The bright birds were coming again.

Wheeling and crooning as their brilliant wings glanced off Aiya's cheek and forehead. The birds banked sharply and became dark silhouettes--brush marks--against a cloudy sky. She continued to watch as the birds launched upward, then spiraled down into the sudden eddy of snow. Now they fluttered before her face once more, the dazzling wings moving back and forth like the flapping curtsy of dancers' skirts. "You must wake up!" the birds called as if from far away. "You--

"--must wake up!" The voice was no longer sweet dulcet, but gruff gravel.

Aiya's eyelids flung wide to find Darman's bristly face looking down upon her. She blinked as she watched snowflakes swirl round the Blade's head in a frothy halo. "How long have I...?" the words trickled into a barely suppressed moan as she tried to sit upright. "How long have I been asleep?"

"Not long," Darman said, his gaze darting to her torso. "I wouldn't try to sit up so quickly."

As if discovering her wounds for the first time, Aiya tried to unbutton her tunic. Dried blood had matted thickly to the heavy fabric and to the torn flesh beneath it. She decided not to force the fabric away from her skin, for fresh blood was fast mingling with the hard, clotted patches.

Slivers of searing pain sliced into her left leg. Gritting her teeth, Aiya laced her fingers beneath it like a sling, then lifted gently. A deep crimson furrow was stretched from knee to shin, laying tissue bare nearly to the bone. Blood was pooling quickly within the canal of her wound, staining the snow under her leg. Then, as if a curtain had suddenly closed between her and the wounds, Aiya looked up at Darman. "Terjal!"

Darman gripped Aiya's shoulders as if he were afraid she might attempt to scramble to her feet. "He's hurt and unconscious--but he's still among the living. Before you can help him, you've got to take care of yourself."

"I suppose," Aiya said as she gazed past the Blade's shoulder, "that I shouldn't argue with a warrior's logic." If Terjal had lost consciousness, then it was up to her to make the decisions for all of them.

Aiya eased back against the snow a bit, the points of her elbows sinking deeply into the greying slush. Command was something she'd never sought, preferring only to offer advice to the grateful ear of the Duke, leaving His Grace to make the final decisions. Have I become so comfortable in my position as Adjutant to Lord Vaukmond that the very thought of leading unnerves me?

Aiya drew her gaze back to Darman's impassive one. "Can you take me to Terjal?"

The Blade nodded, leaning forward to scoop her gingerly into his arms, clearly unaccustomed to being so gentle. Aiya tried hard to conceal the pain she felt as her wounded torso folded slightly within Darman's arms. But she knew her pain would still be obvious: the paling of her skin just as much an indictment of severe discomfort as a wince.

Darman's lean, war-toughened muscles bore her easily to where Terjal now lay, unmoving, in the snow. Strandholt was knelt before the conjurer, his arms folded in bewildered futility. Aiya saw that the flesh along the young Blade's sinewy forearms was stenciled dark and wafer-like with a deep burn. His golden hair had been singed near the nape, almost to the scalp. Arjas sat at Terjal's other side, the stocky Blade's right leg stretched out and twisted awkwardly at the knee; the large darkened dome of a blister clung to the crushed joint like a stubborn guardian.

Strandholt, hearing their soft advance, moved away to allow Darman to set Aiya beside Terjal. "He's been hurt worse than any of us."

Aiya didn't need Strandholt's assessment to realize that Terjal's wounds were severe. As she examined the conjurer's injuries more closely, she half decided that it was perhaps best that he was unconscious.

Burnt skin crinkled and glistened on half of Terjal's face and Aiya smelled an odor of cooked flesh rising from him. Terjal's left arm was skewed in an odd position, as if segmented, and she saw something sharp straining against the fabric of his sleeve.

"Terjal has broken his arm in two places," Aiya told the others, "--hopefully no more." Probing gently, she saw that front of Terjal's robe had been slashed nearly to shreds; the chest beneath concave as if he'd sucked in a last unreleased breath. "Surely Terjal must have some broken ribs, and his shallow breathing tells me he may have a punctured lung." She traced a finger lightly above the conjurer's chest.

"Terjal's leg looks worse than my own," Aiya murmured, her gaze traveling the length of the conjurer's ruined right leg. The beast's claws had sheared the flesh away to the bone from thigh to shin, as was her own. Aiya saw the glistening white curve of tendons exposed like diving serpents in a sea of crimson muscle. "We've got to staunch the bleeding," Aiya said, again half to herself, as she reached for Terjal's belt. After stripping all the pouches from it, she wrapped the belt tightly round the pressure point of the conjurer's thigh. Soon the spurting blood slowed to a weak ooze.

Now that Terjal's most immediate medical need had been met, Aiya turned to the small array of pouches spread in the snow like potatoes. Most appeared emptied of their contents, save three which were only nearly empty. Gently, Aiya picked up one bag, sniffed inside, then absently shook her head as she lay the pouch back in the snow. Seizing another pouch and bringing it to her nose, a hopeful smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. The healing powder! Barely enough for three of us.

Just as Aiya made to sprinkle half a handful of powder upon Terjal's leg, a heavy callused hand seized her wrist. She looked up to see Darman shaking his head. "Remember what I told you back there?" the Blade asked as he inclined his head where he'd found her. For a moment she looked up to see that their impressions in the snow had already been blown away by the chilled wind. "You must heal your own wound first before you can save Terjal."

Aiya bit her lip gently then returned her gaze to Darman's. "Of course you're right; it's just a natural tendency to want to heal the most badly wounded first. Isn't that what you would do on the battlefield?"

"Not on my battlefield. If the barely wounded don't fix their own injuries first, then there'll be no one to help those with worse injuries, and so they will all die." Darman punctuated his simple statement with a slow shrug of the shoulders.

Without an answer, Aiya stretched out her own gashed leg, not bothering to stifle a flinch this time. Slowly, she began to sift some of the healing powder into the scarlet furrow of her wound. Almost instantly the gash began to knit together: tendrils of torn muscle and tendon reached out, grasping, as if to save each other from a dangerous precipice. Soon Aiya's wound was no more than a thin dark seam carved along the length of her leg.

Darman reached out his hands and Aiya clasped them firmly as her right leg sought purchase on the snowy ground. As she was lifted to her feet, both legs began to tremble as if they belonged to a newborn foal. Once she released her hands from Darman's grip, Aiya stretched her arms out like a dipping, soaring bird to keep balance. When the trembling in her legs was subsided, and she failed to sink back to her knees, Aiya grinned at the other two Blades as they stared at her sudden "recovery."

Darman examined her leg with a seemingly impassive eye. "Is there any pain?"

"Nothing that'll interfere with what I have to do," Aiya answered, inclining her head toward the supine Terjal. "At least, as long as I don't think about it."

"What about this?" Darman asked as he touched a corner of her forehead.

Aiya flinched suddenly at the contact. Now she felt a vague stinging sensation emanating, like the expanding ring from a stone thrown in a lake, where the Blade had touched her temple. Bringing up her own tentative fingers to the now inflamed spot, she discovered that the scalp was crusted and crinkled with burnt flesh.

A vain woman would have wept at the marring of beauty, but Aiya felt only a sudden surge of anger--anger because she was now aware of yet another wound that she would have to ignore, and too little healing powder to take care of it.

"I won't deal with this now," Aiya said quickly, waving her hand dismissively at the newly discovered injury. "Such a wound will neither hamper my movements, nor take my life." Then, easing herself carefully into a kneeling position beside Terjal, she spoke softly as she looked up at Darman, "Terjal and I will have to spell-travel back the Cloudreach--he'll never make it back to Quitonne in this condition. You, Strandholt and Arjas will have to return to Quitonne so that your own wounds can be properly treated. I have only enough healing powder to give Arjas's knee cursory treatment so that he will be able to ride. Now as for my journey to Cloudreach, the greater problem," nibbling her lower lip pensively, "is that Terjal must be conscious for the spell--travel; I can't pull us both through the vortex by myself."

Aiya picked up another of the remaining pouches and emptied its contents into her cupped palm. She felt the eyes of the Blades trained on her as she examined the insides of the pouch.

Terjal's Blades were used to following orders, Aiya knew--she'd briefed enough of Lord Vaukmond's legions to know this well. She also knew that warriors were capable of making decisions independently, but that protocol was such a pervasively engraved mode of thinking that only in the direst of circumstances was it circumvented. As dire as things are now, I wonder how much worse it would have to be for protocol to change? Deep down, she didn't want to know.

Two small fragments of sparkling grey waking-crystals now lay cradled in the curve of Aiya's palm winking at her as if aware of their precious quality. Gently she slid one of the fragments back into the pouch and strapped the dun-colored bag to her own belt. With the tip of her index finger, she delicately broke the remaining fragment into tinier pieces, then to fine powder.

Aiya leaned close to Terjal--close enough to hear the even susurrus of his breath--and held her dust-laden palm just under his chin. Suddenly, as if sensing the conjurer's deep sleep, the dust spiraled upward in a tiny helix of brilliance, then sprang its shining net upon Terjal's face.

Soon the patina of dust began to sparkle and wink with an intense urgency, Terjal's face looking as if it were covered with a swarm of tiny insects. Gradually the dust began to dissipate in patches as if sinking deeply into the skin. The dust would take time to revive the conjurer. If it works at all, Aiya thought, afraid to be optimistic only to have the healing fail.

For the first time since she'd come into Terjal's sphere of influence so long ago, Aiya could really look at her former teacher--study him so closely. For here he lay, his face still as marble, closed eyelids shielding her from the slightest reproach should she fail.

Once again Aiya was aware of the Blades' gazes tracing her back as she bent closer to Terjal. Why did her close scrutiny of the conjurer inspire their curiosity so vividly? Were they merely in awe of her ministrations--that after serving the Duke of Windemere she could still manage the conjurer's art? How could they be in awe, she thought with a trace of irony, when they've seen enough sorcery on this quest to last two lifetimes? Still, she felt a hint of guilt gnawing at the fringes of her thoughts, as if she were stealing something rare and extraordinary.

How young he looks--as if he were one of his own students. Though Aiya knew Terjal to be around three score and four now, he looked barely that with his smooth, unlined face--save for the half that had been ruined by the creature's fiery breath. A sudden pinch of dismay struck at the pit of her stomach as she gazed upon Terjal's whorled and blistered skin. For a moment she forgot about her own scorched scalp--somehow its repair no longer so important.

The thick dark red hair framing Terjal's face had become moist from the snow falling upon and pressing against it, curving the strands into waves of flame to paste upon his forehead and cheekbones. Aiya felt an almost irresistible urge to stroke the errant strands from Terjal's brow, but quickly stifled it as she remembered where she was. And who she was.

A flicker of movement in Terjal's eyelids brought Aiya's attention back from her musing reverie. She watched as the conjurer's eyelashes dusted his cheeks in fitful bursts, as if a curtain cord were stuck. Suddenly the eyelids snapped open, the cerulean eyes staring straight ahead, unmoving. Terjal moved his lips as if gasping silently for air--or words.

###

Floating.

An abyss of clouds clasped him in a bundle of misty dressings. Terjal continued to float through the frothy chasm, unaware of anything beyond the paleness of his erratic thoughts. If I'm dead, why am I able to think? And if I'm merely unconscious, why do I dream? For this surely was a dream guiding him through the rooms of his mind.

Something tinkled in the distance.

Laughter, no longer a tinkle, but a low throaty chuckle choking on the dust of death.

The Redeemer--laughing at the trapped conjurer in the distance.

The distance seemed to be growing shorter, the laughter beginning to echo through the bright chasm. Terjal almost saw the outline of Graznod's long, dour face looming like a frieze etched in clouds. Terjal saw the thin lips begin to move, offering, no doubt, a bargain of everlasting life/death.

Terjal willed his ears to close against the words before they could reach his hearing--though he knew this all nothing more than a dream. Still, with his mind's voice, he cried out: I will not take your offer! If I die, then I die--my flesh will desiccate and my bones shall sink into the earth, but I will belong to no one!

The Redeemer's razor-thin lips slanted upward in a smirk. You say this only because you have confidence that you will remain whole. Such could change so easily.

Terjal tried to scramble away from Graznod's dark image, but the clouds wrapped round him tightened. Suddenly Terjal began to feel a mad laughter bubbling up from deep in his own throat. No--I'm delirious and I'm imagining your presence before me. You'll disappear as soon as I awaken.

And you're sure that you will awaken? How much time must pass before you are certain that you are no longer at Death's door? The dry laughter began again, licking Terjal with the sourness of its tone. I have never had a conjurer serve as one of my Redeemed before--you shall be my first. An honor, surely.

Suddenly a rain of winking brilliance began to seep through the Redeemer's ghostly countenance, erasing the outline fragment by fragment. Soon the laughter trickled to a distant rumbling and was gone. Then coruscating light broke through, turning like a colorful pinwheel, drawing him to its very center.

This is it, then. Death is pulling me to its cold bosom after all. Will the Redeemer really be there to meet me? came his last thought as the tunnel of light drew Terjal into its surprisingly warm embrace.

###

They were all crowded round Terjal now, peering anxiously at his contorted face.

Aiya bent closer and held Terjal's chin within the crook of her thumb and forefinger, trying to keep the conjurer still. Terjal's eyes were still wide open, the gaze fixed and staring beyond her face as if he were watching something approach. His eyes held a terror she'd never seen them possess before, the fear seeping from them and into her like a damp fog.

Aiya leaned closer still, her own gaze tunneling into Terjal's as if trying to seek entry into his darkened world. She was close enough to feel the graze of his warm, moist breath upon her cheeks and chin as it blew in short, quick pants.

"Terjal!" she cried out as she placed the palms of her hands flat upon his cheeks, fastening his face between them. I'll have to do a partial mind delve, she thought frantically, though she heard the echo of her own caution to Terjal at Honor's Pavilion: "Your own consciousness might become trapped inside the skull of a corpse." But Terjal would not become a corpse--not on her watch!

Aiya's jade eyes grew wide as she continued to stare into Terjal's own unblinking eyes. Then she entered the world where Terjal cowered.

Suddenly everything around her became white with unmapped brilliance, pressing down upon her and erasing the world she'd now left behind. She heard an intermittent chuckle circling her in shreds of muddled sound, but she did not turn her head to follow it.

Soon, Terjal's eyelids curtained up, then down as if trying to blink away the effulgence surrounding them both. Terjal seemed, for a moment, not to recognize her. She felt him try to wriggle from under her grasp, his hands flying from his sides and crossing before his face--Terjal's wounds disappearing in this white-filled space.

Do you think you can fool me with this image? Terjal cried out, his hands pushing at Aiya's shoulders.

Aiya caught the shaking hands in her own and held them still. Who do you imagine me to be? I am Aiya Lindsmund and I shall pull you from this chasm if I have to burst every artery in my body to do it!

They were both now in the corridor that spans from the center of the mind's consciousness to the solid world beyond. Aiya heard hissing sounds as rents appeared in the mind's fabric which was spread over them, ready to collapse like a windblown tent. Terjal's struggling subsided and he fixed her with an unwavering stare. "You really are Aiya..."

Then the bleached canopy crashed around the two huddled conjurers.

###

For a brief moment Aiya feared she'd lost connection with the solid world as her mind tried to swirl to consciousness. Soon the solid world's colors spun into tactile shapes of light and dark, the outlines sharpening into view.

As she hoisted herself up on one elbow, then to a full sitting position, she started suddenly as she realized the Blades were watching her. Even Darman's thick eyebrows were bowed in concern as the dark eyes studied her intently. I must have really given them a fright, Aiya thought to herself, for Darman to look so worried. Then, feeling Terjal stir beside her, Aiya turned to gaze down at the still supine conjurer.

Terjal was looking at her. Seeing her. The blue of his eyes touching every angle of her face as if he were recording her image for fear he'd never see it again. Then his dry lips began to lengthen into a slow smile of relief. "I hope," the voice cracked like kindling, "that you didn't use the last of the healing powder on me." He must know how bad his injuries were: Aiya saw the pain narrowing his eyes.

"No," Aiya reflected Terjal's weak smile, "I didn't--barely. There's just enough left to repair more of the damage to your chest; if I don't plug the holes you'll surely never live to see the end of this quest."

Terjal's smile squeezed into a wince as he attempted to move his broken left arm. As he tried to lift it, Aiya saw something white like a tuft of cotton clutched in his sweating hand. "Your arm is broken--probably in two places," she said as she reached out her hand. "Let me."

Terjal eased his wrist back against the snow, a gasp escaping through his gritted teeth. "I grabbed a handful of the beast's fur," Terjal's voice hissed through his clenched teeth. "It should help us reveal its controller and where to find him."

"Then we've got to get back to Cloudreach," Aiya said, surprising herself at the decidedly perfunctory tone of her statement as she looked at the stiff white fur now in her own hand. Quickly, she stuffed it into an empty pouch hanging from her belt. "I can't finish the healing out here with another blizzard lying in wait and with no more than a few grains of powders left. And," her cheeks feeling warm as she shifted her gaze heavenward, "I can't spell travel to Cloudreach by myself and with you in tow." There. She'd had to admit once more another of her failings to Terjal.

Terjal's eyes closed briefly as another wave of pain caused his cheeks to ripple with a sharp intake of breath. "Spell travel has never been one of my...specialties, either. Why else would I ask you to take the lead to Honor's Start? I only go there when the Duke commands it--and you know how rarely such requests come."

Aiya couldn't help but smile. Even through excruciating pain he's trying to allay my insecurities without directly patronizing me. "Well, as long as you stay awake we should just make it through the rift corridor." Then, turning to Darman, "Bring Arjas near to me. My leg is still a little unsteady." Half apologetic.

Both Darman and Strandholt made to move the injured Blade beside Aiya. Arjas's ruined right leg swung stiffly as his forearms curved tightly about his comrades' shoulders, traceries of pain wrinkling his tanned forehead as he was settled next to Aiya. She dribbled another tiny sprinkle of the healing powder into her open palm, watching as it caught the light around it in winking bursts. Then she poured it in a circular pattern over Arjas's blood-darkened knee.

Soon pain no longer creased the Blade's brow as the powder did its work upon the crushed kneecap. "It's not completely healed," Aiya said as she inspected the powder's progress. "Arjas will still need some conventional healing--but he should be able to travel now."

Darman nodded. "I know someone in Quitonne who can help. At least, last I heard, he was still living in the city."

"Take all the mounts and provisions, then--you'll have a harder journey than Terjal and I."

A corner of the First Blade's mouth yanked slightly upward in a diffident smile. "Me and Strandholt'll start getting everything ready." Casting a baleful eye at the thickening shred of clouds above, he added, "The sooner we set out the better; seems a storm's about to crowd upon us any minute now."

Aiya looked at the pocked, scarred face before her: browned and seared by long years of fighting under a relentless sun for anyone with the proper coin. Darman, Terjal's First Blade, was obviously a man who'd never had an allegiance to anything but the sovereigns promised--until his tenure with the Master of Cloudreach. Darman didn't need to tell Aiya any of this--for she'd seen enough mercenaries passing through Windemere to know his story. She wanted to thank him for his help, but she knew he'd only dismiss her gratefulness with hot embarrassment riding his cheeks like twin red suns. Warriors don't like sentiment; it makes them weak. Lord Vaukmond's teachings again.

Aiya turned back to sprinkle the remaining healing powder upon Terjal's chest. He was still awake--and watching her.

###

Terjal and Aiya were gliding through the rift corridor, the vortex skimming over them, its light shivering the air around them. Aiya sensed Terjal just behind her, but his spell energy was waning. Cloudreach spun like a grey wheel in the distance: a tiny pebble turning over and over in the surf of energy surrounding it.

Aiya felt something unseen tug her backward. Terjal must have lost consciousness! her mind called out. We won't make it to the spell chamber without Terjal's guidance. With what little scrap of strength she had left, Aiya pummeled her way through the vortex, Cloudreach nearly within her grasp.

She almost saw the cracks in the tower's marble--

--but hit hard snow-covered ground with the point of her shoulder instead. Terjal flopped beside her as if he were a bale of hay thrown from a cart, his eyelids shuttered against the familiar scenery. Aiya sat up, her head feeling the thick weight of dizziness pressing upon it, and looked about.

They'd arrived at Cloudreach--but not inside it. Its single tower rose from the ground like an upturned dagger to pierce the darkening skies above. Gazing at it now, Aiya sensed something ominous in its grey mien--an unseen presence clinging to its marbled outer walls. Sentries, Aiya thought as a touch of fear crept up her throat. Of course Terjal would post golems around Cloudreach whenever he and his Blades are away. The sentries know I'm here: an uninvited, unannounced intruder. They'll no doubt be gathering to sniff me out.

With Terjal once again unconscious, Aiya had no means to get past the sentries safely. They were conditioned to recognize the mind patterns of Terjal and his Blades only--she had no way of knowing if Terjal had seen fit to add her own mind pattern to the golems' limited catalogue. She couldn't chance it--for if she guessed wrong, her death would guarantee Terjal's demise as well.

Aiya sat beside Terjal and gazed at the sleeping conjurer. How peaceful he looks and how I wish I could trade places right now. I would gladly endure severe physical pain rather than face such uncertainties alone. But she couldn't afford to indulge her insecurities now--she had to continue to think as an advisor would. And make the decisions herself.

Aiya stretched her injured leg, testing the limits of its pain and pleased to see that it obeyed her bidding with minimal discomfort. She swiveled her foot slowly and carefully, feeling the gristly crackle of her ankle bones as her foot waved back and forth. Then rolling into a slight crouch, her toes trying to dig through the leather of her boots for a foothold, she placed her palms flat on either side of her for balance. In one quick motion Aiya swung to her feet, her healing right leg trembling slightly with the effort, yet keeping her from falling.

Aiya poised her right leg up and out like a dancer, straining for her first step. When her right foot pressed itself firmly against the earth and she did not fall, Aiya allowed her left foot to follow. Soon she was easily pacing back and forth beside Terjal's supine body. Once satisfied with her own progress, Aiya knelt before the conjurer to ponder her next plan of action.

I'll have to copy Terjal's mind pattern and blend my own into it.

Closing her eyes and tilting her head back slightly, Aiya placed both palms against Terjal's temples. She allowed her consciousness to float like a leaf upon a pond, sailing toward Terjal's own allayed consciousness. Then she felt the weight of her mind sinking beneath the surface of Terjal's mind; for a moment, as she passed through, she felt a stab of pain streak across her chest and through her left arm. Soon her left leg throbbed with a searing ache. I'm absorbing everything Terjal's feeling beneath the haze of coma, she thought with a touch of dismay--though she'd expected this.

Once she'd battened her own mind against Terjal's phantom pain, Aiya cast immediate instructions to the sentries--whose presence was drawing nearer. Fall back now and let me pass for I have wounds I must heal. Fall back! Aiya tried to cleave away the anxiousness she felt; she knew the sentries were empathic enough to sense even the most subtle fear.

When she no longer sensed the advancement of the sentries upon her, Aiya bent to pull Terjal upright. The injured conjurer sagged like a door with a broken hinge as Aiya clutched him to her shoulder, mindful of his broken left arm which dangled like a bent stem beneath the torn sleeve of his robe. Slowly they staggered toward the entrance to Cloudreach, Terjal's limp feet trailing in the snow.

Then she saw them.

"Where did you find these, Terjal?" Aiya whispered aloud as she stood watching the slavering golems guarding the outer perimeter of the courtyard.

The golem-sentries appeared to be twice the height of an average man. Bulky cords of muscle twisted beneath flesh the color of spoiled meat as they hefted swords aloft. Tiny heavy-lidded salmon-tinted eyes peered from under a thick shelf of brow and above a nearly flat shapeless knob of nose. Long wolf-like teeth curved out from under fleshy lips like unsheathed daggers. Black hair, shiny with grease or sweat, seemed to sprout from the center of their crowns like a geyser, falling well past the wide rounded shoulders. Aiya saw that the golem-sentries wore nothing more than sleeveless tunics and breeches--seemingly impervious to the intense cold surrounding them.

Now they saw her.

Aiya watched as the golem-sentries shuffled their feet, hesitating--confused by the shifting mind signals being sent to them. I can't keep the mask in place and haul us both through the door, she thought as she eased Terjal back onto the ground.

As soon as she sat down and allowed her mind to calm, the golem-sentries stopped their fidgeting movements. I must spell travel us both inside, Aiya thought, calming herself.

Almost immediately Aiya began to feel self-doubt bubbling to the surface of her thoughts. She bowed her head and sifted her fingers through her hair, trying to stifle the thoughts. She wouldn't listen anymore--she had questioned herself internally one too many times. Now Terjal's very life depended upon her abilities, though he would not know at this very moment. She couldn't allow Terjal to pay such a high price all because she had no confidence in her inherent talent--and the training she'd received under his tutelage.

If I don't act now, Terjal will surely die right here, Aiya thought, looking at the golem-sentries, and Cloudreach's guardians will soon set upon me once his life's spark is gone. Better to dissolve in the rift corridor then to face a bodily death.

Aiya glanced at Terjal's prostrate form at her side and realized his breathing had grown markedly shallow. Every moment of her pondering cost the conjurer another minute of life. That last thought smote all others from her mind. It was now the time to act--the consequences be damned!

She brought her hands up in front of her face as if she were about to inspect them. Then her fingers began to flutter slowly--halting--trying to remember the fingerplay she'd used from Honor's Start and truncating it once the memory flooded into her mind.

Suddenly, patches of scintillating white began to appear, eating away the color around her. Aiya continued the fingerplay as the white patches began to drift into each other, her fingers moving rapidly through the cold air, the fog of her warm breath wreathing them.

Aiya felt herself melting into the rift corridor, her stomach flattening against her spine as she and Terjal were rushed through its blankness. She also felt her self-doubt dissolving away into the sparkling white.

###

The first thing Aiya felt was the cold stone floor pressing against her stiff back. With a slight moan she rolled to her side to find Terjal lying beside her, seemingly in blissful sleep. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, she realized with relief that they'd made it to the spell chamber. She felt the prickling energy grazing her in the violet hued room as she sat up on the floor.

She was safe from Cloudreach's golem guardians.

###

Memories of her school days at Cloudreach had flooded back to Aiya as she'd pulled Terjal from the spell chamber. A brief limping trot down the long hallway had brought her to a healing chamber: its walls lined with a conjurer's provisions of sorcery.

Flasks and urns of varying sizes were lined upon the simple wooden shelves. Aiya inhaled deeply the ancient musty scent powdering the air as she removed certain unlabeled vessels from their wooden berths. Hurriedly she selected the suitable potions and powders, her fingers grazing hesitantly some of the urns before moving to another.

Terjal now lay upon a cot in a corner of the chamber, his eyes still closed against what now surrounded him. Aiya sat upon the edge of the cot, an emerald hued urn clasped in her left hand and balanced upon her knee like a scepter, gazing down at the benumbed conjurer. Carefully she peeled the shredded robe from Terjal's chest. Much of the fabric had fused itself to the wound and she tugged at it gently till it gradually lost its grip upon Terjal's torn flesh.

With the wound laid bare for her inspection, she saw that her early ministrations had been successful. Only deep scars remained like knife trails in bread dough, criss-crossing diagonally across Terjal's chest. Thin seams of crusted blood lined the scars and only a few sections of scab had broken, sending fine traceries of fresh blood into the narrow trenches of the wounds.

With her dagger, Aiya slit the sleeve covering Terjal's broken left arm. She saw the jagged, broken points of his humerus and ulna piercing through the meat of his triceps and forearm like white stalks. Next, Aiya flung the hem of the robe from Terjal's ruined right leg and cut away the rent breeches. The laceration, running from thigh to shin, had grown mottled with the onset of infection--the red of the wounds circled by bruised flesh.

Quickly Aiya began to sprinkle powder taken from an emerald-colored urn upon Terjal's right leg, the fine particles clutching at the wound with an unseen grip. Suddenly the mottling began to disappear and the pools of red began to shrink. Aiya repeated the procedure upon Terjal's arm and chest, feeling further relief as she watched muscle and bone begin to knit together and become smooth flesh again. The powder drizzled upon the singed flesh of Terjal's face fully restored the conjurer's countenance within a single heartbeat.

With the remaining powder, she dusted her own blistered scalp, feeling the tingle of regeneration swarming through her skin. Lifting her tattered tunic, she sprinkled powder on her still-healing torso--again feeling the insect--like pricking upon her abdomen. With the last handful she sifted powder over her nearly-healed left leg. Then she placed the empty urn on the floor and lay beside Terjal upon the cot.

Aiya felt the slow crawl of sleep gaining purchase in her mind; felt the pendulum swing of dizziness dash her head to the hard pillow. Before slumber would fully take her, Aiya turned to face the sleeping Terjal, laid her hand upon his still-healing chest and felt his calmly beating heart beneath.

The last thing Aiya felt before drifting into sleep was the sweet tug of her own heart.

^TOP OF PAGE