He looked around the room. "Now if I were a master sorcerer with a secret to hide, where would I hide it?"
"Someplace close, I think," Shiara said, looking around the great room. Either in this room or in a room off it." She started toward one wall and then stopped.
"Cormac, I want you to examine the room carefully for anything strange or unusual."
"In this place? Fortuna! But what will you be doing?"
"I am going to finish my spell." She bit her lower lip. "Even once we find the key we may not want to use it. And I wish to finish this business and be away quickly."
"As you will, Light." He moved off.
"And Cormac, touch nothing!"
Again the grin. "Since it’s you who ask, Light."
While Cormac searched, Shiara concentrated on completing her spell. She forced herself to think only of the technical aspects, blocking out the unease that almost stifled her. Only when the spell was complete and primed and her counting demon duly instructed did she look up.
"Have you found anything?" she called to Cormac across the gloomy expanse of the hall.
"Nothing I care to think overmuch on," he called, crossing the black-and-green floor. "The place is strangely proportioned, these pedestals seem strewn about at random and the pattern on this miserable floor makes my eyes ache." He looked down at the patterned marble at his feet.
"The floor," Shiara said reflectively. "Yes." She looked up. "There may be a message here." She stepped back to the entrance and looked out over the elaborate pattern formed by the squares of marble that floored the hall.
From the door the tiles made the floor seem to sweep away in a roller-coaster perspective, tilting and writhing off into the distance. There seemed to be no horizon line and no point of perspective save madness in the bizarre geometry of the tiles. And yet…
"Cormac, walk out that way," she said pointing toward one corner of the hall. The swordsman followed her pointing finger. "A little further. Now stop." Inexorably the pattern seemed to pull him to the right. It was somehow wrong to move to the left at that point.
"Now go left," she commanded. Cormac dubiously obeyed. "Further left. No, don’t look down at the floor! Don’t close your eyes. Just keep to your left." With his gaze locked at the shoulder level Cormac moved more to his left and off into the gloom.
"Now what do you see?"
"Nothing much," Cormac called back. "I just bumped into a wall. Wait a moment, I seem to have company."
Shiara gasped.
"Nay, lass, he’s not dangerous now. But I think you will enjoy this."
"Stay where you are." Shiara moved away from the door and toward Cormac who was invisible in the gloom. "Talk to me. Anything, just so I can follow the sound of your voice."
"Well, it’s dark over here, darker than any other part of the room. And our friend isn’t much of a conversationalist."
"Fine," said Shiara coming up to him. "Don’t look at that floor. It’s both a trap and a hiding place. It is designed to draw you away from this spot and perhaps ensnare you if you are so foolish as to watch the floor as you walk."
She nodded to Cormac’s silent companion. "I think that’s what happened to him."
Standing almost next to Cormac with his eyes fixed on the floor was a black-robed wizard. He was obviously alive but equally obviously caught fast in the grip of a spell. He could neither move nor talk but his eyes burned with venomous hatred as he looked at the floor.
"Why it’s Jul-Akkan isn’t it?" Shiara said pleasantly. "I thought you might be along on this and of course you’re too old a fox to be caught by the death spells around the hoard. What did you do, wait outside while the others rushed to the pedestals?"
She turned to Cormac. "Note him well, Cormac. Jul-Akkan is high in the Council of the League. Indeed he bid fair to become a master of all the League, were he able to rid himself of one or two of his more troublesome colleagues. Now here he is, caught like a fly in a honey bowl."
Cormac shifted and raised his sword for the killing stroke.
"No," Shiara commanded. "I don’t know what that would do to the spell and I doubt you could kill him so easily. No, best leave him while we attend to our main business." She stooped to examine the wall behind Cormac.
"Now let us see what is here."
A quick search of the wall revealed a thin narrow crack in the polished black stone of the wall. Carefully she ran her hand along it, feeling rather than seeing the unevenness that marked a panel in the otherwise solid stone.
She knelt down and pressed her hand against the panel. "It is locked and enchanted, but not guarded, I think."
"Don’t bet your life on that, lass," Cormac warned. "This fellow was tricky enough for ten wizards."
"I will venture nothing on the chance. I merely make the observation."
Shiara looked up at him from where she knelt. "You do not have to be here for this."
Cormac shook his head. "You may need me." Then he laid his hand on hers. "Besides, a World without Light is not a World fit to live in."
"Thank you Cormac," she squeezed his hand. "Now stand out of my light while I unravel this puzzle."
Again working partly by magic and partly with her picks and other tools, Shiara carefully pried the secrets from the lock. Cormac stood by nervously, fingering his sword hilt, his head turning this way and that as he searched for tangible manifestation of the danger he sensed here. Finally there was a click and the panel swung smoothly back.
Behind the panel lay another smaller room lit with the same balefire glow as the great hall. It took only a single lantern to light it. The stink of incense and the reek of magic was fully as strong here as it was beyond. But there were fewer pedestals bearing treasures.
"A puzzle within a puzzle," Cormac said as he surveyed their latest find.
Shiara pointed to a pier off to one side of the chamber. "There, I think."
Cautiously she approached and then sucked in her breath at what she saw.
Laying atop the pedestal was a magician’s staff. But it was like no magician’s staff Shiara had ever seen. It was perhaps four feet long and as thick as her wrist, but it was not wood or even metal. Instead it was made of a crystalline substance that seemed to show flickers of an amethyst light deep within itself. Tiny crabbed characters ran inscribed in bands around its surface, save for a space about a hand’s breadth wide near the top. There was no knob or finial on either end. It was more a sceptre than a staff, she realized. A symbol of rule as well as a tool of magical power.
The wizardess passed her wand over the pedestal and smiled at the result.
"This is the key. If I neutralize the spell and move this, we can remove all else in this place."
"Be careful, Light."
"I will my Sun."
Slowly and carefully Shiara began to unravel the spell binding the staff to the pedestal. She made a final sweeping gesture and the spell flickered and died.
In spite of removing the spell and in spite of her urgent desire to finish this business, Shiara was reluctant to touch the evilly-glinting object before her. She had handled such staffs of other wizards before, but there was something about this one that awed and dismayed her.
Finally she placed her hand upon it and felt the waves of magic flow through her. It seemed as if a dark and vastly deep space opened up around her, inhabited by huge shadow things that pressed close, whispering offers of power, the fulfillment of all dreams and the slaking of all lusts. She had but to wield the staff and…
Quivering, Shiara fought the temptation. She lifted the staff and carried it across the chamber at arm’s length as if it were a poisonous serpent.
The waves of magic beat stronger against her, calling to her more and more clearly. In a fit of panic Shiara tried to drop the staff and found she could not. Now it was the staff which was holding her.