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I went at once to find Lostra. I had not given the portals much thought until now - I understood their mechanism simply enough - one knew where one wanted to be, one stepped into the portal and thought of its image, and then arrived. An elegant solution to a shortage of space, I had assumed - no passages, no hallways, no streets. Simply rooms, an endless collection of them, each with a portal. I thought of them now a little more. How did they know which image to pluck from my mind. I had found I could follow people, go to wherever they went, and thus learn of more places I could take myself. Yet I had also found there were some I could not follow. Some for whom any such attempt led me directly back to the room fort-master Vann has assigned to me. How did the portals know? How did they know who I was. How did they know where I was not permitted to go?

I thought of Lostra, wherever he may be, and allowed the portal to take me to him. How did it know the right room to choose?

And how, in knowing all these things, had the stranger, for whom I had not even a name, evaded all capture?

"Skyrie." Lostra seemed glum, staring at the blank grey wall of his room. The same blank grey wall as all the other rooms I had seen, though most hid behind gaudy decorations, paintings, murals, hangings, anything to hide the dull, lifeless grey. I had noticed the taste for decorations, but only now did I understand the reason.

"Lostra. I may have found someone who can help us, but it will be dangerous."

He sighed. "I have found nothing. I am not even permitted to return to my ship. They say the goods I sought for trade have been delivered, so the sailors will have gone, for I told them not to wait."

It did not seem possible to me for anyone to feel homesick for the silver desert, baked and glaring.

"Then perhaps we should leave."

"It is not permitted."

"Perhaps we should leave anyway."

He tried to smile. "I appreciate the thought, friend Skyrie. But it is not permitted."

"I have been told many things are not permitted. I have often found they can be done, nevertheless. And the one I spoke of, who may lead us to another, who may lead us to the Well of Shadow, requires that we help him escape. It is his price."

"Then go. I know you quest for the Well. You are better without me."

I could not argue against the logic of that. But I found, again, I could not travel alone.

"Perhaps. But you saved my life, and in return for that, I gave my word I would help you find these death-pirates."

"And you saved mine. Your debt is void."

"My word is my word. You will have to find some other way to repay me for my other favours."

Lostra smiled, faintly. "I have never been to this place, but I have heard of it. They say it is alive."

"They call it the Infinite Citadel. I had thought it smaller, a fortress on legs, nothing more."

He shook his head. "I know no more than you. But I have heard it is alive. It thinks. It will not allow us to leave, friend Skyrie. It is a power beyond man. Even you cannot defeat such a thing."

"It is sorcery, nothing more," I snapped. "It can be bent to will of one man, so it can be bent to the will of another. I will find a way."

With that, I settled to draw, and carefully sketched our lodgings.

I found him again, he who would take me to the Well of Shadow. Always there, in the same place.

"How do you live?" I asked him. "Do you not need food or water or other conveniences of normal men?"

He glared. "I eat from the charity of others - or what I can buy or steal. And I have changed my mind, Skyrie of Icantoka. You are not the sorcerer I require."

"A shame, for I have devised a plan for our leaving. Here." I tossed him a coin. "Use this so you won't have to steal your next meal."

I saw the desperate gleam of hope in his eyes, but with it too, a haughty disregard, and perhaps a twist of sadness.

"Do you speak the truth."

"I will take you from this place - for a price - if that is what you wish. You have my word of it."

He bared his teeth. "I will need your word of more than that. Take me from this place and turn me over to those who hunt me? You would still keep your oath."

I smiled in turn. "I will take you to the Well of Shadow, for that is where I wish to go."

"And if I do not know the way?"

"You will take me to this Precursor, who does, and travel with us so I know his words are not false."

"And if he will not tell you?"

"You will convince him otherwise." His eyes burned with hope. "I accept your terms."

"If we are to become companions, I would know your name."

"You may call me Lex."

"Then, Lex, I have one other condition. You will tell me all you know about the Well of Shadow."

He laughed. "And will you understand it? I think not. But I will tell you what I know as we travel, little good it will do you. Now what of your plan? How will you pass the wards on the portals?"

"I will not. But the wards are not against me, they are against you." "Some are against all of us. And how will I pass even those that are not?"

I handed him the drawing of the rooms I had been given. "You will use this, and others like it."

"What is it?"

"A spell. You have but to think on the image, and the drawing will take you there."

Lex looked long at the picture, then tore it and hurled it at my feet. "What fool do you take me for? There is no sorcery in this! And I have told you, the citadel bears protections throughout against sorcerous travel by any means except the portals."

"You are wrong."

I shrugged. "If you do not want my help, I will not give it. Or perhaps I am a better sorcerer than you think."

He sighed and drew closer to me. "I am sorry, my friend. But I have seen many of the Empire's greatest sorcerers, and none could weave a magic to travel through the citadel. It is woven too tightly against that."

"I am not sure I am using sorcery. Perhaps it is some other trickery." He stared at me, disbelief in his eyes. Was I mad? A fool? And yet, the desperate hope remained, and he did not turn to go.

"Your word I will reach the Well of Shadow?" I asked.

He nodded.

"Then I will tell you something." And I told him of the Emerald sorcerer, who had visited me in my tent at the walls of Icantoka, how he had entered, despite the guards, the sorcerers and even wardings of my own. "He used a sorcery I have never encountered before, nor since. All his power came through drawings, and yet it was a power unlike that of any sorcerer I have met. It seemed somehow stronger. And though I could not sense the magic within his pictures, I could sense something else. A different power. Sorcery still, but in a form more concentrate, more potent, than any other. He would not show me how this power worked, but directed me to the Well of Shadow. Yet in the time that has passed since then, I have thought long on what I sensed. I have learned enough to create a little of his skill. This drawing, though you sense no magic within it, contains more power than any spell or ritual I know. It is immensely hard to focus. Two days of concentration to produce but this one picture. But I promise you, it will take you away from here. Focus your eyes upon it and fell the image in front of you. Feel is with your mind, not your vision."

I laid the picture out on the table in front of him and watched.

"It shimmers!"

"Yes! More!"

"I see the place as though I were scrying it!"

"Yes!"

"But this is so hard! I have never met a spell so resistant to me!"

"It is, perhaps, a power beyond those with which you are familiar."

"Yes. I see it clearly now. The room. I see someone moving!"

"Lostra."

"But what use is this? I have scrying spells of my own."

"It is not a scrying spell. It is a gateway. Step through it."

Seconds passed, and Lex stared at the image in front of, and such was the intensity on his face, the sweat dripping from his brow, others seated around us stopped from their conversations to stare as well.

A shimmering curtain of colour rose up from the picture and engulfed his face, moving down his body, engulfing him, cloaking him in a scintillating sheen of shifting hues, greens and reds and blues and yellows, all colours in between and yet some more, defying the eye. Gasps arose around me, and then Lex was gone, and the drawing with him.

Every face in the room stared after me as I left.

Knowing what I know now, I do not understand how I was able to fathom even this much of the Emerald sorcerer's power. Yet in the years to come, my blunt, brutal glimmer of knowledge was enough. I found not a single sorcerer in all the Fourteen Empires who shared this power , nor even one who had heard of it. Yet I meddled with it, in my foolishness, without care or heed for the consequences, and thus, slowly, I would become its master.

The content of this page is © copyright Stephen Deas 2001 and is used here with permission.
It may not be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the permission of the author.