because anyone could walk in from my room now and my room was missing a wall. Still…
I hesitated before crossing back to my sitting room with its Tabriz stained with ty'iga spit and partly covered by fallen wall. There was something almost restful about Brand's quarters, a kind of peaceful quality I hadn't really noticed before. I wandered a bit, opening drawers and looking inside magic boxes, studying a folder of the man's drawings. The Logrus sight showed me that something small and potent and magical was secreted in a bedpost, radiating lines of force every which way. I unscrewed the knob, found the compartment within it. It contained a small velvet bag which bore a ring. The band was wide, possibly of platinum. It bore a wheellike device of some reddish metal, with countless tiny spokes, many of them hair-fine. And each of these spokes extended a line of power leading off somewhere, quite possibly into Shadow, where some power cache of spell source lay. Perhaps Luke would rather have the ring than the sword. When I slipped it on, it seemed to extend roots to the very center of my body. I could feel my way back along them to the ring and then out along those connections. I was impressed by the variety of energies it reached and controlled - from simple chthonic forces to sophisticated constructs of High Magic, from elementals to things that seemed like lobotomized gods. I wondered why he hadn't been wearing it on the day of the Patternfall battle. If he had, I'd a feeling he might have been truly invincible. We could all have been living on Brandenberg is Castle Brand. I wondered, too, why Fiona, in the next room over, had not felt its presence and come looking for it. On the other hand, I hadn't. For what it was, it didn't register well at all, beyond a few feet. It was amazing the treasures this place contained. Was it something about the private universe effect said to obtain in some of these rooms? The ring was a beautiful alternative to Pattern Power or Logrus Power, hooked in as it was with so many sources. It must have taken centuries to empower the thing. Whatever Brand had wanted it for, it had not been part of a short-range plan. I decided I could not surrender the thing to Luke - or to anyone with any familiarity with the Arts. I didn't even think I should trust a nonmagician with it. And I certainly didn't feel like returning it to the bedpost. What was that throbbing at my wrist? Oh, yes, Frakir. It had been going on for some small while, and I'd barely noticed.
«Sorry you lost your voice, old girl,» I said, stroking her as I explored the room for threats both psychic and physical. «I can't find a damned thing here that I should be worried about.»
Immediately she spiraled down from my wrist and tried to remove the ring from my finger.
«Stop!» I ordered. «I know the ring could be dangerous. But only if you use it wrongly. I'm a sorcerer, remember? I'm into these matters. There is nothing special about it for me to fear.»
But Frakir disobeyed my order and continued her attack on the ring, which I could now only attribute to some form of magical artifact jealousy. I tied her in a tight knot around the bedpost and left her there, to teach her a lesson.
I began to search the apartment more diligently. If I were to keep the sword and the ring, it would be nice to find something else of his father's that I could take to Luke-
«Merlin! Merlin!» I heard bellowed from somewhere beyond my room.
Rising from a tapping of the floor and lower walls, where I had been seeking hollow spots, I returned to my archway and passed through into my own sitting room. I halted then despite another summons in what I now recognized to be Random's voice. The wall which faced upon the side corridor was more than half rebuilt since last I had viewed it-as if an invisible crew of carpenters and plasterers had been silently at work since I had positioned the dreamstone in the gateway to the kingdom of Brand. Amazing. I simply stood and stared, hoping for some betraying bit of business within the damaged area. Then I heard Random mutter, «I guess he's gone,» and I called back, «Yeah? What is it?»
«Get your ass up here quick,» he said. «I need your advice.»
I stepped out into the corridor through the opening which remained in that wall, and I looked upward, Immediately I could feel the capabilities in the ring that I wore, responding like a musical instrument to my most immediate need. The appropriate line was activated as I assented to the suggestion, and I took the gloves from behind my belt and drew them on as I was levitated toward the opening in the ceiling. This, because it had occurred to me that Random might recognize the ring as having once been Brand's, and that could lead to a complicated discussion I'd no desire for at the moment.
I held my cloak close to my side as I came up through the hole into the studio, to keep the blade under wraps also.
«Impressive,» Random said. «Glad you're keeping the magical muscle exercised. That's what I called you for.»
I gave him a bow. Being dressed up made me feel vaguely courtly.
«How may I be of service?»
«Cut the crap and come on,» he said, taking hold of my elbow and steering me back toward the demibedroom. Vialle stood at the door, holding it open.
«Merlin?» she said as I brushed by.
«Yes?» I answered.
«I wasn't certain,» she said.
«Of what?» I asked.
«That it was you,» she responded.
«Oh, it's me, all right,» I said.
«It is indeed my brother,» Mandor stated, rising from his chair and approaching us. His arm was splinted and slung, his face considerably relaxed. «If anything about him strikes you as strange,» he continued, «it is likely because he has had a number of traumatic experiences since he left here.»
«Is that true?» Random asked.
«Yes,» I replied. «I didn't realize it was all that apparent.»
«Are you all right?» Random asked.
«I seem to be intact,» I said.
«Good. Then we'll save the particulars of your story for another time. As you can see, Coral is gone and Dworkin is, too. I didn't see them go. I was still in the studio when it happened.»
«When what happened?» I asked.
«Dworkin finished his operation,» Mandor said, «took the lady by the hand, drew her to her feet, and transported her away from here. It was most elegantly managed. One moment they stood at the bedside; the next their afterimages ran through the spectrum and winked out.»
«You say that he transported them. How do you know that they weren't snatched away by Ghostwheel or one of the Powers?» I asked.
«Because I watched his face,» he said, «and there was no surprise, whatsoever upon it, only a small smile.»
«I guess you're right,» I admitted. «Then who set your arm, if Random was off in the studio and Dworkin occupied?»
«I did,» Vialle said. «I've been trained in it.»
«So you were the only eyewitness to their vanishment?» I said to Mandor.
He nodded.
«What I want of you,» Random said, «is some idea where they flashed off to. Mandor said he couldn't tell. Here!»
He handed me a chain, from which a metal setting hung.
«What's this?» I asked.
«It was the most important of all the Crown Jewels,» he said, «the Jewel of Judgment. This is what they left me. The Jewel part is what they took.»
«Oh,» I said. Then: «It must be secure if it's in Dwotkin's care. He'd said something about putting it in a safe place, and he knows more about it than anyone else-»
«He may also have flipped out again,» Random said. «I'm not interested in discussing his merits as its custodian, though. I just want to know where the hell he's gone with the thing.»
«I don't believe he left any tracks,» Mandor said.
«Where were they standing?» I asked.
«Over there,» he said, with a gesture of the good arm, «to the right of the bed.»
I moved to that area, feeling through the potencies I ruled after the most appropriate.
«A little nearer the foot.»
