But her appearance was not reassuring. She was impeccably gowned and coiffed, looking as near to demure as she ever got. That meant she had found out something that she didn't like, and she was going to have it out with him, here and now.
While he smiled and granted her an ironic little bow, his thoughts raced behind his careful shields. Could she have discovered Falconsbane? But how? He had been so careful. No one came near the creature but those servants he himself controlled.
'Why, my dear teacher, how pleasant to see you, after so very long,' he replied carefully. 'I had thought that your new young friend was occupying all your time - '
'Enough fencing, child,' she snapped at him. 'We both know you've been up to something, meddling with energies you shouldn't have touched! And so does every mage sensitive to the flows of power! Your fumbling created some unpleasant echoes and ripples that are still causing me problems with my own spells, and I wonder how any of your pets are getting anything at all done!'
'My fumblings?' He felt sweat trickling down his back beneath his heavy velvet tunic, and he hoped that he wasn't sweating anywhere that she would notice. 'What are you talking about?' Could it be that she actually didn't know what he had done?
'Don't try to toy with me, boy!' she growled. 'You were playing with some kind of odd spell or other, and it was either something you made up yourself, or something you got out of one of your damned scraps of half-literate grimoires! Which was it?'
Before he could answer, she cut him off with a gesture. 'Never mind,' she said. 'Don't bother to lie to me. I'll tell you what it was. You were trying to build a Gate, weren't you?'
He stared at her dumbly as she continued, her strange violet eyes flashing with scorn.
'You haven't even the sense to fear a Gate Spell, you fool!' she snarled. 'Don't you know what the thing would have done if you hadn't broken it first? It would have turned back on you and eaten you alive! Building a Gate without knowing where you want it to go, precisely and exactly where, is the kind of mistake that will be your last! You must have used up a lifetime's worth of luck to escape that fate, you blithering idiot.'
She went on and on at some length in the same vein; he simply hung his head so that she could not see his eyes and nodded like the foolish child she had named him. He stared at his feet as his sweat cooled, and his flush of fear faded. But beneath his submissive behavior, he was wildly excited and he did not want her to realize what she had just told him.
She had answered his every question about the so-called 'portal' he had created! It was not a way to pull in node-energy, but was instead something entirely different, a way to create a doorway that would lead him instantly to any place he chose!
She had given him a weapon of incredible power and versatility, without knowing what she had done. Already he could imagine hundreds of ways to use such doorways.
He could simply step through such a door and into the very heart of a citadel. He could move entire armies without wearying them. He could use these doors to obtain anything or anyone he wanted, without worrying about such pesky complications as guards, locks, or discovery....
As she railed on, pacing back and forth like a restless panther in her black velvet, he also realized from what she did not say that she was completely unaware that he had brought anything through his Gate.
She mentioned nothing of the sort, in fact, not even as a horrible possibility. She seemed to be under the impression that he had sensed the Gate turning back on him and, in a panic, had broken the spell, collapsing the Gate upon itself.
He kept his face stiff and expressionless. He answered her, when she demanded answers, in carefully phrased sentences designed to maintain that fiction. The longer he could keep Falconsbane a secret from her, the better.
At least, until the moment that the Adept had recovered enough to bring him openly into the court as a putative ally. That way he would be able to work with Falcons-bane without fear of Hulda's reactions.
She has her friends, the ambassador and his entourage from the Emperor...I should introduce Falconsbane as an envoy from the West, beyond Valdemar. She may even try to win him over. He'd appeal to her, I expect. Perhaps I should even let her seduce him - or him, her. I'm not certain which of the two would be the quicker to take the other....
As she used up her anger, wearing it out against the rock of his submission, her voice dropped and her pacing slowed. Finally she stopped and faced him.
'Look at me,' she demanded. Slowly, as if he were afraid of her continued wrath, he raised his eyes. 'Do not ever attempt that spell again,' she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. 'It is beyond you. It is far more dangerous than you can guess, and it is well beyond your current ability and skill. Furthermore, it is obvious that you do not have the whole of the instructions for such a spell. Half-understood spells are more dangerous to the caster than to anyone else. Is that understood?'
