Chapter 9

Shortly after midnight, McAllister and Sable left the guest-house through the door. Soon enough, they reached the University, guarded by both a wall and a guard at the gate. "Sable," he inquired as they studied the wall before them, McAllister unwilling to give the guards at the gate any reason to recall their faces, "Do you remember making us smaller when we left Auben's church? How long can you hold us as miniatures?"

She gave him an amused look. "Indefinitely," she said, then, "I had forgotten, though I had the Jade Horse's example before me."

"Life," he told her, "has just become more interesting. For example," he pointed toward a grille set in the pavement of the street with a smile, "we are about to meet those who inhabit sewers."

It was dark, and it was wet, and worse yet, it was not uninhabited. Fifteen minutes later, McAllister climbed through the grille he'd chosen, in the corner between the westernmost building and the wall, then turned to grasp Sable's hand and pull her up to street-level after him.

"The things that rat said," Sable told him, accusingly, "were things no equine should ever have to hear spoken to her."

"Imagine his surprise, then, when he learned you were both Horse and Dragon," McAllister replied absently. "We need to find a door."

"Still, McAllister, it was well done of you to run him through for me. Here's a door."

McAllister nodded, absently, while feeling around the edges of the doorframe. "There is a lock, but my fingers sense something," he told her.

"I feel sorcery all about this place," she replied. "This western wing seems to be all about sorcery, by the feel of the place. There are many small sources here."

"What do we do about them?" he asked.

"We pull at them, draining them into our internal fire," she replied. "Sometimes, it is woven, and must be done strand by strand, and other times it is monolithic, massive, and we simply absorb it."

"Show me on this door," he said, "there, and there."

She did the thing he asked, and he watched. "I'll try the next we come across," he said, and slipped the small, thin blade he had bought from the arms-seller that afternoon into the doorjamb, and deftly slid the bolt back.

"You have some interesting talents," Sable told him, in the silent way, as she closed the door softly behind them.

"You'll learn mine, and I, yours," he promised. Together they ghosted from hall to hall.

"I smell brimstone," she said, in the silent way, and McAllister nodded.

"Your nose is more sensitive than mine ... which way?"

"Down here," she said, and led him to a stout door.

A moment's inspection, then, "There is that which you've called sorcery on this door," he observed. "On both sides, keeping the door shut."

"On both sides," she agreed. "Doesn't that make you wonder what's behind it?"

"Do you know," he said, "it does?" Moments passed as he worked at what he sensed on the door, and then he told her, "It is a strange feeling absorbing this. Until just now, I could not feel this internal fire ... this is what you meant by 'sorcery' earlier? I do not think it is a natural feeling, and yet, I seem to have some capacity for it."

"And an ability, also. That was deftly done," she told him. "May I borrow that knife?"

A moment later, Sable moved the bolt back into the door rendering the door free to move. "You learn quickly, also," he told her.

As they moved through the large room, McAllister noted the large stone-topped workbenches, with outsized mortar and pestle, sacks piled at one end of the bench, and small, tightly-made boxes at the other. Of most interest to McAllister were the tightly-stoppered glass carboys on the floor, and the tub of water. Glancing inside, he saw what he expected, small, round pellets of dark material soaking in the watery contents.

Much materiel and unidentifiable constructs were on the other flat surfaces in the room, and at the far end stood a desk, with a form on the bench before it, sleeping with its head on the desk.

"It's a woman," McAllister commented. Before him, the woman stirred uneasily, and made a small, querulous sound.

"She sleeps fitfully," Sable replied silently. "Should we wake her?"

The rudely-carved stick in McAllister's pocket twitched just then. Showing Sable what he was doing, McAllister wordlessly fished it out, so the crude face on it could observe.

Sable said nothing, but radiated a slight amusement.

A definite sense of exasperation came from the stick McAllister held in his hand. A tiny blue bolt sizzled from the upper end of the thing and hit the sleeping woman square on the buttock. With a jerk, and a small scream, the woman jerked awake. She looked wildly around the room, while her hands moved in a defensive manner, and McAllister became aware of the feel of sorcery.

"I will not harm you," he said, as Sable faded into the dark of the room. "Make a small light, and you may see me," he offered.

"Who are you?" she demanded. Then, "How did you get in here?" as a small ball of weak light appeared over her hand, her hand cupped to shield her eyes from it. A slight gasp, and then the woman asked, "Are you the one?"

"The one who? What one?" McAllister asked, confused, though he did not miss how the light was created. "Was my coming foretold?" Frowning, he dropped the stick into his pocket again, and he sensed it seemed amused at the mischief it created.

"Yes," the woman said, oddly intense in the strange mage-light, staring at McAllister, roving her eyes up and down his form, "yes, it was foretold."

McAllister could not discern her well, shapeless and faceless in the dim light cast back from the objects in the room at her, the source shielded from her face by her hand, though there was enough to see the movement. "You are a sorcerer also," she said with conviction.

"I have discovered I indeed have an internal fire, though I am new come to the fact," he allowed.

"You are modest," she said, "for I have labored long over the sealing of that door each night, and you seem to have unraveled it with some ease."

McAllister stood silent for a moment. "Nonetheless, I am within this room, now," he reasoned aloud, "and I would know of this foretelling," he concluded.

McAllister regarded her for a moment, taking in the wide face and wider eyes, the dark hair and the exotic slant to those dark eyes, reading the fear and uncertainty in them. He wondered at the source, sensing the woman before him was somehow reluctant to speak. "I understand if you do not wish to speak of it, the shock of finding me in your ... workroom, unannounced while you slept would be enough..."

She interrupted him. "No, that is not it," she said.

"Then what?"

"I would not have you think less of me," she said, "though I am old, and unlovely, and fat as well. Honesty is really the only way for such as I."

McAllister, taken aback, observed, "You do yourself an injustice, lady. You do not seem unlovely to me, though the light is perhaps not full. Yet, from what I see, I do not understand your disparagement. Still, you were explaining?"

The other made a twisted smile at McAllister's words. "I know the truth, as do all others. I went to an oracle once, and asked how I would achieve my heart's desire. I was told I would be awakened in the dark, by the man who would show me. He would come in the night when I felt myself as secure as my art could make me, and in a place I would never have expected it. All dark he was to be, and with a great burden on his soul, the oracle said. Do you have any great burden on your soul?"