to make it comfortable as an altar or work table, measuring as long as the height of an average elven man, and about three times as wide as that same man’s body. Upon it rested many objects that Syukoe took to be the tools of the sorcerer’s craft.
Master Iku stepped over to the table and dropped the ring into a bronze bowl, then fell back and folded his left hand into his right, hissing with pain.
“ Master!” Syukoe cried out in alarm. Two of his fellows supported him as he doubled over, chest heaving. Syukoe knelt beside the stricken mage, her throat clogged with fear.
“ The magic of the ring is very potent, especially with the king so near. It is a wonder that I was able to hold onto it for so long,” the old mage said through gritted teeth. He stood straight once more, having mastered the pain, and unfurled his clenched fingers.
Where the ring had contacted his palm, a blackened hole gaped, seared into the Master’s flesh by the ring’s power. No blood seeped from the wound; the tissues had been cauterized by the intense energy.
“ Master, you must let us tend to your hand,” one of the Kirians, a woman of middle years whose name escaped Syukoe, said.
“ No! There is no time,” Master Iku replied, his voice full of urgency. “This wound is nothing compared to what I and the rest of us will suffer if we do not accomplish what we must this night. I will bind up my hand if I can find a bit of cloth, and make do.”
“ Master, please take this.” Junko stepped forward and proffered a red silk ribbon that, moments before, had bound back her waist-length golden hair. Master Iku took the ribbon with a word of thanks and began wrapping it tightly about his injured hand. Junko, eyes lowered deferentially, backed away and retreated into a corner of the room where she then sat, back pressed against the unyielding stone.
Syukoe knew little about her father’s favorite concubine, other than she was very young and came from the north. The princess wondered just what the Kirians had offered her to betray her master and king. Perhaps sharing the king’s bed and receiving his favor had not been enough for this ambitious girl. Perhaps she had desired much, much more, and when she could not get what she craved, her mind had turned to treachery.
Syukoe shook her head in frustrated anger. None of this was Junko’s fault.
She had to stay focused. Her survival, and that of the elven nation, depended on it.
Master Iku had finished wrapping his hand and now stood at the stone table, the bronze cauldron containing the Griffin Ring before him. The light from the ring still blazed, throwing the upper half of the elder Kirian’s face into eerie shadow, making of it a bizarre, featureless mask. The others stood to either side of their leader, arms raised, palms turned outward. Master Iku spoke a single word, and the aimlessly drifting symbols in walls and doors began to swirl and dart, forming themselves into linear patterns, which then froze into place. Syukoe could now see that they had formed what looked to be the sentences of a massive text, written in a language unknown to her.
The Kirians began to chant.
A sudden wave of concussive force hit the chamber like an enormous hammer blow, throwing everyone off- balance. The chanting faltered for an instant, then resumed with even greater speed. Another shockwave rocked the chamber a heartbeat later, sending a fine powder of rock dust pattering to the floor.
Blue-white fireballs of energy sprang into being in all eight corners of the room. Syukoe heard Junko scream as the concubine flung herself out of the way. The energy balls raced along the floor toward the center of the room, leaving burning trails in their wakes, which shone in the semi-darkness like the spokes of a giant wheel. They met and coalesced under the base of the stone table. The entire structure lit up, becoming as transparent as rock crystal.
Upon the glowing coals of the lit brazier, Master Iku cast a handful of powder. Tendrils of spicy smoke curled up into the supercharged air, tickling Syukoe’s nostrils. Abruptly, the chanting ceased.
The energy in the room thrummed with such intensity, Syukoe could barely remain standing. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Junko, collapsed upon the floor like a discarded doll wrapped in a pile of silken rags.
Master Iku, a fine sheen of sweat upon his brow, clapped his hands together three times and spoke a single word. To the uninitiated, a Word of Power was felt, rather than heard. Syukoe squeezed her head in her hands, fighting to remain conscious, as the Word blasted her mind and body like the sonorous voice of a great bell.
A sphere of energy manifested inside the bronze cauldron. Master Iku slowly raised his hands and the sphere followed until it hovered at eye level. The ring floated within.
Still off-balance from the residual effects of the Word of Power, Syukoe fell to the floor as a third massive shockwave hit the chamber. She stared in stunned disbelief as the seemingly solid stone of the doors bulged inwards, as if their substance had been somehow fundamentally altered, making them more like clay than rock.
Somehow, the Kirians remained standing, all thirteen pairs of eyes fixed upon the ring. A steady shower of rock dust sifted down from the ceiling. Syukoe coughed as the fine grit worked its way into her throat and lungs. She scrambled to her feet and whirled to face the deforming doors, drawing her sword because her warrior’s instinct compelled her to fight, even against impossible odds.
The room shook steadily now. The Kirians began a new chant, this one slow and deliberate, each word a Word of Power. Syukoe moaned in pain, struggling to keep a grasp on both sword and consciousness. The Words kept a steady beat, in rhythm to the synchronized pulses of the mentally joined sorcerers.
Syukoe heard a loud pop and turned in time to see the ring fall through the sphere back into the cauldron, its light extinguished. That light now burned within the sphere itself, with such intensity that Syukoe could not look directly at it. In a moment of clarity, she realized that the magic of the Key had been separated from the ring and placed within the sphere.
“ Princess!” Master Iku called out. “We require you now!”
Syukoe moved as quickly as she dared, fighting to keep her balance. She slipped into the circle of magicians beside Master Iku, who indicated that she should hold out her hand. She braced herself for what she knew would come next.
The Master had briefed her only this morning on how the Kirians would form the link to the future Onjara. The magical principle was based on the blood tie between the generations that stretched unbroken down through the years, connecting Syukoe with her descendent. Her living blood would catalyze the spell that would open a hole in the fabric of Time, allowing contact with the target. The Kirians would then cast the Key through the hole and into the body of its new host, thus effectively sealing it off from the king’s control.
Without the power of the Griffin Ring at his disposal, Shiura Onjara could no longer command his armies. The foul creatures he had conjured up from the Void were compelled to serve him by the magic of the ring; freed from that compulsion, they would be thrown into disarray and made far more vulnerable. Syukoe’s forces would then have a chance to defeat them, and perhaps some semblance of victory could be won from the disaster of the rebellion.
Bereft of his deadliest weapon, the king himself would also be weakened, giving the beleaguered Kirians a chance to neutralize his magic. Syukoe had made Master Iku swear to her that if they ultimately succeeded in bringing her father down, the Kirians would find a way to imprison, rather than kill, him. She still loved him, despite everything.
The floor heaved sharply. Syukoe gasped in dismay as the solid stone of the walls began to ripple in glistening black waves.
“ He is unraveling the magic that holds the very substance of the Tower together,” Master Iku stated grimly. “Soon, the rock will be like putty, unable to hold its shape. We must hurry.” He grasped Syukoe’s wrist in his left hand and held it over the lighted charcoals of the brazier. In his right hand, he held a small ritual blade, poised over Syukoe’s waiting flesh. He closed his eyes and began to intone the opening verse of the spell.
Master Iku spoke rapidly, the words running together in a continuous buzz of sound. The other Kirians stood silently, eyes closed, brows furrowed. Some perspired heavily, others betrayed the intensity of their effort with barely a twitch of an eyelid or lip. Oddly, despite the chaos of the dissolving room, the group seemed locked in a bubble of stillness, shielded from the worst of the punishing energy blasts directed at them by their enemy. Syukoe
