away from the party, but he was suddenly across the room, and a second step carried him perilously far down the corridor outside. She hurried to keep him in sight, only to find that a single step caused the chamber to blur into darkness. She stood so close to Pharaun that she had to restrain an impulse to back up a step, lest she throw herself even farther away.
The wizard smirked at her discomfiture and said, "I am flattered by your attention, dear lady, but you need not stay quite so close." He laughed softly. "Just step when I step, and you will pace me more easily."
He took several slow, measured strides, holding back a bit as the rest of the party caught the trick of it, and in a moment they all marched to-gether along the dusty streets of Hlaungadath beneath a cold and starless sky. Each step seemed to catapult Halisstra forty, perhaps fifty feet across the dim terrain. The black shapes of ruined buildings leered and leaned from all sides, huddling down close over the streets as if to hem in the trav-elers, only to fade into dark blurs with each careful stride.
Outside the ruined walls, Pharaun paused a moment to check on the party. He nodded toward the desert stretching to cold mountains in the west, and he began to march quickly, setting a rapid pace that belied his effete mannerisms and aversion to the toils of travel. Finally able to stretch out her legs, Halisstra began to gain a sense of just how quickly they were moving. In five minutes of walking they left the site of the Netherese city a league behind them, a dark blot on the dim breast of the sands. In thirty minutes the mountains, nothing more than a dis-tant fence of snowcapped peaks from Hlaungadath's streets, towered up over them like a rampart of night. The shadow walk also made light of the most difficult terrain in their path. Without hesitation Pharaun stepped out over a sheer ravine as if it simply did not exist. The magic of his spell and the strange plane they traversed brought his foot down securely on the far side of the obstacle. Climbing the long, rugged slopes leading up into the mountains was no more work than stepping from stone to stone across a stream.
"Tell me, Pharaun," Quenthel said after a time, "why did we crawl through miles of dangerous Underdark passages to reach Ched Nasad, when you might have used this spell to shorten our journey?"
Halisstra could sense the ire hidden in the Baenre's voice, even through the murk and gloom of the Shadow Fringe.
"Three reasons, fair Quenthel," Pharaun replied, not taking his eyes from the unseen path he followed. "First, you did not ask me to do any such thing. Second, the wizards of Ched Nasad arranged certain defenses against intrusions of this sort. Finally, as I said before, the Fringe is a dan-gerous place. I only suggested this after we all agreed that marching for months across the sun-blasted surface world presented an even less ap-pealing prospect."
Quenthel seemed to consider the wizard's words, while mountains reeled and gnarled black trees began to appear around them.
"In the future," the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith said, "I shall expect you to volunteer useful information or suggestions in a timely manner. Your reticence in advancing ideas may cost us all our lives. Is that worth the meager pleasure you derive from knowing something we may not?"
The Master of Sorcere's teeth gleamed in his dark face, and he con-tinued without making a reply. For some time he devoted his attention to navigating the Fringe. As Pharaun was under normal circumstances the most garrulous of the company, the effort of concentrating on his spell left the small party of dark elves unusually silent. They fell into a watchful march, winding quietly along in single file behind the wizard, as the immeasurable journey through the darkness stretched out into what might have been hours or even days. Halisstra found herself beginning to con-sider the very curious notion that this was the real world, the true substance of things, and the bland mundane rigidity of her own world was the illusion. She found that she did not care for that thought at all.
After a long time, Pharaun raised his hand and called a halt. They stood on a small gray stone bridge, arching over a deep gully through which trickled a dark, bubbling stream. Nearby the black ramparts of an