Prisoner (The Scarred Mage of Roseward #2) - Sylvia Mercedes Page 0,99
feeling safer with something at her back. It was enormous, reaching to the arched ceiling overhead. She peered up, narrowing her eyes. Was that a pattern of clouds painted across the ceiling? And were they . . . moving?
Her pursed mouth twisting to one side, she studied the pillar itself. It wasn’t stone as she’d first thought, or if it was, its surface had been perfectly carved to look like the rough bark of a pine tree. And at its base there appeared to be roots plunging into the stone floor.
It was all so strange. So otherworldly. So impossible. She might be a city girl through and through, but even she knew trees couldn’t grow without sunlight.
Then again, this was Eledria. Maybe everything in this world thrived on pure magic.
Adjusting her grip on the poker, Nelle peeked out from behind the pillar. The long hall appeared to be empty. But she was a snatcher. She knew better than to trust appearances. Some sixth sense warned her that not all was as it seemed.
She hurried on to the next pillar, paused, and continued to the next. In this way, scurrying like a mouse from shelter to shelter, she crossed what felt like miles of stone before finally coming within sight of the hall’s far end.
It was another blank wall. Nelle left the shelter of the final pillar and approached the wall slowly. It was at least thirty feet high and seemed to be a single slab of stone. Polished flat stone—no etchings or decoration other than natural veining.
“There’s got to be a way out,” Nelle whispered. She’d now twice seen doors appear where there’d seemed to be no door at all. Magical doorways must be the norm in Noxaur.
Reaching out a tentative hand, she rested her palm against the stone. It was so cold that at first she felt nothing but icy chill straight to her bones. Rather than pull back, she leaned into it, closed her eyes, and sent her senses searching for what lay beneath the surface of the stone.
A faint, tingling buzz responded to her search—magical energy lay under her palm, much like the sensation she got from Soran’s spellbooks. This whole wall was laced with magic just waiting to be commanded.
Nelle opened her eyes and let her hand drop again. She didn’t know a spell for opening secret doors. And though she’d heard the pink woman speak a command, she couldn’t for the life of her recall the words used. But maybe . . . maybe . . .
Magic originated in the quinsatra. To be used, it must first be drawn into this world. Mages used the written form to summon it into physical reality; only then could they join their minds to it and begin the manipulation.
But this magic had already been drawn into this world and trapped in stone. How was that any different, really, than magic trapped in words or paper? The ward stones around Roseward contained spell writing, didn’t they?
Nelle bowed her head, placed her hand back on the stone, and leaned heavily into the wall. Magic simmered under her touch, gathering in intensity. If she knew the Old Araneli words, she could certainly call it to life. But ultimately, what was Old Araneli? Just a language like any other. A way to make the incomprehensible realm of thought and mind and soul perceivable in a physical manifestation. Araneli may be more perfect than her own language, but . . . how much did perfection really matter?
“Precision is everything, Miss Beck . . . except when it is not.”
A smile slid across her face. She understood. In that heat-seared moment of clarity, she understood.
“Open,” she commanded through clenched teeth.
The door in the wall swung out beneath her hand, so swiftly, so silently that she almost fell through. She stumbled, caught herself, and looked out.
Her eyes widened. A broad courtyard stretched before her, paved with smooth dark stones and surrounded by huge walls and towering, sharp-peaked buildings. But she hardly saw those.
Instead, her gaze fixed on the heaps and bundles spread out across the courtyard, piled on top of each other in unnatural tangles of limbs. Dozens upon dozens of skull-dogs.
Nelle couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even blink. A wind picked up and blew at her filmy skirts, whispered across her exposed skin, and played through her hair. At last, finished with its exploration of her, it whisked away and darted off among the sleeping monsters.