The tall, beak-nosed sorcerer stiffened visibly, but then turned and stalked down the hallway to the landing at the top of the stairs. "I'll stand over here if it helps your concentration in the slightest, which I doubt," he said, his expression twitching between smirking and glowering.
Coryn was already ignoring him, studying the blank door. There didn't seem to be anything magical about it, not even when she closed her eyes and tried to picture and explore any hints of sorcery in those planks, or around the small metal lock. Perhaps it was that this whole place was so magical that the mere spell on a door was lost in the haze. Certainly, she sensed unusual emanations surrounding her, encouraging her. The Tower still suffered, she knew, though she hadn't glimpsed the Master since Kalrakin's appearance. But she felt implicitly that her presence was a balm to that pain. Oddly enough, she was suddenly filled with confidence, and she viewed the door as an inviting portal, drawing her toward a world of wonders.
Safety awaited her there. Not perfect safety, to be sure, for the world was ever dangerous. But passage through the door would take her beyond the reach of Kalrakin's capricious violence. He would be left behind.
Her eyes remained closed as she walked forward, feeling her way. In her mind she saw the door outlined in white light. Raising her hands, fingers extended, she advanced one step, then another, expecting to feel the touch of smooth, cool wood. But she met no resistance. The glow expanded, encompassing her, and she felt a tingle of pure joy. Still nothing blocked her path as, with two more steps, the glowing aura completely surrounded and embraced her. In surprise, she opened her eyes to see that she was enclosed in a place of utter darkness.
At the same time, she heard an angry curse from somewhere behind her. Something smashed into a solid wooden barrier, pounding with a volley of repeated blows, and she had a vaguely satisfied image of Kalrakin throwing himself against the door, violently and futilely striving to follow her.
"Indeed, this must be my Test," she whispered, heartened by the sound of her own voice in the darkness. She felt a sense of ownership, of proprietorship. Though it was just a room, it was one of a very few from which the Master had managed to bar the trespassing sorcerers. And yet she had been allowed in. No, she had used her own magic to enter.
Coryn reached back to touch the door and murmured the soft incantation of a light spell. Immediately a soft, diffuse glow surrounded her.
She was in a medium-sized room, she saw at once. There was a single object, a large chest on a floor that was otherwise layered with a thick film of dust. Moving forward, she saw that the trunk was clean, as if it had just appeared in this long-disused chamber. Quickly she scanned the rest of the room, seeing no other exits or entrances. There was a round window in the far wall, secured by a wooden shutter so tight that no ray of daylight slipped through-if, indeed, it opened onto the outside of the Tower, as she assumed.
She focused her attention on the chest, kneeling before it, the knee of her torn trousers raising a puff of dust from the floor. A large clasp secured the lid, and there was a keyhole- but no key in sight. Coryn touched the clasp and a word came into her mind, one she had read in Umma's secret book.
She spoke it at once; the word made a strange sound, yet agreeable and even familiar on her tongue. A tiny light sparked, not at all unpleasantly, at her fingertip. She pulled the clasp upward, and it released easily. The lid was heavy, but with both hands she was able to pull it up.
Somewhat to her surprise, she saw the trunk was empty. Reaching a hand inside, she touched the bottom, comparing the depth of her reach to the outer dimension of the chest; there was no false bottom, so far as she could tell, yet she had reached deeper than the actual size of the trunk.
Puzzled, now, she got up, dusted off her pants, and went to the window. The shutter was fastened with a simple clasp, which she released. When she pulled, the shutter swung away, and she found herself dazzled by the morning sunlight streaming across Wayreth Forest. She was about halfway up the tower, she guessed, above the tops of the surrounding trees, so she could see for miles. A rolling carpet of green extended to the far horizon; one view was dominated by a range of low, verdant hills. The blanket of trees extended uninterrupted in all directions, as far as she could see.
Her window was far above the nearest balcony, sheer wall extending above and to both sides, so this was clearly no way out-unless, of course, she was supposed to fly. The fly spell she had memorized from Jenna offered a possibility, but she had no intention of abandoning the Test.
Making a complete circuit of the walls of the room, she found no singular features other than a few torch sconces- which she pulled at, experimentally-and the door through which she had passed. Coryn had no interest in leaving the room yet-to face the hostile Kalrakin, waiting in the hallway; besides, somehow she knew, just knew, that the next step of the Test had to do with something in this room. That seemed, pretty clearly, to mean the chest. She went back to the container, which was perhaps four feet long by three wide, and a little less than three feet deep. It was still empty, and that hollowness, that lack, made her a little sad all of a sudden-and in the swelling up of unexpected emotion she realized what she had to do. Stepping into the chest, she knelt and took hold of the lid. With considerable effort, she pulled it up and then lowered it, watching as the light from the window and her spell slowly vanished behind the descending cover. There was no terror in that darkness; instead it was like a warm blanket enclosing her.
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.