Wizard of the Grove (52 page)

They had to have been created by power, Jago realized, standing before the first and gazing at it in wonder. No mortal hand could have done so perfect a job for the terror that twisted the man's features was as extreme as the beauty it twisted.

He moved to the next and although it was a different man, it was the same expression.

And then he realized that these men, so perfect of face and form, all stared in terror across the hall, and he turned.

And recognized the tapestry he now faced.

Red-gold hair, sapphire eyes, and a mocking smile; Jago had grown up in Kraydak's Empire and once he'd seen its lord. The blue eyes of the tapestry seemed to glow and Jago felt his palms grow damp. Fighting over half a lifetime of fear and oppression that threatened to drop him to his knees, he raised his head and met the wizard's eyes. And saw they were nothing but bright blue thread.

He wiped his hands and swept his gaze along the rest of the wall. The tiny woman with the ebony hair and eyes, with the lips as red as rubies and the smile as cold, had to be Aryalan. He didn't need to put names to the rest.

He turned again to the wall he'd first examined and saw the terror
repeated seven times as the seven gods stared out at their wizard-children who had killed them.

Curious, Jago looked more closely at Kraydak's sire. His shoulder-length hair and full beard had been picked out in gold thread and pieces of amethyst had been worked into the color of his eyes. Falling from one limp hand was a scale and from the other a sword. Kraydak had murdered justice.

“And he continued to destroy you, all the rest of his days,” Jago said softly to the god. “But for what peace it gives, he too was destroyed in the end.”

He looked at no more tapestries as he walked to the archway that would take him out of the hall.

It took him some time to find the trap—his mind kept drifting back to gods and wizards—and he'd almost decided no trap existed when he spotted the false lintel. But the trigger eluded him still. Finally he gave up, put the point of his dagger between the stone and the overlapping masonry, and threw his weight against the hilt. The blade bowed but held and the lintel sprang free, slamming down to shatter against the floor.

Jago waited until the dust had settled and the echoes of the noise had died and then he stepped over the rubble and looked left down a corridor that held twelve huge, wooden, brass-bound doors.

“Twelve,” he mused, pushing a chunk of stone back toward the archway. “And fourteen tapestries. And, if I'm not mistaken, sixteen tiles in each wall and in the floor of the checkerboard room.” He smiled grimly and began searching for the next number in sequence. At one of the not-quite-identical doors he stopped; ten rivets held the lock to the wood. The door opened a route to the left as Jago suspected it would. He had to go left to find Crystal and Raulin.

Pulling out his lock-picks, he dropped to one knee and set to work. When the eighth tumbler fell, the door swung open.

The room was empty, and, as far as he could tell, untrapped. In the center, a flight of stairs led down to a lower level. There were no other exits.

Jago paused in the doorway and frowned. He'd either solved the
riddle, and the rest of his way was clear, or he'd solved the riddle and was walking into a major setup.

“How in Chaos do I out-think a wizard dead for centuries?” he wondered, decided not to try and headed for the stairs.

He reached the bottom in a small anteroom, with padded leather benches against the side walls and a dark red carpet on the floor. A smell he recognized drifted through the open door that faced the stairs; dust and leather and . . .

“Books?” Jago ran forward into the largest room he'd seen inside the tower and rocked to a stunned halt. The room was filled with books—books on shelves, books on tables, books stacked haphazardly on the floor.

“These can't be real,” he murmured as his feet, under no conscious control, carried him farther into the canyons between the cases. His disbelief had no effect on either the books or the room in general.

He bumped up against a table, picked a book at random off a pile, and opened it. The lettering remained as clear and sharp as on the day the Scholar had put pen to paper. Jago drew his fingers lightly over the page and began to read. A while later he put it down and picked up another and, later still, he began to wander—scanning titles, dipping occasionally into the pages, marveling at the knowledge stored away.

In a corner, he found a rack of scrolls and carefully unrolled the uppermost. The crackling parchment gave the first indication that time did, indeed, operate on the objects within the room but then, the scroll had been written before the Age of Wizards. He read over half of it before he realized he shouldn't be able to read it at all. None of the words looked familiar, but he knew what they meant.

Thinking back, Jago remembered other books in other languages but never any book he hadn't understood. Aryalan had obviously taken steps to ensure all parts of her library were accessible.

“. . . and the Lady of Grove,” he read aloud, his voice touched with wonder, “came from the heart of her tree. Greatly daring were the bards who sang of her beauty for she walked in beauty beyond words.
Tall she stood, and slender, with silver hair, and ivory skin, and eyes the green of sunlight through summer leaves.” Tossing a braid back over his shoulder, he smiled. “Sounds like the spitting image of Crystal.” Then he paused, one arm outstretched to grasp a black leather tome. What had he just said? Parchment rustled under his other hand and he looked down.

The scroll.

Silver hair, and ivory skin, and eyes the green of sunlight through leaves.

Crystal.

And Raulin.

He wet lips suddenly dry.

“Mother-creator, I'd forgotten about Crystal and Raulin.”

Close to panic, Jago backed away from the scroll and began to search frantically for another door. There had to be another way out. He found it at last, tucked back behind a shelf of geographies, half buried behind stacks of maps. It had no lock, only a brass hook, and he was afraid, until he opened it, that it was just a closet. He checked the way for traps, moving faster than he knew was safe, and stepped through, pulling the door shut behind him.

The air in the narrow stone tunnel seemed cleaner somehow and he stood for a moment just breathing it in.

“So,” he said to the silence, “were the books a trap of Aryalan's making or my own?”

The silence made no answer.

“Did she cause me to forget? Or did I do it to myself?”

He pulled the stopper from his waterskin and took a long drink. He didn't really think he wanted to know.

The tunnel ran, by his best guess, parallel to the hall of tapestries, although a level lower. He started down it, back toward his companions, leaving his questions by the door. He hadn't gone far when the walls began to close in and the ceiling lowered. For the first time since he'd entered the tower, he remembered that it was not only underground, but underwater.

He touched the stone. Was it damp?

And then the wizard-light went out.

It was more than Jago, nerves already frayed, could endure.

“Not alone,” he begged. “Not in the dark.”

He could feel the weight of rock all around him.

Closing his eyes helped only a little, just enough for him to force his feet to move. With his shoulders pushing against the walls and one hand running along the ceiling to protect his head, he inched forward. It was never so bad when Raulin was with him and he used that as a goad. If he couldn't make it through this, Raulin might never be with him again.

He had no way to tell if time was passing until the blackness against his lids turned gray. And then orange. He opened his eyes and could see the end of the tunnel.

With his whole mind on the open area ahead, he stumbled forward and out.

He thought of traps one step too late, felt the stone give under his foot, saw the steel plate begin to drop. He had no idea what the steel was to close him in with—fire, flood, or wild beast—nor did he care. He dove forward, rolled, and the plate crashed down behind him.

When his ears stopped ringing, he tried to stand and found he hadn't rolled quite far enough. One braid had been caught between the metal and the floor.

Laughter seemed the only appropriate response . . . until he felt a touch against his boot sole and looked up into the tiny black eyes of a male brindle.

*   *   *

Raulin stood and stared at the narrow stone bridge, his back pressed so hard against the wall he was sure his shoulder blades would leave imprints. Mentally, he retraced his route and decided he'd head back to the last cross corridor and try the other direction; just as soon as he could get his feet to move. He'd caught only a glimpse of the depths the bridge spanned, but that had been enough to send him staggering back to safety and freeze him there.

“Just as soon as the memory fades a bit,” he told himself, the wall under his palms growing damp, “I'm out of here.”

And then he heard Jago scream on the other side.

He was across the bridge before he knew it and running as fast as his bad knee would allow toward the sound.

“Chaos!” Skidding around a corner he only just managed to avoid slamming into the hind end of a brindle. A brindle that appeared to have his brother pinned. Well, he'd dealt with
that
once before.

He pulled his dagger and leaped at the animal's back, aiming for a pale patch of fur at the top of its spine.

A pale patch of fur . . .

Jago watched mesmerized as the brindle swayed above him, both his legs held easily beneath massive paws. He remembered claws and teeth tearing his flesh from the bone. He remembered pain. He waited for it to begin again.

The brindle bent its head to feed. Jago forced himself to look away.

“Jago! Chaos blast it, Jago, look at me!” Raulin grabbed Jago's chin and yanked his head around. “It isn't real! It's illusion!”

To Jago, caught up in the memory of old torment, Raulin's voice seemed to come from very far away. But Raulin's voice shouldn't have been there at all, so he listened and dragged himself free of the words. When he finally managed to focus, Raulin crouched where the brindle had been.

Raulin saw reason return to his brother's eyes, and started to breathe again. “If you believed in that thing so strongly,” he growled, “why didn't you run?”

Jago jerked his head to the limit of the trapped hair.

Raulin's gaze ran along the golden braid and back and Jago tensed for the roar that was sure to come. Raulin didn't disappoint him.

“I TOLD YOU TO GET YOUR HAIR CUT!”

With a half-smile, Jago pulled his dagger and handed it over. “Be my guest.”

“Serve you right if I shaved half your head,” Raulin muttered, bending to the task. “I told you this would get you into trouble one day, but you wouldn't listen. You can sit up now.”

Jago sat and tried not to wince as the other braid was cut to match. “What are you doing?” he asked as Raulin coiled the length of hair and crammed it into his belt pouch.

“What does it look like,” Raulin snapped. “I can't see how you managed with two. This thing weighs a ton.”

“I am feeling a little light-headed.” The ragged ends just touched his shoulders.

“That's because there's nothing between your ears.” And in a much softer tone he asked, “You okay?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Yeah.”

They held each other then, and everything was all right.

*   *   *

“Tested . . .” Raulin nodded. “It makes sense.”

“It's the only thing that does. If Aryalan wanted to keep people out of her tower, she wouldn't have bothered with false floors and falling walls and the rest of this nonsense, she'd have thrown up a power barrier or made the tower invisible.”

“So what are we being tested for?”

“I don't know.”

Raulin sighed. “Great. Lost in a dead wizard's tower, being tested for reasons that probably died with her, and we know what happens if we fail.”

Jago stood and offered Raulin his hand. “Frankly, I'm more worried about what happens if we pass. Come on, let's find Crystal.”

*   *   *

“RAULIN! JAGO!”

Crystal let the echoes of her voice fade and reached out with power. Nothing. She could feel the link with Jago, but she couldn't use it to track him. She couldn't touch Raulin at all.

“I told them this was going to happen. I told them!”

Feeling better after that short burst of pettiness, she started across
the checkerboard room to the archway. Raulin would not stay put, that went without question. Jago might, but she rather doubted it as he had no way of knowing if either of his companions still lived. She had to find them before they found something they couldn't handle. Or something found them.

Raulin could be dead,
Avreen pointed out.
Why don't you call the Mother's son and find out? He did say he'd come if you called.

Raulin isn't dead.
Crystal's voice was edged.

You could know for sure. What is it about Lord Death that frightens you lately?

Crystal slammed a barrier down so hard she felt her other shields tremble. She couldn't keep Avreen locked away for long, but she'd enjoy the peace while it lasted. Afraid of Lord Death, indeed. He was her oldest friend. Why didn't she call him?

The center four tiles of the sixteen in the floor dropped out from under her.

Her power caught her just before she hit the spikes. She drifted up and out of the pit, furious at herself for being distracted.

“What a stupid way for a wizard to die,” she muttered. “I keep this up and someone's going to have to rescue me.”

When she reached the arch she paused and pushed a wave of power through before her.