Malakar stopped with the door against Lira’s palm. He looked at her hand first, then raised his eyes to her face without changing his grip on the handle.
“He knows the transfer routes,” Lira said. “He identified three separate interests before any of them understood the others were in the room. If one of those interests has touched the focus or the ritual surrounding it, he may recognize something we will not.”
“He also brought those interests to lunch,” Thane said. He remained beside the grathok, one hand resting on the damaged sledge as though prepared to drag the entire thing away if the discussion took another turn he disliked. “Half the trouble in that smokehouse followed him through the door. If he stays with us, he stays where I can see him.”
Elora stood within the passage behind Lira, the serving boy’s dried blood still caught beneath one thumbnail. “We don’t trust him. I don’t think Kal expects us to. But he followed this trail before we knew there was one, and someone tried to use him to take the grathok from us. Sending him away won’t separate his problem from ours.”
Zerai leaned around Malakar to inspect the atrium behind him. “Although leaving a thief unattended in the entrance to a wizard’s tower is certainly a bold alternative. I assume everything valuable is nailed down, cursed, or trained to bite.”
Kal spread his hands. “I appreciate how quickly everyone has moved from questioning my character to planning around it.”
“Don’t mistake preparation for affection,” Zerai said. “I’ve known you for one meal, and most of the furniture didn’t survive it.”
Kal turned toward Lira and considered the argument most likely to interest her. “You’re right about the routes. The marks I found were commercial, not arcane, but people who move forbidden things tend to repeat themselves. Seals, inventory cuts, false destinations. Give me one detail I recognize, and I may tell you who handled it before it reached the gnolls.”
His attention shifted to Elora, and the practiced ease in his voice softened without disappearing. “You’re also right that this doesn’t make me trustworthy. It makes excluding me inconvenient, which is a much sturdier foundation for cooperation.”
When he looked toward Thane, he abandoned persuasion for practicality. “You can stand beside me the entire time. Hold whichever wrist makes you happiest.
Thane’s mouth tightened. “Wouldn’t help. You’d steal with the other one.”
Malakar opened the door another inch, forcing Lira either to withdraw her hand or place more of her weight against it. She let the pressure move her arm but did not step aside.
“His usefulness is not a dispute,” Malakar conceded. “It is the reason he will not enter.”
Kal’s smile sharpened. “That almost sounds like a compliment.”
“It should not. The working below depends upon every influence being identified, measured, and contained. You arrived carrying the attention of wards you deliberately disturbed, obligations you have not disclosed, and the interest of several parties whose names you either do not know or have elected not to share. I will not introduce an unknown variable into the procedure merely because it has learned to make uncertainty charming.
“He makes you sound like an infection,” Zerai told Kal.
“An interesting infection,” Kal said with a smile.
“A rash also attracts attention.”
Malakar’s gaze remained on Lira. “He may wait in the atrium. He will not descend.”
Lira held his eyes for another moment, then removed her hand from the door. The concession sat poorly with her, but the failing grathok left no time to force a contest Malakar had no intention of losing. She stepped through, and Elora followed after giving Kal a stern look that warned him she would remember precisely where he had been left.
Zerai backed into the passage after them. “Don’t open anything.”
Kal placed on hand against his chest. “You wound me.”
“I watched you rob a clerk during my illusion.”
“You made three copies of me. It felt irresponsible not to use one.”
Thane entered last and stopped directly in front of Kal, close enough that neither of them could pretend the warning was casual. “Anything’s missing when we come back, I start with your fingers.”
“You should establish an inventory first.”
“I got ten places to begin.”
Kal watched the door close for several seconds, his jaw set and the amusement gone from his face. Then his attention wandered across the sigils worked into the surrounding arches, followed the stair climbing toward the upper floors, and paused at each passage Malakar had forbidden him to enter. At last, he noticed the chest standing beyond the circle of glyphs on the ground, its old wooden lid held beneath dark metal fittings and a lock made for hands less curious than his. The irritation left his face. Kal studied the hinges, measured the distance to the closed door, and smiled.
The stairs descended along the curve of the tower for two complete turns before reaching the first sublevel. The black stone continued beneath their feet, though here the iridescence had been polished down until the walls reflected only a muted suggestion of movement. The air cooled with every step. By the time they reached the bottom, the market had disappeared entirely, leaving the tower’s faint metallic resonance and the scrape of their boots against stone.
Malakar led them into a corridor wide enough for two people to walk abreast. Or one Tako. Its walls were divided at regular intervals by narrow bands of dark wood, and identical doors appeared between them without handles, hinges, labels, or keyholes. The corridor turned left after twenty paces, then right, then left again. Each new stretch repeated the one before it: the same width, the same pale lights recessed into the ceiling, the same doors placed at measured distances.
Lira watched their route without appearing to do so. At the second turn, she marked a shallow chip near the floor where the black stone met the wooden trim. When the same mark appeared two corridors later, she stopped.
Malakar continued for another step before noticing she was no longer behind him.
“We have passed this wall already,” she said.
“No.”
“The damage near the base is identical.”
“So is the workmanship.”
Zerai leaned around Lira to inspect the chip. “Either every mason who worked down here made the same mistake, or this hallway has developed a very specific personality.”
Malakar waited.
Lira looked past him. The corridor behind his shoulder offered three more unmarked doors and another turn. Nothing distinguished the way they had come from the way they were going. Even the slope beneath her feet was difficult to judge.
“You designed the passages to repeat,” she said.
“I designed them to serve the tower.”
Lira stopped at the next turn. “We should be closer to the outer wall.”
Malakar looked back at her. “You are.”
She glanced toward the corridor behind them, then at the identical doors ahead. “The route does not agree.”
Zerai crouched beside the nearest band of wood and studied the grain. “The spacing changes. Barely. The doors and almps keep repeating, but never in quite the same order.”
“Enough variation to break anyone counting their way back,” Lira said.
“Enough to discourage wandering,” Malakar replied.
Thane looked down both branches of the crossing. “Can we find the stairs without you?”
“No.”
The answer stopped him longer than an evasion would have.
Thane cleared his throat. “What happens if we lose you?”
Malakar resumed walking. “Then your day has developed a larger problem than navigation.” He turned toward the right-hand passage. “Stay close, lest you become a resident.”
The next corridor ended at a four-way crossing. Malakar chose the right-hand passage without slowing, though Lira could find no mark, current of air, change in light, or shift in stone to explain the choice. Two more turns followed. One passage narrowed by inches before widening again, too gradually for the eye to catch until Tako’s shoulders brushed both walls. Another brought them to a door identical to the twelve they had already passed.
Malakar placed his palm against it. Lines of pale light spread beneath his fingers, and the door withdrew into the wall.
The room beyond was cleaner than any workshop Lira imagined could be found beneath the tower. Smooth white stone covered the walls and floor in fitted slabs without visible mortar. Long metal tables stood beneath suspended lamps, their surfaces bare except for trays of instruments arranged by length and shape. Glass-fronted cabinets lined one wall, each shelf divided into narrow compartments containing folded cloth, stoppered vessels, silver blades, needles, clamps, and tools whose purposes were not immediately apparent. Nothing had been left in a careless heap. No stain marked the floor, and no old residue darkened the seams around the tables. Even the air carried only a sharp mineral scent beneath the colder smell of metal.
It was a room built for cutting things open, but not for butchery. Every surface suggested measurement, restraint, and the expectation that whatever entered would be taken apart in a deliberate order.
Lira’s attention settled on the circle worked into the floor. The design matched the glyph in the atrium, down to the smallest curls of filigree between its nested rings. She looked up and found its twin spread across the ceiling directly above it.
Malakar stepped between the two marks and raised his hands. His fingers turned through a sequence of precise gestures, one hand circling the other before both crossed at the wrists and separated. Golden lines appeared in the space between hi palms, flat and bright, weaving themselves into a glyph suspended upright before him. Smaller rings formed within it and began rotating in opposite directions while his hands continued shaping the design around them.
The glyphs in the floor and ceiling answered.
Gold light spilled through their engraved lines, growing brighter until the room hummed with it. Between the circles, narrow columns of radiance descended from above and rose from below, filling the empty space in overlapping bands. The grathok emerged inside them by degrees. Its sledge appeared first as a lattice of glowing edges, followed by the iron hooks, the dark folds of its hide, the long claws, and the ridged skull. Light moved through the carcass from head to tail until the last translucent portion hardened into flesh and the full weight settled onto the floor.
Far above them, Kal swore loudly enough for the words to carry down the stairwell.
Zerai looked toward the ceiling. “That would have spared us several miles of dragging, shouting, livestock negotiation, and Thane explaining weight distribution to people who never asked to begin with.”
“It would also have required access to my tower,” Malakar said. The golden glyph collapsed between his hands and vanished. “You did not have it.” He extended on hand toward Zerai. “The focus.”
For several seconds, no one moved. The grathok occupied so much of their attention that the smaller object had nearly disappeared beneath the labor of hunting, preserving, hauling, and defending what Malakar needed to make it useful. Then she opened her satchel, unwrapped the focus, and placed it in his palm.
Malakar carried it to a long stone worktable beneath a suspended lamp. He turned it with silver tongs, examined its surface through a narrow lens, then passed one hand over it without touching. The flame above the table bent toward the object.
“The commands remain,” he said.
Thane stepped closer. “Active?”
“No. Repeated use wore a channel through the focus. The force that traveled through it has faded, but the path remains.”
Lira studied the object beneath the lamp. “And the grathok gives you enough power to follow it.”
“It may give me enough power to make what remains legible.”
Only then did Malakar approach the carcass.
Zerai followed Malakar around the sledge, watching him press two fingers into the grathok’s hide and examine the chalked seams along its flank. “For something that was supposed to be difficult to find, we found an exceptionally large one. That has to count for something. More creature, more magic. It’s practically arithmetic.”
Malakar did not look up. “It is anatomy mistaken for arithmetic.”
Zerai’s satisfaction faltered. “That sounds like a very polished ‘no.’”
“The creature’s size is irrelevant. With regard to magical creatures, their potency is governed by the purity of the animating spirit, not the amount of flesh built around it.”
Elora glanced toward the carcass. “Purity meaning goodness?”
Not goodness. Concordance. Magical beasts are governed more completely by their nature than people are. The gentler the nature, the cleaner the power moves through it. Less conflict. Less corruption. Less of the creature spent fighting what it is.”
Zerai looked down at the grathok’s claws. They were larger than her head. “And this one?”
“This one spent its entire life angry at everything within reach.”
Thane folded his arms. “You told us it would work.”
“It will.” Malakar lifted one of the heavy forelimbs, inspected the darkening tissue beneath it, and let it fall back onto the sledge. “The creatures you declined to hunt would have given us a stronger connection, a clearer trail, and considerably more information.”
Elora’s expression tightened. “They were harmless.”
“Yes,” Malakar said. “That is why they would have been useful.”
Silence settled around the sledge. Malakar removed his glove, dropped it into a shallow metal basin, and returned to the worktable where the focus waited beneath the lamp.
“The grathok is impure, violent, and beginning to rot,” he said. “Nevertheless, it will pay its rent.”
Malakar set the focus at the center of the worktable and adjusted the lamp until its light fell across grooves along its surface. He arranged three instruments beside it, each shaped like a needle with a loop at one end and a flattened blade at the other.
“The commands did not simply pass through this,” he said. “They followed the same route repeatedly. Every use deepened it.”
Zerai moved closer, stopping where the table met a line carved into the floor. “So the magic wore a path?”
“A crude description.”
She rolled her eyes. “And whatever remains in the groove points back toward whoever made it?”
“Possibly. Origin, direction, method of transmission, intermediary contact. The focus may retain all of those things, or fragments of each.”
Lira studied the object beneath the lamp. “You said ‘may.’”
“I am not in the habit of promising answers before I have examined the question.”
“What form would the answer take?” Elora asked.
“Whatever the residue can still support. Direction. Distance. A remembered voice. A sensory impression from the moment of use. A pattern of magical construction. If several people handled the focus, or if the commands passed through more than one source, the trail may divide.”
Zerai crouched near the nearest floor mark, following the sigils with her eyes. “This is a tracing lattice, but the inner lines don’t return to the center. They turn outward.”
“They are not meant to contain the trace.”
“They are meant to follow it.” She pointed toward a hooked sigil between two rings. “And that one?”
“To prevent the returning current from choosing its own path.”
Thane had remained near the grathok, but the answer brought him forward. “Say that again without dressing it up.”
Malakar folded his hands behind his back. “A connection may be followed in either direction.”
“So whoever is at the other end can follow it back to us?”
“If they recognize the pressure and know how to act upon it.”
“Can the focus give another command?”
“Not without power.”
Thane looked toward the carcass. “Which we brought.”
“Yes.”
“Can something come through?”
“Not bodily. A voice could cross. An image or an influence, or even a compulsion if the source possesses the necessary skill and the connection is opened too widely.”
Thane’s gaze shifted to the grathok’s slack jaw. “Can that thing get up?”
“The body may move when power passes through it, but movement is not resurrection.”
“I won’t care about the distinction if it bites Tako.”
Tako rested one hand against the iron platform. “Tako bite back,” he said with a toothy grin.
Zerai leaned over the table without crossing the line. “And if the trail divides, do we choose which one to follow?”
“If I can distinguish between them.”
“What if you can’t?”
“Then you will receive several answers and know none of them is complete.”
Lira’s eyes narrowed. “Could they follow us to Dunmoor?”
“Not through geography alone. If the source learns who opened the connection, what they carried into it, or what they intend to protect, geography becomes less important.”
Elora kept her eyes on Malakar rather than the focus. “What happens to the person at the other end if you force the connection open?”
He turned to her. “That depends on how tightly they are bound to it.”
“Could it hurt them?”
“Yes.”
“Could it kill them?”
“If the connection is direct, the source vulnerable, and force returns through the channel.”
Elora pursed her lips as Malakar turned back to the instruments.
“And that concerns you less than whether the trail is readable?” she asked.
“It concerns me in proportion to its relevance.”
“To whom?”
“To Dummoor.” Malakar placed one of the looped needles beside the focus, aligning its point with a groove no one else could see. “If the other end suffers because we learn where the commands began, that is a consequence,” he said. “If we protect their comfort and return without an answer, that is also a consequence. Only one belongs to those who sent you.”
Malakar left the looped needle beside the focus and moved to the outer edge of the worktable. He touched two fingers to the carved line in the floor, then traced its course until pale light answered beneath the stone.
“Once the focus is placed within the working, no one touches it,” he said. “No one crosses a marked boundary without instruction. If you hear a familiar voice, you do not answer it. If you see someone you know beyond the circle, you do not follow. You will not move an instrument, break a line, or improve upon my method because I appear occupied. When I give an instruction, you obey it immediately.”
Lira watched the light complete its circuit. “You control the procedure. You do not control every decision made inside it.”
“A distinction without practical value once the working begins.”
“If you order one of us to harm another, surrender the focus, or step into something you failed to explain, I will countermand you.”
“If I require one of those things, delay may render your judgment irrelevant.”
“Then explain what could require it before we begin.”
Malakar’s gaze moved over the party. “A voice may attempt to separate you. An apparition may present itself as someone whose safety matters to you. The focus may direct a command toward the nearest receptive mind. If that occurs, I may instruct another person to restrain them.”
“That’s different from harming them,” Elora said. “You keep choosing words that leave the cost outside the sentence. Instability. Contamination. Acceptable loss. If someone is burned, broken, possessed, or emptied out so your ritual can continue, say which one you mean and who you expect to bear it.”
“I expect everyone in this room to bear some risk.”
Elora stepped nearer to the boundary. “If your method harms one of us, responsibility doesn’t vanish just because the outcome was difficult to predict.”
“Responsibility is not a substance that can be divided cleanly after an accident.”
“No. It’s a choice made before one.”
Thane folded his arms and looked from the focus to the braces. “Start naming accidents. I don’t want to hear ‘feedback’ after somebody’s bones fold, or discover ‘contamination’ means a stranger’s voice moved into my head and started giving orders.”
“The likely failures are fewer than your imagination suggests.”
“My imagination didn’t put hooks in the floor.”
Zerai had already begun following those hooks with her eyes. Three iron clasps had been recessed into the stone beyond the inner circle, each connected to a copper chain beneath the platform. Along the far wall, six glass vessels rested inside a wooden frame, empty except for a dark stain in one.
“What are those for?” she asked.
“Containment.”
“You said the circle contains the working.”
“It contains the principal movement of force.”
“So the bottles contain whatever escapes it?” She pointed toward the clasps. “Those restrain the carcass, which means you expect it to move. The chains conduct something, and that stain is old, which means this has gone wrong before.”
“It means the apparatus has been used before.”
Thane inspected the nearest brace without touching it. “Can the grathok stand?”
“No.”
“Can it bite?”
“It has a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth and a jaw that may close.”
“And the claws?”
“They may move.”
“Can the focus give one of us an order?”
“Yes.”
“Can we mistake it for our own thoughts?” Elora asked.
“If the source is skilled.”
“What happens after the ritual? Can the voices keep going?”
Malakar paused. “Possibly.”
Zerai looked toward the vessels again. “Those aren’t for spilled magic, are they?”
“They are for impressions that acquire enough cohesion to persist.”
Tako listened beside the grathok, one broad hand resting on the iron platform. At last, he looked from the carcass to the focus and then to Malakar.
The room went quiet.
Malakar placed both hands on the table. “The connection. We are not opening a window and looking through it. We are taking hold of the same line used to command the gnolls and pulling until it reveals where it leads. Whatever waits at the other end may feel that pressure. It may pull in return. Every rule I have given you exists because, once we touch that line, the distinction between observer and observed will no longer be entirely ours to make.”
Malakar moved around the working in a slow circuit, touching nothing as he assigned each of them a place. His voice carried the same measured precision he had used for the braces, the looped needles, and the glass vessels waiting along the wall.
“Lira, there.” He indicated a position beyond the outermost line, where she could see the focus, the grathok, and every break between the circles. “You will watch the complete structure. If anything crosses the boundary, you stop it. If one of your companions begins acting under outside influence, you prevent them from reaching the focus.”
Lira took the position and drew her bow. “I decide when one of them has become a threat.”
“You decide whether to act. The working will decide how much time you have.”
He turned toward Thane and pointed to the iron frame braced across the grathok’s chest. Two chains ran from it into the floor, while a third passed beneath one forelimb and tightened against a ratcheted wheel. “You will hold that brace in alignment. If the body contracts, twists, or attempts to pull away, you do not release it.”
Thane gripped the handle and tested its weight. “Can this fail?”
“That is why you are holding it.”
Before Thane stepped across the inner mark, Malakar raised one hand. “The book remains outside.”
Thane’s hand went beneath his coat. “Why is this a problem?”
“Because the working is intended to isolate the history trapped within the focus. The book contains another imprisoned consciousness, another form of confinement, and another magical history. Bring it inside, and the trace may follow the wrong prison.”
Thane drew the book free but did not release it. “And if it does?”
“You may receive the goblin’s imprisonment in place of the commands used upon the gnolls. More likely, the two histories will contaminate one another until neither answer can be trusted.”
Thane stared at him for another moment before carrying the book to a stone shelf beyond the active markings. He set it down where he could still see it from the brace, then returned without comment.
Malakar placed Elora near the outer circle, close enough to reach anyone inside without standing in the strongest current. “You will watch for spiritual injury.”
“What does that look like?”
“Damage to memory, will, identity, or the bond between spirit and body. Blood, burns, and broken bones will be simpler.”
Elora studied the instruments laid out beside the focus. “You say that as though simplicity makes them unimportant.”
“It makes them familiar.”
She opened her satchel and laid out a roll of clean linen, a stoppered vial of consecrated oil, a narrow silver mirror, and the small wooden emblem of Redecca she normally wore beneath her collar. Last came a length of soft cord, which she folded twice and placed beside the others.
Malakar watched her arrange them. “You expect restraint to preserve a damaged spirit?
“No. I expect it to keep someone from reaching the focus while I learn whether they still know their own name.” Elora set the mirror face up so she could catch the eyes of anyone standing within the circle. “If one of them stops recognizing us, begins repeating a command, or answers a voice no one else can hear, I pull them out. If they fight me, I bind their hands. Then I keep calling them back until they remember which thoughts belong to them.”
“And if they do not?”
Elora rested two fingers against Redecca’s emblem. “Then I motivate them with something stronger.”
Malakar looked at her, but whatever response he considered stayed in his mouth. He turned instead to Zerai. “You stand here.” The mark he indicated lay close to the working, near enough that the inner sigils remained visible beneath the edge of the table.
“You will identify changes in the pattern, tell me if the trace divides, and warn me if one arrangement begins imitating another. You will not alter, complete, redirect, improve, or correct anything without instruction.”
Zerai crouched near the line and followed the nearest sequence of marks with one finger held above the stone. “That’s a very thorough list of things you think I might do.”
“Sadly, it is not exhaustive.”
Her eyes brightened. “What’d you leave out?”
“Do not make me discover it during the ritual.”
She moved to the next cluster of sigils, studying them with renewed concentration. “This one mirrors the outer ring, except the return stroke bends toward the vessels.” Malakar continued walking. “Observe. Do not interpret aloud unless asked.” He then locked eyes on the largest person in the room. “Tako.”
The vaelin came forward.
Malakar positioned him beside the grathok’s head, one hand near the horn and the other above the opened seam along the upper chest. “The skull and exposed tissue must remain aligned with the focus. If the body moves, you hold it here. You do not strike it, release it, or respond as though it has returned to life.”
Tako settled both hands into place. “Dead things still push.”
“Yes.”
“Then Tako push back.”
“Only enough to keep it aligned.”
Tako nodded once.
Malakar opened the grathok along the chalked seams with a narrow silver blade. He removed only what he required, placing dark tissue into waiting vessels while copper lines were threaded from the platform toward the focus. Needles entered the carcass at measured intervals. Thane tightened the braces. Zerai called out two mismatched marks, and Malakar corrected neither because both were intentional. Elora watched the party more than the work, while Lira oversaw everything.
By the time the focus was secured at the center, no one was arguing about whether they should proceed. They had already accepted their positions, surrendered what Malakar required, and helped him complete the means. The decision had passed while they were busy preparing to survive it.
Malakar made one final circuit of the working, checking the copper lines and each vessel before returning to the focus. He rested two fingers against the table beside it without touching the object. “The residue is weaker than I anticipated,” he said.
Thane tightened his grip on the brace. “You told us it was still there.”
“It is. Presence and usefulness are not the same condition.”
Zerai leaned forward until her toes met the marked stone. “So the grathok can make it louder, but you’re not certain it can make it clear?”
Malakar gave her a brief look. “Close enough.”
Lira watched the complete circle. “What are the options?”
“I can reinforce what remains and follow the existing path without restoring the command. That is the cautious approach. It is also the less useful one.”
“How much less?” Elora asked.
“The race may give us direction without distance, distance without location, or several impressions with no reliable order. You may leave knowing you were correct and still lack enough to act.”
Thane’s jaw set. “And the other way?”
Malakar placed the last silver needle beside the focus. “I wake the command.”
No one answered. Malakar continued before any of them could mistake the silence for uncertainty.
“The creature can drive enough force through the object to restore the old pathway for several moments. A functioning channel will be easier to follow. It may reveal where the command originated, how it traveled, and what stood between the source and the gnolls.”
“And whoever is there feels it open,” Lira said.
“If they remain connected, yes.”
Thane looked at the focus with open distrust. “We came here to find the bastard, not knock on his door.”
“If we take the safer path and return with fog, Dunmoor still pays for the caution,” Elora said. Her voice remained quiet, but she did not look away from the table. “We already know something is reaching toward it. An incomplete answer may only tell us to be afraid more accurately.”
Zerai traced the outer curve of the sigil in the air. “And if the weak trace splits, we could spend another week chasing the wrong branch, find another creature, drag another carcass through another city, and arrive back here with less time.”
“Or,” Thane added, “we wake hostile magic on purpose and give it a chance to learn us.”
Tako kept both hands on the grathok’s skull. “Quiet hunt, maybe lose trail. Loud hunt, prey turns head.”
Malakar completed the final containment mark. Pale light settled into the groove and stopped at the focus. He straightened, looked from Lira to the others, and waited.
“Shall we begin?”
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