her dozens of castings to cut an opening large enough for her to crawl through. By the time she was done, her rage was spent and she was exhausted from the effort.
Alexander appeared not long after, finding her facing the darkness of the cave with no way to make light. “I see your magic is back,” he said with a smile.
She nodded wearily.
“Fortunately, I think the wall on the inside of the valley is just an illusion,” he said, transforming into a ball of light to guide her way.
A few minutes later, she reached the wall on the other end of the tunnel only to discover that it felt solid. Emotionally spent, she sat down with her back against the side of the tunnel and closed her eyes.
“I don’t have the strength to burn my way through right now.”
“Try pushing against it,” Alexander said. “It doesn’t look entirely solid to me.”
More to humor him than anything else, she reached out and put a hand against the wall, leaning into it with halfhearted effort. To her amazement, her hand sank into the stone. There was still resistance, but the farther she passed through, the more it gave. Getting to her feet, she pushed through the wall to the other side, stepping into the little clearing on the edge of Hazel’s valley and a clear winter morning.
“I would never have guessed,” she said, feeling the wall on the other side. It felt solid until she made an effort to pass through. “Well, that’s a pretty effective secret door.”
After placing a few stones in front of the door to mark its location, she headed for the cottage under a bright sunny sky. “I don’t get this place. I couldn’t find it with Slyder, yet it’s obviously open to the sky.”
“I’m not so sure,” Alexander said. “I couldn’t find it either and I searched pretty extensively.”
“So … what, then? A variation on a Wizard’s Den?” Isabel asked.
“No, I think it’s really a cavern with an elaborate illusion that looks like a sky.”
Isabel stopped in her tracks, looking up. “Is that really possible?”
Alexander spread out his hands and shrugged. “I’m lying in a bed on Tyr.”
“Good point,” she said, continuing on toward the cottage.
Before searching for her things, she found some food and ate a quick breakfast. Once her gnawing hunger was sated, she started looking for her equipment. After more than an hour, she found a hidden panel in the back of Hazel’s armoire that opened to a staircase leading below the cottage into a small stone room that looked like it had been magically carved into the bedrock.
Isabel’s pack and weapons sat atop a trunk at the bottom of the stairs. The room appeared to be Hazel’s workspace. Dozens of jars of green glowing lichen hung from the ceiling, casting an eerie glow over the room. There were many shelves of books and a table covered with glassware. A large cauldron sat over a cold fire pit in one corner and several shelves contained a plethora of ingredients, some Isabel recognized, but most were unfamiliar. One shelf held a number of powder-filled jars with labels that read: sleep, henbane, poison, smoke, and concealment. Below that were several vials filled with liquids of various colors and consistencies. They were labeled as well: healing draught, blackwort and invisibility.
“Do you think these are potions?” Isabel asked.
“I’m sure of it,” Alexander said. “The healing draught has the same colors as the ones Lucky gave us. The others all contain magic, except the blackwort and it’s the only one with dangerous-looking colors.”
“Should I take them?” Isabel asked.
“Absolutely,” Alexander said. “Hazel drugged you and left you for dead in the swamp without any of your equipment, then abducted Hector, Horace, and Ayela. Take everything of use that you can carry, then light this place on fire. We’re at war with that old witch.”
“When you put it that way,” Isabel said, going to a bookshelf and looking at the titles on the spines. “Most of these are in languages I don’t understand, but these two I can read.” She carefully opened the first book. It was small and bound in leather and written in the common tongue. The next was similar in size and binding except it contained many more pages.
“These might be useful,” Isabel said. “This one is a charm spell and this one is a shapeshift spell.”
“Take them both,” Alexander said. “Do you see any others you can read?”
Isabel shook her head, scanning the remaining titles on the