“It was Father’s!” Dara said indignantly.
“Then can I have it?” Mark said almost simultaneously.
“Not now,” Kayl said to Mark. She was beginning to wish she had sent the children somewhere else, anywhere else, while she and Glyndon discussed the rod. Not that she had anywhere to send them. She looked down at the crystal and sighed. “I suppose we ought to make sure,” she said, half to herself, and reached toward it.
“Kayl!” Glyndon said in alarm. He bent forward hastily, also reaching for the crystal. Simultaneously, their fingers touched it.
The circular room was full of light. Large, arched windows were spaced at regular intervals around the curving walls, providing an uninspiring view of the dead valley below. The side wall where the stairway came up was covered with a tapestry in cream and crimson, and more tapestries hung between the windows. A cream-colored frieze circled the wall just below the high, domed ceiling. The only furnishings were a marble bench on one side and the waist-high pedestal in the center of the room, where the huge crystal cube rested. The place should have seemed pleasant and airy; instead, Kayl felt as if she were standing in a tomb.
The wizards were all clustered around the pedestal, muttering over the crystal. Kevran was taking measurements, while Glyndon hunched over one side, feeling for any irregularities in the surface. Varevice and Beshara seemed to be arguing about something; Evla was staring into the cube as if she were in a trance. Only Barthelmy and Kayl hung back. Barthelmy watched Odevan standing behind his mistress in an attitude of respectful attention. Kayl prowled the perimeter of the room, looking for conventional, nonmagical threats.
“I give up,” Kevran said at last. “The thing’s a perfect cube, as near as I can tell, and that’s all I can tell.”
“You’ve done better than I have,” Varevice said sourly. “I’ve done every spell I can think of, and that lump of rock is still just a lump of rock.”
“Odevan!” Beshara said peremptorily. “Can you see anything?”
The sklathran’sy came forward and pressed his long, spidery fingers against the top of the crystal. “No, Mistress.”
“Could it be witch-glass?” Evla asked. “I can’t think of anything else that’s so dead to magic.”
Beshara looked speculatively at the Crystal. “I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re probably right. It’s a pity, in a way; we’ll have to destroy it now.”
“Destroy it?” Glyndon said, looking up from his crouch beside the cube. “Why?”
“Beshara’s right,” Varevice said reluctantly. “If it is witch-glass, a lump this size would account for that odd echo in the Elder Mothers’ seeing spells.”
“Not to mention the blur in the ones the High Mage cast,” Beshara put in. “I’m afraid the only way of stopping the interference is to break the cube up into smaller chunks.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Glyndon said. “Especially since we still aren’t sure what this really is.”
“Have you some alternate suggestion?” Beshara asked sweetly.
“We could try breaking off a small piece to test,” Kevran said. “That ought to at least tell us what the cube is made of.”
“But that will spoil the cube!” Glyndon objected.
“I don’t like the idea either, but I think it’s the only way we’ll ever find out what we need to know,” Varevice said.
“And it’s better than just breaking it up.”
Evla nodded agreement. Glyndon looked from one to another, then threw up his hands. “All right, then, go ahead. You will anyway. Just don’t slip and hit me instead.” He crouched and began again his examination of the Crystal’s surface, his palms pressed flat against one vertical side of the cube.
“Everyone agrees, then?” Kevran asked, looking at the other magicians. “All right.” He drew his dagger and raised it over his head, then brought it down, hilt first, in a hard, sharp blow on one corner of the crystal cube. The Crystal rang with a high, pure note, but did not break. Kevran raised the dagger and brought it down again.
With a loud crack, a small corner of the cube broke off. The ringing of the crystal filled the chamber, still a single high note but without the same purity. Momentarily, it mingled with Glyndon’s scream of anguish; then he collapsed forward over the top of the crystal cube, his hands still pressed against its surface.
Evla was on her feet at once, bending over the unconscious Varnan. Kayl started forward to see if she could help.
“Behind you!” Barthelmy’s cry of warning snapped Kayl’s attention away from Glyndon. She turned, and took an involuntary step backward.
A thick, dull blackness was oozing from the wall behind her. It spread rapidly, forming a dark, wet curtain that shut out the light from the windows, then began creeping forward like a cat stalking. Kayl drew her sword and backed away. The blackness wiggled and moved up another foot. She heard screams and shouting behind her, but she could not take her attention off of the black thing long enough to glance around. Somehow she was certain that if she did, it would engulf her.
The thing moved forward. The light in the room dimmed as it blocked more of the windows. Kayl cut at it with her sword, but the blackness closed behind the blade like molasses flowing together behind a knife. She slashed at it again, and again, and felt the balance of her blade change in her hand. She looked down and saw that the metal was dull and pitted, and the edge of the sword visibly eaten away.
She retreated again and glanced around. Her companions, except for Glyndon, were casting spell after spell at the dripping black curtain, with no apparent effect. The blackness covered half the chamber wall now—including the door to the stairway. They were trapped.
A long tendril whipped out from the blackness and wrapped itself around Odevan’s waist. The demon screamed in agony and tore at it with his hands. Beshara and Barthelmy cried out together, but it was Beshara who dove forward to grab Odevan’s arm. With her free hand she sent a gout of fire at the tentacle. The blackness continued to draw Odevan closer, and Beshara with him. She did not release her hold, even when the black thing overwhelmed them.
Kayl wanted to turn her head away, but she did not dare. Another tentacle flashed toward her; she slashed at it and deflected it enough to dodge the rest of the way out of its path. She heard Evla scream, and her heart contracted.
Glyndon was leaning heavily against the crystal, shaking his head as if to clear it. Kayl shouted at him to do something; they needed everyone, even a groggy Varnan wizard. Then a wave of mental agony struck her and she staggered, knowing that one of her star-sisters was dead. The blackness oozed closer, and Kayl slashed at it angrily, hopelessly, uselessly…
“Mother? Mother, are you all right? Mother?”
Dara’s voice, growing more and more frantic, brought Kayl back to herself. The crystal had rolled a little away from her hand and Glyndon’s; looking at it, she shuddered. She forced herself to look up and meet Dara’s worried gaze. “It’s all right, Dara. I’m fine. I think.”
“Are you sure? You looked…” Dara stopped, shaking her head for lack of any better description.
“There’s no harm done,” Kayl said. She glanced across at Glyndon, then turned back to Dara. “Would you and Mark go down and get a couple of mugs of wine from the innkeeper? It will break the warding, but I don’t think that matters much anymore, and Glyndon and I could use them.”
Mark and Dara exchanged glances, and Dara nodded. They slipped out of the room. Kayl looked back at Glyndon as the door closed. “Are you all right? You look a little…” She made an ambiguous gesture.
“I’m fine,” Glyndon said with an attempt at a smile. “I think that thing just brought back the worst effects of last night’s ale.”
“Maybe next time you won’t drink so much of it, then,” Kayl said, trying to match his tone. “And I thought you told me it was winter wine.”
“It was.” Glyndon shook his head experimentally. “At least the effects of the crystal don’t last
as long as the effects of the wine. What did it do to you?”
“Nothing like that, but then I wasn’t drinking last night. This time I remembered a circular room at the top of the Twisted Tower, with a big cube of crystal.”
Glyndon looked up quickly. “I saw the same thing. A vision…”
“That was no vision,” Kayl said flatly. “It was a memory. An impossible memory. We never got past the door at the top of the stairs; the black thing was waiting for us.”
Glyndon did not answer. Kayl stared at him, an unwelcome suspicion growing in her mind. “We never got past the top of the stairs,” she repeated. “Did we?”
Glyndon looked miserable. “Kayl, please don’t ask me.”
“Then explain to me how I can remember something that never happened.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t? What did you do while I was fighting that black thing?”
“I don’t know!” Glyndon all but shouted.
Kayl studied him, and the anguished self-doubt in his expression shook her to the core. “Tell me what you do know, then,” she said in a quieter voice.
“I tried to use the Crystal,” Glyndon said. “I thought the black thing was its guardian; that’s why it appeared when Kevran knocked the chip off the corner of the Crystal. I thought if I could reach the black thing through the Crystal somehow… It didn’t work.”
“But you did do something.”
“I don’t know what or how. I don’t remember anything about the Twisted Tower after I tried to reach into the Crystal, except for some vague images of fighting on the stairs.”
“None of us seem to remember that fight very clearly,” Kayl said in a grim tone. “But you’ve known about the Tower room and the Crystal all these years, haven’t you? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“And make you all certain I’d gone mad?” Glyndon said bitterly. “The visions were bad enough without claiming I remembered something nobody else did.”
Kayl stared at him. Had the trip back to Kith Alunel really been that bad for him? She tried to remember. She had not paid much attention to Glyndon and Kevran then; she had been too wrapped up in her own grief and Barthelmy’s. Did he think she had been avoiding him out of fear that he had lost his wits? “If that’s the way you saw it, I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I wish… I wish I’d known.”
There was a moment’s silence. Kayl turned and picked through her scattered belongings until she found a long wool sash. Bending forward, she covered the crystal with the end of the sash, then picked it up and knotted the sash tightly around it. She wrapped the sash around her waist and tucked the end in, hiding the knot.
“Now what?” Glyndon asked cautiously.
“I’m going to think,” Kayl replied. “And then—I don’t know. I’m going to have to tell the Sisterhood something.”
“Kayl, you can’t!”
“I have to. Don’t you see, this is what the Elder Mothers wanted to know this morning. They were right; things didn’t happen the way Barthelmy and I said they did. And if they’re right about that, they may be right about the Tower interfering with their magic.” And she herself might have to rethink her determination not to return to the Twisted Tower, Kayl thought. She put the thought aside, for later consideration, and looked at Glyndon.
Glyndon looked away. “I suppose so,” he said at last. He sounded unhappy and very tired.
“It’s also the only way I can think of to get the Elder Mothers to let us look at that scroll,” Kayl said gently. Glyndon did not answer. A rap at the door announced Mark and Dara’s return. Kayl looked at Glyndon’s slumped shoulders a moment longer, then said, “I’ll talk to you again before I say anything to the Sisterhood.”
“All right.”
Kayl stared at him and tried to think of something else to say. There was another rap at the door; Mark was probably getting impatient. Shaking her head, Kayl rose to her feet to let them in.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
KAYL SLEPT POORLY THAT night and she awoke before dawn the following morning. The bit of crystal was an unyielding lump inside her sash, demanding a decision. Should she give it to the Sisterhood with a full explanation, or keep it hidden? How would the Elder Mothers react if she told them the whole story? Part of Kayl wanted to dump the whole sorry tangle on the presumably wiser heads of the Elder Mothers; another part had grave doubts about the advisability of such a course.
The mental argument made her restless, and eventually drove her down the stairs to the serving room. She had no desire to wake Mark and Dara with her pacing. There were one or two other early risers below, but they were more interested in their breakfasts than in Kayl. She, in turn, ignored them as she prowled about the room.
She was on her fourth circuit when the door of the inn opened. Kayl turned, curious to see who would be arriving at such an early hour. To her surprise, the dark-cloaked figures were the Elder Mothers Mika and Javieri.
Kayl crossed to them and bowed, wishing they had waited until she knew what her own intentions were. “You’re looking for me?”
“We are,” Mika said. “Is there somewhere we can talk in private?”
“I’m afraid this is it,” Kayl said, gesturing at the serving room. “The children are still sleeping, and I won’t have them waked.”
Javieri raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Under the circumstances, it seems like a minor consideration,” she said mildly.
“To you, perhaps,” Kayl replied.
“Javieri has never had many dealings with children,” Mika said. She looked up at her companion, and her eyes held amusement. “If you had, you’d understand. Wake them now, and they’ll be grumpy as bears for the rest of the day.”
“I defer to your superior knowledge,” Javieri said, smiling. “The table by the hearth?” Kayl nodded acceptance, and they crossed the room and seated themselves. Kayl looked at them expectantly.
“We have come on behalf of the Elder Mothers of all the Sisterhood to ask you to go once more to the Twisted Tower,” Mika said. “And your friend Glyndon shal Morag as well.”
“You want Glyndon, too?” Kayl said, surprised. “Why?”
“For the same reason we want you and Elder Sister Barthelmy,” Javieri said, and hesitated.
“The three of you are the only ones they’re certain can get past the spells on the Tower door,” Mika said bluntly. “There was an expedition about five years ago—”
“Barthelmy told me,” Kayl said. “But she said they didn’t try to go inside.”
“Oh, they tried. They gave up after the spells on the door killed the first two women who went through it.”
“And you think we can do better?” Kayl said incredulously.
“You have already done so,” Mika pointed out. “We think that Glyndon shal Morag and Elder Sister Barthelmy can, between them, duplicate the spells that got your Star Cluster safely inside the Tower fifteen years ago. No one else has succeeded in that.”
“And you will know more about the Tower than either of the first two Star Clusters we sent,” Javieri said.
“The Ri Astar Diary?” Kayl said, looking at them skeptically. “You place that much faith in it?”
“Not in the diary alone,” Javieri said. “We hope to confirm its information elsewhere.”
“You hope to? You’ve had it a year or more; why haven’t you confirmed it already?”
Mika sighed and glanced reprovingly at her younger companion. “We have no certainty of our ability to do so, and perhaps we should not have mentioned it. But—the last group who sought the Tower heard rumors of a man, a scholar and wanderer who may know much of the Twisted Tower. He was in another part of the mountains then, and they would not delay their journey to seek him out. We intend that the next expedition shall do so.”
“You must be very sure he knows something worth hearing,” Kayl said, not bothering to conceal her skepticism. “I’d prefer to base a hope of success on something stronger.”
<
br /> “So would we,” Javieri said soberly. “But we have reached the point where we must grasp at whatever hope is offered, though it break like winter grass in our hands.”
Kayl could hear the desperation behind the level words, but she shook her head. “If you can find this person, and if he really knows something useful about the Twisted Tower, and if he is willing to tell you… Too many ifs for me, Your Serenity.”
“It is why I had not planned to mention it,” Mika said.
“There seem to be a number of things you haven’t mentioned,” Kayl snapped. “Such as just what you expect this expedition to do when it reaches the Twisted Tower.”
“I thought Barthelmy had told you that,” Javieri said.
“Barthelmy’s story seems to have missed a few things,” Kayl said coldly. She was angry as much on Barthelmy’s account as her own. Kayl was sure Barthelmy had told the truth as she knew it, which meant the Elder Mothers had been lying to her as well as to Kayl. “That business about trying to get inside, for instance, or why you are so sure the Tower is the cause of your… difficulties.”
Javieri glanced quickly around, checking to make sure no one was within earshot. Mika gave Kayl a grim smile. “You are not making this easy, are you?”
“Why should I?” Kayl retorted. The discovery of the crystal chip had made her willing to listen, even willing to reconsider her determination to go to the Tower, but it had not made her willing to let the Elder Mothers know that she was thinking such things. “Ever since Corrana appeared at my inn you’ve been lying to me and manipulating me. Why should I help you?”
“To save the Sisterhood,” Javieri said, so softly Kayl could hardly hear her.
“After all you’ve done, I’m not sure I want to.”
“You have been one of us; you know the good the Sisterhood does,” Mika said. Her expression was stern. “We make mistakes, but who does not? Do not demand greater goodness in us than you yourself possess.”
Javieri leaned forward. “Even if you do not think the Sisterhood worth saving for its own sake, think what will happen if we fall. The Sisterhood of Stars has long been one of the supports of the Estarren Alliance. If the support collapses, what then? The Alliance is already dying, but slowly; would you see it end in your own lifetime?”