The Weather-Mage laughed aloud in triumph as she walked over to her prey. For a moment she stood there, looking down at him with a sneer. How easy it had been to defeat him! Without Aurian to protect him, the former Academy drudge had soon betrayed his lowly half-Mortal origins. Following the capture of Miathan, taking another Mage out of time had been a simple matter—and one that put Anvar into her power while she decided his future at her leisure. The possibilities of the situation were now beginning to dawn on Eliseth. With her enemy’s paramour enmeshed and isolated within the crawling blue shimmer of the spell, she knew she had some time to ponder the considerable advantage his capture would give her over Aurian—who, judging from her absence, so plainly lacked the courage to follow her so-called love to his fate. But she would turn up eventually—of that, Eliseth was absolutely certain. And when she did .
. . The Weather-Mage smiled coldly. Aurian was a pathetic fool for her softhearted devotion to this half-Mortal scum with his tainted blood! Eliseth knew that she could use Anvar as bait to rid herself of her foe for good.—Without a backward glance, she left her victim where he lay on the cold stone of the roof—isolated as he was in her time spell, he should be safe enough up there—and strode across to the door that led down into the tower. Eliseth’s eyebrows rose in surprise, then drew down in a frown as she tugged at the latch and nothing happened. But this door was never locked! A closer examination showed that the latch was stiff with rust.
“But I was only up here five or six days ago,” the Mage-woman muttered to herself. “How could the wretched thing get into this condition in so short a time?” Reluctant to actually damage the door that kept the weather out of the tower, she stepped back and unleashed several brief, successive bursts of pure force at the recalcitrant latch, until the metal was shaken loose from its coating of corrosion and the bar rattled loosely in its socket. Even with the latch free, however, the door, its swollen panels cracked and weathered to a faded silver, stubbornly resisted Eliseth’s attempts to push it open.—Eventually, as her patience was reaching the breaking point, the door groaned open reluctantly on stiff, rust-caked hinges, allowing her sufficient space to shoulder her way inside. Eliseth leapt backward with an involuntary gasp, as dank, clinging trailers of cobwebs swept across her face. Colliding with the wall, she found it slick and slimy to the touch. “What the bloody blazes?”
With a grimace, she scrubbed her hands against her skirts, then illuminated the stairwell with a bolt of searing lightning.
It was unbelievable. Long after the incandescence had faded back to darkness and the dazzle had left her eyes, Eliseth stood transfixed with shock, unable to accept what she had seen. The clean white stone of the staircase had vanished beneath a thick layer of dust and grime, and it was clear from the lack of footprints that no living soul had passed that way for many a long age. The ceiling was festooned with webs, and the curving walls glistened black with slimy mold. The air within the passage was stale and fetid with neglect and decay.
The Weather-Mage sat down dumbfounded on the top step of the staircase, oblivious of the dirt and the chilly dampness that immediately began to seep through her skirts. How could this have happened? The upper reaches of the Mages’ Tower had clearly not been used in years. But that was impossible—or it ought to be. Eliseth’s mind went back to her terrifying fall through the gap in Creation. Clearly she had passed through space, from the Vale to Nexis.—Had she also traveled through time? And if so, how many years was she adrift?—Had she journeyed to the future or the past?
“Use your brain!” the Magewoman muttered to herself. “It must be the future.—Had I traveled into the past, the Academy wouldn’t be deserted like this.” But how far into the future had she come? Eliseth remembered her uneasy feeling that Nexis had somehow altered from the city she remembered and, scrambling hurriedly to her feet, she left the stairwell and rushed back across the flat rooftop to the low wall that looked out across the undulating landscape of rooftops. In the darkness, however, and from this great height, she could make out no details to help her gauge the passage of time. Though a scattering of lamps glittered on the darkened streets of the city, there were no lights or other signs of life among the Academy buildings, and no soldiers manned the guardroom at the gate. Eliseth might have been the only person alive in all the world. For the first time since she had vanquished Miathan, she felt the cold touch of true fear. Without warning, she had been wrenched away from everything that was familiar and secure. She shivered as an unaccustomed sense of loneliness swept through her.
This was no use! With an effort, the Weather-Mage thrust aside the insidious feelings of fear and desolation that were threatening to swamp her good sense.—Straightening her shoulders, she turned and strode resolutely back toward the tower stairs. As she went, her foot caught on something that rolled away with a metallic rattle and a flash that sent rippling waves of power right across the rooftop. With a start, Eliseth recognized the grail that had been partly responsible for bringing her here. Stooping to pick it up, she stowed it safely in a deep pocket in her robe. The Sword, however, would have to remain where it was for the time being. She knew better now, than to try to handle it. It had already injured her—indeed, she had been lucky to survive her first encounter with the Artifact. Until she could discover a way to master, or at least endure, its wild and lethal powers, it would be no use to her whatsoever.
Eliseth descended the staircase with difficulty. Since she had little skill with Fire-magic, her wispy attempts at Magelight were dim and of short duration. They had an annoying—and dangerous—tendency to flicker into oblivion at the slightest wavering of her concentration, plunging the treacherously slippery steps beneath her feet into utter darkness. She passed by Miathan’s chambers on the upper landing and Aurian’s door on the next floor without a second glance, heading directly for her own rooms—for by this time the Mage felt a desperate need for the reassurance of familiar surroundings. There was little comfort to be found, however, in the decay and ruin that met her eyes as she let herself into her chambers. Her suite was unrecognizable from its former, pristine self.
Eliseth wandered from room to room, recoiling in disgust as her feet sank almost to the ankles into the oozing remains of a rotting carpet: once snowy white, but now grey and stained with black mildew and greenish mold. The discovery of her jewels, still safely locked in their dusty box, cheered her, however. She pocketed them clumsily, wincing and cursing at the stiffness of her burned hands, but her hopes of finding anything else that was salvageable soon withered, for her precious possessions, amassed over many years for their beauty and priceless value, had long ago been lost under a thick blanket of rot and dust. Her numerous clothes, made from rich, luxurious furs and fabrics and carefully stored in closets and chests, had also succumbed to the ravages of time. A thin, cold wind blew in through the broken windows, stirring the shredded rags of curtain that still hung there and adding to the atmosphere of abandonment and dissolution.