A knock at the door made Meisha jump.
Shaera, apprentice of air and one of Varan's older students, came into the room. She cradled a candle in one hand. "Did you call me?" she asked.
"No," Meisha said, her customary sullen gaze snapping into place. "Why would I want you?"
"Why, indeed?" the girl murmured. She walked right past Meisha, ignoring her hissed curses. "I came to leave you this." She crouched next to the cot and spoke a soft, breathy word.
A small column of fire rose up from the floor, floating in midair as if suspended from an invisible wick.
"Just until you learn the spell yourself," Shaera explained. "Always carry a light down here. If nothing else, light frightens the rats away." She smiled encouragingly. "You'll grow used to the Delve. We'll help you."
"You think I need your help to make fire," Meisha said cuttingly. Her eyes rounded, and the flame soared higher, almost touching Shaera's belt.
The girl's smile didn't falter. "He said you were powerful. I'm impressed. But can you make the fire last the whole of the night?"
Color rose in Meisha's cheeks, matching the slow-burning flame. She said nothing.
"I thought not." Shaera paused at the door. "If you get scared again, you can sleep in my room."
"Get out!" Meisha yelled, mortified that the girl had heard her distress. "Leave me alone!"
Shaera nodded and closed the door behind her.
Meisha seethed. Never on her worst night in Keczulla had she cried out, not when she'd been beaten by the Wraiths for holding back food, not when she'd been starving because they'd denied her for a tenday afterward. Through it all, she'd never made a sound.
How dare she, Meisha thought, how dare she come into her room uninvited? What would Varan think of such an invasion of privacy?
She snorted. Varan had probably sent the girl.
"Maybe you'd like the favor returned," she muttered. Her fear pushed aside by anger, Meisha slammed her door and headed for Varan's chambers.
She listened at the doors to each of the apprentices' rooms: Jonal, the water student; Prieces, the earth apprentice. Shaera and Lima were both air, and shared a room across the passage. Meisha had never bothered to learn beyond their names and elements.
Each room was quiet, the occupants undisturbed by her earlier shouts.
Did none of them feel the unnaturalness of the Delve? Meisha wondered. Or had they been in the place too long? All the apprentices here were at least two years older than Meisha and more advanced in their training. Perhaps they had grown used to the underground setting.
The thought of ever growing accustomed to life without sunlight made Meisha's skin go cold. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms.
That would never happen to her, she swore. She would always crave the Morninglord's touch.
When she came to Varan's door, she hesitated. A thin, green beam of light limned the crooked wooden planks. Enspelled globes, she thought. Varan used them in place of torches to light various parts of the Delve.
She reached up to rap on the wood and felt a tingle of electricity race down her arm: strong magic—dangerous, if she disturbed Varan in the middle of a casting.
The spell glow died away. Varan's muffled voice came through the wood.
"Come in, Meisha."
Scowling, Meisha dragged open the door to the chamber Varan used as a workroom. Her mouth fell open.
"Close the door, please," the wizard said crisply.
Meisha shut the door and turned a slow circle in the chamber, the better for her eyes to take in the writing scribbled on every wall's surface.
She could decipher only a handful of the arcane phrases. Inscribed and illuminated with green light, the writing blurred her vision if she stared at it too long. As if that were not disconcerting enough, Meisha swore she saw the writing move, rearranging itself as she tried to read.
"You couldn't sleep?" Varan inquired, when Meisha continued to gape at the wall of power.
She shook her head. "What is all this?" she breathed, her earlier anger forgotten.
"Some of we poor practitioners still have to rely on spellbooks —the written word—to fuel our Art," Varan explained, "especially when we create new magic."
"Do you often?" Meisha asked. "Create new magic?"
"As often as I am able," Varan replied. "Creation, as I see it, should be the ultimate goal of all who study the Art. That and teaching apprentices are the only ways our magic truly lives on. It matters not if the magic is used for protection or destruction, as long as it exists and can be turned and forged into something new."
"And you think I will be your destructive force," Meisha said, turning at last to regard the wizard.
"I've decided to reserve judgment in your case," he hedged, "as you so often surprise me. But I do not think I will be disappointed, whichever path you choose to take."
He waved a hand, and the light faded from the writing. "So you're having trouble sleeping," he mused. "It may be my stirrings of the Art woke you. In such a confined space, the magic has few places to go. The Delve is old, and the walls are worn with the imprints of old magic and the tread of feet—human and otherwise."
"Why do you live here then?" Meisha asked. With no chair in the room, she settled on the cold floor. "If the Delve is so old, aren't you afraid one day it will collapse?"
Varan chuckled. "From what I've been able to discern, the Delve has withstood far more than an old wizard's spells and come out intact. Now it is my sanctuary. The walls will hold." The wizard shrugged into a thick robe and plucked up a crooked staff as he spoke. "But we haven't solved your problem; you need sleep."
He ushered her out into the hall, spell-locking the door behind them. "When I can't find calm, I work until I'm weary, and I still have a task to finish before I seek my bed tonight. This task will weary both of us, if you'd care to join me?"
Meisha nodded eagerly. Anything would be preferable to returning to her boxlike room in the dark, even with the flame burning all night. The weight of the Delve still pressed down on her, but in Varan's presence the feeling seemed to diminish.
She followed the wizard down a side passage typically forbidden to the apprentices. Meisha recognized the boundary of Varan's wards inscribed on the tunnel wall. They walked right past the sigil, led by the glow from Varan's staff.
They entered a wide-mouthed, bell-shaped chamber that Meisha saw was entirely submerged in water. The cavern's ceiling reflected unbroken across the clear surface of the water, making it impossible to tell where the bottom lay.
Varan released his staff, causing it to hover over the center of the calm pool. "Fresh water source," he said. "Something we're always in need of down here. Close, too, so I'm considering extending the wards."
"So other creatures won't intrude on the watering hole," Meisha surmised.
"Correct—ordinarily—but I've observed this particular watering hole is rarely used by wandering creatures," Varan told her. "Can you guess why?"
Meisha looked at him sharply, at the same time taking a step back. "What dwells in the water?"
"Very good," Varan said, "and to answer your question, something big."
"So I'm to be your bait?" Meisha asked sullenly. She'd thought Varan would let her attack the thing.
Varan laughed. "Hardly, little one. I am not an ogre, or a Red Wizard, with apprentices to squander—and a waste it would be, for the creature that lives beneath the surface would rend you unrecognizable. Besides," his eyes glinted, "I do not require bait."