The Last Guardian by Jeff Grubb Page A

he was witnessing.
    Was it a bad memory for Medivh? Was this the time when he slipped into the coma?
    Looking at the older mage, Khadgar could see much of the young man from the vision. He was taller, but slightly stooped from his years and researches, yet there was the young man wrapped within the older
    form.
    Medivh for his part said, “Do you have ‘Song of Aegwynn’?”
    Khadgar shook himself out of his thoughts. “The song?”
    “Of my mother,” said Medivh. “It would be an old scroll. I swear I can’t find anything here since Page 40

    you’ve cleaned!”
    “It is with the other epic poetry, sir,” said Khadgar.He should tell him about the vision, he thought. Was this a random event, or was it brought on by his meeting of Lothar? Was finding out about things triggering visions?
    Medivh crossed to the shelf, and running a finger along the scrolls, pulled the needed version, old, and well worn. He unwound it partway, checked it against a scrap of paper in his pocket, then rewound and replaced it.
    “I have to go,” he said suddenly. “Tonight, I’m afraid.”
    “Where are we going?” asked Khadgar.
    “I go alone, this time,” said the elder mage, already striding toward the door. “I will leave instructions for your studies with Moroes.”
    “When will you return?” shouted Khadgar after his retreating form.
    “When I am back!” bellowed Medivh, taking the stairs up two at a time already. Khadgar imagined the castellan already at the top of the tower, with his runic whistle and tame gryphon at the ready.
    “Fine,” said Khadgar, looking at the books. “I’ll just sit here and figure out how to tame an hourglass.”
    Six
    Aegwynn and Sargeras
    Medivh was gone a week, all told, and it was a week well spent for Khadgar. He installed himself in the library, and had Moroes bring his meals there. On more than one occasion he did not even reach his quarters in the evening, rather spending the time sleeping on the great library tables themselves.
    Ultimately, he was searching for visions.
    His own correspondence went unanswered as he plumbed the ancient tomes and grimoires on questions about time, light, and magic. His early reports had drawn quick responses from the mages of the Violet
    Citadel. Guzbah wanted a transcription of the epic poem of Aegwynn. Lady Delth declared that she recognized none of the titles he sent her—could he send them again, this time with the first paragraph of each, so she knew what they were? And Alonda was adamant that there had to be a fifth breed of troll, and that Khadgar had obviously not found the proper bestiaries. The young mage was delighted to leave their demands unanswered as he sought out a way of taming the visions.
    The key to his incantation, it seemed, would be a simple spell of farseeing, a divination that granted sight
    of distant objects and far-off locations. A book of priestly magic had described it as an incantation of holy vision, yet it worked as well for Khadgar as it did for their clerics. While that priestly spell functioned over space, perhaps with modification it could function over time.
    Khadgar reasoned that this would normally be impossible given the flow of time in a determinant, clockwork universe.
    But it seemed that within the walls of Karazhan, at least, time was an hourglass, and identifying bits of disjointed time was more likely. And once one hooked into one grain of time, it would be easier to move that grain to another.
    If others had attempted this within the walls of Medivh’s Tower, there was no clue within the library, unless it was within the most heavily guarded or unreadable of the tomes located on the iron balcony.
    Curiously, the notes in Medivh’s own hand were uninterested in the visions, which seemed to dominate other notes from other visitors. Did Medivh keep that information in another location, or was he truly more interested in matters beyond the walls of the citadel than the Page 41

    activities within