Sunbright leveled a scarred arm and calloused finger at the older man. "You're a filthy mage, aren't you?"
A tiny shrug. "A mage. My name isn't Chandler, by the way. It's Candlemas. A chandler makes candles, see?" His rueful smile was not returned.
"So everything you told me was a lie?"
"Not everything." Candlemas scanned their surroundings, which were the blankest he'd ever seen. How could he entice the barbarian to penetrate the not-fog? "About half, well, much of what I said was true."
"You used me!" A finger stabbed downward. "Even that damned raven is yours, isn't it?"
Candlemas blinked at the platform and saw the raven. Funny, he hadn't seen it enter the portal.
The raven cocked its head as if also confused as to how it had gotten there. It croaked, "Sorry. That's how the egg breaks."
"The raven is an avatar," Candlemas explained. "A shade of mine sent to watch over you. Like a homunculus, only more reliable."
Sunbright rubbed his throbbing temples. He snarled, "I don't want any more of your damned magic near me! Wait, you sent Ruellana, too, didn't you?"
"Ah, no." The chunky mage cast about again, then settled creaking onto his hams, which slipped down the glass toward the middle where Sunbright stood. He had to drag his hands to stop his slide. "Ruellana is an avatar-no, a persona-of another mage named Sysquemalyn. She's chamberlain while I'm steward of, uh, a castle. She got us into this current pickle. And I'd have to say that, while I've used you somewhat-but kept you from harm repeatedly-she's used you worse and meant you harm. Of course, you probably don't believe anything I say. I understand. But the latest round involved sending you after that book, and she arranged it! No doubt she whispered in the One King's ear that he needed the book, so he dispatched the next able warrior who strode into his court to fetch it before-"
The mage stopped himself, but Sunbright caught the implication. The barbarian's eyes were as hard and cold as glacial ice. "Before you could send me, correct?"
Candlemas shrugged. He hoped the young man wouldn't attack him here. Magic shields would be dicey in a spot like this. They might do anything from protect Candlemas to crush him like a cockroach.
But Sunbright's native curiosity overcame his thirst for vengeance-for the moment. "So Ruellana is a lousy mage too. I should have suspected all along. I was too blind to see. But what was that thing that grabbed her, and where have they gone?"
Candlemas bit his lip as he thought of the manner in which Sysquemalyn had left his workshop. "Good questions."
Sliding Harvester home in its scabbard, Sunbright suddenly whirled on Greenwillow. "And you? What are you, really? And who's your master? And what do you get out of… attending me?"
Shocked, the half-elf's conflicting emotions warred on her expressive face. Combining sorrow and rage, she flared, "I'm not anything but what I appear to be! I've been your comrade and friend and… that's all. I don't want anything from you. YOU chose to accompany me to Tinnainen, remember?"
"I know only that I've been used, prodded, steered, and cheated by everyone I've met since leaving the tundra!" roared Sunbright. "But no more! I'm stuffed to the eyes with lying lowlanders, and I'm going home as soon as I can. I'll take my chances at being killed by friends and relatives over skulking, lying fiends the day long."
Greenwillow shrilled once, "Nooooo!"
But Sunbright had hunched at the edge of the platform, stuck his head into the limbo-fog, then planted his hands on the surface and vaulted into the void. There was nothing left to indicate he'd ever stood on the black glass bowl.
Greenwillow blazed hatred at the mage. "This is all your fault! Your backstabbing, traitorous, lying, sneaking, thieving magic ways! I hope you rot in the deepest pit of the Nine Hells until the sun falls from the sky!"
So saying, she leaned over the platform, sprang outward, and was gone.
"That's the problem," Candlemas sighed to the raven. "We just might."
The raven pecked at the black glass, hopped up and down, and clacked its beak at its master. "That's the way the egg breaks."
It squawked as Candlemas booted it off the platform.
Sighing, skidding to his feet, Candlemas leaned gingerly into the fog, then rolled over the edge as if tumbling from a boat.
Greenwillow ghosted through fog that was not solid under her feet, but neither did she plummet. If anything, she swam through the air in slow motion, but that didn't describe it either. She tried to steer for the route Sunbright had taken, but had no real sense of direction.
After a few seconds-or hours-her feet plunked on stone. Two steps broke her free of the fog, which clung in shreds that she brushed off like spiderwebs.
Immediately, she called, "Sunbright?" There was no answer, and without thinking she drew her slim, elegant sword.
She'd landed on flagstones the color of pale moss. Before her was a half-wall of the same material. Behind her was a taller, similar wall. Arching overhead, a bowshot high, was a distant ceiling of green flagstones as wide as rooftops. There were more low walls and tall ones, all marching into the distance. Even the light seemed green, though she couldn't find a source.
There was nothing else in sight,
"Sunbright?"
She'd expected her voice to echo in this cavern, but it seemed to travel a distance and then stop. Hesitant, she laid her hand on the low wall. The stones were as smooth as river rocks and were warm like the back of a lizard lying in the sun. The floor was also warm, despite the shadows.
"Sunbright!"
Movement behind her made her whirl, sword leveled.
But what she saw was herself, reflected in stone.
Wonderingly, she advanced. Her image crept toward her. It was fragmented by cracks and wavy from imperfections in the stone. And hardly natural. She could tell it was magic, for the stones couldn't reflect like mirrors.
And her face was ugly.
Her brows were straight across, almost a bar, not arched like an elf's. Her nose was wide, with flaring nostrils, and stippled with blemishes. Her mouth was fat-lipped and pendulous, her hair thatchy and uneven above rounded ears. Even her slim elven figure had coarsened to thick hips and fleshy arms and huge feet.
With a shock, she realized she looked not like an elf, but like a human.
Horror-stricken, Greenwillow ran her hands over her face, felt her nose and lips. But all were numb, and she couldn't tell if the reflection were true or not.
What was this? she wanted to cry. Had some curse turned her human? Was this a hell for elves, to be degraded to an inferior race? She looked down at her legs and feet, but a mist in her eyes-incipient human blindness? — clouded her vision. Even her hand before her eyes was a blur. Yet the reflection stayed as sharp as before.
A trick, her mind replied calmly. A passing madness in this fragment of hell or whatever it was. Yet her eyes contradicted her thoughts, until she wanted to cry out and beat her brain into submission, or blind herself and spare the misery.
Turning away with a gasp, she banged into the low wall, which had somehow crept up on her right. She hadn't shifted, she was positive: the wall had. But perhaps it sought to engulf her, like a trapdoor spider. Whirling, she jumped for the open space, stubbed her toes on a raised step that hadn't been there just a moment ago.
More flickers to her left. The reflection now had gray hair. The face was wrinkled, the scrawny arm too weak to hold up the sword.
Age, she thought. Humans age too quickly and die, like dandelions living a single season. Was this happening to her? Desperately she ripped at her pony-tail, dragged it before her, but the increasing self-blindness prevented her from seeing if her hair were black or gray.
Blindly, she groped along the wall, but the image followed. Between two high walls she saw twin reflections, like ghosts who sought to drive her mad. Her reflected back was now hunched, her legs trembling.