There was no reply.
“Nicco?”
Worried that the cleric might have stepped onto the platform and been teleported away, Arvin tucked the pouch in a pocket and crossed the room. He stood beside the platform, listening, and heard what sounded like snoring over the hiss of the flames. It seemed to be coming from the center of the platform.
Wary of the flames, Arvin leaned across the platform. His hand brushed against tassels-one end of Nicco’s sash. The cleric must have fallen victim to a spell that sent him into a magical slumber. Arvin grabbed the sash and tried to pull Nicco toward him, but when he yanked, the sash suddenly came free, sending him stumbling backward. Dropping it, Arvin made a circuit of the platform. He leaned over it as much as he dared, but his questing hands encountered only air. He could hear Nicco snoring but couldn’t reach him. The platform was simply too wide. Nicco must be lying directly at its center.
Arvin paused, thinking. Whatever laid Nicco low hadn’t taken effect immediately. Maybe if Arvin didn’t venture too close to the center of the platform, he’d be safe. He couldn’t just let the cleric lie there. If he did, Nicco might never wake up.
Arvin stepped up onto the platform.
As soon as he did, he felt a rush of vertigo. It was as if someone had grabbed hold of his trousers at the hip and yanked, sending him tumbling forward. Too late, he realized what had happened. The key in his trouser pocket must have triggered something-one of the phase doors that Nicco had spoken about. Like an anchor chained to Arvin, the key pulled him down into a patch of blurry, queasy nothingness.
Arvin landed facedown on a hard stone floor, knocking the air from his lungs. He felt a throbbing in his lip and tasted blood; his lip was split. Hissing with pain, he sat up and looked around and found that he was in utter darkness. He wet his lips and found them coated with a damp, gritty substance that tasted of ashes.
The remains of the cremated dead.
He spat several times, not stopping until his mouth was clean. Then he rose to his feet. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear a faint chanting-the voices of the cultists, raised in prayer to their loathsome god. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw, in the direction the chanting was coming from, a patch of faint reddish light, rectangular in shape-a hallway. As he stared at it, something small scurried across the floor nearby, making him hiss in alarm.
It’s just a rat, he admonished himself angrily, embarrassed at having startled. Where’s your self-control?
He raised a hand and found that the ceiling was just overhead. Its stonework felt solid. He tried prodding it with the key, but nothing happened. Whatever doorway Arvin had just passed through appeared to work only in one direction.
Somewhere above, Nicco lay in magical slumber. The cleric might as well have been in another city, for all the good he was going to be.
Arvin worked his way around the room, feeling the walls. He didn’t find any other exits; there was only one way out.
Toward the chanting voices.
He shuddered at the thought of facing the cultists alone and raised a hand to touch the bead at his throat. “Nine-”
The bead wasn’t there.
Hissing in alarm, Arvin dropped to his knees and scuffed around in the ash. Dust rose to his nostrils and he choked back a sneeze. Then he spotted something near the middle of the room-a faint blue glow. Brushing the ash away from it, he saw that it was coming from his bead. It was no longer smooth and round; fully half of the clay had crumbled away and something was protruding out of it-a slim length of crystal that glowed with a faint blue light.
A power stone.
Suddenly, his mother’s last goodbye made sense. “Don’t lose this bead,” she’d told him as she tied the thong around his neck. “I made it myself. I had intended to give it to you when you’re older but…” She paused, eyes glistening, then stood. “One day, that bead may grant you nine lives, just like a cat. Remember that-and keep it safe. Don’t ever take it off.”
“Nine lives,” Arvin repeated in an anguished whisper as he stared at the power stone. “And you gave them to me. Why didn’t you use them to save yourself instead?” He knew the answer, of course. That his mother must have foreseen her death in the dream she had the night before-and, contrary to her assurances, believed it to be inevitable.
A tear trickled, unheeded, down Arvin’s cheek.
Grasping what remained of the bead in both hands, he crumbled it apart. The crystal came away clean, unmarred by its years inside the bead. Holding it between his thumb and finger, he peered into its depths. The faint blue light inside it was the color of the summer sky and seemed equally as limitless. His mother had created this power stone. Somewhere, deep inside it, was a tiny piece of her soul. It whispered to Arvin in a voice just at the edge of hearing, as if calling his name. Allowing his mind to fall into the cool blue depths of the stone, he tried to answer.
Mother?
There was no reply-just a soft sighing, as impossible to grasp as the wind.
Staring at the power stone, Arvin drifted in that vast expanse of blue, no longer aware of his physical surroundings. What was it that Tanju had said? In order to hail a power stone, one had to know the proper name to use. If a stranger had created the stone, Arvin might guess for a thousand years and never come up with the right name. But it wasn’t just anyone who had crafted this power stone. It was Arvin’s mother.
This time, he used his mother’s name: Sassan?
Still nothing, just an empty sighing.
Arvin drifted, trying to think what his mother might have named the stone. It would almost certainly be a name Arvin was familiar with-one his mother knew he would eventually guess. She wouldn’t have given him the power stone if there were no hope of him ever using it.
He tried again, using the name of the lamasery: Shou-zin?
Nothing.
He thought back, again, to his mother’s final words to him, wondering if they might have held a clue. But she hadn’t said anything, really, after the cryptic message about the bead granting “nine lives.” She’d simply given him one of her brief, formal hugs then turned to go, stopping only to shoo the cat away from the door so she could open it.
Suddenly Arvin realized the answer.
Cinders? Arvin tried, using the childish name he’d given the stray cat that had taken up residence with them, despite his mother’s protests.
Who hails me?
The voice that answered sounded female-and slightly feline. It was braided together from several different voices, each with a different timbre and pitch. Though they all spoke at once, Arvin knew instantly how many they were-six. The maximum number of powers a power stone could hold.
Arvin hails you, he answered. Show yourselves.
Six twinkling stars suddenly appeared in the pale blue sky. They hung like ripe gems just waiting to be plucked, each burning with a light either bright or faint according to the amount of energy that fueled it. Arvin brushed his mental fingers against the closest of these stars-a medium-bright mote of light-drinking in the knowledge of the power it contained. By manifesting this power, he would be able to teleport, just as Nicco did, to any destination he could clearly visualize-the chamber above, for example.
Laughing, he touched another of the motes of light, its glow approximately equal to the first. This second power also conveyed the ability to teleport but was intended for use on another person or creature, rather than on the manifester himself. Strange, Arvin thought, that his mother had included a power that would only affect others. The ability to teleport someone else wasn’t exactly a life-saving power. Giving a mental shrug, he moved on to the next.
He touched another of the gemlike stars and discovered it to be a power that would allow him to dominate another person, forcing him to do whatever he bid. He gave a mental hiss of satisfaction-then realized that was the mind seed, reacting to the extremes to which this power could be put. Even so, a part of him savored the idea of using it on Zelia. With it, he could force her to obey his-