Looking rather mystified, the woman frowned as she reached up and touched her finger to a tear rolling down Magda’s cheek.

Magda quickly wiped her cheek. “We’re going to get you out of here,” she told the woman.

The woman laid a hand on Magda’s shoulder. “Thank you, but you can’t help me.”

“Yes, we can,” Magda insisted. “Do you think you can stand?”

“You don’t understand. You must not help me. I am lost. You must leave me. You don’t know what you’re dealing with. The dream walkers will tell their contacts here and then they will do this to you as well.”

Magda shared a look with Merritt.

“We have a way to stop dream walkers from doing that,” Magda said.

“Dream walkers are powerful.” The woman turned her eyes up. “Are you so sure?”

“We’re sure,” Magda said. “Now, can you stand, just until we can get you out of here?”

The woman nodded. “If it kills me I want to walk out of this place.”

Magda had to smile at that. She could easily understand the sentiment.

“I’m Magda, by the way. This is Merritt. He’s gifted. As soon as we get you out of here we’ll protect you from the dream walkers so that they can’t enter your mind, and then when you’re safe, Merritt can heal you.”

The woman reached out and squeezed his hand.

With a finger, Magda lifted some of the jet black hair back off the woman’s face. “What’s your name?”

“Naja Moon.”

It was a name as exotic as the woman’s looks.

“Well, Naja, can you tell me why you came here, to the Keep?”

Naja looked up at Merritt and then back to Magda. “I came because Emperor Sulachan must be stopped or he will destroy the world of life.”

Magda straightened a little as she glanced up at Merritt standing over them with the light sphere. She leaned in again toward Naja.

“How do you know this, Naja?”

“I was his spiritist.”

Chapter 73

Before Magda could ask anything else, Naja’s eyes winced closed as she endured a shudder of pain. When the stitch of agony eased up, she struggled to catch her breath as she rested, huddled in Magda’s warm embrace.

Steam from her labored breathing rose into the still air of the small stone cell. Instead of asking anything else for the moment, Magda rubbed the woman’s hands, letting her rest while working some warmth into her icy fingers. The chill of being deep underground was an insidious killer, over time sapping a person’s energy and eventually their life.