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.
But his wild magic was an abomination here, Coryn told herself. She could feel the suffering of the Tower, pain buzzing in the air all around her; every fiber of her flesh wanted to strike out, to stop the man's rampage.
But as the pieces of stone flew past her, and some, to her astonishment, right through her, she understood she was not really in that corridor. Some arcane means allowed her to see what was happening, to observe, hear, and even smell in that place, but she could neither come to harm nor lash out at Kalrakin. She found herself admiring the Tower's ingenuity-and its inherent courage, standing up to Kalrakin's destructive tantrum and still resisting the efforts of the wild mage to gain access to key locations.
Another white door gleamed, right in the middle of the hallway-though Coryn was certain it hadn't been there a moment earlier. She went over to it, opened it, and passed into a large cavern. The dank air stung her nostrils with a powerful acidic stench. It was dark, but even though she no longer carried her torch-she wasn't sure just where she had left it, but it was no longer in her hand-somehow she could see clearly.
Her steps carried her across an uneven floor, around great spikes of stone that jutted upward; curiously, she noticed many more of these strange formations on the cavern ceiling, dangling downward. Coming around a large shaft, where upward and downward spires had apparently merged into a column, she couldn't suppress a gasp of astonishment, and fright.
She had heard of dragons, but the creature coiled in front of her was much more of a nightmare than anything she could imagine. The mere sight of it made her knees weak, and brought a clammy sweat to her palms as she clenched and unclenched her fingers. The serpent was green, massively snakelike, and was watching her through hooded slits of eyes. Every instinct, every nerve of her being urged her to turn around and flee.
Instead she stood there and met that monster's lazy, disinterested gaze with a steely glare of her own.
"I have slain your comrades. You will find their corpses over there," indicated the serpent in an oily hiss of a voice. A forked tongue slithered from between the toothy jaws, jutting pointedly to the left.
"I do thank you," Coryn said. She was about to start along the indicated path when some notion caused her to hesitate. She faced the beast and curtsied. "Thank you, Sir Dragon," she added.
The wyrm snorted, but she thought that it was at least a little pleased by the gesture. As she walked past the dragon, toward a narrower continuation of the underground cavern, the beast spoke, almost a whisper in her ear.