Sourcery

happened? Here is a gifted youth, perhaps raised in isolation out in the untutored, um, countryside, who, feeling the ancient call of the magic in his bones, has journeyed far across tortuous terrain, through who knows what perils, and at last has reached his journey’s end, alone and afraid, seeking only the steadying influence of us, his tutors, to shape and guide his talents? Who are we to turn him away, into the, um, wintry blast, shunning his—”
    The oration was interrupted by Gravie blowing his nose.
    “It’s not winter,” said one of the other wizards flatly, “and it’s quite a warm night.”
    “Out into the treacherously changeable spring weather ,” snarled Spelter, “and cursed indeed would be the man who failed, um, at this time—”
    “It’s nearly summer.”
    Carding rubbed the side of his nose thoughtfully.
    “The boy has a staff,” he said. “Who gave it to him? Did you ask?”
    “No,” said Spelter, still glowering at the almanackical interjector.
    Carding started to look at his fingernails in what Spelter considered to be a meaningful way.
    “Well, whatever the problem, I feel sure it can wait until morning,” he said in what Spelter felt was an ostentatiously bored voice.
    “Ye gods, he blew Billias away!” said Gravie. “And they say there’s nothing in Virrid’s room but soot!”
    “They were perhaps rather foolish,” said Carding smoothly. “I am sure, my good brother, that you would not be defeated in affairs of the Art by a mere stripling?”
    Gravie hesitated. “Well, er,” he said, “no. Of course not.” He looked at Carding’s innocent smile and coughed loudly. “Certainly not, of course. Billias was very foolish. However, some prudent caution is surely—”
    “Then let us all be cautious in the morning,” said Carding cheerfully. “Brothers, let us adjourn this meeting. The boy sleeps, and in that at least he is showing us the way. This will look better in the light.”
    “I have seen things that didn’t,” said Gravie darkly, who didn’t trust Youth. He held that no good ever came of it.
    The senior wizards filed out and back to the Great Hall, where the dinner had got to the ninth course and was just getting into its stride. It takes more than a bit of magic and someone being blown to smoke in front of him to put a wizard off his food.
    For some unexplained reason Spelter and Carding were the last to leave. They sat at either end of the long table, watching each other like cats. Cats can sit at either end of a lane and watch each other for hours, performing the kind of mental maneuvering that would make a grand master appear impulsive by comparison, but cats have got nothing on wizards. Neither was prepared to make a move until he had run the entire forthcoming conversation through his mind to see if it left him a move ahead.
    Spelter weakened first.
    “All wizards are brothers,” he said. “We should trust one another. I have information.”
    “I know,” said Carding. “You know who the boy is.”
    Spelter’s lips moved soundlessly as he tried to foresee the next bit of the exchange. “You can’t be certain of that,” he said, after a while.
    “My dear Spelter, you blush when you inadvertently tell the truth.”
    “I didn’t blush!”
    “Precisely,” said Carding, “my point.”
    “All right,” Spelter conceded. “But you think you know something else.”
    The fat wizard shrugged. “A mere suspicion of a hunch,” he said. “But why should I ally ,” he rolled the unfamiliar word around his tongue, “with you, a mere fifth level? I could more certainly obtain the information by rendering down your living brain. I mean no offense, you understand, I ask only for knowledge.”
    The events of the next few seconds happened far too fast to be understood by non-wizards, but went approximately like this:
    Spelter had been drawing the signs of Megrim’s Accelerator in the air under cover of the table. Now he muttered a syllable under his breath and fired the spell along the tabletop, where it left a smoking path in the varnish and met, about halfway, the silver snakes of Brother Hushmaster’s Potent Asp-Spray as they spewed from Carding’s fingertips.
    The two spells cannoned into one another, turned into a ball of green fire and exploded, filling the room with fine yellow crystals.
    The wizards exchanged the kind of long, slow glare you could roast chestnuts on.
    Bluntly, Carding was surprised. He shouldn’t have been.