At the top of the staircase, heavy curtains hung like waterfalls over an arched opening in the wall: a way out of the chamber behind her; perhaps a way out of the palace itself. Thwarted by the magicks of the place, she detected no hint of the Harrow’s passage. But she had seen him part the curtains and vanish.

Facing water in an opaque brocade of gold and silver and refined tourmaline, she paused for an instant to secure her clasp on Anele, her connection to Liand. Then she led them through the liquid fabric.

Beyond that barrier, she found that she had indeed left the ambit of the palace. At once, the sensation that she was immersed in water and theurgy left her, and her nerves extended their percipient reach. A narrow corridor pierced the gutrock crookedly ahead of her. Like all of the Lost Deep’s stone, it had been refined to a lambent sheen: the passage was filled with light like an invitation. Here, however, the illumination did not mask the lingering scent of force and flame from the Staff of Law, or the faint emanations left behind by the Harrow’s own sortilege.

Almost running, Linden headed into the corridor with Anele and Liand.

The hall curved and twisted, insidious as a serpent. Other passages or chambers branched out on both sides, but she ignored them. Sensing the Harrow, she was certain of her way. Liand breathed raggedly, worn down by his earlier efforts beyond the Hazard; but his strides were steady. Anele displayed his familiar, unlikely stamina. And Linden was sustained by images of Jeremiah. She believed that her son was near. If the Insequent did not forswear his oath—

One sweep and angle and opening after another, the way created the illusion of a maze; a place in which lives and intentions were lost. Yet Linden felt no secrets hidden in the walls, no concealed intersections, no disguising glamours. If the Viles, or Roger and the croyel, or moksha Raver had left snares to baffle her, she could not perceive them.

And the aura and inferences of the Harrow’s passing remained steady.

Then Linden, Anele, and Liand rounded a corner. Abruptly the corridor emptied them into a round chamber shaped like a dome, a sphere cut in half by its pristine floor.

Here again, she could not think of the space as a cavern or cave. Its dimensions were too perfectly symmetrical to be a natural formation. Like the floor, the walls as they curved upward to meet over the precise center of the space were nitid with the Lost Deep’s characteristic moonstone glow. The chamber was not as large as the other halls which she had entered and departed: it seemed almost intimate by comparison, although it could easily have held the Swordmainnir and several score of their comrades. Still it made Linden feel small to herself.