“She’s out of it?” I said.
“For a long time,” he replied.
I looked at Jasra, who was glancing down into the mirror.
“Are you ready?” I inquired.
She regarded me through lowered lashes.
“How do you propose transporting us?” she asked.
“Do you have an especially tricky means of getting us in?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Then I will be calling upon the Ghostwheel to take us there.”
“Are you certain it is safe? I’ve conversed with that … device. I am not sure it is trustworthy.”
“It’s fine;” I said. “Any spells you want to prime first?”
“Not necessary. My … resources should be in good order.”
“Mandor?”
I heard a clicking sound from somewhere within his cloak.
“Ready,” he said.
I withdrew the Ghostwheel Trump and studied it. I began my meditation.
Then I reached. Nothing happened. I tried again, recalling, tuning, expanding. I reached again, calling, feeling…
“The door …,” Jasra said.
I glanced at the door to the hallway, but there was nothing unusual about it. Then I looked at her and realized the direction of her gaze.
The doorway to the next room, where Nayda slept, had begun to glow. It shone with a yellow light, and even as I watched, it grew in intensity. A spot of greater brightness then occurred at its center. Abruptly, the spot began a slow up-and-down movement.
Then came music, from where I was not certain, and Ghost’s voice announced, “Follow the bouncing ball.”
“Stop it!” I said. “It’s distracting!”
The music went away. The circle of light grew still.
“Sorry,” Ghost said. “I thought you’d find a little comic relief relaxing.“
“You guessed wrong,” I replied. “I just want you to take us to the citadel at the Keep of the Four Worlds.”
“Do you want the troops, also? I can’t seem to locate Luke.”
“Just the three of us,” I answered.
“What about the one who sleeps next door? I’ve met her before. She doesn’t scan right.”
“I know. She’s not human. Let her sleep. “
“Very well, then. Pass through the door.”
“Come on,” I said to the others, picking up my weapons belt and buckling it on, adding my spare dagger, grabbing my cloak off a chair, and drawing it over my shoulders.
I walked toward the portal and Mandor and Jasra followed. I stepped through, but the room was no longer there. Instead, there came a moment of blurring, and when my senses cleared, I was staring down and outward across a great distance beneath a heavily overcast sky, a cold wind whipping at my garments.
I heard an exclamation from Mandor and, a moment later, another from Jasra-behind me and to the left. The great ice field lay bone-white to my right, and in the opposite direction a slate-gray sea tossed whitecaps like serpents in a bucket of milk. Far below, before me, the dark ground simmered and steamed.
“Ghost!” I cried. “Where are you?”
“Here,” came a soft response, and I looked down to behold a tiny ring of light near the toe of my left boot. Directly ahead and below, the Keep stood stark in the distance. There were no signs of life outside its walls. I realized that I must be in the mountains, standing somewhere near the place where I had held my lengthy colloquy with the old hermit named Dave.
“I wanted you to take us into the citadel within the Keep,” I explained. “Why did you bring us up here?”
“I told you I don’t like that place,” Ghost answered. “I wanted to give you a chance to look it over and decide exactly where you wished to be sent within. That way I can move very fast on the delivery, and not expose myself overlong to forces I find distressing.”
I continued to study the Keep. A pair of twisters were again circling the outer walls. If there had not been a moat, they would probably have done a good job of creating one. They stayed almost exactly 180 degrees apart, and they took turns at illumination. The nearest one grew spark-shot with bolts of lightning, acquiring an eerie incandescence; then, as it began to fade, the other brightened. They passed through this cycle several times as I watched.