“How long now to midnight?”
“Still more than an hour,” she panted. “We’re in good time. The important thing is not to run into Artsivus.”
The fifth floor. The sixth. On the seventh I cast a quick glance into a brightly lit corridor and saw someone sitting slumped against the wall in the distance. My blood ran cold for a moment because I thought it was Artsivus. But no, Sagot spared us. And the way the man was sitting there was kind of strange, too.
“Kli-Kli,” I said to the gobliness, who was already creeping on up the stairs.
“Yes?”
Without saying anything, I indicated the man in the corridor with my eyes.
“We have to check!”
“Have you got nothing better to do?”
“We have to check, Dancer. We can’t leave any strangers in our rear.”
“All right, but be careful,” I said, taking out my crossbow.
As we walked along the corridor the man didn’t move. Then I saw who it was and went dashing to him.
Someone had split Roderick’s head open. The floor and the wall he was slumped against were covered in blood.
“Ah, darkness!” I cursed. “Who did this to him?”
“You know who. Don’t make a fuss, Harold. The lad’s dead. He must have guessed something and his old teacher decided to get rid of him.”
“He saved my life once. I feel sorry for the lad.”
“We’ll all be in need of pity soon, if we don’t get a move on. Come on, Harold. We can’t do anything to help him now. Listen, what’s that door doing open, eh?”
It was only then I realized that the door closest to us was slightly ajar. Kli-Kli immediately stuck her curious nose through it.
“Ooh! Just look what’s in here, Harold!”
I looked in. The vast hall was crammed full of boxes and all sorts of weird things. I supposed it was probably a storeroom for magical doodads.
“The artifacts depository!” Kli-Kli had had the same idea as me. “Maybe the Horn’s still here?”
“Let’s check then,” I agreed. “But quickly!”
The storeroom was full of absolutely everything, from shelves with spell scrolls on them to mysterious and incomprehensible objects that glowed. The only things missing were the Rainbow Horn and the Shadow Horse.
“Looks like we’re wasting our time wandering around in here,” said Kli-Kli, giving up even before I did.
“Looks like it,” I sighed, gazing at a set of shelves stacked with various shining globes and spheres.
One of them caught my eye. It was gray, and I could make out a familiar silhouette inside. I took a step toward the shelves, and the tower immediately trembled slightly.
“What’s that?” Kli-Kli asked, gazing around in fright.
“I don’t know,” I said, puzzled.
“It’s begun,” Valder told me. “The ritual has begun!”
“How can it have begun!” I yelled out loud. “It’s not midnight yet!”
“Harold, what are you talking about?” Kli-Kli asked in amazement.
“Bad news, Kli-Kli. Artsivus is impatient!”
“So what do we do?”
Before I could answer, Valder spoke again.
“The goblin girl should leave!”
“What?”
“She should leave, Harold. She’s too powerful as a shaman, and I’m already weak. When she’s here, it’s hard for me to do anything at all. And today I’ll need all my strength.”
“Harold, what’s wrong with you?”
“Let me speak to her myself.”
I relaxed, leaving Valder free to do whatever he wanted.
“What on earth’s happen— Oh!”
She gaped at me with amazement in her eyes, obviously listening to what Valder was saying. I couldn’t hear what he told her, but Kli-Kli nodded rapidly.
“Hang in there, Dancer!” the gobliness said to me at the end. “I’ll bring help.”
She rushed off and the tower trembled again.
“Why did she do that?”
“It’s for the best. You and I have to stop the Master of the Order.”
“And how do we do that?”
“I don’t know yet. Take it.”
“What?”
“That sphere. It will be useful.”
“What if he breaks out?”
“That will distract the Player for a while.”
I grabbed the sphere with the demon inside. It was cold. Well now, perhaps the Messenger was right when he said demons had a part to play in this story.
“Leave the crossbow. And the bag, too. We won’t need all that,” said Valder. “Good. And now forward, my friend!”
I darted out into the corridor, clutching the sphere in my hands, and ran toward the stairs.
“How do we set him free?” I asked Valder as I ran.
“It’s a magical prison. I sense that the power swirling about up there is so great, we only have to take the sphere close, and it will fall to pieces! Trust me.”
I did trust him. There was nothing else I could do.
The tower was trembling continually now. Fine tremors shook the stairs and the walls, and I was beginning to feel afraid that—Sagot forbid—the whole building might collapse.
The door into the Council Chamber was standing wide open, so it only took me a moment to understand what was going on. I think I was watching everything through Valder’s eyes.
The mirror floor reflected constellations never seen in Siala, and there were flaming purple auroras in its depths. The Rainbow Horn and the Shadow Horse were lying five yards apart.
The Horn was already surrounded by a glow that constantly changed color. Every now and then a shower of purple sparks came flying out of the Horse, soared up toward the transparent ceiling, and faded away in the air. Thick tentacles of Power were reaching out toward the artifacts and there was a black cloud expanding inexorably between the two magical objects. Artsivus was standing absolutely still, with his hands raised toward the ceiling. The puny archmagician had his back to us, and I immediately regretted that I’d left the crossbow downstairs.
“Don’t worry about that,” Valder told me. “Ordinary weapons are absolutely useless now.”
“And now what do we do?”
“Wait. It’s not time yet.”
Artsivus chanted his spells in a harsh-sounding language, and from time to time the tower shuddered. The purple flame in the mirror blazed brighter and brighter. The black cloud directly in front of the Player was already the size of a decent carriage. But it was only black round the edge; its center was transparent. And through it I could see a strange world, a completely different world.
The world of a different Master.
It looked as if Artsivus was opening up a passage for his new lord. The Rainbow Horn was shining with a brilliance that was too painful to look at, and the sparks were streaming up toward the glass dome from the Shadow Horse.
Surely the archmagicians and ordinary magicians of the capital ought to sense what was going on?
The archmagician’s chanting soared even higher and I felt the Scales of the Balance tremble. Just a little longer, and Artsivus’s magic would annihilate everything for tens of leagues around, not to mention the fact that the Scales of the Balance would be overturned completely.
Ah darkness! That was Valder thinking for me again!
