Текст книги "The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh "

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 36 (всего у книги 48 страниц)

!—he oughtn't, and said as how he was going to get revenge on this Hagon and on my brother—" Melot drew breath. Her hands shook. She clenched them both on her knees and stopped the tremor. "This Hagon investedsomething in my brother, that's what Othis said; and Othis wants to put some kind of hold on him too; and now they got this problem, because they can't untangle it, and they've set up to have this duel to settle it, tomorrow, except—except—well, where's my brother in this? Who's going to see he doesn't get hurt? I mean, it's not right, Gatan never worked for either of them, they got no right, have they? They can't do that, fight over him, I mean. I figured you'd know it wasn't right, you'd just sort of like write a letter for me to these two, and maybe—maybe a letter where it could do some good, I mean like you were my lawyer and you were going to do something, but you don't have to really, I mean, just the letters, that's all. I got money enough for that; or I can get more if you tell me what. I mean, just scare 'em a little. That's all."

"That's very interesting," the doctor said, and the heat went to Melot's face, a suspicion of condescension. "You're not a witch, then?" the doctor asked.

"I wait tables."

"But you're not a witch."

"Man, there's no one got less luck than me."

"Not born fortunate."

"My mother coughed me out. Thought I was a stomach-ache." Melot clenched her fingers on her silver coins. "It was my birthday this Hagon walked in on, I mean, what kind of luck is that?"

"How many days ago?"

"Three."

"How old are you?"

"Thirty-three."

"Interesting. Interesting." The lawyer hopped up from his stool and put his spectacles on, went over to a stack of books and pulled out the second from the top. He opened it on the table and leafed through it, unfolding pages into untidy charts. "What hour of the day?"

"Third." The numbers came together out of nowhere and coincided, and Melot got off her stool and stood there with her hands clenched on her coins and her heart thumping away. "I got no luck, I never had any luck."

"There are two kinds," the doctor said, and sent the shivers down her back.

"You just write the letters, master Toth, that's all I want, I mean it's Gatanin trouble, not me." The doctor looked up over his spectacles, his dark eyes full of surmise and, for the first time, alarm. "Gatan's birthday."

"Same. Same—we always, I mean, we always thought it was funny, like he had the luck I missed, charming folk was his talent, only he was four years later—"

"The wrong one. Hagon got the wrong one. So did Othis." "What are you talking about?" The words came out blunt and plain and Melot felt a rush of panic. She laid her fistful of money on the table by the book. "I can't afford you doing all that. Just the letters. I mean, all you have to do is write what right is. They'll listen to you."

The doctor hopped up and pulled out another book. He opened it and stood there riffling through it and reading here and there. "No, no," he said, and: "No, not here, not that, not here—"

"I can't afford a lot!"

The doctor pulled down his spectacles and turned and looked at her. "Melot Cassissinin. I'm not a wizard myself; I'm a specialist whose talent just happens to be keeping track of books and things in books. And that little talent has got me a few others– My clients usually don't come in broad daylight and my fees aren't as straightforward as you offer. The door downstairs, for instance. Hagon himself did that. Othis has contributed a few things about the place. Conveniences. They're very expensive for a wizard. But they pay them. They pay whatever I set, because I have a small talent at research—which means, madam, that no single wizard can master all of them, or many of them; a wizard's investment is too much and too deep in too few books to have any appreciation of interrelated consequences. My investment is shallow, but very, very wide. I am not, precisely, a barrister. I do not plead cases. I'm a consulting lawyer, which is quite another thing. I do not sue nor do I defend or prosecute. I merely advise. Do you understand, Melot Cassissinin? Nor do I practice a law which has to do with justice. I practice the law of nature. I render a simple service to those who meddle in it. I advise of consequences. So I suggest you have a seat, young woman, and wait."

"It's tomorrow."

"Yes. Quite. So is sunrise. The question is inevitability. Do sist down, madam, and don't utter a word, if you please."

Melot subsided over to the low stool she had sat on before, sank down and hugged her arms about her knees, her knees against her chest, watching as Dr. Toth went striding down the long line of shelves against the wall and pulled down one book after another. He carried them back to his desk, dumped them atop the last, pushed his spectacles up his nose and began leafing through the pages while dust flew up and danced in the light like stormclouds. "No," he said. "No, and no." And slammed the books shut one and the other, and got up and dumped them onto the stack beside the desk.

"If—" said Melot, thinking of the letter she had come for.

"Hush!" the master snapped, and folded one arm and rested the other hand on his brow, standing there with his head bowed and his eyes squinched shut.

The air chilled, not like a wind, like something had instead leached the warmth and the life out of it. That cold reached into Melot's bones and into her muscles and she could not shiver, she could only sit and sit. Then of a sudden the doctor flung up his head. "Ah!" he said, strode off on his long legs and whirled about to point a finger at her. "You! Stay on that stool. Touch nothing, hear!"

"Yes, s-sir."

He spun and strode off again, out the magical door and thump, thump, thump down the stairs before the door had shut; while Melot tucked her cloak about her and shivered and shivered, thinking of the small darkness with the teeth she had imagined on the stairs, in the hall below. It might have been a cat, might have been a dog or even some rat, but it had died here, it had become something awful; it lived here and it could have gotten in when the doctor opened that door, and it hated visitors, O, gods, gods, gods. Melot she sat with her teeth chattering in the shaft of light from the window and with her head spinning and her muscles weakening in their shivers.

At last she ducked her head down against her knees and shut her eyes and tried to get the shivers out, because she was Melot Cassissinin, after all—nobody much, but she walked the streets not with a mince or a flinch, but with a sure, businesslike stride that announced to the world that here walked a woman who wanted no trouble but who was prepared to make it. And thatfor the thing with the teeth, for she had a sharp square heel and a quick foot and a set of lungs that would bring the house down and bring master Toth on the run. So she rested as she could after the cold had taken the strength out of her and she waited and she waited while the sun crawled across the floor and left her in the dark. The beam wandered the length of the hall and lost itself in the stacks of books, so that only one tall mountain of them was alight. Suddenly a candle lit itself, sending another chill into the air.

Thump, thump-thump, thump—Up the stairs. Up and up the stairs, and round the turn, as the magical door opened and master Toth came in with an armload of books.

Melot started to stand up, started to blurt out a What now, and swallowed it and sank down again on her numb backside, because Dr. Toth paid her no more heed than if she had been another stack of books. He set his books down on the stand where the candle was, flung open one and another of them, threw a sheaf of paper onto the lot and sat down on the tall stool, immediately dipping a quill into an inkpot that uncapped itself. Another small chill. And Melot's stomach growled. She clenched her arms across her belly, trying to silence it. Tried to think of something else. The rumbling came again, loud; and the pen-scratching stopped. Dr. Toth looked at her through his spectacles as if she were something objectionable on his carpet, then pushed his spectacles a degree higher and started writing again, flipping pages and making the candle-flame shake and shadows dance.

Another rumble from her stomach. Melot hugged herself and sucked in air and tried to tense her muscles, which only started a shiver. Gods, gods. He would throw her out. He was only interested in his books. He did all this work and there was a fee; and she sold her other dress and Gatan's clothes, and her cooking pots and her mother's ring, and then she sold what she never had sold for money, except once for a doctor for their mother before she died. And it all came to those coins and a dull cold terror that they were not enough; that it was only the books interested Master Toth and he was working on wizard's business never thinking at all about Gatan or herself. She was only a lump sitting here bothering him in his work. It could not be a letter he was writing. What he had said he would do she could not make out, but it was all as if he was not in the habit really of doing anything beyond handing out advice; and what could she do with advice against a pair of wizards?

Her stomach rumbled again. The pen stopped scratching and she looked up as he looked down his spectacled nose at her.

"In the cupboard there," he said brusquely with a wave of ink-stained fingers. "Eat what you like, for the gods' sake, and watch where you're walking."

"Yes, sir." She looked desperately where he pointed; and got off her stool onto numb legs, limped over where a small path through the stacks led to a cupboard. A candle lighted there on the counter, blink. She shivered and carefully opened the doors, found a plate of bread and fresh seed-cheese and a bottle of wine. All fresh. All as if they hadn't been lying in a cupboard all day. The air inside was chill, and the wine bottle cold as she poured into a chill cup; and the knife cold as she cut a little bread and cheese.

Then she thought again and put it on a tray and walked timidly, fearfully up to Master Toth; but she knew how to get up to a table and deftly fill a cup with never bothering a gentleman. She set it there on the stack nearest and slipped back to feed herself, a bit of seed-cheese wrapped in bread and wine—gods, such wine, the Ramnever served the like. It hit her empty stomach and made her head spin as she tidied things and closed the cupboard.

More candles lit. The sun was going. The pen scratched away and stopped as Master Toth took a drink of wine and a left-handed nibble of cheese while he kept reading, all hunched over his books. The cheese slowly disappeared. He took up the pen again. Scratch-scribble, hastily. Melot crept back to her stool and sat down again, blinking owlishly. She was unbearably sleepy, three days with never but a little sleep and that dreadful, in a shameful bed. The wine sat in her stomach and hummed in her veins and whispered in her skull like bees in a hive.

"We have it," Dr. Toth announced suddenly, "we have it!"—startling her awake, startling her hands to her sides hunting the edges of the stool among her skirts as the doctor held up his paper.

"Woman, up, don't dawdle! There's precious little time."

She stood and wobbled. Dr. Toth slid down from his perch and came and seized her by the arm, dragging her with him.

"But," she said.

"Time," he said. "Come along, walk, woman. Melot Cassissinin. Good gods, keep your feet under you. I trust you know where this Othis lodges."

"Can't you magic it?" She caught her balance as the door opened and left the stairs gaping darkly in front of them, with him dragging her along in the dim light of candles which lit themselves in the stairwell, above the books and the litter. "Can't you—"

"A practical suggestion if I had the wherewithal. I'm not wont to have to race with fools. Tomorrow you say. But which tomorrow, tomorrow of the dawn or tomorrow of the wizards, or tomorrow of the clock? Do you know? No, I thought not." Thump, thump, around the turning and down into the first hall, into the bizarre maze of books, all the candles in the sconces agleam.

"Do come on, woman."

"Yes, sir. Yes, sir." Melot skipped and ran as best she could being hauled upon in time to his long steps. The door opened for them, and the wind skirled the candles and they went out onto the porch and down, down the steps to the nightbound street.

Melot was staggering when they had reached the Avenue, reeling along with the doctor's fingers clamped upon her wrist and tugging at her to more haste. She ran and ran still, and brought up short against the doctor's side when he stopped and gave a piercing whistle. More magic? She blinked. There was the least small chill; but it might have been the wind. And there down the Avenue came a public cab, a-rattle on the pavings, one of the wheeled sort, the cabman jogging along at a fair pace—a cabman without a hire, at this hour, just where the doctor needed him. Melot blinked in amazement and as the cab rattled up to a stop by the curb—"Wizards' Row, fast as you can," the doctor said to the cabman, tossed him a coin that made his jaw drop, and opened the door himself and flung Melot in, the third only time in her life she had seen the inside of a cab—

"—but, but," she said, smothered in her skirts as the doctor shoved her over against the wall and wedged himself in, "Dr. Toth, that's wrong, it's the Rains, it's—" But the cab was off, rattling along fit to make her teeth clack. "Wizard's Row," the doctor said firmly. And the cab lurched and jolted. For that coin that had sailed through the moonlight with a wicked golden glint the cabby would run his gut out. He was doing that, and the wheels jolted and bounced. Melot clenched her jaws and clenched her fist on the hanging-strap and swayed this way and that with the doctor as they bounced along, clack, thump, and a missing stone, thud-clack. Her breath refused to come back. Her brain reeled. But I can't pay, that was gold he threw to a cabby-man, and that's all it is to him, he's rich, rich as a priest and rich as a lord, and I'm nothing, my money's not enough for him and he's young and handsome and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, can't even pay him that way, nothing I can offer—

– Does he take souls? Is that what he trades in?

Thud-clack-clack. She heard the cabby panting now, felt the cab steady into that holding pace now the cabby had come to his senses and realized he had to stay alive and stay moving. It was a long, long way; but the man had gold, had gold enough to buy the cab and a soul or two, might be . . .

Thud-clack. Sway and skid at the corners, jog and jounce. In time Melot heard the cabby panting up ahead as if his gut would burst and his life-blood spew, but he ran on, and they swayed and bumped one against the other, the doctor in his fine coat and her in her cloak, and outside the windows of the cab the neighborhood changed and changed again. The cab slowed to a walk a while, picked up: they kept moving, by fits and starts.

And at long, long last they stopped altogether, and the cab tipped, and the cabby came round to their window, panting like a beached fish. "What number was you wanting, milor?" The doctor peered out. "Close enough," he said, and flung the door open and gave the man another something in his hand. The cabby stood there while Melot got out, and tried to help her; but there was dark running from his nose in the moonlight. Melot felt his hand shake and when she stepped clear the cabby just stopped and collapsed there on the curb, head between his knees. And the doctor grabbed Melot's wrist and pulled her along willy nilly. Down the street, the peculiar street where more magic was than was comfortable anywhere, and some of the houses with their peculiarities . . . like fire and smoke; like ice and a permanent shimmer of recent rain. Melot quaked in her steps and came on, panting and desperate as the doctor started up long wooden steps to an unpretentious house of beams and towers. The door-emblem blinked at them and the door swung wide with a gust of chill hardly worse than that all up and down this street, chill to sting the lungs and make a body glad of a cloak. Candles sprang to life inside, and an old man came out of a brighter-lit room.

"Dr. Toth," that one said—a wizard, sure he was a wizard. "What's this?"

"An excellent question," the doctor said, and dragged Melot with him as he swept into the lighted room—a library, but ever so much neater and cleaner than his own. Melot goggled at the giltwork and the leather bindings and the lamp in dragon shape and the brass camel that held up a table on which rested an interrupted dinner and an open book.

"Do look lively, woman!" The doctor spun her round by the arm and her startled eyes fell full on the wizard, for wizard he must be, a small gray man in a blue robe, with sad mustaches and lively blue eyes. "What does she seem like?"

"Why—no one, no one in particular—"

"Ah," said Dr. Toth, and he pushed Melot into a chair near the camel-table; he took the divan and helped himself to the wine. "Have some, my dear?"

Melot reached. The goblet he put in her hand weighed ten times what it seemed, and she slopped the wine over in her startlement. Gold, it was gold. She blinked at one and the other of them, and looked doubtfully at the gray wizard as he sat down on the remaining chair.

"Read this," said Dr. Toth, and handed the gray wizard a paper from his pocket. "Does that make sense?"

The gray wizard held it up to his eyes and adjusted it this way and that in myopic concentration. His mouth moved and stopped moving and he looked up with his blue eyes wide. "Who does this describe?"

"Her. It describes her, Master Junthin. Two idiots are fighting over her brother—"

– Gods save me, Melot thought with a mouthful of wine half-choking her. Her eyes watered in pain and she swallowed and tried not to sneeze it up, a hand clamped to mouth and nose as she stared at the wizard and the doctor in panic, frozen like a bird between two snakes. "—and one of them has invested him, if she can tell a straight story. That's how her luck works, don't you see? They tracked the thing straight so far, and when they got close, their eyes bent right around her and they went for second best. Her luckbrought her to me. It had to. She had no choice. It was her luckbrought the trouble on her in the first place and cozened those fools Othis and Hagon—a luck like that, there's nothing stops it. It rolls downhill and it arranges things—"

"But don't you see?" Junthin said, on his side, "It arranged you and her to be here. And me to be at home. A client canceled. Gods know why—" Owlish eyes blinked at Melot and sent chills down Melot's back before they slid away to blink at the doctor and to glance down at the paper again and up. "If they don't stop this—"

"You canfind them."

"Yes." The paper shook in Junthin's wrinkled hands. He wiped his face with his sleeve, the paper still trembling and wavering. "Oh dear gods, dear gods. A nexus. A nexus. O dear gods. How far?"

Melot looked from him to the doctor, whose handsome face was starkly sober. "Master Junthin," said Dr. Toth, "you know that I'm a tolerably important nexus myself. You know I enjoy a certain latitude with the Profession on that account, not mentioning my talent. That my researches persistently turn up a certain set of consequences should I be . . . eliminated, or bothered, or directly hampered in my work: do you see? And those consequences are far-reaching. I consult every wizard's text and put all the prohibitions and the possible interferences together and they do assume a pattern into which I fit rather centrally, I may say, which assures that of all individuals in all Liavek not safe to trifle with, I am at the head of the list, I in my modest house, my quiet researches, my inquiries—"

"Yes, yes, we all know that. We pay you handsomely, extravagantly. Ipay you. You render a service."

"And keep you from eliminating yourselves or a city street or perchance Liavek itself by combination of unforeseen consequences . . . Perhaps. I always considered, that would be justification enough for what I cast for my horoscope and my own luck—"

"We never doubt it. But, my dear doctor Toth, we cannot stand on—"

"But do you see, Master Junthin, tonight I learned a different truth about my importance. It wasn't myself had the importance all along. Shedid. Her luck arranged all of this. Arranged my birth two hundred years ago. Arranged your client's cancellation. Arranged all of this and my profession and our very existence. Nexus, man. A big one. That'swhat those fools are playing with. They've got her brother. His luck didn't outmaneuver theirs; they mistake him for some petty little trinket they can use not knowing that the nexus-sense they pick up is just the overspill from hers. And I'm telling you, Master Junthin, if they harm him in their brigandish behavior, if they run afoul of herluck and tie anythingimportant to it—like the welfare of Liavek, do you see? Do you see what they're meddling with?"

"O dear gods and stars."

"Wait. Wait." Facts and insinuations and promises went flying this way and that in confusion, like pigeons, and Melot's head spun. "You promised about my brother . . ." It was not precisely so, but it was never wasted to try to convince the other side in a bargain there wasa bargain. It was all the wit she had left, with the red wine dizzying her and the warmth and the profusion of candles and wizard-talk flying past her ears. "You got to get him out, Master Toth. You do got to do that, you took my money—" O fool! To mention the money, the pitiful money– She blinked at them and shivered and saw two men and them both magicians staring at her as if she had snakes for hair. "You got to. I got this feeling—I get these feelings—things will go wrong if something happens to him."

"Is she lying?" asked Master Junthin.

"I don't know," said the doctor.

She was. She was lying with a vengeance, because premonitions seemed the only cash these wizard-types understood, premonitions and bad luck and good. She knew how to throw an evil-eye scare into a drunk or to ill-wish a street ruffian and give him the doubts enough to get away; so she did it with a first-class wizard and the wizards' own lawyer; and saw them stare at her and wonder.

"Bless," said the wizard, and the air went a little colder and the candles dimmed all together and came up again.

" Dosomething. Get the neighbors, can you?"

"Summon? With herinvolved?"

"Have you a countersuggestion, Master Junthin?"

"O gods, O gods," Master Junthin murmured. And shut his eyes. The air went decided chill. A bell began to ring somewhere in the hall. Another rang far away as if it was outside the house. And farther and farther and farther until the air whispered with them. Melot took up the goblet and took another sip of wine. She wanted it for her nerves. And she pretended a composure which was the greatest lie yet.

Meanwhile the bells rang and Dr. Toth stood there with his arms folded looking down at her. With that look on his handsome face that said he had his doubts in both directions.

"Mmmph," she said, and offered the plate of cheese with eyes wide and naive. He caught the irony. It was dangerous to have done. A meticulous brow lifted. But by the gods, a woman never got anywhere in the world letting the opposition drag her about and tell her sit here and sit here and stare at her like that. Her hair was snarled from running. It fell down around her ears and her eyes, too tangled with itself to stay put; and she sweated, and her best (and only) dress wanted laundering, while he smelled of books and fine soap and even his sweat smelled clean. She was despicable. She was plain and starved and her dress hung about her ribs. And he had talked about him being born—( two hundred years ago?)—to satisfy her luck, which rattled around in her brain without a niche to fall into. Two hundred years ago?

Was the way he looked—something he had taken in payment?

The front door opened. Master Junthin went out into the hall and brought in an out-of-breath little man in a dressing-gown . . . "What's toward, what's toward? Good gods, Junthin—" The little man spied Dr. Toth and stopped in midword. And even then the front door was opening again. Two women came into the room on their own, like as peas except one had her hair in pins and the other had it dripping wet; and hard on their heels came a fat man with a marmoset on his shoulder. "What is this?" the marmoset piped, falsetto. "What is this?" There were more arriving. A boy with scales on one cheek. A black woman who cast no shadow. The door kept opening and closing and Melot clutched the wine goblet, aware of the stares no less on her than on Dr. Toth, and hoping—hoping desperately for the sight of two wizards in particular.

But they did not come. And Junthin began to explain the whole affair to the others, using words that slipped in and out of language she knew, till Dr. Toth, unlike himself, stole over to Melot and took the goblet away, took her hand and drew her to her feet like a grand lady, holding her arm locked gentlemanly-like in his.

"You just have to want your brother," Dr. Toth said. "Mind is very important in this."

"I wanthim."

"Fine, fine. Now you've got to trust Junthin for this. This isn't my kind of affair." He gave her hand a little squeeze and passed her hand grandly to Junthin's reach.

The wizard's skin was cold and damp. "My dear woman, my dear, just stand there, right where you are. Just shut your eyes, hold your eyes shut. O, gods, my furniture—" And from the woman with the wet hair: "A nexus of that size, O ye gods and stars, Junthin, quit babbling about the furniture—"

"But my vases, my vases—" Junthin fled and set one and another of the great ornate vases on the floor, then scurried back to the large rug where others were clearing the tables. The door opened to another arrival– "Never mind," the woman of the pins said to the latecomer, an aged, wizened man, "stand here, Gaffer Bedizi'n—" And from the old man: "Eh? I was in bed, my cat woke me– Eh, Dr. Toth? It is Dr. Toth, 'pon my soul—"

"Be careful, gaffer Bedizi'n. For the gods' sweet sake and Liavek's, just stand on that point, stand there! Hear?"

Melot looked left and right. Took in her breath, because all of a sudden it started to grow cold; and Junthin began to talk, and all of them to talk. Then the talk became one sound, and that sound rumbled up through her bones like close thunder—"Now, now now—name him, name him—"

It's Gatan they want, they want me to talk, Gatan, Gatan—

BOOM! The thunder burst in her face and there was something there, while a great fist hit her and she went flying backward into collapsing wizards and the crash of furniture and goblets and trays and vases. She hit the floor on her backside, feet out at angles, and struggled up on her hands to see Gatan sitting there in the center of the carpet without a stitch on and blinking and wobbling back and forth. There were rope burns on him. There was a dazed look on his face. "Gods!" he cried, proving his reality.

"Air displacement." It was Dr. Toth, who was helping up Master Junthin and then gaffer Bedizi'n who blinked owlishly. "Your cloak, my dear." And he drew Melot to her feet and took her cloak and went and cast it around Gatan, who sat helplessly where he had landed.

"Where were you?" Melot cried, clenching her hands to fists and pounding her knees as she gazed into Gatan's bewildered, blinking eyes. "Gatan, Gatan, you great fool, where have you been?"

"In this cellar," he said. "In this cellar." He shivered and hugged the cloak about him; and Melot went and threw her arms about him. He was sometimes a fool, Gatan was; and he looked like one this time, being naked as a hatchling and cold as meat and gods help him, smelling like a sewer. Weed clung to his hair. She picked at it, patted his unshaved cheek. "Oh my vases," Junthin moaned at the fringes of things.

"He has a luck," the woman with wet hair said.

"An investment," said the woman with pins, and Melot looked about at her and hugged Gatan fast as the woman rolled her eyes and staggered back against her twin. "An investment, O gods, he's carrying something. Do stand up, young man."

Melot applied herself with both hands and Dr. Toth helped, and the fat man with the marmoset.

"Up, up," the marmoset wailed as the fat man pushed, and Gatan wobbled to his feet and reeled this way and that under Melot's support. Gatan howled, and his face glowed red and changed of a sudden with the shadowed overlay of a man's rough features that were never Gatan's. They changed again, a second face.

"O good gods," Melot cried, stepping back.

"It's Hagon," cried the woman in pins, while the face faded leaving Gatan with his own; Melot stood there in profoundest shock—Gatan, not-Gatan, O gods—what was this they had summoned to the room?

"Not Hagon's choosing," said the marmoset, "that's Othis, that was Othis, sure."

"What, what, what?" Melot cried, and went and grabbed Dr. Toth by the sleeve. "What are they talking about, what's happened to him, what's wrongwith him?"

"An investment." Dr. Toth took her by the arm in turn and by both arms both hard and gently, his close-set eyes looking straight into hers. "Hagon evidently intended to invest some fraction of his power into what he thought was a nexus of considerable intensity. Do you know– no, of course you don't. But with an extension into even such a minor nexus, why, Hagon could invest the merest portion of his magic into your brother and use your brother's luck to magnify his power, to become a great wizard, not a petty one. And so Othis saw his chance. At the worst moment, at the positively worst moment in Hagon's procedure or Othis'—your luck brought us to summon him out of their reach."

"But—but—can't you help him?"