Free Dragonlinks by Paul Collins Page B

to be a merchant.’
    â€˜Or so it is voiced about,’ said Jelindel, frowning.
    â€˜What do you mean by that?’
    â€˜I can read, and I am widely read, Zimak. Fa’red has not abandoned the practice of thaumaturgy. I see little signs that I understand in the writings about him.’
    â€˜Tch! How would you know? You’re not even an Adept 1 in the arts of magic.’
    â€˜And neither are you.’ Jelindel tugged at Zimak’s sleeve but she could see he was in no mind to listen to reason. ‘I’m starting to think that the Preceptor’s civil militia was a much better idea,’ Jelindel said unhappily. She quickened her pace in spite of her doubts.
    After a quarter-hour of winding streets and furtive shadowing, they ducked behind a cart as Thull stopped in one of the more respectable streets of D’loom. Jelindel took out a roll of reedpaper with scribeglass lenses at either end and peered through it at the mage.
    â€˜What’s that?’ asked Zimak suspiciously.
    Jelindel steadied her device to focus on Thull. Her lips moved as if by rote. ‘Five years ago a Skelt philosopher saw a scribe’s children playing with a pair of old, scratched scribeglasses. He asked what they were doing, and they said they were playing mages: moving buildings and ships nearer as though by magic. He tried the trick himself, and found that it did work. His name for the thing is farsight, and he even used one to discover mountains on Reculemoon and Blanchemoon.’
    Zimak saw now that it was two tubes, one inside the other. Jelindel adjusted the focus slightly.
    â€˜I made this farsight from a pair of old scribeglasses.It can resolve Specmoon as a crescent – tch, I thought so. Look!’
    Thull seemed to spit a wad of phlegm at an ornately carved creststone. He then splayed his fingers over the surface before walking a hundred paces and doing the same thing again. Without a glance back he crossed the street and turned a corner.
    â€˜Hurry, after him!’ hissed Zimak, but Jelindel grabbed his tunic.
    â€˜He will be back. Come look at this.’
    There was a pale blue globule of glowing jelly where Thull had spat. A thin blue line stretched out from it along the wall to where he had stopped a second time. Jelindel turned to regard the archway that spanned a cobbled courtyard on the other side of the street.
    â€˜The man suffers from an enchanted cold,’ said Zimak.
    â€˜It’s not phlegm, silly. It’s a little measure of his life-force. He crossed the street and went around that corner, so … whose house is that across the street?’
    â€˜Fa’red’s. He’s the merchant – and former mage – that I carried the message to this morning. What’s Thull doing?’
    â€˜Come back to the cart. I’ll explain as we go.’
    Now it was Zimak’s turn to trail behind Jelindel. ‘Thull did not actually spit, he merely spoke a word that released a part of his life-force that stuck to the wall. He has gone to the street behind Fa’red’s house by now and is using mage-light from that fragment of his life-force to look through the walls of the house.’ She looked at Zimak knowingly. ‘It’s just as you look through the weave of thin curtains to watch the market’s dancing girls undressing by lamplight.’
    â€˜If they really cared they’d use thicker curtains,’ said Zimak huffily.
    â€˜Whatever. According to The Watcher’s Guide to Magic as Practised , this is very powerful magic. It takes many decades to master the speaking of one word of life-force. The word is easy to speak, but the danger is that you can easily speak out your entire life-force. Do that and you would be more likely to survive a slashed throat.’
    â€˜Decades … perhaps even centuries?’ Zimak guessed in awe. ‘I knew he was a potent mage. What did I tell you!’
    â€˜What you told me might