Once while trying her hand at some elementary divinations Mystina had given herself a vision of her death at the hands of Lezard, and it only made her laugh. Maybe everybody else at the Academy wanted her dead, but surely Lezard couldn't care less whether she lived or died as long as she didn't interfere with his latest passion.

Sometimes she was his latest passion, like when he'd dug an obscure book on sex magicks out of the library and turned up demanding to put it to the test. Mystina didn't mind. Quite the contrary. Of course, it hadn't worked, and Lezard's disappointed obsession had turned to something involving growing ears on the backs of mice. But it had been fun, while it lasted, and the rope burns made the other students stare at Mystina even more.

Headmistress Lorenta had thrown the vaults of the library and the basement labs open to them both, with her blessing. Mystina managed to produce an appalling explosion of non-color that made half the undergraduate dormitories settle alarmingly and would, in the years to come, revolutionize the field of dark magic; Lezard waved half the library silently away to some other plane of existence, never to return. The books, however, each being suspended in its own potent magical field, did not go with the building wherever it went. They remained just where they were, hovering in neat rows in midair until they were plucked down and transported to their new home.

In trade for half the library building Lezard acquired an odd stone of no particular color the size of his thumbnail. If it did anything useful, he never told Mystina.

It was while Lezard was helping to transport the books to their new homes that he found the ancient theurgic manual, which had apparently fallen behind the shelves hundreds of years ago and been lost ever since. After the most casual of perusals he abandoned the rest of the books where they floated and tucked the manual under his cloak. Five minutes later he was hammering on Mystina's door.

Mystina threw her door open only to have the ancient and dusty book shoved under her nose, and she reeled back and sneezed. "Who is that?" Lezard demanded, shoving the book at her again. "What does that say?"

Well-used to Lezard by now, Mystina took the book and squinted at the page, at the crude woodcut and the spidery text below. "Ia Valkyrie ftaghn," she read. "Ia ia ph'nglui R'lyeh..." Mystina stopped.

"Well?" Lezard demanded.

"Odin's Valkyrie." Mystina clapped the book shut, raising a cloud of dust, and shoved it back at Lezard. "If you want to know more you'll have to take enough classes in advanced sorcerous languages to learn Aklo. You'll like Aklo. It's horrible." She sneezed again.

"Valkyrie," Lezard breathed, carefully flipping the book back open and caressing the woodcut with idle fingers. "Valkyrie."

In the spring Lezard stormed the sorcerous languages department and started on the fast track. Mystina just sneered at this, Lezard's latest little obsession, and contented herself with putting the fear of Mystina into the incoming students.