She thought suddenly of Bombax, still not returned, and she threw off her lethargy and growing sense of helplessness and swung her legs off her bed and stood. She was surprised and vaguely irritated at how strong her leg felt. She had been employing her healing talents regularly, but hadn’t tested the results before now. Had she known she could bear her weight this well, she might have fought harder to be included in the expedition.

She took a step away from her bed and almost instantly felt her leg give way. She barely managed to keep herself from falling.

She sat down again and stayed there for long moments, gathering her resolve. She would not even consider quitting. Hoisting herself off her bed a second time, she hobbled carefully to the far corner of her chamber. Her walking staff was leaning against the wall, and she took it in hand. Better supported now, she made her way to the door and out of the room.

Her destination was a hundred feet down a hall and three floors up to the highest room in the highest tower of Paranor. It took all her energy to get there, and she suffered a good deal of pain in the process. When she had climbed all sixty steps, she limped across the entry chamber to the ironbound wooden door that led into the cold room.

Even though the Ard Rhys had not found any trace of Bombax by using the scrye waters, Aphenglow thought she might have better luck. She was much closer to him than Khyber, more deeply invested. She might see things that others would miss or simply overlook. Reading the scrye waters was an art, and sometimes success was achieved for intangible reasons. It was a better use of her time trying to discover if that were true rather than sitting around. Doing anything was better than doing nothing.

She released the latch and pushed open the heavy door to the cold room. The drop in temperature as she entered was immediately noticeable; on the walls condensation had turned to smears of ice, and she could see her breath when she exhaled. The chamber occupied the whole of the top floor of the tower, a surface area forty feet in diameter and fifteen feet high. It was empty save for a platform constructed of massive blocks of bluestone on which a broad basin rested. The shallow bowl of the basin was filled with greenish waters that looked to have the consistency of a thicker liquid, something approaching oil. The waters swirled in a clockwise motion, the movement barely discernible.