Night of The Eye dom-1

by Mary Kirchoff

  Guerrand knew no other way to help his friend than to spare his pride, and so he looked away. Just then, the colors about the dwindling gate flared briefly, drawing the trio's attention. A shape tumbled with a loud popping sound through the plinths and onto the beaten grass, rolling to a stop against Belize's trunk. The ground began to shake, and the carved plinths swayed and rocked. Guerrand jumped back to Esme and Lyim just as the marble columns cracked and crashed to the ground, striking the mysterious shape as they tumbled. The swirling colors of the gate dissipated entirely, casting the hilltop back into the dimmer light of the moons.

  "What is it?" gasped Esme, nodding toward the amorphous shape.

  Steeling himself, Guerrand walked through the shattered blocks of marble and approached the trunk. The young mage's stomach churned as he stared down into the face of Belize, set in the middle of an oozing, flabby, ulcerous body like those Guerrand had seen in the archmage's lab. A shapeless flipper groped up toward the lid of the trunk. What remained of his mouth quivered, lidless eyes rolling from side to side, revealing his agony. Guerrand clapped a hand to his own mouth to keep from retching.

  "It appears that the Master of the Red Robes has been following the ways of the Black Robes for some time."

  Guerrand's head snapped up at the sound of a familiar voice. Justarius stooped to pick up the burned and tattered sheafs of Harz-Takta's spellbook near what remained of Belize. "Some knowledge is better left unrecovered."

  Justarius's gaze upon Belize's body was grim. "He made the frequently fatal conceit of allowing love of himself to supersede his passion for magic. Magic must always come first."

  "Wh-When did you get here?" stammered Guerrand, holding fast to Esme.

  Justarius eased himself onto a blasted block of the marble plinths, closing his robe against the crisp wind that blew off the strait. "It was quite simple, really. Your comments about Belize's research practices plagued me, until, by the time I teleported to Wayreth, I was certain these were no idle experiments he was performing. Par-Salian agreed that they sounded like the result of gating experiments."

  He blew the chill from his hands. "LaDonna recognized the name Harz-Takta. He was a Black Robe a millennium ago, considered too nefarious even for that order."

  "That," explained Justarius, "concerned me enough to immediately scry in my crystal ball for Belize's whereabouts, which revealed this place. Hearing Belize's plans, I teleported here, but you had already prevented him from entering the Lost Citadel." The red archmage raised an ironic brow with a look that took in both his apprentices. "By the way, weren't you two supposed to wait in your chambers for my return?"

  Esme's face burned crimson. "What's going to happen to us?" she whispered from the circle of Guerrand's arm.

  "Considering that Belize's crimes motivated your actions, Par-Salian and LaDonna have agreed to let the matter of your transgressions drop. Under the circumstances, however, I think we must terminate your apprenticeships," he finished gruffly.

  "You mean you're kicking us out?" Guerrand cried indignantly

  "I mean," said Justarius with heavy emphasis, "I have taught you all that I can. You both handled yourselves admirably against great odds." He nodded his head toward the vast emptiness where Belize's gate had been. "The spell Guerrand devised to defeat Belize was truly inspired."

  Guerrand's relief blew out in a breath, and he gave a self-deprecating chuckle. "You mean inspired by desperation."

  Justarius shrugged. "The result still demonstrates that you have mastered the visualization technique." He smiled. "Besides, you have a bad habit of bending the rules, a trait you seem to have passed on to Esme." He smiled fondly at the young woman. "It is a quality that makes for difficult apprentices but formidable mages."

  "What will happen to Belize?" whispered Esme, regarding what remained of him with undisguised revulsion.

  "He'll be given a tribunal to determine his status," explained Justarius. "If found to be a renegade, he'll be executed immediately in keeping with our order's policies. A renegade's unpredictability threatens the delicate balance between Good and Evil." Justarius toed the monstrosity that was Belize. "Frankly, I don't think he'll live long enough for a tribunal. But that is his due."

  From the protection of darkness, Lyim asked, "What will happen to his disfigured apprentice?" A snake's soft hiss told that Lyim had lost the most for his part in tonight's battle. "I have no master, no hand-" his voice caught "-and nowhere to go."

  "That's not true!" cried Guerrand. "You can go with me-" he glanced at the young woman, who nodded "-with us. I owe you so much, Lyim."

  "Then I'll take your hand as payment." Lyim gave an eerie, humorless laugh at Guerrand's stunned expression. "Ah, Rand, will you ever conquer your ever-ready sense of guilt?"

  Justarius sliced through the awkward silence. "Lyim needs more aid than you can give him now. The choice, of course, is his."

  "What are you offering me?" Lyim asked. The snake that was his hand hissed again in the dark shadows of the broken pillars.

  "What I would offer any aspiring mage," Justarius said simply. "A chamber at Wayreth to rest and heal until you can secure a new master. That is one of the tower's primary functions, a benefit of belonging to a guild, if you will."

  "Can you restore my hand?"

  Justarius bowed his dark head. "That I cannot promise. I have no personal knowledge of the forces that caused the mutation. But I'd try to help you find someone who does."

  Lyim looked to his fellow apprentices, locked in embrace, and closed his eyes for a long moment. "I would speak with Guerrand and Esme alone," he said, tucking his snake-head into the bell of his cuff selfconsciously. Justarius stepped away and concerned himself with the contents of Belize's ironbound chest.

  Guerrand faced his friend, unsure how to deal with a blusterless Lyim. He reached out to clasp the man's shoulder, then drew back clumsily. "Lyim, I'm sorry. It's gratitude, not pity I feel-" Guerrand cursed himself for his awkward drivel. "This is coming out all wrong!"

  "Forget it," Lyim said gruffly, struggling to regain his old bravado. "Never explain, never defend, that's what I always say."

  Esme overcame her own revulsion to loop a hand through Lyim's good arm, but he pulled away in embarrassment. "Justarius is a good man," she tried to reassure him. "If he says he'll help you, he will."

  "I hope so," Lyim said wearily. "He may be the only chance I have." With that, Lyim moved back into the protection of the shadows to wait for Justarius's departure.

  The archmage returned to say good-bye. "Give Lyim time to come to terms with all that he has lost," he said gently, noting Guerrand's concerned expression.

  "Hopefully he'll be cured by the time Esme and I get to Wayreth for the Test," said Guerrand. "That will take several months, I should guess."

  Justarius considered Lyim's mutated hand. "Perhaps." Nodding respectfully to Guerrand and Esme, he said "Gods' speed to you both," then moved nearer the ruined plinths. "Nal igira." Archmage, apprentice, wooden chest, and the monstrous mutation that was Belize disappeared from the face of the cold, moonlit hillside.

  Guerrand and Esme stood alone in the silence.

  Well, not quite alone. Suddenly a sea gull's familiar squawk cut the air.

  "Zagarus!" cried Esme, rushing to the bird's side.

  Rand?

  The young man followed Esme. "I'm here, Zag." Guerrand gently pulled back the edge of the makeshift bandage Esme had applied to the sea gull's burned side. To Guerrand's relief, the wound looked better already. "You're a tough old bird, aren't you?"

  Zagarus's tiny black eyes rolled open with a glint of humor. I'm a hooded, black-backed Ergothian sea gull, the largest, most strikingly beautiful of all seabirds.

  Guerrand threw back his head and laughed until tears of joy and relief and hope sprang to his eyes. Picking up the sea gull tenderly, he tucked Esme's hand in the crook of his arm. "Come on, you two. We have a long journey ahead of us."

  Epilogue

  Bath
ed in the radiance of the Lost Citadel's diamond spires, three comrades of old watched, with a dismay bordering on irritation, as the strands of light dropped from their moons.

  "Belize of the Red Robes came too close," the ancient, white-robed man said, his aged hands about the golden bars before him. "He actually opened these before he was turned back by one of his own." Solinari shivered from the chill his human form felt in the coldness of the cosmos.

  "It's been a thousand years, Solinari," Nuitari pointed out reasonably. He was an intense young man with jet-black hair who did not entirely share the concerns of his companions. But that was not uncommon. His goal, after all, was to bring more and better magic to Krynn. Black magic.

  "Only a thousand?" Lunitari's eyebrows rose in surprise. Time had no meaning here in the citadel she'd helped raise among the stars.

  "We must do something to prevent it from happening again," said Solinari firmly.

  Nuitari cast an accusing glance at the old man. "You know I don't like to interfere in their day-to-day activities."

  "I do," said the woman cooly, "but we're not talking about that." She held her face up to be warmed by the crimson light of her 'witching moon.' "A mortal in the citadel has farther-reaching consequences. Gilean, Paladine, and Takhisis would be most displeased if we allowed the infinite powers of the universe to be unleashed on their world."

  Nuitari looked at the caustic beauty archly. "He was one of yours, you know."

  "Not for some time." Lunitari tossed aside the notion with a wave of her tapered fingers, liking the feel of the utterly human gesture. "You should have had your eye on him."

  "Stop bickering like siblings," Solinari chided them both. "Surely we all agree it would be disastrous if one of these mortals finally succeeded."

  "Of course." Nuitari frowned, tiring of the subject. Solinari did love to go on. "Why don't we seal it off and be done with it?"

  "What happens to mortals when you tell them something is unattainable?" asked Lunitari. "They only want it the more. Besides," she added, "the citadel represents magical perfection. It is perfection. We'd be telling them to no longer strive for excellence in the Art. I certainly don't want that for my followers."

  "Well," sniffed Nuitari, "I'm not going to stand here at the gate forever to keep them out."

  "No one was suggesting that," said Solinari with infinite patience. "These mortal mages must not come to depend too much on our help. Dependence breeds laziness. The next thing you know, they'll expect us to fight their battles for them." His companions could think of nothing more tedious.

  "We gave them all the knowledge they needed more than three millennia ago before we banned them from the citadel," said Solinari. "Have they lost it? More important, have they lost their fear of our wrath?" Stroking his chin, he said, "Perhaps a test is in order."

  "I have it," Nuitari said. "Isn't your man Par-Salian their leader?" Solinari nodded. "Let him know we're displeased and that they must appease us. It's always worked before."

  "If you want cattle slaughtered for sacrifice," Lunitari said caustically. The dark young man gave her a hateful stare.

  "We need a greater demonstration of their loyalty than the usual supplication," announced the white-haired man. "Let them prove their fear and obedience to our rules. We will tell them to build their own bastion against further attempts to gain entrance here." He glanced once more through the gold gate at the mortals on the murky planet below. "They must learn to police themselves or suffer the consequences."

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