Sun Cross 2 - The Magicians Of Night by Hambly Barbara

Author:Hambly, Barbara
Language: eng
Format: epub

11:00—cat

11:24—face on wall

11:24—Stopped pacing as if startled, resumed immediately

12:10—glass of water

12:45—spider

12:55—Raised head and looked around room as if checking for something, settled down almost at once.

“Promising.” Von Rath laid the two sets of notes on the library table before him, aligned their edges with his habitual neatness, and surveyed his fellow mages with eyes like glacier ice. “Your impressions?”

“It was—astounding,” Baldur whispered reverently, black-rimmed nails picking at the edge of a nearby book. “I c-could feel the power flowing into you, you blazed like a torch with it.”

“You were losing twenty-nine thirtieths of it.” Rhion leaned back in his chair. His whole body ached from lack of sleep, the few hours of dream-tortured slumber he’d fallen into that morning doing nothing to make up for two nights without and his exertions on the astral plane on top of that. The splinters of sunlight forcing their way between the library’s snuff-colored curtains were agonizingly bright in the room’s brownish twilight; Poincelles and Baldur both squinted and winced whenever they turned that way. Gall, as usual, sat stoically in a corner. From his window during one bout of sleeplessness Rhion had seen him at dawn, walking calmly nude down the path beyond the wire to Round Pond for his morning swim.

“There was power in the room,” von Rath insisted doggedly. “I know it. I felt it.”

“Some of the Shining Crystal texts mention a Talismanic Resonator,” Baldur put in diffidently. “They do not say what it is, but they speak of it as establishing a field of power.”

“As the Holy Grail did,” Gall said, shifting his slender form in his chair, the harsh afternoon sunlight making of his long white hair a glowing halo. “And as certain other sacred relics could. The crystal tip of the golden pyramidion atop the ancient Pyramid of Khufu.

“Which you were privileged to buy from a trusted antiquities dealer in Cairo?” Poincelles inquired sarcastically, glancing up from filing a broken fingernail back into a neat point.

“A Talismanic Resonator will work only if there’s something for it to resonate with,” Rhion said, firmly cutting off Gall’s indignant rejoinder. “And in this universe you’d kill yourself raising a field as little as a mile across.”

“Perhaps a stronger drug? Or another type of drug?”

“Be my guest,” Rhion retorted sourly. “Only don’t ask me to take any—or to be in the building when you start screwing around with power while under the influence.” He took off his glasses to rub his red and aching eyes. Von Rath looked far worse than he had yesterday morning when they had spoken outside the temple, as if he had not slept at all. Good, thought Rhion. It meant he’d sleep soundly tonight.

Hurting for sleep himself, Rhion considered putting off breaking into the Dark Well and activating the Spiracle for another twenty-four hours. He needed rest desperately—Rebbe Leibnitz probably did, too—and there seemed little chance of getting any during the remainder of the day. He didn’t relish the thought of trying to manipulate the power of the Void, even at his most alert.

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