I guess you could say similar things about Morrolan, if you wanted to return to an earlier theme. I replaced the cord about my neck.
“I propose,” I said, “that we head straight up the Tower and do this, or at least attempt it, because I don’t want to give myself time to think about it.”
“Very well,” said Teldra.
The familiar doors opened to us as we approached them. I said, “Are you not frightened at all?”
“Would you rather I were, Vlad?”
“Good question. I’m not sure.”
In and up and around and about; and add a few more prepositions to the mix, and eventually we were climbing the narrow metal staircase up to Morrolan’s Tower. I’d been there before. It was not one of the places I missed.
“There ought to be a guardian here,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“We shouldn’t be able to just walk up and do this. We ought to have to fight our way past some sort of legendary half-man half-monster that has guarded this place since the beginning of time, and cannot be harmed by any weapon, nor moved by any words, nor evaded by any motion.”
“I see,” said Teldra. “Why?”
“I don’t know. A warm-up for the rough stuff.”
“Do irony and grey laughter help ease your fears?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “Was that a rude question on my part?”
“I’m not sure. I’ll get back to you on that.”
I pushed open the door over my head. It fell over with a boom and I caught the faint odor of formaldehyde, which I hadn’t remembered from before. I climbed up and looked around. From my previous experience, I knew better than to count the number of windows; besides, all of them except one were covered up. The view out the open one was of a deep purple with pinpoints of light dotting it here and there; it reminded me a bit of the sky in the East. It actually took me a moment to realize that the Necromancer was already there, standing very still against the curtain between two of the windows, Teldra came up behind me and carefully shut the trapdoor.
“Vlad,” said the Necromancer. “It is a pleasure to see you again.”
I didn’t know how to respond to her; I have never known how to respond to her. In some ways, she was more enigmatic even than Sethra Lavode. She looked creepy; I imagine on purpose. She was thin, even for a Dragaeran, and dressed entirely in dull black, without even silver buttons, and she was very, very pale, and she was an expert in what I think of as death, but, from what I’ve picked up of her conversation, she sees as something entirely different; to her “place” doesn’t mean the same thing as it means to me, nor does “life” or “the soul.” What to the Athyra are issues of epistemology and ontology are to her matters of engineering. I made a fervent wish that I would never arrive in a circumstance where “place” and “life” and “the soul” became matters of engineering.
It is wishes like that that get you in trouble.
How in blazes had I gotten myself mixed up with weirdos like this in the first place?
“Your natural charm, Boss.”
“Shut up, Loiosh.”
Once again, I removed the cord from around my neck, and put away the Phoenix Stones. This time, I remember feeling nothing in particular as I did so. I allowed Spellbreaker, a gold chain of small links, just less than two feet in length, to fall into my left hand from where it was coiled around my wrist. I looked at it. It was made of the same substance as the gold Phoenix Stone I had just put away, but it was different. Things had been done to it. Someone, some Serioli smith, I believe, had worked it, shaped it, and made it into something very special—exactly what, I had only gotten hints of over the years, like the Serioli who, when I asked if it was a Great Weapon, said, “Not yet.” Heh.
This time, the links of the chain were very small; perhaps a quarter of an inch long, which meant that there were more of them than on other occasions, when the chain had been, say, fourteen inches long and each link had measured an inch and a half. For some reason, I found the idea that the number of links changed to be more disconcerting than that the overall length of the chain would vary.
I turned my eyes to the window, then back to the chain. In my mind, I drew a picture of Blackwand, Morrolan’s weapon.
Or, rather, I tried to draw a picture of Blackwand; but it kept sliding away from me.
“Help, Loiosh.”
“I’m there, Boss.”
I pictured it in its sheath, though I had seen the damned thing naked. About five feet in length, it was: a longsword, as some called it, the hilt smooth and black, the guard a simple crosspiece, gleaming like silver; on top of the hilt a piece of smooth, glistening black stone, that stone called Verra’s Tears, which was obsidian that had been smoothed away by Black Water. The scabbard I had seen Morrolan use most recently—he had several—was very plain, and seemed to be leather, although there had to be more to it than that. It was an old sheath, and there were a few threads coming loose at the seams, and a slight tear in the leather near the very top.
With Loiosh’s help, the picture became clear, then very clear, then clear enough that I became frightened, then Lady Teldra was next to me in response to something I said, then there was a motion from around my shoulder, then I sent Spellbreaker out into the window in front of me.
And it all worked, just like Sethra Lavode had said it would.
Shame about that.
The window blurred and shifted, filled with lights, and darkness, and indistinct shapes. Herds of animals I didn’t recognize grazed upon green fields beneath a sky that was a peculiar grey; strange appendages like fingers worked upon a small metallic object, striking it with a tool; a mountain peak appeared below me, stark against a sky that was black, black, black; there was an ocean of green, waves that seemed huge and that crashed against the window but didn’t pass through; a young girl who may have been human or Dragaeran and who I might or might not have recognized made impossible eye contact with me; an athyra-like bird screeched horribly and fell along a wooded path, then vanished into nothing as it landed; violet sparks came from a wheel that spun at incredible speeds, though to no purpose I could imagine; a man with a pen made odd scratches on a long roll of parchment; deep under water, a strange creature with scales all of green and yellow worked upon a piece of red fabric, embroidering it with a thin silver needle and blue thread. And all of this with no trace of sound—that, perhaps, the most peculiar thing of all.
Now the window shows darkness pierced by flickerings of light as of a storm, the source of the light beyond the scope of my vision, but in those flickerings I see Blackwand, itself, only barely more real than in my vision, until suddenly I realize that, though it is concealed in its sheath, and that sheath attached to a familiar figure, I feel Blackwand; and that tiny portion of my brain, which remains free to have opinions and feelings regrets that we have been successful.
Teldra and I, in perfect unison, following Spellbreaker, took one step forward through the window. There was no sense of disorientation, the way there is when teleporting, nor was there the delay. In a way, I think this made it worse—the changes were sharper than any I had known before, and it was lucky that I didn’t have to defend myself at once. The first thing I noticed was that I felt heavier—perhaps the result of a general protection spell against anyone who doesn’t belong, or it might also be some natural property of the place. The air smelled funny, sort of sweet, with a queer kind of tang in it. There were no sounds; what had seemed to be a flickering light was some sort of dim lamp, forty or fifty feet away, that was hanging from the ceiling and swaying back and forth, and it was in this light that I saw Morrolan and Aliera, which was the second thing that struck me; but the first demanded my immediate attention.