enterprise. But because of the element of chaos intrinsic to sorcery, it was theoretically possible for any magician to break the enchantment of any other, and tonight he'd proven the theory valid.
Which, he realized with a stab of alarm, didn't mean he was out of danger. He'd activated a ward that had unleashed the ghargatula on him. What if the same magic had also alerted Orchtrien that an intruder had entered the library?
Rhespen listened for sounds emanating from elsewhere in the keep, and heard nothing. With his mystical sensitivities, he examined the ether around him. It didn't appear that anyone was about to teleport into the chamber.
So apparently he was all right. He flourished his staff and shifted and molded the ambient patterns of magical force as a painter might swirl and blend paint on a palette, recreating an approximation of the red bands he'd noticed before. They were inert, but if one of the golds glanced around the room with magesight and didn't look too closely, he might think the broken ward was still intact.
Rhespen extracted a series of tiny objects from his pockets and set them on the floor. He waved his hand over them, and they swelled into normal-sized pens, bottles of ink, and blank books. He then called on certain spirits of the air, who revealed their presence by taking up the writing implements and beginning to copy the contents of several of the dragons' grimoires. The quills flew and the pages turned with supernatural rapidity.
Rhespen set his hand on Winterflower's head and whispered words of power that sent the shadows spinning around the darkened chamber. Every magician learned spells to dissolve the works and break the bindings of another, but he felt at once that this one was different. His arm burned with power straining for release.
On the final syllable, it blazed from his flesh into hers. She jerked, but afterward eyed him uncertainly.
Assailed by doubt, he asked, 'Do you feel any different?'
'I… think so,' she said.
'The counterspell was supposed to break Orchtrien's hold on you. I was certain-'
'By the Winsome Rose, you're right! I'm myself again! It just took a moment for me to realize.' She threw herself into his embrace, and for a while, they were too busy to talk. But finally she asked, 'How? How did you kill him? Did you take him in his sleep?'
He blinked in surprise. 'I didn't have to kill him to liberate you. The magic cleansed you all by itself. I stole his secrets to obtain the proper counterspell. They're right there.' He nodded toward the haversack containing the copybooks, shrunken again for ease of transport, where it sat on a chair with his rod leaning beside it.
Now it was her turn to seem nonplussed.
'It will be all right,' he assured her. 'I now possess all the lore Orchtrien does. I haven't crammed every bit of it into my head yet, but it's in that bag, available for use. That means we can run far away, and he won't be able to track us. I can block his attempts at divination.'
She gave her head a little shake, as if to snap her thoughts into focus. 'That's wonderful. How will you sneak the secrets-and me, of course-out of the city?'
He grinned. 'That's the easy part. I have a spell of teleportation stored in my staff. Grab anything you wish to carry with you, and I'll whisk us both away.'
'I only want my jewelry box.' She turned to fetch it, and something banged. Rhespen realized it must be the door, flying open and smashing into the wall. Running footsteps pounded toward the bedchamber.
Startled, he hesitated. Dazzling light blazed, filling the air, blinding and disorienting him. When the glare died, his tortured eyes could just make out, through floating blobs of afterimage, Maldur, ivory wand in hand, and the several half-dragon crossbowmen he'd brought along with him.
'These fellows,' the human wizard said, 'are watching you closely. Start murmuring an incantation under your breath, begin an occult gesture, or ease a hand toward one of your pockets, and they'll shoot.'
'How did you know?' Rhespen asked. He didn't really care how, but if he could get Maldur talking, gloating, it would give him time to try to figure a way out of his trap.
He told himself there had to be a way. It was ridiculous to think that he, who had defeated a ghargatula, might prove unable to cope with half a dozen humans. But actually, he knew such could easily prove to be the case. Wizards were mighty, but only when given a chance to bring their powers to bear. When not, they were as vulnerable as anyone else.
'When you came home,' Maldur said, 'and found out that this damsel had become the king's whore, it broke you. I have made a study of you and could tell, no matter how you tried to hide it. I watched with satisfaction to see you wither away, but you didn't. The iron came back into your nature, and at the same time, you started to betray signs of exhaustion. I inferred that you were visiting Lady Winterflower at times when the king was elsewhere, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't catch you sneaking in or out. Not until tonight.'
'Because,' Rhespen said, 'I haven't been coming here. I spent my nights in study of new magic. Tendays ago, I sneaked into the golds' tower of magic and copied all the grimoires.'
Maldur's eyes widened. 'Impossible.'
'No, merely difficult. The lore I stole, all the secrets of draconic sorcery, is in that pouch.' He nodded at the haversack.
Rhespen was reasonably sure Maldur would turn in that direction. The white-haired man was, after all, a magician, surely avidly curious, jealous of the arcane might of the wyrms no matter how he tried to suppress such dangerous feelings. He hoped the guards would reflexively shift their eyes as well.
Because he only needed to distract them long enough to speak a single word of power. He whispered the first syllable, and crossbows clacked. Pain stabbed into his guts.
His knees buckling, he denied the agony long enough to grit out the remaining syllables. Magic chimed through the air, and his enemies dropped. The half-dragons were quite possibly dead, or failing that, unconscious. But thanks, perhaps, to some talisman or enchantment of protection, Maldur was merely stunned. Shuddering, blood streaming from his nose, teeth bared in a snarl of effort, he shook his head and managed to raise himself to his knees.
He struggled, too, to level his wand.
Rhespen attempted a second spell and immediately botched it. The excruciating fire in his midsection, the trembling of his hands, and the choked rasp of his voice, made precision impossible. But if he could get his hands on his staff, perhaps he could still shift Winterflower and himself away from here before Maldur recovered sufficiently to stop them..
He looked for Winterflower, and rejoiced to see that she'd already had the sense to pick up the staff and the haversack, too. Then she released the teleport spell he'd bound in the rod and vanished.
He goggled after her in astonishment and horror, until a blast of force from Maldur's wand slammed him into oblivion.
Rhespen woke lying on a rack, his wrists and ankles manacled to the torture apparatus and a vile-tasting leather gag in his raw, dry mouth. Such restraints were an effective way of ensuring that a magician couldn't cast spells.
He wondered if he could have cast them in any case. A healer had evidently tended the multiple puncture wounds in his guts. Otherwise, he might well have succumbed to them already, or failing that, remained unconscious or delirious. But they still throbbed so fiercely he could scarcely bear it, and he felt as weak and feverish as he was parched.
He lay alone in the dungeon for what seemed an eternity, until he wondered if a slow, agonizing, solitary death by thirst was the punishment Orchtrien had decreed for him. But finally footsteps sounded on the stairs. Rhespen turned his head to see the king himself, wearing his elf shape, descending.
Orchtrien extracted the gag from Rhespen's mouth.
'Maldur begged me to put him in charge of your interrogation and punishment,' said the gold. 'I'm considering it.'
Rhespen tried to answer, but his voice was inaudible. Orchtrien unstoppered a leather bottle and held it to his lips.
'I'm told you must content yourself with just a swallow at first, lest it make you sick.'
Despite his pain and fear, the cold water sliding down his throat gave Rhespen a moment of bliss, the last such he might ever know.
'Thank you, Majesty,' he croaked.
'Thank me by answering my questions truthfully. It may go easier for you if you do. You told Maldur you
