Sleep - where he would forget where he was and the bonds that had been placed upon him, the coercions that now ruled his mind and powers. Where he would forget that it was a mere stripling of a usurping King that he must call 'Master.'
He had learned his captor had given him his real name quite by accident, during one of those bouts of pretended sleep. The annoying hedge-wizard who played host to him had entered with the servant that had brought him food, and had ordered the frightened man to wake Falconsbane and see that he ate and drank. The servant had objected, clearly thinking Falconsbane some kind of wild beast, half man and half monster, fearing - he little knew how rightly - that Falconsbane might kill him if he ventured too near. The wizard had cuffed his underling, growling that 'the King wants him well and what Ancar will do to both of us if he is not is worse than anything this creature ever could do to you!'
At the time, Falconsbane had come very close to betraying his pretense by laughing. Clearly, this foolish magician had no idea who and what he was entertaining!
And if he had? Likely he would have fled the country in terror, not trusting to anything but distance to bring him out of Falconsbane's reach. The silly fool; even that would not help him if Mornelithe became upset with him.
He still had no real idea why it was that Ancar had placed him under magical coercions - other than the obvious, that the upstart wanted an Adept under his control. Why he wanted and needed an Adept - what purposes he wanted that Adept to serve - that was still a mystery. But at least, after listening covertly to the conversations between the sniveling hedge-wizard and his Master, he now knew how Ancar had brought him here.
By accident. Purely and simply, by accident and blundering.
The thought that he, Mornelithe Falconsbane, Adept of power that puny young Ancar could only dream of, had been 'rescued' entirely by a mistake was enough to make him wild with rage - or hysterical with laughter. It was impossible. It was a thing so absurd that it never should have happened. No mage of any learning would have ever given credit to such a story.
Nevertheless....
It was logical, when analyzed. The backlash of power when his focus had been smashed, his web of power- lines snapped back on him, and the proto-Gate had been released from his control had sent Falconsbane into the Void. No ordinary Gate could have fetched him back out again, for ordinary Gates were carefully constructed, and the terminus chosen, long before the Gate energy was set in motion. No Gate could be set on the Void itself; to attempt such a folly would be to court absolute disaster as the Gate turned back on itself and its creator and devoured both. But Ancar had not created an ordinary Gate; he had not been creating a Gate at all, so far as he knew. He had thought then - and still thought now - that he had been constructing some safe way for a lesser mage to handle the terrible powers of node-energies, energies only an Adept could safely master. Ancar did not have Adept potential, for all his pretensions; Master was the most the whelp could ever aspire to. But whoever his teacher was, that teacher had evidently chosen not to inform him of this, and he had been searching for a way to make himself an Adept for some time now.
His collections of spellbook fragments must be quite impressive - and the fact that he was willing to risk himself using only fragments proved either that he was very brave, or very stupid.
Or both.
The directions for the Gate had come from one of those fragments, one that had not included the purpose of the spell he had decided to try. As a result of incomplete directions and the utter folly of following them, he had set up a Gate with no terminus. But at the time, at the back of his mind, he had been concentrating on something he wanted very much.
An Adept. If he could not be one, then he wanted one. Actually, he had probably hoped for both, to become an Adept and to control one, or more than one. A suicidally stupid plan, one that Falconsbane would never have tried. Dark Adepts, the only kind Ancar would be likely to attract, were jealous of their powers, unwilling to share them, and would never stop testing any bonds that were put upon them. And when those bonds broke -
- as eventually, Falconsbane would break his -
- then revenge would be swift and certain.
Falconsbane had known of some of Ancar's activities from his spies; he had been interested in the young King purely because the boy was the enemy of those blasted allies of k'Sheyna, the ones with the white horses. He had briefly toyed with the notion of an alliance himself - with him as the superior, of course. He knew that Ancar had longed for Adepts for some time, and it was logical to assume that he had been concentrating on the need for an Adept at the time the Gate began to fold back in on itself.
Falconsbane knew everything there was to know about Gates, except the few secrets that had disappeared with the Mage of Silence. Oh, him again. He could make some deductions now, with the information that he had gleaned from his covert listening, that were probably correct. The energies making up Gates were remarkably responsive to wants, as Falconsbane had every reason to know now. Especially when those wants were triggered by fear as the Gate began to reach for its creator.
Ancar wanted an Adept, and no doubt wanted one very badly when his spell went awry; as it happened, the Void had one. Falconsbane, still caught in nothingness.
