lit by candles. The two mice skittered down the hall, hugging the base of the wall, staying in shadows until they were across from the door. The mage opened the plain wooden door and stepped through. Tas, ahead of Selana, could see there was a room beyond, not more hallway. But the door shut before they could reach it.
The two mice approached the door cautiously. Their sharp mouse ears could detect him moving around on the other side. The bottom edge of the door cleared the stone floor by at least an inch, plenty of room for two mice to squeeze through.
'After you,' thought Tas, motioning with his whiskered snout. Selana slipped noiselessly under the door, followed by the kender, both of them wondering what horrors they would encounter on the other side.
Chapter 13
Using his good hand, Balcombe shook fragments of a squirrel's brain from a pair of calipers into a stoneware bowl. His work area was a waist-high wooden table in the laboratory that adjoined his apartment in Castle Tantallon. The room was small, as magical labs were measured, but quite generous by the standards of normal castle chambers. One narrow loophole in the outside wall let in a small amount of light, though torches were still needed for full illumination.
Frowning, he licked the last, tart droplets from the porcelain bowl in the palm of his right hand. The spellcasting draft made from a snow-white pearl and an owl feather steeped in wine sharpened his senses in an unpleasant way. Noises took on a jarring quality, filling his head with sharp reverberations; smell brought with it an unsettling sense of time and the sequence of past events; worst of all, colors and shapes became more distinct, as if the two were no longer associated but could be separated and examined individually. Of course, that was the point. The elixir empowered him to identify the characteristics of a magical item. He could, quite literally, see, feel, hear, and smell the magical capabilities of an item he was handling. Currently he was examining the copper bracelet on his wrist.
Balcombe ran his fingers over the bracelet as one would stroke a lover. He liked the feel of heavy jewelry, took an almost sensual pleasure in certain pieces. This one was particularly stimulating in that regard, with the added benefit of the gems on its face; he coveted faceted stones of any sort.
Balcombe could see that the bracelet revealed the future through visions to its wearer, just as the pathetic little con man had said. Far more curious was its background. It appeared that it had been fashioned by a dwarf but it also bore the unmistakable signs of elvish influence. He could not identify the specific elf kingdom involved, but it was neither Silvanesti nor Qualinesti, of that he was sure. A faint but persistent saline odor clung to it that he had never encountered before. It could have come from the Isle of Sancrist, perhaps, or even beyond.
Regardless of its origin, Balcombe suspected that a practiced wearer could, in any twenty-four-hour period, seek answers to a set number of specific questions about the near future. Its potential was enormous in the hands of a skilled user, though mastery required much practice. He resolved to wear it for a full day sometime in the coming week, but now he was too tired to experiment with it, so he struggled to slip the bracelet over his hand and off his wrist; the fit was quite tight. Finally he wrestled it off and set it on the counter.
The mage's shoulders slumped in exhaustion. This spell had been ten hours in the casting; the first eight were consumed by purifying the bracelet, as the identification spell required, and removing influences that could corrupt and blur his magical sensitivity. He had been just going to finish it, when he had been interrupted by the awakening in the dungeon of his newest zombie, formerly Omardicar the Omnipotent.
He had been most annoyed to find the four oddly allied strangers there, doubly so for what they'd done to a zombie he'd not even had a chance to use yet. The captured dwarf and half-elf had provided little truly useful information, except that they'd been after the bracelet, though he had been unable to ascertain why.
Balcombe thought about the two who were safely behind bars. More intelligent and perceptive by far than the seer had been, they had proved a greater challenge to the mage's mind. He had probed them, both verbally and magically; the dwarf had given him little information, being naturally resistant to magic. The half-elf had provided little more, being magical himself.
They had a tenuous connection to the one they called Delbridge, Balcombe's short-lived zombie-claimed, in fact, never to have met him, which a detect lie spell revealed to the mage to be the truth. By the end of the interrogation, Balcombe felt quite confident they knew nothing of his connection to Rostrevor's disappearance.
They would make excellent zombies.
He anxiously awaited word that the two who had escaped, the oddly pale young woman and the kender, had had their deaths meted out by his shadow monster. He was taking no chances, now that he was so close to his ultimate goal.
Balcombe yawned and blinked heavy eyelids. The strain of the spell preparation had drained him physically, but the events in the dungeon and jail left him mentally keyed up. He desperately felt the need to relax. From a sideboard he picked up a blue bowl and the straight razor he used to shave his head. He carried the two items across the stained stone floor of the lab to a door and passed through it into his richly carpeted and appointed bedchamber. There he settled in a mauve, velvet-covered divan and reclined among a mound of feather pillows.
Balcombe placed the bowl on the floor. Extending his left arm off the edge of the couch and over the bowl, he opened the razor and positioned its keen edge against the ball of his palm. He lingered like that for several moments, savoring the anticipation of what he was about to do. A fine lattice of hairline scars paralleled the shining blade. With a glint of dementia in his eyes, he applied just enough pressure on the blade to push a shallow crease in his palm. Then, smiling tightly, he drew the blade slowly toward himself. As it slid, the parting flesh rose slowly up the side of the blade as the metal sank into the skin. A thin trickle of blood flowed out from beneath the steel, then ran in a warm red stream across his tilted palm to drip into the bowl on the floor. The flow surged in rhythm with his pulse, and his head nodded in time with the soothing beat. Soon tiny streams of blood crisscrossed his hand, following the minute network of lines etched there. A few moments after that his palm was drenched and growing sticky as the crimson fluid began to coagulate.
The discovery that the sight of his own^blood calmed him, that the sensation of his own pain thrilled him, had come on a horror-filled night ten long years ago. On that damp, moonlit night a broken apprentice mage had teetered on the brink of the Abyss only to ultimately cheat death by striking a deal with the devil himself.
Balcombe had learned much since then. The former initiate had secured a position as court mage to a paranoid and disenfranchised Knight of Solamnia in a forgotten corner of Abanasinia. He had become free- even paid-to hone his magical skills in the lap of luxury, without interference, without unwanted attention. He was free to stoke the flames of bitterness toward those he held responsible for his failure of the Test in the Tower-, the Conclave of Wizards, which had administered the Test and then left him for dead.
He never could decide which of the three orders he hated most for participating in his humiliation. The head of the conclave, Par-Salian, was a powerful wizard of the White Robes. The one time Balcombe had met him- when Balcombe had received his first assignment as an apprentice-the middle-aged archmage of Good had acted distant, as if the conversation were a distraction keeping him from his real work, which seemed too caught up in theory. Balcombe thought it likely that Par-Salian had designed the Test.
At the time of Balcombe's Test, Justarius had recently been appointed head of the Red Robes, the order Balcombe had sought to join. Now Balcombe found that order's neutrality infuriating, especially since it likely kept Justarius from intervening on behalf of the young Balcombe in his time of need during the Test.
That left LaDonna. Also middle-aged, the dun-haired wizardess was head of the Order of Black Robes. Balcombe knew less about her than the others, because during his formal training he had never considered wearing the Black Robes. In truth, he held her the least responsible of all because of her alignment toward evil.
That was why he sought to replace her in the conclave.
What greater revenge against Par-Salian and Justarius than to call Balcombe, a failure of their impossible test, their peer? He would achieve far greater power than he had ever dreamed possible when he made that first journey to Wayreth Forest.
If only Hiddukel held up his end of the deal.
