A Dragon's Ascension - Ed Greenwood [113]
Not for Gadaster-what use are whole and handsome bones to a man who has passed beyond death and sanity, into the enduring dark madness beyond?-but for Ingryl Ambelter himself. With every healing he partook of, a little of Gadaster's will seeped into him, stealing within silently to join a whelming of what was already there.
He seemed oblivious, too, smilingly confident as he went blithely on calling himself Spellmaster… and could not even see or feel Gadaster's regard when he lay drinking Gadaster's power.
There would come a day, if this went on, when Ingryl would taste the other edge of the sword of spells he'd used on Gadaster-and his sentience would be torn apart in torment for a suitable time… a year or three, perhaps… ere Gadaster quenched it forever and took Ingryl’s body for his own, repaying his apprentice in kind for his treachery.
Yes, there was no greater danger for a mage than dabbling in magics he did not really know. All must be understood, every last detail and consequence, not just the flash and the fire-or what difference would truly stretch, between a wizard and a small boy playing with a burning brand from the hearthfire, carelessly setting this tapestry and that chair alight, and so dooming himself and a grand house together?
Yet this magic that had so disturbed his bones was one Gadaster did not know. It had shaken the oldest enchantments of the palace, underlying spells that had been old and forgotten and many-layered when Gadaster had cast his first timid magics here, in the service of Silvertree.
Did he dare to send his awareness stealing forth, when he might be noticed by someone truly mighty? He must.
Curiosity is the bane of wizards, and the goad that drives them on. He had to know.
Something was gone, something missing. Destroyed, not taken… the throne! The River Throne stood shattered, amid much lesser destruction, and that meant all the binding enchantm… but what was this? A singing of shattered spells, a tangle of incantations about emptiness… Kelgrael was dead! The Sleeping King had awakened-and been slain!
So what of the Serpent? Th-Horns of the Lady! Gadaster became aware of a deep, dark, and fell sentience very close by above him, pervading all of the palace above, and now seeking down, down into these cellars…
He must sleep as Kelgrael had, must spin himself away from this place, or be discovered!
Gadaster did something hasty in his mind, drawing a glyph with mental fire in the gloom with frenzied haste, racing along it in mounting fear…
Just in time. The glow faded from old bones lying in a casket, and darkness reclaimed the room Ingryl had so carefully prepared.
A bare breath later, minor magics on its shelves-and one small, fallen thing, on the floor-flashed briefly blue as the mind that had been called Irtle Eroeha, and other names besides, became aware of them… and drank their power, leaving crumbling dust behind.
The bones lay still and silent as the dust of Flowfoam Palace started to settle once more.
And when the next great crash came from above, a few moments later, nothing in the casket was aware of anything.
At the top of a tower far from Aglirta was a round, high-ceilinged room dominated by a tall arched window that was always open.
Bats flew in and out of that window almost ceaselessly, whatever the hour, and the rafters above, as they reached up to meet in a central down-spire of carved and turned wood that was far grander-if shorter-than the matching spire above it, outside the tower, were encrusted with thick clusters of hanging bats.
A dark-robed man sat at a desk in that room, reading. He seemed scarcely to notice the dozens of bats that perched and then flapped away from his shoulders and head, or clung there with the passing hours. He was reading a spellbook that many a mage would have cheerfully given many lives for