Her surroundings shifted in unpleasant fashion, as though someone had taken normal space in either hand and given it a spiral twist. She felt she was about to lose her balance, though the weight remained on her soles. Clawing her knife from its scabbard, she prepared for an attack, knowing even as she clasped the hilt that any physical action here must be pointless.
Then the mist cleared, and she recognized the subterranean hall where she had first met Enas Yorl against her will. There was the table so long it could have seated the entire nobility of Sanctuary; there was the caped figure seated at its farther end; and all around her she heard echoes that brought shivers to her spine, as of cantrips which had set the thick stone walls to ringing like a new-stuck bell.
She stood as immobile as on that first occasion, this time not by con- straint, purely from her mingled fear and anger.
“You failed!” she accused.
Her words, themselves echoing along the monstrous room, drove away the fainter echoes. At long last Enas Yorl bestirred himself.
“No,” he said in a thin voice. “I succeeded.”
“What?” Jarveena took a pace toward him. It seemed not to diminish the distance that separated them; in any case, she had no wish at this moment to be in his presence at all, let alone come closer. “Then why did Klikitagh brush past me without a sign of recognition-worse: shove me out of his way like a persistent streetwalker?” Recollections crowded in. “Besides, you said that if you did succeed, he’d die!”