Curse of the Shadowmage

Eleven

The wanderer came to the gates of Triel on a gloomy day late in the month of Uktar.

Even from a distance, Beris thought there was something strange about the fellow, a man clad all in black riding a mist-gray horse. Beris shivered inside his beaten-steel breastplate, chalking it up to the clammy air as he gripped his spear tightly. An unsettling thought drifted through his mind. Didn’t one of Lord Elvar’s priests say that sometimes the King of the Dead appeared in the guise of a dark man riding a pale horse? Like all soldiers, Beris was a superstitious man. Under his breath, he muttered a charm against evil spirits.

“What are you mumbling about now, Beris?” asked the grizzled soldier who stood with him before the open gate.

“I was just wondering who that rider is, Sarig,” Beris answered hastily. Beris was the youngest of the twenty mercenaries Lord Elvar paid to guard Triel, and he took enough abuse from the older men as it was. He didn’t want Sarig to think he was afraid of a lone horseman. Which he wasn’t, of course. “Who do you suppose it is?”

“Looks like some beggar to me,” Sarig grunted in disgust.

Beris nodded. “I suppose he’ll be seeking hospitality, then.”

Sarig gave a harsh snort of laughter. “Lord Elvar isn’t very hospitable!”

While the lord was not an evil man, his distrust of strangers was nearly as legendary as his propensity for switching religions. Elvar ruled a small district, of which Triel was the center. Triel itself was more of a fort than a proper town. Here the Dusk Road met up with the larger Trade Way, which continued on all the way to the great city of Waterdeep to the west. Triel served mostly as a way station for traveling merchants. Its small cluster of cottages and storehouses was surrounded by a sturdy stockade of stone and wood.

When the rider finally came to a halt before the gates, Beris breathed a relieved sigh. The man’s skin was mushroom pale, and dark half-moons hung beneath his faded green eyes, but he looked far more like a sick beggar than an incarnation of Death. His midnight blue cloak was spattered with mud. Despite the wanderer’s ragged appearance, the gray mare he rode was an exceptional animal.

“State your business!” Sarig barked, brandishing his spear.

The wanderer blinked, as if he had just waked from a deep slumber and was surprised to find himself in some new time and place. “Can you help me?” he asked hoarsely. “I’m so tired. And hungry.”

Sarig gave a derisive snort. “I told you, Beris—a beggar.”

Beris ignored him. There was something about the man—perhaps the deep sorrow in his eyes—that made Beris think he was more than a simple vagabond seeking alms. “I’d best take you to Lord Elvar,” he told the wanderer. “If you’ll dismount, I’ll lead your horse for you.” He reached out to grip the gray mare’s bridle, but she bared her big yellow teeth menacingly. Beris was forced to snatch his hand back quickly.

The ghost of a smile touched the wanderer’s lips. “I’d better lead her,” he said quietly. “She bites.”

“So I noticed,” Beris said dryly.

The wanderer dismounted. Beris gestured for him to follow, and they entered the stockade to seek out Lord Elvar. They soon found him standing before the open door of the stockade’s large stone granary. Elvar was having a fit. Again.

“Look at that!” he shouted, jowls waggling. Elvar was an overlarge man with beady eyes and an upturned nose that gave him a distinctly piggish look. His expansive gut was stuffed into a too-tight waistcoat of food-stained green velvet. He thrust a torch into the darkened doorway of the granary. A squealing gray form scurried out, vanishing down a nearby drainpipe. “There’s another!” Elvar raged. “Rats—they’re everywhere!”

A small group of townsfolk, merchants, and soldiers had gathered around the irate lord. “The rats will eat all the grain,” he continued his tirade. “And with winter coming, we’re all going to starve!” Elvar looked like a man who had never wanted for food in his life, but his eyes were wide with fear all the same. He bore down on a thin-faced man clad in the drab brown robe of a priest.

“You!” Elvar growled angrily. “You told me that if I prayed to Malar, Lord of All Beasts, he would keep the rats away from the grain. But Malar has done nothing!”

“It is not for us to question the actions of the gods,” the priest said pompously.

“I’ve had enough of you and your foolish prattling, priest!” Elvar roared. He turned to a pair of soldiers. “Take this charlatan and throw him out of my town. I am a disciple of Malar no longer.”

The priest looked shocked as the mercenaries grabbed his arms and hauled him away. Elvar had converted to worship of the god Malar nearly a moon ago. By Beris’s calculations, that actually made this one of Elvar’s longer religious commitments. Most gods didn’t last a tenday in the lord of Triel’s chapel.

When Elvar continued to rant about how they were all doomed to die of hunger this winter, Beris decided this was not the best time for a stranger to beg for hospitality. He turned to tell the wanderer they might do better to wait until later, then stared in alarm. Leading his pale mare, the stranger approached Elvar. Beris made a grab for the man but was too late.

Elvar glared at the wanderer in annoyance. “What do you want?”

“I am hungry,” the strange man said quietly.

“And I suppose you want me to feed you,” Elvar said in disgust. He rested his chubby hands on his broad hips. “I suppose you think we should be happy to give a cretin like yourself food when we haven’t enough to make it through the winter ourselves.”

The wanderer gestured to the storehouse. “You have plenty of grain.”

“Don’t tell me what I have or don’t have,” Elvar snapped. He studied the wanderer. Suspicion gleamed in his beady eyes. “Tell me, beggar, where did one so wretched get such a fine horse?”

“She’s mine.”

“Liar,” Elvar hissed. “I say you stole it.”

Beris pressed forward. “Excuse me, milord, but I think that the horse does belong to him. She seems to obey his—”

“Shut up!” Elvar commanded. “If I say he is a thief, then he is a thief.” He gestured to a trio of mercenaries. “Lead the horse to my stable, then take this man and cut off his hands so everyone will know him for the thief he is.” With that, Elvar waddled toward the large stone manor house in the center of the stockade.

Beris tried to protest, but the other soldiers pushed him roughly aside. Two grappled the wanderer, ruthlessly twisting his arms behind his back. Another grabbed the gray mare’s reins. She let out a defiant whinny, rearing back on her hind legs.

“Stop!” a commanding voice thundered.

Everyone froze—the townspeople, the soldiers, even Lord Elvar—staring in amazement. An aura of power surrounded the wanderer, who now looked more like a king than a vagabond. The pale horse quieted and let out a soft nicker.

The wanderer fixed Elvar with his pale green gaze. “If there were no rats in your granary, would you have given me something to eat?”

Elvar licked his lips. “Of course,” he lied hastily.

Reaching into a leather pouch at his belt, the wanderer produced a set of bone pipes. He lifted them to his lips and began to play. The throng stared in trancelike wonder. Beris had never before heard such music—mournful, vaguely threatening, yet so achingly beautiful he thought it would break his heart. As the man continued to play, a gasp rose from the crowd. From a dozen dim corners and shadowed alleyways emerged countless small, dark, lithe forms.

Cats.

In moments there were a hundred of them, as black and silent as smoke. The wraithlike felines padded swiftly toward the granary, emerald eyes winking mysteriously, before disappearing through the open door. The hideous cacophony that followed nearly drowned out the piper’s music. People clapped hands over their ears against the horrible din of squealing and yowling. Abruptly, the noise ceased. The dark cats streamed out of the granary now, each bearing a gray bundle in its mouth. As they passed the stunned Elvar, each of the cats dropped its grisly burden at the lord’s feet. In moments there was a furry mound of dead rats heaped before the lord of Triel. The wanderer lowered his pipes; the strange music faded into the air. The dusky cats melted once more into pools of darkness.

“Now may I have something to eat?” the wanderer asked solemnly.

Elvar gaped at him, then nodded emphatically. “Of course! You shall have my very finest!” This time, Beris noted, sincerity was written across the lord’s porcine face. “But please, stranger,” Elvar implored, “tell me your name, so that I can know who has saved Triel from disaster.”

The wanderer hesitated a moment, as if he did not quite remember his name. When at last he spoke, he seemed a figure of majesty no longer, but simply a weary traveler.

“Cal,” he said haggardly. “You can call me Cal.”

The statue watched over the ancient crossroads with deep, moss-filled eyes. A cool wind rushed through the sentinel trees, and the misty forest air was filled with cast-off leaves of copper red and burnished gold. Mari reached out and touched the timeworn stone.

“I’ve found another one!” she called out.

There was a crashing in the underbrush as the others approached, leading their horses among the trees.

“It is indeed a Talfirian Watcher,” Morhion agreed after a moment of study. “You have found the path again.”

Whether the statue had once represented man, woman, or god, Mari could not tell. An eternity of wind and rain had worn away all features except the staring pits of the eyes. They had come upon a dozen of the mysterious stone figures over the last two days as they wended their way southward, deeper into the Reaching Woods.

It was Jewel who had first discovered the path, the morning after their harrowing flight from the three shadevari in Hill’s Edge. At first they thought it was a game trail that paralleled the river. Here and there they turned up what seemed to be cracked paving stones. Then they came upon the first of the Watchers. Morhion instantly realized the significance of the crumbling statue.

“This was a road, once,” he explained, “built by the Talfirc, the people who dwelt in this land a thousand years ago. They set the Watchers here to guard the way.”

They had decided to follow the ancient road southward. Again and again they had lost the faint tracks in the underbrush and were forced to stop and make a laborious search. The loss of time worried Mari.

“This path divides in several directions,” Kellen noted in his grave manner. “Which way do you think we should go?”

“Whichever way leads fastest toward something to eat, besides hardtack and acorns,” Cormik said forlornly. He picked futilely at the dried leaves and burrs that clung to his once-elegant attire.

Jewel parted her ruby lips in a wicked smile. “Personally, I think our strict regimen is doing you good, my sweet, expansive elephant. Sparing amounts of food and generous amounts of exercise are exactly what you need.”

With his one good eye, Cormik glared darkly at her. “If I had wanted your opinion, my dear geriatric tart, I most certainly would have requested it. I know exactly what I need, and it involves large and plentiful quantities of roasted pheasant, sweet subtleties, and red Amnian wine. And soon!”

“This path has gradually veered east, away from the River Reaching,” Morhion said. “Let us try west. Perhaps that way leads to a ford. We have to get across the river if we’re going to pick up Caledan’s trail again.”

The green forest light was fading to dusk when the narrow path broadened, and they came upon the ruined city. The endless wall of trees parted before them, and the voice of the river roared like thunder on the air. Here the paving stones were intact, though late wildflowers and sweet herbs pushed their way up between the cobbles. Most of the city’s structures were little more than jumbled heaps of stone, tangled with vines and crowned by stands of oak and ash. However, in the center of the city was a circular plaza, in the middle of which rose a tapering, step-sided building.

“I think this was a city of the Talfirc,” Morhion said, raising his voice above the rushing river.

“What happened to them?” Mari asked in wonder. “Why did they leave?”

Morhion shook his head. “It is a mystery. The Talfirc dwelt in this land for a long age. However, by the time our ancestors came westward over the mountains, the Talfirc were already centuries vanished. No one knows where they went, or why.”

“They built this city awfully close to the river,” Cormik noted. “I wonder if they built a bridge as well.”

Morhion’s eyes gleamed brightly. “Let us find out if you’re right.”

The Talfirc had indeed built a bridge. Unfortunately, the river had shifted in its course over the centuries. The ancient yet solid span of stones now arched over the verdant floodplain. The river came nowhere near it.

“Well, that’s about as useful as a rowboat in the desert,” Jewel said drolly.

“Not even that,” Cormik chimed in.

They made their way back to the central plaza. The light was failing rapidly.

“We might as well camp here,” Mari said, though she shivered as she did. The years rested heavily on this place.

“What’s that boy doing?” Cormik asked with a scowl.

Mari followed Cormik’s gaze, then gasped. Kellen was climbing nimbly up one side of the stone pyramid. “Kellen!” she cried out in alarm. “Come back down!” He seemed not to have heard her over the roar of the river, for he kept climbing. It was unlike him to behave so rashly, but she could see now what had attracted his attention. Atop the pyramid was a gleaming golden orb.

Morhion was the first to the pyramid. He leapt from the saddle and swiftly scrambled up the side after Kellen. Seconds later, Mari, Jewel, and Cormik dismounted and started up the stone steps after the mage. These three were perhaps a quarter of the way up the pyramid when Kellen reached the summit. Glancing over his shoulder, he grinned when he spotted Morhion right behind him. But there was something wrong with Kellen’s eyes, Mari realized. They were dull, vacant. And Kellen never grinned, Mari remembered. Sometimes he smiled, but he never bared his teeth and grinned.

“Look at it, Morhion,” Kellen said in a strangely flat voice. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Morhion also sensed something was wrong. He reached a hand out toward the boy. “Kellen, don’t touch the—” But the mage was too late. Kellen had already laid his left hand on the orb.

Green lightning split the sky. A bolt of sizzling energy shot down from the angry clouds and struck the golden orb. Both Kellen and Morhion were thrown backward by the blazing force of the strike, tumbling down a dozen steps before coming to a halt. Kellen staggered to his feet, dazed, but Morhion lay still, sprawled upon the stones. Mari could see a red stain spreading across his forehead.

Mari scrambled up the side of the pyramid, quickly outpacing Jewel and Cormik, who followed behind her. A heartbeat later, the golden orb flashed. There was a hissing noise, like air escaping through a crack, and a grating of rock on rock. Mari cried out as the stones beneath her shifted. In moments they no longer formed a staircase, but instead a smooth, steep ramp down which she slid backward. Over her shoulder, she could hear screams. She twisted her neck just in time to see Cormik and Jewel disappear into a dark pit that had opened at the base of the pyramid. Mari clawed at the stone to slow her descent. Then she heard Kellen’s frightened cry.

“Mari, look out!”

She looked up in time to see Kellen and Morhion sliding rapidly toward her. She tried to twist out of the way, but she was too slow. Child and mage struck her at the same time. She lost her grip on the stone, and they all went tumbling down into darkness.

Surprisingly, it was Cormik who took charge. The corpulent crime lord was accustomed to a life of luxury; nonetheless, he reacted to their predicament with coolness and aplomb.

The five had fallen through an opening into a perfectly spherical chamber formed of seamless black stone. Moments after they struck the bottom, there came a low grinding noise. The entire hollow globe seemed to rotate. Mari scrambled on all fours, trying to keep from tumbling end-over-end like a rat trapped inside a spinning ball. When the sphere’s movement came to a halt, the opening through which they had fallen was no longer above them, but was instead situated halfway down one of the curved walls. A second stone wall now lay beyond the opening; apparently this sphere was contained within another, larger stone globe. Only a small slit breached the outer wall at this point, a narrow window through which came the faint gray-green light of dusk.

Kellen remembered nothing of what had occurred outside. Whatever power had compelled him to climb the pyramid seemed to have no influence here. He was back to normal, as dazed as the rest.

Cormik began issuing orders. “Jewel, examine that opening in the far wall and see if there’s some way out of here. Kellen, please assist her. You have smaller hands and may be able to reach things she cannot. Mari, we’re going to need more light—can you do something about that? I’ll see to Morhion.” The mage had not stirred. He lay on the ground, unmoving, his skin like alabaster against the black marble floor. The wound on his forehead had blossomed into a grisly crimson flower.

Numbly, Mari set to her task. She rummaged in her pockets until she found a stump of candle, flint, and tinder. Creating fire was no simple feat. She struck the flint repeatedly against the edge of her steel eating knife. After many failed attempts, a glowing spark landed directly on the tinder. Quickly, she blew on the bit of fluff. There was a wisp of smoke, and suddenly a bright flame curled out of the tinder. She held the candle’s wick to the flame. The candle caught, golden light filling the dark sphere. Mari took a deep breath. Concentrating on the mundane chore had calmed her nerves. She realized that this was probably one of the reasons Cormik had assigned her the task.

She approached Cormik, who bent over the still-unconscious mage. He had placed his velvet cloak under Morhion’s head for a pillow, and the crime lord was deftly binding a bandage over the wound on the mage’s brow.

“I didn’t realize you were so adept at healing,” Mari said softly.

“I’m not,” Cormik replied. “But in my line of work, unwanted holes have a nasty way of appearing in one’s self and one’s co-workers, and so one gets accustomed to plugging them up.” He tied the bandage and leaned back, sighing. “I’m afraid that’s all I can do.”

Mari reached out and gripped the mage’s chill hand. Don’t leave me Morhion, she thought fiercely. Don’t you dare leave me. Not now. I can’t do this alone.

Kellen and Jewel moved back from the window in the outer sphere.

“Did you see anything near the opening that might help us?” Cormik asked eagerly.

Jewel ran a hand through her short, dark hair. “Do you want some inane but optimistic possibilities calculated solely to keep our spirits up? Or do you want the truth?”

“You make it seem like such an attractive choice,” Cormik commented acidly.

“Sorry,” Jewel apologized. “I suppose that’s why I’m a thief, not a politician. Not that there’s much difference in what we do, just how we present it afterward.” She went on. “There’s only the thinnest crack between this sphere and the one that surrounds it. The window is too small to climb through, and I couldn’t so much as scratch the stone with my knife. If our taciturn friend the mage were awake, I think he would tell us the sphere is enchanted. In other words, we’re trapped quite nicely.”

“Unless we could rotate the sphere again,” Kellen went on. “Then we could realign the opening in the inner sphere with the hole we fell through in the outer sphere. Maybe we could boost ourselves up and get through.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Cormik admitted with an impressed look. However, they could find no trace of a mechanism by which the globe might be rotated. If any of them could unlock this mystery, it would be Morhion.

“How is he?” Jewel asked quietly.

Cormik shook his head. “I’m not sure, really. The truth is, the blow to his forehead really isn’t all that serious. It’s enough to give him a good headache, but that’s all. I don’t know why his breathing is so shallow, or his heartbeats are so fluttery.”

“It was the lightning,” spoke a cracked voice. “The power of the bolt has confused the life energy that commands his heart to beat.”

They looked up in shock to see a face hovering outside the narrow window. The light of the flickering candle revealed the speaker for a wizened woman with straggly gray hair. Her face looked as tough as old leather, and her bright obsidian eyes were nearly lost in masses of wrinkled skin.

“Who are you?” Mari asked breathlessly.

The ancient woman laughed, a sound like the call of a crow. “No one and nothing,” she replied hoarsely. “A bad memory, and one best forgotten. That’s all. And who are you?”

The old woman seemed more than half mad, but she might be able to help them. “We’re on a quest,” Mari replied.

“Truly?” the old woman said caustically. “Well, if you were searching for a bad end, then your quest is over, for you’ve found that here.”

Mari winced. That reply hardly showed a helpful attitude.

“My friend has been hurt,” Kellen said gravely.

“And what makes you think I can do anything about it?” the old woman snapped.

Kellen didn’t even blink. “I imagine that you’re very wise, that’s all.”

The old woman grunted at this. “Well, you’d be right to imagine so,” she said in a surly tone. “And my wisdom tells me that I am too old and far too weary to concern myself with a lot of meddlers and troublemakers. I would say farewell, but I suppose it would be wasted on you, so I’ll say nothing at all.” She started to draw away.

“Wait!” Kellen cried, reaching his hand toward the window.

The old woman froze. A hissing sound escaped her lips. At last she whispered in a voice filled with wonder and dread. “The child wizard …”

With swiftness surprising in one so old, she reached through the narrow opening and clutched Kellen’s hand before he could pull away. She ran a gnarled finger over the puckered scar on his left palm. “So young, yet already marked by magic,” she murmured in awe. “Of course. After all this time, I had dared to let myself forget. I waited so long, you see, but you never came. Finally I dismissed the prophecy as foolishness. And now, in the dark winter of my life, you have come at last.” Her voice became a moan of despair. “But why have you waited all these years? Why have you come when I am so old, so weak, so tired?”

Kellen managed to pull his hand out of her gnarled grasp. He gave her a frightened look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not a wizard. Not yet, anyway.”

The old woman laughed at this, an eerie sound. “But you will be. You will be a wizard the likes of which this world has never known. Ah, but do I have the strength to do what I must?” She fell silent.

Mari stepped forward. “Please, listen to me,” she said earnestly. “You seem to know much I don’t pretend to understand. Won’t you help us, so we can talk with you more about … about this prophecy?”

The old woman hesitated, then vanished from the window. Mari groaned in despair. Abruptly the old woman reappeared and thrust a hand through the window. “Here, place this on the mage’s chest,” she ordered.

Mari took the proffered object. It was a small black seed. She thought to question the old woman, then bit her tongue. This was not the time to annoy the stranger. She knelt before Morhion and unlaced his shirt, then placed the tiny seed on the pale flesh above his heart.

At first nothing happened. She traded skeptical looks with Cormik and Jewel. Perhaps the old woman was mad after all. Then Kellen whispered softly, “Look.”

The seed was sprouting. As they watched in wonder, a small, dark purple leaf unfurled itself from the seed, and a root tendril snaked outward, plunging into the flesh of Morhion’s chest. More leaves uncurled themselves, and the strange purple plant grew larger as its roots sank deeper into Morhion’s body. The mage trembled, and his back arched off the stone beneath him.

“It’s hurting him!” Mari cried out in horror, reaching to pull the magical plant from his body.

“Stop!” the old woman commanded. Something in her voice made Mari freeze. “If you pluck the heartroot out now, your friend will surely perish.”

Mari forced herself to remain still. There was nothing to do now but watch. The plant grew fuller, more lush. Its roots writhed like snakes beneath Morhion’s skin. Its deep purple leaves began to throb in time to the mage’s erratically beating heart. Morhion convulsed, his hands scratching reflexively against the black marble. Suddenly his entire body went limp.

For a terrified moment Mari thought he was dead. She clasped a hand to Morhion’s wrist. His pulse was strong and even.

Abruptly, the plant began to wither. Its purple leaves turned black and curled upon themselves. The stem broke, and the brittle plant crumbled as it fell to the floor. The only trace it left on Morhion’s flesh was a tiny violet circle, and even this began to fade. The mage took in a deep, shuddering breath and sat up, eyes open wide. Immediately he grimaced, touching a hand tentatively to his wounded brow.

“What happened?” he asked in a dazed voice, and the others let out a collective sigh of relief.

The witch’s name was Isela, and as far as they could tell from the bits and fragments she told them, she had dwelt in the ruined city—she called it Talis—all her life. She left them for a brief time, only to return to the window with dried fruit, nuts, and a leather jug of water. The others accepted these gratefully, and thanked Isela when she told them she had retrieved and picketed their horses.

“Though I suppose we’ll have little need of them if we cannot find a way to escape this trap,” Morhion said darkly. Thanks to Isela’s magic, the mage had largely recovered from the lightning strike. “I wonder what this prison was originally for. And the pyramid. Do you know, Isela?”

“I think I did once,” she said wistfully. “I’ve forgotten so much … so much I wonder how I ever knew it all. It seems to me that the wizards who dwelt here long ago used the pyramid and the orb to defend Talis from its enemies. The orb remembered the touch of magic, and when the boy laid a hand upon it, it called down the lightning to protect the city. But you had no idea what was coming, and so were caught by the trap that would have served to guard the wizards of long ago.” She paused, licking her thin lips. “There is a way to rotate the sphere, you know.”

“How?” Mari asked intently.

“A wizard could do it.” She gave Morhion a piercing look. “But you are too weak from the heartroot.”

Morhion took a deep breath. “I’ll try it,” he said solemnly. “Tell me how.”

“It would kill you,” Isela said flatly.

“That is not important.” Anger flashed in his icy eyes. “We dare not delay our quest any longer. If the price is death, then I will pay it.”

Isela gave a derisive snort. “A lot of good that would do your friends. Especially when there is one other who has the power.” Her sharp gaze drifted toward Kellen.

“He’s only a child,” Mari said scornfully. “You would truly have him attempt something so perilous?”

“He has already faced grave peril once.” Isela’s gaze flickered back toward Morhion. The mage fell silent.

“What do I need to do?” Kellen asked quietly.

Mari started to protest, then halted. What choice did they have? All she could do was watch Kellen closely, and stop him if he appeared to be in danger.

“Close your eyes,” Isela instructed in a low voice. “Imagine that you are not inside the sphere, but rather that the sphere is a small black orb you hold in your hand.”

Kellen sat cross-legged and shut his eyes. After a moment, he spoke in a dreamy voice. “I can see it.” He cupped his hand as if holding a ball.

“Now, you must turn the orb a half-turn to the left.”

“It’s hard,” Kellen protested, his brow furrowing.

“Try!” Isela hissed. “You must try!”

Kellen shook his head slowly. “No, it’s too heavy,” he said with a moan. “It’s … it’s crushing me …”

Alarmed, Mari started forward, but Morhion was faster. He knelt beside the boy and whispered in his ear. “Do not fight the weight of the sphere, Kellen. That is its magic you feel. Let that magic fill you.”

“I can’t,” Kellen gasped. “It hurts …”

“Do not resist it,” Morhion said in a chantlike voice. “Clear your mind. Imagine your body an empty vessel. Then let the magic fill you. It will not harm you if you do not fight it.”

A spasm crossed Kellen’s face, then his visage relaxed. “Yes …,” he whispered. He moved his hands, and the sphere lurched into motion. The window—and Isela with it—vanished as the opening in the wall rotated. After a moment the sphere ground to a halt. Kellen’s eyes flew open. “Did it work?” he asked breathlessly.

“Yes, it did,” Mari said in amazement.

The opening in the inner sphere was now aligned with a similar-sized opening in the outer sphere. Beyond was moonlight. Without warning, Isela’s wizened face appeared in the opening. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she snapped. “An invitation?”