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of the city guards standing watch at the gate and lounging around the courtyard within. The captain and
Freki escorted Randal and Nick across the courtyard and up a flight of stone steps to a small room
where another guardsman-this one older, with gray in his hair and beard-sat behind a wooden desk. The
guard at the desk looked Randal and Nick up and down.
"What do we have? Public brawling?" the older man asked.
"No, sir," said the captain. "Show him the evidence, Freki." Freki laid Randal's spell book on the desk.
The older guard picked it up. " 'Randal of Doun,' " he read aloud. He looked at the young wizard.
"That you?" Randal nodded. "Yes."
"We've had more than enough trouble with your kind. Possession of magical books or implements gets
you a flogging through the city gates." Randal didn't say anything. The older guard nodded to the captain.
The captain turned to Freki and said, "Lock "em up."
Freki nodded in turn and marched the two northerners out of the small room and down into the depths of
the prison. They came to an underground cell, dark and foul-smelling and cold in spite of the warm air in
the world outside. An iron grille barred the entrance to the cell. Freki unlocked the door and pulled it
open. "In there," he said. Randal and Nick obeyed, and the door clanged shut. Freki locked it and strode
away down the dim corridor.
"Well," said Nick, after a long pause. "What do you think our chances are of breaking out of here before
morning?"
Randal moved over to the damp wall of the cell and sank tiredly down onto the dirty straw that covered
the stone floor. "We can't," he said. "I can feel spells of binding on this place that go back for centuries."
He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. The sense of increased well-being that he'd felt
since putting the statue and its bag into a protective binding had begun to ebb away, bringing back the
dragging exhaustion that had beset him on the road from Cingestoun. The spell wasn't broken completely
when Lys cut the drawstring, he thought blearily, but it must have been weakened. That's why I feel this
way-the statue's feeding on my lifeforce. At this rate, I may not live long enough to see what kind of
justice Widsegard has for wizards. I hope Lys can find somebody who can deal with that artifact. It's
dangerous, and it's starting to work its way loose. He heard Nick saying something close by, but he was
suddenly too weary to answer. With his cheek resting against the cold stone, he fell asleep.
Randal woke with a start and stared around. Nothing had altered, it seemed. Nothing had happened to
account for his waking. He stood up and stretched. The weariness he'd felt before was gone, and he
turned back toward the wall to give Nick a hand up onto his feet. Two skeletons lay on the floor of the
cell. The disconnected bones of the closer one were covered by a loose black robe. A wizard's robe.
Randal bit back a cry of fear. Carefully, he raised his own arm, still clad in the wide black sleeve of his
Schola robe, and touched his own flesh. Solid, he thought. Warm. I'm alive, and this is a dream. But
where is Nick?
"Nick?" he whispered. "Are you here, too?" But no answer came to him, and the two skeletons grinned
in silent mockery. Randal felt a slight breeze pass through the dungeon corridor, bending the flames of the
smoky torches set in brackets outside the cells. Someone must have opened a door somewhere, he
thought. If they have doors in dreams. Then he heard a sound. The light tap-tap-tap of someone walking,
walking with a cane or a staff. Under his robe, Randal felt sweat trickle down his back. Panic seized him.
Whoever was coming, he knew, was coming for him. And there was nowhere to hide down here,
nowhere to run to. He grabbed the bars of the door and shook them, but the door didn't budge. A
shadow was growing visible in the passageway leading to the cell, a shadow walking slowly. Then the
figure came into view-an old woman, garbed in a long white cloak, with strands of gray hair floating from
under the hood. In her hand she clasped the staff on which she leaned. She walked up to the door of the
cell, her staff tapping with each step she took. When Randal looked at her face, he could tell that she was
blind: White film covered both her eyes. Randal recognized the old woman-she was the statue he had
carried over mountain and moor from Cingestoun, grown to human size and brought to horrible life. The
woman faced in his direction and spoke. "Set me free," she said.
"How can I?" Randal asked. "I'm the one in prison, not you." Then, abruptly, Randal saw that he was
wrong. He was looking in through the door of a cell, not out as he had thought, and the woman was
standing in the cubicle. Randal felt something cold in his hand. It was a ring of keys.
"Don't worry, granny, I'll help you," he heard himself saying. Even as he spoke, he was trying keys in the
lock. He found one that fit and turned it. With a howl of rusting metal, the bolt withdrew. Randal pulled
the door open. "You can come out now." The old woman took a step forward. "Take me with you. I
have to find my way home."
"Come on, take my arm," Randal said. "We'll get out together." Slowly they walked up the passageway,
turned, and took the stairway up. At last they came to the small room that topped the dungeons. The light
of the setting sun slanted in through the window, illuminating motes of dust with gold and smearing red
light on the walls. The room had guardsmen in it, and they moved, and they talked, but no sound came
from their mouths. Still, Randal knew that he hadn't gone deaf-he could hear the buzzing of a single fly
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