“Come. There is something you should see.”

Puzzled, Cardiel glanced at his colleague in question as they halted before the stark side altar. The white vigil light cast a silvery glow on the heads of the two prelates. Arilan’s face was unreadable.

“I don’t understand,” Cardiel murmured. “I’ve seen—”

“You’ve not seen what I would show you,” Arilan said almost sharply. “Look up at the ceiling there, where the beams cross.”

“But there’s nothing…” Cardiel began, tilting his head back to squint in the dimness.

Arilan closed his eyes and let the words begin to shape inside his head, felt the tingle of the Portal beneath his feet. Pulling Cardiel abruptly against him in an iron grip, he reached out with his mind and wrenched the spell into being.

He heard Cardiel gasp. And then they jumped, and the chapel vanished, and they were standing in total darkness.

Cardiel staggered drunkenly as the darkness hit, arms reaching out blindly as he regained his balance. Arilan was gone from behind him, and he could see nothing in the blackness. His mind churned chaotically, trying to put some rational explanation to what he had just experienced, trying to orient itself to the darkness, the utter silence. He straightened in the blackness, cautiously, one arm sweeping the air before him while the other guarded his eyes. Finally, he got up the courage to speak, a terrifying suspicion growing in his mind.

“Denis?” he whispered meekly, almost afraid he would receive an answer.

“Here, my friend.”

There was a faint rustle of fabric a few yards behind him, and then a flare of white light. Cardiel turned slowly, his face draining of color as he spied the source.

Arilan stood in a soft glow of silver, his face framed in a silvery aureole, which waxed and waned and flickered almost as a thing alive. His expression was calm and serene in the silver light, the violet-blue eyes gentle and reassuring. In his hands he held a sphere of bright, cold fire whose quicksilver glow spilled sharp radiance on his face, his hands, and down the violet folds of his bishop’s cassock. Cardiel stared at him in astonishment for perhaps five heartbeats, his eyes growing wider, his pulse pounding in his ears.

Then the room was spinning and the darkness was swirling around him and he was falling. He was next aware that he was lying on something soft yet unyielding, eyes tightly closed, and that a gentle hand was raising his head to put a cup to his lips.

He drank, hardly aware that he did so, then opened his eyes as cool wine trickled down his throat. Arilan was bending over him anxiously, a blown-glass goblet in his hand. He gave a wan, tentative smile as Cardiel opened his eyes.

Cardiel blinked and peered at Arilan again, but the image did not disappear. There was no silvery nimbus around his head, however, and the room was now lighted by perfectly ordinary candles in many-armed candlesticks. A low fire burned in a fireplace off to the left, and he could make out the dim shapes of furniture around the perimeter of the room. He was lying on a fur of some sort. As he raised himself to his elbows, he could see that it was the skin of a great black bear, the head grimacing fiercely to one side. He rubbed a hand across his forehead, his eyes still wide with shock. Memory returned in a rush.