Before she lost her courage, Magda pushed the dead still, faded red cloth aside and ducked under it into a narrow hallway. Under a low, arched ceiling the hall led back through darkness toward an area of mellow light. At the end of the entryway she found a roughly round chamber lit by dozens and dozens of fat candles. The room was hollowed out of the same pale sandstone as the rest of the catacombs. Ledges carved into the walls all the way around held all the candles. The candles gave the whole room a soft, warm amber glow.

To the right Magda saw a dark doorway, presumably leading farther back into the quarters. She suspected that the spiritist would be in that back area.

In the middle of the room a thin young woman sat cross-legged on the floor. She had very short, fine brown hair and wore a dark, loose-fitting wrap of a dress that covered her legs entirely but left her shoulders and slender arms bare. Her hands remained nested in the lap of her dress.

A strange, thick leather blindfold fastened around her head covered her eyes. It was a uniform width except for a notch cut in the middle to fit around her delicate nose. The blindfold went temple to temple, held in place with a leather thong tied at the back of her head. Magic symbols and spell-forms had been carefully tooled into the leather with some of the lines colored in with paint. By the way the leather edges were worn and smooth it looked to have been in use for quite some time.

It was beautifully made, but covering the young woman’s eyes as it did struck Magda as rather foreboding.

The woman cocked her head as if to use an ear to better locate her visitor. “Welcome.”

“Thank you,” Magda said. She glanced into the dark opening to the side, but saw no one. “Are you Isidore?”

The young woman smiled, making her bony cheekbones stand out all the more. The smile, while pleasant enough, did not put Magda entirely at ease. The woman’s expression and the lines around her mouth had an uncompromising toughness to them that seemed at odds with her young age. It reminded Magda a bit of the look she had seen in the eyes of orphan girls who lived by their wits in the alleyways of Aydindril. Those girls were tough beyond their years.

“I am Isidore. Strangers are most uncommon down here. Who would you be, then?”

“Magda Searus.”

“Ah. Wife to Baraccus. I have heard of you.”

Magda didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. She glanced again to the dark doorway, wondering if the spiritist could hear the conversation.