The Floodgate

Consternation filled Andris. This was a wizard's work, and serious work at that! Stern laws forbade the jordaini to use magic, or to have any magic used on their behalf. A blink bird might be either a natural beast or a conjured image, but both were forbidden.

That knowledge didn't stop him from looking under the mattress. He picked up an ancient tome bound in thin, yellowed leather. The pages within were fine parchments aged to pale sepia and covered with faded writing. Andris took the book over to the window and began to read.

With each page he turned, he crept farther from the window, as if he could distance himself from the horrors revealed. He held in his hands the journal of Akhlaur! The deathwizard's own hand had written these runes, turned these pages.

Andris's skin crawled. His sick feeling intensified as he considered the book's bindings. No animal yielded leather so thin and delicate. The skin had once been human, or more likely, elf.

Suspicion passed into certainty as he read on. Precise little runes and neat, detailed drawings related with matter-of-fact detachment atrocities beyond Andris's darkest dreams. Elves had been the necromancer's favorite test subjects, and none had endured so much as the girl-child Akivaria, more conveniently known as Kiva.

Andris felt like a man gripped by the mosquito fever-burning with wrath, yet racked with numbing indecision. This book held secrets that could destroy the jordaini order if they became known. Now, he knew.

As he had told Matteo, with knowledge comes responsibility.

With shaking hands, Andris took up the second book, which proved to be a detailed genealogy of the early jordaini order. As he read, he prayed that Matteo's friend Tzigone did not know the details of his elf heritage, or realize that one of his forebears was still alive and currently a «guest» of the Azuthan temple.

He exploded into motion, snatching up his few belongings and stuffing them into his travel bag. After a moment's hesitation, he added the books to his gear.

His eyes stung with unshed tears as he slipped away, using the route that his friend Themo employed for clandestine trips to the port of Khaerbaal. No one noticed the shadowy figure leave. For the first time, Andris was grateful the jordaini had become so adept at averting their eyes. He could move among them as if he were indeed a ghost.

So he was, by any measure that mattered. His future was gone, snatched away by the lingering madness of the wizard Akhlaur and by the jordaini masters who had first suppressed this knowledge, then spilled it over him in one scalding enlightenment. The only life Andris knew was that of a jordain. His future was gone.

On swift and silent feet, Andris went to claim his past.

Chapter Two

Matteo followed the jordaini lad who headed for the headmaster's tower like a hunting hound hard on a trail.

"I know the way," he pointed out. "If you've other duties to attend, don't let me keep you from them."

The boy shot an incredulous look over his shoulder. "Headmaster said to bring you." And that, as far as he was concerned, was the beginning and end of the matter.

Matteo sighed, envying the lad his certainty. Life had been simpler when the credo of jordaini service-truth, Halruaa, and the wizard-lords-were three seamless aspects of a sacred whole.

The headmaster's tower rose in a stately curve of white marble, resembling a slender stalk crowned by a budding lotus flower. The immense scale did not distort the sense of grace and serenity this blossom exuded. A lush garden surrounded the tower, and servants clad in simple green garments went about their tasks.

Despite the prohibitions on magic use, the wizard's tower did not look out of place. The jordaini were taught to know magic nearly as well as any wizard. Matteo could recognize hundreds of spells just from the gesture of a wizard's hand or from the combined scent of the spell components.

Having wizards for masters had always seemed normal and natural to him.

"Normal and natural," Matteo muttered, with more bitterness than he'd realized he harbored. But there was nothing natural about the image that haunted him daily-an aging woman with a wan face and vacant eyes. He did not know her name. He knew nothing about her, except that she had given him life.

Oddly enough, if Tzigone's hints proved true, his father's name was well known to him. Most likely he had heard it his whole life without knowing its significance.

Since his return to the Jordaini College, Matteo often found himself searching his former masters' faces in search of his own reflection. Of all the masters, Ferris Grail was most like him in appearance. This added an unsettling edge to the coming interview.