Beginning on the western slope of the mountain and working quickly towards the east, they carved a deep channel into the rock, creating a chasm where none had existed before.
As the Mage-made gorge neared the shores of Crystal Lake, and the remaining earth and stone holding back the lake grew thin, water began to seep out. The moisture increased to flowing rivulets, then spurting leaks as rock and stone shifted, then cracked beneath the strain.
A final blast of Mage Fire finished it off. Chill and crisp, the water of the high mountain lake burst through the compromised rock and gushed into the newly-formed gorge. White and foaming and moving rapidly, a new river rushed away towards the west, emptying Crystal Lake with impressive speed.
As the surface of the lake dropped, the flow of Source-fed waterfalls that fed the Heras River slowed to a trickle. Within a bell, they had dried up altogether.
Eld ~ Boura Fell
When Melliandra learned that Vadim Maur had left Boura Fell to prosecute his war, she knew her time had come. She hurried down to theumagidens to retrieve the length of knotted rope and the black canvas bag she’d stolen from the guard halls and hidden in a rock-covered cubby hole in the rat tunnels. She stripped off her ragged tunic and tied the canvas bag to her torso, securing it by winding the length of rope repeatedly around her body. Once that was done, she slipped the tunic back over her head and pocketed a small, sharpened knife and the ring of keys she’d painstakingly carved from discarded bits of metal.
Her heart was pounding in her chest as she slipped back into theumagiden and made her way up a series of stairways until she reached the corridor directly above the High Mage’s private apartments. There, she made her way to the door to the refuse shaft and ducked into the closest abandoned room to unwind her rope and canvas bag. She tied a looped knot on one end of the rope, tightened it as best she could, slung the canvas bag over her back, the coiled rope over her arm, and cracked open the door to peer out into the hallway.
When the coast was clear, she darted out of the room, opened the refuse shaft door, and clambered inside. She hooked the looped end of her rope on thesel’dorstake she’d driven into the rock last week, then took a breath, grabbed the rope, and began lowering herself down the slimy, muckcoated walls of the refuse shaft. Her bare toes slipped on the ooze-covered rock. Only her tight grip on the knotted rope kept her from tumbling helplessly down the deep, dark shaft to thedarrokkenpit below.
Overhead, light streamed in as someone two floors above opened the doors covering the refuse shaft. Melliandra flattened herself against the wall just as a stream of garbage and the Dark Lord knew what else came raining down. A rotting lump of something landed on her shoulder, gagging her with its foul stench.
Her skin broke out in a clammy sweat. She turned her head abruptly as her stomach threatened to erupt and breathed rapidly through her mouth. Shadow take her! Whatever the putrid lump was, itreeked!Worse, she could feel the wriggle of maggots and rotworms moving inside the gelatinous blob.
She gave her shoulder a violent twitch and felt the lump dislodge and roll down her back. The refuse doors overhead closed again, and the shaft fell into darkness once more.
A soft, blindly seeking mouth nudged the skin near her ear.
With a choked cry, Melliandra lost her battle with her stomach and nearly lost her hold on the rope. Only quick thinking and desperation saved her. She twisted one arm and one leg around the rope and dangled there, retching helplessly while her free hand slapped at the tiny maggots and rotworms writhing in her hair.
So much for bravado. It seemed thisumagiwas little braver than any other squeamish squeal of a girl when it came to some things.
When her stomach had emptied and she was as sure as she could be that no other crawlies remained in her hair, she put both hands back on the rope and continued inching her way down the refuse shaft to the door that led to Vadim Maur’s private incinerator and spell room.
Upon reaching the door, she muttered a brief curse. She’d been hoping the Mage would forget to ward the refuse-shaft door before he left, but no such luck. He might be inhabiting a less powerful body now, but Vadim Maur was too careful a Mage to leave even something as insignificant as a refuse chute unprotected against intrusion.
Ah, well. She’d hoped to be in a less precarious position for her first attempt to weave magic, but since when had the gods ever done her a kindness? If this was where she had to prove herself, so be it.
Carefully, using a combination of the detailed instructions Lord Death had so painstakingly planted in her mind and the sensations she’d gleaned from the High Mage’s mind, she summoned her magic. She’d intended to call only the smallest tendril, but instead her power came in a rush, flooding her body with sudden, electric sensation. Cool and sweet, intensely pleasurable. She closed her eyes on a wave of euphoria so great she nearly lost her balance and toppled from the slippery ledge.
The wards around the refuse-shaft door lit up, bright as flame in the darkness. Startled both by the brightness and her own intense power, she released her magic and crouched there, trembling, waiting for any hint that Vadim Maur had detected her activity.
One long moment passed, then another and another. A full chime she waited, but nothing happened. She wasn’t sure if Vadim Maur was still in the Well of Souls, if his distance from Boura Fell blinded him, or if her ability to hide her thoughts had become so strong she could now hide her magic as well, but whatever the reason, she couldn’t sense him. The usual weight of his dark omniscience was absent. There was no prying invasion of her mind, no evil snap of his hated voice jabbing into her brain demanding to know what she was about. There was only silence and solitude, the comforting aloneness of her mind.
She drew a deep breath and tried to calm her racing heart. If the High Mage had not sensed that unchecked flare of power, she might just be able to pull this off, after all.
“You can do this, Melliandra. Youmustdo this.”
She fixed a picture of Shia in her mind, focused on the ice blue eyes, rimmed in dark cobalt. Shia’s eyes stayed bright and steady as Shia’s face faded, replaced by a younger, more masculine version of Shia. A child’s face. A boy. Shia’s son. Watching Melliandra with unblinking intensity. He was depending on her.
She summoned her magic once more.
This time, she braced herself for the rush of pleasure, clinging to her rope and panting as sensation crashed over her in waves. Was this what the Mages felt when they worked their spells? No wonder magic was everything to them!
The wards on the refuse door went bright again. She stared hard at the pattern, matching it thread by thread to the same one she’d seen through Vadim Maur’s eyes the last time he’d released the ward on the refuse shaft door. Nothing had changed, thank the Dark Lord.
Whispering, “You’d better not have betrayed me, Fey,” she closed her eyes and released the first of the weaves Lord Death had planted inside her mind. Magic swelled. Swallowing her fear and distrust, she surrendered control of her body—and her magic—to the Fey’s implanted instruction.
Her eyes flew open. She watched with intense concentration as the magic inside her rose, shaped itself, merged with the glowing threads of the ward and began to unravel it. She examined every sensation in minutest detail, every muscle that tensed, every nerve that tingled, every thought and breath and tiniest movement. And she painstakingly filed those observations away in the secret compartment in her mind so that she could take them out later for study.
Once she escaped Boura Fell, there would be no Lord Death to teach her magic; so until that day of freedom dawned, she was determined to learn all she could from every possible source, Mage or Fey. Shia’s son possessed powerful magic, and she would not let him face the world as defenseless as she had been all her life.
At last, the threads of the ward fell apart and disintegrated. She reached into her pocket for the dull knife she’d stolen from the kitchen. With a little maneuvering, she slipped it through the tiny crack between door and stone wall and released the latch.
