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Mariabro
Arrayan considered the question, trying desperately to scour her memories. She glanced over at Olgerkhan, needing his always rock-solid support.
"No," she answered, but it was more a feeling than a certainty. "Out of the city. The city was… too small."
Wingham slipped back into his seat and for a moment seemed to be gasping for breath. "Too small? What did you create?"
Arrayan could only stare at him. She remembered leaving the house with the book tucked under her arm, but only vaguely, as if she were walking within a dream. Had it been a dream?
"Have you left the house since your return from your journey with the book?" Mariabro
The woman shook her head.
"Any sense of where you went?" the ranger pressed. "North? South near Wingham's caravan?"
"Not to Uncle Wingham," Arrayan replied without pause.
Wingham and Mariabro
"Palishchuk only has two gates open most of the time," Mariabro
"If not south, then…." said Wingham.
Mariabro
"How could I have been so foolish?" the woman whispered to the large half-orc, but Olgerkhan could only smile at her, having no practical answers.
"The book's magic was beyond your control, perhaps," Mariabro
"The wand was a god's artifact," Arrayan reminded him.
"Do not underestimate the power of Zhengyi," said Mariabro
The city was quiet that late afternoon, with most of the folk still off in the south at Wingham's circus. The quartet saw almost no one as they made their way to the north gate. Once there, Mariabro
"You left and returned along the same path," he informed Arrayan. The ranger pointed to the northeast, toward the nearest shadows of the Great Glacier, the towering frozen river that loomed before them. "Few others have come through this gate in the last couple of days. It should not be difficult to follow your trail."
Indeed it wasn't, for just outside the area of the gate, Arrayan's footprints, both sets, stood out alone on the summer-melted tundra. What was surprising for Mariabro
"It's no wonder you were so weary," Wingham said to Arrayan some time later, the miles behind them.
The woman could only look back at him, helpless. She had no idea she'd been so far from the city and could only barely remember leaving her house.
The foursome came up on a ridge, looking down on a wide vale, a copse of trees at its low point down the hill before them and a grouping of several large stones off to the right.
Arrayan gasped, "There!"
She pointed, indicating the stones, the memory of the place flooding back to her.
Mariabro
"No one else has come out," the ranger confirmed. "Let us go and collect the book that I might bring it to King Gareth."
Arrayan and Olgerkhan caught the quick flash of shock on Wingham's face at that proclamation, but to his credit, the shrewd merchant didn't press the issue just then.
Mariabro
For there was Zhengyi's book, suspended in the air at about waist height by a pair of stone-gray tentacles that rolled out from its sides and down to, and into, the ground. The book was open, with only a few pages turned. The foursome watched in blank amazement as red images of various magical runes floated up from the open page and dissipated in the shimmering air above the book.
"What have you done?" Wingham asked.
Mariabro
"The book is reading itself," Olgerkhan observed, and while the statement sounded ridiculous as it was uttered, another glance at the book seemed to back up the simple half-orc's plain-spoken observation.
"What is that?" Wingham asked as Mariabro
"Foundation stones," Arrayan answered.
The four exchanged nervous glances, then jumped as a spectral hand appeared in mid-air above the opened book and slowly turned a single page.
"The book is excising its own dweomers," Arrayan said. "It is enacting the magic Zhengyi placed within its pages."
"You were but a catalyst," Wingham added, nodding his head as if it was all starting to make sense to him. "It took from you a bit of your life-force and now it is using that to facilitate Zhengyi's plans."
"What plans?" asked Olgerkhan.
"The magic was in the school of creation," Arrayan replied.
"And it is creating a structure," said Mariabro
"Castle Perilous," muttered Wingham, and all three looked at him with great alarm, for that was a name not yet far enough removed from the consciousness of the region for any to comfortably hear.
"We do not yet know anything of the sort," Mariabro
Arrayan nodded. The legendary wizard Doern had long ago perfected a method of creating minor extra-dimensional towers adventurers could summon to shield them from the dangers and hardships of the open road.
"It is possible that Zhengyi created this tome, perhaps with others like it, so that his commanders could construct defensible fortresses without the need of muscle, tools, supplies, and time," Mariabro
Wingham, too, moved to the book, and from up close the rising, dissipating runes showed all the more clearly. Individual, recognizable characters became visible. Wingham started to wave his hand over the field of power above the opened book.
What little hair the old half-orc had stood on end and he gave a yelp then went flying back and to the ground. The other three were there in a moment, Arrayan helping him to sit up.