'I am as prepared as I shall ever be.'
'Then leave me to the tasks I have left to do.'
Thus did he continue to not give an answer to that little mystery. Perhaps his passage through the Mists had robbed him of the ability to learn new magic. If so, then he would not be anxious to share that vulnerability with a potential antagonist. Would the same prove true for me once I crossed the barrier? It was a risk, but one I was willing to take. No mage ever has enough spells to learn; it's like an addiction to wine, but I had such a number of them at hand that I thought I could be content for a time so long as it meant escape.
The crucial hour passed and all was finally to his satisfaction; we had only to wait until the moon was right. We could see it through the round glass window he'd placed in the tower roof high above. Each of its round panes had been shaped and specially polished to amplify the light. As soon as the moon was exactly centered we would call on and focus the flowing energies of the solstice, then he would assume control allowing me to open the portal; if all went well we could push our way through it to the plane of Oerth and finally be free.
The center of the chamber's vast floor was interrupted by a low circular wall, quite similar to a crofter's sheep pen in construction. Only instead of flat native stones piled untidily upon one another, this was a smooth work of art. He'd had the pottery guild at it all winter turning out one identical white ceramic cube after another, thousands of them. Then it was up to the masonry guild, using a special mortar which Azalin had conjured, to lay them in their courses with mathematical precision. The finished circle stood waist high, a dozen feet across, and the wall was a foot thick. He said it would hold strong against the force of any magical energy, shaping it into a form we could readily control and exploit.
I hoped he was right. The power of the solstice was very great. I had used it in the past with much success, but never on so large a project. It is one thing to enjoy a gentle summer rain safe indoors, quite another to survive the unchecked force of a lightning storm on the exposed face of a mountain.
Azalin took his position on the eastern compass point of the circle, and I stood ready on the west, our mutual gaze hard upon the window above. The moon was nearly right.
'Now,' he whispered. 'Begin now!'
I obliged, muttering with him the words of power, drawing down the first thread-like flow of energy sieving through the glass panes. The tendrils, unseen by normal eyes, reached toward us both, and I felt mine start to entwine about me. Arms extended, I directed it into the circle. My eyes were shut, yet clear in my mind I could see the whole room, see the thin, pale lines of moonlight rushing along my limbs in obedience to my will. A dozen feet away Azalin did the same.
Our voices grew louder, drawing more silver-blue light from the window. The room hummed with the sound of the building power. I began to tremble uncontrollably as the stuff surged through me, not from fear, but from the utter exhilaration of it. It was like being seized by battle-fever-beyond fear, remorse, or even anger-all that matters is the singing joy of sheer destruction. There is no beginning, no ending, only the crimson blaze of the present.
As the moon reached its centering, we had to shout to be heard above the roaring light. It fairly gushed through the window, filling the circle we stood over, then overfilling, but the light rose up, holding to a whirling cylindrical shape. As it spun, small sparks were thrown off to be caught and passed swiftly along the glass and copper constructs. The crackling snap of the tiny lightnings added to the din; I could barely hear myself shrieking out the final words.
Azalin continued with his incantation; I could just see his lips moving through the glare. He made several broad gestures and waited, but nothing happened. He repeated the gestures, and slowly the cylinder began to reform itself, the top retreating from the window, the base from the floor. It continued to quickly turn in midair, but the direction altered as the energy compressed, first going diagonally, then vertically. After a few worrisome moments, the cylinder gradually took on the shape of a perfect glowing sphere.
I had anticipated this, having seen it before in Ilka's crystal ball. The vision had left out the monumental noise. The vibration of it went through my body to gnaw at my very bones. I wanted to retreat but held fast, arms still outstretched, directing more power into the thing.
His voice cracking with the effort, Azalin screamed at me to start the next phase of the spell as he took over the effort of holding the light in a stable form.
Shouting the words, I instantly sensed the change. The sphere bulged out, doubling its circumference until it extended beyond the boundary of the containing walls. I felt the heat of it as it swelled toward me, inches from my face. Azalin's voice rose above the din, and through the glare I saw him make a specific gesture of control.
It didn't work. He repeated it twice more and the sphere started to shrink, the brightness increasing.
I tried to penetrate the glare with my mind's eye, looking at it in the same way as I looked into the crystal. For an instant I caught a glimpse of green and gold. I concentrated and finally saw a true image of what lay beyond, a sight I had not seen in two centuries, a fair green land bathed in summer sunlight. Past the rolling fields rose mountains, a long range of peaks totally unfamiliar to me.
'Open it!' Azalin ordered.
I heard him more in my mind than with my ears and quickly launched into the final phase of the spell. The image rippled and held, growing larger until it was life-sized, and then I knew it was now a true doorway-and open.
To daylight.
I could survive it if I had to; there were trees present where I might find temporary shelter. If necessary I could bury myself in the ground before the burns became too severe. While unconscious I'd be at Azalin's mercy, though. A risk I'd just have to take.
He shouted something, but I could no longer hear clearly; the roar managed to increase that much more and took on a teeth rattling high-pitched yowl. I called out the last of the incantation and saw Azalin hoist himself up on the edge of the circle. Through the vision in the sphere I could dimly see him standing on the wall.
I felt the control weaken as his attention wavered. The whole chamber rumbled with it as though the earth itself shrugged.
The green land faded, went suddenly hazy. The door was still open; I knew it to be open.
Azalin set himself, then leaped toward it. Toward… mist. The Mists. The Mists were flooding the bright sphere.
His momentum suddenly ceased; he hung in the core of the sphere like a fly in a web, slowly turning and tumbling out of control.
The sphere began to grow and became too bright to look at. The noise went beyond hearing, beyond bearing. I made one last effort to hold it together, knowing it would be useless; things were quite outside my control. The future as revealed by Ilka's crystal was about to become the past. My last spell exhausted, I dropped and dove for cover against the outer wall of the circle an instant before the blast ripped through the chamber.
The force of it rushed over me, slammed into the sigil-covered walls and ricocheted in a hundred directions at once. The glass containers were the first to go, their liquid contents shooting up in noisome fountains just before they shattered. Shards flew everywhere like arrows; I covered my head with my arms and braced against the thousand bites of lancing pain where I was struck. But that wasn't nearly as bad as the fireball.
I didn't know what it was at the time. It came too fast to comprehend. I heard a terrible deep booming above, like a huge hammer beating insanely upon a giant's drum. The sound was such that I thought my head would burst from it. I cowered and tried to turn into mist to escape it, but my body stubbornly held to its man-form. The energies tearing through the room must have disrupted my shape-changing ability. The vast, now out of control forces pressed me down against the hard floor as though to crush me to pulp, then atop that pressure came a wave of searing heat. It could not have lasted more than a second, but years might have passed in my perception of things.
Then silence. Absolute silence. I was sure that I had gone deaf.
When I finally dared to open my eyes to the present reality and move, the stillness was almost palpable, the air a thick, milky fog which rolled lazily about me. It was not the Mists of the borders, though, but rather steam rising from the escaped liquids where the last of them boiled away on the stone floor. With some relief I found that I could hear their bubbling hiss. My normal hearing was unaffected; it was my sense for magic that had been overburdened from the excess stimulation. My head rang from it, but I seemed otherwise unharmed. The many cuts I'd taken from the flying glass were healing, and I'd been spared from the horror of the fire by a special protective ring I always wore. As for the rest of the place…
To describe the room as a shambles would have been a dreadful understatement The only thing standing was
