Balram turned to the stairs, but Cesira had climbed back to the top. She stood behind the balcony rail, a second spear resting on her shoulder.
“You won’t get out of here alive, bitch,” he snarled at her. He motioned to one of his men, who began moving along the outer wall, smashing lanterns and spilling oil in streams across the floor. Fire licked up in tall pools. “You’ll burn with this house, if we don’t get to you first.”
Then by all means, Cesira said, holding out her arms, Come to me.
The fire beast exalted in his find. Magic raged wildly above his head, fueled by the mad wizard and their mental link.
The mortals were scattered throughout his domain. He could smell them leaving their imprints on the Delve in a complex web, moving, trying to find each other.
The woman of fire and one other—they were closest to his former prison. The beast dismissed them at once as too easy. Let them have a start on the game. He relished the challenge of two well-prepared magic wielders.
His senses drifted outward. Two more were near the thoroughfare, and a larger party was across the bridges—but wait. The beast picked out the scent, distantly, in the Howling burrow. Four fighters, moving stealthily—deeper into the mazelike tunnels constructed by the dwarves.
There lay his hunt, a chase through the labyrinth to claim the first of his prizes.
The beast rumbled in satisfaction. He stretched his lean muscles and began to run, tracing the faint scents to their source.
Meisha felt as if her bones had been dashed over rocks. Perhaps they had been. She felt a hand prod her shoulder and hadn’t even the strength to fight it off.
“Meisha.”
Dantane’s face swam into focus. The wizard leaned over her with a vial in his hand identical to the one he’d given her in the portal room. “Drink,” he said, putting the glass to her lips.
Meisha drank, and gradually felt the strength returning to her aching arm and leg. The magic faded, leaving only a dull pain. “Where are we?”
“We came through a second portal,” Dantane said. His voice sounded odd, uncertain. “The chasm in the floor. I found you not far from where I appeared. I don’t know where we are, but you need to see something.”
“What is it?” she asked.
Dantane hesitated. “I believe it’s you.”
“What?” Meisha sat up, gazing over the wizard’s shoulder.
She recognized where they were immediately. The circular chamber was crowded with pedestals of rock rising up four, six, sometimes ten feet into the air, separating the chamber into various levels. Two exits lay at opposite ends of the room. At the ends of those tunnels would be similar testing chambers.
“The star,” she murmured.
Meisha suddenly realized they weren’t alone. She looked up at the shortest pedestal, where a child stood. She was bald but for a dark fuzz beginning to sprout from the top of her head. She waved her arms in the motions of a spell. Below her, a man in well-kept robes watched her casting with a critical eye.
Varan—but not the mad wizard trapped in the Delve. This Varan was whole, and appeared much younger. For Meisha, seeing the little girl was like seeing a ghost.
“We’re in a testing chamber,” she said, for Dantane’s benefit. “Varan designated one for each apprentice, arranged like the points of a star. When I was here, these caves could only be reached through Varan. He teleported us down.”
“You didn’t know the portal led down here?” asked Dantane.
“No. I didn’t know Varan knew of the portal,” she admitted. “The markings on it don’t match his sigils. Perhaps that was how he discovered the secret tunnels,” she murmured, half to herself, “through the portal.”
“There are more caverns?” Dantane prompted. “Do you know where?”
“Varan said they adjoined the testing chambers somehow. We looked, as apprentices, but the entrance was magically concealed. I suppose it’s possible, now his other magics are breaking down, that the connecting passage has been revealed.”
“So we’ll have to explore each chamber,” Dantane said. “Our companions might be there, or in the other tunnels.” He looked at her. “Do you know what they contained?”
Meisha laughed humorlessly. “Whatever great Art the Howlings saw fit to store. You were deposited in the wrong place, Dantane, if you seek treasure down here.”
The wizard grimaced. “Such seems to be the course of my life,” he said.
Meisha stood up, her eyes drawn back to the phantom image atop the pedestal. She watched, fascinated, as the air in front of her double seemed to split in two. Out of the breach came the head of a being that only vaguely resembled a human. Hairless, outlined in white flame, it stared at its summoner curiously. Though she felt no heat, Meisha recalled well how the air around the creature rippled with burning. It was the first time she’d ever interacted with a fire elemental.
The scene blurred and faded, leaving them alone in the chamber.
“What was that?” asked Dantane.
“A memory,” answered Meisha, “from soon after I came to the Delve. I was a Wraith—half-feral—in Keczulla, when Varan found me. He took me on as an apprentice because he sensed my talent. I remember when he brought me down here to converse with the fire elemental. I could feel it burning, just like I burned inside. It’s part of every savant’s training, to recognize how their spirit matches the element they’ve chosen. With proper training, eventually, the spirit melds with that force and becomes part of it,” Meisha said, her voice oddly hushed.
“Is that what you aspire to?” Dantane asked, “to join with the fire and become as an elemental creature?”
She glanced at him. “It’s what every savant wants.”
“But do you?”
Without answering, Meisha stood up, her eyes scanning the floor where the phantom images had been. “There.” She bent down, lifting a small piece of glittering crystal from the floor. “The source of the memories,” she explained.
“Your masters work,” Dantane said, impressed. “He has great power.”
“Obviously, not enough,” Meisha said, “or he failed to follow his own teachings.”
Had Varan recorded all his past sessions with his apprentices? she wondered, and if so, how many crystals, how much Art would be required for such a task?
“Why do you despise him so much?” Dantane asked. “He awoke the power in you. Without it, you might have died a Wraith.”
“I know,” Meisha said. “He cared about me, as much as he was capable of such feelings. He offered me magic and a place in his world, but I couldn’t accept it.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I hadn’t possessed that power and if Varan hadn’t sensed it, he would have passed me by on that street without looking twice. It was the power that fascinated him most, not any of us. And yet, I still wanted to love him.”
“Then why did you come back?” Dantane asked. “Why help him now?”
“Because he was right. He was the only one who understood me, and I still love him for that,” Meisha said bleakly. “That bond—the one I see reflected in Kall’s group—I’ve known nothing like it, not since the night Shaera left the candle in my room.”
“Shaera?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Meisha waved the memories away. “She’s gone now—they’re all dead—and Varan is not the master I knew.”
“What about the boy,” Dantane persisted, “the one who followed you?”
“Talal,” Meisha said, and something inside her constricted. She’d avoided thinking about the boy. “Talal is … he has no scrap of magical power in him, and yet I find myself wanting to mentor him, in life, if not in the Art. It’s strange. Then, in the next breath, I remember what I am and what I could do. When I remember, I want to put him as far from myself as I possibly can.”