rock had suddenly become a liquid mirror. Oriseus waited a moment to let the shimmering settle, then stepped onto the stone. It was as if he stepped into a puddle of shining water, slowly sinking to his knees, his waist, his chest, and then vanishing silently as the silvery moonstuff closed over his head. Although each man there was a mage, no one was untouched by Oriseus's feat. After a brief hesitation, Dalrioc Corynian pushed himself forward and plunged into the shadow pool, flailing for his footing but sinking out of sight. One by one, they all followed, leaving Aeron and Sarim to the end.
They paused at the brink of the portal and exchanged a glance. 'Do you still wish to do this, Aeron?' Sarim asked.
The fear he'd suppressed all night threatened to overwhelm Aeron; all his instincts railed against following Oriseus into the stone. His feet were rooted to the ground, and cold sweat trickled down his back. This is a fine time to come to my senses, he thought. 'We're here,' he answered. 'I have to see this through.'
'Very well,' Sarim said. He stepped onto the stone and glided through it, a luminescent ghost in the moonlight.
With a determined grimace, Aeron set his foot on the silvery surface of the stone and stepped into it, sinking slowly into the cold light as if the stone were bottomless. As he slid into the portal, a chill, sharp as a razor, climbed his body, so intense that his feet ached with cold by the time he had sunk to his chest. His heart surged with panic, and he desperately gulped for air as his head sank under the moon mirror, leaving nothing but a ripple in his wake.
When Aeron opened his eyes again, he was standing beneath a starless sky, far hills on the horizon limned by an eldritch glow. Bitter air seared his nose and throat, drying the tears in his eyes. He still stood on the acropolis, but the hill was different. Below him, crowded Cimbar had vanished, leaving only a handful of spare lights glimmering faintly along a sluggish, leaden bay. The topography was not quite correct; there was less water, and the hills seemed steeper and more forbidding. Overhead, the cold skies were empty of all but a few dim and hateful stars.
'Come, Aeron. This is no place to dawdle.'
Aeron turned at the sound of Oriseus's voice. It took him a moment to understand what he saw. The High Conjuror beckoned from within a tall shadow, silhouetted against a looming shape that towered into the night sky. Oriseus was shrouded in a violet aura, a faint flickering light that stemmed from the power of his will and the skill of his magic. Marching toward the great dark shape, each of the other mages was similarly marked, although the color and strength of their auras varied. Aeron glanced down at his bone-white hands and found a delicate blue faerie light dancing over his skin. The sight fascinated him, and he stared in frozen wonder, the unnaturally still and frigid air slicing through his chest with each breath.
The conjuror frowned with impatience and repeated his summons, holding out his hand. 'Aeron, the others have gone ahead to the temple. Come on.'
'The temple?' Aeron asked, puzzled. He took two steps toward Oriseus, the cold, hard ground crunching beneath his boots. He looked past the red-robed master, and his heart stopped. Behind Oriseus, the Broken Pyramid stood intact, looking as it must have centuries ago. No other building of the college, or even the city, was mirrored within the shadow, but the pyramid stood, a stark and inescapable monolith beneath the eternal dark. His jaw fell open. 'It stands again!'
'It never fell here. That is the way of the shadow. It remembers things lost to the daylight, places long gone, people long dead. In some places, it even holds the memory of what might have been. The city below is ephemeral, a vanity of no importance. But the pyramid is quite real here, Aeron.' Oriseus stepped forward and took Aeron's arm in a firm hand, steering him into line. 'This is the least of the wonders I have to show you today, lad. Now follow me.'
Nodding mutely, Aeron fell behind the others, trudging to a dark and narrow door in the pyramid's flank while his mind reeled numbly. Oriseus moved on to shepherd them all within, watching vigilantly. Aeron spared one more look for the sere hilltop, stretching out with his senses, searching for something more than the empty cold that surrounded him. His unease was growing by the moment, a hopeless panic that frightened him all the more because he could not pinpoint its source. Something was terribly wrong here.
The Weave, he realized. It's gone. The stony earth was cold and dead, the air still and lifeless. The spark, the flame of the living world was missing here. No magic, no life, existed for him to perceive. Yet as he adjusted to his surroundings, he sensed the barest trickle of magic. The shadow held the merest whisper of the Weave, but it was not entirely desiccated.
As Aeron turned his attention to the pyramid, he became aware of a dark, hot energy suffusing the structure, a tangible emanation of potency that he could sense as surely as if he turned his face to the sun during the day. It streamed and coiled away from the obelisk like a leaping flame, invisible and silent, yet fraught with unearthly power. The thick, ancient stones could barely contain the raging conflagration within. The sensation terrified Aeron, yet he hungered to feel the black warmth on his face, to stand unharmed in the dark pyre and tame the power.
Aeron scrabbled forward after the others, eagerly moving to view with his own eyes the wonder hidden within the stone tomb. He didn't even spare Oriseus a glance as he passed between the blank door and felt himself pulled down the long, silent corridor of worked stone that led within. He trailed Dalrioc Corynian as the circle of sorcerers wound through the lightless labyrinth of the pyramid's innards, spiraling downward through winding stairs and echoing chambers until they reached a chamber set beneath the center of the structure. Midnight power thrummed in the stones under his feet.
Oriseus pushed the door open, leading the way into a wide, low vault of dark stone and squat columns. Arched galleries circled the room, and intricate bas-reliefs defaced the walls, but Aeron had no eye for these. The stone in the center of the room seized his attention.
It was a simple thing, an uneven shard of smooth, glossy black rock about the size and shape of a horse's skull. A weird lambent light danced in its ebon depths. It was bound in rune-carved iron bands, suspended in a rude circular stand of black metal. The mages surrounded it in an even circle five paces wide. For a long moment they gazed on it in silence, unable or unwilling to speak. Finally Master Sarim wrenched his gaze away. 'Oriseus? What is it?'
The High Conjuror did not reply immediately. He stepped close and laid a hand on the cool rock, his face absent. Finally he answered. 'Thousands of years ago, the Imaskari arose, first of all men to walk in this world. Unfettered by the powers and restrictions of gods, they had nothing to defy their understanding, their comprehension. The glories of Netheril and fallen Raumanthar were mere reflections of the first mages, the sorcerer lords who mastered magic in that forgotten age.
'And so the Imaskari ruled vast lands thousands of years before the rise of Mulhorand, of Unther, of Netheril and the other ancient kingdoms of man. They roamed the planes, building portals to a thousand times and worlds. And so they aroused the ire of the petty gods who rule over this sphere. These powers sought to bring down the Imaskari by withholding the Weave from them. The lords of the Imaskari thus turned to a source of magic from beyond this world, a source of magic that they could wield without answering to the rude demipowers of this sphere. They brought the Shadow Stone into this world, establishing a link or conduit through which they could draw on an energy that exists outside all time and space.'
Oriseus circled the stone, studying the mages one by one. 'This stone represents that which existed before anything else existed. It is a symbol, a link to the blind and voiceless power that was displaced from our sphere in the very beginning of things. It did not save the Imaskari, but with this they slew gods when the world was young.'
Oriseus looked up at them, his eyes glinting. 'Here, my fellows, is the strength that even gods fear. Set your hand on it and it is yours. You need only ask.'
Aeron closed his eyes, his face flushed with the energy that danced before him. Oriseus had once told him that the Weave was the spirit, the soul of the world. The stone was something else, a void or vacuum that injured the world by its very existence. It was potential without purpose, eager for the hand and mind to guide it. With nothing more than his intuition, Aeron understood that once he touched the stone with his will and sight, he would be able to call upon its power anywhere, anytime, joined by an ethereal link to something that defied distance and hesitation. He shuffled closer a half-step, drawn by the power.
Ahead of him, Dalrioc Corynian broke the ranks of their circle and boldly stepped forward, an arrogant sneer on his face. 'Very well, Oriseus. I ask.' He moved to stand beside the stone, studying it without a hint of hesitation. Dalrioc reached out and set his hand on the glossy rock and stood petrified, enraptured, his face twisted in a rictus
