When their work was done, Smhee said, ‘I don’t know what their reversal will do.
But I’ll wager that it won’t be for Kemren’s good. We must hurry now. If he’s
sensitive to the inflow-outflow of his magic, .he’ll know something’s wrong.’
She thought that it would be better not to have aroused the mage. However, Smhee
was the master; she, the apprentice.
Smhee started to turn away from the wheels but stopped.
‘Look!’
His finger pointed at the wheels.
‘Well?’
‘Don’t you see something strange?’
It was a moment before she saw what had made her uneasy without realizing why.
No water was spilling from the paddles down to the pool. The water just seemed
to disappear after striking them. She looked wonderingly from them to him. ‘I
see what you mean.’
He spread out his hands. ‘I don’t know what’s happening. I’m not a mage or a
sorcerer. But… that water has to be going some place.’
They put their boots back on, and he unshot the bar of the door. It led to
another flight of steps, ending in another door. They went down a corridor the
walls of which were bare stone. But there were also lit torches set in brackets
on them.
At the end of the corridor they came to a round room. Light came down from
torches; the room was actually a tall shaft. Looking up from the bottom, they
could see a black square outlined narrowly by bright light at its top.
13
Voices came from above.
‘It has to be a lift,’ Smhee whispered. He said something in his native tongue
that sounded like a curse.
‘We’re stuck here until the lift comes down.’