At last they reached the top of the hill and stepped beneath the crumbling arch of the gate into the ruined courtyard. Aurian paused and looked around her with a shudder of unease. Save that there was no moonlight yet, the place looked eerily similar to the way it had appeared in her dream right down to the silhouette of the shattered weather-dome, and the same spine-chilling feeling that the place was thronging with the ghosts of the past. The wind seemed to sigh and whisper to itself in corners, and every black and vacant window about the shadowy courtyard seemed to be filled with watching eyes.
Keeping together, Aurian and the cats searched the lesser buildings in turn: the guardhouse and stables, the chambers devoted to Fire- and Earth-magic, Meiriel’s infirmary, and the kitchens with their adjoining hall. All of the buildings were deserted, and appeared to have been for some considerable time. Webs stretched undisturbed across doors and windows, and the dusty floors were void of footprints. A sickly, waning moon was just rising as they stood at last in the cold shadow of the Mages’ Tower and looked across the courtyard at the library, with its endless maze of archives beneath. To Aurian, either option was equally disagreeable, but she decided on the Tower as the better of the two. With a shudder, the Mage looked into the open doorway of the tower that once, in happier times, had been her home. It gaped like the dark, ravenous maw of a monster that waited to devour her. “Well I suppose we’d better get it over with,” she muttered. Leaving Khanu at the bottom to guard her back, she stepped into the darkness with Shia at her side.
The wan moonlight had not yet reached the doorway of the tower, and it was pitch-black inside. Even her night vision needed some amount of light, however small, to work upon, and Aurian strained her eyes to peer into the thick darkness at the bottom of the stairwell. She wanted to avoid using Mage-light if she could, so as not to give herself away to anyone who might be watching.—The tower reached high above the walls of the Academy compound, and any lighted windows would be visible from the city below.
“We’ll start at the bottom,” the Mage told Shia, glad that their mental speech removed the need to speak aloud. “If there’s anything in one of these rooms, we don’t want it getting between us and the way out.”
The first room was the tiny cell that had been Aurian’s first home at the Academy. It was as bare as ever it had been while she was in residence, and she closed the door quickly, with a shudder. It brought back too many memories of the unhappy little girl who had been a victim of Eliseth’s cruelty. The next rooms were one floor higher on the spiral of stairs—the chambers that had belonged to D’arvan and Davorshan. These also proved to be empty, their dust undisturbed for long ages, though Aurian was dismayed by the extent of the damp and decay that she found within. Bragar’s chambers proved to be the same.—So far, the Mage had only given the rooms a perfunctory glance, not even bothering to make a light, as she suspected that there would be little there to interest her. She hoped that Eliseth’s suite would yield more clues to the whereabouts of the Weather-Mage. It was only when she reached the next floor, and Eliseth’s chambers, that Aurian noticed the footprints. At her startled exclamation, Shia, who had been downstairs guarding the tower entrance, came leaping up the stairs. The Mage was kneeling on the landing in the doorway of Eliseth’s rooms, tracing outlines in the dust on the floor. “Look. Someone’s been here.”
This high in the tower, fingers of moonlight could reach through narrow windows placed at intervals in the outer walls. Where the beams touched the floor, the thick dust glimmered with a soft silvery light—save for a series of darker patches. The smudged and dusty prints of feet leading up and down the stairs, and into the Magewoman’s chambers and out again.
Muttering an oath, Aurian loosened her sword in its sheath. These look like a woman’s booted foot—it’s far too delicate to be a man. Eliseth must have been here! But what about the other? The boots are of similar make....” A prickle of fear coursed through her. “Gods! Can Miathan and Eliseth still be in the Academy?”
“I doubt it. Whoever it is, they haven’t been here for a long time.” Shia was peering hard at the tracks and following them back down the stairway with her nose. “See? In the darkness, you must have missed the prints in the lower chambers. But see how blurred the prints are—and I can pick up no scent. There was no one in the courtyard, and we’ve looked everywhere else. I would say that no one has been in this place for many months—probably longer.”
“It should be safe enough for me to go on alone, then,” Aurian said. This place was so full of memories for her that somehow she wanted no one—not even a friend as close as Shia—to be with her when she revisited her old rooms. “If you go back to watch the entrance with Khanu,” she told the cat, “I’ll take a quick look upstairs—and then we can get out of here.” She shuddered. “The Academy has changed so much—I hate to see it like this. I can’t believe now, that it was ever my home.”
Eliseth’s rooms had been ransacked—by the intruder, or by Eliseth herself, Aurian did not know. Nothing of value was left, nor was there any clue to the whereabouts of the Weather-Mage, so Aurian went up to the next floor—and her own chambers. Fighting a deep feeling of reluctance, she opened the door. As she looked around the room, grimacing at the dust and disorder, her eye fell upon the fireplace with its high, carved mantel—and the hearth, where long ago, Anvar had dropped his bucket and covered her in a choking cloud of ash.—The door into the bedchamber was ajar, and through it she could see the bed that she had shared, in happier times, with Forral.
She should never have come in here. Aurian felt the tightness of unshed tears in her throat as she was swamped by memories of the two men she had loved. She blinked, and swallowed hard. “Damn it, this won’t help,” she muttered to herself. Quickly, she checked both rooms. The intruder had been here—she could see the telltale footprints plainly in the dust—and cupboards and drawers had been pulled open and their contents strewn about the room. “Whoever did this, they’d better not let me catch them,” Aurian growled. It was easier to be angry. It was the best way to take her mind off the sorrowful memories. There was no point in looking through the chaos for old possessions. Everything would be ruined by now, and besides, the Mage wanted no reminders of the past.—As she climbed the last flight of stairs and approached the Archmage’s door, Aurian drew her sword, and took the Staff of Earth in her other hand. As she grasped it, the thrill of power that coursed up her arm helped to stiffen her courage. Just as in her dream, there seemed to be no wards on Miathan’s door.—In her dream, the Mage remembered, she had taken the heel of the Staff and pushed it open. This time, to deliberately break the sequence, she gave it a good hard push with her booted foot and sprang back quickly as it creaked open.
She was met by darkness—a solid blackness so profound that it defied even her Mage’s sight. It was as though the moonlight reached the threshold of the room—and then stopped. Aurian stepped forward, her heart hammering wildly, and summoned a sphere of actinic Magelight. Miathan’s chamber leapt into glaring light—and proved to be as empty as the others. Feeling slightly foolish, Aurian pressed on into the bedchamber—and stopped dead. There, upon the bed, lay a long, shrouded outline, all details obscured at this distance by the crawling blue web of a time spell. Biting her lip, the Mage crept forward, both sword and Staff at the ready. Then, as she approached the figure, the features resolved and became clear to her.