The Magehound

She would believe this still, had she not witnessed the intensity of his grief over his lost friend. Matteo might have devoted his life to truth, but Kiva suspected that in time he would find rules and facts to be too bloodless a mistress.

At present Matteo was as proper and prideful as any young man of his elite class. But if that were to change, he could become a useful tool. His words suggested a subtlety of mind that pleased Kiva. He was still too young and naive for that subtlety to prove a threat, but it would make the process of conquest more interesting and rewarding.

A faint groan came from the curtained bed. Kiva absently flicked her fingers toward her latest recruit, increasing the flow of scented smoke from the censer beside his bed and thus deepening his slumber. It was not her favorite method of inducing sleep. She preferred to use the spell that had apparently, and mysteriously, been worked upon the wemic.

Kiva studied the picture in the scrying bowl carefully. After casting the illusion that had enabled her to take Andris from House Jordain, she had followed the group of grieving jordaini students to Khaerbaal. She had two purposes for this: First she hoped to glean more information about Matteo by watching his behavior away from the strict rules of the school and the watchful eyes of his masters. In addition to this, she wanted Mbatu to finish the work of the previous day. If luck was with them, he would at long last run Keturah's daughter to ground.

The wench had been seen in Khaerbaal a few days ago, and the Lady Day festivities had offered a means of smoking her out. But the girl had managed to elude Mbatu in the crowds, and Kiva had been forced to leave the city or risk losing Andris to bids from other wizards.

Tzigone was a complication, to be sure, but her presence in Khaerbaal was also an opportunity that Kiva could not let pass. Three moons had waxed and waned since she'd last heard so much as a word of the slippery wench. So the wemic had left Andris sleeping in Kiva's care, exchanged his earring for an identical one linked to Kiva's scrying bowl, and gone off in pursuit of Tzigone.

The ruby and bowl were powerful devices, ancient beyond reckoning and reputed to have been created by an Ilythiiri wizard before the sundering of the one land. Kiva had carefully researched the claims of the adventurer who had sold her the bowl, and when she was satisfied that the man spoke truth, she had bought the treasure and then killed him. These days the Ilythiiri were called by another name: drow. These dark elves evoked such fear and horror that Kiva knew no one, human or elf, who would willingly use an artifact they had created, not even if it proved to be the most powerful device of its kind that Kiva had encountered in two centuries devoted to the study of such treasures.

Yet despite its power, the scrying bowl yielded no sip of the wayward girl. Kiva battled anger and frustration as she watched through Mbatu's eyes without actually seeing his prey. Her frustration had turned to fascination when Matteo stepped between the wemic and the fugitive. A jordain was pledged to follow the law, yet Matteo had risked his future to place himself between an unknown girl and a magehound's personal guard. Kiva noted the mixture of chivalry and rage that prompted the jordain's uncharacteristic response, and her plans for Matteo took a sudden shift.

She watched as the young pair fled together, tracking Tzigone by Matteo's exasperated responses to the girl's unseen actions and unheard words. The girl's shield against magical inquiry was absolute, even stronger than that of a jordain. In fact, this was the first scrying device Kiva had ever found that could actually track a jordain, who were bred for their magic resistance.

The girl would have been one of the strongest jordaini in Halruaa's history had her breeding been true. Such a waste-all the careful testing and meticulous records that made the marriage match between two wizards, not to mention the magical potions fed to the female for years. Who could have guessed that Keturah would disrupt the breeding process and take matters into her own hands?

Frankly, Kiva was surprised at the woman's initiative. It was true that Keturah had always been a strong-minded wench, but the humans of Halruaa were seldom capable of such blatant rebellion. Their lives and minds were ordered and constrained by laws, rules, customs, and magic.

Always magic, Kiva reminded herself. She could endure much for that. She could shrug aside nearly twenty years of training in their schools, the sly questing hands of their males, the idiocy of their rules. What were such things to an elf who had seen the birth and death of three centuries? If it took her another three hundred years, she would use Halruaa's magic to seize what was hers to claim.