trees without too much trouble. He emerged in a sunny, diamond-shaped courtyard directly in front of the wizards’ college. A number of robed clerics and sorcerers were sitting on stone benches around the courtyard. When Tol came into view, they stood up and gaped at him in alarm. The closest ones hurried away, as if he were some ravening fiend come to attack them.
A woman in white robes approached. Hollow-cheeked, she was very advanced in years, her hair completely white. She stood very straight, though, and did not lean on the tall staff in her hand.
“Who are you? How did you get here?” she asked sternly.
“Forgive me, lady,” Tol said, bowing his head. “I mean no harm. My name is Tol of Juramona.”
When he raised his head again, other robed figures stood behind the woman. A rotund, red-faced man asked, “How did he get so far?”
“I don’t know, Oropash,” the woman replied. “Helbin, was the Wall of Sleep properly invoked?”
“The wards were properly placed. I saw to it myself,” answered a more youthful man at her right hand. His sand-colored hair was tightly curled, as was his thin mustache. “No one could possibly have gotten through!”
The old woman looked from Helbin to Tol and back again, white eyebrows rising significantly. Young Helbin flushed.
To Tol she said, “Come here, young man. Don’t be afraid. I am Yoralyn; come to me.”
Tol’s feet crunched on the bright quartz gravel. He wasn’t afraid, but many of Yoralyn’s colleagues obviously were. He halted several paces from the startled mages and spread his hands.
“I’m not armed,” he reassured them. “I’m visiting Daltigoth with my liege lord, Enkian Tumult, marshal of the Eastern Hundred. We’re here at the emperor’s command, for the laying of the cornerstone of the great tower.”
Yoralyn consulted a smooth sphere of amethyst in her hand. “He speaks the truth,” she said. “His aura is as innocent as a child’s.”
“Then how did he penetrate the Wall of Sleep?” demanded the rotund mage, Oropash.
The younger sorcerer, Helbin, advanced and stared Tol in the eye. He was tall and vigorous-looking, more like a warrior than a priest. Over his robe he wore a loosely draped mantle of faded red silk. Each of his fingers bore a ring. He extended one hand, palm out, and waved it in front of Tol.
“I perceive no sensation of power,” he muttered. “I sense no counterspell or amulet, but there must be a reason! An ordinary person could not pass through the barrier without succumbing to its influence!”
Their agitation, and the speculative gleam in Yoralyn’s pale blue eyes, unnerved Tol. “I’m sorry,” he said, backing up a step. “I’m not sure what happened. But I’ll go at once-”
“No, stay,” said Yoralyn. “Come this way.”
Helbin and Oropash stood aside, allowing Tol plenty of room to pass. The two sorcerers, fearful but curious, followed Tol as he trailed the old woman to a nearby fountain. A silver stream spewed from the mouth of a dragon statue in the center of the pool. The statue was three paces tall and carved from a single block of emerald.
As he passed, Tol realized the fluid flowing from the statue’s mouth wasn’t water, but quicksilver. A droplet splashed out of the pool onto the low marble wall surrounding the fountain’s basin, and then, like a living thing, the silver globule rolled up the stone slab (against the slope, Tol noted with astonishment) and dropped back into the pool.
More sorcerers joined the procession. They emerged from other side paths or simply appeared out of the air on the grassy lawn. Scores had congregated by the time Yoralyn halted at the foot of the ramshackle scaffolding, Inside the scaffolding, a single course of masonry had been laid, enormous cyclopean stones two paces high and as wide as a tall man could reach.
Yoralyn regarded Tol silently with a disconcertingly piercing stare. He stammered, “I’m truly sorry if my coming has caused a problem.”
“It has, Tol of Juramona. We defend the Vale of Sorcery with a special conjuration, intended to keep out all those not of our orders. Yet you wandered in without apparent difficulty. Moreover, none of us seems to have felt the disruption of our solitude. We find that gravely disturbing. Who are you?”
Tol gave her a brief account of his coming to Daltigoth.
“So, you’re the one who slew Morthur Dermount?” Helbin said at the end of the tale.
Tol acknowledged this, saying, “He gave me no choice but kill or be killed.”
“No blame attaches to you,” Yoralyn assured him. “Morthur was a wild mage, an unregulated practitioner of the black arts. He was trained by rogue elements of the Red and Black Robes. It’s a pity we couldn’t have discovered the names of his mentors, but…” She shrugged, then said, “You possess his ring, do you not?”
Reluctant to part with so powerful an object, Tol simply nodded.
“We would like it returned to us. It is not lawful for an untutored person like yourself to use it.”
“Must I give it up? Lord Enkian awarded it to me as a spoil of victory. It does not work when I wield it.” He described his inability to use Morthur’s ring at the Dalti bridge and told of Miya’s success.
A sustained murmur went through the crowd. Helbin and Oropash held a hushed conversation with Yoralyn. At length she silenced the group with upraised hands.
“Master Tol, we have no quarrel with you. You seem a good and honorable man. Something is amiss, however. Your immunity to Morthur’s soporific spell, and to our protective enchantment, is unheard of and most troubling.”
“You must give us Morthur’s ring,” Helbin said, and it was more an order than a request. “There may be something in it that helped you defeat our wards.”
Tol didn’t want to comply. The large sapphire ring was his prize from a hard-fought struggle. “I care nothing for the ring’s power,” he argued, “but I would like to keep it. Lord Morthur-or Spannuth Grane as I knew him-did much harm to me and my people, and his ring is the only trophy I have.”
Helbin seemed disposed to overrule him, but Oropash said reasonably, “Let us study the ring during your visit here, Master Tol. Once we’ve delved into its secrets, you may have it back.”
Tol looked to Yoralyn, who nodded in confirmation. Satisfied, he loosed the lacings of his belt pouch to produce the ring.
A fresh wave of agitation rippled through the throng of mages.
“You have it with you?” Yoralyn exclaimed.
Tol paused, two fingers buried in the pouch. “I do. What’s wrong with that?”
Turning to her fellow wizards, Yoralyn declared, “I did not sense the ring’s power on the boy. Did anyone here?”
From the fresh consternation on every face, it was obvious no one had. Helbin asked for the ring, extending a hand. Tol dropped it on his open palm. The mage closed long fingers around it. His eyes shut momentarily, then sprang open.
“The ring is consecrated to Nuitari. It is potent still!” Helbin exclaimed.
“You must give it back to him immediately,” Oropash said quietly.
Helbin did so, and Tol, his eyes wide, returned the ring to his pouch.
Eyes firmly closed, Oropash said, “I cannot see the ring when the boy possesses it!”
“Nor can I!”
“It vanishes as soon as it touches his hands!”
Every sorcerer in the glade began talking at once. The disorder of their thoughts caused strange displays-a cloud of coal-black butterflies appeared over one mage’s head; another’s lost all color and took on the appearance of a snow sculpture; flames played about the feet of a female mage.
“Calm yourselves!” Yoralyn cried.
The manifestations instantly dissipated. The sorcerers quieted, looking chagrined at having lost control.
Yoralyn came to Tol, tightly clutching her staff with both hands. Up close, he noticed the staff wasn’t wood, but some kind of animal limb, covered in greenish-black hide.
“The ring, please.”
He again took it out and gave it to her. She handed it to Helbin and seized Tol’s large hand in her dry, gnarled fingers. Her grip was powerful, and Tol didn’t struggle against it.
“Where are you?” she whispered. “I cannot find you. You are here in my hands, but invisible to my inner eye!” She released him abruptly. “I would know more of this,” she said, more kindly. “Will you return and speak with me again?”
“If you wish, lady. I will be in Daltigoth and at your service, until the foundation ceremony is done.”
