The Colors of Magic Anthology

The Mirror of Yesterday

Damon had managed to levitate a few inches above the rocky beach. Arms crossed over his chest and eyes closed in concentration, he hung in midair, bobbing slightly. Three fellow apprentices watched with mixed emotions. They were excited to see Damon demonstrating a new magical ability, one that they would all have themselves some day, but each was envious that someone else had succeeded at levitating first.

Damon, for his part, was using the sound of the surf as his mantra. The waves rolling in and out had ceased to be water hitting beach. For him, it was only an audible impression, the come and go of the fundamental forces of the world, the cosmos breathing. He was nowhere.

Then he remembered he had a forehead because it suddenly hurt. Something hard hit his feet and then his hip and arms. He had become unexpectedly intimate with the beach, and he opened his eyes to find himself lying on it. He felt a buzz of pain on his forehead.

"Do you understand?" someone said.

Damon looked up to where Sabra, Jervis, and Annarais sat watching him. Sabra had spoken.

The question "Do you understand?" was one that Master Wane put to them frequently-when he had just thwarted one of their fledgling attempts at magic. There were only two answers to the question: "No," which meant you were still an apprentice, and "Yes," which would mean you were now a wizard. None of them had ever correctly answered the question.

"Dammit," said Damon, standing up and brushing the grit off his leggings and elbows. "A rock? Did you throw something at me?" He looked accusingly at Sabra. She met his gaze, but her face was impossible to read.

"Well," she said innocently, "the first time you show that trick to Master Wane, he's going to smack you on the head with his staff to test your concentration. I was doing you a favor."

"Go to hell," muttered Damon. He put his hand on his forehead where the rock had hit him and then ran it back over his close-cropped head.

"All right, I will," said Sabra. "Maybe I can find hell over among those boulders." She jumped up and stalked off down the beach, gone in a moment among the big, black rocks behind them. Her footsteps were soon lost in the sound of the glacial runoff that tumbled over the cliff and cut through the rocks below on its way into the sound.

"Congratulations," said Annarais, raising two fists in a victory gesture. She was smiling with genuine approval.

"Yeah," added Jervis. "I bet you can't wait until Master Wane gets back so you can show him that stunt."

Damon looked away. Tears of frustration burned his eyes. He no longer heard the soothing surf. Instead he was back in the training room, in front of the mirror with Master Wane. As the mage closed the curtains over the mirror he said, "You will never become a wizard." Master Wane had leveled that judgment the day before he left, and Damon was grateful the other apprentices had not been there to hear it.

"Sabra always steals the show, doesn't she? Don't let her get to you."

Damon came back to the beach at the sound of Annarais's voice. "Yes," was all he could muster before the waves slipped from his ears once again.

He had tried, again and again, to prove he had what it took, that certainly he, of all the apprentices, would become a wizard. In that rare moment alone with his teacher, Damon had almost burst with pride when Master Wane had told him that he was ready for a special test. First the master shaved Damon's head. Then he led him to the draped mirror in the training room. The mage pulled the black curtain aside and revealed the glass.

"Whom do you see?" the teacher asked his student.

Damon blinked. Something was wrong, but he couldn't tell what. He looked in the mirror and saw himself. He. had long, brown hair, just as he always had, and that seemed right to him. "I see me," said Damon. "Us." He wondered what this test was all about.

"And what day is it today?"

"The fourth day of the month, the day of the full null moon."

"No," said Wane, running his hand over Damon's bare pate. "Today is the fifth. The null moon was full last night. And you have no hair left on your head. You are seeing yesterday."

"Master?"

"This mirror shows you as you were yesterday," said Master Wane. "The common mind believes the body's eyes. You become what you believe, and so you think it is still yesterday. The mind of the mage knows better than to believe what the body sees. The mirror does not sway it. I see this body of mine as it was yesterday, but I know myself to be what I am today."

Master Wane closed the curtain. "You will never become a wizard."

A moment later, Damon realized what day it was and touched his shaved scalp. In front of the mirror he had lost himself.

"Never…"

Damon, unconsciously running his hand over three weeks of growth on his head, remembered the present… and Jervis's words. "And it's not just some stunt, Jervis! You try it if you think it's a stunt."

Jervis didn't answer. He was looking out over the sound. Jervis was the least likely to become involved in petty competition, Damon thought. He opened his mouth to apologize for his sharp words, but Jervis spoke first.

"Master Wane has been gone a long time," Jervis said quietly, as if he didn't realize he was speaking aloud. "I don't like it."

This was the longest Master Wane had ever left them alone. He had been gone more than three weeks now and had neglected to tell them when he would return. His only words were of visiting his colleagues at the School of the Unseen, but they had all seen the carrier pigeons he occasionally sent flying from the top of the tower.

Sabra had told them the Kjeldorans used those pigeons. She had been picked up by Kjeldoran troops in the months following the flood that had washed her village into the sea. It was the Kjeldorans' alliances with Master Wane that had brought Sabra to the old mage's tower on the hill. The apprentices assumed the master had political business in Kjeldor, but three weeks was a long time to be away, even for politics.

Damon tossed a pebble at the surf. "Jervis, you know Master Wane doesn't want us talking about what he's doing or even knowing about it. His allegiances have nothing to do with us. If he didn't know what he was doing, he wouldn't have been around to take us in." Damon thought briefly of the first wizard who had found him, when he had just been orphaned. That wizard had preferred less tasteful magic and had eventually sold Damon to Master Wane. The memories made him shudder.

Annarais stood up and stretched. "He's probably going to look back in time and see that we were here on the beach when we were supposed to be studying."

Jervis pointed a thumb at Damon. "We are. studying. He's demonstrating a new trick for us. That's studying, isn't it, Damon?"

A voice boomed from down the beach, "It's bobble-dy-cock!"

The apprentices jumped in recognition of Master Wane's voice and his favorite term for tomfoolery. Damon looked past Annarais, who spun around. Moving swiftly toward them from among the tall, dark rocks was their master. He had always reminded Damon of a seagull, loud and a little dirty, with hair the color of ground-up oyster shells.

"Who is the wizard who makes the sky blue?" demanded Master Wane. He raised a gnarled staff to the sky and shook it. He'd put that question to them many times before, and they were to have solved it by the time he returned. "Damon?"

"Welcome back, Master Wane," Damon said lamely.

"To leave is to return. Who is it?" shouted the wizard, pointing his staff at the apprentice.

"I do not know, Master." Damon dropped his gaze and looked at the pebbles on the beach.

"I'm going to beat you ten times," said Master Wane, swinging his staff for emphasis. "Then maybe you'll know. Annarais! Who is the wizard who makes the sky blue?"

Annarais cleared her throat. "The sky is like a great mirror, and it reflects the blue of the ocean." She tilted her chin upward sharply as if confirming her theory.

"You," yelled Master Wane, "I shall beat twenty times. Jervis! Who is it?"

"The sky is not blue, Master," said Jervis in a voice that was almost firm.

"And this rock," replied the master, picking up a good-sized stone from near his foot, "is not hard!" He let it fly at Jervis, who dodged expertly. "Thirty times!"

"Now," continued Master Wane, looking around, "where is my most promising pupil, Sabra? She's as smart as she is beautiful, and that's saying a lot. I'm sure she knows the answer. What did the three of you do-drown her out of envy?"

Sabra? Master Wane had no favorites. Damon lifted his eyes from the sand to take a closer look at the wizard. Had Master Wane taken a bath while he was away? The sense that something was amiss grew into a certainty.

"Sabra!" accused Damon.

Master Wane turned, but it was Sabra standing there, not the master.

"Great heavens," said Jervis. "It's you, Sabra. That's amazing."

"Thank you, thank you," said Sabra, smiling and bowing to Jervis, Annarais, and Damon in turn.

Damon tried to picture what he had seen in his mind. He could remember seeing Sabra's smooth face, not Master Wane's wrinkled visage. He had seen Sabra's brown hair, her young woman's shape, and her apprentice's frock, yet he had recognized her as Master Wane. He was convinced she was Wane. "Sabra! Did you-? How did you do that?" he asked.

"There is seeing, and there is seeing," said Sabra, chuckling. "Annarais, I like your answer to Master Wane's question. I think I'll use it myself."

"You're welcome to it," said Annarais. "I'm sure it's wrong."

Sabra laughed, and the others joined in.

By afternoon the sun had climbed high enough in the blue sky to shine down over the cliff where Master Wane's tower stood. Its imposing presence had guarded the cliff for decades, maybe even longer. Leading up to it, along the sheer cliff wall, was a trail of switchbacks, and next to that was a chilly waterfall fed by thawing glaciers miles and miles inland.

On rare occasions while exploring the abandoned lands around the tower the apprentices had come across broken or burned items that looked as if they had once been of some use. As a game, they would try to fit names and functions to some of the more recognizable pieces. Sabra showed the first of these items to Master Wane, quizzing him about its origins. The squarish stone was warm, even when wet, and buzzed slightly. Wane snatched the blackened, worn blue object away from Sabra, threw it to the ground, and roared, "Remnants of a not-so-forgotten war. These things were made to destroy. No good can come from them, and your ignorance will kill us all!"

The three other youths slinked off, and Sabra was left trembling before Master Wane's wrath. But that seemed a lifetime ago. Now any object they found was secreted among the apprentices' things. They made a pact that the first to achieve a wizard's status would have his choice of the few artifacts.

Now that the sun warmed the beach, the apprentices stripped to their breech-clothes and swam in the chilly water. Master Wane had told them that magic is like the ocean. If you are patient and calm, it will hold you up and take you to fantastic places far away, but if you flail about and lose your concentration you'll go under. Even if you know how to stay afloat, there are dangers lurking under the surface.

From her perch on a slick, craggy rock protruding from the waves Sabra dove into the water and swam into the shallows where the other three were wading and joking.

"Someone's coming along the beach," she said, "someone driving a little wagon. He's just around that bend." She pointed her tanned arm, glistening with seawater, toward a dark cliff farther down the beach. "Let's have some fun."

The apprentices waded up the beach and began wiping themselves dry.

"I don't like this," said Jervis. "No one ever comes down this beach. The roads all washed out two years ago."

"He's probably coming to see Master Wane," said Sabra confidently. "And Master Wane is exactly who he's going to meet."

"Don't get us into trouble." Damon glared at Sabra, but the brown-haired girl only smiled.

"Follow my lead." Her voice was high with excitement. "Close your eyes." The others, now dried and dressed, complied.

In a moment they heard Master Wane's voice. "Open your eyes or you'll miss the demonstration." Sabra was gone, and the master was in her place. "We'll have a little sport," he said with uncharacteristic jocularity.

Out from behind the cliff came a lonely, little wagon pulled by two mules and driven by someone dressed in gowns of white. The apprentices sat on the sun-warmed rocks watching the wagon's slow approach, all except for Sabra, who stood in eager anticipation.

When the wagon was finally within calling distance the homely white-robed woman driving the mules called, "Hail and well met!"

Annarais opened her mouth to respond, but Sabra cut her off. "Approach!" she yelled in Master Wane's voice.

The wagon continued on its way until the driver called the mules to a halt and climbed down. She stopped, surveyed the little group, stepped forward, and addressed Master Wane.

"Hail and well met, my friend. Before you stands a humble healer, come from afar to find Master Wane, who has long been a friend to the Kjeldorans, seekers of peace and justice, and an enemy to the evil rulers of Stromgald. We have need of his expertise."

"But-" Jervis started to protest to Damon.

"Silence!" Master Wane snapped at the apprentice. He faced the woman. "I am Master Wane, you ugly wench."

The others were so shocked they couldn't think to laugh.

"How dare you stand before one such as I, a man of magic and power, when you are but a common wretch? Kneel, or you shall return to your convent in the form of a more useful creature."

Damon glanced at Annarais and Jervis, their faces frozen in disbelief. He didn't like where this was going, but Sabra's little prank had taken him by surprise as well. She was going too far.

The healer knelt and averted her eyes. "My fault, Master. I am but a novice." Her dark eyes flickered, and she brushed a lank strand of black hair from her eyes back into the untidy knot on her head. She reached into her loose robe and hesitated. "The Kjeldoran high priestess asks most respectfully for the benefit of your knowledge."

Damon cocked his head to one side in surprise. Why would the Kjeldorans send someone here, when the Master was there? Perhaps he had not traveled to Kjeldor after all. Maybe something had happened to him! Damon's attention was drawn to the novice's hand as it emerged from her stained robe. She cast her eyes down and revealed a strange, green glass sphere with a short, stoppered neck. With both gloved hands, she held it up in front of her, still not meeting Master Wane's gaze.

"Please, Master Wane, great and powerful one," said the healer, "as you know, there are many excavations across Terisiare where ancient wonders are being unearthed. We are fortunate enough to have found this magical bottle, and we seek to understand its use. Surely one with your insight and wisdom could help us."

Sabra cleared her throat and strode over to the kneeling healer. "I am an important man," she began, "and I have little time for such trivial matters. However, the Kjeldorans are worthy of my time-barely. I will take this artifact to the-to my tower and study it." She reached for the item with one hand. "Give it to me and be gone."

Just as Sabra's hand reached the sphere, the healer dropped it onto the rocks at her feet, and it shattered. Thick, white smoke plumed in the air. The tendrils of smoke touched Sabra and wrapped about her like ropes. The other apprentices saw Master Wane stiffen and fall. Sabra's body went into paroxysms, and blood gushed forth from her nose and ears, staining the rocks. The woman in white stood. Annarais rushed screaming and dropped to her knees beside Sabra, and Damon followed. Sabra was still, but even dead she appeared to be Master Wane.

The healer stripped off her soiled white gloves, revealing bony, greenish hands. She undid the clasp at her throat and shrugged off her dirty robes. Beneath, she wore a close-fitting black leather vest and breeches, crisscrossed with haphazard leather stitches-repairs to cuts the outfit had suffered from numerous combats. Set in the vest, over her left breast, was a black gemstone the size of a peach pit. The skin of her arms and shoulders was mottled and dotted with pox scars. A curved scabbard perched on her hip, the black pommel of a blade protruding. Her face, creased in a humorless smile, revealed thin scars snaking from either side of her mouth to her neck. To Damon she looked as if she had died many times over but had somehow managed to live through the experience.

"It's a trick," said Jervis, arms held tightly across his chest. "It's another of her tricks." Damon caught his eye and made a cutting motion with his hand to silence him.

"Oh, it's no trick, little fish," said the killer. "Your master is quite dead."

"She's dead," whimpered Annarais, stroking Sabra's hair, hair that looked gray. Damon glanced up at the killer to see if she'd noticed what Annarais had said.

Paying scant attention to the apprentices, the impostor gave a sharp whistle. "Little fish," she said, "it suits my lords' purposes that you know why I killed your master. The wizards of the School of the Unseen have been on good terms with my lords in Stromgald, but then this rogue-" she kicked Sabra's leg with a leather-shod toe "-took it upon himself to help the Kjeldorans. His imprudent choice of allies was his undoing. When his peers from the School of the Unseen come looking for their fellow, tell them he met the fate of a traitor, that an assassin from Stromgald defeated him. Such a fate awaits any of the rest of them who favor Kjeldor."

The assassin's wagon had begun to rock. The sound of metal straining against metal came from within. Then the door on the side swung open, and a metal man lurched into the sunlight. The wagon rose noticeably on its springs as the thing climbed out.

"My lords will be pleased," said the assassin. "If they had known that one little aeolipile was all it took to bring this mage down, they would never have supplied me with a golem, or with this." With her thumb she tapped the black gemstone set in her vest, directly over her heart.

The golem strode over to the assassin and stood next to her, head and shoulders taller than she. Made of ancient bronze, it had been scrubbed free of patina. The sun glanced off of its polished hide in speckles of broken color. Under different circumstances Damon might have found the hulking artifact beautiful.

"Pick up the dead man," the assassin ordered the golem.

The lumbering mass rotated its head so that it faced the ground. Its face swung back and forth as it scanned the earth, but it did not move.

"I don't believe it," said Jervis. His eyes hadn't left Sabra's lifeless body.

Damon put one hand on Annarais's shoulder and gave a quick jerk of his head back in the direction of the tower. He stood up, helped Annarais stand, and without a word they backed away.

"Pick up the corpse!" ordered the assassin. "Put it in the wagon."

Now the golem complied. It grabbed the body by the ankle and hoisted it into the air. Gears whirred as the golem turned to place the body in the wagon.

Damon and Annarais reached Jervis, arms still wrapped tightly around himself.

"It's no trick," hissed Damon. "Let's get out of here."

Jervis's eyes fell on the blood on Annarais's hands. "Angels of mercy," he swore, "it's true."

With the sounds of the metal man behind them, the three apprentices stumbled through the large, black rocks that bordered the beach, waded the frigid stream that fed into the sound, and came to the base of the cliff where a switchback trail began. Jervis glanced back nervously.

"How long will that spell last?" he asked.

"She's dead," panted Damon. "What happened? What was that thing? Who-"

"Jervis is right," said Annarais. "The assassin's bound to notice sooner or later."

"She's going to turn back and get us all," said Jervis. He leaped up onto a boulder and tried to spy over the other stones. "How long do you think Sabra's spell is going to last, now that she's-" Jervis stopped short. "What are we going to do?"

"Keep moving," said Damon. "We've got to get back to the tower. Come on."

Jervis stood still, his arms hanging limply at his sides.

"That's the first place she'll look. We've got to split up, hide, get away, maybe get a boat."

"The tower will be safer," said Annarais. "We can get our fighting staffs. She can't get in. We know our way around, and there's lots of places to hide."

Jervis looked past the trail. Below them was a steep, rocky slope that led to countless recesses, inlets, grottos, and tidal pools. "Go die in that damn tower," he said, "She'll get you, just like she got Sabra. I can make it on my own. I did it before. I'll do it again." Without looking back, he started picking his way recklessly down the jagged rocks of the slope.

"Jervis!" yelled Annarais. "We need to stick together!"

Eyes focused on his precarious path, he yelled, "Shut up. I've got to get to safety."

"Jervis!" Annarais repeated her plea, but Damon grabbed her arms from behind and compelled her on.

"He might be right. Let him go. Let him do what he thinks is right, but don't wait here. That assassin will come back when Sabra's spell wears off. Let's go."

Damon moved ahead and pulled Annarais behind him. The switchbacks seemed to go on forever, one after the other, until it was hard to say how long they'd been climbing, how many times they'd turned, and how far they had left to hike. The cliff they were climbing- which they had climbed hundreds of times-hung over a deep sound. It had once been a strip mine before the ice and the beginning of the thaw. The cliff itself was eroding with the thaw, and the tower was doomed to slide into the water with it. Master Wane was fond of saying, "It's a wise man who knows his house is built on sand."

When Damon and Annarais were halfway up the side of the cliff, they heard a scream, nearly inhuman in its urgency.

"Did you hear that?' asked Annarais.

"It sounded like Jervis," said Damon. "Don't stop." He shoved her forward. Annarais nodded, and they continued hiking, the silence broken only by ragged breathing and Annarais's curses.

They were both winded when they finally reached the top of the cliff, but they had renewed urgency since hearing Jervis's scream. They scurried to the great, mechanical door at the base of the tower, tripping over rocks and their own feet. The tower rose up more than fifty feet above them. It looked like an old-fashioned lighthouse. The underside of the balcony that surrounded the top floor extended out from the wall. From the ground up to that balcony the walls looked like blank stone, though the apprentices knew there were plenty of windows. Illusions hid them all.

Damon and Annarais were damp now from sweat and sticky from brine, their stringy hair sticking to their faces and shoulders, their clothes chafing their skin. They stood on the broad stone step at the top of the stairs that led to the door, leaning against the massive, latchless door, panting. The door had always seemed to Damon to be like a great, metal mouth. It was far older than the tower, something Master Wane has salvaged from ages past. The door was smooth, but the mechanisms that surrounded it were complex, with pistons, gears, and counterweights.

"What do-" Damon bent over, bracing his hands on his knees. "What do you think happened to Jervis?"

Annarais closed her eyes and leaned against the door. "I don't know, but let's talk about this inside."

"Neither life nor death," began Damon, reciting through his panting the litany that would open the door, "but existence." He paused to catch his breath. "Neither chaos… nor order… but existence." The litany defined how his master's style of magic differed from the other fundamental types of Dominarian magic. The litany was complete, but the door stood impassive.

Damon glanced at Annarais, trying to hide his desperation.

From over the cliff, they heard the rocks knocked loose, falling down the steep slope. It was the sound of pursuit.

"Oh, great heaven," whispered Damon, and he took Annarais's hand.

She stood upright, centered herself for a moment, and spoke the litany. It was as if the litany spoke itself, playing her lungs and mouth the way a musician plays a flute. "Neither life nor death, but existence. Neither chaos nor order, but existence."

With a great commotion of machinery, the iron doors swung up and apart. The two apprentices rushed inside, into the high-ceilinged atrium. The doors clanged shut behind them. Exhausted, they sank to the floor and leaned against the door.

"They won't be able to get in," said Annarais.

"But, we've got to prepare, just in case," replied Damon.

The two apprentices split up, trying to prepare for the arrival of the Stromgald assassin, although neither knew what it would take to stop her. Annarais took the far stairs two at a time. At the top, she raced along the curving walls, heading for the sparring room at the other end of the corridor. She flung the door open and grabbed two metal-shod fighting staffs from their wall bracket near the door.

Meanwhile, Damon looked around the atrium. He closed the wooden shutters on every window and dropped bars into the holds to secure them. Obscured by illusion or not, an open window was a way in. He ran up to the second floor, whose curving, shadowed hallway overlooked the atrium. Here was their kitchen as well as their personal cells, their study rooms, and the sparring room.

He found Annarais in Jervis's cell, standing there with the window unsecured, holding a large, round shell in both hands. The heavy shell had been one of Jervis's treasured finds.

Without looking up, Annarais said, "Master Wane says your life is like the nautilus's shell. It starts very small, and it gets bigger and bigger as you grow. But you know what he forgot? It ends." She put her finger into the empty opening where a living thing had once made its home. "All that's left is something for someone to find on the beach-a trinket."

A mighty boom reverberated through the atrium. Damon jumped, and Annarais's hand flew to her mouth. They hurried out into the hallway and looked one story down to the floor. Another boom sounded from the door into the tower.

"We can't fight her golem," said Annarais.

"We can hide," returned Damon. "Maybe we can get to the training room. Maybe we can even make it to the top, to Master Wane's chambers. He talks to other wizards far away. Maybe he has a magic glass, something we can use to call him. Maybe he can get here, or just get us out." Like closing the shutters, he suspected it was a futile effort at best.

"The training room," said Annarais. "I know the key."

She slipped back into Jervis's room and came out with the fighting staffs. She tossed one to Damon. The booming persisted. Damon followed Annarais to the end of the hall next to the sparring room's door. There stood a wooden door carved with sigils in a wavelike pattern. None of the apprentices had ever been up to the training floor without Master Wane, and he had always opened the latchless door himself. Annarais placed herself in front of it, biting her lip. With her two hands, she made a slow, unpracticed series of gestures and then looked at the door.

"I don't understand." She was becoming more frustrated every minute. "That's exactly what he does. Exactly! Why won't it open?" She repeated the gestures. The boom sounded again, this time accompanied by the sound of metal straining and giving way.

"What are you thinking?" asked Damon.

"I'm trying to get through the damn door," snapped Annarais, her voice strained.

"No," said Damon, putting a calming hand on her shoulder. "What are you thinking while you're doing it?"

"I'm thinking we're both going to die."

"Do the litany. Try it while thinking the door litany. 'Neither life nor death but-'

"I know the damn litany!" yelled Annarais.

Annarais shivered and began again. Her hands moved smoothly as she repeated the gestures. Below them, the double doors bent inward, and the heavy, bronze creature squeezed into the breach, widening it. The door before Annarais creaked open, and the two apprentices darted in. The door shut behind them.

They raced up a narrow flight of stairs which opened into the middle of a curved room lined with racks of scrolls. Near the other end was a row of writing stands where the apprentices practiced their letters and sigils.

Against the wall was a wide, low chest tucked under a window. To the right was the door to Master Wane's chambers. As the Master had made clear many times, only a wizard could open that door. Near was a black curtain, with the mirror behind it. Momentarily, Damon longed to gaze into that mirror and forget everything that had happened today.

"There's got to be something here that we can use," Damon cried, frantically searching the room.

"Maybe there's something in Master Wane's hardwood chest," replied Annarais.

As Damon approached the chest, a flicker caught his eye. Sitting on one of the writing stands was the flat, mirrored disk that Master Wane had used to create phantasms-horrible but insubstantial images of frightening creatures.

Damon remembered sitting with Sabra and Master Wane on the rocky beach, waves gently lapping in the background. The master had reached into his stained gray cloak and produced the disk, laying it gently on the pebbles before them. The disk reflected the sun and blue sky. "The blind see only the truth," he said.

Wane had tucked his age-spotted hands into his cloak and closed his eyes. Sabra reached out for the disk. She pulled it close to her face and peered into it. With a forefinger she pushed at a pimple on her chin. Suddenly her eyes widened, and she dropped the disk on the rocks. Damon looked up and saw behind Sabra a naked, hairless, humanlike form with long, clawed fingers and toes. Its wings made it seem bigger than it really was, but it was the claws, not its size, that looked deadly. It rested on the rocks behind Sabra, and, as she began scooting backward toward Master Wane, it followed her with short hops.

Learning to ignore these horrific visions had been an early lesson for each apprentice, a lesson in distinguishing that which the eye sees from that which the mind knows. "Our magic is the magic of the impossible," Master Wane would often say, "of the impossible made true."

Damon picked the disk up. "Maybe we can use this to distract the assassin," he muttered, and he tucked it into a wide pocket hidden in his shift beneath his frock.

Together, he and Annarais tugged at the chest's cover, but it was sealed tight. They heard crashing noises from downstairs. Damon swore and kicked the chest. Then, abruptly, he grabbed Annarais by the forearm.

"When have we ever seen Master Wane open anything with his hands?" He straightened up and took a deep breath. His eyes closed.

He opened them a moment later when Annarais whispered, "Done."

The chest was open, the cover gone. Probably never was one, Damon thought sourly. He glanced at Annarais. "Go see if you can open that door." She nodded.

Inside the chest was a jumble of items and scrolls. Some Damon recognized from training exercises, most he had never seen before. He pulled out a sextant covered with spikes. What could that be used for? He dropped it back in the chest. Spotting the hilt of a sheathed blade, he extracted it carefully and slipped it into his inside pocket. It clinked against the disk.

He was tossing scrolls and sheaves of paper from the chest, searching for more weapons, when he heard a pounding in the training room. His heart skipped a beat, and he looked up, but it was Annarais beating repeatedly on the door to Master Wane's personal quarters. Damon picked up his staff and hurried to her side.

"If we could get through-" she said, tears of frustration forming in her eyes. "I tried the litany. We'd be safe, but we're not safe, we're going to die. It won't open. Nothing will open. I can't do it."

Damon dropped his staff, grasped her shoulders, and pulled her back against his chest. She shook in his hands as she cried, then Annarais wiped her eyes with her wrist and sniffed loudly. Damon felt a tremendous sympathy well up inside him, an overpowering desire to protect Annarais.

He felt a sudden confidence, an assurance, an acceptance of his own learning. Without a word to Annarais, he stepped forward and placed his hand on the handle of Master Wane's door. He pulled, not with great force but with great confidence.

The door held. Damon's confidence crashed.

The door at the bottom of the stairs shattered. Damon turned and held his staff defensively in front of him. The polished, plodding golem reached the top of the stairs, and its head swiveled to consider the apprentices. Behind it the stairwell stretched like a long, narrow pit in the floor, and Damon could just barely see the assassin lurking there at the bottom of the stairs.

"Take another step and I'll disintegrate you both," said Annarais.

Damon peered at her in astonishment. She was holding a squarish blue stone in her hand. It glowed as if alive. The assassin murmured a word to the golem and ducked back into the stairwell.

Annarais raised the stone and pointed it at the machine. "Don't come any closer."

The golem's feet scraped over the stone floor as it turned toward Annarais and began to walk toward her.

Damon grasped Annarais's arm and raised it. "What is this thing? Can you really do that?"

Annarais answered breathlessly, "Remember, we found it on the beach just after Jervis came. Sabra was left holding it when Master Wane found out." She looked at the golem as it continued its march toward them. She said in a rush, "The master dropped it on the beach and walked away, but Sabra kept it. She learned how to make it work."

The golem was now managing a lurching jog, its arm raised for a blow. Annarais held out the device toward the creature and gave it a quick turn, as if it were a doorknob. A flash like lightning threw Annarais back against the wall, made Damon's hair rise, and enveloped the metal creature. The flash was gone. The golem was coming toward them as if nothing had happened.

Damon sidestepped the machine and ducked its swinging arm. He backpedaled toward the writing stands, and the golem followed. Damon raised his disk and gave it a mental command. Between him and the machine, something took shape. It was a hairless, humanlike creature with long claws, the image that had terrified Sabra. It flapped its wings and hissed as it hopped from foot to foot. The golem brought its spiked ball down through the illusion with a spin of its whole upper body, and then, with the sound of gears grinding, resumed its stance, ready to strike.

Untouched, the illusion continued to caper. The golem struck again, exactly as before. Exactly as before it resumed its ready position. Damon watched as it repeated its attack without variance three times. He remembered what Master Wane had said about machines that mimic life: they're still machines. Unconscious of its own actions, the golem responded as it had been built to respond. In the face of an unchanging foe, its response never changed. It was stuck.

Damon slowly crawled through the discarded scrolls behind a writing stand, trying not to attract the golem's attention. He looked for Annarais. Behind the golem, near the far wall, she was shaking sense back into her head. He waved and started to crawl toward her, still clutching his staff.

Suddenly the assassin vaulted out of the stairwell and crouched on the floor, blade in one hand. She saw Annarais near her then spotted Damon behind the writing stands.

"Very good," she said. Her laugh was surprisingly pleasant and reminiscent of chimes. "Very smart, little fish. I was sure that thing would finish off the two of you. The fact that you both are still alive raises my opinion of you. The first two were easy kills." She tilted her head back and raised her voice. "Wane! Traitor! I hope that somewhere, somehow, you're using your magic to see this. If I can't get you, I want you to see what happens to your precious students."

The assassin took her curved blade in both hands and walked purposefully toward Annarais, who was now holding her staff at the ready. Terrified, she had both her hands near one end, holding the other end out to try to keep danger at bay.

Willing his disk to work again, Damon rose and charged the assassin. Before him, another winged creature took form. The assassin shot Damon a sideways glance and moved in on Annarais faster than she could retreat. With a swift, curving motion, the woman ducked past the end of the staff, grabbed the weapon's center with one hand, and slipped the blade underneath, where it disappeared into Annarais's frock.

Annarais fell back against the wall, and the assassin pivoted to face Damon. Between them, the illusion of the imp blocked their view. Damon denied the imp, refused it a place in his mind. To him, it became a wispy outline through which he could see the assassin. He dropped the disk and charged, both hands on his staff. Damon saw the assassin weave to try to view past the illusion, but his aim was clear. Grunting, he leaped through the illusion, the metal-shod end of his staff bursting through the image and striking the assassin in the left eye. She rolled to the side as his momentum carried him past. The assassin held a hand over her wounded eye, but she swung her sword in such furious arcs that Damon had to pause. The illusion hounded the woman, but she ignored it.

Damon heard Annarais cry out. She had struggled along the wall, grasping her belly, until now she was in front of the mirror. She grabbed the curtain with her free hand and toppled, pulling the curtain down. Heedless of the mirror and of the assassin, Damon ran to her side. There was blood everywhere.

"Damon." It was Annarais's voice, but it didn't come from her. It was in his head. He looked up and saw her reflection in the mirror. There she stood, alive again, just as she had been yesterday. There was his reflection as well, clean and carefree.

"Do you understand?" said Annarais.

Damon did not need to say yes. He saw his yesterday self in the mirror. "You will never become a wizard," he thought to his reflection. "The apprentice does not become a wizard. He is replaced by one. I am not my past."

Movement caught his attention. He looked past his reflection. Stalking him was… a white-robed healer. Damon reached under his frock, unsheathed his knife, and held it pressed flat against his forearm where the assassin wouldn't see it. He turned as she approached.

Behind her, the first image of the imp continued to draw the repetitive attacks of the golem. The second image hopped and hissed, but the assassin was not distracted. Damon dismissed the second image with a thought. He looked at the assassin. He could see the wound he'd given her-a broken cheekbone. It hadn't shown in her reflection. The assassin sneered as she approached.

Damon knew that her mind would be unable to withstand the mirror's magic if she looked at her own reflection, but the assassin fixed her gaze on him. Slowly, deliberately, she stepped closer.

"You hurt me," she said. "So I'm not going to kill you as fast as I killed your friend. I'll make you squirm a little first. None of your little illusions are going to save you." She continued to fix her gaze on Damon and began swinging her sword before her.

"There's where you're wrong," cried Damon. "The phantasms that live in this mirror are real." With his free hand, he gestured over his shoulder at the mirror.

The assassin's gaze flicked to the mirror, to her own reflection-disguised as a healer. Her eyes lost their intensity, and she stood still. Damon saw the struggle raging behind her dark eyes, the intensity of her purpose against the magic of the mirror. Suddenly, she pulled her sword back over her shoulder to strike a blow, her training and determination just barely winning out over the mirror's magic.

"Welcome, healer," said Damon.

His words added to the power of the mirror's magic, and it overcame the assassin's resistance. What her eyes saw and her ears heard, her mind believed. She dropped her sword, and her arm fell to her side.

"Who are you?" asked Damon, almost tauntingly.

"I come from Kjeldor in search of the great Master Wane," said the assassin. She seemed a little confused. Her hands closed into fists and opened again nervously, as if the internal struggle continued, but she played her part.

"I am a former student of Master Wane," said Damon. "I welcome you to his home." He held out his arms to embrace her, and she returned the embrace in kind. "You are what you see," he said.

"But where is Master Wane?" persisted the impostor, uneasy in the embrace. "I have an ancient artifact which we Kjeldorans need his guidance on." She began to pull away.

"I am what I will," continued Damon. He plunged the knife into the small of her back. The woman started, then backed away in shock. She turned and collapsed, bleeding, the knife sticking from her back. Her eyes were wide with surprise. Damon stooped over her, yanked the knife free, and planted it in her throat. Her reflection remained in the mirror. Damon turned toward it, his back to the corpse.

"Begone," he said, and the reflection was gone.

Annarais's image remained. "Thank you, dear Annarais," he said, and he dismissed her reflection, as well.

In the mirror, he saw the golem, a creature with no mind, still locked in futile combat with the imp, a creature with no body. He was considering what to do with them when something grabbed his ankles and yanked him to the unforgiving floor.

It was the assassin. Blood no longer ran from the gash where Damon's knife stuck in her throat, and her dark eyes were now lit by some eerie force. The black gem in her vest glowed like a cold heart. Her hands, strong as vises, pulled Damon onto his back and under the weight of the living corpse. They clamped onto his neck. His face bulged and he couldn't breathe. He clawed at the assassin's face, but she seemed impervious to pain.

"Your little trick has killed me," said the assassin, in a hollow, ragged voice. The effort of speech made blood dribble past the knife in her neck. "But I am a devotee of the night. Death makes me stronger." She dropped her weight on Damon's belly, and the last of the air in his lungs squeezed out his throat. "You tricked my mind, but my mind has now been sacrificed to the night. You'll have no more luck with your trickery. That's all your kind of magic is-trickery."

Damon's frantic struggles were useless beneath the weight of the powerful, skilled, relentless assassin. He closed his eyes to gather what was left of his concentration. He remembered Master Wane saying, "The mind that is moved is not the true mind."

Damon opened his eyes and cast his gaze at the imp that held the golem in its endless cycle of attacks. He willed the imp to move toward him and the assassin.

Staring down into Damon's face, the assassin continued, "You wizards of the sea and sky think you understand magic, but your magic is soft and harmless, insubstantial as the images you create."

The golem followed the image of the imp, striking and striking with the massive, spike-covered ball at the end of its left arm. Now Damon willed the image to cover the assassin.

"When you are dead," said the assassin, "we shall make a zombie of you, so that you can serve in my lords-"

In a blur, the golem brought its mighty weapon and smashed the assassin's head to one side, cutting off her taunting speech. The impact knocked the corpse off Damon, and as he gasped for breath he willed the imp over the assassin again. The golem, finally striking flesh instead of phantom, smashed the flailing corpse beyond recognition. A blow shattered the black stone on the assassin's chest, and she stopped moving for good.

For a long while Damon rested on his hands and knees regaining his breath, trying to comprehend all that had happened to him. Finally he rose, strode across the training room, and opened the door to Master Wane's chamber, the door that only wizards could open. Behind it he found not stairs but an empty shaft. He levitated into Master Wane's chambers. There he found nothing but a round room, bare walls, bare floors, and five open doorways leading to the balcony that circled the top of the tower. He walked onto the balcony and looked out over the sound.

Damon saw the deep orange sky and the black clouds. At his will, the sky shifted from orange, through red, to purple, and then to blue with white clouds. He chose to see the sky as a nice, clear shade of blue.

There, on the balcony, he awaited his colleague's return.