Stalking Darkness

And what if some of those killed were also friends of ours—Myrhini, Cilla, Thero, Well, maybe not Thero—”
    “I don’t know!” Alec shrugged uncomfortably. “I can’t say one way or the other without knowing the details. I guess I’d just have to have faith in him until I knew more. Maybe he didn’t have any choice.”
    Seregil leveled a stern finger at him. “You always have achoice. Don’t ever imagine you don’t. Whatever you do, it’s a decision and you have to accept responsibility for it. That’s when honor becomes more than empty words.”
    “Well, I still say I’d have to know why he did it,” Alec retorted stubbornly.
    “That’s good. But suppose, despite all his kindness to you, you discovered he really had betrayed your trust. Would you hunt him down and kill him as the law required?”
    “How could I?”
    “It would be difficult. Past kindness counts for something. But say you knew for certain that someone else would catch him—the Queen’s officers, for instance—and that they’d kill him slowly and horribly. Then wouldn’t it be your duty, as a friend and a man of honor, to see to it that he was granted a quick, merciful death? Looked at from that angle, I suppose killing Micum Cavish might be the greatest expression of friendship.”
    Alec stared at Seregil, mouth slightly ajar. “How the hell did we come to me killing Micum?”
    Seregil shrugged. “You asked about loyalty. I told you it wasn’t easy.”

11
N YSANDER A LONE
    T he hands moved more often now.
    As Nysander gazed down at them through the thick sheet of crystal that covered the case, a trick of the light superimposed his reflection over the splayed hands below, creating the illusion that his head lay within the case, gripped in the withered talons of the dead necromancer. The face he saw there was a very old one, etched with weariness. While he watched, the hands slowly curled into fists, clenching so tightly that the skin over one knuckle split, showing brown bone beneath.
    Continuing grimly on through the deserted museum, Nysander half expected to hear the Voice from his nightmares, roaring its taunting challenge up through the floor from the depths below. Those dreams came more often now, since Seregil’s return from the Asheks.
    Summoning an orb of light, Nysander opened the door at the back of the museum chamber and began the long descent through the vaults.
    He’d wooed Magyana here in the days of their youth. When she’d remained obdurate in her celibacy, they had continued to share long discussions as they wandered along these narrow stone corridors. Seregil had often comewith them during his ill-starred apprenticeship, asking a thousand questions and poking into everything.
    Thero came with him occasionally, though less often than he once had. Did Ylinestra bring him down here to make love, Nysander wondered, as she had him? By the Four, she’d warmed the very stones with her relentless passion!
    He shook his head in bemusement as he imagined her with Thero; a sunbird embracing a crow.
    He’d never completely trusted the sorceress. Talented as Ylinestra was at both magic and love, greed lurked just behind her smile. In that way she was not unlike Thero, but Thero was bound by Orëska law; she was not.
    The fact that she had gone from his bed to Thero’s troubled Nysander in a way that had nothing to do with former passions, though he had been unable to convince Thero of that. After two tense, unpleasant attempts, Nysander had dropped the subject.
    Other wizards might have dismissed an assistant over such a matter, he knew, yet in spite of their growing differences, Nysander still felt a strong regard for Thero and refused to give up on him.
    And mixed with that regard, he admitted once again in the silence of the vaults, was the fear that many of his fellows in the Orëska would be glad to take on Thero if he let him go. Many were critical of Nysander’s handling of the talented young wizard, and thought Thero was wasted on the eccentric old man in the east tower. After all, he’d ruined one apprentice already, hadn’t he? Small wonder Thero seemed discontent.
    But Nysander knew the boy better than any of them and believed with every fiber of his being that given his head at this stage of training, the young wizard would ultimately ruin himself. Oh, he would earn his robes, of course, probably in half the time it would take most. That was part of the problem. Thero was so apt a pupil that