“Now what do you see?”
“Nothing much,” Cormac called back. “I just bumped into a wall. Wait a moment, I seem to have company.”
Shiara gasped.
“Nay, lass, he’s not dangerous now. But I think you will enjoy this.”
“Stay where you are.” Shiara moved away from the door and toward Cormac who was invisible in the gloom. “Talk to me. Anything, just so I can follow the sound of your voice.”
“Well, it’s dark over here, darker than any other part of the room. And our friend isn’t much of a conversationalist.”
“Fine,” said Shiara coming up to him. “Don’t look at that floor. It’s both a trap and a hiding place. It is designed to draw you away from this spot and perhaps ensnare you if you are so foolish as to watch the floor as you walk.”
She nodded to Cormac’s silent companion. “I think that’s what happened to him.”
Standing almost next to Cormac with his eyes fixed on the floor was a black-robed wizard. He was obviously alive but equally obviously caught fast in the grip of a spell. He could neither move nor talk but his eyes burned with venomous hatred as he looked at the floor.
“Why it’s Jul-Akkan isn’t it?” Shiara said pleasantly. “I thought you might be along on this and of course you’re too old a fox to be caught by the death spells around the hoard. What did you do, wait outside while the others rushed to the pedestals?”
She turned to Cormac. “Note him well, Cormac. Jul-Akkan is high in the Council of the League. Indeed he bid fair to become a master of all the League, were he able to rid himself of one or two of his more troublesome colleagues. Now here he is, caught like a fly in a honey bowl.”
Cormac shifted and raised his sword for the killing stroke.
“No,” Shiara commanded. “I don’t know what that would do to the spell and I doubt you could kill him so easily. No, best leave him while we attend to our main business.” She stooped to examine the wall behind Cormac.
“Now let us see what is here.”
A quick search of the wall revealed a thin narrow crack in the polished black stone of the wall. Carefully she ran her hand along it, feeling rather than seeing the unevenness that marked a panel in the otherwise solid stone.
She knelt down and pressed her hand against the panel. “It is locked and enchanted, but not guarded, I think.”
“Don’t bet your life on that, lass,” Cormac warned. “This fellow was tricky enough for ten wizards.”
“I will venture nothing on the chance. I merely make the observation.”
Shiara looked up at him from where she knelt. “You do not have to be here for this.”
Cormac shook his head. “You may need me.” Then he laid his hand on hers. “Besides, a World without Light is not a World fit to live in.”
“Thank you Cormac,” she squeezed his hand. “Now stand out of my light while I unravel this puzzle.”
Again working partly by magic and partly with her picks and other tools, Shiara carefully pried the secrets from the lock. Cormac stood by nervously, fingering his sword hilt, his head turning this way and that as he searched for tangible manifestation of the danger he sensed here. Finally there was a click and the panel swung smoothly back.
Behind the panel lay another smaller room lit with the same balefire glow as the great hall. It took only a single lantern to light it. The stink of incense and the reek of magic was fully as strong here as it was beyond. But there were fewer pedestals bearing treasures.
“A puzzle within a puzzle,” Cormac said as he surveyed their latest find.
Shiara pointed to a pier off to one side of the chamber. “There, I think.”
Cautiously she approached and then sucked in her breath at what she saw.
Laying atop the pedestal was a magician’s staff. But it was like no magician’s staff Shiara had ever seen. It was perhaps four feet long and as thick as her wrist, but it was not wood or even metal. Instead it was made of a crystalline substance that seemed to show flickers of an amethyst light deep within itself. Tiny crabbed characters ran inscribed in bands around its surface, save for a space about a hand’s breadth wide near the top. There was no knob or finial on either end. It was more a sceptre than a staff, she realized. A symbol of rule as well as a tool of magical power.