Guerrand dashed through the formal dining area that bridged their rooms. It took him ten minutes to collect and crush a sufficient amount of dried peppermint and meadowsweet and steep it in oil of cloves.
Vial in hand, Guerrand dashed toward the door. On impulse, he checked his appearance in his looking glass, then wished he hadn't. He looked like he'd been dragged through a knothole, but he hadn't time even to change. Esme was in pain and waiting for his herbs.
Slicking a moistened hand over his mop of dark hair, Guerrand hastened back through the dining room. He forced his steps and breathing to slow in the antechamber. A sense of propriety suggested he knock at the door to her sleeping chamber. There was no answer. He waited and knocked again. When still there was no response, he poked his head through the curtain that hung in the doorway.
"Esme?" he whispered, wondering if she had fallen asleep after the day's travails. What he found in the sleeping chamber nearly made him drop the vial he carried.
"Zagarus!"
The familiar was strutting back and forth on Esme's cot. Guerrand saw his own pack at the bird's feet, the flap open. The young woman herself was nowhere to be seen.
"Where's Esme?" the apprentice demanded, his fingers growing cold about the vial of herbs when he saw the fragment of mirror on the chest by the cot.
She's gone! She stepped into the mirror! Zag pointed his beak at the glistening glass.
I flew to her window, looking for you so that I could slip into my nest in the mirror. Esme saw me but was busy stuffing her pack with components. Suddenly, she slung the pack over her shoulder and said, "I don't know if you can understand me, but tell Rand I'll be back in the time it takes to leap from the mirror, grab the spellbooks, and jump back here." Those were her exact words. Zagarus heaved a sigh of relief at having got through it all. What did she mean, Rand?
"It means she went back to Belize's," Guerrand said numbly. He snatched up the mirror and felt the jagged edges press his flesh.
What are we going to do?
Guerrand sank down next to the bird and considered the question. He wasn't so much angry at Esme as anxious. "Wait for her to return," he said at last. "If everything goes well, she should be able to return in under ten minutes. She could be back any moment, then." He remembered her splinted limb with a frustrated sigh. "I'll give her a little more time for her leg."
Guerrand let twenty minutes pass before he allowed the fear to pound at his temples. Where was she? He looked futilely at the mirror and closed his eyes. Something was wrong. He would not let his mind conjure possibilities. Only one thing was clear: he had to go and find her.
"Come on, Zag," he said, mirror in hand as he raced back to his room. Guerrand snatched up herbs and other items he used for his best spells and added them to the spellbook he placed in his pack.
The apprentice glanced once more around his chamber and spied his swordbelt with sword and dagger, long unused, hanging from a wall peg. Whether due to a premonition or the memory of Belize's monstrosities, Guerrand pulled it down and buckled it around his waist.
Guerrand set the mirror on his desk, then waved Zagarus into the glass first. Stretching his arms above his head as if swan-diving into the Strait of Ergoth, Guerrand slipped into the shiny surface of the magical mirror.
A heartbeat later in the foggy mirror world, Guerrand envisioned the looking glass in Belize's laboratory and stepped through it. Instantly he sensed an unnatural stillness, like the calm after a violent thunderstorm. Holding
his breath, Guerrand walked around the shelves. His booted feet crunched over glass. The floor was covered with shattered beakers, colored preserving liquids, and assorted organ components. The shelves that had so recently been neatly stacked were now bare, swept clean. The stench was worse than he'd remembered.
Guerrand kicked a hen heart out of his path. "Esme?" he called softly.
She's not here, Rand, Zagarus said. I'm by Belize's table. You've got to see this.
Blood hammering at his temples, Guerrand raced past the steps to the platform. Only one torch lit the area containing the table that Guerrand knew had held Belize's spellbooks. That lone light revealed enough to raise Guerrand's gorge. The entire floor and much of the walls were covered with spattered gore. The nauseating blotches were broken by scorch marks Guerrand knew came only from the intense heat of magical fireballs. Severed limbs and heads, obliterated torsos, and oozing organs were everywhere. Much of the carnage had been blasted beyond recognition.
Guerrand pinched his nose shut and began breathing through his mouth before wading toward Zagarus. The bird was perched upon the table, trying desperately to put space between himself and the grisly remains of a dead male dwarf who had the head of a large house cat. Between the bird and the dwarf on the table there were only dusty outlines where once spell-books had been.
Esme took the books and left the lab before Belize returned, Guerrand told himself. Seeing them gone, the archmage flew into a fury and destroyed everything he saw.
If that's true, why hasn't Esme emerged from the mirror? demanded Zagarus, reading Guerrand's thoughts.
"I don't know!" snapped Guerrand, his mind racing out of control. Had Belize caught her stealing his books and… Closing his eyes, the apprentice said with agonizing surety, "He's taken Esme somewhere."
Well, where do we look-"Kyeow!" Zagarus sprang from the table as the head of the dead dwarf-cat began to stir. Though the right side of its furry face was gone, the one remaining green cat's eye struggled to open. Guerrand was at once riveted and repulsed. His hand went impulsively to his dagger and stayed there while he waited, watching.
The creature seemed to give up trying to raise its head, though the eye remained open, focused on Guerrand. The blood-matted fur beneath the orb began to move up and down, and Guerrand realized that it was trying to speak with what was left of its mouth. A high-pitched keening erupted from the cat's face. Though modulated, the sounds made no sense to Guerrand.
"I can't understand you," growled Guerrand in frustration. "Are you asking me to end your suffering?"
The gruesome creature seemed to understand Guerrand, for it stopped wailing and unmistakably shook what remained of its head. A mangled dwarven hand came up with agonizing slowness. It trembled above the tabletop briefly Then one stubby digit, the only one left, began to push around the dwarf's own blood and ichor until an outline emerged of tall, etched pillars that Guerrand could not mistake: Stonecliff.
"You're telling me this is where Belize has taken my friend?"
The pathetic creature began to nod, then gave one short, violent shudder before falling still in the blessed peace of death.
Guerrand reached out a trembling hand and closed its eye.
Chapter Seventeen
The archmage Belize touched a fingernail, yellow and hideously twisted, to the throbbing slash across his right cheek. He would have to wash the gash before it festered, considering the foul, decayed claw that had caused the injury.
It was all the young chit's fault, Belize fumed. She'd unleashed the creatures who caused the cut, the monstrosities he kept locked in his back room. It did not help his mood to admit that he'd never believed his creations to be more threatening than starved fleas; he should have killed them long ago, anyway.
When Belize thought of the young woman whose hands he'd caught upon Fistandantilus's Observations on the Structure of Reality, his temper flared anew. The mage had returned to Villa Nova to retrieve his spell-books and some personal affects before leaving for Stonecliff. The second his foot hit the floor of the lab the creatures had been upon him. He'd easily obliterated them all with a few well-placed magic missiles, but not before one had managed to slice his cheek. That one he'd blasted beyond matter with a fireball. Then he'd collected his spellbooks and teleported the woman to his chamber for questioning.