The grip on his arm tightened, but the touch on his face remained light and cool. Come with me.

“Will you take me to my friend, the little boy you took?”

The child is beyond your reach, man of two bloods and two lives.

Alec’s heart missed a beat. She was not the first to call him that.

Only the dead can walk with the dead, she whispered in his mind.

Alec reached out and steadied himself against the alley wall. “How do you know those words?”

I know what you are. Come away. You must see.

“Not until you tell me who you are and where you want me to go.”

You must see what must not be seen.

“Not until you give me the child.”

The tips of her fingers dug into his muscles like talons. He reached for his dagger but suddenly he was in cold darkness. He couldn’t see the woman, but he could still feel her painful grip biting into his forearm.

You must see.

“I can’t see a damn thing! Where are we?” His voice reverberated eerily around him.

And suddenly there was light, soft and bright as a lightstone, but much wider in range. He blinked in the sudden glow, then looked around. “Illior’s Light!”

He was in the third cave—no, that wasn’t right. The stone floor under his boots was dry, and he couldn’t hear any water dripping. The most telling differences, however, were the paintings on the wall, distasteful and perverse parodies of the wonders of the oracle’s cave.

She stood beside him, glowing brightly. She was beautiful, fair-skinned and blue-eyed, with hair the color of night. And she looked inexpressibly sad.

You must see.

He looked back at her and she was pointing to the far wall. There was something there—something round about eye level that shone softly in the pale light.

She followed him as he walked across the echoing cave. The glow came from a large, glittering black opal about the size of a small apricot fixed to the wall in a heavy golden boss. The stone was carved with a web of symbols that looked strangely familiar. As he reached out to touch it, the woman whispered something to him. It didn’t sound like a warning, but before he could touch the stone, everything went black.

Mika floated in the dark, formless, voiceless void of the sleeping death. There was nothing to touch, no sense of up or down. He didn’t feel cold. He didn’t feel anything at all.

Child.

Mika strained to hear the faint voice. Was it Master Thero, saving him again from this terrible place?

Child, open your eyes.