Prince of Ravens

member?”

Jack decided on the spot to overpower the bookish mage with pure charm. “Why, hello,” he answered with a wide smile. “I suppose that to your records I might seem to be a century in arrears, but things are not as simple as they appear. During my travels I have skipped across the years like a pebble hurled across the surface of a pond. I am, however, now likely to remain in this era for some time, and may be interested in resuming my membership. Of course I would like to look around before making up my mind. I am not a hasty man, oh, no.”

Berreth’s frown deepened. “Chamberlain Marzam said that you had not actually yet joined the guild in your own timeline-”

“I have joined, and I have not joined. Both are equally true; traveling through time engenders many paradoxes. The chamberlain undoubtedly failed to comprehend this.”

“Can you offer some additional proof of your unusual claims?”

“That will prove difficult. I could hop back to yesterday and meet you then, but of course that would become our first meeting, and this encounter would not take place; you would have no memory of this discussion. Or I might time-stride to tomorrow and return, but who’s to say that I didn’t just teleport off and hide for twenty-four hours to give the appearance of having leaped a day ahead?” Jack shook his head solemnly. “Your excellent archmages have already identified me as one and the same with a person who belonged to the guild one hundred and six years ago, and you can see that I am about thirty years of age and perfectly human. Is that not proof enough?”

Berreth’s brow knitted as she listened closely to Jack. “Perhaps it would be easiest if I just marked you down as a lapsed member,” she said.

“Please proceed in whatever manner is most convenient for you.”

The studious mage drew a small ledger from her sleeve and scribbled furiously in it. “That was Delgath?” she asked.

“The Dread Delgath,” Jack corrected her.

“And what can we do for you today, Dread Delgath?”

“I would like to tour the premises, meet the charming staff, and determine whether to renew my membership. You must remember, my experience of the Guild’s facilities-which may not have actually happened yet-is a hundred years out of date.”

“Very well.” Berreth seemed more than a little relieved to close her ledger and turn her attention to a more manageable task than recording the comings and goings of the Dread Delgath. “Please, follow me.”

Jack followed the mage as she led him on a tour of the High House. She provided perfunctory explanations as they wandered through laboratories, lecture halls, scriptoriums, rooms full of curios and exhibits, meeting chambers, and vaults. Jack feigned great interest in everything he saw, and went out of his way to compliment Berreth on the evident depth and variety of her learning. It was difficult to tell if his efforts were bearing fruit, since his solicitude seemed to puzzle her more than anything else; apparently she was not accustomed to being the recipient of such attentions. At one point they paused in a large library, filled with tall bookshelves that were crowded with strange and curious tomes.

“I don’t suppose you have a book known as the Sarkonagael somewhere in your collection?” Jack asked.

Berreth gave him a stern look. “Oh, you’re one of those, are you?”

“One of those?” Jack repeated.

“For three days now the High House has been besieged by fortune hunters who believe that first, any missing spellbook must naturally be in the Wizards’ Guild, and second, we do not read the daily handbills and haven’t noticed the reward offered for the book.”

“Please forgive me,” Jack replied. “I do not demean your perspicacity. I simply believe that one should eliminate the obvious possibilities before proceeding to more obscure solutions. It is my rigorous mental discipline that leads me to ask.”

“Well, you may eliminate the High House’s library. No Guild member knows the book or has any idea why it might be so important to whatever party is offering the reward through Horthlaer’s.”

Jack offered a small smile; here was a chance to bait a hook and see what came of it. “Ah, but in that you may be mistaken, dear Berreth. In a past that may or may not come to be, I encountered the Sarkonagael in the library of the necromancer Iphegor.”

The mage peered at him through her thick spectacles. “Indeed? Can you tell us anything about its contents? What is it? Who would want it?”

Jack paused, thinking it over. Any information he shared might help the Guild to recover its lost book, and provide him at least a partial claim on the reward … but he could also use the opportunity to sow disinformation, and perhaps throw the investigators off the track so that he could recover the book-and its substantial reward- himself. “I propose a deal,” he said. “I will tell you what I know about the Sarkonagael, if you will help me find out what became of several prominent wizards I knew back in my previous visit with the guild. I am very curious about their respective fates.”

Initiate Berreth gave him a skeptical look, perhaps wondering if he really knew anything about the Sarkonagael, but she nodded. “The library contains records of prominent wizards and their activities. I think I might be able to help you.”

“Excellent,” Jack replied. “In that event, I will tell you that the book was subtitled Secrets of the Shadewrights, and was a lengthy dissertation on shadow magic. It held a particularly dangerous spell that allowed an unscrupulous wizard to create a simulacrum or copy of somebody else by crafting it from the stuff of shadow. And the tome once belonged to the necromancer known as Iphegor the Black.” All that was true enough, of course. “As to its appearance, it was bound in smoky gray dragon leather, and its pages were made of a strange sort of black vellum. The writing was in a silver ink that could only be read by the light of a magical shadow-lantern.” That was entirely fiction, made up on the spot to confuse any Guild efforts to locate the book by its physical appearance. If he was ever caught in the lie, he could always claim that the book must have been magically disguised when he saw it a hundred years ago.

Berreth pulled out her journal again and added more notes with her quill, scratching away at the yellowed parchment. “Fascinating,” she said. “The archmage and the deans will be very interested in this; you know more about this book than anyone else of this day, it seems.” She shut her book and tucked it back into her sleeve. “Now, let us see what we can find out about these old Guild members of yours.”

Jack spent the rest of the morning with Initiate Berreth, searching through the guild’s ancient records. He’d hoped that he might find some hint or suggestion to identify which of the powerful wizards of his acquaintance had imprisoned him in the wild mythal, but that hope proved ill-founded. The Guild records noted that Yu Wei, the Shou wizard who served Myrkyssa Jelan, was deceased as of the Year of Wild Magic, years before Jack’s imprisonment. That made perfect sense, of course; he’d seen Yu Wei struck down by Zandria’s spell of chain lightning in the final battle against the Warlord and her minions. Still, it was reassuring to know that Yu Wei did not somehow escape certain doom and return to vex him.

Zandria’s fate was more difficult to piece together, because she’d left Raven’s Bluff a year or so after Jack’s adventures with her. Fortunately, the Guild was in the habit of hoarding news of notable wizards wherever they might be. During the Year of the Bent Blade, she was living quite comfortably in Elversult, having recovered some great treasure or another from Chondathan ruins in the area. In fact, it seemed that she had won herself a noble title for her efforts and was counted as one of the city’s high councilors. “Zandria might have returned briefly to Raven’s Bluff to visit some sinister scheme upon me,” Jack mused, “but I simply don’t believe she was that angry with me, especially if her circumstances in Elversult were condign.”

“What did you do to earn this Zandria’s anger?” Berreth asked.

“I solved an impossible riddle for her and helped her to win a legendary treasure, but she was difficult to please,” Jack answered. “What of Iphegor the Black?”

Berreth consulted the appropriate tomes, and in half an hour more Jack had his answer. The story of Iphegor the Black, nightmare of rival sorcerers and plunderer of ancient lore, was quite peculiar. He vanished from the knowledge of the Wizard’s Guild until the Year of the Black Blazon-a full six years after Jack’s imprisonment-at which point he returned to Raven’s Bluff at the head of an army of necromantic mice. He sent his tiny skeletal horde into the home of Marcus, Knight of the Hawk, capering and cackling with maniacal glee in the street outside as the undead creatures devoured the hapless knight in his bed. Then he vanished with the cry, “Thus ever to mouse- murderers!” and was never heard from again.