Nineteen after Sun's Height, 30016 DC

Emlyn swore, his hand flying to his sword, Ali yelled in shock, and Ensa whirled around, her night-seeing eyes picking up the symbols etched on the back of the now firmly closed door. 'Magic!' Star, her fur standing stiffly on end, had wrapped her tail firmly around Ensa's neck, hissing. The wizard looked around frantically, trying to take in a room painted in disorienting bleached colours, that suddenly seemed full of strange -

'What's underfoot?' Ali asked, suddenly, feeling a change. Ensa glanced down - she saw from the corner of her eyes that everyone else did likewise, despite the fact that they couldn't see - and grimly answered the girl's question.

'Flagstones.' They all knew that it had been springy packed dirt in the ruined tower. Ensa swallowed and looked around in horror.

There was a loud clatter; Emlyn had taken a step, and knocked into something that wavered, overbalanced and fell noisily onto the stone floor. He froze guiltily, though he sounded as though more was bothering him than the worry that he might have damaged something. 'What was that?'

Ensa looked. The slender, branched shape was black against the deep grey floor and she had to bend down and touch it to feel the hard coldness of iron before she could explain it. 'A candle stand, I think. Don't anyone move; it's quite cluttered in here. I'll get some light; shut your eyes.'

Closing her own, she muttered a few words, flicking her stubby fingers in precise and intricate gestures, and felt the spell ignite, the power streaming in a warm rush up her spine and down through her arm into the staff she was clutching in her right hand.

Everyone cracked their eyes open, blinking furiously to adjust to the sudden dazzling brightness filling the room. Then they looked around again; pale and wide-eyed as they discovered what Ensa had already realised.

This wasn't the ruined tower.

Ensa had the impression that they might be underground, and after a moment she realised that the reason for that was because the circular room was windowless. The stone walls were covered by tapestries; they might have been brightly coloured once, a long time ago, but were now too faded and dusty to make out the colours and patterns they had once displayed. The room was full of furniture; several other wrought iron candlesticks beside the one Emlyn had knocked over, a long table or workbench, a tall bookshelf with a few dilapidated tomes and some other dust-obscured objects, some more shelves over by the wall, a couple of chairs and a fat, once-plush couch, still piled with overstuffed cushions.

'Where the hell are we?' Ali yelped.

'We don't know!' Emlyn shot back. He picked his way between the furniture and went back to the door. 'Ensa, can you help me have a look at this?'

Ensa was still examining the room. Everything was covered in dust and clearly no one had been down here in many years; but, the wizard noted, there was no sign of moths or mice or other pests having got in. This place must be well sealed.

'Coming, Emlyn,' she said, but she paused before joining him, lifting Star in her hand. 'Have a look around,' she said, quietly. 'See if you can find a way out? I think you might not be able to, but I'd like you to try.'

The rat brushed her nose across Ensa's hand, whiskers quivering, and then whipped around and ran down the coarse skirt of the wizard's robe, scurrying across the dished flagstones of the floor to disappear into the shadows by the wall.

There was no door any more. Emlyn stared at it stupidly, his heart suddenly pounding. He'd been fooled initially because there was an alcove cut into the stonework of the wall, the same size and shape as the arched doorway had been in the ruined tower. But the magic symbols Ensa had spotted were etched onto stonework that showed no sign it ever had or could move. His mind raced wildly. How could they get out now? What should they do?

'Don't bother,' he said, hoarsely, as the half-orc came over to join him. 'We're not getting out here.'

'I'd still like to know how we got in,' Ensa muttered. She squeezed herself in beside Emlyn and ran her hands across the wall, brushing dust from the written spell fragments. 'I think I can work out what this is, Emlyn. Might give me some chance of reversing it.'

'You can do that?' Emlyn asked with sudden hope.

'Mm.' Ensa was absorbed in the runes. 'This is obviously a transport… see this combination here? It's related to a Draconic phrase that roughly translates, uh, "many days travel"… and this here might be about the mechanism of the door, but… see, it's not an inscription describing what it does, it's the spell itself, and they're not written plain. You have to be a magic user to even start thinking about deciphering them, and this is way beyond my level. I don't think I can undo it or move us back. I can't cast a spell nearly this powerful. What I'm hoping is that it might already have the reverse translocation as part of spell and I might be able to figure out how to activate it… uh, gebeh, mirin, dan… well, if it makes you feel better, I think we're still on Iluen.'

It didn't. Emlyn swallowed again. 'There were other choices?'

'Well, there are other places.' Ensa wasn't really paying attention; she was counting on her fingers as she scanned the spell again. Emlyn left her to get on with it, biting down his panicked impulse to urge her to hurry, and looked around for the others. Shadow he couldn't see; the elf had slipped away among the clutter in the room and must be lurking somewhere. Ali was still where she had been, looking around with interest.

Emlyn picked his way back over to the girl, picking up the candle stand he'd knocked over and setting it upright again. 'You all right, Ali?'

'Yep,' Ali said brightly. 'What do we do now?'

Emlyn blinked and looked at the acrobat. Actually, she didn't look at all worried. Curious, perhaps; but even that was eager and slightly excited.

'Ensa's going to figure this out,' he said - more confidently than he really felt, but he wasn't going to let on that he was even a little frightened when Ali so clearly had no such apprehension. 'And we should - uh -' His mind blanked. He wished desperately that Tynan was here. The ranger always seemed to know what to do. The best that Emlyn could manage was a slightly frantic '- uh, search for another way out, just in case.'

'Sure.' Ali flipped herself over a table that stood in her way and dodged lightly through the furniture. Taken aback, Emlyn turned and picked his way around a pair of bookcases to the other side of the room, wincing at the noise as he knocked his armour plate against the corner of one tall wooden shelf. The acrobat didn't even seem to have noticed that they had been magically transported to - well, the gods knew where. He shook his head in disbelief.

All right. There might or might not be a door, and they might or might not be able to get out of it into wherever they were now and find a way back. But it was all right. Ali was right not to be worried. Ensa was deciphering the spell and Tynan was outside, and if they didn't come back soon then he'd be looking for a way to get them out too. They'd get them out. It was going to be fine. He clenched his stomach muscles, trying to dissipate the tight feeling.

In the mean time, he could do worse than following his own advice to Ali. Ahead of him was the masonry wall, curving gently away in both directions. He rested a hand gently on its slightly fuzzy dust-coated surface and followed it round to the right, leaving a dark clean train where his hand had rested. Rooms did have doors, after all.

Emlyn almost didn't see Shadow crouching in a small open space behind the workbench, and almost fell over the elf, who shot to his feet and moved out of the way in a hurry. 'Watch where you're going!'

Emlyn blushed, feeling clumsy and more than usually heavy in his full armour. Shadow sounded truly irritated. 'Move aside,' the elf ordered.

Emlyn jumped out of the way, his sword swinging against the wall with a dull crack, winced, bit his tongue, and asked meekly, 'What are you looking at?' The elf had knelt down again to examine some sort of marks on the floor, but the clutter in the room was between them and Ensa's light and the human couldn't see clearly enough to make out what Shadow was looking at. He'd have put them down as nothing if he'd noticed them at all.

Shadow didn't deign to answer, and Emlyn couldn't even guess from his impassive face whether the elf thought he'd found something good or bad, or even significant. The fighter was about to bury his embarrassment and annoyance and ask again when the light went out.

His eyes still full of the bleached aftereffects of being plunged into darkness, he heard Ensa click her tongue across the room. 'Sorry,' her gravely voice echoed out of the blackness. 'Just give me a few seconds.'

Emlyn could feel Shadow shifting beside him, stirring the air. Then there was a stiff creaking noise, and a shower of light and dust poured onto his head.

He had squeezed his eyes shut instinctively. Now, spitting out the furry taste in his mouth and brushing dirt out of his hair, Emlyn cautiously opened them and looked upwards. There was a square of light in the high ceiling.

'What is it?' he heard Ensa call out of the blackness, and he moistened his mouth and raised his voice.

'A trapdoor! That's how whoever used this room got in and out.' He could smell the fresher air streaming down from above, and the light was making solid beams through the thick dust hanging in the air.

'Good.' Ensa sounded as though she was coming in their direction. 'Star, come back here, please… I've looked at this spell, and there's good news and bad news. I think there is a reverse; but to use it we need to have the key.'

'Key.' Emlyn swallowed. That didn't sound like good news. 'What sort of a key, Ensa?' His voice sounded hoarse and he squeezed his hands into fists.

'Uh - it could look like a key, or it could be an amulet, a badge, a crystal, some sort of ornament or statuette… probably nothing that would get damaged or broken too easily…'

'So we just have to find it.' Emlyn looked around wildly. There was so much clutter in the room. 'Well - we can do that! We just need to dust down all the stuff that's on the shelves and -'

'Actually -' Ensa cut across him '- it's a little more complicated than that. It's not here.'

There was a silence. Emlyn almost felt it falling around him, thick and despairing. 'How can you be sure?' he managed, croaking through his dry, dust-filled throat.

'I did a detect magic. Emlyn, when we find it I'll know it; there's nothing else that'll be carrying those auras. But I assure you it's not in here. We'll have to go up. Look at that light; it's not outside, there's a building up there. Chances are the key is up there somewhere. And now you've found the door.'

'But we can't get to it.' Emlyn heard his voice almost wailing now and bit his lip so hard he could taste the salty tang of blood through the grittiness of the dusty air. Concentrate. Concentrate. There were things that had to be done now, and if he panicked he was only going to embarrass himself. They could get out of there. They would.

He really wished Tynan was here.

'Huh.' The snort came from behind him and sounded distinctly unimpressed. 'You can't get to it, you mean.' Ali raised her voice. 'Hey! Can we get a better light?'

Ensa didn't bother to answer that, but another dazzle burst into the air and then the wizard stepped beside Shadow, her hand outlined blackly where it gripped her brightly glowing staff.

'Better,' Ali muttered. She was examining with her eyes the distance between where she stood and the lit square of the trapdoor. 'Right.'

She flexed her fingers and wrists and stepped over to the wall, looking upwards to examine the patterns of the masonry blocks and then said lightly. 'Huh. Emlyn, give me a leg up.'

'Oh - sure.' Emlyn hurried over to stand beside her and laced his hands together for the slim girl to use as a step. Professional, competent Ali was always such a surprise to him.

Her boots ground faintly against his fingers as the acrobat stepped onto the platform of his hands, and then he felt the shift of her weight and the bunching of her muscles as she half-sprang, half-scrambled upwards to stand on his shoulders, steadying herself initially against the wall and then standing freely. He could feel her moving her weight to compensate as he shifted to brace under her weight and tried desperately not to move too much.

'Don't show off, Ali,' Ensa said, sternly, behind him. 'Lean against the wall.'

Emlyn could almost feel the acrobat's scorn in the shifting and bracing of her legs. 'This isn't showing off. It's easy,' she said, loftily, and then her slight weight lifted off Emlyn's shoulders and he was able to stand back beside Ensa and look up at her.

Ali did make it look easy. She climbed swiftly and without hesitation, reaching for a new hold almost before it seemed to the watchers below that she had made sure of the old one. Emlyn thought he caught the faintest hint of a long breath and glanced at Shadow to see the elf looking genuinely admiring. He longed to comment; even opened his mouth to speak, and then remembered that he might distract the acrobat. By the time Emlyn recovered himself, Shadow's green-black eyes were tracking Ali's progress as opaquely as ever.

Ensa held her breath as she watched the girl climb, and even Star, creeping back to her mistress through the scuffed up dust of the floor, was being as silent as she knew how. If ever Ali was beautiful, it was now, the wizard thought. The acrobat's slim body was ascending swiftly through the beams of light pouring from the trapdoor, and the silver stripe in her costume was flashing and catching the light. For a second Ensa wondered where Ali had got such an obviously expensive piece of material to sew into her outfit, and then dismissed the speculation as something for another time.

Ali reached the top of the wall. They saw her head tilt back as she looked at the edge of the trapdoor; and then, without warning, she kicked off from the wall, her body arcing backwards in mid-air for a second before snatching onto the edge of the hole in the ceiling. She swung there for another instant, and then with a quick jerk swung herself upwards and tumbled out of their sight onto the floor above.

There was a second of silence, and then Ali's head appeared again in the gap, grinning. 'See? Easy!'

Ensa finally let out her breath, hearing Emlyn do the same beside her. 'Well done, Ali!' She bent down and extended a hand to Star to let the rat climb up onto her shoulder, leaving dusty footprints smeared up Ensa's sleeve. 'Do you have a rope?'

There was an awkward silence, and then Shadow stepped forwards. 'Here.' With a quick, economical movement he tossed the end of a rope up to the girl waiting above. 'Let's go.'