After the royal party had retired to their side of the Marai and everyone else had been dispatched to make the various preparations for tomorrow, Rian stood in the inner court of the Marai. With Maskelle, he watched the night fall. It was quiet except for the low chanting of the priests.
It was already so dark Rian could hardly see her standing at his elbow; it made the yellow flicker of lamplight between the pillars of the galleries look as bright as the sun. He said, “If Marada and her people were from here, how do they live? What do they do for food, water?” He knew someone had laid the stone blocks on this plain and built this city. It just didn’t seem reasonable that they could still be here.
Maskelle looked up at the now inky blackness of the sky and shook her head. “I don’t know. I have a feeling Marada was an even stranger creature than we thought. I saw she seemed to exist in the Infinite and our world at the same time. Maybe … they don’t need the same things to exist as we do.” She shrugged. “Perhaps we’ll ask about it when we find them tomorrow.”
Rian hoped that was a rhetorical “we.” If Gisar was telling the truth and Marada’s people were here with their Wheel, then the search expeditions would be even more dangerous. With the Celestial One gone, they couldn’t afford to lose Maskelle, too. How he was going to talk her out of it, however, was another question and not something he wanted to worry about right this moment. “Why wouldn’t they come to us, that’s what I don’t understand. Whether they meant this to happen or not, surely they have to do something about us?”
She drew a slow breath, still lost in thought. “I don’t know. I wonder … This place feels dead to me. Dead or dying.”
Rian felt a coldness settle in the pit of his stomach. That was something else he hadn’t been thinking about. The wind whipped through the court, carrying the scent of emptiness and dust. “Couldn’t that be because of what it did to … the real world?”
He looked toward the east side of the gallery, trying to make sure no one was creeping out to listen to their conversation. Mirak and his faction had been ominously cooperative so far; Rian would have preferred a direct confrontation to force all the innuendo out in the open where it could be fought. At least the Emperor seemed to be in firm control for now.
Maskelle stepped close to him suddenly, turned his chin back toward her and kissed him. It was a deep kiss but quick, and if it was meant to distract him from his question, it worked. She stepped back and said, “We’re not dead yet.”
It was what he had said to Rastim this morning, he remembered, watching the white gleam of her robe disappear into the shadows as she walked back toward the south side of the court. He heard a light scrape, a sandal slipping against stone, from behind him. Rian turned and stepped back warily. A man stood in the portico of the central tower.
“Something I want to show you,” Karuda’s voice said.
Rian hesitated, trying to decide if he smelled a trap or not. It was too dark to see the man’s face. There was one certain way to find out. He nodded and followed when Karuda led the way across the court.
They went through to the west outer gallery, then down it toward the corner tower. From the windows that looked out on the silent stretch of the grassy court, Rian could see three dim glows on the wall: the lamps of the sentries, muted to keep the light from ruining their night vision. There was a brighter light at the bottom of the stairs in the tower, where a lamp had been left burning. In its light Rian saw Karuda’s expression was tense. The shadows made the carvings that spiraled up the walls look threatening, the sinuous Temple Dancers appearing more sinister than erotic.
As Karuda started up the stairs, Rian stepped sideways and looked up through the tower. He couldn’t see anyone lying in wait. Maybe things weren’t bad enough yet for that kind of factionalized infighting; it was hard to tell with these Kushorit. Karuda glanced down but said nothing when Rian started up the stairs.
At the third level, Karuda stepped out onto the balcony. Three men crouched there, all temple servants. Rian didn’t relax; he wasn’t sure of the loyalties of all the servants, though most seemed to lean toward the priests.
One stood, pointing across the plain. In a hushed, frightened voice he said, “There. It’s getting brighter.”
Rian looked where he was pointing and forgot his suspicions. On one of the massive dark shapes outlined against the sky, pinpricks of light glowed, the red flicker of firelight.
Maskelle leaned on the parapet, looking toward the flickers of red that hovered in the dark like stars. Mirak stood just within the doorway behind her. The Temple Master had moved up next to Maskelle and Rian was sitting on the balustrade. The sentries had been sent down to the bottom level of the tower to wait.
Maskelle heard footsteps on the stairs and a moment later Karuda stepped into the doorway. He reported, “You can see the fires from all of the other towers.” He added reluctantly, “It seems to go forever.”
“If there were that many people here, we should be able to hear them,” Rian said, sounding frustrated.
Maskelle took a deep breath and nodded. She didn’t think the fires meant people, either. At least, not the kind of people they were used to. “We’ll wait until daylight, then go out.”
“‘We,’” the Temple Master repeated.
She nodded. “I have to go.” She could feel the Adversary pulling at her, more clearly than she had felt it in years. The Infinite was closer, somehow, even though the other Voices said they couldn’t hear the Ancestors. But the Ancestors have always been tied more closely to the land, the water, the air, she thought. All that was different now. But the Adversary had always been identified and personified by its Voice.
“And leave the Marai unprotected?” Mirak said. He had been uncharacteristically silent until now. But he had always been a cautious man, and he was outnumbered here.
“My duty is not to protect the Marai,” Maskelle told him, turning away from the distant fires to face him. She couldn’t see his expression in the heavy dark, but he would know she was looking at him. “My duty is to find that second Wheel and destroy it.” She heard Rian stir restlessly, but he didn’t protest aloud. She knew his present forbearance wouldn’t stop him from protesting aloud later.
Mirak was silent a moment. “The Voice Vigar gave you the authority of the Celestial One.”
“Vigar’s duty is to protect the Wheel, with the rest of the Voices. If there is anything that will help us, it’s the Rite. As you heard us tell the Emperor, it will be useless to execute the Rite while whoever did this still lives. If they’ve done it once, they can do it again.” She looked at the Temple Master. “When I leave, you become the chief religious of the Celestial Empire.”
The Temple Master sighed, sounding weary. “I thought you might say that.”
Maskelle smiled to herself. As long as we’re carrying on the tradition of awarding it to the person who wants it least. “Now don’t go and make any sweeping decisions on the Reform of the Eighty-First Passage of the Water Invocations while I’m gone.”
His voice dry, the Temple Master replied, “There go my plans for the afternoon.”
“I see no cause for amusement in this situation.” Mirak sounded brittle as glass.
“Neither do we, really,” Maskelle said mildly, realizing she had underestimated how afraid Mirak was. He’s close to the edge, she thought. And he could fall, or be pushed, over. Unlike those of us who went over the edge years ago and have been looking up at everyone else from the bottom ever since. It worried her. She knew what he was likely to do in his right mind, and he was dangerous enough as it was. She didn’t know what he would do if he was panic-stricken enough to break. “I would honestly like to answer all your questions, but I won’t have any answers until we find these people and—”
And kill them.
“What is it?” Rian asked sharply.
They were all staring at her. Maskelle shook her head. “I heard the Adversary again.”
The Temple Master drew a sharp breath.
“How very convenient,” Mirak said, his voice laced with vitriol.
“Oh, the one thing the Adversary never is, is convenient,” Maskelle said under her breath. “Finding that second Wheel,” she said aloud. “That’s the first step.” But only the first step, she thought.
“Sintane, I need to talk to you,” Rastim said.
“Not now.” Rian didn’t bother to look up. With the help of a couple of nuns who had been doing duty as sentries in the taller towers, he was drawing a rough map of what he had seen of the layout of the city around them in soot on the flat pavement of the second outer court. The night was an absolute pitch black, carrying no moon, no stars, and no reassurance that day would ever return. It’s just the clouds, Rian had told himself. There was a real sky up there somewhere. I hope. Working in the flicker of lamplight had given him a headache and he was in no mood to listen to Rastim. He had spent the last few hours with Karuda, organizing the guards and Koshans into search groups, then sending them out to the Temple Master at the edge of the barrier to learn how to cross back and forth through it.
Rian hadn’t completely believed in the barrier until he had felt it himself, but it made a wall as impossible to penetrate as stone or wood. To cross it you had to walk in a pattern: left three paces, straight two paces, right three paces, straight one pace, then turn left and out. Follow the steps in reverse to get back in. No enemies were going to stumble on that formula by accident. Rian had thought the chanting of the priests would become an annoyance after a time, but now it was reassuring, a calming counterpoint to the silence of the night and the lonely echo of the wind.
“It’s important,” Rastim said through gritted teeth.
Rian looked up at him. Only a few lamps were lit to conserve the short supply of oil, and the orange-yellow glows were as bright as stars on the railing of the second-level gallery, and at the archway that led through into the central court. The lamplight threw just enough illumination onto Rastim’s face for Rian to see his expression. Rian sat back on his heels, brows drawing together. “What is it?”
The two nuns looked up from a prolonged discussion over whether the building with the eight spires was behind or to the west of the one with horns, worried at his tone.
“Gisar,” Rastim said grimly.
There were plenty of lamps in this section of the third court, their light flickering over the wall carvings and the pillars. They clearly illuminated the empty box, its lid carefully set aside. Rian touched the wood where Maskelle had written the protective sigils. The ink had been burned away; he could see and feel where the wood was singed.
“It must have spelled you to let it out, like it did at the camp that night,” Rastim said tiredly, wiping the dust from his face with his sleeve. Rastim had said that when he came to relieve Firac at watch, he had seen that Gisar was gone. Firac and the Koshan priest hadn’t been able to see the box was open until a frantic Rastim had pointed it out.
Now the two men looked rebellious. Firac folded his arms stubbornly and the priest began, “With all respect, I don’t think—”
Examining the locks, Rian shook his head. “No, it opened this from the inside.” He could see where the thing had forced the locks apart. Running his fingers over the inside of the lid, he could feel where the heat had started. “The sigils were burned away from the inside, too.”
“This is all we need.” Karuda swore, straightening up from where he had leaned over to look at the lock. Rian had sent for the noble as soon as he heard Rastim’s story. He had also sent one of the nuns to warn Maskelle.
Rian couldn’t disagree. He got to his feet. “So let’s start looking for it.”
Karuda rubbed his eyes, then nodded sharply and started away. “I’ll organize a search.”
Rian took the opposite direction, heading down the gallery toward the arch that opened into the outer court. Though he hadn’t let it show, he was grimly afraid. There was no telling what Gisar would do. He wished he had some idea what to do if he found the thing.
Rastim hurried to catch up with him. “Why are you going this way?”
“If it’s possessed by one of Marada’s people instead of the demon, it’ll try to get back to them,” Rian said, as they reached the steps and started down. “It could be heading straight for the way out.” All the creature would have to do would be to leave the third court by the middle stairs and head straight across the outer court to the gate. If it could hide itself from Firac and the priest, the sentries at the gate wouldn’t have a chance.
“Oh, that’s a point,” Rastim said, following him.
Rian reached the bottom of the steps and started across the open area. The wide grassy expanse of the outer court was dark except for a couple of lamps on the water gate directly opposite the entrance to the gallery behind them. The ground was carefully even and free of obstacles, so it wasn’t hard to cross, even when you couldn’t see your feet in front of you. Rian took a deep breath, the smell of still damp earth and green temporarily blotting out the dust carried on the wind. Thinking it through, he said, “It won’t be able to get through the barrier, but it’ll be trapped between there and the wall—”
A figure rose up out of the dark. Rian shoved Rastim back and caught the blow in the chest, hard enough to make him stumble. He ducked the next by instinct and drew his siri. He heard a weird jangle, as if their attacker wore a lot of noisy jewelry.
He blocked another blow with the sword, feinted, and drove in toward what should have been his opponent’s midsection. The return blow knocked him off his feet. He felt the siri jerked out of his hand. Rastim had struggled to his feet and now dove forward, trying to grab the thing from behind, but it threw him off.
Rian scrambled to grab the fallen sword, then rolled up into a crouch. This couldn’t be Gisar, this was big, big as a man. A lamp bobbed toward them through the dark; the sentries from the gate had heard the fight and must be running this way. The shape dodged forward, back toward the temple, and Rian threw himself at it in a tackle. He caught it around the knees and landed on a tangle of wood and metal wire. Rian floundered for a moment, trying to tell by feel what this thing was. It suddenly contracted under him and threw him off.
Rian hit the ground hard and looked up as the guard arrived with the lamp. The creature stood over him and he realized with a shock that it was Gisar. Or that it had been Gisar.
He remembered the puppet from when it had walked out into the middle of the Ariaden’s performance in the outpost. It had been a small thing, only waist high, with a brightly painted wooden body, the arms, legs, and head strung to the torso with wire, meant to be moved individually by the actor who worked it. Now the wood was distended and lengthened until it looked almost like diseased flesh. The wires had grown into a profuse bundle, standing out from its body like the spines of some sea creature.
Before they or Gisar could move, a howl roared over the court. Wind tore through the empty buildings, magnified to monsoon strength. Gisar whirled and knocked the lamp out of the astonished guard’s hand. Rian felt rather than heard it run past him. He made a wild grab, but the wires slipped through his hands. He scrambled to his feet and bolted after it.
Gisar headed for the outer wall. Rian ran blind, guided only by the jangle of the wires and the thump of the puppet’s feet. He hoped he wouldn’t slam into one of the palm trees that dotted the edge of this enclosure, but he couldn’t risk losing the creature. His dark vision began to return as he neared the low wall. He heard Gisar scrabbling at the stone, climbing it.
With no moon or starlight and only the few lamps at the water gate farther down the wall, Rian saw only an odd-sized shadow moving in the darkness about where he judged the top of the wall to be. He sheathed the siri and jumped, lost his grip on the weathered stone and fell back, then jumped again. He kept his hold this time, found footholds in the carving and pulled himself up to perch on top, ignoring the tight pain in his side from his injured ribs. The wind had risen and he couldn’t hear Gisar anymore.
He slung himself off the wall and landed on the uneven strip of packed dirt that was all that remained of the moat that had surrounded the temple. He braced himself, half expecting Gisar to leap on him, but there was nothing but the howl of the wind. It was impossible to see anything in the empty dark of the plain stretching out from the temple. The pinpricks of light still glowed in the void where the strange city lay, but there was nothing …
Rian stared hard. The shadows rippled, as if something moved out there, not far beyond where the priests’ barrier lay.
He took a few cautious steps forward until he met the barrier. After hearing Maskelle’s description of it, he had expected a solid invisible wall, but it wasn’t that simple. It didn’t feel different at all, it was simply a place that it was impossible to walk through unless you followed the directions of the priests. Experimenting with it earlier, he had discovered that if you pushed on it long enough it would start to push you back, but it didn’t hurt you. He stopped there, leaning on it, trying to listen for the slight sounds the wind might cover and make shapes out of the darkness.
“… this way…”
Rian stepped back, flattening himself down against the stone by instinct though surely whoever was out here couldn’t see him, either. Catching only snatches of words over the wind, he could tell the voice was a man’s, the words Kushorit, but he couldn’t recognize the speaker. He heard what might be a reply, garbled by the wind.
He crept slowly along the wall toward the source of the voices, putting one foot in front of the other with utmost caution. There was no way to tell if the speakers were inside the barrier or out. They could be from the Marai, braver than their fellows and willing to investigate the outside world in the pitch dark, or even a couple of priests performing some sort of task necessary for the barrier. But somehow Rian didn’t think so.
A clumping sound like heavy footsteps made him freeze. He thought he could see movement in the darkness, but it was too jerky, too strangely angular. Whatever was out there, it wasn’t human. It couldn’t be Gisar either; for all that the puppet looked like an abomination, it moved lightly and naturally. And this thing doesn’t jangle, Rian thought. He started forward again.
He heard a scrabbling, as if clumsy feet tried to find purchase on the dirt and rock along the base of the wall. It’s inside the barrier, he realized with a shock, and pushed forward.
Six paces along the wall he ran into something heavy and sharp-edged, like a man wearing lacquered armor. It was halfway up the wall. He grabbed it, threw his weight back to haul it down.
It was strong and clung like a monkey. He clawed at it, trying to find a head or a neck or any other vulnerable spot to injure, but he couldn’t find anything that felt like flesh. It batted at him, then suddenly twisted and kicked, sending him sprawling backward.
Blinding light suddenly blossomed over the plain. Rian flung up an arm to shield his face. He flailed back against the Marai’s wall.
Spots flared before his eyes, but he made himself look. The light came from two swirling clouds that hovered above the ground on the other side of the barrier. They gave off a pearly, iridescent illumination that lit up the plain and cast the low wall into high relief.
It looked like their hosts had finally come to call. One whirlwind moved forward, and in instinctive fear Rian pushed himself away from it until he felt the wall press into his back. But it stopped abruptly. He watched it try to press forward again, and again it failed. The barrier held.
The two whirlwinds began to move parallel to it, toward the front of the Marai and the corner solar tower. Eddies of that strange phosphorescence broke free with the motion, drifting down to lay in puddles against the stone.
He remembered the armored thing that had tried to climb the wall and looked wildly for it. It was gone.
The whirlwinds are a distraction, Rian realized suddenly. So the thing that got in … He pushed away from the wall and ran along it toward the gate, past the glowing clouds. He catapulted himself up the steps and inside. One of the Kushorit sentries almost took his head off with a bori club and Rastim leapt back with a short hysterical yelp.
“Sorry,” Rian muttered. Leaving the guards staring in alarm at the whirlwinds, he grabbed Rastim’s arm and dragged him toward the temple. “What now?” Rastim gasped. “What are they? Something to do with Gisar?”
“Gisar is the least of our problems,” Rian told him, breaking into a run once he was sure Rastim was following. “Tell Karuda to meet me where Maskelle is. Something’s gotten inside,” he called back to him.
He heard Rastim moan, “Oh, I didn’t want to hear that.”
Sitting in meditative silence in the quiet dimness of the little room they had made for the Celestial One, Maskelle thought she heard someone call her name. She opened her eyes.
The makeshift curtain over the archway was still closed, the dust caught in the folds undisturbed. The nun who was helping watch over the old man lay curled asleep in her robe in the corner. Old Mali sat back against the wall, drowsing, but surely close enough to wakefulness to hear someone speak just outside.
Maskelle looked thoughtfully at the Celestial One’s unconscious form, hope stirring. Then she heard it again.
She came to her feet. This time she recognized the voice. She stepped to the door curtain and drew it back. One lamp burned low in the gallery outside. By its wan light she could see Killia, Therassa, and Doria asleep by the wall, and three of the temple servants on the other side. She could hear nothing but their quiet breathing. Nothing. Not even the priests’ chanting. The air felt dead and still, without a whisper of breeze.
Hah, she thought, lifting a brow. A barrier of power surrounded them, isolating this little part of the temple from the rest of the world. Finally, the attack she had anticipated. At least it was something she could get her teeth into; faceless, formless enemies were impossible to fight.
Leaving the Celestial One’s side would be folly. She stepped back from the doorway to the center of the room. Making her voice mildly inquiring, she said, “Who are you?”
Old Mali and the nun didn’t stir, and she knew something must be keeping them unconscious. Then the curtain stirred and lifted and Maskelle took an involuntary step back.
It was Marada. She wore court finery, a gold-shot silk robe and pearls braided into her hair. Maskelle knew what ghosts looked like and this wasn’t one, but the colors of her costume, her features, seemed just slightly blurred. So it was only the host body Maskelle’s bird spirit had killed; Marada, whatever she was, had survived. Keeping her voice mild, Maskelle said, “Marada, how kind of you to visit.”
“I told you that you couldn’t stop us.” Wearing her odd stiff smile, Marada stepped farther into the room.
Maskelle reached for the Adversary and felt nothing. With its usual fine timing, it had deserted her.
Somehow Marada sensed it. She said, “Your spirits can’t help you here.”
Maskelle fell back a step, felt her foot knock against the white stone ball where it lay near the Celestial One’s pallet. That had been the focus for Marada’s power, though the lack of it hadn’t seemed to hurt her. It was the only weapon Maskelle had. “How did you get here? Did the second Wheel bring you, or did you travel here on your own? You must be capable of it; it’s how you got to our world in the first place, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t come to answer your questions.” Marada flexed her hands and Maskelle remembered the spirit-creature that had strangled Igarin.
“Let me guess, you came to kill me?”
Irony touched Marada’s opaque eyes. “How did you know?”
Maskelle picked up the stone ball. “Are you sure you didn’t come for this?”
Marada’s expression didn’t change. “That can do nothing to stop me.”
Maskelle tested the weight of it in her hand. “Really?” She took a step forward and swung it.
Marada fell back and flung up an arm to defend herself, but the stone glanced off her head. Maskelle felt her arm jar with the impact. More proof the woman’s form was an illusion; whatever Maskelle had struck had been more solid than flesh and possessed of sharp edges.
Marada’s hand struck her shoulder and Maskelle crashed back into the wall. She fell and rolled away, bone and muscle aching from the force of the impact. The blow had knocked the stone out of her hand and she struggled to grab it again. Marada started forward, reaching for her. Maskelle leaned back to throw the stone.
Just before it left her hand, she felt the Adversary’s power touch her. Lightly, as if it wanted to remain unobtrusive. She channeled the force of it into the stone as she cast it.
The stone struck Marada’s chest and seemed to pass through her body, slamming into the wall behind her. It took a chunk out of the Temple Dancer carved there, then fell to smash against the floor. Old Mali and the nun sat bolt upright with cries of alarm.
Maskelle looked up in time to see Marada’s form waver and collapse in on itself. She started back as a number of other objects struck the floor with thumps and crashes.
The nun stared and Old Mali cursed. Maskelle told them, “We were invaded.” She edged forward to examine the debris.
It was nothing but trash: fragments of flat building stones, rocks, shattered remnants of smooth dark-colored pottery. Litter, from that wreck of a city out on the plain, swept together to form a temporary shell for Marada’s spirit. Did the woman—if she was a woman—ever have a body of her own? Maskelle wondered. Or was she dead and her spirit lingering, seizing whatever form was available when she needed to be corporeal? Perhaps that was why Maskelle had sensed death in this place. There were still people here, life of a sort, but their bodies were dust, only their spirits left behind.
Sound from outside washed over Maskelle like a wave. Whatever barrier Marada had placed around the room faded away with her death. Maskelle heard the low murmur of chanting and a babble of frightened voices, then Rian burst through the curtain, stopping abruptly when he saw the collection of debris on the floor.
“Marada,” she told him. She lifted a twisted piece of strange blue-tinged metal. “Her spirit was using this mess, working it like that demon worked Gisar.”
Rian looked over the odd fragments, dismissed them with an annoyed shake of his head. He said, “Gisar got out. It led me straight to the place where this thing got through the barrier. And there’s something else—”
Karuda shouldered his way through the others outside, casting a puzzled glance down at Marada’s remnants as he pushed his way in. “You’d better come,” he told Maskelle, looking a little startled at being inside the enemy’s headquarters. “There’s something outside.”
Maskelle made it to the first solar tower and careened up the stairs, Rian and Karuda beside her. She was breathing hard as she reached the top and pushed past a group of guards. The Temple Master, Mirak, and the Celestial Emperor stood on the gallery, looking out toward the captive whirlwinds that hovered just on the other side of the barrier. A furious wind tore through the balusters, keening among the openings in the tower above them. Past the whirlwinds, Maskelle could see movement in the deep well of shadow on the plain.
At first she thought it was people, a large number of them, moving out there in the dark beyond the wall. But the movement was abrupt and inhuman. More of them, she thought. Creatures—constructions, perhaps, like Marada had been.
She stepped forward and leaned on the balustrade, reaching for the Adversary. It was slow to respond, and she prayed it wasn’t losing whatever hold kept it here with them. It was their only hope.
“Are they people?” the Temple Master whispered.
“No,” Maskelle said, almost as softly. “They can get past the barrier. One already did.”
Raith stared at her. He turned back to look out at the dark. “They must know we mean to destroy their Wheel,” he muttered.
“A traitor,” Mirak said grimly. “We know the creatures can take human shape, imprison human souls. There’s one here, with us.”
Maskelle shook her head, frowning. Something wrong there. “Gisar the demon has escaped. It’s too much of a coincidence. It could have warned them.” She saw Rian’s sharp glance, but he said nothing. If by some trick of the Ancestors, Gisar was helping them, she didn’t want to reveal it just yet.
“How?” Mirak asked sharply.
Raith spared a moment to give the Chancellor an annoyed look. “The same way a human traitor would have.”
Maskelle stopped listening to them. She could feel the Adversary’s presence now, hear its voice in her head though the words came too quickly to follow. She closed her eyes and felt it fill the space around her. Whatever those creatures were, they had been dead a long time. She felt a flash of contempt, bitter and hot, and wondered where it came from. Not from the Adversary, surely. She must have felt the emotion herself, and it was reflecting back to her from their tenuous connection to the Infinite.
She blinked and opened her eyes. She sat on the floor of the gallery, Rian supporting her. The Temple Master knelt in front of her, chafing her wrists. The Throne, Mirak, and the guards had left. The night was silent again; the howl of the whirlwinds and the creatures on the plain gone. Shocked by the abrupt transition, she gasped, “What…?”
“It’s all right,” the Temple Master told her. He didn’t look as if it was all right. He looked as if he had seen something that had horrified him.
Rian helped her to her feet and she looked for the creatures. The whirlwinds had vanished, and there was no more movement out past the wall. She said, “They left?”
“They died,” Rian told her. As she steadied herself on the balustrade, he pointed. She squinted, trying to see, and finally made out still shapes lying on the stone.
“The Adversary?” the Temple Master asked.
Maskelle nodded weakly. He had answered her call.
“I didn’t know It could do that,” Rian said, sounding impressed.