Soul of the Fire

There was a fenced yard for the horses inside. Before they turned the horses loose, Fitch told Morley to leave the saddles on them so they could make a quick departure. Morley wasn't any more interested in lingering than was Fitch. Together, they raced up the dozen wide granite steps worn smooth and swayback over the centuries, surely by the feet of countless wizards.

Inside, it was just like Franca had told him, only her words of how big it was couldn't match the truth of the sight. A hundred feet overhead a glassed roof let in the sunlight. In the center of the tiled floor stood a clover-leaf-shaped fountain. Water shot fifteen feet into the air above the top bowl, flowing over each bigger one underneath until it ran into a pool at the bottom surrounded by a white marble wall that could be a bench.

Red marble columns were as big as Franca said. They held up arches below a balcony that ran all the way around the oval-shaped room. Morley whistled. It echoed back from the distance.

"Come on," Fitch said, shaking himself out of his awe.

They ran through the hall Franca had told him about and burst through a door at the top of several flights of stairs. They followed a walkway round square buildings without windows and then climbed stairs that followed halfway around a tower, to a walkway tunneling under what looked to be a road overhead, before they crossed a stone bridge over a small, green courtyard far below.

At last, they came to a massive rampart as broad as a road. Fitch looked out over the right side, between the gaps in the crenellation big enough for a man to stand in. He could see the city of Aydindril spread out below. For a boy who grew up in the flat land of Anderith, it was a dizzying sight Fitch had been impressed by a lot of things he'd seen along the way, but nothing came close to this place.

At the other end of the rampart, a dozen immense columns of variegated red stone held up a protruding entablature of dark stone. Six of the columns stood to each side of a gold-clad door. Above were more layers of fancy stonework, some of it decorated with brass plaques and round metal disks, all of them covered with strange symbols.

As they crossed the long rampart, Fitch realized the door had to be at least ten or twelve feet tall, and a good four feet wide. The gold-clad door was marked with some of the same symbols as on the plaques and disks.

When Fitch pushed on the door, it silently swung inward.

"In here," Fitch whispered. He didn't know why he was whispering, except that maybe he feared to wake the spirits of the wizards who haunted the place.

He didn't want the spirits to make him jump from the rampart like the soldiers had done from the bridge; it looked like the edge dropped off down the mountain for thousands of feet.

"You sure?" Morley asked.

"I'm going in. You can wait here or go with me. It's up to you."

Morley's eyes were looking all around, not seeming able to decide on where to settle. "I guess I'll go with you."

Inside, to each side, glass spheres, about as big as a head, sat on green marble pedestals, like armless statues waiting to greet visitors to the huge room of ornate stonework. In the middle, four columns of polished black marble, at least as big around as a horse was long, from head to tail, formed a square that supported arches at the outer edges of a central dome.

There were wrought-iron sconces holding candles all around the room, but up in the dome a ring of windows let light flood in, so they didn't need to light the candles. Fitch felt like he was in a place the Creator Himself might have. He felt like he should drop to his knees and pray in such a place.

A red carpet led down the wing they were in. In a row down each side of the carpet were six-foot-tall white marble pedestals. Each had to be bigger around than Master Drummond's belly. Up on top of each pedestal were different objects. There were pretty bowls, fancy gold chains, an inky black bottle, and other objects, carved from burled wood. Some of the things Fitch couldn't make sense of.

He didn't pay much attention to the things on the columns; he looked instead across the huge room, to the other side of the central dome. There, he saw a table piled with a clutter of things, and there, leaning against the table, looked to be the thing he'd come for.

Between each pair of the black columns topped in gold, a wing ran off from the vast central chamber. To the left it looked like a disorderly library, with books stacked all over the floor in tall columns. The wing to the right was dark.

Fitch trotted down the red carpet. At the end, broad steps, near to a dozen, went down into the sunken floor of cream-colored marble at the center of the First Wizard's enclave below the dome. He took the steps two at a time up the other side, up toward the table before a towering round-topped window straight ahead.