a chamber. A conduit of crystal running between both chambers held a panel with a single emerald set into it. Isabel heard whimpering before she saw the figure slumped to the floor in one of the chambers. She approached cautiously, her anger hot and ready. Seeing the form of Hazel in the chamber, she began speaking the words of her light-lance, forcefully and deliberately.
She raised her hand toward Hazel and the old witch looked up, tears streaming down her face, confusion and fear in her eyes.
“Isabel, please help me,” she said.
Isabel frowned in momentary confusion until she remembered that the focus of Hazel’s magic was belief.
Seeing Isabel’s resolve harden, Hazel sobbed and put her hands up in front of her face to ward against a spell that would kill her in a flash.
“Stop!” Alexander said, materializing before Hazel.
Isabel reined in her spell, letting go of the thought-form she was about to release into the firmament but holding on to her anger.
“Why? You said it yourself; we’re at war with her.”
“I don’t think this is Hazel,” Alexander said. “Her colors are all wrong.”
“Please help me, Isabel. It’s me … Ayela. Hazel stole my body.”
Isabel gasped, her eyes going wide. “Dear Maker, is such a thing even possible?”
“I think that’s what these chambers do,” Alexander said. “Also, her colors say she’s telling the truth.”
“How do we reverse it?” Isabel asked.
“I’m not sure, but if I had to guess, I’d say you would have to put them both back into these chambers again. I’ll go consult with the sovereigns and then find Hector, Horace, and Hazel. Take care of Ayela and make your way back to the black-and-white room. Wait for me there.”
Isabel nodded, going to Ayela. “I’m so sorry, Ayela. I didn’t know.”
“How could you? This kind of thing isn’t supposed to be possible. I’m the one who should apologize. I took you right to her and she left you in the swamp to die. I can’t believe I trusted her.”
“You believed what you wanted to believe,” Isabel said. “It happens to the best of us.”
“What am I going to do? I feel like my life is suddenly over.”
“I’m going to help you. I promise.”
“Thank you, Isabel,” Ayela said, wiping tears from her old and wrinkled face and looking up sheepishly. “Do you have anything to eat? Hazel took all of my things when she left me here.”
Isabel gave her a bag of dried apples and they started toward the black-and-white room.
Alexander appeared just before they arrived.
Chapter 38
“Isabel, you have to hurry,” Alexander said. “They’re down that passage. I think Hazel is about to sacrifice Horace to the ghidora. She’s preparing a spell, and he’s laid out on a table in front of a hideous-looking statue.”
Isabel raced across the black-and-white room, calling out to Ayela behind her, “Stick to the white squares only!”
The passage was a hundred feet long, opening into a giant cavern filled with cages and lined with doorways leading out of the room in every direction. She caught glimpses of the remains of unspeakable and indescribable creatures as she raced past the cages, following Alexander’s bobbling light.
Some of the cages contained magic circles cut into the stone just inside the bars, while others were ordinary iron cages that had long since rusted to the point of crumbling. Most contained long-dead corpses of unidentifiable creatures but a few were empty. Two still held live creatures, but fortunately both of those cages were still intact and the magic circles within were holding the unnatural creations of Siavrax Karth at bay. That didn’t stop those creatures from snapping and snarling at Isabel when she raced by.
She reached the threshold of a large doorway that used to hold double doors, but was now open to the cavern. She stopped in horror at the scene playing out before her under the flickering light of two torches.
Horace lay on a platform before the statue of a creature from out of a nightmare. Eight feet tall at the back with six-foot-wide shoulders, it stood on six powerful legs, each ending in seven clawed toes. It had four eyes, the lower two set closer together than the upper two, all of which looked like they moved independently, allowing for a very wide field of vision. Its mouth was almost two feet across and lined with razor-sharp teeth. Its long tail split into three, each ending in a blade a foot long.
Hazel, in Ayela’s body, stood before the platform, chanting the words to an ancient invocation while streamers