There was no reason why there should be. Ordinary theft was virtually unknown in the Wizards’ Keep because it was so easy to find thieves by magic. The wizards’ workrooms were carefully protected by multiple spells, but there was no reason to extend that protection to living quarters. After all, no one worked in his or her apartment.
With one very important exception.
Pryddian moved cautiously across the sitting room toward the desk piled high with books and papers. With the hedge witch fled and the Sparrow sent away there should be no one here, but the enormity of what he was doing made Pryddian careful nonetheless.
Well, Pryddian thought, the Sparrow had it coming. This was a way to avenge himself and perhaps profit as well.
As he approached the desk beneath, the red dragon demon reared up from among the clutter and hissed at him. Pryddian stopped and studied the creature carefully. He had expected something like this. Not even the Sparrow would be so careless as to leave his secrets completely unguarded.
However, Pryddian had come prepared, just as he had come armed with an unlocking spell for the door. The fact that it was a thing of the Sparrow’s made it all the more delicious.
“ddt exe!” he whispered, pointing at the guardian demon.
The little red dragon paused in mid-hiss and scampered off the table. Pryddian watched in satisfaction as it ran whimpering for the bedroom.
Eagerly he bent over the desk and began to riffle through the material piled there. The large leatherbound book in the center of the table seemed most important, so he opened it first. But what was inside was the confused mishmash of the nonsense the Sparrow foisted off upon the wizards. Not a true spell in the lot. He slammed the book in disgust and turned to the piles of parchment, slates and tablets stacked around.
Quickly he sorted them, putting aside everything that was too arcane or too fragmentary to be useful. He was left with a sizable amount of material. Stacking the pile on top of the book, he reached into his cloak and produced a pen, a travelling inkwell and a sheaf of parchment. He dipped his pen into the ink and began to copy as fast as he could write, cursing when he blotted something in haste.
This was what he wanted. Not the inane babblings the Sparrow expounded in his classes, but his spells. His real power. Frantically he copied the crabbed smudged characters, taking care to put alternate lines on different sheets of parchment to prevent activating the spells. He added the marginal notes as he went, even though most of them meant nothing to him. With time perhaps he could puzzle out their meanings.
He was perhaps halfway down the pile when he came to the real prize. A powerful searching spell that would show the user anything that went on in the world. Flipping through the parchments he saw the spell commanded three separate sets of demons.
Pryddian licked his lips and his hand trembled. This must be the spell the Sparrow had used to track the Dark League. Like any magician, he believed that knowledge was power and this was a spell that would give him knowledge of the entire world.
The dragon demon peered around the corner at him and occasionally ventured a half-hiss. That Pryddian ignored. Every so often he glanced over his shoulder at the door, gripped by a mixture of elation and terror. If he was caught the consequences did not bear thinking about, but if he got away with this he would possess the essence of the Sparrow’s magic.
Throw him out, would they? They would see who was the better wizard before he was through.
As he bent to copy the sheets he looked out between the drawn curtains and saw Moira coming across the courtyard, still wearing her travelling cloak.
Fortuna! The most powerful spell in the Sparrow’s arsenal and he did not have time to copy it. Without thinking he thrust the originals inside his jerkin with the wad of copies. Hastily he gathered up his pen and ink and tried to put everything back where he found it.