“Oh, yes. Very much so. We resisted, of course, but those without training in the mental disciplines of high magic could easily fall prey to its allure.”
“But Oargesha had training.”
“True, but she had no warning. We did, and we had no wish to suffer her fate.”
“Mmm. So… I know it’s only been three days, but… have you discovered anything about it?”
“It is definitely a planar device,” said Rezam, “As, you may recall, I originally conjectured. Cautious divination indicates that it is either 10,000 years old, or else it was created two weeks from yesterday.”
“We’re putting our wager on 10,000 years,” said the other wizard.
Shadow Fox nodded. “Which plane?”
“Xoriat,” said the two wizards simultaneously. Rezam’s assistant continued, adding, “Once we knew roughly what we were looking for, knitting the stray facts together was not that difficult. It all fits together. That would be about the time of the Daelkyr War. I’m guessing that this is a means of opening a rift of some sort, either to let those from Xoriat here, or else maybe to harvest folks like us and send them into Xoriat.”
“For what purpose?”
Rezam snorted. “You’re assuming that anything having to do with Xoriat will be logical. Even if I knew their plans and could explain them to you, the concepts would probably drive you to claw your own eyes out.”
“And swallow your tongue,” added the other.
“Is there any way to get Oargesha back?” asked the Fox. “Any hope?”
“Listen,” said Rezam, “even if we knew how to operate this device, and even if we could somehow use it to get to Xoriat and back, and even if we were able to find Oargesha in that mess, when we brought her back here, there’d be nothing we could do for her but tie her up tightly and put a gag in her mouth.”
“Because otherwise she’d mutilate herself,” added the second. “In fact, killing her would probably be a mercy. Unless somehow that would drive her soul back to Xoriat. Which it probably would.”
The Shadow Fox sat heavily and buried her face in her palms. “Great gods,” she said to herself, “what have we done?”
“What have we done?” echoed the first wizard. “We’ve managed to procure perhaps the greatest weapon imaginable! If we can just get those notes you were talking about, why, we could bring Khorvaire to its knees!”
“I know. Just the threat could—”
“Threat? How could you have something like this and not use it?” exclaimed Rezam. “Think of it. Everyone who’s slighted us, Thrane and Karrnath and Breland especially, you know they were involved in the Day of Mourning, and House Phiarlan, they had to know that Cyre was going to die, how else do you explain the fact that all of their most senior members managed to be out of our country when it died? Just imagine how they’ll pay with an eternity of torment for what they did to our homeland! And then anyone else, if they don’t bow to our demands, boom! We pull their souls to Xoriat and listen to them scream.”
“But it does such unspeakable—”
“For that matter, we’d have to use it just to test it, make sure we understood its function properly.”
“Right,” said his assistant. “Test all the settings, all the permutations of the controls. Of course, first we have to figure out how to operate it.”
“That’s certain,” Rezam said. “It’s a very interesting puzzle. Very interesting. I could probably start a whole magewright school based on this alone. I wonder if we could duplicate it.”
The Shadow Fox looked at the two mages in disbelief. “You’re mad,” she whispered.
“Mad?” quipped the second. “No, the people trapped in there, they are mad. If you could hear them, you’d know what I mean. We’re trying to make sense of it.”
“But you just said that Xoriat makes no sense to the sane.”
Rezam leaned forward, thrusting his face far too close to the Fox’s. She recoiled from his bulging eyes as far as she could in the chair. “I did say that. But this …” he said, gesturing one hand dramatically to the Sphere, “this is a device. Devices work by mechanical and metaphysical laws. Laws that can be understood. And I think I am starting to understand some of how this device works.” He waggled his eyebrows, and the Shadow Fox felt a knot tighten in her stomach.
She slid out of the side of the chair and stood, backing away from the wizards. “All right,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it. But I think you all ought to cover that thing completely and call it a night. Get some rest before you continue. Understand?”
The wizards looked at each other quizzically, then nodded in agreement. “Absolutely,” they said unconvincingly. “Smart idea.”
The Shadow Fox let herself out of the arcanium, sliding back into the city streets. She prayed that she knew what she was doing.
Dawn was just breaking over the western horizon when Teron sat bolt upright in bed, awakening with a gasp, his hands raised for combat.
Praxle rolled over and looked with bleary eyes. “Nightmare, monk?”
Teron ran his hands over his eyes and across his ears. “Yes.”
“Well, put a cork in it. I’m trying to sleep.” Praxle rolled back over and pulled the blanket up high.
Teron sat in bed for a while, calming himself as the overpowering images of his dream faded in the pre-dawn light. His breathing slowed back to normal, and he lay back down, his hands clasped prayerfully over his nose as he meditated.
A few minutes later, a long, low moan carried through the room.
“I told you to cork it,” grumbled Praxle.
Another moan, and Praxle threw his pillow at Teron, who sensed it at the last minute and partially blocked it, then sat up in annoyance. “What was that for?”
“Quit your yowling nightmares, monk, I want to get back to sleep,” grumped Praxle from beneath a shapeless pile of covers.
Teron started to say something, then arrested his tongue. He stood quietly, went to the window, and pried it open. He leaned out.
“Flotsam!” he said gently, with a ghost of a smile on his face. “And I see you caught yourself breakfast!”
A misshapen homunculus prowled the perimeter of the Camat Library, grunting, hissing, and squealing with every painful move of its malformed limbs. It lurched about the brush on its two legs, using one of its arms for balance and the other arm to shield its uneven, piggy eyes from the sun. It scratched in the dirt, muttering to itself and wiping its nose. Then it moved on, snuffling the leaves and gurgling in its throat. Every so often a horse and carriage clopped along the cobbled street close to the undergrowth, and the pitiful creation hunkered down and covered its head mournfully, shivering in fear.
It hobbled along, doubly-forked tongue dabbing the dirt, frail hands picking up twigs and other detritus for inspection, wet nose sniffing insistently at every thorn and leaf.
Then at last it found what it was looking for: a long, sharp thorn darkly stained. A wail of gleeful spite squeezed out of its angled throat, nasal and reedy. It grabbed the thorn by its base and tried to pry it off, to no avail. The homunculus barked and growled, then cursed a string of incomprehensible syllables in some unknown language. It renewed the attack on the thorn, clawing and biting at the stalk of the plant, prying, tugging, twisting, ripping, cursing. At last, the thorn started to pull free, resisting like a youngster’s tooth, but the eager homunculus exerted its asymmetric body ever the harder, and soon the thorn came loose. The creature yowled its deviant delight, a noise loud and guttural enough that it caused even the daylight traffic to pause in unease.
It loped along the ground to the front door of the library, holding the darkened thorn aloft like a torch. Every galloping movement of its body forced out some small utterance from the beast, small wheezes and grunts of discomfort.
It climbed the long set of stairs leading to the doors, each step half as high as it was. Its barrel ribcage expanded and contracted laboriously, panting with the heroic effort of the ascent. Its jaw, filled with needle-like teeth, hung open with its tongue lolling out.