originates. The latter are extremely dangerous; the power is raw and untamed. The spells that draw upon the power of an origination point will be magnified disproportionately and difficult to control. It is best not to use them.”
“My tower is built on this minor nexus where threads from decay and death merge together. You cannot see it from here; it is too deep within that crack. I know of other minor nexuses that have been claimed by wizards who specialize in other forms of magic. The Wizards’ Schools are all built upon nexus points where many different threads merge together. The Wizards’ School in Wayfair is built upon a particularly powerful one, a major nexus, that is both a concentration of energies and an origination point of two distinct forms of magic. I know of only one other major nexus, and that is deep within the mountains; it fuels the magic of the dwarves and keeps their forges burning. But they are incompetent fools who barely know how to tap into its energy.”
Voltari fell into an angry silence for several seconds, and then returned them to the practice room. When it appeared he was about to leave, Angus asked, “What should I do if I ever find a nexus?”
“You?” Voltari laughed. “Run. You don’t have the ability to tame it, to make it do your bidding.”
“What if I did have that power?” Angus asked.
Voltari cuffed him, laughed, and teleported away.
19
“We can’t stay down here,” Hobart said. “We’ve already left the horses alone for too long.”
“Something might have seen Angus’s flare, too,” Ortis added.
“At least we shouldn’t have to worry about the cat-things,” Angus said. “They appear to be more-or-less domesticated.”
“Giorge needs more time to recover,” Ortis said. “It’s been less than a day.”
“It’s too bad all those other rooms were empty,” Hobart said.
“As far as we could tell,” Angus said. “We didn’t search them close enough to find trapdoors, secret tunnels—”
“Traps,” Hobart interjected.
“While we wait for Giorge to recover,” Angus said. “I’d like to take another look at that pit.”
“Why?” Hobart asked. “You’ve already spent a lot of time there.”
“I know,” Angus said. “Call it a feeling if you want to, but there’s something down there.”
“What if there is?” Hobart said. “How would we get down to it?”
Angus shrugged. “Give me a few hours rest to rejuvenate my energy matrix, and I’ll prime my flying spell.”
“The way you fly,” Hobart muttered, “You’ll run into the wall again.”
Angus chuckled. “Probably,” he agreed. “But if I don’t practice, I’ll never get better. It is a new spell for me, after all.”
“All right,” Ortis said. “I’ll go up to check on the horses and bring back some food and water.”
“Do you think you can make it up the staircase in your condition?”
Ortis nodded. “It might take me a while, but I can do it.”
“I’m going to take a nap,” Angus said. “I’m getting a bit tired, anyway. You can check up on Giorge, can’t you Hobart?”
Hobart nodded and turned away.
Two Ortises went down the corridor and out into the stairwell; the other one followed Hobart.
Angus went into the antechamber where Ortis had healed himself and looked around for a few minutes before sitting down in a corner to sleep. The same sticky substance was on the floor that he had felt on Ortis’s arm when he had passed him, and he wondered if there had been a cocoon after all. If only he had had time to look in on him again….
20
By the time Angus had finished priming his spells—Lamplight, Flying, Puffer, Arclight—Ortis had returned and Giorge had woken up. Giorge could hear again, but his vision was still blurry.
Ortis told them the cat-things were still in the grain near the temple, but they were keeping their distance. The horses were fine.
“Well?” Angus asked as he joined them. “Are we going to look in that room again, or not?”
“You know there’s nothing there but the pit,” Hobart said.
“Yes there is,” Giorge said. He reached into his tunic and brought out a small pouch. He opened the ties and tipped some of the gems into his hand. “I dropped the other bag,” he said.
Hobart reached over and picked up a pea-sized emerald. “These will fetch a handsome price,” he said. “How many are there?”
“Enough to lift Angus’s injunction, winter in Hellsbreath, and buy Hedreth’s inn a half-dozen times. If we get the other bag.”
“Don’t forget the taxes,” Hobart said. “The king will want his share.”
“That’s what the other bag is for,” Giorge said. “We can leave it here and let the king’s men come back and get it for the king, can’t we?”
Hobart glared at him and shook his head. “The king is generous enough to us as it is. He deserves his due.”
“Oh?” Giorge countered. “And what, exactly, did he do to help us find this place? Did he come down here with us? Did he almost die? Did he go blind? No. We’re not even in his land anymore.”
“That isn’t quite true,” Hobart said, frowning. “He claims The Tween as his own.”
“So do the Dwarves,” Giorge said. “Maybe we should pay them taxes.”
“Never mind that,” Ortis said. “There will be plenty of time to argue the point on our way back to Hellsbreath.”
“Right,” Angus said. “You said you dropped another pouch in that room. How do we get down to it?”
“What about that spell you used to lift the rope?” Hobart asked. “That pouch has to weigh a lot less than the rope.”
Angus tilted his head and half-smiled. “If I can see it, I’ll try,” he said. “But I will have to go into the room to see it.”
“So,” Hobart said. “You’re going to fly, then?”
Angus nodded. “Unless you have another idea for avoiding the stakes.”
No one had any suggestions, and into the silence Giorge said, “At least I can see a little better today.”
“Sorry about that,” Angus said. “I tried to minimize the risk from the wand.”
Giorge nodded. “Hobart told me. I should thank you for getting me out of there, but,” he shrugged and pointed at his eyes. “I might have found a way out myself, if you’d given me more time.”
“We didn’t think we could wait,” Hobart said. “Besides, if we get those other gems, it will surely be enough to hire a healer when we get back to Hellsbreath.”
Giorge shrugged. “At least I didn’t fall and die,” he said, grinning. “All my plans seemed to end that way.”
“Look,” Angus said. “I’m going to see if I can find the pouch. Are you coming or not?” He turned and walked down the corridor, casting the Lamplight spell as he went and placing it over his left shoulder. When he reached the end of the corridor and turned, he sought out the faint strand of blue and tied the knots for the flying spell. By the time he reached the room, he had the third spell—Puffer—ready in his mind. He pushed all of the other strands away from him, and kept them at the periphery of his visual field.
He leapt through the hole he had made with the wand and fell, stopping himself in a hover a few feet above the stakes. He maneuvered to the column with the bowl on it, and looked at the floor below him. He frowned. It was covered with a thick layer of rock dust, and he couldn’t see the pouch. He sighed, cast Puffer, and began blowing the dust outward in a spiral away from the column. When he found the pouch, he intensified the breeze and tried to lift it from the floor. It fluttered, and the pouch became upright with the drawstring sticking up straight, but that was all he could manage. He frowned; it was as he had feared: the gems held the pouch down. He sighed and carefully maneuvered among three stakes, but he didn’t fit well and came up about a foot short.
He rose sharply and stopped when he was next to the bowl. He hovered there and pulled off his boot. He set it in the
bowl and carefully lowered himself with delicate little vibrations on the thread of the flying spell. He continued to nudge the spell until his leg was positioned above the opening among the stakes, and then lowered himself at a very slow rate, sweat beading on his brow from the effort to control his descent. When he felt the ties of the pouch with his big toe, he wiggled it around until the drawstring looped around it, then lifted himself gently into the air. When he was free of the stakes, he rose more rapidly, rising above the bowl and dropping the pouch into it.
There was a click.
The floor began to slide back down the wall.
The others watched as it descended into its natural place.
Hobart frowned from the doorway, with Ortis looking over his shoulder. “Now what do we do?” he asked, staring at the gaping hole in front of him where the wand had destroyed the floor.
“What happened?” Giorge asked from behind them.
“The floor slid back into place,” Ortis said.
“Why did it do that?” Giorge asked, pushing past Ortis. “What did you do?” he asked Angus.
Angus reached for his boot and slid it onto his feet. Then he removed the pouch from the bowl and flew up to them. “The bowl must be weight-sensitive,” he said. “When I put these back in the bowl, there was a click, and the floor went back into place.”
“What can we put in it?” Giorge asked.
“We haven’t found anything down here that’s heavy enough,” Hobart said. “It’s all empty corridors and rooms.”
“The feedbags,” Ortis said. “We can put one of them on it.”
“It needs to be about the same weight,” Giorge