The sorceress studied the area carefully, searching for the wraiths who had attacked her on the Cloud Road. The Gray was their natural home, and the whole point of their ambush had been to push her into it. Here, the spirits of the dead were dissolved and absorbed into the Gray, much as corpses on Athas were slowly obliterated by rot and decay. However, some spirits did not suffer this fate. Some were sustained by a force even more powerful than the Gray: their everlasting faith in a cause greater than themselves. The wraiths had dedicated themselves to Borys’s service many centuries earlier, and they were such spirits. It was clear that they intended to use their special natures to force her to fight at a disadvantage.
The sorceress was far from panicked. While she would not be as comfortable in the Gray as her foes, she knew more about this place than the wraiths realized. If they expected her to assume they had killed her simply because she found herself in the Gray, they were badly mistaken. The Pristine Tower served as ample evidence that Sadira was alive. A reminder of the most significant event in her life, the spire of white rock acted as a lodestone for her spirit, holding it together and preventing it from dispersing into the haze. Before they could destroy her, the wraiths would have to drive her off its steps.
Magnus’s voice began to toll out of the haze. He was singing a ballad with melancholy strains as loud as thunder and as sweet as morning dew. Though she could not understand the words, Sadira quickly realized that her friend was trying to help her find a way out of the Gray. Unfortunately, the music came from all directions at once, from the front and back, both sides, above and below, even from inside her own head. She cupped her hand to an ear, trying to locate the source of Magnus’s sonorous voice. It would have been easier to chase down the wind.
The sorceress pulled her slender stiletto from its scabbard. A magnificent weapon with a blade of etched bronze and an iron handle beset with tourmalines, it had been in Agis’s family for centuries. She fished a piece of twine from the deep pocket of her robe and tied it around the crossguard. The other end she looped over her wrist, then held the dagger out at arm’s length and let it dangle from the string. She spoke a magical incantation that would make it lead her to the source of Magnus’s voice.
Sadira felt a strange tingle in the hand with the twine, and its ebony color began to fade. The sensation slowly spread up her arm. What she could see of her flesh, from the fingertips to the wrist, paled to its normal color, and the dagger began to spin wildly.
Though she had not expected the reaction, the sorceress was not really surprised by it. Normally her skin remained black with mystic energy during the day, then returned to its usual color the instant night fell. But in the Gray, day and night did not exist. Without the sun in the sky, her spell had drawn its power from the only available source: her flesh. Then, unable to replenish what it had lost to the spell, her arm had remained pale.
Of more concern to the sorceress was the dagger. It continued to spin madly, attempting to point in every direction at once. Sadira watched the blade for several moments. When it showed no sign of settling down, she decided that her spell had failed, and she caught the hilt.
As the sorceress started to slip the weapon into its sheath, the tower lurched beneath her feet. Sadira stumbled and nearly pitched over the side but managed to drop to her hands and knees in time to keep from falling. Her stomach rolled in one direction after the other, and a sick, queasy feeling rose into her throat. Although she saw no hint of motion when she tried to fix her gaze on the haze around her, she felt like the spire was spinning as wildly as her stiletto had a moment earlier. By plunging her dagger into a fissure and twisting the blade against the edge, she barely managed to keep herself from flying off the steps.
For a long time, all Sadira could do was cling to the hilt and pray the blade would not slip from the crack. If she lost contact with the Pristine Tower, she feared that the haze would begin to eat at her spirit and that her life force would seep away. Even if that did not happen, the wraiths would certainly find it easier to prey upon her as she drifted aimlessly through the Gray. Perhaps they were even responsible for knocking the tower into its crazy spin.
Magnus’s voice began to waver, growing much louder each time the gyrating tower pointed in a particular direction, fading to a mere whisper when it pointed away. At first, the volume increased every few seconds, but gradually the rotations slowed, and the spire continued to point in the same direction for a little bit longer, until the sensation of movement ceased, and the song came to the sorceress’s ears from one direction only: the top of the stairs.
Sadira breathed a sigh of relief. The wraiths had not caused the wild spinning after all. The dagger had been unable to point in a single direction because doing so would have led her not to Magnus’s voice but away from the tower and into the dangers of the Gray. Instead, her spell had reoriented the whole tower, so that the exit lay in an obvious direction: up.
Listening attentively to Magnus’s beautiful song, Sadira peered under the collar of her robe. The flesh of her arm had paled clear up to her shoulder. The sorceress guessed that the magic energy in her body would be completely drained after five or six more spells-even less, if the spells were powerful ones. After that, she would have to find a different source for her enchantments. And in the Gray, she doubted that she would find any plants from which to draw the mystic force of life.
Wondering if she would have enough magic to defeat the wraiths when they finally showed themselves, the sorceress started to climb. The stairs were small, barely wide enough to accept her foot from the toes to the arch. Often, the steps were cracked and so worn that they formed more of a ramp than a staircase. A thousand years of dust lay upon the treads, and she passed over the ancient grime without leaving a track. It took more than a footfall to disturb the torpor of the Gray.
The sorceress climbed for a long time: minutes or hours or days, she did not know. Progress, if she was making any, came slowly. The summit remained veiled by distance, and the base of the tower seemed no nearer. Still, she continued to climb, reassured by the increasing volume of the windsinger’s voice that she was traveling in the right direction. In the stillness of the haze, distance and time were mere illusions, but not Magnus’s song. It came from the outside, and it was real.
After a time, a glowing emerald floated into view. It hovered next to the wall, several steps above, and a large eddy of darkening haze slowly circled it. A pair of green pinpoints appeared in the haze, at about head-height and twinkling with a sinister glow.
Sadira stopped climbing, anxious and ready for battle. Like her, wraiths needed something important from their lives to serve as magnets for their spirits. Although the sorceress had never encountered these particular apparitions before the attack on the Cloud Road, Rikus had. From his description, she knew that for Borys’s followers, a brilliant gem served this purpose. Though she could not be certain, she guessed that Borys had given one of the stones to each of his knights when he took them into his service.
The sorceress thrust a hand into her robe pocket, watching dark haze coalesce around the emerald above. The cloud soon formed the cumbersome figure of a woman in a full suit of plate armor. The warrior wore the visor of her helmet up, so that she could focus the green specks of her eyes on Sadira. The woman’s face was stern and hard, with a cleft chin, sneering lips, and broad flat cheeks.