Hope, somewhat indolent until that moment, sat up, complaining. He lifted a wing and placed it across Kaylin’s eyes as the doors rolled open.

The rooms were the same as Kaylin remembered, as was the hall, the T-junction, and the placement of both studio and gallery.

“Terrano has investigated the studio and its various tools; he believes that there is some enduring enchantment on some of the brushes, but it’s minor; one could easily pass them off as preservation magic.”

“Are they preservation magics?”

Terrano shrugged. “There are differences between this enchantment and Sedarias’s similar attempts. They’re subtle. I wouldn’t have noticed it had I not been looking. Serralyn agrees. The enchantment on the palettes, however, is different. It feels the same. If I weren’t paranoid, I’d consider it harmless. The paint itself isn’t enchanted.

“But...it’s not normal paint, either. Serralyn spoke with the Arbiters; Kavallac feels there might be a combination of paint and enchantment that creates a larger enchantment; it might bypass the cautious. Not all of the paint is augmented, but all has been preserved by the High Halls. Can you ask your friends—”

“Terrano wishes to know,” the Avatar said to those friends, “if you know how these paints were made. Serralyn—and through her one of the Arbiters—believes that some of the pigments, some of the base sediments, may be found in the green.”

Amaldi nodded. “We could, with effort, retrieve some of the plants in the green. They did not last long—not as they were. But she continued to make the attempt.”

“I think she managed,” Kaylin said quietly. “I’m sorry, are you both ready?”

Amaldi reached out; Darreno took her hand. To Kaylin’s eye, they looked more like children than they ever had. “Yes.”

The paintings were no longer shadowed by strange fog; they remained on the wall, where they had first been placed—but they were paintings now. Nothing remained within them. Only two were different when viewed through Hope’s wing: Amaldi’s and Darreno’s.

“We should have had Serralyn meet us here,” Terrano said. “She’s waiting at Mrs. Erickson’s, because she needs to be there if Bakkon is going to join us.”

“Why did we want a giant spider to join us again?”

Terrano rolled eyes. “Bakkon is worried, and he wants to examine the space; he thinks that Azoria may have learned things Starrante didn’t intend to teach her.”

That shut down any possible argument; an image of Azoria as a spider, eating the weaker to grow strong enough to leave the darkness was enough to destroy her appetite.