He snatched his hand back. "That was before everything went wrong!"

Esme moved away to stare out her small window. "I know what it's like to have everything go wrong." She said nothing more for many moments. Guerrand just waited.

"It pains me even now to think of those days, when I thought it important to prove that a mere girl could follow in the great Melar's footsteps." Esme gave a sad, humorless smile.

She looked away from the window, at Guerrand. "My father had magical ambitions only for my brothers. Each, in his turn, rejected magic, afraid to tell Father that he had caused them to hate, not love, it. My father disowned them, leaving them without money or connections or training. No one would even speak to them on the streets of Fangoth for fear of suffering a wizard's wrath."

Esme brushed the bangs from her eyes. "Left without sons, my father's eyes at last turned to me. I was thrilled by the attention and studied hard to satisfy him." She sighed deeply. "It wasn't long before I understood why my brothers had all fled. The great Melar was never satisfied."

Esme moved to stare silently out the window again. "The difference between my brothers and me was that I stayed with Father because I had grown to love magic. To impress him, or escape him-I don't know which-I suggested I was ready to declare an alignment to properly begin training for the Test. 'You're a girl!' he'd thundered. 'You'll be fortunate if you're ever ready to take the Test.' "

A tear rolled down Esme's cheek, and she dashed it away. "I knew that he was just afraid to lose control of me. What he didn't know was that he already had. I slipped away that night and traveled to Wayreth. I never sent word." Her thin shoulders lifted in a shrug. "He had ways of finding me if he cared to know where I went."

Esme fiercely wiped away the last of her tears. "So, you see, if I'm expelled, I've nowhere to go. I can't return to Fangoth. My father would know I've failed, as he'd predicted." She pounded a fist on the sill. "I couldn't abide that, Rand!"

"You wouldn't have to go home," Guerrand said, standing close behind her. His arms went about her shoulders, and she let him pull her back against his chest. "We could start again someplace else. Together."

"I would always know the truth," she whispered so softly he couldn't be sure he heard her. A huge, shuddering sigh racked her body, as if she were resigning herself to her fate. She turned suddenly in Guerrand's embrace, gave a trembling smile, and pressed tear-streaked lips to his cheek. "Thank you."

His eyes, so near her own, went wide. "For what?"

"For… saying that," Esme said simply. She stirred in the embrace, and Guerrand reluctantly let her go. Grimacing, she lowered herself gingerly onto her cot, dragging her left leg up to rest. "Justarius's elixir seems to be wearing off. I'd ask him for more, but he's likely left for Wayreth, and I hate to ask Denbigh. Do you have any more of those herbs that helped me in the lab?"

Guerrand knelt by her solicitously. "You took all I had, but there are more in my chamber." He jumped to his feet. "It'll take me a few moments to mix them."

Esme looked at him sweetly. "Would you mind?"

Guerrand hastened to the door, happy to help ease her suffering. "I'll be back before you know it," he said. She smiled her appreciation as he disappeared into the antechamber.

Guerrand dashed through the formal dining area that bridged their rooms. It took him ten minutes to collect and crush a sufficient amount of dried peppermint and meadowsweet and steep it in oil of cloves.

Vial in hand, Guerrand dashed toward the door. On impulse, he checked his appearance in his looking glass, then wished he hadn't. He looked like he'd been dragged through a knothole, but he hadn't time even to change. Esme was in pain and waiting for his herbs.

Slicking a moistened hand over his mop of dark hair, Guerrand hastened back through the dining room. He forced his steps and breathing to slow in the antechamber. A sense of propriety suggested he knock at the door to her sleeping chamber. There was no answer. He waited and knocked again. When still there was no response, he poked his head through the curtain that hung in the doorway.

"Esme?" he whispered, wondering if she had fallen asleep after the day's travails. What he found in the sleeping chamber nearly made him drop the vial he carried.

"Zagarus!"

The familiar was strutting back and forth on Esme's cot. Guerrand saw his own pack at the bird's feet, the flap open. The young woman herself was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's Esme?" the apprentice demanded, his fingers growing cold about the vial of herbs when he saw the fragment of mirror on the chest by the cot.

She's gone! She stepped into the mirror! Zag pointed his beak at the glistening glass.

I flew to her window, looking for you so that I could slip into my nest in the mirror. Esme saw me but was busy stuffing her pack with components. Suddenly, she slung the pack over her shoulder and said, "I don't know if you can understand me, but tell Rand I'll be back in the time it takes to leap from the mirror, grab the spellbooks, and jump back here." Those were her exact words. Zagarus heaved a sigh of relief at having got through it all. What did she mean, Rand?

"It means she went back to Belize's," Guerrand said numbly. He snatched up the mirror and felt the jagged edges press his flesh.

What are we going to do?

Guerrand sank down next to the bird and considered the question. He wasn't so much angry at Esme as anxious. "Wait for her to return," he said at last. "If everything goes well, she should be able to return in under ten minutes. She could be back any moment, then." He remembered her splinted limb with a frustrated sigh. "I'll give her a little more time for her leg."

Guerrand let twenty minutes pass before he allowed the fear to pound at his temples. Where was she? He looked futilely at the mirror and closed his eyes. Something was wrong. He would not let his mind conjure possibilities. Only one thing was clear: he had to go and find her.

"Come on, Zag," he said, mirror in hand as he raced back to his room. Guerrand snatched up herbs and other items he used for his best spells and added them to the spellbook he placed in his pack.

The apprentice glanced once more around his chamber and spied his swordbelt with sword and dagger, long unused, hanging from a wall peg. Whether due to a premonition or the memory of Belize's monstrosities, Guerrand pulled it down and buckled it around his waist.

Guerrand set the mirror on his desk, then waved Zagarus into the glass first. Stretching his arms above his head as if swan-diving into the Strait of Ergoth, Guerrand slipped into the shiny surface of the magical mirror.

A heartbeat later in the foggy mirror world, Guerrand envisioned the looking glass in Belize's laboratory and stepped through it. Instantly he sensed an unnatural stillness, like the calm after a violent thunderstorm. Holding

his breath, Guerrand walked around the shelves. His booted feet crunched over glass. The floor was covered with shattered beakers, colored preserving liquids, and assorted organ components. The shelves that had so recently been neatly stacked were now bare, swept clean. The stench was worse than he'd remembered.

Guerrand kicked a hen heart out of his path. "Esme?" he called softly.

She's not here, Rand, Zagarus said. I'm by Belize's table. You've got to see this.

Blood hammering at his temples, Guerrand raced past the steps to the platform. Only one torch lit the area containing the table that Guerrand knew had held Belize's spellbooks. That lone light revealed enough to raise Guerrand's gorge. The entire floor and much of the walls were covered with spattered gore. The nauseating blotches were broken by scorch marks Guerrand knew came only from the intense heat of magical fireballs. Severed limbs and heads, obliterated torsos, and oozing organs were everywhere. Much of the carnage had been blasted beyond recognition.