Prophet of Moonshae - Douglas Niles [33]
"Why-you mock me! A man who spends his days indoors, like a woman! I see those hands, far better fit for spinning wool than for holding a man's weapon. Come, sir. Dare you raise steel against me?"
Before anyone could react, Gwyeth kicked his chair over backward and stood to his greater than six-foot height. In his hand, seemingly from nowhere, appeared a long, steel-bladed dagger.
Keane blinked, nonplussed. He looked at Lord Blackstone, apparently wondering if that noble would rebuke his son's poor manners, but the earl remained silent, scowling at the two men.
"Come, I say. At least pretend you're a man!" Gwyeth took a step forward.
"My lord!" Alicia said firmly. "Is this the hospitality of an earl?"
But Blackstone appeared not to hear. Carefully sliding his chair backward, Keane stood. His face was calm. "I have no wish to fight you. It would be ungracious, in light of your father's hospitality. But you shall not insult me!"
Gwyeth's face lit in a fierce grin. "Hah! Frail as a girl, he is, and now he tries to hide with a woman's talk!"
Keane seemed to stretch-at full height, he was an inch or two taller than even Gwyeth, though the burly knight outweighed him by perhaps a hundred pounds. Still, something in the thin man's gaze gave his opponent pause.
But Gwyeth had staked too much of his manhood on this confrontation. He could not back down. He lunged sharply at Keane.
The teacher snapped his fingers, and Alicia saw something like dust or sand puff into the air from the thin man's hand. At the same time, Keane waved his other arm toward the charging figure of Gwyeth.
In the next instant, the burly Gwyeth tumbled face-forward onto the ground. He lay still, only the rapid pulsing of his torso showing that he still breathed. After a moment, he found his voice, croaking a hysterical shriek amid a spattering of drool on the floor.
"Remove him!" barked Blackstone, gesturing to four men-at-arms, all of whom were required to heft the huge man and cart him from the hall.
"Sorcery!" The whisper passed around the great table, and the guests looked at Keane with new, appraising eyes, their expressions a mixture of respect and fear.
"I beg my lord's pardon," Keane said, bowing to the earl before reseating himself. "He shall recover free movement in a matter of minutes."
"Pah!" growled the lord, returning to his meat. Alicia sensed that he was disappointed in his son's embarrassing performance as much as anything else.
The remainder of the meal passed in somewhat stilted conversation, mostly concerning the past five years of weather. Finally the dinner guests made their way to the doors, while Alicia and her two companions bade good night to the earl and retired, with a feeling of relief, to their chambers.
Tomorrow morning, after breaking fast, they would journey with the earl to the Moonwell.
* * * * *
The oil lamp flared and smoked as the wick soaked up the last of the fuel, but Deirdre took no notice. Instead, her pulse quickened with excitement as she read the pages of the tome before her. It was an obscure volume, the Origins of Arcane Power, by one Dudlis of Thay, but it provoked within her feelings that she had never before tapped.
She had stumbled upon the tome almost by accident. She had been browsing among the titles along several high shelves that she had not previously investigated, when the glint of candlelight along the book's golden spine had attracted her eye. At the time, she had laughed at the fleeting suspicion that the book was calling to her, asking to be read.
Now she wasn't so sure that her reaction had been caused by her imagination.
The mind must open to the power that would flow, and the power itself must be fed and nurtured. It is a matter of diet, of meditation-and of joy.
This writer, this wizard-he understands! She felt a kinship to the long-dead author, for this was the power she had long felt within herself. Keane had touched it for her when he had begun to show her simple enchantments, but then the tutor had stopped, almost as if he had been frightened.