With a quiet pop, the jungle disappeared. Nothing remained on the bare stone floor but scattered dirt and a few odd leaves.
“So much for that,” Jacoby said. “Linda, my dear, I shall be forever in your debt.”
“Me? Those guys got you out.”
“Yes, of course.” Jacoby glanced at Gene. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mench.”
“You’re a woman of great courage, my dear.”
“Oh, right.”
“You give yourself so little credit. Have you had lunch?”
“Well, it was sort of interrupted.”
“The dining room’s just down the hall.”
Gene stamped his foot. “All we did was wander in a big circle. Damn!”
“I’d be delighted if you’d join me,” Jacoby said.
“Well, sure,” Linda said. “What do you say, guys?”
Gene shrugged.
“C’mon, Snowclaw,” Linda said, hooking her arm in his. “I’ll rustle up some ribs for you.”
“Y’know, there’s this other dish I like,” Snowclaw told her. “It’s made out of rendered blubber flavored with a little fish oil, and then you take some fish meal, see, and you mush it all up …”
Gene watched the three of them cross the room. He sighed, slid his sword into its scabbard. “Yeah,” he said sardonically. He moped after them.
With some puzzlement he suddenly remembered what Jacoby had screamed.
I can’t control it ….
Keep — Lower Levels
Osmirik squinted, peering through the darkness ahead.
“Another blind passage, my lady. I think.”
A soldier held a lantern high, and light fell on the stone wall that formed the corridor’s dead end. He approached it and ran his hands along the dark stone, searching for any hidden seams or openings. He looked back at Osmirik and shook his head.
Osmirik nodded gravely. He turned and said, “Yes, another one.”
Melydia emerged slowly from the shadows behind him. “No matter. We draw ever closer.” She halted.
She stood holding the L-shaped ends of two long metal rods. The rods were parallel, pointing straight ahead. She turned her body to the left. The rods moved with her at first, then resisted, rotating in her loose grip back to their former positions. She turned the other way, and again the rods swung to the front.
“The force that attracts them grows stronger,” she said.
“Aye, but is the source accessible? Mayn’t it be underground?”
“I doubt it. The Spell Stone is part of the castle.”
“A foundation block, perhaps?”
“Perhaps. But we will be able to see it.”
“Her ladyship is so sure.”
“Yes. I have labored years, and have rung the changes on every conceivable variation. I am sure.” She lowered the rods. “Let us go back to the last turning and start again. I felt the proper direction was to the left, but overrode my better judgment.”
“As Her Ladyship pleases.”
The military escort led them back. There were nine left out of the original eleven. One man had wandered blithely into an attractive aspect and had fallen into a hidden pitfall. The portal had closed before anyone could get to him. Another had died fighting a venomous python that had dropped from a chandelier in a dining hall.
Back at the branching of the corridors, they trooped down the left leg of the Y, Vorn’s soldiers leading, Osmirik and a servant with another lantern behind them. Melydia, flanked by two armed guards, followed with arms outstretched, the instruments in her hands attuned to mysterious, unseen forces. Bringing up the rear were three more servants bearing parcels.
But that passage, too, led to a dead end.
Osmirik sighed. “Ever closer, yet never there.”
By lantern light Melydia’s face was limned in shades and shadows. “We shall not fail.” She handed the rods to a young servant, then looked around. “No torches in this passage, nor in the other one. I did not notice it till now — why, I knoweth not. In truth, we’ve not seen one since we left the dining hall.”
“Absolutely correct, my lady,” Osmirik said. “I did remark on it, but did not think the fact significant.”
“The last dead end we encountered — was it also unlighted?”
Osmirik reflected, then said, “No, my lady.”
Melydia frowned. “Hellish place. Neither rhyme nor reason to it.”
“Aye.”
“But it will not stand beyond tomorrow.”
“Will things go that quickly, my lady?”
“Yes, if we find the Stone soon.”
Osmirik was silent.
“And we will,” she added.
They walked back along the passageway.
“I must charge the rods again,” she said.
“They grow weak?”
“Not yet so weak as to be useless, but soon.”
“The recharging spell will take time.”
“You needn’t remind me,” she snapped.
“I merely wish to —”
“I know what is your wish, and I know what you are about. You have had ample warning, Osmirik.”
“I have. I grow weary of it.”
“You are impertinent?”
“Your pardon, my lady.”
Osmirik thought, Could she know?
He said, “Her Ladyship must know that I seek only knowledge, and that my scholarly interest in these proceedings is keen enough.”
“You show great interest in scholarly minutiae, yet ultimate knowledge seems to hold no attraction for you.”
“I beg your leave to differ, my lady. It does.”
“So? Do you realize the magnitude of the advance represented solely in the spell that charges the rods?”
“I do, my lady. If you recall, I rendered some preliminary incantations from the ancient Tryphosite.”
“So you did, and so acrawl with scholar’s glosses were they that I could barely read them.”
“Merely a desire to be thorough, my lady. There were many questionable passages.”
“No doubt.”
“I do understand that the spell taps some fundamental force.”
“Aye,” Melydia said. “Likely the fundamental force of the universe itself.”
“Natural philosophers have long speculated that the universe is reducible to only a very few forces. Do you think there is but one?”
“I am not a natural philosopher, scribe. I seek only practical knowledge. But, yes, I think there is but one, and the Spell Stone is its focal point. He who controls the Stone controls all.”
But you do not seek to control the Stone, Osmirik thought. You seek only to undo the control of another. That way lies madness, and perhaps death for us all.
His thoughts were interrupted by exclamations among the guards ahead.
“What is it?” Osmirik called, but then he saw. They had not yet arrived at the branching, but here was another corridor leading off to the right, this one lined with jewel-torches. It had not been there before.
“We’re in luck, my lady,” he said.
“Send two soldiers down there and see if it leads anywhere.” She turned to the young servant, a boy of about fourteen. “Give me the rods.”
The lad fumbled in a leather pouch, handed one rod over, then searched the pouch again. “Your Ladyship, they were both in here.…” He rummaged frantically.
“How is it possible? I just now gave them to you.”
“Your Ladyship, I —”
She struck him across the face. “Little fool!”
“I did not hear it drop, my lady,” Osmirik said. “I fancy we all would have heard it on this hard stone.”
She shook the boy. “Then where is it?”
“Your ladyship, I don’t know!”
“I will go back and look, my lady,” Osmirik said, taking a lantern from another servant.