dearly. And a fourth conjury had to intertwine with the others. His creation would need a hint of sentience, though this would make it less subservient.
Sau’ilahk began to conjure Air first of all.
When its quivering ball manifested, he held it and reached out. Caging the warp of Air with incorporeal fingers, he began conjuring Fire in the form of Light.
A yellow-orange glow began to radiate from within his grip.
Sau’ilahk forced his hand corporeal and slammed the servitor down into the passage floor.
He was only half- finished. The last two conjuries had to come simultaneously while he held the first pair firm. Around his flattened hand, a square of glowing umber lines for Earth via Stone rose in the passage floor. A circle of blue-white appeared around that as he summoned in Spirit and inserted a fragment of his will.
The spaces between the shapes, glyphs, and sigils of white grew iridescent, like dew-dampened web strands as dawn first broke. He called upon his reserves, imbuing his creation with greater essence. It would be birthed closer to the edge of sentience, to serve him better.
Sau’ilahk’s hand began to waver in his sight. Everything faded black for an instant. Exhaustion threatened to drag him into dormancy. He exerted more will to remain present, and he straightened, lifting his hand from the floor.
All glowing marks upon the stone vanished.
He whispered only with his thoughts. Awaken!
Another glow rose beneath the passage’s floor.
Mute and pale yellow, it shifted erratically, darting about as if something swam through stone beneath the passage’s floor. Sau’ilahk raised his hand higher, fingers closing like a street puppeteer toying with strings.
The glow halted. The floor bulged above it, like gray mud about to belch a bubble of noxious gas. And the light emerged—and winked at him.
A single eyelid nictitated with a soft click of stone as it closed and opened over a lump of molten-formed glass. Its oblong stone body holding that glass eye surfaced next and rose. Three small holes on either side of that mass were marked by small rippling warps of air where it would take any sound it heard. It stood up on four legs of thin rock, each three jointed, with pointed ends. Where those ends touched the floor, small ripples spread in rings, like those created by an insect shifting nervously upon a still gray pond.
Then it bolted for the passage wall.
No . . . no return for you . . . until I wish it!
The stone-spider skittered to a halt and began to quiver. Whirling around, that lump of glass eye opened wide, fixing upon him, and its light shifted to hot red. The servitor dashed straight at him.
Sau’ilahk curled his fingers, crushing their tips into his palm.
Obey!
The stone-spider halted, and quivers turned to shudders as that one eye burned with conscious rage.
Sau’ilahk sank his awareness into it.
Everything tinged red in the dim passage. Darker still was a black form of gently writhing cloak, robe, and cowl. He saw himself through the servitor’s singular eye.
Very good . . . Follow the gray-clad one beyond the passage’s end, but remain out of her awareness. You will not return until I recall you. Now go!
Sau’ilahk opened his clutching fingers, and the servitor rushed the wall once more.
It shot upward and across the passage’s ceiling. Faint ripples in the stone marked its passing, like a fisher-spider darting across water.
Sau’ilahk watched it scurry out of the passage’s top, and he drifted closer to the exit.
The walk back along Limestone Mainway seemed longer than Wynn remembered. But as she passed the greeting house, someone called from the mainway’s end chamber.
“Wynn!”
Chane’s raspy voice brought some comfort, and Wynn quickened her pace. He trotted to meet her. Noble Dead he might be, but he was always there for her.
“Did Ore-Locks come?” he asked. “How was it at the smithy?”
“Brutal,” she answered. “I may have lost him, even more than Sliver.”
He shook his head. “How?”
Wynn briefly recounted what had happened, and then asked, “And you?” “The duchess returned,” he answered, “as you guessed. She is lodged at an inn off Breach Mainway, near the market.”
Wynn took a deep breath, though her relief was small. At least one thing had worked out this night. They might yet follow the duchess and learn more of why she was here. In turn, perhaps something useful would come of that.
“Come,” Chane insisted. “I will show you . . . before we return to our lodging.”
He led the way back up the curving tunnel.
Wynn was tired by the