“I’m stuck here anyway,” Harold said. He pointed to what I had assumed was the front door to the suite. “It’s like walking into a wall trying to go through there.”
“And the same for how we came in?” Tanda asked.
“Oh, I can go all the way to the entrance into the ballroom through the skull room,” Harold said. “Then I hit the screen.”
“How about through the floor, or the window?” I asked.
“Haven’t tried either,” he said.
“I doubt it would work,” Aahz said.
“Yeah,” Tanda said, “captive spells, which I think this sounds like, are all-around prisons. It’s like being in an invisible, unbreakable bubble.”
“So to get Harold out with us,” I said, “we have to break that spell as well.”
“You’re coming with us?” Glenda asked.
“I’m going to try,” Harold said. He didn’t add that there was gold for getting him out, and none of the rest of us filled her in either.
“So, old mentor,” I said to Aahz, “how do we go about breaking the spells, since it seems to me that both our main ways of escape are blocked by them?”
He looked at me with a harsh look, then answered my question. “A couple of ways to break a spell. Either put a counter-spell on it, or cut off the source of power to the spell.”
“Since this place is flowing with energy, the second doesn’t sound likely. How does a counter-spell work?”
“I’ve tried every one I know,” Harold said.
I glanced at Aahz. “My mentor hasn’t even taught me any yet.”
“When you gain enough self-control to use them,” Aahz said, “I might think about it.”
“I tried a number of them the first day I was here,” Glenda said. “Didn’t even dent the dimension-hopping shield.”