10 – Aftermath by Asprin, Robert

The droplet of light was white and intense by contrast with the vague glows that both-he had to admit the fact-magicians had created earlier in the evening. It might even have looked bright beside a candle, but Samlor had difficulty remembering anything as normal as candlelight while he stood in this chill, stone room.

Pulse and pause; pulse and pause; pulse . . . He’d thought that the creature of light was a minnow, or perhaps no more than a daub of illumination, a cold flame that did not counterfeit life.

But it surely did. A squid rather than a fish, too small to see but identifiable from the way it jetted forward with rhythmic contractions of its mantle.

The marble floor was so highly polished that it mirrored the creature’s passage with nearly perfect fidelity, catching even the wispy shadows between the tightly clasped tentacles of light trailing behind. The colors and patterning of the stone segments created the illusion that the reflec- tion really swam through water.

“Star,” the caravan master demanded in a restrained voice. “Why are you-“

The reflection blurred into a soft ball of light on a slab of black marble, though the tiny creature jetted above it in crystalline purity. The squid pulsed forward and hung momentarily over a wedge of travertine whose dark bands seemed to enfold the sharp outline.

Then source and reflection disappeared as abruptly as they had spurted from the child’s gesture.

“What?” said Star, shivering fiercely. She scrunched her eyes shut so that her uncle thought she was about to cry. “What happened?”