"Come on," Leesil urged, "before we get any more surprises."

He grabbed her arm, hoisting her up.

Magiere paused only to pick up her falchion, but she didn't sheathe it or the dagger. As she stepped onto the meeting place of the four bridges, she kept her eyes on the white undead.

All her dissatisfaction settled on the notion of taking Li'kan's head.

This ancient thing-and whatever controlled it-wanted Magiere to have the orb. So why had Li'kan done nothing to stop Welstiel and his minions?

"What's wrong with her?" Leesil asked.

Magiere took a long breath. "I don't think she's been down here in ages-or longer than I can guess. She just froze at the sight of it."

"So what is it?" Leesil whispered.

Magiere had no answer. She was no mystic or sage, and doubted that even those who were would understand the orb. She was just a rogue, a charlatan grown tired of the game… and a tainted thing born in the worst of ways. But instinct told her this device was no longer safe here, and she believed the Chein'as knew this as well.

They had given her the circlet, what Wynn called a thorhk.

Without even thinking, Magiere sheathed her falchion and tucked away the dagger. She pulled aside her hair to lift the circlet from her neck. From the look of its open-end knobs and the grooves in the spike's head… was this thorhk a handle for lifting the orb?

Leesil's brow wrinkled as Magiere fitted the circlet over the spike.

The knobs slipped along the stone grooves, until they settled in the notches on the spike's opposing sides. Gripping the circlet like a bucket's handle, Magiere lifted with both hands, trying to clear the orb from its tall stone stand.

She expected resistance. Whatever the orb and false spike were made of, the whole of it looked heavy. To her surprise, the circlet lifted easily.

A hum rose around Magiere, seeming to fill the cavern. Or was it inside her, running through her bones, gathering in her skull?

"No!" Leesil shouted. "Put it back in!"

Magiere felt water droplets gather on her face. She saw them on her hands as the air's mist seemed to pull in around her. A light spread from somewhere beneath her grip on the circlet, and she dropped her gaze.

The spike hung free, dangling from the circlet's knobs. Rather than lifting orb and spike together, her circlet had pulled the spike, separating it.

The orb, still resting in the stand, emanated light… was made of light. Its glow sparked within the drops upon Magiere's arms and hands.

Rainbow hues swirling through the orb suddenly bled into each other, until its whole form burned pure teal.

"Put the spike back!"

Magiere heard Leesil's shout, but she couldn't turn away, and her eyes began stinging from the light. Her vision blurred like snow blindness.

Only the orb remained crisp and real.

Magiere couldn't move, though she felt someone's hands close atop her grip on the circlet.

Chap turned back as the landing hollow's dark space filled with light. He cringed at the brilliance erupting from the platform.

Three hazy silhouettes were barely visible in the glare. Then a tingle crawled over Chap's skin, making his fur bristle.

Fay-he felt his kin manifested here.

Chap turned aside from the blinding light and saw Sgaile shielding his eyes. And beyond the elf, the hollow's walls began to bleed… water.

Globules welled from the stone and ripped from its surface, but they did not fall downward. Each glittering droplet shot toward the platform, like heavy rain falling inward from all around into the teal brilliance.

Chap felt a hint of connection to Earth, Fire, Air, Spirit… and an overwhelming sense of Water. He had not tried to root himself in the elements of existence, yet they sharply filled his awareness-and the last, primal Water, smothered the others.

He remembered being born.

Every pain and sensation flickered past in his mind. He drifted back further, almost remembering his existence among his kin, the Fay.

They-he-had mourned a loss.

No, a sin-from an instant before the first "moment" existed.

From when "time" came into being at the beginning of creation.

Chap inched forward in the blinding light, feeling with his paws for the bridge's edge. He cried out through his spirit to his kin.

What… was so horrible… in the making of this world? What did you… we do?

There was no answer.

Once, at one with his kin, "time" had meant nothing to Chap. Now he struggled with moments and days and years like walls built around his lost memories. But he felt the presence of a Fay in this place.

Chap lifted his head and tried to gaze into the light.

One? There was only one Fay here?

How could he sense one and not the many? There were no others like himself in this world that he knew of. The tingle across his skin sharpened.

A wordless hiss in Chap's skull drove cold into his bones. For an instant it almost shifted to a leaf-wing crackle in his head.

He felt it clearly-another Fay-a second, yet singular and alone. It wormed through him like winter's ache, the same one that had tried to coil around his awareness as he fled from Li'kan's mind.

The presence vanished from Chap's awareness. The tingle within him ripped away as he choked.

Within the painful light upon the platform, Magiere had done something to awaken or activate the ancient artifact.

He did not yet understand what or why, but there was a reason that the orb had been left fallow in the frozen mountains and burning chasm. Water droplets raced from the stone walls toward its light as vapors from the chasm twisted upward.

"What is happening?" Sgaile shouted.

Chap scurried forward with eyes down, barely making out his paws' outlines upon the stone floor. The glare broke away on both sides, leaving only a narrow strip running ahead. It had to be the bridge.

Chap padded blindly out, heading for the platform.

Leesil grappled for Magiere's hands, turning his face from the blinding orb. Though it burned with a green-blue glow, the light filling the air was searing white. He felt rain patter on his body. But it fell inward from all around, all directions. Droplets stung him and seemed to roll over his limbs, sucked away toward the orb.

He closed his eyes and shouted, "Let go! Damn it, Magiere, let it drop!"

No matter how hard he pressed on her hands, she remained rigid and unyielding.

Something grabbed the back of Leesil's hauberk.

Wrenching force heaved him backward, and his fingers tore from Magiere's hands. He landed hard on stone and flopped over once. He quickly flattened in fear of blindly tumbling over the platform's edge.

Leesil looked back for Magiere, and his eyes watered instantly in the glare. Tears beaded and ripped from his face. They joined a thousand droplets racing through the cavern toward the light beyond Magiere.

Her body shielded the orb, as if she stood directly in line with the sun, turning her into a darkly blurred silhouette. White light radiated around her, blurring everything else from sight.

Until another hazy silhouette closed on her.

Narrower and shorter, it reached out beyond Magiere, somewhere above the orb.

Leesil turned his face aside as he crawled toward Magiere. He could barely make out the open cavern. Vapors thinned from the air, and the far walls were lit up. The pocket cavities of the dead, not as bright as the open stone, were little more than oval blotches in his blurred sight.

He saw them begin to move.

Like shadows that the light couldn't smother, they shifted along the cavern walls and flowed in a slowly swirling pattern.

Leesil dragged the back of his hand over his eyes, trying to clear his warped vision.

The swirling of shadows undulated. They flowed together in turning paths like a snake with no beginning or end, and those huge shadow coils turned everywhere across the cavern's walls.