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
