suspect things that have had magic go through them, you might as well hold suspect the ... the,” she groped for an example of absurdity, “the stones of the Citadel themselves.”
He paused in the act of slinging the slightly tea-stained shawl around his shoulders and turned enormous, deranged gray eyes upon her. “Oh, I do,” he said. He plucked one of the pinwheels from the vase, large, delicately balanced, and of a brilliant red and yellow like a hallucinatory sunflower, and blew gently on its curving sail. “Daurannon should be in the Senior Parlor by this time, drinking his evening tea; I think it's high time that you and I had a look at the Vaults.”
“As a theory it's preposterous,” Daurannon had said. “The mazes in the Vaults were dug as a protective measure to guard the old wizard-lords' treasures against invaders, and their more dangerous secrets against the curious, the same way the very ancient lords built mazes into their castles. That's all those garden mazes mimic. And true or not,” he'd added, seeing Antryg open his mouth to argue, “the Council has agreed not to permit you to enter the Vaults without one of us as escort.”
Perched on the arm of the oak chair on the opposite side of the parlor fire, Antryg had experienced—and now, as the scene recurred to him through the smoky overlay of his dreams, experienced more strongly—a sense of odd and painful deja vu. The Senior Parlor, on the third floor of the Polygon, above the level where the classical mass of that great building broke up into a stylistic jackdaw nest of additions and alterations, had been a home to him once upon a time. Asleep and dreaming in his borrowed bed in the Pepper-Grinder, even as his mind played back the scenes of the earlier evening, it tangled them with the memories of those other nights: hundreds of them, thousands of them, when he'd sat in the same fashion, perched, knees up, on the arm of that very chair, with Daurannon slouched comfortably in the opposite seat of heavily carved and age-blackened oak, stirring milk into his tea after the fashion of the lower classes on the western seaboard.
Even the people had been the same, as much a part of the small, cozy chamber as the linenfold paneling, the undressed stone of the fireplace, and the smells of herbs and candlewax. Bentick played piquet with someone, usually Phormion but on this occasion Nandiharrow; Otaro the Singer sat on the raised stone hearth, soft phrases and ribbons of melody flowing from his big old harp with the restful ease of conversation, while Zake Thwacker—Brighthand—a seventeen-year-old docker's son from the Angelshand slums in the gray robes of a Junior, sat at his feet. Pentilla Riverwych was curled up in a chair at the long table beneath the western windows, unconsciously plaiting and replacing the end of her thick brown braid as she read from some obscure history that Seldes Katne had brought her down from the library.
Most of them had been Antryg's teachers, before he'd become a teacher himself. Pentilla, now a Senior, had been his student.
And he was an exile.
Even in sleep, deep in the dreams that brought the scene back to him, that hurt.
“But if my theory that the Vaults are an energy maze is preposterous—which of course it is,” argued Antryg persuasively, “what harm can I do by going there alone? I mean, I'd have gone down through the kitchen—they connect up with the stores-cellar and the room where Pothatch keeps the flour—except it's locked up for the night, which I must say is rather hard, Bentick, on the poor students who just want a cup of cocoa.”
“Considering the things abroad in the Vaults now,” Nandiharrow remarked, judiciously rearranging his cards, “that cup of cocoa could be dearly bought.”
“It isn't the energy from the lines of power that worries us, and I think you know it.” Daurannon set his teacup aside—soft-paste china, white and yellow, from the finest workshops in
He paused in the act of slinging the slightly tea-stained shawl around his shoulders and turned enormous, deranged gray eyes upon her. “Oh, I do,” he said. He plucked one of the pinwheels from the vase, large, delicately balanced, and of a brilliant red and yellow like a hallucinatory sunflower, and blew gently on its curving sail. “Daurannon should be in the Senior Parlor by this time, drinking his evening tea; I think it's high time that you and I had a look at the Vaults.”
“As a theory it's preposterous,” Daurannon had said. “The mazes in the Vaults were dug as a protective measure to guard the old wizard-lords' treasures against invaders, and their more dangerous secrets against the curious, the same way the very ancient lords built mazes into their castles. That's all those garden mazes mimic. And true or not,” he'd added, seeing Antryg open his mouth to argue, “the Council has agreed not to permit you to enter the Vaults without one of us as escort.”
Perched on the arm of the oak chair on the opposite side of the parlor fire, Antryg had experienced—and now, as the scene recurred to him through the smoky overlay of his dreams, experienced more strongly—a sense of odd and painful deja vu. The Senior Parlor, on the third floor of the Polygon, above the level where the classical mass of that great building broke up into a stylistic jackdaw nest of additions and alterations, had been a home to him once upon a time. Asleep and dreaming in his borrowed bed in the Pepper-Grinder, even as his mind played back the scenes of the earlier evening, it tangled them with the memories of those other nights: hundreds of them, thousands of them, when he'd sat in the same fashion, perched, knees up, on the arm of that very chair, with Daurannon slouched comfortably in the opposite seat of heavily carved and age-blackened oak, stirring milk into his tea after the fashion of the lower classes on the western seaboard.
Even the people had been the same, as much a part of the small, cozy chamber as the linenfold paneling, the undressed stone of the fireplace, and the smells of herbs and candlewax. Bentick played piquet with someone, usually Phormion but on this occasion Nandiharrow; Otaro the Singer sat on the raised stone hearth, soft phrases and ribbons of melody flowing from his big old harp with the restful ease of conversation, while Zake Thwacker—Brighthand—a seventeen-year-old docker's son from the Angelshand slums in the gray robes of a Junior, sat at his feet. Pentilla Riverwych was curled up in a chair at the long table beneath the western windows, unconsciously plaiting and replacing the end of her thick brown braid as she read from some obscure history that Seldes Katne had brought her down from the library.
Most of them had been Antryg's teachers, before he'd become a teacher himself. Pentilla, now a Senior, had been his student.
And he was an exile.
Even in sleep, deep in the dreams that brought the scene back to him, that hurt.
“But if my theory that the Vaults are an energy maze is preposterous—which of course it is,” argued Antryg persuasively, “what harm can I do by going there alone? I mean, I'd have gone down through the kitchen—they connect up with the stores-cellar and the room where Pothatch keeps the flour—except it's locked up for the night, which I must say is rather hard, Bentick, on the poor students who just want a cup of cocoa.”
“Considering the things abroad in the Vaults now,” Nandiharrow remarked, judiciously rearranging his cards, “that cup of cocoa could be dearly bought.”
“It isn't the energy from the lines of power that worries us, and I think you know it.” Daurannon set his teacup aside—soft-paste china, white and yellow, from the finest workshops in
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