Rosimar opened his mouth to protest as Jemidon herded him toward one of the alcoves, but Jemidon clamped his free hand over the magician's mouth. He hooked the grating with his foot, swung it open, and pushed Rosimar inside. With a final swirl, he looped his foot behind the iron bars and pulled them shut. Just as the wooden doors to the room creaked open, he shoved Rosimar behind a crate and tumbled on top of him.
'Strange, I was sure we secured the entrance as Trocolar had directed when we left.' Jemidon heard a voice he recognized as that of Holgon the magician. 'But it is no wonder. Nine passes with the dove were boring enough. Today's tedium dulls even the brightest mind.'
'Continue as you have been told, and you will be rewarded well,' another voice answered. 'The Maxim of Perseverance, 'repetition unto success,' may not be as precise as the one before, but the results are nearly the same.'
Jemidon strained to hear the second speaker and frowned. The voice was not unfamiliar, but he could not place it for certain. He looked down at Rosimar and saw the magician's knuckles pressed to his teeth. Cautiously, Jemidon released his grip and waited for a reaction. Rosimar remained still, rigidly stiff and unmoving. Jemidon paused a moment more and then, indicating silence, slowly rose to peer through a crack between the stacked crates.
He looked out to see Holgon, tightly bundled in a heavy cloak and wearing woolen gloves. The magician huddled over the furnace and was talking to someone just outside Jemidon's view. Two guardsmen with bored expressions lounged against supporting posts, ignoring the conversation. From the metallic rustle of mail, Jemidon could tell that there were more men-at-arms in the room as well.
'It will take nearly a hundred times,' the soft voice continued. There was a hint of some accent about it and a breathless quality, as if each word would be the last before a massive gulp of air. 'But with each repetition of the ritual, the effect becomes more likely to happen. You rushed the first stones to the marketplace, Holgon, with barely a dozen complete enactments. Some of the purchasers were able to shake the illusion that compelled them to buy and saw what the pebbles truly were. Only when you increased the repetition for the next batch did the images hold firm beyond the first hour. And without the subsequent trades, an increase in value would never have happened.'
Jemidon nodded in his hiding place. That explained why there had been no outcry about worthless stones as there was for the tokens. Except for himself, Benedict, and a few others, the illusion had held. After the glamour that compelled him had faded, something else convinced the owner that they were still very special. With growing excitement about what he was learning, Jemidon strained forward to catch more.
He saw Holgon sigh and then dip into the sack for one of the small stones. The magician gripped it with tongs, inserted it into the furnace, and began to stomp his feet. The guard on the left unbuckled his sword and lowered it to the ground. He then joined Holgon's beat, clapping his hands to the rhythm while simultaneously banging together two cymbals strapped to the insides of his forearms. The other guard scooped some pieces of rope from the floor and tied them together in a series of intricate knots, while puffing his cheeks with air and then swallowing in noisy gulps.
'The Rhythm of Refraction,' Jemidon muttered to himseif. 'Except for the use of cymbals instead of drums, it is the magic ritual for making a lens that focuses all of the colors the same.'
'Enough,' the soft voice commanded abruptly. 'It is the number of repetitions that count, not the perfection of each step as it is performed.'
Holgon grunted and extracted the stone from the furnace. With his free hand, he flicked open a small vent above the coals. A brilliant yellow shaft of light shot out into the room. Holgon held the stone to intercept the beam, and one of the guards scurried to hold a scrap of cloth on the other side.
'Nothing,' Holgon said after a moment. 'It is no different from all the times before.'
'Patience,' the soft voice commanded. 'I suffer without comment the small air volume of this room. Repeat the ritual as you have been told.'
Holgon shrugged and began to move the stone slowly back and forth across the beam, momentarily blotting it out and creating bursts of light that hit the cloth. Another guard extracted a poker from the coals; with each pulse of light, he gently dabbed the cloth with the tip.
'And again enough,' the voice said. 'After a dozen passes, the burning point grows too cold. Start from the beginning and proceed as before.'
Everyone returned to his former position, and the sequence was reinitiated. Holgon heated the rock in the furnace and stamped the dust, while the others executed their parts of the ritual in step with the cadence.
'Eventually there will be transparency,' the voice continued. 'Never as fine as the most exacting lens, but with each heating, each bathing in the flow of the flame, each burning of the cloth, the barrier to the light weakens. Eventually it will suddenly shine through.'
'But why not have the glamour carry it all?' Holgon asked. 'If the owner believes, it does not matter whether the scentstone truly is flawed or not.'
'As I have already explained, the glamour can do no more. It is the Rule of the Threshold, or 'fleeting in sight, fixed in mind.' The subtle messages that flash on the screen with the animations cannot be too short, or they never would be noticed. But if they are presented too long, the mind becomes aware that they are there, and their power is lost. The glamours in the marketplace strain to the limit. They can convince no more than they do now.'
'It still sounds better than this excuse for magic.' Holgon extracted the tongs for a second time. 'Perhaps I should become like the archmage and learn more than one art.'
'Your archmage!' The voice tinkled in what Jemidon took to be a laugh. 'Soon his skills will be no more. The imps twitter that he has heard of the strange failures of sorcery all around this globe and that he finds no explanation at home and plans even to strike across the seas in search for the cause. But by the time he gets to Arcadia, Trocolar's payment to me of Pluton's mercenary constabulary will have long since passed. And then for the rest, it will be too late.'
Jemidon strained against the crates which defined his hiding place, trying to ferret out the true meaning of all the words. He shifted his position slightly and then felt a sudden kick from Rosimar's legs. He looked back to the ground just in time to see the magician explode in a frenzy of motion, his eyes twitching in a wild panic,
'Air, clear air! I can withstand no more!' the magician screamed. He bolted upright and shouldered against the crates in front, sending them in a crash to the floor and knocking open the grating to the larger room. Instinctively, Jemidon pulled at Rosimar's robe, but grasped only emptiness. Together, they clattered out onto the dusty stonework for all to see.
'Seize them,' the voice commanded as the men-at-arms sprang to life. 'This is not according to my plan.'
Jemidon turned for the doorway, but managed only half a step through the clutter before he was hit from the side and hurled to the ground. He rose to one knee, but two more guards joined the first, pushing him to the stones. He looked quickly about to see another slap the flat side of his sword against Rosimar's head, crumpling the magician in a heap. Benedict bolted from his hiding place and tried to rush past Holgon, but the master thrust his glowing poker between the divulgent's legs as he dashed by, crashing him to the ground, where he lay gasping in pain.
'Trocolar advised me well to keep his dungeon secured,' the voice said with the same soft cadence that had come before. 'When these are fettered, search the other alcoves. There may be more.'
Jemidon struggled to look in the direction of the anthanor and, for the first time, saw Holgon's companion. The figure was thin and tall, easily a head taller than even Canthor, the bailiff on Morgana. He was totally covered from head to toe with a dark brown greatcloak and deep hood that shielded his face entirely in shadow. The cloth hung heavy and limp, water glistening among the coarse threads. A small pool had formed from what dripped from the low hem to the floor. A belt of gold braid cinched in a narrow waist, and a multicolored cube hung from the clasp. Jemidon saw a tiny circle of imp light dancing around the hood and heard the hiss of gently moving air behind the soft tones of the accented voice.
The guards dragged Jemidon to his feet and, with his arms held tightly behind, pushed him toward the stranger. As he drew closer, Jemidon caught his breath. Cold air rolled around his knees and swirled up to his chest. As if stepping out onto an arctic meadow from a well insulated hut, he found himself shuddering and tried to turn away.
But as he did, he suddenly remembered the suggestion of coldness in Drandor's tent and the wisp of icy air behind the latched door in the presentation hall. They had been only hints before; but now, in the almost
