Masters of Magic Read online

  “I’ll think about it,” he said in the end, rising from his chair and placing his back against the wall. “Perhaps I’ve kept you talking too long. You look like you need to sleep. Don’t think too much about the future. You’re sick still, and things may distort in your mind. We’ll speak again later.”

  Collecting his robes about him, Starke left, closing the door behind him with a faint click of the latch. Lothar lay back in the darkness, feeling the pull of weariness strongly. For a while, he resisted it, knowing that his dreams would be bad. His eyes flickered over to the corner of the room where his few belongings had been stowed. Malgar’s staff leaned against the wall, casting a deep black shadow against the cool stone surface. It seemed harmless enough, a mere shaft of dead wood, but something about it was strange. It sat uneasily in the world, as if it belonged somewhere else entirely. He found that its very presence in the room unnerved him. He closed his eyes, and rolled with effort on to his side, facing the cool starlight of the open window.

  Sleep was nearly upon him. In the darkness, he heard Marius’ final words once more, echoing in his mind as they did every night. Of all the colours, the most potent, because it is all the colours combined. What power there must be in the Dark Magic, and, as Marius had showed, it could be harnessed for good… perhaps.

  Lothar clenched his fists, willing such thoughts to leave his mind, embracing the forgetfulness of sleep where such ideas would trouble him no longer.

  “I won’t go down that path,” he heard himself whisper. “I won’t…”

  Finally, after more half aware muttering, he sank at last into the blessed relief of slumber, his eyelids falling closed, his fingers gently uncurling, his breath slipping into long, slow regular draughts of the chill night air.

  In the darkness of the room, Malgar’s staff rested lightly against the wall, its ancient surface worn as smooth as glass, the weak, silver light from the window glinting on the runes and words of power carved into it long ago. It looked like it was waiting for something, unhurriedly, silently, like some lonely watchman on a forgotten tower.

  Outside, the ravens strutted moodily across the empty lawns of the Grey College, looking patiently for the dawn and the ending of the dark, but that was still many hours away. Until then, the cool night wind moaned over the crumbling stonework of the courtyard, eddying into the narrow streets of Altdorf, passing over the other colleges, winding through the cloisters and spires used by the wizards, the masters of magic, before sighing and curling into the higher air, rising and falling, drifting into the cold starlight, and passing away.

  Scanning, formatting and

  proofing by Flandrel,

  additional formatting and

  proofing by Undead.