“You fools, don’t you understand? He isn’t dead. I don’t care what your Gifter said or pretended. Peter is not dead.”
Manacle now, chilly as winter. “I do not appreciate being called a fool. As a direct descendent, unto the thirtieth generation, of the original Searchers, as fifth in a direct line to win the title of Dean, I am not one to be lightly called fool. We bear with you, Huld, though you are a mere Gamesman, because you have been useful. We do not bear with insult, however.”
I heard Huld’s teeth grind together. To be called a “mere Gamesman” would have been enough. To hear the scorn in Manacle’s voice was more than enough.
“You bear with me, Dean Manacle, because I am the only one who can warn you of what the Council plots against you, what the Council intends. Without me, you are at the mercy of that strange people, not a tender mercy, Manacle. Now, where are they? Where are the Wizard and the Seer?”
Manacle drew himself up with a trembling hauteur, pompously waving the hovering servitor away. “They are in the laboratories, Huld. I will take you there tonight, after the meeting. You may see for yourself. I will tell you then what the Committee has decided about your request, your request to have access to our defenders. I do not think they will be sympathetic, Huld. They believe that the Council and the Committee are effective counterweights to one another. They believe it is so we keep the world in balance.”
“Until the Council grows tired of balance.” It was said very quietly, but with enormous menace. With that utterance the room became perfectly still. One of the little girls whimpered, the sound falling into quiet as a pebble into a pool, the ripples spreading ever wider to rebound from the walls, an astonishment of sound. Manacle stared at Huld with eyes grown suddenly wary. “Why would they wish to destroy the historic balance?” he quavered.
“Why would they not? They grow proud, powerful. They long for new things. Why else would they have created this ‘Peter,’ this new Talent? For what other purpose than to change the balance?”
One of the magicians who had stood silent during this exchange, one taller than most, with a face the color of ash, said, “Do you know this to be true?”
“Professor Quench, I know it almost surely. The likelihood disturbs me greatly. And it should disturb you.”
“We must know,” said Quench in a voice of lava, flowing, hardening, roughening the room with its splash and flow. “We must know, Manacle. We must know, Shear. Likely isn’t good enough. We must know.”
Manacle dithered, shifted his feet, picked at an invisible spot of lint. “The Committee of the Faculty,” he offered, “the subject is to be brought before the Committee when it meets tonight.”
Quench stared him long in the face, then nodded. “See that it is,” he said, walking out of the room, voice splattering behind him. “See that it is. I will be there.”
Manacle now very much on his dignity, feeling diminished by ashy Quench and burning Huld, flutters at Shear. “Take the consecrated monsters away, Shear. This has quite disordered my day. If we are to have questions raised like this, out of order, before the Committee has had a chance to consider, well. I have much to prepare.” He bustled away in the direction Quench had gone. Shear herded the girls away, and my last glimpse of Huld was of his fiery eyes watching Manacle to the end of sight. We went, Mavin and I, quiet as bunwits, down the carpeted hallway and into the place designated. There were pallets there for sleeping, and spigots for a kind of gruel, and a pool for bathing. There was nothing of interest save the tall, barred door which led into Manacle’s quarters. Once Shear had gone, it would be no trick to shape a finger into a key, to go out and lock the door behind us.
So we did. “What will he think when he finds two of us gone?” I whispered to Mavin.
“He will think the two remaining ate the two who are missing,” she snarled at me. “Don’t be a fool, boy. Leave the door open as though Shear forgot to lock it. Then he may wonder where his breeders are, but he will not suspect a spy in his own place.”