The room in this tower was half full of something mechanical, and it was not what he had expected. He’d thought vaguely of statues of strange gods, of a room thick with incense, of—well, now he couldn’t put a name to what he’d expected.

It stood in the middle of a “magic circle” of inlaid brass in the middle of the room. He knew it was a magic circle because he had watched the Thet priests lay out something similar when they made the canvas for Avatre—in chalk on the floor, not in permanent brass inlaid in the floor. But the construction itself looked like one of Heklatis’ little mechanical toys. Except that it wasn’t so very “little.”

The mechanism itself was also made of brass. From the look of things, it could be swiveled and pointed in just about any direction.

The heart of the thing was the biggest crystal he had ever seen. Shaped like two pyramids clapped together, an enormous, perfect octahedron, he had never seen anything like it. It was flawless, clear, and half again as tall as he was. For a long moment, all he could do was to stare at it in wonder. He hadn’t known quite what to expect, but whatever it had been, his imagination had not been able to anticipate this.

Though why it should be called an “Eye,” he couldn’t think.

He shook off his amazement, and began looking for a place to hide. He might be here a long time.

There weren’t a lot of hiding places here; he finally found a kind of storage area, a three-sided cupboard in the corner between the windows opposite the place where he had come in. When he pulled the door open, it looked as if it hadn’t been opened in years. If there had ever been shelves in there, they were gone now. There were dusty bottles and jars on the floor, some of which inexplicably made his skin crawl. He shoved them aside and squeezed himself in, watching the room through the crack in the door. And it made him wonder, what had this place been used for, before it had been made into the home for the Eye? The Tower was older than the Eye. Probably the reason that the cupboard was still here was only because it was too much trouble to pull it out.

So far, so good.

Back to the hard part.

Waiting.

TWENTY

TWENTY

THERE were two possibilities for what would happen next. Either the Magi would bring Aket-ten here before the rest of the wing began their attack, or they would do so because the wing had begun their attack. He thought he was ready in either case.

It turned out to be the former rather than the latter.

He heard them coming long before he saw them. The hollow tower amplified every little sound from below.