The Lost Path Between the Worlds
John C. Hocking

“Gods, are you an idiot? Can’t you speak?” The woman’s voice rang in the still air. I looked up from the counter and saw Polinar fleeing toward me, his face screwed up with tension and embarrassment. As Polinar passed the counter I stepped from behind it, placing myself between him and his nemesis.

“Speech is difficult for him, milady,” I said. “Perhaps I can help you.”

“Why would you employ a mute idiot in an archive? Are you the senior attendant?”

“I am,” I said. There was little point in telling the lady that when Polinar was a small boy his throat had been improperly slashed by the Southron bandits who had killed his mother and father. It had been a while since I’d encountered a noble with this kind of attitude, but I’d met them before and would doubtless meet them again. “Can I help you?”

“Are you literate? This city is full of illiterates who don’t know the difference between Thar the Pen and Sulvanius.”

“Thar the Pen’s works are on the third floor among the history texts. Sulvanius is several aisles to the west, among the poetry. As Thar was a native of the city, if you’re interested you can find his bloodline in the ancestry files of the fourth floor.”

She closed her mouth and looked at me with a little interest and a good deal of skepticism. “What is your name?”

I told her. She told me her name was Lady Astrid Taranova. She had straight black hair and just enough copper tint to her skin to indicate she probably had Southron blood. Her white robes were edged with fine purple and cut to reveal her youthful figure. I’m sure I would have found her beautiful if everything from her stance to her tone of voice didn’t forcefully convey contempt and impatience.

“Has the Archive received the library of Dalin Daskander?”

“Yes, Lady, a legacy of almost 500 volumes kindly left to us in his will.”

“Excellent,” she said, sounding as if she meant it. “You will take me to it now.”

“Alas, I cannot. Daskander collected rare and valuable texts, many having to do with little-studied aspects of the Old Southron civilization. Such a complex legacy needs to be inventoried and accessed. ”

“Nonsense,” Lady Taranova snapped. “I’ll pay for the privilege.”

“I’m sorry, Lady, but nobody can examine Daskander’s library until it has been processed and we’ve determined its value. Work is being done even now and I understand that it may be completed as early as tomorrow morning.”

She took a step toward me and stared directly into my eyes. I blinked and tried not to look away. Her perfume smelled like night-blooming poppies.

“I am not interested in the entire legacy,” Lady Taranova said in softer tones. “I am looking for a handwritten text called CELESTIAL COUPLET.”

I was so occupied with staring into her great dark eyes that I found myself unable to respond. She leaned close enough that when she spoke I felt her breath on my cheek.

“Perhaps you could find it for me?”

I stepped back and moved to put the counter between us. It was not what I most wished to do at that moment.

“I’m truly sorry, Lady. Nothing can be done with the legacy until tomorrow.”

Her dark eyes lowered to watch her own hands come down flat on the countertop, and my gaze followed. She quickly turned over her right hand, and there was a fleck of white-diamond fire in her palm. It burned like a star, small yet somehow swelling to fill my vision. The roar of great wings filled my ears and I was falling into the pure white light.

“Won’t you help me?” she whispered.

I bowed my head, thrust a hand over my eyes and thought I might fall.

“I don’t believe milady is on the registry of sorcerers,” I managed to say. My voice rasped and my balance was unsteady, but my remark was nothing to scoff at. In the city of Frekore, magic users are required by law to register their skills. I tend to those records in the Archives.

Her hand snapped shut and the tiny light was snuffed like a candle. She stared at me a moment and I could not read her expression.

“I see,” she said at last. “Perhaps tomorrow, then.” Astrid Taranova turned away and walked toward the Archive’s great double doors. Only then did I notice she had a companion. A very tall man in strange garb leaned against a pillar, watching me. He was far enough away not to intrude on my conversation with Lady Taranova, but close enough to hear it if he’d pleased. His hair was as black as hers, and fell over wide shoulders in two thick braids. Both shirt and breeches were of well-tanned leather, with a broad dark belt worn over his left shoulder and across his breast. The belt was adorned with shiny black discs, and a single green glove that was tucked behind it at his waist. He gazed at me and his eyes held a flat arrogance. He stroked one of the odd discs with a forefinger, then turned as stiffly as a soldier on parade and followed Lady Taranova out into the afternoon heat.

I went back into the receiving area, where Dalin Daskander’s legacy lay spread out over several long tables. Polinar was there cataloging scrolls, and he bowed his head as I passed. I had to look through the lot twice before I found it. CELESTIAL COUPLET wasn’t a book or a scroll, but a collection of documents -- just loose pages tied between silk-wrapped boards. I pulled it open, and was startled. The volume was a haphazard gathering of rubbings from monuments and gravestones mingled with pages made from tree bark and animal skin. The material consisted of everything from what looked like free-verse poetry to densely printed text, and virtually all of it was in Old Southron. I’d never seen so much of the lost language in one place. Even more exciting was the fact that the margin of almost every page was filled with scrawled notes, apparently attempting translation.

Over the years I’d assisted more than a few scholars who hoped to use the Archives to help unlock the secret of the Old Southron language. The version spoken by modern mesa folk is much degraded and their writing has been lost, so an understanding of the original writing has proven elusive.

Daskander’s crabbed notes were almost as hard to translate as the Old Southron. Still, I could make out bits and pieces, and there were a number of cryptic illustrations, often depicting men wearing capes fashioned of feathers and standing in some sort of ring or circle. CELESTIAL COUPLET was about Southron sorcery in general, but one ritual in particular. It was also only one volume of two, which made sense given its title.

I made sure that the second volume wasn’t in Daskander’s legacy, then sat at the table as if I were working and leafed through the loose pages again and again. Apparently, the sorcerer donned some kind of mantle and left the world, only to return with vastly greater powers. This sequence of events was alluded to so many times that I wondered if it was some kind of myth or tale of power. I was puzzling over a sequence that Daskander interpreted as being about the dwelling place of a serpent, when Polinar sidled over and nudged me. It was a warning; a moment later the Elder entered and asked how the processing was going.

I didn’t tell the Elder about CELESTIAL COUPLET or Lady Taranova, although I thought about little else for the rest of my shift. I resolved that the only way that she would examine the book would be in my company, and I looked forward to learning more about both her and the book the next day.

I dreamt that a great black snake rose before me in darkness. The snake’s jaws dropped open and a terrible light burst forth. An intrusive rapping sound broke the snake apart. The sound was insistent, rapidly growing into a maddening tattoo.

I sat up in bed with a muffled exclamation. It was very late and there was someone at my door.

“Gods and demons,” I rasped. “Be still, I’m coming.”

I lurched out of bed and stumbled across my apartment, dodging stacks of manuscripts. I pulled open the door, fell against the jamb and blinked at my visitor.

“What the hell…” I began, then saw it was the boy the Archive employs to run messages. He had no family and the Archives served as his home.

“Doros, what are you doing here this time of night?”

“Master, there’s been trouble at the Archives. The Elder bid me summon you at once.”

“Trouble?”

“It’s been broken into, sir.”

“Broke in? How?” I was waking up, but it wasn’t coming easily.

“Sorcery, master. I was asleep in the palms when I heard a roar and woke to see green fire on the doors. I ran to the Elder’s house and he sent me to get you. Come.”

“Green fire? Gods, is the Archive burning?” But Doros had turned and was running barefoot down the empty street under a sky full of stars.

A dream-like and dizzy horror clutched at me as I sought and put on my robes. I started to leave, then ducked back in to get my best dagger. I hung it on my belt at the small of my back.

The city was cool and silent in the first hours past midnight. I hastened through the deserted streets like a solitary ghost. Tenement Row fell behind me and the tall palms of Cistern Park swayed drowsily against the stars. There was no light in the sky, no commotion as there would have been had there been a fire. My heart slowed somewhat. The cobbled path snaked through the palms and I could make out the dark shape of the Archive looming through the trees.

I almost tripped. The great double doors of the Archives had been blown inward. Constables and city guards milled about the wreckage, some holding torches aloft to survey the damage. I didn’t see the Elder or any of the attendants.

The doors lay in the antechamber, between the pillars. One was split, and both bore a strange black charring that looked oddly weathered, as if they’d been exposed to fire many seasons ago. I walked into the Archive unmolested and, in the lamplight within, saw a familiar figure.

A woman in the gray and gold armor of a soldier of the House of Flavius stood with her back to me, addressing with authority a pair of attentive constables. Her hair, which I’d only seen tied back, spilled over her steel-jacketed shoulders in a golden torrent. We had met twice before, both times under strange circumstances.

“Lucella,” I said, and she turned.

“The archivist,” she said. “I wondered if you’d be about.” Her features were hard, but regular, and handsome when she smiled, as she did now.

“Where else should I be?” I said, sounding more irritated than I intended.

“Where else indeed?” she said, looking away. “Have you seen the body?”

“The body?” I repeated numbly. “What body?”

I followed Lucella Esteriak into the receiving area. Nothing seemed out of order except for the still form of Polinar sprawled on the floor.

“Oh Gods, “ I heard myself say. I knelt beside him. He lay on his back, arms outstretched, eyes and mouth open. The old scars on his neck were plainly visible. He would never have to strain to speak, or do anything else, ever again.

“Friend of yours?” asked Lucella softly.

There was blood on his chest, but I couldn’t see the wound for the tears in my eyes, and I couldn’t answer her.

“I’m told it was a straight thrust to the heart,” she said evenly. “It was swift.”

My fingers smoothed the robes around the wound I couldn’t see, and Lucella dropped to one knee beside me.

“What’s this?” She tore open the stained robes over Polinar’s breast. “No sword did this.” My vision cleared in time to see her fingers dig into the wound and seize something that resisted her attempts to wrench it loose before coming free in an ugly spatter of scarlet.

“What in thirteen hells is this?” she demanded.

It was a black disc about the size of a man’s palm. It was made of obsidian, had a rim like a razor, and I had seen others just like it on the belt worn by the sullen companion of Lady Astrid Taranova. I stood up unsteadily.

“Was anything reported missing?” I asked.

“Not yet,” said Lucella. “The Elder said he didn’t think anything was stolen, but it would take a full inventory to be certain.”

I swiftly rummaged through the legacy of Dalin Daskander, and was unsurprised that CELESTIAL COUPLET was gone.

“Let’s go outside,” I said to Lucella Esteriak, “I have a story to tell you.”

Dawn seemed no closer out among the palms. The wind had lost its warmth and chilled me as I told her about CELESTIAL COUPLET, the two who sought it, the black obsidian discs and the green flames that Doros had seen.

“Lady Astrid Taranova, you say?” said Lucella, rubbing her neck.

“You know her?”

“Had to break up a few parties at her estate. I heard she had some magic, and that she might not be registered for it.”

“She does and she isn’t,” I said. Something flickered between the trees. “What’s that?”

Lucella turned and squinted into the night. “Where?”

I leapt up onto a bench and saw it again, a ripple of emerald light.

She said it. “Green fire.”

“Like Doros said…” I began, but she couldn’t hear me because she’d taken off down the cobbled path at a dead run. I followed, racing through the night after Lucella Esteriak. She moved very quickly for someone wearing armor, but I caught up with her where the palms nod over the park’s low wall.

“It’s gone,” she said, hardly panting. “Do you see it?”

“It was in the Tiers,” I said, “and not too far off.” I pointed up the broad, rising hillside to the dim sprawl of the Tiers, where many of the city’s wealthy have residence. There was a sudden green flash, briefly illuminating a tiled roof. In the darkness that followed it was hard for me to tell where the light originated. Apparently it wasn’t difficult for Lucella, who took off again as if she knew just where she was going.

“Hey!” I cried, but saw it was useless, and followed.

We ran six blocks uphill, and if Lucella hadn’t suddenly drawn to a halt I might have decided I was getting tired. She’d stopped before a long wall with her hands flat upon it, looking up.

“This is it,” she said. “The green flame burned on the house beyond this wall.”

I laced my fingers together and wordlessly offered her a boost. She accepted my offer and was shortly dragging herself to the top of the wall, her greaves scraping on the stone. I’d forgotten that a soldier’s sandals are hobnailed and was shaking my smarting hands while congratulating myself on not cursing aloud, when Lucella reached down an arm and told me to jump. I did, and she caught my hand. She pulled; I grabbed the top of the wall and heaved myself up beside her.

Below us was a dark courtyard, ringed with overgrown shrubs. A two-story villa dominated the enclosure. The green flames were gone, but the front doors of the house appeared to have been blown off their hinges.

“This is the home of Allar Bandrotus,” said Lucella.

“Who’s he?”

“A rich old recluse who bothers no one. Come on.” She dropped off the wall into the courtyard and, like a halfwit, I did the same.

We ran across the grass and cobbles to the shattered doors. The foyer looked as though a whirlwind had passed through it. Down a darkened hall, in the violated mansion’s core, a ruddy light gleamed. Lucella simply dashed directly into the room, drawing her sword as she entered.

It was a library, and it was burning. High-ceilinged and richly appointed, the room’s walls were lined with more books and scrolls than I’d seen outside the Archives. Bright fire leapt up the south wall, enveloping shelves and their contents, spreading swiftly.

I was so horrified by this sight that I almost tripped over Allar Bandrotus. My foot drove into his ribs, which would have been painful had he been able to feel it. Several black discs were embedded in his arms and legs. His gray-bearded face was disfigured by agony and a brutal blow that had stove in his forehead.

“The archivist!” someone exclaimed. I looked up from the dead man’s terrible face and found myself gazing at Lady Astrid Taranova and her companion. She was smiling. He was not.

“How resourceful you are!” She seemed genuinely delighted. “I must know how you’ve come to be here.” In her hands were the silk-bound boards of CELESTIAL COUPLET, held with another document bound in dark leather.

“Is that the second volume?” I demanded. Flames crackled louder along the wall.

“Remarkable! How have you learned these things?”

“Shut up!” snarled Lucella. “You two are under arrest in the name of the House of Flavius. Drop your weapons.”

“Very unfortunate,” said Lady Taranova. “Sand…”

The tall man who wore a belt lined with discs of black volcanic glass pulled a strange green glove over his left hand. It was shiny and covered with tiny scales, like the skin of an adder.

“Call off your lackey,” spat Lucella, “or I’ll cut him down.”

The man Lady Taranova called Sand had two short black staffs strapped to his back. He didn’t reach for them, just plucked an obsidian disc off his belt with the green-gloved hand.

“I am no lackey, woman,” he said in a deep, disdainful voice. “I am descended of Southron royalty, who reigned in splendor centuries before Janarax carved an empire out of bloody barbarism. You who live in the upstart cities of the Triad dwell on the ruins of a civilization greater than any you will ever know.”

“Marvelous,” said Lucella. “I’m an acting constable of the city of Frekore. Drop your weapons and I’ll see that you get to tell the magistrate all about yourself.”

“Is CELESTIAL COUPLET yours?” I put in. Lucella glanced at me only long enough to deliver an impatient frown. The man named Sand threw back his shoulders and shook back his black braids.

“It was my grandfather’s. He spent his life gathering the lost and scattered knowledge of the old empire’s greatest feat of sorcery, but he was weak and the decadence of your civilization claimed him. He sold the precious legacy he’d fought so long to assemble, sold it for the wine and delirium root that killed him. But I am stronger than he was, and I have come to reclaim it. That,” he pointed at the two volumes held by Astrid Taranova, “is the greatest legacy of the Old Southron Empire.”

“CELESTIAL COUPLET is a pile of scribblings,” I said bitterly. Rage rose in me so abruptly my voice almost cracked. “And you murdered an unarmed man to get it.”

“Murder?” Sand’s voice curdled with scorn. “You speak of the clerk at the Archives? Is it murder to remove an inferior from your path? I am a scion of a higher breed. He was worth less than the stone with which I slew him.”

“That’s enough,” I said, and drew my dagger. Lucella and I stepped forward as one.

“Sand,” called Lady Taranova, “dispatch them quickly. Goodbye, archivist, I hope the pain is brief.” With that she stepped back, through a door on the opposite wall, and out of sight. The flames began to roar, painting Sand with flaring red-orange light.

Lucella moved, and Sand’s green-gloved hand immediately snapped toward her to send a razor-edged missile singing toward her throat. Her short sword blurred in a silvery arc that stuck the disc from the air with a brittle ring. He had a second flying at her so quickly she had no time to block, but twisted her body so that it glanced off her armored shoulder.

I closed with him, and it was a stupid thing to do. Though I can throw a dagger better than most, I’m not schooled in cut-and-thrust knife fighting. Sand’s remarks about Polinar had maddened me. Perhaps they were meant to. In any case I drove at him with the dagger in my fist and scarlet fogging my vision.

Sand sidestepped my clumsy thrust. His hands shot to the two black staffs where they jutted over each shoulder, and he drew them in a single, fluid motion. I arrested my lunge and tried to slash back at his body. I caught a glimpse of the Southron’s dark eyes, gleaming with arrogance and contempt. For Sand, fighting with me must have been like dancing with a drunk.

A black staff darted out and struck my wrist. My fingers sprang open and the dagger leapt from my grip. I gaped at my traitorous hand, and the second staff’s slash almost took off my head. I didn’t so much roll with the attack as awkwardly hurl myself away from it, but instead of receiving a killing strike to the temple I took a glancing blow to the back of my skull. My vision erupted with flying tapers of flame. I staggered into the door through which Lady Taranova had fled. I bounced off the frame, then fell headlong into the next room. Hitting the floor hurt, but lying prone on it felt pretty good.

I heard Lucella trading blows with Sand in the library, forced myself to my knees and leaned, half conscious, against the wall beside the door. The room tilted and rolled about nauseatingly. Blood tickled my scalp. I knew I should get up, but couldn’t convince myself to do more than consider it.

One of Sand’s black staffs bounced through the doorway and I snatched it up. It wasn’t metal, but a very fine-grained wood. The weapon was hard, but light, and smooth as satin.

A savage cry jolted my attention to the doorway. There was a scrape, a crash, and Lucella came reeling into the room. She spun to face the door, and though she couldn’t miss me where I knelt beside it, she gave no sign. The short sword was held in her left hand now, while her right arm hung limp at her side. Blood painted a streak down Lucella’s face, welling from an ugly welt over her right eye, which was already swollen almost shut.

“I can spar with my left hand,” she snarled through bared teeth. “Come ahead, you preening twit!”

Certain Sand wouldn’t let that pass, I straightened and drew back the staff. He burst into the room, his eyes fixed on the woman who’d insulted him. I swung the staff with such abrupt and complete effort that pain twisted raggedly around my spine. I felt his knee give way beneath the blow, and Sand went down on the floor beside me.

I rose up to bring the rod down on his skull, but his left hand, clad in the reptilian glove, shot out and seized my throat. My breath was instantly cut off, and the pain of his grip was such that I thought my windpipe had been ripped open. I dropped the staff, grabbed his wrist with both hands and tried to pull his hand from my neck. It didn’t do any good. My vision dimmed. I heard an unpleasant wheezing rattle, but it sounded far away and I didn’t recognize it as my own.

There was a sudden blur of movement and impact, and Sand’s hand released my throat. Lucella was on his back, driving him down onto his belly, but she was only there an instant. She rolled away and came up in a fighting crouch with her dagger gleaming in her fist. Her sword she left standing up between Sand’s shoulder blades.

Sand reared up on his knees, swayed, and stared down at the silver tip of Lucella’s short sword where it jutted from his breast. Aside from the crackling of flames, it was very quiet.

Sand looked up from the blade that had killed him and his gaze met mine. The flat arrogance was gone from his eyes.

“How about now?” I asked him. “Are you different than Polinar now?”

He didn’t answer, only blinked, coughed blood, and fell heavily onto his face. I looked away as Lucella wrenched her blade free.

“Sorry,” she said hoarsely, wiping the red sword on Sand’s shirt.

“For what?”

“I deprived you of a warrior’s revenge,” she said. “He slew your friend.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “And I’m not a warrior.”

Lucella raised a bloody eyebrow, but made no answer. I stepped over Sand’s body to retrieve my dagger.

We emerged from the burning villa of Allar Bandrotus into his nighted garden. Lucella stood straight and moved easily, but the firelight revealed the extent of her wounds. Her right arm looked wrong and might even have been dislocated at the shoulder. The blow she’d taken to her brow must have pained and dizzied her; it certainly deprived her of vision in her swollen right eye. I’d never seen Lucella in such a state and was gazing at her with some concern when she spoke up.

“So where did Taranova go?”

“Go? How would I know?”

“You read the wizard’s book, right? She must intend to work that Southron spell tonight.”

“Tonight, Lucella?”

“Why the hell would she steal both volumes in one night if she didn’t want to use them as soon as possible?”

I frowned. “Dalin Daskander was a sorcerer of power. Do you suppose Lady Taranova was waiting for him to be out of the way so that she could collect CELESTIAL COUPLET?”

“And grab the second volume from old Allar Bandrotus with no chance that Daskander might notice. Perhaps. But where has she gone?”

“Come on, Lucella, I’m not a seer.”

“No, but you did look through the damn book. What did it say?”

“Well,” I rubbed my eyes. “Southron wizards put on a feathered robe and got into some kind of enchanted circle. Then they’d perform the ceremony and pass from this world into another. When they came back they’d have somehow acquired great power.”

“It never said where this took place?”

“No,” I said angrily. I felt unaccountably ashamed that I couldn’t somehow produce this bit of intelligence and was beginning to resent Lucella’s demanding tone. “I told you, I’m not a sorcerer.”

“It never said anything about a location? Could the ceremony be done anywhere?”

“There was something about the dwelling place of a serpent. That might be their name for the area where the ceremony took place, but it hardly helps.”

Lucella’s good hand seized my shoulder and shook it. Surprised, I looked into her face and saw she was smiling broadly.

“Lady Taranova’s estate has expansive grounds. In the woods near her house is a rock formation called The Snake.”

“What?”

“It looks like a coiled serpent. Come on, archivist.”

She hurried through the garden toward the gate, and aside from her slumping shoulder she seemed almost buoyant. I followed, not at all convinced that it was a wise thing to do.

We flagged down an old woodsman bringing a cart full of kindling to the markets. Lucella’s claim of being an acting constable didn’t seem to impress him as much as her battered appearance and flourished sword blade. I took his name and swore we’d return his cart. Any guilt I might have felt at leaving the poor fellow on the street in the first hours of the morning were assuaged by the relief of being able to travel while sitting down. It was a crude, working cart, but the horse that drew it was hale and Lucella coaxed the beast into a brisk trot.

Astrid Taranova lived on the Northeastern rim of the Tiers, where the estates of the nobility spread out into the forests surrounding Lake Sulla. The first pale light of dawn was showing in the east as we passed through her open gate. The wind had picked up, hissing through the cedars and smelling of rain. Taranova’s mansion was dark, but there were dull flashes of pallid light flickering in the forest like earthbound lightning.

“That’s it,” said Lucella. “Come on.”

She leapt from the cart, stumbled and stood unsteadily. Her left hand went to her right shoulder and I could hear her taking a series of slow, measured breaths. A sudden gust of wind drove a few pinpoints of rain into my face.

“Are you all right?”

“I’ve dealt with worse,” she said. “You should have seen me at Beltor’s Bridge.” She fell silent and I couldn’t tell if she was preparing to tell me about Beltor’s Bridge or if she was about to fall over. “Come on,” she said again.

The forest was open, with patches of meadow between trees and stars visible among the branches overhead. We left the cart beside the darkened house and hurried toward the flickering white lights. The radiance was bright but cold, like the glow of a firefly, and it shifted from black extinction to bonfire brilliance. The forest floor started out soft with mulch, but soon rose and grew rocky. The trees fell behind us as the ground beneath our boots became a level sheet of rock. Ahead, a tower of stone jutted against a sky in which fresh clouds were piling into ominous towers. The rock formation rose in even levels like steps, giving it the appearance of a great coil. At its apex was a dark wedge, completing the illusion of a titanic snake.

The floor of the forest rose another step and we could see a broad, open area before the serpent tower. In the center of this clearing, set deep in the naked stone like a dark-lustred gem, was a circular pool of black water.

At the base of the coiled rock formation called the Snake, Astrid Taranova conjured with forces none had disturbed in millennia. She stood on a smooth platform of rock. The wild energies she summoned were reflected in the dark pool and outshone the distant lightning of the approaching storm.

Lucella and I moved quickly across the clearing, coming close to Lady Taranova before she noticed us, but we drew up short, transfixed by both her appearance and her gaze.

“Too late!” she shouted wildly. She wore nothing but a strange, feathered robe. The garment and her hair floated about her, crackling with the pale energies that coursed over and through her body. As we watched, a sphere of translucent silver light shimmered into being around her, expanding and flickering in and out of visibility like a mirage. Strange colors slipped and ran over the orb’s surface like oil on water. I thought of a huge soap bubble and rubbed at my eyes. I had never seen such wizardry before and could feel its unnatural power like a weight upon my chest.

Lucella stood beside me with her sword gripped in her left hand. Her blood-streaked face was drawn with pain, but the eye that wasn’t swollen shut blazed with determination. She approached the roiling sphere of sorcerous energy until she was close enough to touch it. The wind seemed to catch its breath, quieting as if to let her speak.

“Cease your conjuring!” Lucella demanded.

“You can’t stop me,” cried Lady Taranova. “I’ve brought forth the magical circle and it is a barrier through which none can pass. This is the sacred spot. I wear the mantle. I’ve spoken the words of power while I burned incense looted from the tomb of a king dead two thousand years! It has begun and cannot be halted. I shall cross the boundary between the worlds and visit another place. A place of power! The entire sorcerous might of the Old Southron Empire shall be mine for the taking!”

“You believe that?” I asked. “You believe you can make this ancient ritual work?”

”Of course I can. We found the final words in the books. Sand deciphered the procedure. He helped me understand.”

“Hell,” said Lucella sourly, “Sand also thought he was a match for the archivist and me, and his body’s burning in the library of Allar Bandrotus right now.”

Lady Taranova goggled at Lucella. “He’s dead?”

“As a leg of mutton,” said Lucella unkindly.

The sorceress screamed, thunder crashed, and the orb of energy blazed up bright as the desert sun. It expanded, as if lunging for Lucella, who replied in kind. She thrust her blade for the center of Taranova’s breast. There was a white flash of intolerable brilliance where Lucella’s sword met the barrier, and her body was blown backward like a leaf on the winds of the storm. She struck on her back, rolled and lay motionless.

“Lucella!”

“Stay with me!” commanded Lady Taranova, “or I’ll split you in half.” As if to support her words, lightning snarled above and struck a tree some distance to my left with an ear-splitting crack. A roaring avalanche of thunder followed. The wind pulled at my robes, pregnant with rain.

I stared at Lucella’s prone body.

“Watch, archivist. Be a witness to my ascension. It will happen in moments.”

The first drops, heavy and cold, struck my head and shoulders. I couldn’t tear my gaze from where Lucella lay still on the stone.

“She’s finished,” said Lady Taranova, “just a small fragment of the illusion that is the city of Frekore and its pretentious House of Flavius. A new time is coming, archivist.”

“The hell with it,” I said and walked to Lucella.

“What are you doing? Heed me, you fool! Heed me if you would live to see the new world I shall bring to pass. You!”

The last word was shrieked with such fury that I turned, and saw Taranova holding both hands above her head. Between her palms blazed a gem of emerald flame. The hands drew back and I knew she meant to hurl it at us. I knelt beside Lucella, foolishly thinking I might shield her from a sorcerous fire I knew had sundered oak doors built to resist siege.

Thunder roared, the wind howled and I had no idea what to do. I felt the earth shudder and I took it in stride, as all the other elements seemed poised to destroy me. But as I watched Lady Taranova I was amazed to see her lower her hands and let the green flame die. She was looking at something behind me.

The pool was overflowing. Water as black as tar boiled up in a low fountain at the pool’s center, sending ripples rolling across the pond to spill over the rim and slosh on the stone. An icy fist seemed to clench inside my chest. Something was rising from the depths of the pool. It broke the surface, a dome covered with black slime, rising higher and still higher until it stood taller than a man and larger than a noble’s carriage. Foul mud coursed off its surface, but I could see it was a great globe.

Lucella still wasn’t moving and lay oblivious to the strange object that loomed over us. Lady Taranova’s magical enclosure flared brighter, and I saw a vague track in the stone, a shallowly indented path, leading from the pool toward the sorceress. No sooner had I noticed this than the sphere shuddered and began to move. It slid out of the pond and ground along the shallow track. When it was completely free of the pool it stopped. I was close enough to touch it and badly wanted to widen the distance, but I couldn’t see leaving Lucella alone beside the thing, or trying to move her when she was obviously badly wounded. So I crouched, panting and wishing I was elsewhere, doing other things.

There was a sharp report and a flap was flung open on the thing’s side, spraying me with reeking mud. I recoiled, then gazed in amazement at what had to be an open door in the side of the sphere. Inside, I saw only darkness. Time seemed to stop dead while I waited for whatever was within the globe to emerge. Nothing happened. Golden light began to flicker in the muddy sphere’s belly, then the door slammed shut. With the grim sound of metal grating across stone, the thing slowly began to move again.

Once it pulled away from Lucella I felt better about leaving her alone and ran to where Lady Taranova stood inside her circle of power. She was staring at the great sphere; it was obvious the track led directly toward her. I stood to one side, the weird energy surrounding the sorceress making my skin tingle.

“What’s happening?” There was neither certainty nor triumph in Astrid Taranova’s voice now.

“Milady, I fear you did not read CELESTIAL COUPLET closely enough.”

“But Sand said he already knew what was to be done, that what we found in his grandfather’s books simply helped complete the incantations.”

“Milady, I think that…” I pointed at the dark sphere. “… that is the mantle of which the book spoke. It has opened for riders and will now make the passage between worlds.”

“But that’s wrong! I’m inside the circle of power. I can’t get out and it can’t get in. Soon the pathway will open and I will follow it.”

“Will you?” I asked. The sphere, risen from its long resting place at the bottom of the pool, was still moving, drawing ever closer to the quicksilver bubble that protected and trapped Lady Taranova.

Behind the sorceress light burst as if a huge window had been thrown open on another world. I saw a vast cloudscape of bilious orange fill the space behind her, and heard her cry out in fear. The cloudscape blinked out, and then it was as if I gazed from a lofty cliff top, covered with green scrub, looking down upon a vast expanse of blue water, brilliant in the light of a different sun. Then a black valley lay spread out before me, full of shattered metal ruins, dead and cold beneath strange stars.

“No!” Uncertainty had been replaced by horror. “What will happen to me?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Help me! Come with me!”

The dark sphere drew closer, so that I had to step back from its great curved surface. Lady Taranova screamed something incoherent at me and reached out a hand like a claw.

Outside the sorceress’s bubble of energy, far outside her reach, I felt her hand, larger and stronger than any man’s. It seized my breast and wrenched me toward her. I staggered forward, horrified and unable to resist, reined in by her power and panic, drawn inexorably to what I feared would be my death upon the wall of sorcerous light.

A sword, flying end over end, sailed past my shoulder and struck Taranova’s magical barrier. It rebounded with a crack and a flare of livid energy. The sorceress recoiled and her spell broke. The terrible grip fixed to my torso was suddenly gone and I reeled backward and fell.

The great sphere hit the barrier of light with a crackling hiss that stung my eardrums. I rolled away as it drove easily through the sorcerous bubble, which burned away the dark slime that shrouded it, revealing a glistening globe of crystal and gold. It was a vehicle made for otherworldly journeys, a strange ship built to sail the seas between the worlds. Lady Taranova was forced back as the sphere took up more and more space within her charmed circle. I heard her screaming; then the sphere was completely enclosed by the magical barrier, there was a tremendous clap of thunder, and she and it were gone.

The platform of stone was empty. Only the trail of water and mud leading from the pool to the base of the Snake revealed that anything unusual had happened here.

I got to my feet and turned away from where the Lady Astrid Taranova had vanished, following her path between the worlds. Lucella was still standing where she had thrown her sword and broken Taranova’s spell. As I watched Lucella sat down, then fell heavily onto her back.

“Archivist,” she called hoarsely. I went to her.

The rain had softened and the sky had gone pearly with the coming of dawn. Lucella lay on her back and her face was gray. Her good eye regarded me evenly.

“You’ll be alright, Lucella,” I said. “I’ll go get help.”

“No,” she said. “No. Stay with me.”

I sat down on the stone beside her. Her good hand sought mine and clasped it.

“You can go in a minute. Stay with me for a while.”

“All right,” I said. And I stayed with her for a while.