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a
gruesome death if not performed correctly.
    More snow had fallen when Silhara returned to
the temple, and a fresh fall of white obscured the spoked-wheel
design. He’d come alone, and only by threatening to lay a geas on
Gurn and shackle Cael to one of the exterior walls. Gurn replied by
raising the shovel he held in warning.
    Silhara glared at him. “Cracking my skull open
with that shovel isn’t my idea of helping, and it’s stupid to think
we can dig the sword out from under all that stone. Even with both
of us—and the dog—digging for days, we’d get nowhere, and I don’t
have days.”
    He’d already lost hours in the library. Bursin
alone knew what was happening to Martise in that time. The thought
ratcheted his temper and his panic up another notch.
    Defeat slumped the servant’s broad shoulders.
He signed to Silhara who nodded. “We’ll return. Both of us. You
have my word.” Gurn knew him well enough to believe the effort he’d
make to fulfill that vow even if he couldn’t guarantee the
outcome.
    He reached inside his shirt and slipped off
the necklace he wore. The delicate chain threaded through his
fingers, a pendant of colored glass swinging from its loop. The
glass encased a tiny curl of brown hair. Once the means by which
Martise’s old master kept her enslaved, the necklace was now a
favorite possession of Silhara’s. He’d crushed the spirit stone
that entrapped a part of his wife’s soul and replaced it with the
pendant that held a bit of her hair. He wore it when he traveled
without her to Eastern Prime’s markets, keeping her close even when
she was far from him. Now, the pendant would be a tether to bring
her home. He buried the chain under a loose pile of small rocks to
keep the crows from snatching it.
    Cloaked beneath a sullen sky, Silhara
initiated the first of two rituals—this one to reveal a relic
buried longer than generations of memory.
    Ritual spellwork hid numerous traps,
especially when the mage worked alone. Silhara always worked alone
and had paid dearly for the preference more times than he could
count. Burns, frostbite, teal-colored skin, orange eyes, hair loss,
blisters and a month’s worth of impotence when he was seventeen
that had terrified him enough to actually offer a sincere prayer to
the gods for help.
    The gods had ignored him, but his mentor had
shown mercy—along with a generous heap of ridicule—and reversed the
damage of a poorly executed ritual. Except for his brief alliance
with Conclave to kill the god Corruption, Silhara remained a
solitary practitioner. He was, however, far more careful with his
spellwork now than when he was a juvenile sorcerer with more
arrogance than sense.
    His caution served him well in the broken
temple. Incantations, combined with a rigid pattern of steps and
the scatter of certain herbs, illuminated the wheel, revealing the
entire design instead of the few lines not yet faded away by time
and the elements.
    The illumination held the wheel’s shape and
began to rotate. Small mounds of snow collapsed as the ground
thrummed with a low vibration, reminding Silhara of Conclave
acolytes and their chanting during dawn prayers.
    He built spell upon spell, connecting
revelation summonings with ward-break invocations until a complex
web of light and resonance engulfed the temple. Stone groaned
across stone as the shallow staircase leading to the structure’s
center broke at the left seam and slid to one side.
    Success!
    Silhara turned his spellwork toward the
opening revealed and invoked a string of incantations. The tremors
under his feet strengthened, and his teeth chattered against each
other more from the vibrations than from the cold. These were old
wards, inhuman ones. Without the lich’s grimoires to aid him, he
might never crack them open.
    Blood streamed from his nose and coursed down
his cheeks in thin rivulets from his eyes. Powerful magic, whether
benevolent or malevolent, always demanded a tithe of some sort,