the army would not be needed, believed that Cadderly had succeeded in defeating Castle Trinity. For, as the young priest's power continued to grow, Dean Thobicus felt himself being pushed away from the light of Deneir. Once, Thobicus had commanded the most powerful clerical magic, but now even the simplest spell, like the one he had used to dispatch poor Belago, came hard to his thin lips.
He turned back to the room to see Bron Turman staring at him skeptically.
"Very well," Thobicus conceded. Tell Baccio I will meet him this evening - but I maintain that his army should hold a defensive posture and not go traipsing through the mountains!"
Bron Turman was satisfied with that. "But you believe that Cadderly and his friends have succeeded," he said slyly.
Thobicus did not respond.
"You believe that the threat to the library is no more," Bron Turman stated. The burly Oghman headmaster smiled, a wistful look in his large gray eyes. "At least, you believe that one threat to the library is no more." he added.
Thobicus steeled his gaze, his crow's-feet coming together to form one large crease at the side of each orb. "This does not concern you," he quietly warned.
Bron Turman bowed, respecting the words. "That does not mean that I do not understand," he said. "Vicero Belago was a fine alchemist."
"Bron Turman..."
The headmaster held up a submissive hand. "I am no friend of Cadderly's," he said. "Neither am I a young man. I have seen the intrigue of power struggles within both our sects."
Thobicus pursed his thin lips and seemed on the verge of explosion, and Bron Turman took that as a sign that he should be leaving. He gave another quick bow and was gone from the room.
Dean Thobicus rocked back in his chair and pivoted about to face the window. He couldn't rationally call Turman on the outwardly treasonous words, for the man's reasoning was undeniably true. Thobicus had been alive for more than seven decades; Cadderly for just over two, yet, for some reason that the old bureaucrat could not understand, Cadderly-had found particular favor with Deneir. But the dean had come to his power painstakingly, at great personal sacrifice and at the cost of many years of almost reclusive study. He was not about to give up his position. He would purge the library of Cadderly's open allies and strengthen his hold on the order. Headmaster Avery Schell, Cadderly's mentor and surrogate father, and Pertelope, who had been like Cadderly's mother, were both dead now, and Belago would soon be gone.
No, Thobicus would not give up his position.
Not without a fight.
Kierkan Rufo wiped the stubborn mud from his boots and breeches, and muttered quiet curses to himself, as he always did. He was an outcast, marked by an ugly blue-and-red brand of an unlit candle above a closed eye, which lay on the middle of his forehead.
"Bene tellemara" whispered Druzil. A bat-winged, dog-faced, scaly creature barely two feet tall, the imp packed more malicious evil into that tiny frame than the worst of humankind's tyrants,
"What did you say?" Rufo snapped. He glared down at his otherworldly companion. The two had been together for the last half of the winter, and neither much liked the other. Their enmity had begun in Shilmista Forest, west of the Snowflake Mountains, when Druzil had threatened and coerced Rufo into serving his wicked masters, the leaders of Castle Trinity - when Druzil had precipitated Kierkan Rufo's fall from the order of Deneir.
Druzil looked curiously at the man and squinted from the flickering light of the torch Rufo held. Rufo was over six feet tall, but bone-skinny. He always stood at an angle, tilted to the side, and that made him, or the world behind him, seem strangely incongruent. Druzil, who had spent the last few months wandering through the Snowflakes, thought Rufo resembled a tree on a steep mountainside. The imp snickered, drawing another glare from the perpetually scowling Rufo.
The imp continued to stare, trying hard to view the man in a new light. With his stringy black hair matted to his head, those penetrating eyes - black dots on a pale face - and that unusual stance, Rufo could be imposing. He kept his hair parted in the middle now, not on the side as it had always been, for Rufo could not, on pain of death, cover that horrid brand, the mark that had forced him to be a recluse, the mark that made every person shun him when they