He’s in my skull-
Yes, came a soft, soft voice. / am. And you’re quite right. But you also taste
what my power would be. I’m still apprentice. But to hide a thing is another of
my talents. And Mistress doesn’t see me. I’ve learned the edges of her power,
I’ve mapped it like a geography, and I simply walk the low places, the canyons
and the chasms of it. She’s committed an error great mages make: she’s lost her
small focus. Her inner eye is set always on the horizons, and those horizons
grow wider and wider, so the small, deft stroke can pass her notice; I can sit
in a small place and listen to the echoes her power makes. It makes so much
noise tonight it has no sense of a thing so small and soft. And I approach
mastery. It lacks one thing. No, two. You are one. The thought will remain. I
will seal it up now, I will seal it so you needn’t fear at all; all that will
remain is a knowledge that 1 am not your true enemy. Wake up, “Stilcho-“
Stilcho blinked, startled for a moment as he found himself face to face with
Haught. Something was very wrong, that he was this close to Haught and feeling
no fear. It was a situation that produced fear of its own. But Haught let him
go.
“Are you all right?” Haught asked with brotherly tenderness.
Witchery did not obliterate memory of past injury. It only made things seem,
occasionally, quite mad.
And the fire still roared in the front room, where he had no wish to go.
Ischade herded another soul home. This one was a soldier, and wily and full of
tricks and turns-one of Stilcho’s lost company who had deserted in the streets