“It came out of the portal you went in,” he explained. “Thero drove it off before Seregil was too badly hurt, though it made a mess of him. But seriously, what happened to you?”

Micum found a hand mirror and held it up before Alec: his eyes were sunken and his face was gaunt and grey.

“You need something to eat.” Micum went and spoke to someone outside, then came back and sat on the foot of Seregil’s bed.

“Where is Mika?” asked Thero.

Alec swallowed hard, fighting back tears of shame and rage and frustration. “I tried, Thero, but he had a head start on me somehow. By the time I spotted him, he was too far away to get to before a woman rode out from the town and took him inside, into the tower there. She must be the necromancer. She lifted Mika by magic.”

“And you just left him there?” Thero gasped.

“Let him speak.” Seregil reached for Alec’s hand. “What happened?”

Clutching Seregil’s hand like a lifeline, Alec told them what had happened—the tower, the strange woman who’d shown him the vision of the cave on the other plane, the ghost in the oracle’s cave on this side, what the rags he had on had looked like on the other plane, all of it.

“I tried to get to Mika, Thero, I swear. But the necromancer spirited me off to that cave before I knew what was happening. I was out of food and I couldn’t find a way in—I’ve got to go back to the palace and find a way through to him again.”

“Wait,” said Seregil. “This woman—this necromancer, let’s assume—knew that you were ya’shel, and that you came back from the dead. Even more reason for her to capture or kill you.”

“And why show Alec ‘that which must not be seen’?” said Micum. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Tell me more about the thing you saw on the cave wall,” Thero ordered, still very angry.

Alec described the golden rosette and the inscribed stone it held.

“Can you draw it for me?”

Alec reluctantly left Seregil’s bedside and went to the field desk. Parchment and ink lay ready. He dipped the quill pen in the inkwell and drew the rosette and black opal as best he could. His fingers were trembling, making it hard to be as exact as he wanted to be. Underneath that he drew the symbols on the stone as well as he could remember them. When he was done he blew on the ink to dry it and handed the parchment to Thero.

The wizard studied it for a moment, his mouth set in a grim line. “Are you sure these symbols are correct?”

“I only saw it for a moment,” he told Thero. “So, no, I’m not sure. You can’t tell what it is?”