The lid shut with a click, and with a start she heard the snap of the lock. In the next instant the floor beneath her dropped, and she found herself falling. In a panic she reached for the sides of the chest, but they had also vanished-or she had already plunged far away from them. A rush of air blasted her face, pulled her hair out straight, and loudly flapped the fabric of her tunic.
Another spell came into her mind, one she had heard Jenna use on this trip. Immediately she spoke the purposeful word of featherfall. In the next instant she was floating gently, righting herself, and quickly coming to rest on a flat, solid surface. She stepped to the side, slightly unbalanced, and her foot kicked a loose object on the floor. Coryn realized, with a chill, that another second or two delay, and she might have smashed into the ground and died.
For the first time, this Test began to seem like a very serious matter.
She needed to see better. Experimentally, she tried to mouth the command for her light spell, and was not surprised that she couldn't remember it exactly. Of course, it was an unfamiliar spell, and not at all an easy one; she would have to study and practice the spell some more before she would be able to cast it readily. But there were other ways to bring about illumination. She remembered the object her foot had bumped-it had sounded like a piece of wood. Dropping to her knees, she felt around on what seemed to be a floor of flat, mortared stones. Quickly she found a wooden shaft that seemed to be about the length of a club.
Another word of command from Umma's book brought a cheery blaze to the head of the shaft, making quite a serviceable torch. She held it up and saw she was in a very large chamber, so large that she couldn't see any sign of walls or ceiling within the dome of her flickering illumination.
Slowly she turned in a circle, trying to figure out which way to go; when she had completed the spin, she felt oddly certain that she was intended to head in the direction where she had begun the circle. Starting forward, torch held high, she tried to peer through that vast, surrounding darkness.
The sound came first as an indistinct roar, distant but clearly powerful. Almost immediately Coryn identified a surge of rushing water. Swelling in volume, churning so hard that it soon rumbled through the floor under her feet, the flood swept closer; already she could feel a change in the air, chill moisture sweeping against her skin, the noise a physical pressure.
She thought, momentarily, of the wild magic she had so long used to control water in all its forms; then instantly her gut lurched with a spasm of nausea. And suddenly she knew there was no place for wild magic in her heart, not now, perhaps never again. For a brief second, that thought filled her with sadness and sharp fear. Now she could see the huge wave, taller then herself, bearing down on her like a vengeful, white-haired hag.
"Gravitus-denu!" The levitate spell popped into her mind and out of her mouth in the same split second. Water surged against her feet, up to her knees, the white crest looming overhead-and then the churning maelstrom roared under her, as she rose swiftly into the air, above the surging waves.
She floated idly for a few minutes. The sensation of weightlessness was pleasant, as it had been when Jenna had cast the same spell upon her a few days earlier. How long had it been? She was losing track of time.
Staying low enough to see the surface of the water in her torchlight, but not getting her feet wet, she watched as the tempest settled into a placid lake and then, slowly, drained away. When she could see the wet paving stones reflecting back the glow of her torch, she lowered herself to the ground.
Continuing on her way she came to other challenges, meeting each with a spell. At first these came from her childhood reading in the hut, or from her eavesdropping on Jenna.
But then there were others, words and incantations that she had never heard before, enchantments that arose in her mind as needed. Where did the come from? Did they come from the Master? She wasn't sure. She wasn't sure she cared. She was filled with happiness.
She began to cast a variety of spells previously unknown to her. When a ball of fire exploded toward her, she summoned a protective globe that completely surrounded her. Invisible but strong, it held back the incendiary storm that would have charred her in seconds; and within the sphere she merely felt a mild, not even unpleasant, warmth. When, next, a deep chasm yawned before her, she delighted in crossing over it with the fly spell. When she came to another chasm a short distance later, she created a magical horse-a stamping, snorting creature of ephemeral mist-which she mounted. The steed surged through the air, carrying her to the far side. Making her way down a narrowing corridor, she then came to a wall of stone erected across her path; yet another new spell melted those rocks into sticky mud, and she tiptoed through the morass to continue merrily on her way.
Finally the corridor opened up to terminate in a small, square room. There was a door in each of the three walls-a red door to her right, a black door in the middle, a white door to the left. She thought of Jenna and Dalamar, their rivalry and hostility toward each other-and their contempt for her.
Without hesitation, Coryn turned to the white door and opened it.
She stopped in surprise when she spotted Kalrakin just a few paces away. The tall, bearded sorcerer was stalking away from her down a corridor in the Tower-it looked like the very same place where she had last seen him.
Abruptly Kalrakin stopped and turned, and Coryn suppressed an urge to back up and close the door. Instead, she stood there and faced him as he stomped toward her. Her eyes were drawn to his hands. Once again she saw that pearly stone as he flipped it hack and forth. She was awed, and frightened, as the angry sorcerer approached; the ominous stone seemed to he wavering and dancing in the air. Her breath caught with a sudden jab of fear.
But Kalrakin walked right past her, without so much as acknowledging her existence. With amazement she grasped that he couldn't see her, and she felt a thrill of stealthy accomplishment as she fell in behind him, following the tall sorcerer along the hallway.
"You were a fool to let that little bitch live!" he snarled. Only then did she notice Luthar, standing outside the very door she had penetrated at the beginning of the Test. She had descended far from that place, and wandered a long distance through caverns and that vast chamber, yet she was not surprised to find herself right back at her very point of origin.
"I am sorry for the suggestion, Master," murmured the rotund man, his face paling. Coryn saw a bruise on Luthar's cheek, and a nasty sear of a burn that had blazed along his hand and wrist. Kalrakin had already punished his companion. "But it seemed our best chance of opening the wizard lock."
"Bah!" the dour mage turned again, startling Coryn who was just a few steps behind him. But once again he showed no sign that he was aware of her presence. His face distorted by fury, eyes blazing, he stretched out his fist, fingers clenched around the stone. White light pulsed and the sorcerer grimaced with the strain of casting his most powerful magic. Paving stones rose from the floor, shattered against each other, shards flew through the air; a whole section of the hallway was destroyed by Kalrakin's wrath.