Valerius shook his head. "Her body was in the vaults, among the enemy's dead."

Seregil loosed another sizzling volley of Aurenfaie curses. "How many of the Oreska House were killed?"

"Eight wizards, seventeen apprentices, twenty-three guards and servants, last I heard. And there are plenty of others who may not survive their wounds."

"And the enemy?"

"Twenty-seven dead."

Seregil gave the drysian a questioning look. "And the others? Wounded, prisoners?"

"Not a one," Valerius replied darkly. "That dyrmagnos creature saw to that herself. According to those who witnessed the fight, as soon as Mardus and his creature had disappeared from the vaults, and I do mean «disappeared» in a thaumaturgic sense, every one of the surviving Plenimaran swordsmen there and up in the atrium just fell down dead where they stood. I've seen the corpses; there's not a mortal wound on them."

"I'll need to see them." said Seregil.

"I rather suspected you would. They've been laid out in the west garden."

"Good. But first I want to see the vault."

Tiles and rubble grated beneath their boots as Seregil and Micum crossed the atrium to the museum chamber. Whatever magic had blasted the doors from their hinges had carried through and smashed half the cases in the chamber. The case holding the hands of the necromancer was among these; the hands lay palm up among the splinters and shards like huge brown insects.

There were people everywhere in the vaults now. As they made their way down one level after another they met servants and apprentices carrying up rescued artifacts, and wizards weeping or wandering past in stunned silence.

A doorkeeper at the final door let them through without question. Torches and wizard's lights lit the maze of brick-paved passageways. By their light Seregil followed the traces of battle: a bloodied dagger abandoned at the turning of a hallway, dark smears and spatters on the pale stone walls, shattered pieces of an ivory rod, a corselet buckle, the charred remains of a wizard's robe.

Micum nudged a broken sword with his foot, then spread his arms to find that he could nearly touch both walls at once. "Sakor's Flame, it must have been a slaughter."

The sound of voices guided them the last of the way to Nysander's long-hidden cache hole behind an unremarkable expanse of wall halfway down one of the innermost corridors. A blacked hole a few feet above the floor led into darkness. Beside it stood a young assistant wizard Seregil vaguely recognized, together with several servants:

"You're Nysander's friend, aren't you?" she said. "Magyana told me you might come."

"This is it, then?" he said, peering into the hole.

"Yes, it's a room of containment, masterfully done. I don't suppose anyone but Nysander knew it was here all these years."

"Obviously, someone else guessed," Seregil retorted humorlessly. "Where did the attack come from?"

The girl colored indignantly as she pointed farther down the corridor. "There's a breach in the wall at the far end of this passage where a sewer channel runs within a few yards of the wall. As you say, they seemed to know just where to look."

She and the others retreated, leaving Seregil and Micum to their investigation.

"Thero could have known," Micum admitted, watching Seregil take out his tool roll and select a lightwand. "He might have guessed. Perhaps Nysander even told him."

"No. He didn't." Stooping, Seregil inspected the jagged opening. "Illior's Fingers, the stonework is three feet thick here, but there's no debris. I see something shiny on the far edge, though."

The opening was large enough for Seregil to wiggle through.

Reaching in, he ran his fingertips cautiously over what felt like metallic nodules beading a section of broken stonework. "It feels like—Of course, it's silver. And something melted it; it ran like wax before it cooled. I'm going in for a look."

Micum frowned as he peered doubtfully into the dark, cramped space. "Do you think it's safe? Nysander must have had one hell of a lot of magic protecting whatever he had hidden in there."

"Any safeguards that existed must surely have been destroyed," the wizard said, placing his palms against the stone above the hole. "I sense only the residue."

Holding the lightstone in one hand, Seregil squeezed in headfirst. It was a tight fit. Jagged stone scraped at his hands and belly as he crawled through to the small chamber beyond.

"I'm in," he called back to the others. "It is a room of sorts, but too small to stand up in."

"What's in there?" asked Micum, peering in at him.

"Nothing. It's empty. But every surface from floor to ceiling is all black, and covered with magical symbols."

Seregil touched his palm to the wall beside him and recognized the soft, almost velvety texture of the surface at once; rubbing at a small section of it with his sleeve, he uncovered gleaming metal.

"It's silver, the whole room is sheathed with it."

He was not surprised; taking all the details into consideration, he knew it to be nothing more than a larger version of the silver-lined box Nysander had given him to carry the crystal crown. "And here at the back there's a shelf running the width of the wall."

Examining this, he found three areas of bright metal on the shelf, as if whatever had sat there had kept it from tarnishing. The central mark was roughly circular and about the size of his palm. To the left was a smaller, but more perfectly round circle. To the right was a large square of silver, not so bright as the other two. Seregil recognized the last two outlines as those of the boxes holding the coin and crown, but what had the central object been? Judging by the relative lack of tarnish, it had been there the longest of the three, proving Alec's supposition that Nysander had been guarding something long before they had brought him the disk.

Bending over the mark with his light, he touched the outline, tracing it with his finger—his vision dissolved into a brief curtain of sizzling sparks, then darkness.

A single clear, attenuated note broke the silence surrounding him and for as long as it lasted he knew nothing else. It pierced him, bathed him, dancing along on the threshold dividing pleasure from pain. Gradually other notes joined the first and they had form, long heavy forms that gradually wrapped together like the strands of a great rope.

And he was one of those strands, twisted tight and drawn along with the rest toward some destination. It was not fear that shot through him now, but an horrific elation.

Other sounds gradually filtered in from beyond the umbilicus, and these were different.

Removed.

Not of the flow.

Countless black-feathered throats raising a deafening collective cry that swelled to a roar of diseased laughter, then faded away as the flow passed on.

Human screams, voices crying out in every language of the world.

The clash of battle.

Impossible explosions.

He burrowed deeper into the umbilical bundle but the intrusive sounds followed, rising to an awful crescendo before they faded as quickly as they had come.

Silence, gravid with a sense of immediacy.

At last another sound crept in between the strands; Seregil knew this sound and it inexplicably filled him with a greater dread than all the rest. It was the heavy rumble of ocean surf.

"Seregil?"

The sound of Micum's worried voice broke through the vision, yanking him back to the cramped chamber.

"You all right in there?" Micum called again.

"Yes, yes, of course," Seregil replied thickly, although suddenly he didn't feel all right. He felt pissed as a newt.

Rising slowly, he staggered back to the opening and pulled himself through. Micum helped him to his feet, but his legs didn't seem to want to support him just yet. Sliding down with his back to the wall, he rested his elbows on his knees.