“And you were supposed to be back before sundown- sundown yesterday, I might
add.”
“You’re my assistant, my apprentice. Apprentices are like children: Children
don’t make decisions; they do as they’re told. And if I tell you to have the
cage ready-you have the cage ready no matter when I return,” the magician
complained, daubing at the wounds on his neck.
The men stared at each other until Randal looked away. Molin Torchholder was too
accustomed to power to be any man’s apprentice.
“I thought it best to save the globe after you and she knocked it off its
pedestal,” he explained, nodding toward the table where an unremarkable pottery
sphere rested against a half-emptied wine glass.
Randal slumped back against the wall. “You touched an activated Globe of Power,”
he mused. He possessed the globe and still hesitated before touching it, but the
high priest simply picked it up. “You could have been killed-or worse,” Randal
added as an afterthought. His fingers wove glyphs that made the globe first
shimmer, then vanish into that way-station between realities magicians called
their “cabinets.”
“I’ve made my way doing what had to be done,” Molin said when the process was
complete. “You’ve led me to believe that the destruction of that globe could
unbind the planes of existence. I can see that, at its heart, the globe is
nothing but a piece of poorly made pottery. Perhaps it was necessary to use
magic to destroy it, as you and Ischade did with Roxane’s, but, perhaps, simply
falling off the pedestal would be as effective a destruction. I could not take