'They expect Drandor to be finished when the sun tops that ridge.' Jemidon nodded to the east. 'There barely will be enough time to get you in the well. But with my sliding about the scenery, I could come for you no sooner.'
'I still do not quite understand,' Delia said as they hurried along. 'The scenery is supposed to be an aid to help the sorcerer cast his spell. An aid to put the watcher in the proper frame of mind. We were working with helmets and pikes, swords and battle-axes, to suggest battle scenes. Now you have replaced them with wavecaps and fogs, totally unrelated to what I will chant.'
'Precisely the point,' Jemidon said. 'The more divergence, the better our chances will be. You see-'
He stopped suddenly and pointed ahead to the hall. 'Look, waiting at the stage doorway are some robes of brown. Hurry, we can ill afford delay when dealing with Gerilac's tyros.'
Jemidon grabbed Delia's hand, as he had done on the granite cliff, and sprang into a run. Together, they covered the remaining distance in a rush. As they approached the stage entrance, Jemidon recognized Erid and the others, standing with studied nonchalance in the frame of the door.
'Faster, faster,' Erid shouted as they drew close. 'I want to see your expressions when your entry is barred.'
In response, Jemidon put on a burst of speed, tugging on Delia's arm. But she gasped and stumbled; reluctantly, he slowed his pace.
For a moment more, Erid watched without moving. Then, when they were about fifty paces away, he and the other tyros sprang back into the hall and slammed the doors. Jemidon heard the bar drop with a heavy thud.
'The patrons' entrance,' Jemidon said. 'Before they can secure it as well. Somehow we will work our way back to the stage.'
Delia nodded, and they quickly circled the hall. Seen from the front, wings of unlike design jogged away from the central structure, one sprouting twin towers at its far end, the other a staggered tier of small boxes. Four doors cut the entrance facade, each one grander than the one adjacent, the last filling an archway twice the height of a man. Together, Jemidon and Delia bounded from the rock path and through the largest entryway into the hall.
Immediately they plunged into dimness. Two candles in a wall sconce illuminated three identical doors and a single staircase leading off to the right. Delia ran forward to try one of the latches, but Jemidon pulled her back.
'No, let's try upstairs,' he said. 'These probably all lead into the Maze of Partitions on the first floor. It would take who knows how long to work our way through to the stage. Perhaps in a balcony we can find a faster way around.'
They raced upstairs and found a long corridor snaking off to the left. The wait nearest the stage was lined with doorways and elaborate portals that opened onto boxes beyond. Jemidon poked his head in one and saw that it was completely empty, the far wall hung with shutters that had been pulled firmly closed. In the next were lavish furnishings, couches with gilded frameworks, and deep floor cushions of shiny silk.
'Come along,' Jemidon shouted as he withdrew. 'These probably all open onto a balcony above the Maze. Let's follow the corridor to the end. There should be another stairway there.'
Running faster on the smooth floors than they had been able to do outside, Jemidon and Delia traversed the straight mns of the passageway and followed the bends that wound about the outer wall of the hall. Finally they reached a barrier of brick and stone that blocked them from going further. In growing desperation, they looked for another exit, either up or down, but found none.
'By the laws, it is too late to retrace our steps back to the entrance and try again,' Jemidon said. He grabbed savagely at the closed door on the last box in line and tried to wrench it open. The thin wood creaked, bowing from the jamb, but bolts at the top and bottom set from the inside held it in place. Tendrils of cold air whiffed from the crack as the door sprang back.
'Someone is in there!' Jemidon exclaimed. 'Who could it be? All of the masters will be in the first row, and these presentations are for no others.'
'Does it matter?' Delia asked. 'I thought our goal was to get me to the well.'
Jemidon grunted and tried the door on the next box adjacent to the one that was sealed. It flew open. With no better plan in mind, he motioned Delia to follow him in.
The interior was decorated more luxuriously than most, with patterned draperies hanging on three sides and even a painting on the closed shutters facing the stage. Lighted cressets brimmed with scented oil, and additional bottles stood amidst sand buckets underneath.
Jemidon climbed over a down-filled bed in the middle of the room and flicked at the latches on the shutters, pushing them open to look out onto the lower floor of the hall. His eyes swept the stage, and he suddenly stopped in mid-glance.
'It is like what I saw the night of the storm,' he said. 'But this time Drandor has made it much more real.'
The trader had tilted a mirror over the chanting well. The light that arched upward did not project throughout the hail, but reflected horizontally onto a curtain that hung from the stage. On its surface, Jemidon saw a scene that moved and changed as he watched. From some impossibly high vantage point, he viewed the offshore islands of Arcadia, sparkling in the sea like pearls on a string. Then, in a breathtaking dive, the islands grew and moved from the center of focus to vanish off the edges of the screen. Morgana remained in view, swelling larger with each instant. The hills, the harbor, and the individual buildings resolved into recognition. The detail was not that of a sorcerer's illusion or even of a good painting, Jemidon knew; but somehow the production was compelling, drawing him in so that he could not turn aside. He felt like a hawk swooping on its prey, expecting any minute to see a small rodent scamper among individual tufts of grass.
With a stomach-screeching 'turn,' Jemidon felt himself stop the plummet and reverse direction above the highest tower of the presentation hall. He raced over the peak with only inches to spare. He banked to the side and glided for a pass over the harbor. With a final turn away from a setting sun, he sailed from the island in a growing twilight.
The first row of the lower level which contained the masters burst into an incoherent babble. Jemidon blinked his thoughts back to attention and saw Drandor emerge from the well with his smile at its widest.
'Most interesting.' The sorcerer on the right rose to greet him. He stepped past the small table with the open scroll and bulging bag of coins. 'These glamours do not have the detail, but if I had to decide between yours and what I saw of Gerilac's today, my choice would be clear.'
'Intriguing, I agree,' the next in line said, 'but should not master Gerilac be given the benefit of the doubt? We all have seen his Women of the Slave Quarter before. The high prince himself whispered that he enjoyed it well.'
'You are to judge only what you see now.' Drandor's smile melted away. 'Past performances were not to be a factor.'
'But it is so little time from our celebration,' the second sorcerer continued. 'Like us all, master Gerilac was not fully rested. It is no wonder he was unable to weave again the splendid glamour that we enjoyed so well when the prince was here.'
'You have seen two performances,' Drandor insisted. 'It is no concern of mine that the other did not match its expectations.' The trader looked about the hall. 'And if the last does not start immediately, then we should waste no more time and proceed to your vote.'
'A moment more,' Farnel called out from backstage. 'My tyros will arrive shortly.'
'The vote,' Drandor repeated, and several masters nodded their heads in agreement.
Jemidon tore his eyes away from the stage and finally looked down to the floor. 'There,' he exclaimed. 'From our vantage point, we can see a path below the long tapestry on the left, a narrow walkway that winds to the front of the hall.'
He turned back into the box and grabbed the nearest draperies from their hangings. While the masters argued, he tied several together and threw one end of a makeshift rope over the shutter rail. Delia nodded understanding. With Jemidon bracing against her weight, she shimmied down its length to land on the floor below. She paused and looked up expectantly, but he waved her on, holding up the free end of the drapery still in his hands. As she sped onto the walkway, he glanced back into the box, looking for a means to anchor his own way down.
While he tested the weight of the bed and tried to maneuver it into a position so that it would not slide, the
