had used during the day.
She picked up the last packet of herbs. It contained vervain. She had known all along it would come to this. She opened it dully, staring at the brittle leaves inside.
“Coram. Timon.” Her voice sounded dead. “You’d better leave.”
Coram stepped forward. “Lad—” he began worriedly. He looked at her face and sighed. “Let’s go, Timon,” he said. “We don’t want to be here when they start foolin’ with serious magic.” They left, and Myles bolted the door.
Alanna threw the vervain onto the fire. She had no business trying magic like this. She was no sorcerer, and sorcerers far older and stronger than she had failed to master the forces she now sought to call upon.
A moan from the bed reminded her of why she was there. Kneeling before the flames, she whispered the words Maude told her would call the Greater Powers—the gods. Slowly, very slowly, because she was tired, the flames turned violet She reached both hands into the purple fire.
Her essence, the stuff that made her Alanna, streamed out through her palms. She was dissolving into the fire; she was the fire. Then she uttered the spell Maude told her to use only when nothing else was left.
“Dark Goddess, Great Mother, show me the way. Open the gates to me. Guide me, Mother of mountains and mares—”
The fire roared up with a sound like a thunderclap. Alanna’s body jerked, but she couldn’t move away from the hearth. The fire filled her eyes. She saw countless gates and doors opening in front of her. Suddenly—there it was: the city, the city carved in black, glassy stone, the one she had seen in Maude’s fireplace. The sun beat down on her. She was very warm. The city called to her, its beautiful towers and shining streets singing in her brain.
The city vanished. Now raw energy rammed through Alanna’s arms, into her body. She choked back a gasp as her flesh turned into purple fire contained only by her skin. She glowed; she shimmered; she burned with raw magic. It hurt. Every part of her screamed for cold and dark to put out the fire. She couldn’t hold it She would burst like a rotten fruit.
A voice spoke, and Alanna screamed. That voice was never meant for human ears. “Call him back,” it chimed. “I am here. Call him back.”
Tears ran down her cheeks. The voice and the pain were killing her. The fire was eating her alive, like a tiger.
Something inside her rebelled. She clenched her fists and fought the pain. She ground her teeth together. She would ride this tiger. Her body had never given the orders before—she could not let it start now. Am I a silly child? she thought angrily. Or am I a warrior?
She fought back, shoving the pain away until she had it under control. Now she ruled the power she had pulled from the flames. She rode the tiger. She was a warrior!
Alanna walked to the bed. Myles got out of her way. He had watched, helpless, when Alan screamed as he turned a bright, sparkling amethyst. The color had dimmed, but Alan continued to shine with a pale purple fire. Myles sensed that if he touched Alan now, he would be burned to death.
Alanna stood beside the bed, looking down at Jonathan. He seemed so far away, so far from her. “He has traveled a long way,” the terrible voice said. “Take his hands. Call him back.”
A small part of Alanna realized that the voice was female. “Thank you,” she whispered.
She took Jonathan’s hands carefully. Her mind reached into his unseeing eyes.
“Jonathan,” Alanna called. “It’s time to come home. Jon.”
Myles stared. He did not hear a boy-child calling the Prince. He heard a woman’s voice, speaking from eternities away. Awed by a power he could not understand, the knight moved even farther away from the bed.
Alanna fell into the blue depths of her friend’s eyes. She was twisting in a black, writhing well. The alien place pulsed around her, enclosing her like a living thing. Shrieks and cackling and the screams of doomed souls sounded all around her. She was on the edge, between the world of the living and the Underworld. She drifted between Life and Death.
“Jon,” she called steadily, feeling the power in her shoving the ugliness back. “Jon.” At last she could see him. He was far below her, near the bottom of the well, near Death. A huge, dark shadow shaped like a hooded man