Spell of Fate | Page 2

three senior-level magicians to dispel. His flattened image was still
embedded in the wall just past the bend, the expression on the stretched
face oddly untroubled. Her grandfather had hung a tapestry over it.
Behind the sliding bookcase was a narrow alcove and the top of a
tightly wound circular stair. Leen followed the unstoppable Robin
down it, refusing to give in to a sudden maternal rush and tell him to
watch his step. She kept her left hand on the central support pole and
glanced up periodically as the stairs wound around it; it was fully two
complete turns, or perhaps even a quarter more, before they reached
bottom.
Leen had no idea where they were, compared to the overall layout of
the Archives and the catacombs and the palace complex as a whole.
The palace was the kind of place where outside and inside
measurements rarely added up, anyway, with the discrepancy as likely
as not to indicate that the inside dimension was significantly the larger.
Still, the Archive occupied the lower levels of its corner of the complex,
so it appeared reasonable to presume that the staircase had taken them
down into the midst of solid rock. Or into what she had previously
assumed, for lack of any particular reason to think otherwise, was solid
rock.

The floor was cold and certainly felt like unbroken bedrock rather than
some construction team's marble or concrete sub-basement. Leen was
no longer quite as willing to give it the benefit of doubt as she had been
even moments before, though. The other two features of the room were
suggestive. One was the wall that faced her at the bottom of the stair. It
too was solid, and cold, and obviously thick, but unlike the floor, it was
metal. Metal. Not a crude iron alloy or a thin beaten sheet of copper or
some lumpish bronze implement or even a piece of the newer structural
steels, either, but a deadly serious, absolutely flat, medium-gray slab
that reflected its dull sheen beneath the centuries'-long accumulation of
sifted dust. She had never seen a piece of metal like that in her life. As
far as Leen knew, there had never been a piece of metal like that
anywhere in the world. Since the Dislocation, of course. Although there
was no evidence of hinge, lock, or control, Leen was certain the slab of
metal was a door.
It wasn't a certainty born of unfettered intuition. The wall adjoining the
metal one on its right had its own feature. From the level of her waist to
a spot above her head and for a span of an arm-and-a-half or so in
width, the solid rock wall, retaining the same texture and feeling of
cold stone, turned inexplicably transparent behind its coating of filth.
Leen slid a finger through the grime. As the clear rock became clearer
behind her finger, she could see that her initial impression was no
mirage. The transparent area glowed a pale green, the green washing
over her finger in a faint necrochromatic smear. Where her fingertip
pressed against the wall a brighter green spot appeared beneath it. She
brought her eye close to the smudge her single wipe had left.
Although it was difficult to tell exactly how thick the crystal actually
was, it was incontrovertibly not thin. The depth of her forearm, at least.
That it did have a far side, though, was also evident, since Leen could
see something beyond it - a circular spot of green, coin-sized. A light.
Not a flame, or a sorcerous torch, or a rune like the ones on Robin's
tunic, but a light of some different type entirely, a light that glowed its
perfect, unceasing, monochromatic glow in the darkness where no eye
had seen it for-

The light turned orange, flashed once. Then it winked off.
Leen's head snapped back as though the light had leapt forward through
the crystal and slapped her instead. She shook her head once, trying to
still through sympathetic magic, she supposed, her whirling thoughts.
She looked down at Robin; he was happily pounding away at the metal
door, making not the slightest dent or sound, except for the very mild
thump of his small hands against the material. Leen discovered she was
rather proud of him, even in the midst of her quite un-Archivist-like
mental turmoil. Even as the young child he was, he was revealing the
appropriate inclinations of a first-class Archivist himself. One of them,
unfortunately, was dredging up things better left hidden. Still, he had
most likely finished his part; now it was her turn. Leen told herself to
remember to get him something special for bringing her such an
interesting puzzle. Interesting? Well, this was interesting. Indeed, it
was more than interesting. Something ancient