Stalking Darkness

most masters would joyously fill his head with all they knew, guiding him quickly through the levels to true power.
    But more than a keen mind and flawless ability were needed to make so powerful a wizard as Thero would undoubtedly become. Ungoverned by wisdom, patience, and a compassionate heart, that same keen mind would be capable of unspeakable havoc.
    So he kept Thero with him, hopeful to change him, fearful to let him go.
    There were moments, such as the night he found him tending toSeregil’s injuries after the misadventure in the sewers, when Nysander caught a gleam of hope—signs that Thero might be coming to understand what it was that Nysander was asking of him beyond the mere learning of magic.
    Reaching the door to the lowest vault, he shook off his reverie and hastened on.
    Few had reason to go to this lowest vault, which for time out of mind had been the Orëska’s repository for the forgotten, the useless, and the dangerous. Many of the storerooms were empty now, or cluttered with mouldering crates. Other doors had been walled up, their frames outlined with runic spells and warnings. But as he walked along, the sound of his footsteps muffled on the dank brick underfoot, he could hear the bowl and its high, faint resonance, audible only to those trained to listen for it. The sound was much stronger than it once had been.
    The wooden disk had had little effect on it; its power was incomplete separated from the seven others Nysander knew existed somewhere in the world. The crystal crown was a different matter. As soon as he’d placed it here, the resonance of the bowl had grown increasingly stronger, and with it his nightmares.
    And the movements of the necromancer’s hands in the museum.
    How Seregil had survived his exposure to the disk unprotected by anything but his own magical block was still a mystery. Equally mystifying was how little protection all Nysander’s carefully prepared spells and charms had been for Seregil from the effects of the crown. In the first case he should have died, in the second he should have had absolute protection, yet in both cases he had sustained wounds but survived.
    All this, taken together with the words the Oracle of Illior had spoken to Seregil, left Nysander with the uneasy conviction that much more than mere coincidence was at work.
    Stopping, he faced the familiar stretch of wall yet again. With a final check to be certain no eyes, natural or otherwise, were upon him, he spoke a powerful key spell and cast a sighting through stone and magic to the small hidden room beyond.
    Immured in the darkness of centuries, the bowl sat on the tiny chamber’s single shelf. To the uninitiated, it was nothing more than a crude vessel of burnt clay, unremarkable in any way. Yet this homely object had dominated his entire adult life, and the lives of three wizards before him.
    The Guardians.
    To one side of the bowl lay the crystal box containing the disk; on the other, still smeared with the ash of Dravnian cook fires, was the flat wooden case holding the crown.
    For no better reason than curiosity, he spoke the Spell of Passage and entered the chamber.
    Magic crackled ominously around him in spite of the wards and containment spells. Taking a lightstone from his pocket, he held it up and regarded the bowl solemnly for a moment, thinking again of his predecessors. None of them, not even Arkoniel, had anticipated ever adding to the contents of this hidden and most guarded chamber. Now he had, not once but twice, and their combined song was a pulse of living energy.
    His hands stole to the containers on either side of the bowl.
What would that song be if I opened these, brought even these three fragments together without the rest? What could be learned from such an experiment?
    His right thumb found the catch on the wooden box, rubbed tentatively at it—
    Nysander jerked back, made a warding sign, and retreated the way he’d come. Alone in the corridor, he broke the Spell of Passage and slumped against the opposite wall, his heart pounding ominously in his chest.
    If just three fragments of the whole could force such thoughts into his mind, then he must be all the more vigilant.
    Forced those thoughts into your mind, old man
, a niggling inner voice chided,
or revealed them there? How many times did Arkoniel warn you that temptation is nothing more than the dark mirror of the soul?
    Inevitably, regret followed hard on the heels of memory. Arkoniel had taught him well and