Matabar

For a moment, a pregnant pause filled the office. Ildar — just as stout as Ardi remembered him to be from the Pnevs' celebration, though the faint outline of his once-imposing build still showed — shifted his worried, puzzled gaze from Senior Magister Paarlax to Ardan and back again.

The Senior Magister himself seemed intent on competing with a seasoned actor in the richness of his facial expressions. One moment, he was frowning, knitting his bushy eyebrows into a single woolly line; the next, he'd jerk them up nearly to his hairline; then he would puff his cheeks out only to deflate them, flushing scarlet before going pale once more, and…

"I was looking for something to remove the press plate on the typewriter," Ardi blurted, gesturing with his free hand — thankfully not the one still holding the scholar's notes — toward the spool of ink ribbon resting on the newspaper. "All I could find in the cabinet was that ribbon, and-"

"And you, my dear friend," Ildar supplied, taking Paarlax by the arm and leading him to a chair, "forgot to lock the safe, as always."

"Did I?" The scholar asked, sounding a bit skeptical as he lowered himself onto one of the chairs. "Are you sure, Mr. Nalimov, that he wasn't sent here by that wretched den of swindlers?"

"Of course not, my dear friend," Ildar nodded, a touch more vigorously than the situation warranted. "I don't think Bri-&-Man would bother hiring an ordinary — albeit talented — first-year student. Besides, although I'm not well-versed in Star Magic, he clearly has only one Star, correct?"

Paarlax looked up at the single star on Ardi's epaulettes and exhaled in relief. Meanwhile, Ildar circled around behind the Senior Magister and positioned himself between Ardan and Paarlax, waving a hand behind his back.

The young man promptly closed the book and reached for the safe, intending to-

"Leave it," Paarlax said suddenly. Rising to his feet, he walked over to the door and locked it with a twist of the latch.

Ildar and Ardi exchanged puzzled glances, while the Senior Magister moved away from the door and slid open one of the filing cabinet drawers. Oddly, instead of the usual labeled index cards, the drawer held an old-looking bottle made from cloudy glass and with a battered label, along with five squat tumblers nestled inside one another.

Retrieving the bottle and three of the tumblers, Paarlax strode over to his own desk (where Ardi stood frozen in bewilderment), cleared some of the papers aside, spread out a sheet of newspaper, and placed the glasses on it. He then poured the amber liquid into them in perfectly equal measures, as though gauging each portion with a ruler.

Once the bottle was stoppered with a makeshift cork, he handed each of them a drink, then turned to Ardi with a faint narrowing of his eyes.

"Well, Mr. Egobar," he said, "let's see how close all those praises Convel and an Manish sing about you come to the truth."

Ardan, feeling not merely stunned, but adrift in some nebulous state — akin to the uncertain parameters of the Ley's fundamental properties in Paarlax's own research — opened and closed his mouth wordlessly.

"How do you think the Ley propagates?" Paarlax asked, leaning against a nearby table, arms crossed, though still gripping his tumbler tightly.

Ildar positioned himself on the Senior Magister's right, making it quite clear Ardi should respond. It was unlikely Paarlax would cause trouble for the young man, but he did have a good rapport with the dean of Ardan's faculty, so being cautious seemed wise.

Ardi recalled everything he had read, as well as what he had observed when he'd kindled his second Star. He hadn't fully understood most of it, but his mind had latched onto some fragments and filed them away.

"Is it a relativistic characteristic?" He asked at last.

Paarlax gave a wry huff and saluted him with the glass. "It's good that you realized it isn't absolute. But since you claim it's relative… Relative to what, precisely?"

Ardan pondered briefly and then, drawing on what he had read, though with little confidence, finally answered, "Relative… to the observer?"

The Senior Magister gave a roguish grin and snapped his fingers. "Close, young mage, close indeed. That conclusion does you credit and confirms the glowing praise of your instructors."

He walked over to the still-open safe and pulled out the very device Ardi had noticed before: a steel platform protected beneath a glass dome, with sets of gradually narrowing "gates" spaced evenly inside. They were like the curved braces between the tines of a fork, each gap shrinking until, at the very last gate, barely a hair could fit through.

Ardi could only guess how many exes and how much advanced tooling it had taken to create such a contraption. Maybe it hadn't even been made with standard technology; perhaps its creation had involved Star Magic. Then again, performing the calculations needed for forging seals at such a high degree of metalworking precision would have taken… Ardi cast a glance at the rows of grimoires on the safe's upper shelves… likely about as much time as filling those shelves.

"Not relative to the observer, my dear student, but relative to a resonating field," the Senior Magister said gently, in a tone that emulated a mother's care for her cherished child, as he set the device on the desk.

"A field… What kind of field?" Ardan asked in confusion.

Paarlax's lips stretched into an excited smile. He looked like a child granted permission to show off their prized possessions to guests.

"An excellent question," he said, circling the table. Removing the chain with a key from around his neck, he unlocked a drawer in the desk. Inside, rather than the papers Ardan had assumed would be there, lay something vaguely reminiscent of a Ley generator.

Only it was drastically smaller. With some effort, one could've fit it in a large satchel. It also weighed far less than a standard model, or else Paarlax — sturdy as he might've been — would never have managed to lift it onto the desk by himself.

"This is-" Ardan began.

"A prototype," the Senior Magister cut in. "I've been working on a miniature Ley generator for quite some time. Unfortunately, this specimen can produce only twelve Red Star rays."

"How many hours of operation?" Ardan asked.

"Under what initial parameters, young man?" Paarlax inquired.

"Let's say…" Ardi eyed the combustion chamber, the oil pan, and the number of regulating knobs near the pressure gauge. "With one liter of fuel?"

"The Ley number of the fuel?" Paarlax prompted.

Ley generators used fuel with a Ley number that indicated the percentage of Ertalain oxide in the petroleum mixture.

"The standard for household generators," Ardan clarified.

"One moment," Paarlax said, retrieving a simple workbook from the safe and flipping through a few pages. "At one liter of six-percent fuel, this prototype can supply a continuous load for about five hours."

Ardan set his glass on the table and drew closer to the apparatus. Machines didn't normally pique his curiosity, yet this device inspired a certain respectful awe.

"That's almost forty percent higher than a standard generator," he muttered, carefully examining the design, its key components, how cleverly the cylinders were concealed, and then… "But what about the blades? What do you use instead of blades to extract a spark from the accumulator?"

"Ah!" The Senior Magister raised a forefinger. "To lighten the construction, I did away with blades entirely."

At that, Ardan's eyebrows nearly shot up to his hairline — just as Paarlax's had a while ago.

"But… how?!"

"A field," Paarlax said, mystically drawing out the word. He then connected the generator to the mysterious glass apparatus using several thick rubber hoses.

Next, he took a small glass container, poured fuel into the intake chamber, closed the lid, turned a valve, and flipped a switch.

At first, nothing happened. Then, with barely any noise or vibration, the device issued the faintest hum. Ardi could barely make out the cylinders' movements, but the extra vibrations normally caused by rotating blades never came.

And a moment later, a shimmering crimson haze crept along the tubes and into the chamber. Ardan initially didn't grasp what he was seeing, until, after a few heartbeats, he realized it was a cloud of Ley flowing from the generator into the chamber.

Whether it was a vapor, a mass, a wave — one might've called it any of those, for Ardi wouldn't have been able to guess its proper name.

Initially, the scarlet, flickering mist filled the first compartment over a few seconds, then streamed through the narrowing gates into the second compartment. Normally, the flow should have slowed as each gate shrank, but instead, it rushed faster and faster, until at last, it filled the entire device.

The Senior Magister switched off the apparatus the moment the crimson haze reached the far side of the chamber.

"In my research, Mr. Student, I concluded that the Ley, like any other energy, has a bond with the surrounding reality. And so-"

"Analyzers," Ard exhaled. "Analyzers operate on the same principle…"

Paarlax, who had been so animated just seconds before, suddenly deflated. Meanwhile, Ildar, who had been silent until then, surged forward, waving his hands.

"Let's not dwell on sad things!" The man urged, perhaps too zealously, trying to dispel the abrupt heaviness in the air. "After all-"

"After all," Paarlax cut him off, "those thieves at Bri-&-Man simply took my patent and twisted it around, exploiting a trivial wording mistake that my secretary made. Apparently, my analyzers employ a direct interaction with the Ley Lines rather than the Ley field's structure — and they claim that doesn't constitute a 'proper interaction!' Damn it! I'm certain that worthless little worm was planted in my design bureau by that accursed Trevor Man!"

Ardi blinked a couple of times. Analyzers were considered a prized asset of the Empire of the New Monarchy. Unlike Aversky's practice grounds, the Empire did not share that technology with foreign nations.

Yes, other countries had eventually developed their own analogues — through reverse engineering and industrial espionage — but those generally performed far less efficiently.

"You… You invented the analyzer?" Ardan asked in disbelief.

Paarlax grimaced, while Ildar let out a doleful sigh, pulled over a chair, sat down, and placed his tumbler before him.

"I invented the device's operating principle and the first prototype," the Senior Magister said with a dismissive wave, then glanced at his glass and downed it in one gulp. He opened the bottle again, poured himself another round, did the same for Ildar, and then they both tossed the liquor back just as quickly.

They were drinking clearly expensive whiskey the way drifters would knock back the cheap moonshine sold by the Telkarts. According to Arkar, that questionable brew — "production waste," as the Telkarts called it — would find its way swiftly into the hands of the city's poorest.

"The rest, including the method for storing data on various fields and how that data is displayed for the user, was indeed Trevor's engineers' doing," Paarlax went on, swirling his glass and watching the amber liquid slosh inside. "But without my calculations and theoretical frameworks, they'd have been stuck with a clunky chamber the size of this entire office, never arriving at the portable, wearable device they ended up with."

Ardi's mind whirled with a thousand questions: How had Paarlax discovered Ley fields? How had he uncovered the links between them and deduced their laws and guiding principles? How exactly was information stored in the analyzer's plate? And hundreds more besides.

And yet, what he finally asked turned out to be something else entirely. Perhaps those corporal's credentials from the Second Chancery, which were currently tucked away in the inner pocket of his jacket, had nudged him in that direction.

"Then why are you here?" Ardan asked, unable to conceal his genuine surprise.

A bitter smile crossed Paarlax's face. He had the look of a man sinking into thick, unwelcome memories. Slowly, that expression shifted back to the same spirited gleam he'd worn before, and his eyes cleared.

"Think about it, young man," the Senior Magister said. "Think, and answer your own question."

Answer his own question? What reason could a Senior Magister — one of the people who, in the last forty years, had propelled not only the Empire, but the entire world, several rungs up the ladder of progress — have to be in a place like the Menagerie?

A place inhabited by… creatures possessing the most direct, intimate ties to the Ley.

"I can see you've guessed my reason," the Senior Magister said with a dry chuckle. "Forgive my bluntness, but I would presume that you're likely of mixed blood, so… let me put it this way: to really examine the Ley's influence, including its effects on living organisms, in the greatest possible detail, one would need to vivisect Firstborn. Plural. — Hardly a practice our society encourages."

Ardi felt neither revulsion nor any flicker of resentment at his words. Paarlax, it seemed, was being sarcastic at his own expense rather than seriously suggesting such a thing.

"In this particular experiment," the Senior Magister went on, indicating the generator and the chamber, "I'm trying to measure the speed at which a Ley field expands. But alas, its concentration is too high."

"Too high?" Ardan repeated.

Paarlax nodded. "You see, on paper, the calculations suggest that the Ley might follow rules not entirely the same as the ones gravity or light do, but it's close enough. Logically speaking, if the Ley is part of our universe, it has to obey its laws. But!" He raised his forefinger again in that characteristic gesture — it was clearly a habit. "I still haven't pinned down what determines the Ley field itself. We can calculate it, we can even observe it" — he gestured at the chamber — "but its fundamental principles remain hidden behind the sheer volume of the field."

"How small a volume do you require, Senior Magister?" Ardi asked.

Paarlax tossed back another glassful. Seeing that Ardan had barely touched his own, he took it from him and drained that, too.

"The theoretical calculations imply that, relative to one centimeter, we're talking ten to the minus fourteenth."

Ardi blinked a few times in silence.

"But an atom…"

"Is ten to the minus eighth," Ildar supplied unexpectedly.

Ardan glanced from the chamber of the strange device that apparently measured the speed of Ley field propagation to the generator.

"Then how-"

"Excellent question," Paarlax cut him off once more. "Forgive me, young man, but I won't answer that. The last time I rambled on about such things around an outsider, it cost me my career."

"And an entire fortune," Ildar added.

"Thank you for rubbing salt in the wound, my friend," Paarlax said. "But money is the least of my worries."

"Even so, Erzans," Ildar pressed, coming over to the table and pouring more liquor into their glasses, "if you had decent funding, maybe you could manage to split the Ley field not just on paper, but for real."

"Perhaps," the Senior Magister admitted.

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"But why not seek help from the Magisterium and the Guild?" Ardan couldn't help but ask. "They fund research."

Paarlax sighed and patted Ardi's shoulder in a fatherly way. "Results from state-funded research, my dear student, belong to the state. We do receive generous royalties, as well as other benefits, but the patents and the rest all revert to the Crown by law."

"And-"

"Don't misunderstand me, young man," Paarlax said, waving his hands. "I'm not against this arrangement; in fact, I think it's perfectly fair. If not for the Crown, which invests nearly seven percent of the national budget into research, who knows how backwards our world would be? And it's only right that if they give you an insane amount of exes for your most reckless idea, then the results — if they are promising — should be shared fairly. However…" He returned to the table, carefully disconnected the hoses from the generator, and placed it back into the desk drawer rather than in the safe, which was somewhat surprising. "Not every experiment, my dear student, should fall into the hands of those unafraid to stain them with blood."

Ardan frowned. He wasn't entirely sure what Paarlax meant by that.

"I will treat these experiments as knowledge for the sake of knowledge," the Senior Magister said, placing the key back around his neck. "Not as a new war machine."

It glimmered faintly against his skin. Only then did Ardi realize that the safe was likely a decoy, while the unremarkable drawer in the desk probably had serious magical safeguards — far stronger than those protecting the scraps of research in the safe, or the chamber that was useless without the special generator.

And as it turned out…

The real product of his research wasn't the journal Ardan had set on the table, nor the "gated" chamber, but… the generator itself.

"It's rather like the notion that, if you could outrun the speed of light, you'd travel back into the past?" Ildar remarked, tilting his tumbler.

"Oh, don't start with that, my friend," Paarlax snorted, pouring himself another measure of whiskey. "To begin with, you can't outrun light. And even if someone managed it, they wouldn't wind up in the past. Relative to them, the rest of the world would keep moving forward while they simply stood still."

"But Erzans, you once claimed that measuring fundamental light particles changes them not only in the future, but also in the past," Ildar said.

"On paper," Paarlax confirmed. "On paper, in some calculations, that does happen — and it drives me and my fellow Ley field researchers half mad. But proving that paradox experimentally? We won't be doing that this century, or even this millennium."

"Remember, my dear friend, that just thirty years ago, this city's roads were filled with horse-drawn carriages, and our homes were lit by oil lamps," Ildar reminded him. "Who knows what the next decade might bring."

"Perhaps you're right, Ildar, and-"

Ardi's mind was practically boiling with endless questions.

"So, you think that by splitting the Ley field, one could… travel to the past?" He asked.

Paarlax cast Ildar a reproachful look, but the man merely spread his plump arms out, causing the hem of his jacket to lift a little.

"I don't believe so, young man," Paarlax answered, his tone somewhat sterner than before. "The concept of time is extremely relative."

"And yet, Erzans," Ildar insisted, "your calculations don't say it's impossible."

"They likewise don't prove it's possible," Paarlax countered. The two old friends seemed to be returning to a long-running argument that left Ardi somewhat lost. "I understand your fascination with these grand ideas of time travel, my friend. And if they bring you some comfort, may the Face of Light help you. But as I've shown you countless times, to split a Ley field and then accelerate a Ley-beam to the necessary velocity would require nothing less than infinite energy. Do you understand? In-fin-ite." He drew out each syllable. "Such a thing does not exist in our reality."

"The Sidhe's Flame," Ildar remarked, as though he were pointing out something trivial.

Ardi nearly jumped. That artifact's name had been coming up far too often lately.

"Drop it, my friend," Paarlax said, pouring more whiskey for himself and Ildar. He glanced at Ardi, who shook his head to decline, then stoppered the bottle. "That myth about Mendera sneaking into the Castle of the Sidhe of the Flaming Dawn — assuming that the Sidhe and Fae existed at all — and stealing some flame capable of generating boundless Ley energy simply doesn't hold up. Enthusiasts have run the numbers. An object like that can't exist in our reality."

"But we did win the war," Ildar persisted.

"No one is denying that," Paarlax said with a nod, "nor the heroism of Mendera and his company. They simply stole something else entirely — an unusually powerful kind of accumulator. Powerful enough, at least, to secure victory over Ectassus."

"But-"

"And if a bottomless source of energy really existed," Paarlax interrupted him, gesturing ever more emphatically, his words taking on a fervent heat, "then where is it? Why aren't we seeing its impact? Why isn't it feeding our entire land with a limitless supply of Ley energy? Why do factories and plants mostly run on gas and diesel, rather than Ley generators? Where are the locomotives fueled by the Ley? The automobiles with generators instead of engines? Where is all of that, my friend? If we truly had an inexhaustible energy source, we'd have already reached our moon — or maybe even the neighboring planet — instead of complaining that Trevor Man stole my patent."

"They might have hidden it away."

"Who? The Crown? Then where's the physical evidence? We would have found something."

"Not the Crown," Ildar said, casting a sidelong glance at Ardan.

Paarlax frowned at first, then smiled. It was neither sad nor particularly eager — more like the expression of someone who had just caught hold of a word that had been dancing on the tip of their tongue for some time.

"I've been wondering why your face seemed so familiar, young man," he nodded, suddenly figuring it out. "You're a descendant of Aror Egobar."

"His great-grandson," Ardi replied without denying it.

"It's incredible how small our world really is," the Senior Magister allowed himself a brief chuckle.

"Pardon me?" Ardi asked, not understanding.

"There's a theory, my dear promising student…" Paarlax stepped closer to him, inspecting him from head to toe as though Ardi were some exhibit — or one of those creatures living in the farthest horizons of the Menagerie. It was not the most pleasant feeling. "A theory that your great-grandfather, after the Dark Lord's defeat at the fortress of Pashar, managed to steal the Flame of the Sidhe and destroy it before his own death. For a while, people even believed your great-grandfather's demise was connected to him destroying the Flame of the Sidhe. But, given he was in hiding all this time, I suspect the Flame was mere folklore. If the Dark Lord's right hand had truly gotten hold of such a mighty artifact — excuse the pun — then our country would be a very different place right now. Assuming we'd still exist at all…"

Ardan had never heard anything about that. This was now the second time someone had connected Ardi's great-grandfather to the Flame of the Sidhe. The first time, its Embers had been mentioned, and now it was the Flame itself.

Yes, the world was indeed a small place.

This was not the first time Ardi had heard this phrase being uttered by someone. That had been in Mart Borskov's little wagon and…

Sleeping Spirits… He and Mart had parted ways only eight months ago, but it felt like years had passed since then.

"And yet, my dear friend…" Ildar rose from his seat and came closer, as if afraid someone might overhear their "secret" if he spoke too loudly. "If the Firstborn, with their Speaking art…"

"The proper term is Aean'Hane," Paarlax corrected him. "Speaking is merely the first stage of the Firstborn's art."

Ardi looked at the scholar with surprise and, unexpectedly, a hint of admiration. The medallion of a Senior Magister wasn't awarded to just anyone.

"Let's call it that, then." Ildar shrugged. "But here's the point: if they could create an accumulator of such power, without any modern technology, that it effectively turned the tide of a war — a war bloodier and vaster than any other in the history of the world — then surely we, with our scientific progress…"

"Still have no idea how to craft anything comparable," Paarlax finished for him. "Don't forget, Ildar, that our written history spans only three and a half millennia. The Firstborn's writings go back more than twenty-six thousand years. Yes, our technology may look like something out of a fairy tale, but that doesn't mean the Firstborn didn't have their own technology that was different from ours. Perhaps they never built iron railways, or cars, or ships displacing hundreds of tons. But they knew… other things. All right. We've rambled on for too long. It's surprising, really… Alcohol doesn't usually loosen my tongue this much."

Ardi maintained a mask of icy calm. The longer he worked with Star Magic, the stronger his skills as a Speaker grew, including his Witch's Gaze, just as Nicholas-the-Stranger had warned they would. And the opposite was true as well. Paarlax, who only had three Stars to his name, and a bit of liquor clouding his senses, hadn't even noticed that he'd fallen under Ardi's subtle influence. And Ardi had been too tense and anxious to rein in this irritating, albeit occasionally helpful, talent.

"Still," Ildar went on, "if we had even a fraction of the energy you estimated is necessary to break down the Ley field and propel the Ley-beam, then-"

"First of all, Ildar, let me remind you that's impossible," the Senior Magister scoffed, grabbing the bottle and the empty glasses to put them back in the file cabinet. "What fraction could you possibly take from infinity? That's the whiskey talking, my friend. And even if it were possible, to shatter the Ley field would require a colossal surge of energy. Something so powerful it might blow up half of the capital, if not split the entire planet in half. Maybe it would even obliterate all of known reality, or transform us into a star, or — there are so many 'ors…' I'd rather not list them all."

"But if it's like light, my friend…" Ardi still couldn't fathom why Ildar was pushing Paarlax so hard about these fantastical notions of traveling through time.

In Atta'nha's library, Ardi had read stories of how spirits sometimes returned to guide their descendants. But that had nothing to do with time travel — only with paths once trodden by the dead. Even the mightiest of the Sidhe, including their Queens and Kings, did not command time. At best, some of them, those endowed with a special gift, could pierce the future with their minds. Prophets, seers, fortune tellers — one could call them by any of those names.

But their prophecies had always been so vague that until they'd come to pass, they might as well have been fairy-tale nonsense.

"What do you mean, Ildar?" Paarlax asked after locking his special cabinet.

"If, to an observer, anything faster than light appears to be frozen, while for the one outpacing the light the journey continues forward, then maybe the explosion meant to destroy the capital is also relative." His face grew dark, as though he were staring inward into some personal darkness. "The capital or the planet would shatter, but only in a future that vanishes, because the observer has moved back in time, where the explosion hasn't yet happened."

Paarlax shook his head and squeezed his friend's shoulder.

"I'm sorry for your loss, my friend," said the Senior Magister, his voice trembling just enough to show he meant it. "I'm sorry, and I understand. But what you're talking about is inhuman… and unscientific. If someone traveled to the past because of this explosion, and in that past, the explosion never took place, then how did they time travel in the first place? You're stepping into the realm of paradox, Ildar. Or multi-reality theory which is pure fiction based on speculation."

Ardi had hardly spoken to Alice and had no idea what might have happened to Ildar in the past that had led him to fixate on such theories. And even if Ardi had known her better, it wasn't exactly polite to pry.

"All right, we've taken up too much of our new acquaintance's time," the Senior Magister said, glancing at his wristwatch. "Eternal Angels… It was even longer than I thought."

Ardi looked at his own watch. Nearly three hours remained before he was supposed to meet Tess near the temple. The journey there would take maybe forty minutes, so…

"I can still-"

"No, no," Paarlax cut him off with a shake of his head, then looked over the heap of paperwork. "You've already done the work, and quite diligently at that, though you weren't obligated to do any of it in the first place… So, let's do this: as a thank you for a pleasant conversation, for your truly bright mind, and for taking your task so seriously, I'll show you the anomalies you've spent hours compiling."

Ardi's heart quickened. Getting to see such rare, magical creatures — access to which was almost as restricted as the forbidden sections of the Grand's library — and alongside Senior Magister Paarlax, no less?

Alirov had unwittingly given Ardan a gift for the Feast of the Saints rather than doling out any punishment!

He only had two hours left, though…

"I can see you're interested," the Senior Magister said warmly, patting Ardi on the shoulder (he had to lift his hand quite high to reach). "But I also sense you're still uncertain — what is it?"

"I have only two hours and-"

"Ah, that's unfortunate," Paarlax said, interrupting him yet again, visibly crestfallen. "In that time, I can only show you one, maybe two anomalies at most. So choose wisely."

Ardan's spirits lifted. He'd half feared he wouldn't have time even for a single magical creature. But two?

Which one to pick?

One image after another flickered through his mind. The list of anomalies he'd meticulously pored over buzzed like a startled beehive. He did the first thing that occurred to him and simply blurted out a name:

"The Wolf of Blazing Darkness!"

"An excellent choice," Paarlax nodded. "Well then, gentlemen, off we go!"

With that, the Senior Magister stashed his journal in the safe, locked it, and, whistling somewhat awkwardly under his breath, headed for the exit. Compared to the dour mood with which Paarlax had greeted Ardi hours earlier, he now seemed practically buoyant.

The same could not be said of Ildar. He looked like clouded glass: a bit dull, withdrawn, and lurking in his own shadow. It was amazing how alcohol could affect people in such different ways.

The three of them — Ardi grabbed his bag but left his coat on the "rack" — crossed the long corridor, passed through another door, then descended the stairs until they reached…

"An elevator?" Ardan exhaled, gripping his staff more tightly.

"More of a platform," Paarlax corrected him.

And the Senior Magister was right. The stairwell, which was so big it could've easily fit a small truck, led to a huge platform. Hanging from ship-grade chains sheathed in protective covers, it looked like an entire room without walls: it was maybe twenty-five square meters, or perhaps more than that. It had no handrails or any other sort of safety features. It was just a massive iron platform suspended in a stone shaft by more iron contraptions, with hundreds of meters of empty darkness below.

Empty, underground darkness. There was no light, no breeze, no sun. Just stone — stone beneath them, stone to the right and left of them, and stone above them. Stone that, for reasons known only to itself, didn't collapse to bury those foolish enough to descend into it.

It was a crushing, heavy presence, definitely not intended for mortals…

"Are you all right?" Paarlax asked kindly.

"I'm just afraid of elevators," Ardi admitted, bending over a little as he leaned on his staff, trying to breathe in sync with his heartbeat. "And enclosed, tight spaces."

"A curious trait." With that, Paarlax approached the control panel, flipped a lever, and pushed a few buttons.

Soon, the chains rattled, and the platform began its slow descent. Ardi closed his eyes, attempting not to dwell on how each passing moment took them deeper underground. How the shaft was tightening its unyielding stone embrace around them, and-

"Ildar," Paarlax spoke up. "I'm surprised to see you here so early. The next delivery of supplies is three days from now."

Ardi prayed Ildar wouldn't blurt out that Alice had asked him to come at Milar's request.

"I was driving by, old friend, and realized that we hadn't seen each other in a while."

"A while? We discussed my latest experiment two weeks ago."

"Two weeks without a close friend feels like six months without a wife."

"Believe me, Ildar — I'd gladly go without mine for two… oh, forgive me. I didn't think."

"It's fine, my friend. That's just the whiskey talking."

"Yes… the blasted whiskey."

Ardi breathed a soft sigh of relief. Milar had been right about Ildar supplying food to the Menagerie. That explained his fancy suit, his shoes that were worth at least fifty exes, and why he was on such close terms with Paarlax.

It was also fortunate that he hadn't spilled the secret about Alice. Though his spur-of-the-moment excuse could have been more graceful; as it was, it had sounded rather improvised.

The next fifteen minutes or so passed by in silence, with Ardi keeping his eyes tightly shut. Perhaps he was missing some impressive views, but at least this made him feel better. Breathing came a little easier, though his chest and head still felt like they'd gotten caught in invisible, steel clamps.

"We've arrived," Paarlax finally announced. "Welcome to the Third Horizon."

Ardi opened his eyes and found himself in what looked like a utility corridor. It was roughly seven meters high and five meters wide. The floors, walls, and ceiling glinted under the glow of Ley-lamps, which were hidden behind metal grates. It all had a faint metallic sheen to it. Everything, everywhere Ardi looked, was coated with steel, burying the naked rock beneath its cold armor.

He suddenly felt his stomach lurch so violently that he nearly lost his footing. But this had nothing to do with his fear of elevators or enclosed spaces.

"Here," Paarlax offered Ardi a flask of something that had a strong herbal aroma.

A tonic.

"It'll help for a while," the Senior Magister explained. "These Horizons are completely isolated from the Ley, and the atmosphere here is… unusual."

Ardi managed not to mention that he'd felt something similar before, in a Second Chancery cell.

He drank the tonic and did feel noticeably better. His organs stopped doing a frantic dance, and the pounding in his head subsided. The sensation of having a limb severed, however, did not go away.

Without any Ley to call upon, he felt robbed of something precious, something he hadn't even realized he possessed until it was gone.

It was strange that it hadn't felt this severe in his cell…

"And the anomalies?" He asked.

"As you've read yourself, we mix special crystal powders — Ertalain-based ones — into their food," Paarlax said. "Now, shall we?"

They started walking. The corridor was entirely shielded from the Ley Lines and flanked by immense steel gates. The gates' panels likely retracted into the walls. Next to them was a massive control lever, plus a pair of cranks and valves, small observation windows, smaller access doors, and overhead, there were graphite boards listing each cell's maintenance schedule. And there was plenty more besides.

Ardi tried to take in every detail, but an unpleasant feeling gnawed at him. His heart was skipping beats, and the air in his lungs felt like a foul-smelling fog that threatened to make him ill. His legs kept trying to turn him around and force him to sprint back to the elevator. From time to time, he found himself reaching out to rest a hand on the wall, seeking some sense of steady ground.

His sweaty, pale palm met the cold metal, which offered only a dead, unfeeling silence. Ardi heard nothing. The world around him was hushed — there were no whispers, no faint murmurs of hidden tales.

Could this be how those without the gifts of a Speaker or a Listener lived their whole lives? In utter silence, with no murmur of stories in the wood, no stone inviting them to hear forgotten legends, no wind sharing tales of the horizon…

Ardi gave his head a little shake.

No. He definitely did not like this place.

"Here we are," Paarlax announced, stopping by a door beside yet another set of huge steel gates. A sign above read "349."

The Senior Magister carefully opened the door, and they entered a spacious antechamber.

"Our specimen was born here in the Menagerie, so it's accustomed to humans, not overly aggressive, and quite docile when fed… We always keep it well fed," Paarlax explained, taking a clipboard from the wall to scribble some notes. "Still, don't cross the boundary line. It's been trained never to cross it, and I'd advise you not to step over it, either."

With that warning, the scholar turned a wheel on the locking mechanism, and they stepped into…

A forest.

It felt like an actual forest.

All around them, fir and pine trees reached upwards. Birds sang somewhere in the boughs. Sunlight — distant and gentle — filtered through, and a light mist clung to the soft moss. The air was chilly and a bit damp, clinging to Ardi's skin like a fine drizzle. If one didn't look or listen too closely, it could pass for a real woodland scene.

But Ardi did listen and sniff the air.

The moss smelled fine, but not like true wild moss — there was none of that sweet-and-bitter tang creeping into his nostrils. The pines were almost too fragrant, their needles so soft it was as though they'd never felt forest fires or storms. Their thick trunks, sturdy and unscarred, had never been tested by bark beetles, or the antlers of elk and deer, or the tusks of boars, or the claws of bears.

The wind was cool and damp, but it felt artificial somehow. It was the kind of wind one wouldn't encounter even amid the Alcade's heaviest rains. And the sun overhead glowed too steadily, too mildly, unlike the sun of any real summer day.

No, it wasn't a clever illusion like the ones in the "Heron" casino. The scientists had simply grown a forest down here, hung a lamp overhead (disguised by some glamour, no doubt), and rigged up a system of fans for ventilation. If Ardi focused his hunter's senses, he could guess the fan's location from several hundred meters away.

The Wolf of Blazing Darkness had quite the domain — three hundred meters across, at least.

"Now, let me call it," Paarlax said, taking a small whistle off the clipboard. "Try to remain calm."

"Yes," Ildar murmured for the first time in a while, sounding half-dazed. "Please, Ard, try not to jump right out the nearest window. Not that there seem to be any here…"

He didn't finish that thought. Ardan turned to face him. Their gazes locked.

How had the Spiders always known the movements and plans of people in the Second Chancery? The answer was standing right in front of Ardi, because no one but Milar's squad knew what had happened with those windows.

Maybe Alice had simply told her "friend" about what had happened to her colleagues. However, there was one problem with this: Ardan had that thought only after he'd already raised his staff and snapped open his grimoire.

Ildar had no chance to cover his slip. With a swift tug, he yanked off his belt and pressed something on the buckle. It snapped into a short wand inscribed with runes.

Ildar knew Star Magic.

He was one of the Spiders.