best we can do is work within the Circle to hold the brothers off, deflect them, counsel them into diversions, try to bring an understanding that every war has no winners before they launch into such a conflict as this land, and no one in it, would survive. Look around my house. What is here? For Mishra, nothing of any value. He wants powerful machines and magical weapons. What does he need with art? With beauty? To him, I am nothing more than a fancy puppet. In the Circle lies my dignity and my freedom, and the greatest wealth I have: the chance to protect my family and my country from the worst of the brothers' furies.
'Porros-you would have been my successor. The Circle would have followed you without question. You were the rightful monarch of this land. A disciplined force of fighters, scholars, and magicians would have moved upon your command. Porros, one day the Circle will grow strong enough, will find the knowledge and the right words to stop this awful war. Why will you not wait for us to do it by peace? Our only chance is together.'
The Collector stopped for a moment, then added, more softly, 'Why, Porros, did you bring such evil? And why did you sing the foul note that caused my song to fail?'
His eyes never leaving the Raptor's, he concentrated and hummed Claria's namesong under his breath, the magic tracing the next two letters of her name deeply into the hard crystal, the effort taking all of his energy, all of his strength.
'Why? Because I could. Because I could not bear for you to destroy such a wondrous thing. Samor, I joined the Circle to learn magic-never to offer myself as servant to your idealism. Your quiet ways of peace will never change the Artificers. My family members are warriors! The only thing the brothers will ever understand is power and might. You waste my gifts. And there are those, Collector, there are those who think as I think. They stand with me now. We will take back the kingdom of Almaaz by strength. How else does the eagle feed?'
The Raptor began to scan the room, taking in every detail of the Collector's acquisitions. On the top shelf of a heavy mahogany case, the only copy of the Book ofKhem, the greatest known compendium of cures in all of Almaaz. On the other side of the room, one of the Faces of the Night-the other part of the sculpture had never been found-its eerie dark stone seeming to engulf the light around it. And everywhere, stuffing every crevice of the study, music boxes of the finest and rarest make, of the richest materials, turned and tuned by the finest craftsmen in the known world. The Raptor shook his head and narrowed his eyes.
'I see now that you play games with me. You have expected me. Where have you hidden the real treasure? Where is my gold? Ah, of course. Where but under the mountain of the Clock?' Porros's eyes, alight with his madness, glowed like the beast's.
Done! The Collector breathed sharply as his low song engraved the last letter of the name upon the totem. The Raptor, startled by the sound, whirled upon the older man, throwing himself over the desk in unbalanced impatience. The Collector had no time to brace himself, no time to summon the magic to shield his body. He instinctively met the attack with the object in his hand, bringing the heavy stone totem toward Porros's head. But the Raptor dodged the blow fluidly, bringing his long, thin hands around the Collector's neck in a death grip.
The Collector gently dropped the totem, his thoughts flying over the time he would never have to see his daughter grow up, of what would become of the Clock, its fail-safe incompletely recorded. The Raptor mercilessly pressed upon the older man's throat, venting years of revenge and jealousy. With a ragged gasp, the Collector managed to summon a spark of fire between them, repelling the younger man backward, pitching him into a seven-hundred-year-old mirror, rending its delicate frame and breaking the glass. Three music boxes jangled down from their places and the room erupted into a glorious cacophony. The Collector felt movement on the floor below him, though he could not hear it. Maybe the juma… Charga… But then he remembered that the study door stood firmly bolted. He could hear Charga battering at it, ferociously attacking the hard, thick wood. But it would take her too long; Samor knew he was alone in this.
The stunned Raptor wasted no motion in rising from the wicked splinters, shook them angrily from his robes, and rejoined his attack, armed now with a crescent of the broken mirror. He swooped over the gasping mage, raking the sickle-shaped edge just under the Collector's jawline, three bright ribbons of red erupting in its wake. The Raptor seized the severed cord and its amulet triumphantly as the Collector clutched his neck with one hand, the other flailing at his desk, his fingertips finding the blood-spattered book and somehow managing to push it over into the bean jar. 'You are deceived… may you find the truth before you find your death. However long that may take,' he whispered, his breath failing.
'I need not your truth, Collector. You named me well, despite your little joke. Like the eagle, I shall seize with my own hand what I want. My shadow shall fall over all I possess and all I rule. No blade, no poison, no water or fire shall harm me. No mage shall overcome me! I have all the Circle's magic now.'
'You have broken the Circle, and there is one thing you never learned about its magic, Porros. It works best when the many voices agree. You will never have what you could have had. You have broken your country and you have broken your own family with it. Think of your sons! But none of the Circle will come for you, Raptor. The face you see in the mirror is the face that will destroy you,' the Collector whispered, humming over his four-stone ring. The melody was a benediction, the words a curse.
'Did you not hear me, fool? I will hunt them all down, one by one, until the end of all time!'
'Leave them, Porros. They will never raise their hands against you. But we cannot let you go unhindered. You will live halfway between light and darkness, phantom and flesh. Between time and eternity.'
Bright weapon still in hand, the Raptor screeled with rage and indignation, his dark hood falling back as he caught sight of himself in the fragment of the blood-smeared mirror. In horror, he saw his sandy hair and angular jaw disappearing into nothingness. Only his gray eyes remained under the hood.
'What have you done to me?' He flung down the glass and spun around the study, his bones afire, his dark red robes gathering and gathering speed. 'I shall bring such a wind as you have never known, old man, and I will scour your image from this earth! I will scatter your belongings and I will bring your name to ruin after you,' he screamed as he took to the air, his voice roaring from the heart of his whirlwind as it moved into the night sky.
TTie Collector lay slumped over his desk, blood pouring from his neck, his pale hand clutching the chroniclave, still keeping perfect time despite the pandemonium around it. One thought repeated in his mind with each stroke of the pendulum: No one knows the song! Mishra will surely leave the wall open if he does not use Claria's namesong! There was no time, no time. The world was already going quiet before his eyes.
Outside the study door, Charga breathed in deeply, centered her strength, and focused on the bolt that lay between her and her master. At last, she could see it clearly in her mind. She gathered her will to break the wood, and began to split one fiber from the next, working from the inside out, as quickly as she could.
Inside, the Collector fought for consciousness as he sang Claria's namesong again, bringing the magic to it, and scratched a single glyph, the form of a tiny fingerprint, onto the bronze bottom of the chroniclave. He hoped it would be enough. Samor drifted into death thinking of his family, of the Holy Book, and how all things seemed to find their way home, even the beast, no matter how long the journey. The voice of the elf he had seen at the Chimes shadowed his last breath, reminding him, over and over, like the chroniclave's pendulum, that there would be time.
When Charga put the edge of her foot against the door this time, it broke cleanly and easily, but far too late. She found the smiling Collector still clutching his little musical clock, its pendulum beating steady time, the straining shutters banging a sharp counterpoint to the mounting wind squall.
Far to the west, the high red rocks shuddered, cracked, and then dissolved into powder as the Raptor lashed at them in his anger. An inch or two of the sharp red grit already covered the floor, the carpet's design now completely obscured. Reading the wind's direction and force, Charga shouted orders to the sleepy steward and sounded the alarm for her small company to assemble in the protected courtyard. She slammed closed the study door, racing to join them.
I will come back for you, my lord. I will not leave you to this tomb, unknown and unmarked. I heard everything that went on with this traitor. He is a dueco-a double devil. I pray your forgiveness that I could not help you. Forever will I remember your teachings. Your daughter, your people, and especially the Raptor's own sons shall not grow up ignorant of them.
She leapt the final stair railing and landed catlike in the courtyard.
'Go now!' she screamed over the howl of the wind and the squawking, frightened, parrots. Her lieutenants immediately urged Lesta and Claria, whose small mouth moved in cries of silent terror as the storm took her words away with it, in the direction Charga had pointed, toward the Neffian cliffs and their hidden caves.
Charga clenched her teeth against the stinging lash of the storm and her own grief, pulled her hood over
