The wounded elf smiled slightly. “I’ve been watching galasmancers play with those things long enough to have a fair idea of how they work. I can recall the spell that activates them if a crystal is in place, but I have no magic.”

Laromendis said, “We do, and I’ve been through enough of these things for the Lord Regent that I probably know the spell as well as you do.”

Arosha asked, “Do you know how to find a different portal? I could help you tune this to one of our other portals, but I don’t know if I can find one that we didn’t build.”

“Here’s what I know,” said Gulamendis. “According to the human Pug, what they call rifts have an affinity and if there is a rift in existence and you create a second rift, it will tend to follow the first.”

“Tend?” asked his brother in a skeptical tone.

“If you have a better idea, I would welcome hearing it,” said the Demon Master.

“You can activate this gate’s destination?” Gulamendis asked the Sentinel.

“Yes,” said Arosha. “That’s the easy part. Setting a different destination than the one already cast is the hard part. I think I’ve seen it done enough times to have a sense of how to do it, but only to a few other portals, as I said, the ones we’ve built, and they are all now closed. If I open any of them from this end…they’ll all be guarded and worse.”

“What’s worse?”

“The portal could be buried under rock, at the bottom of a lake…” The Sentinel shrugged, though it caused him to wince. “I can only imagine what would happen if you stepped through into solid rock.”

Gulamendis said, “Do you know the way to E’bar?”

The Sentinel said, “This one is already set for the new city.” He slowly rose and said, “It was to be where the last of us fled. But as I said, if we step through archers will be waiting to fill us with arrows before we say a word.”

Gulamendis got a thoughtful look and then said, “We change…something.”

“Something?” asked his brother.

“What?” asked the Sentinel.

“Set it for almost E’bar. If Pug is correct, a new rift should form, somewhere nearby.”

“How nearby?” asked the Conjurer.

The younger brother fixed Laromendis with an exasperated look and said, “I will settle for the same planet.”

“As long as we don’t end up in the middle of the sea…or under a mountain…”

“Can you do it?” asked Gulamendis.

Laromendis nodded. “Setting magic imprints on objects, enchanting them, is a lot like conjuring an illusion—it’s just moving energy over the surface of something, rather than in thin air.”