“All is done?” It was his apprentice, Halferd, who spoke.

Wanno only briefly turned toward the one who queried thus. To the mage, Halferd was a stripling whom he retained to perform services and instruct. This apprentice was held by many others to be a powerful spell-caster in his own right, but to Wanno he was a mere pupil. Had he gazed at Halferd’s face at this moment, looked into his eyes, perhaps the mage would have reconsidered his estimation; but after no more than a sideways glance at the other man, Wanno placed the child in a crib in a secluded corner of the little bedchamber and laid the magical box at the infant’s feet, covering it with part of a blanket. Only then did he bother to answer Halferd’s question.

“Yes. Both parents are gone away for a time, and there is much to be done if I am to fulfill my oath. First, I must arrange for the nurse who is to have care of the babe.”

“I’ll fetch her for you straight away, Master Wan-no,” Halferd murmured deferentially as he stepped toward the exit from the room.

“No.”

Halferd’s heart sank at that short utterance. Did the crusty old bastard suspect him of something?

“Yes, Master Wanno? Is there something I have neglected?”

“You don’t know who I have decided upon to be the infant’s maid,” the hollow-eyed mage said as he began to fuss over the circle of runic inscriptions chalked on the floor around the cradle where the princeling slept. In fact, Wanno had some time ago made his decision on a guardian for the child, and had made many preparations concerning that subject without Halferd’s knowledge. Unfortunately, he had also been forced to deceive the woman he had chosen to care for the child, but this was certainly a case where the end justified the means. “That is a matter I will see to myself. While I am gone, you will do a second and third ward around this one’s place.”

“Of course, master,” Halferd answered quickly. “May I ask who you have selected?”

“You may not,” Wanno said without rebuke. “The less you know, the easier it will be to mask all of this from those powers who seek to undo my protection. That would be a hot fire for us both now, wouldn’t it, boy?”

His lips pressed into a tight line, Halferd bobbed his head just as if he were an apprentice lad, not the able sorcerer he actually was. “I will complete a threefold warding, master, and stand alertly on guard until you return.”

Wanno looked briefly at him, then nodded. “Yes. Keep a sharp eye out for hawks…” the mage said. his words trailing off as he suddenly brought his arms up in a sweeping gesture and spoke a word that sounded impossible to speak, even for one so skilled at dweomers as Halferd was. At its utterance, Wanno was gone with a popping sound, followed by the whoosh of air rushing in to fill the space where he had been a split-second before.

Hawks? The man really is beginning to slip into dotage, Halferd thought. Demons or devils, yes; perhaps some horror from Tarterus or Gehenna; but… hawks? “Bah!” Halferd muttered aloud. “This is for you!” he added, making vicious strokes as he drew a precise set of sigils and strange marks on the stone floor. Instead of scribing the lines and shapes with tenderness and deliberation, Halferd worked as if he were wielding a sharp instrument upon exposed flesh.

When Wanno eventually returned, his apprentice had done all he had been charged with and was alertly seated near the infant, an old, gnarled staff held in his grasp. When his gaze fell upon this, Wanno spoke sharply. “What are you doing with my staff!” It was an accusation, not a question.

Halferd tightened his grip on the ebon-hued wood. “I carry out my duty to guard the babe,” he said, letting his eyes meet Wanno’s for only an instant before sliding away. The old one could work magic simply through his gaze meeting with another’s, and Halferd had no intention of allowing himself to be caught by some trick-not now!

Then something seemed to alert Wanno. A strange light shone in the old man’s deeply set eyes as he looked at his apprentice. The realization came to him at that moment that Halferd was near middle age, even for a dweomercraefter. And he was also a spell-worker of considerable ability-so why had he been content to remain an apprentice? There was only one answer…

Wanno stood with his spine straight. His staff was in the hands of an outsider, a man he didn’t really know after all, despite their years as apprentice and master. Halferd’s brief glance into Wanno’s eyes had betrayed something that the old mage liked not. There was a smell of duplicity in the still air, a sense of something malign that hovered in the shadows overhead.

“I see,” Wanno said, meaning something entirely different from the way Halferd took the remark “Exemplary, Halferd, exemplary!” he added with a bluff heartiness that he hoped didn’t seem as forced and insincere to his apprentice as it did to him. “However, I have other, more important things for you to see to now. Hand me my staff, and I’ll instruct you as to their nature.”

Halferd coughed and shuffled his feet. He didn’t hand the twisted length of ancient yew to Wanno. Instead the apprentice raised the silver-bound tip of it, so the staff pointed with veiled menace in the general direction of his master. “There is a matter to be cleared up ere I give this to you, Wanno.”

Coldness suddenly flowed through the mage’s veins. Here was vile treachery unmasked! Wanno had anticipated the possibility of some trouble; indeed, he had built in some protections around the infant that no one else knew about, just in case something beyond his control should occur. But he had not suspected that Halferd-loyal, quiet Halferd-would turn out to be one of his enemies!

Smiling slightly, Wanno set his steel-hard eyes upon the man before him. A word was locked just behind those iron orbs as he stared out upon Halferd, a terrible word of magical force ready In his forebrain. Before his foe could do aught with that fell instrument, the syllable would roll from throat to tongue and out into the room. Halferd would be blasted where he stood. Perhaps he was more than an apprentice, but he was no great binder of dweomers. It was madness indeed for one of his poor strength to challenge Wanno-especially in the old man’s own place of power!

“Place my staff most gently upon the floor, boy,” the mage commanded, “and then I will permit you to speak.” He saw Halferd break into a sweat and begin trembling slightly.

“No!” Halferd shouted, but at the same time he started lowering the staff. Then he began to shake more, and his body was wracked by a fit of coughing and gasping. He tried to talk, but explosive bursts of air and desperate indrawings of breath between the hacking coughs prevented meaningful speech.

This was very odd, Wanno thought, for he had used no spell upon the fellow. What was going on? Then a faint rustling from behind betrayed the presence of someone else in the room. It was an act! Halferd’s fit was a contrivance, intended to distract him while more danger came at him from the rear. Without another second’s hesitation, Wanno allowed the word to thunder forth. The syllable rolled up and was shot forth in an eyeblink-and Halferd was no more. Greenish bits of ash floated in the place where he had stood. Gone too was the staff. Too late to mourn that now, the mage thought, as he started to direct his attention toward the trespasser who had slipped in at his back.

Too late indeed… As Wanno turned his head to look over his shoulder, the last thing he saw was the face of his killer-and the last thing he felt was the blade of a dagger as it sheared through his spine.

“That’s done him!” The voice was jubilant, harsh.

“Shut up, you silly blaster, and do the same for the sprat!” the other man ordered. The bigger and meaner-looking of the pair held a long, wavy-bladed dirk whose metal glinted with an ugly purple sheen where it wasn’t smeared with bright red blood. The man he spoke to was slighter and uglier. Both were clad in deep gray and wore felt-soled boots. Any resident of the city could have identified them instantly-assassins of the guild. Denizens of either the lowest dives of Greyhawk or of its high places might have been able to do more than tell one what they were; these were two of the greatest assassins in the whole city. Alburt, known by some as Goodarm, was the dirk-wielding leader of the pair. He spoke to Slono Spotless, held in only slightly less awe than Alburt himself by those who knew of them.