Spell of Fate | Page 2

embedded in the wall just past the bend, the expression on the stretched face oddly untroubled. Her grandfather had hung a tapestry over it.
Behind the sliding bookcase was a narrow alcove and the top of a tightly wound circular stair. Leen followed the unstoppable Robin down it, refusing to give in to a sudden maternal rush and tell him to watch his step. She kept her left hand on the central support pole and glanced up periodically as the stairs wound around it; it was fully two complete turns, or perhaps even a quarter more, before they reached bottom.
Leen had no idea where they were, compared to the overall layout of the Archives and the catacombs and the palace complex as a whole. The palace was the kind of place where outside and inside measurements rarely added up, anyway, with the discrepancy as likely as not to indicate that the inside dimension was significantly the larger. Still, the Archive occupied the lower levels of its corner of the complex, so it appeared reasonable to presume that the staircase had taken them down into the midst of solid rock. Or into what she had previously assumed, for lack of any particular reason to think otherwise, was solid rock.
The floor was cold and certainly felt like unbroken bedrock rather than some construction team's marble or concrete sub-basement. Leen was no longer quite as willing to give it the benefit of doubt as she had been even moments before, though. The other two features of the room were suggestive. One was the wall that faced her at the bottom of the stair. It too was solid, and cold, and obviously thick, but unlike the floor, it was metal. Metal. Not a crude iron alloy or a thin beaten sheet of copper or some lumpish bronze implement or even a piece of the newer structural steels, either, but a deadly serious, absolutely flat, medium-gray slab that reflected its dull sheen beneath the centuries'-long accumulation of sifted dust. She had never seen a piece of metal like that in her life. As far as Leen knew, there had never been a piece of metal like that anywhere in the world. Since the Dislocation, of course. Although there was no evidence of hinge, lock, or control, Leen was certain the slab of metal was a door.
It wasn't a certainty born of unfettered intuition. The wall adjoining the metal one on its right had its own feature. From the level of her waist to a spot above her head and for a span of an arm-and-a-half or so in width, the solid rock wall, retaining the same texture and feeling of cold stone, turned inexplicably transparent behind its coating of filth. Leen slid a finger through the grime. As the clear rock became clearer behind her finger, she could see that her initial impression was no mirage. The transparent area glowed a pale green, the green washing over her finger in a faint necrochromatic smear. Where her fingertip pressed against the wall a brighter green spot appeared beneath it. She brought her eye close to the smudge her single wipe had left.
Although it was difficult to tell exactly how thick the crystal actually was, it was incontrovertibly not thin. The depth of her forearm, at least. That it did have a far side, though, was also evident, since Leen could see something beyond it - a circular spot of green, coin-sized. A light. Not a flame, or a sorcerous torch, or a rune like the ones on Robin's tunic, but a light of some different type entirely, a light that glowed its perfect, unceasing, monochromatic glow in the darkness where no eye had seen it for-
The light turned orange, flashed once. Then it winked off.
Leen's head snapped back as though the light had leapt forward through the crystal and slapped her instead. She shook her head once, trying to still through sympathetic magic, she supposed, her whirling thoughts. She looked down at Robin; he was happily pounding away at the metal door, making not the slightest dent or sound, except for the very mild thump of his small hands against the material. Leen discovered she was rather proud of him, even in the midst of her quite un-Archivist-like mental turmoil. Even as the young child he was, he was revealing the appropriate inclinations of a first-class Archivist himself. One of them, unfortunately, was dredging up things better left hidden. Still, he had most likely finished his part; now it was her turn. Leen told herself to remember to get him something special for bringing her such an interesting puzzle. Interesting? Well, this was interesting. Indeed, it was more than interesting. Something ancient was still alive in there.
CHAPTER 1
IT SEEMED LIKE THE FIRST DECENT SLEEP he'd had in