Damon and Annarais were damp now from sweat and sticky from brine, their stringy hair sticking to their faces and shoulders, their clothes chafing their skin. They stood on the broad stone step at the top of the stairs that led to the door, leaning against the massive, latchless door, panting. The door had always seemed to Damon to be like a great, metal mouth. It was far older than the tower, something Master Wane has salvaged from ages past. The door was smooth, but the mechanisms that surrounded it were complex, with pistons, gears, and counterweights.
"What do-" Damon bent over, bracing his hands on his knees. "What do you think happened to Jervis?"
Annarais closed her eyes and leaned against the door. "I don't know, but let's talk about this inside."
"Neither life nor death," began Damon, reciting through his panting the litany that would open the door, "but existence." He paused to catch his breath. "Neither chaos… nor order… but existence." The litany defined how his master's style of magic differed from the other fundamental types of Dominarian magic. The litany was complete, but the door stood impassive.
Damon glanced at Annarais, trying to hide his desperation.
From over the cliff, they heard the rocks knocked loose, falling down the steep slope. It was the sound of pursuit.
"Oh, great heaven," whispered Damon, and he took Annarais's hand.
She stood upright, centered herself for a moment, and spoke the litany. It was as if the litany spoke itself, playing her lungs and mouth the way a musician plays a flute. "Neither life nor death, but existence. Neither chaos nor order, but existence."
With a great commotion of machinery, the iron doors swung up and apart. The two apprentices rushed inside, into the high-ceilinged atrium. The doors clanged shut behind them. Exhausted, they sank to the floor and leaned against the door.
"They won't be able to get in," said Annarais.
"But, we've got to prepare, just in case," replied Damon.
The two apprentices split up, trying to prepare for the arrival of the Stromgald assassin, although neither knew what it would take to stop her. Annarais took the far stairs two at a time. At the top, she raced along the curving walls, heading for the sparring room at the other end of the corridor. She flung the door open and grabbed two metal-shod fighting staffs from their wall bracket near the door.
Meanwhile, Damon looked around the atrium. He closed the wooden shutters on every window and dropped bars into the holds to secure them. Obscured by illusion or not, an open window was a way in. He ran up to the second floor, whose curving, shadowed hallway overlooked the atrium. Here was their kitchen as well as their personal cells, their study rooms, and the sparring room.
He found Annarais in Jervis's cell, standing there with the window unsecured, holding a large, round shell in both hands. The heavy shell had been one of Jervis's treasured finds.
Without looking up, Annarais said, "Master Wane says your life is like the nautilus's shell. It starts very small, and it gets bigger and bigger as you grow. But you know what he forgot? It ends." She put her finger into the empty opening where a living thing had once made its home. "All that's left is something for someone to find on the beach-a trinket."
A mighty boom reverberated through the atrium. Damon jumped, and Annarais's hand flew to her mouth. They hurried out into the hallway and looked one story down to the floor. Another boom sounded from the door into the tower.
"We can't fight her golem," said Annarais.
"We can hide," returned Damon. "Maybe we can get to the training room. Maybe we can even make it to the top, to Master Wane's chambers. He talks to other wizards far away. Maybe he has a magic glass, something we can use to call him. Maybe he can get here, or just get us out." Like closing the shutters, he suspected it was a futile effort at best.
"The training room," said Annarais. "I know the key."
She slipped back into Jervis's room and came out with the fighting staffs. She tossed one to Damon. The booming persisted. Damon followed Annarais to the end of the hall next to the sparring room's door. There stood a wooden door carved with sigils in a wavelike pattern. None of the apprentices had ever been up to the training floor without Master Wane, and he had always opened the latchless door himself. Annarais placed herself in front of it, biting her lip. With her two hands, she made a slow, unpracticed series of gestures and then looked at the door.
"I don't understand." She was becoming more frustrated every minute. "That's exactly what he does. Exactly! Why won't it open?" She repeated the gestures. The boom sounded again, this time accompanied by the sound of metal straining and giving way.
"What are you thinking?" asked Damon.
"I'm trying to get through the damn door," snapped Annarais, her voice strained.
"No," said Damon, putting a calming hand on her shoulder. "What are you thinking while you're doing it?"
"I'm thinking we're both going to die."
"Do the litany. Try it while thinking the door litany. 'Neither life nor death but-'
"I know the damn litany!" yelled Annarais.
Annarais shivered and began again. Her hands moved smoothly as she repeated the gestures. Below them, the double doors bent inward, and the heavy, bronze creature squeezed into the breach, widening it. The door before Annarais creaked open, and the two apprentices darted in. The door shut behind them.
They raced up a narrow flight of stairs which opened into the middle of a curved room lined with racks of scrolls. Near the other end was a row of writing stands where the apprentices practiced their letters and sigils.
Against the wall was a wide, low chest tucked under a window. To the right was the door to Master Wane's chambers. As the Master had made clear many times, only a wizard could open that door. Near was a black curtain, with the mirror behind it. Momentarily, Damon longed to gaze into that mirror and forget everything that had happened today.
"There's got to be something here that we can use," Damon cried, frantically searching the room.
"Maybe there's something in Master Wane's hardwood chest," replied Annarais.
As Damon approached the chest, a flicker caught his eye. Sitting on one of the writing stands was the flat, mirrored disk that Master Wane had used to create phantasms-horrible but insubstantial images of frightening creatures.
Damon remembered sitting with Sabra and Master Wane on the rocky beach, waves gently lapping in the background. The master had reached into his stained gray cloak and produced the disk, laying it gently on the pebbles before them. The disk reflected the sun and blue sky. "The blind see only the truth," he said.
Wane had tucked his age-spotted hands into his cloak and closed his eyes. Sabra reached out for the disk. She pulled it close to her face and peered into it. With a forefinger she pushed at a pimple on her chin. Suddenly her eyes widened, and she dropped the disk on the rocks. Damon looked up and saw behind Sabra a naked, hairless, humanlike form with long, clawed fingers and toes. Its wings made it seem bigger than it really was, but it was the claws, not its size, that looked deadly. It rested on the rocks behind Sabra, and, as she began scooting backward toward Master Wane, it followed her with short hops.