fire advancing from all sides. And they led me. An eddying swirl, a darting, sliding lightness, a black flash of lightning piercing the wall of flame and pushing me toward the amber eyes.
I am falling . . .
“We will dance the djanga with you yet!” I heard a voice say behind me.
A final, angry spurt of crimson flame enraged at its own impotence. Night . . .
“What’s wrong with him?”
The voice pierced through the dense cobweb of unconsciousness, severing its threads like the blade of a dagger. It snatched me from the bottom of my sleep, slowly lifting me up to the surface so that I could take a gulp of the fresh air of life.
“He’s coming round! Egrassa, give me the flowers! Quickly!” Miralissa’s voice was tense and . . .
Perplexed? Frightened?
“What, may the Darkness devour me, is going on here?” asked the first voice.
I thought I knew it, too . . . Alistan Markauz.
“Calm down, count, explanations later! Egrassa, why are you taking so long?”
“Here.” The elf sounded calm.
I smelled the sour scent of some herb and winced involuntarily.
“All right, Harold, time to stop this comedy! Open your eyes!” The imperturbable Ell’s voice was sharp and tense.
I tried. I really did try. But my eyelids were terrible heavy; they were filled with lead and refused to obey me.
“Come, Dancer, open your eyes! I know you can hear me!”
Miralissa calls me that, too—Dancer! It’s all Kli-Kli’s fault. The goblin was the first one to claim that I’m supposedly in some prophecy or other. I ought to strangle him, but I feel sorry for the little green creature.
One more effort. This time everything was much easier. The elfess had a will of iron. The first thing I saw was her face. Miralissa was leaning down over me and, despite her swarthy complexion, she was exceptionally pale. “Thank the gods,” she said when I looked up at her and smiled. Standing a little farther away were the two elves, as tense as two taut bowstrings or the strings of some musical instrument. Markauz was standing beside them. He looked gloomy. But then, that was his constant mood; we had all grown used to that long ago.
“How are you feeling?” asked Miralissa, putting her hand on my forehead again.
How am I feeling? My arms and legs are all there. I don’t think I have a tail. Everything’s all right. Just what are they all in such a flurry about?
“I feel fine. Why?”
I attempted to get up off the bed, but Miralissa gently pushed me back down.
“Lie down for a while.”
“Will someone explain to me what is going on?” asked Milord Alistan, unable to restrain himself any longer.
“I wish someone would explain to me,” Miralissa snapped irritably, and shivered, as if there was a chilly draft in the room. Quickly, she recovered her composure and was all business again. “Everything was going as usual. The standard procedure for attuning the key—it can be carried out by any third-year apprentice who knows almost nothing about shamanism. Everything was normal, and then the key suddenly flared up with a purple light and I lost contact with Harold. His consciousness was transported to such distant realms that we had great difficulty in bringing him back here. Or rather, somehow he made his own way back—all our attempts were unsuccessful. I don’t understand a thing!”
The artifact flared up with a purple light? That happened in one of the dreams. Some man . . . Sunik? Suonik? I can’t remember. He did something to that key. Something not exactly good. Another of the Master’s minions, that was who he was.
“Harold, can you remember anything?”
“Well, something,” I said slowly.
“Stop muttering! What do you remember, thief?” Alistan was still furious.
“Dreams. Thousands of dreams.”
“What dreams?”
“It’s all your key’s fault, you should have made it yourself, instead of sending a prince to the dwarves!” I said in a reproachful voice.
“How do you know that a prince commissioned the key?” Miralissa’s eyes widened in surprise.
“From a dream, I suppose . . . ,” I said after a moment’s thought. “I even remember the elf’s name—Elodssa.”
“Elodssa the Destroyer of Laws,” Ell said, nodding to confirm that I wasn’t lying. “There was a head of the House of the Black Flame with that name. Long ago, more than a thousand years. But I did not know that he commissioned the key.”
“He didn’t commission it,” I said, defying Miralissa’s prohibition and sitting up on the bed. “His father did. Not even his father, all the elves.