He turned right and followed the corridor, halting at the sixth door on the right. To his relief, the facade still bore the complicated sigil he'd marked as his own. To be certain, he leaned close and put his ear to the door, straining to listen for any sound within.
Voices rang out sharply from the end of the hall. Aeron straightened and looked before he could help himself. A pair of students in their tabards and caps stood outside a door, talking in low voices. They seemed older than the students Aeron had remembered-these weren't teenagers, but a pair of grown men.
"Aeron!" hissed Eriale. "Don't stare!"
He nodded abruptly and set his hand to the door, trying it. Naturally, it was locked. He turned his shoulder to conceal his actions from the two students down the hall, and quietly spoke the spell of opening he'd used to enter his room. To his surprise, it worked flawlessly, and he let himself into his room. Eriale stepped in on his heels, sliding out of the hallway and out of sight.
The room was very close to the way he'd left it; his personal effects were still in the same places, and no one had bothered to remove the furniture or even to strip the bed. A few mundane books remained on his shelves, but Aeron could tell at a glance that most of the important ones had been removed, including his old spellbooks and the scroll tube in which he'd hidden the Chants of Madryoch the Ebon Flame. "Damn," he muttered.
"I wonder why they never cleaned out your room?" Eriale said.
"Well, they did in their way. Most of my spellbooks and some scrolls and texts aren't here anymore." Aeron sat down at his old desk, his chin in his hand. "No one knew where I'd gone when I first fled. It must have been months before they decided I wasn't coming back."
"The books were your only important belongings?"
Aeron nodded. "Yes. I suppose that Oriseus or one of his masters probably searched this room personally. They wouldn't bother to remove anything except materials they thought they might have a use for."
"The servants wouldn't have come in to check on you?"
"They might have been instructed not to, on the chance that I might return."
Eriale strolled over to the window and gazed out at the muddy apron of ground beyond the dormitory. She leaned forward to study something outside. "Aeron, what's this?"
"What?" Aeron stood and moved over to gaze out the window over her shoulder.
Outside, the ruins of the Broken Pyramid were not just ruins anymore. The rubble had been cleared away from the stone foundation of the ancient monument, and an effort was underway to rebuild it just as it had stood hundreds of years ago. Aeron gaped in shock; he'd never imagined that it could be rebuilt. But the smooth dark stone rose forty feet into the air, ending in a jagged course of stone blocks. The whole edifice was ringed by rickety scaffolding, and sheds for stonecutters and carpenters had been raised at the foot of the structure. A handful of masons were at work on the ground, cutting the blocks for the next course.
"What are they building here?" Eriale asked.
"It looks like they're raising the Broken Pyramid again," Aeron said. "The ruins of an old Untheric obelisk used to stand there. It was nothing more than a heap of rubble, with a few old walls still standing. Oriseus must have decided to rebuild it." He frowned, watching one mason patiently chisel away an uneven corner. "Where are all the workmen? This looks like a place where dozens of men could work without getting in each other's way."
"It's the end of the week."
Aeron grimaced. Not everything had to have a sinister purpose behind it, he reminded himself. But he did not like the look of the pyramid. He could feel the magical power imprisoned in the heavy stone blocks, as if each stone that had been laid down completed one small part of a vast and potent whole. The ebon sheen of the smooth rock drew his eye, refusing to allow him to look away. When complete, the spire would be a focus for the Shadow Stone, a magnifier of some kind.
"Aeron?" Eriale glanced at him with concern.
"I'm fine," he admitted after a moment. "The implications of this frighten me, that's all."
"Do you sense the stone?"
Aeron met her eyes and returned his gaze to the rising pyramid. With the trepidation of a man reaching out to touch an angry snake, he allowed his vision to blur and shift, trying to sense the eddy and flow of the Weave around the tower. He could feel the stone nearby, but its chill emanations seemed muted, like sunlight passing through a thin cloth. The monument would change that when complete; it would offer a conduit from the realms of shadow into the waking world, a breach through which the stone's corrupting influence could stream undiminished.
"It's there, but it's in the plane of shadow," Aeron said after a long moment. "Close at hand, but a world away."
Eriale reached out to clasp his hand. She could tell that he was frightened by what he saw, even if she did not perceive the threat that was visible to him. "So what can we do about it?" she asked.
"I won't know for certain until I take a closer look."
The archer grew pale. "You mean, from the shadow-plane?"
Aeron nodded. "We'll try at dusk. But first I want to see Master Telemachon's chambers." He turned away from the window and glided across the room, picking up his bundle of sheets again. With Eriale trailing behind him, he opened the door and peeked out.
They were lucky-the two students were gone. He quickly crossed the hall and ducked into the servant's passage again, trotting back down to the laundry room. The laundress had left as well, so Aeron returned his sheets to the shelf and led Eriale outside into the cold, clinging fog.
"It doesn't seem like many people are here today," Eriale said quietly as they circled the quadrangle. "How many masters and students are there?"
"There used to be about thirty masters, forty students, and eighty to ninety novices in the college when I was here. But as you pointed out, it's the week's end. They might be elsewhere." Aeron chewed on his tongue. "Or maybe there aren't as many here now. A number of masters left after Oriseus became lord of the ruling council. And a lot of students and novices washed out then, too."
They found the servants' entrance to the Masters' Hall and entered carefully. A wing of the building was devoted to servant's quarters and the refectory, so a maid and chamberboy weren't at all out of place here-but their odds of encountering another servant were much higher. Aeron immediately turned to the servants' stair to circumvent the crowded scullery and kitchens, descending to the cluttered cellars and storerooms beneath the Masters' Hall.
Here the warm wood paneling and elegant furnishings of the college were conspicuously absent. The barrel-vaulted ceiling was low and dank, illuminated by guttering oil lamps at irregular intervals. Great tuns of wine and ale were crowded under each stone arch, dusty and worn. Aeron had only been down in the cellars once or twice, but he turned left and led Eriale along the dark passageway.
Someone coughed ahead. From one of the storerooms a lean old manservant appeared, carrying a small cask of brandy. Aeron kept the surprise from his face and managed a friendly nod of greeting, hoping his nervousness wouldn't show.
"Good day," he said cheerily.
"Hmmph. Good day, indeed." The valet passed Aeron with a long look. Aeron breathed a sigh of relief-the fellow hadn't seemed to notice their strange faces. His hopes were dashed a moment later. "Hey, wait a minute. Who are you?"
Aeron glanced at Eriale. Her face was carefully neutral, and she took two steps to flank the servant without being obvious about it. He turned to face the fellow and offered a smile and a shrug. "We're both new. Who are you?"
"I'm Kerrick. Did Olmad bring you on?"