“What does that tell you?” asked Micum, puffing away on his pipe.

“I’m not sure, because my measurements are not precise.”

“May I?” Seregil took the caliper and used it to draw another circle with the oracle’s cave as the center. This time the circle encompassed the palace, the river, and the tower with room to spare all around. “This is where the seals would have been. It seems more likely they’d be at the center of things.”

“You’re right,” said Thero. “And the river is quite far away, compared with the palace. It’s as if the other plane overlays our own, like a veil, only we can’t see it.”

“And yet the tower is completely gone,” Alec pointed out. “Everything else is sort of mirrored, but the tower is gone.”

“That must have been the point,” said Seregil. “The rest of the countryside got caught in the storm, but the tower was the crucial part that had to be locked completely away. It’s the dyrmagnos’s retreat. Maybe that’s where she holed up when Nhandi found out what she really was. Nhandi and her army—if she had one—couldn’t get in, so she and Khazireen did the only thing they could.”

“Got rid of her, tower and all,” said Micum. “That was quite a trick. Too bad they had to destroy the countryside along with it.”

“Trapped, not destroyed,” said Thero. “I’m sure it would have been kinder if they’d just killed all those people, rather than condemning them to that place with her.”

“What about the palace, though?” asked Alec. “It wasn’t destroyed, or transported or whatever you want to call it. But there are still portals there that carry me off to the area around the town.”

“Perhaps Nhandi and Khazireen protected it from the worst of things,” said Thero.

“It seems Rhazat had her revenge on Nhandi if she’s wearing her enemy’s skin,” Seregil noted with distaste. “Have you ever heard of any necromancy like that, Thero?”

The wizard nodded grimly. “Yes.”

“And?”

Thero glanced out the tent flap to make sure Mika wasn’t listening outside. “She must have skinned Nhandi—alive.”

Micum lowered his pipe. “Maker’s Mercy. Do you think she and Khazireen knew what the dyrmagnos might do?”

“Why do you think he killed himself?” said Seregil. “The way the skull is positioned—it’s like he’s keeping watch for her even now. Perhaps that’s what the ghost is doing there.”

“For a thousand years,” Thero said softly.

Chapter 27: Despair and Hope