Well of Darkness by Margaret Weis

Author:Margaret Weis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780061755620
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Each man put out his hands to steady the other.

“I beg pardon,” Gareth said, startled by the collision. “I trust I have not—”

“Gareth!” The man peered at Gareth, but he could not see him well through the darkness and the storm. “I know your voice. Yes”—the person turned Gareth so that his face was illuminated by the light of a torch, a torch that flared and sputtered in the driving rain—“it is you.”

“Master Ev-evaristo,” Gareth stammered.

“Just the person I wanted to see.” Evaristo shouted to be heard over the howl of the wind. “I have tried for two days to have a word with you. Didn’t you get my messages? One would think you were deliberately avoiding me!”

Gareth, who had been doing just that, endeavored to make his escape. “If you will excuse me, Master, I am wanted—”

“No,” said Evaristo, seizing hold of Gareth with a firm grasp. “I have you now, and I’m not letting you go. Come back inside. What I have to say will only take a moment, then you may be off on whatever errand draws you forth on such a raw night.”

To have fled would have looked extremely suspicious. Gareth could do nothing but accompany his former tutor back into the Temple. The porter, again forced to wrestle with the door and expose himself to the elements, received them with ungracious looks and mutterings.

Evaristo drew Gareth into a quiet alcove. The tutor removed his soaking cloak. Gareth hunched more closely into his, made certain that his hood left his face at least in partial shadow. One of the sores had erupted on his face. His fellow students mistook it for a pimple, but he feared that Evaristo might see it and guess the truth.

“What does take you out on such a night?” Evaristo asked cheerfully.

He had changed little in the intervening eight years, grown rounder and more comfortable perhaps. He was a happy man, a contented man, pleased with his wife and his children, pleased with his advancement in the ranks of the magi. He now ran a school for young boys, children of wealthy merchants, and was doing quite well for himself.

Gareth had his lie to hand, recited it glibly enough, recalling with a sinking heart that in the days of his childhood Evaristo had been quick to tell when the whipping boy was prevaricating and when he was telling the truth.

“Fulfilling the requirement for charitable works…I tend the sick…housebound…I fix their meals…”

“The trials of the novice,” said Evaristo, smiling. “How well I remember. I won’t keep you from your soup-making.” He peered at Gareth searchingly to try to see through the shadows. “How have you been? You look pale, as if you had been ill.”

“I am in excellent health, Master,” said Gareth, hugging the shadows close. “As you say, the trials of a novice…”

“Late hours, too much study. You must get more exercise and eat more. You are far too thin.”

“Master—” Gareth began with a hint of impatience.

“I know. You have somewhere else to be.

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