The Howling Delve - Jaleigh Johnson [55]
Meisha slowly circled the rear wall, putting herself in the wizard's periphery so he would know she was there. Varan held an object in his hands, an opaque sphere caged in a knot of iron bands. Within the sphere, tiny lights winked and danced like ttapped stars. Wherever Varan touched the bands, the lights would gather, drawn zipping across the empty space to swirl around his fingertips. The collected magic in the room was so intense it hutt Meisha's head to concentrate too closely on any one point. And the Aft did not issue only from the sphere.
Meisha uttefed a quick word and swept a fanning gesture the length and width of the room. As the spell took effect, the light nearly smote her blind. Most of the intact objects on the floor, with the exception of the food, contained magic-slight in some instances, dangerously strong in others.
"Varan, what have you been doing?" Meisha whispered, but no one answeted. She glanced behind het, but Talal had not followed her into the room. He stood, framed in the crack of the half-closed door, watching Varan. His expression showed a mixture of hatred, awe, and fear.
Meisha took a step forward. She felt the boy make a restless motion. Her eyes shot a question at him, and a warning-don't try to stop me.
Talal appeared torn. Reluctantly, he stepped into the toom, just far enough to whisper, "He won't answer you. He never talks to us."
"What's wtong with him?"
"Lady, you'd need a bucket full of scribes to make that list. Just come away," he pleaded.
Meisha shook het head. "I have to see him." She crept toward the wizard, carefully toeing aside the non-magical debris to make a path.
She knelt next to her former teacher, but he did not stir from his work. He smelled much worse than Talal. His gray-blue robes were stained-Mystra's mercy, in some places charred-and soiled by old urine and waste. Her eyes traveled upward, and Meisha gasped at the gaunt, cavernous husk that the wizard's face had become.
Varan had been aged when Meisha was young, but the man who sat before her was sucked dry, all his energy and vitality gone. His left eye was missing, and the flesh around the empty socket had melted, folding into itself like a pudding. His one good eye stared dully at the wall as his hands moved in a jerky rhythm over the sphere.
Meisha followed his gaze. A rough parchment drawing floated flat against the cavern wall, illuminated by green radiances. On it someone had scribbled-the hand was too spiky to be Varan's-a drawing of the sphere, with notes along the top and sides of the page.
The lights in the sphere flared, drawn to its center. Suddenly, a sound like shattering glass echoed in the toom, and the lights went out. Gray mist tendtils flowed from the gaps in the iron bands, curling up sinuously to touch Varan's beard.
The wizard's hands shook, as if the sphere had suddenly doubled in weight. It dragged the old man's arms down, and the mist swirled and dissipated. The sphere hit the cavern floor with a thud that Meisha felt through her knees.
Distaste flickered in the wizard's eye. He pushed the sphere aside and tore the drawing from the wall.
"Broken."
Meisha's head snapped up at the sound of the wizard's voice. "Varan?"
"Hello, little firebird," he replied, but his gaze never left the drawing. Carefully, he tore it into strips of glowing green, flicking each aside like magical confetti.
Relief flooded Meisha at the sound of the old nickname. "Master. What happened to you, to your eye?"
Varan seemed not to hear her. "I broke another one." He selected a brittle piece of meat from the plate and tore off a bite.
"What do you mean, you 'broke' it?" Meisha asked.
"Broken," Varan repeated. "Some of them work, some break. And yet they cling to me, just like you did, firebird. Cling to me, wanting to be fixed. I suppose I'll fix them all, eventually."
"Varan," Meisha said, choking back her revulsion at the white, squirming