The Warden

Chapter 10

"Do you need any more evidence?" asked the tall she-wight. "What could be more convincing than these latest attacks? The night wight leader is becoming bolder and she will only become more and more so."

Master Elwith scowled, hiding his frown behind his hand. He didn't trust the creature standing before him. In truth, he placed very little trust in most individuals on a daily basis. He had not become the High Mage of all Haimlant by giving his trust away willy-nilly.

He caught the nightling glancing between the table, at which he, the sovereigns, and other nobles sat, and the ceiling.

Admiring the Great Works of the past, thought Master Elwith, sneering in his mind.

Admittedly, with their own conventional means, not a single craftsman could even come close to reproducing either. In that sense, to the layman, both were impressive. The table blossomed out of the stone floor, supported by a single plinth as it grew into a massive oval surface large enough to accommodate the king and queen and the other thirteen members attending the council. The surface, polished to mirror-smoothness, reflected the true masterpiece of the room—the ceiling. While the table boggled the mind with its scale and seamlessness, the ceiling robbed one of thought if not prepared. Anyone outside the ranks of the mages that was.

Truly massive in scale, supported by sixteen great columns, each embedded with mage stones—once just called seeing-stones—the ceiling domed upward mimicking perfectly the current state of the night sky, making one feel as though the solid stone roof above their heads had opened up to the elements. Both Mona and Mani had set for the night. Pinpricks of light dotted the black expanse, shaping themselves into the multitude of constellations that now occupied the summer nights' sky. Somewhere among all the jumble of stars, the Hunter and the Wolf battled. Supposedly, the Talking Horse galloped across the expanse, but it all sounded like poppycock to Master Elwith. How anyone decided a mess of seven stars somehow looked like a stallion, he'd never know.

Such absurdity didn't detract from the Work itself though.

Magic, he corrected to himself, eyes still falling up into the fathomless depths of the imitation sky.

The mages went to great lengths to ingrain that habit into the ranks of their initiates. The mundane masses, those not Awakened, were better off believing in magic. Anything more might unbalance their feeble minds.

The abomination before him could not affect Workings. That fact he was sure of. In his mindeye no lifelight burned where the wightie stood. An unnatural vacuum of anti-existence, not black, rather utterly devoid of substance marked her person. Lacking lifelight precluded the entire species from performing Works.

He hoped.

"While the events we have just learned of are beyond shocking," the king said, "we are still in need of some assurance as to what you are proposing."

All eyes, even Master Elwith's, went to King Othrad. A man in his middle years, hair dark but succumbing to ever increasing grey, he did not distinguish himself as the brightest candle of the bunch, though his surrounding himself with those of superior ability showed that he had some sense. The decision to marry his wife, Queen Brishwyn, had shown a real spark of foresight. Where he glowed, the queen incandesced. Literally. In his mindeye, Master Elwith compared the two and the queen shone like a sunbeam while the king a softer moonbeam.

"What more assurances would you have of me and mine?" asked the she-wight, Lady Telias they called her.

Master Elwith wanted to spit at the thought. Whatever the thing before them was, it was not a lady, no matter how human it looked.