Stormlight - Ed Greenwood [107]
Then he stepped back, closed his own eyes, calmed himself, and carefully cast a spell he'd been carrying for a long time. When it was done, he stepped forward, touched Aundable's ear, and watched his body jump in the chair.
Laspeera looked up at him almost reproachfully. She'd long since smeared the ointment over her husband's face and was visibly calmer. Only the edge of her Up, firmly caught between her fine white teeth, betrayed how upset she was. "And now?" she asked, her voice so low and quiet that it was almost a whisper.
"Mind-speak to him," Vangerdahast said briskly, handing her the other thing he'd taken from behind the panel. Laspeera recognized the circlet at once, donned it, gave him a thin smile of thanks, and bent over her husband's slack face.
Satisfied, Vangerdahast turned away and strode across the room to its door. Instead of opening it, he touched a certain spot in the relief carving of the mounted knight that adorned it, and then turned his head to watch a certain carving glow on another wall. Stepping smartly across the room to touch the lit spot before it faded, he spoke a word under his breath-and then turned again to face the door that was slowly appearing on a solid section of wall.
He ignored its handle, instead touching a bottom corner of the door with his hand as he muttered another word. The wall faded into invisibility, leaving a dark opening lit only by two gleaming, winking eyes. Vangerdahast stepped fearlessly straight into them. As they vanished, the hidden chamber beyond was flooded with light.
It was not an impressive place: a storeroom with a central table and walls covered with row upon row of shelves crammed with boxes, coffers, and chests of all sizes and descriptions. Vangey thrust the table aside to clear the floor area, selected seven boxes without hesitations, and from each one scooped out a crystal sphere similar to the one Aundable had been using, setting them in a ring on the floor around him.
Unless he was totally mistaken, Laspeeras husband would be fine; it was now Vangerdahasts pressing duty to see just what had attacked him so. He fished a slim dark staff out of a recess behind the door-molding, touched each of the crystals in turn, and murmured a long-unused phrase.
The storeroom darkened. Glowing brightly, the seven crystals rose in unison around the old wizard. Vangerdahast closed his eyes to picture in his mind what he was about to scry.
Aundable had been looking at northeastern Cormyr, if the map he'd been running his finger over was any indication. So just what was it, in that forgotten and largely wild outlying arm of the kingdom, that had struck out at him?
Standing quietly among the scrying stones, the lord high wizard of Cormyr sent his awareness questing out through all of them. He was leaping north and east in little bounds, through the eyes of bats and awakening night birds and the bolder birds of the day, making their last flights as full night came down… It was just a bit beyond Immersea that he saw something that flashed and glimmered through the sky on wings he could see through.
An onrushing dragon, wings spread in ghostly glory-a red wyrm, once, by its shape and the look of its head. The owl he was using wheeled away in mounting fear, and Vangerdahast ceased scrying to fix the sight of the high-flying dragon firmly in his nun
He wheeled around and said, " "Speera? Touch my mind."
Laspeera looked up, unsmiling. Her husband’s head was cradled in her hands. She met her master's gaze squarely-and Vangerdahasts questing thought flashed between their eyes.
In a trice, he was in Aundable's mind, seeing what Laspeera saw. and giving his own warm greeting. The man now unhurt, and completely fearless-but had totally forgotten what he'd seen or where he was scrying when he saw it.
Not for long: one glimpse of the dragon in the royal magician's mind made him cry out. Vivid memories flashed through the linkage. "That light!"