“What is it?”
“I don’t know. I wish… I wish I could have studied here. The only power I have ever known is Ghisteslwchlohm’s.”
“The wizards will help you,” she said, but he found no reassurance in that. He looked at her.
“Will you do something for me? Go back into crow-shape. I’ll take you on my shoulder while I search for them. I don’t know what traps or bindings might still linger here.”
She nodded tiredly, without comment, and changed shape. She tucked herself under his ear, and he stepped onto the grounds of the school. No trees grew anywhere on them; the grass struggled only patchily around white furrows of scorched earth. Shattered stones lay where they had fallen, still burning deep within them with a memory of power. Nothing had been touched for centuries. Morgon felt it as he drew near the school itself. The terrible sense of destruction hung like a warning over the wealth. He moved quietly, his mind open, scenting, into the silent buildings.
The rooms stank with a familiar name. In most, he found bones crushed beneath a cairn of broken walls. Memories of hope or energy, of despair, collected about him like wraiths. He began to sweat lightly, struck by shadows, faint and fine as ancient dust, of a devastating, hopeless battle. As he entered a great circular hall in the center of the buildings, he felt the reverberations still beating within the walls of a terrible explosion of hatred and despair. He heard the crow mutter harshly in its throat; its claws were prickling his shoulder. He picked his way across the ceiling, which was lying in pieces on the floor, toward a door in the back of the room. The door, hanging in splinters on its hinges, opened into a vast library. A priceless treasure of books lay torn and charred on the floor. Fire had raged across the shelves, leaving little more than the backbones and skeletons of ancient books of wizardry. The smell of burned leather still hung in the room, as if nothing had moved through the air itself in seven centuries.
He moved through empty room after empty room. He found in one melted pools of gold and silver, precious metals and shattered jewels the students had worked with; in another, the broken bones of small animals. In another, he found beds. The bones of a child were crouched under the covers of one of them. At that point, he turned and groped through the torn wall back into the evening. But the air was filled with silent cries, and the earth beneath his feet was dead.
He sat down on a pile of stone blown out of the corner of the building. Down the barren crest of the hill, the maze of rooftops spilled toward the crumbling walls. They were all of timber. He saw vividly a sheet of fire spreading across the entire city, burning crops and orchards, billowing along the hike edge into the forests under the hot summer sky, with no hope of rain for months to quench it. He dropped his face against his fists, whispered, “What in Hel’s name do I think I’m doing here? He destroyed Lungold once; now he and I will destroy it again. The wizards haven’t come back here to challenge him; they’ve come back to die.”
The crow murmured something. He stood up again, gazing at the huge, ruined mass looming darkly against the translucent wake of the sunset. Scenting with his mind, he touched only memories. Listening, he heard only the echoes of a name cursed silently for all centuries. His shoulders slumped. “If they’re here, they’ve guarded themselves well… I don’t know how to look for them.”
Raederle’s voice broke through the crow-mind with a brief, mental comment. He turned his head, met the black, probing eye. “All right. I know I can find them. I can see through their illusions and break their bindings. But, Raederle… they are great wizards. They came into their power through curiosity, discipline, integrity… maybe even joy. They did not get it screaming at the bottom of Erlenstar Mountain. They never meddled with land-law, or hunted a harpist from one end of the realm to the other to kill him. They may need me to fight for them here, but I wonder if they will trust me…” The crow was silent; he brushed a finger down its breast. “I know. There is only one way to find out.”
He went back into the ruins. This time, he opened himself completely to all the torment of the destruction and the lingering memories of a forgotten peace. His mind, like a faceted jewel, reflected all the shades of lingering power — from cracked stones, from an untouched page out of a spell book, from various ancient instruments he found near the dead: rings, strangely carved staffs, crystals with light frozen in them, skeletons of winged annuals he could not name. He sorted through all the various levels of power, found the source of each. Once, tracing a smoldering fire to its bed deep in a pool of melted iron, he detonated it accidentally and realized the iron itself had been some crucible of knowledge. The blast blew the crow six feet in the air and shook stones down from the ceiling. He had melted into the force automatically, not fighting it; the crow, squawking nervously, watched him shape himself back out of the solid stone he had blown himself into. He took it into his hands to soothe it, marveling at the intricacies of ancient wizardry. Everything his mind touched — wood, glass, gold, parchment, bone — held within it an ember of power. He explored patiently, exhaustingly, lighting a sliver of roof beam when it grew too dark to see. Finally, near midnight, when the crow was dozing on his shoulder, his mind strayed across the face of a door that did not exist.
It was a powerful illusion; he had looked at the door before and not seen through it, or felt an urge to open it. It was of thick oak and iron, barred and bolted. He would have to pick his way over a pile of broken stone and charred timber to open it. The walls were crumbled almost to the ground around the door; it seemed bolted against nothing but the battle-seared ground between two ruined buildings. But it had been created out of a living power, for some purpose. He clambered over the rubble to reach it and laid his hand flat against it. Some mind barred his passage, gave him a feel of wood grain under his fingers. He paused before he broke it, disturbed once more by the ambiguity of his own great power. Then he walked forward, becoming, for a breath, worm-eaten oak, rusted locks, and encompassing the power that bound them there.
He stepped downward abruptly into darkness. Steps that lay hidden under an illusion of parched ground led down under the earth. His fire wavered, grew smaller and smaller until he realized what force was working against it. He held the flame clear, steady, burning out of fire deep in his mind.
The worn stone steps sloped sharply down a narrow passageway. Gradually they levelled, and a blank, empty face of darkness loomed beyond Morgon’s shadow, smelling of rotting timbers and damp stone. He let his brand burn brighter; it probed feebly at the vastness. A chill, like a mountain chill, shivered through him. The crow made a harsh noise. He felt it begin to change shape, and he shook his head quickly. It subsided under his hair. As he drew the fire brighter and brighter, searching for some limit to the darkness, something began to seep into his thoughts. He sensed a power very near him that had nothing to do with a vast, underground chasm. Puzzling over it, he wondered if the chasm itself were an illusion.