'Back a step, a little more. There.'
'Ready?'
'Aye.'
But he wasn't prepared for the immense surge of strength that lifted him, flung him effortlessly straight up. Kulp made an instinctive grab for Felisin, missed – luckily, as he was then past her, through the ceiling's hole. He almost fell straight back down. A panicked twisting of his upper body, however, landed him painfully on an edge. It groaned, sagged.
His fingers clawing unseen flagstones, the mage clambered onto the floor.
Felisin's voice keened from below. 'Mage! Where are you?' Feeling a slightly hysterical grin frozen on his face, Kulp said, 'Up here. I'll have you in a moment, lass.'
Heboric used his invisible hands to swiftly climb the makeshift rope of leather and cloth that Kulp sent snaking down ten minutes later. Seated nearby in the small, gloomy chamber, Felisin silently watched with fear racing unchecked within her.
Her body tortured her with pain, the feeling returning to her feet with silent outrage. Fine white dust coated the blood on her ankles and where the pillar's crystalline edges had scored her wrists. She shook uncontrollably. That old man looked dead on his feet. Dead. He was burning up, yet his ravings were not just empty words. There was knowing in them, impossible knowing. And now his ghost-hands have become real.
She glanced over at Kulp. The mage was frowning at the torn shambles of the raincloak in his hands. Then he sighed and swung his gaze to a silent study of Heboric, who seemed to be sinking back into his fevered stupor.
Kulp had conjured a faint glow to the chamber, revealing bare stone walls. Saddled steps rose along one wall to a solid-looking door. At the base of the wall opposite, round indentations ran in a row on the floor, each of a size to fit a cask or keg. Rust-pitted hooks depended on chains from the ceiling at the room's far end. Everything seemed blunted to Felisin's eyes; either it was strangely worn down or the effect was a product of the mage's sorcerous light.
She shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself to fight the trembling.
'That was some climb you managed, lass,' Kulp said.
She grunted. 'And pointless, as it turns out.' And now it's likely to kill me. There was more to making that climb than just muscle and bone. I feel . . . emptied, with nothing left in me to rebuild. She laughed.
'What?'
'We've found a cellar for a tomb.'
'I ain't ready to die yet.'
'Lucky you.'
She watched him totter to his feet. He looked around. 'This room was flooded once. With water that flowed.'
'From where to where?'
He shrugged and approached the stairs in a slow, laboured shuffle.
He looks a century old. As old as I feel. Together, we can't make up even one Heboric. I'm learning to appreciate irony, at least.
After some minutes Kulp finally reached the door. He laid a hand against it. 'Bronze sheeting – I can feel the hammer strokes that flattened it.' He rapped a knuckle on the dark metal. The sound that came was a rustling, sifting whisper. 'Wood's rotted behind it.'
The latch broke in his hand. The mage muttered a curse, then set his weight against the door and pushed.
The bronze cracked, crumpled inward. A moment later the door fell back, taking Kulp with it in a cloud of dust.
'Barriers are never as solid as one thinks,' Heboric said as the echoes of that crash faded. He stood holding his stubbed arms out before him. 'I understand this now. To a blind man his entire body is a ghost. Felt but not seen. Thus, I raise invisible arms, move invisible legs, my invisible chest rising and falling to unseen air. So now I stretch fingers, then make fists. I am everywhere solid – and always have been – if not for the deceit perpetrated by my own eyes.'
Felisin looked away from the ex-priest. 'Maybe if I go deaf you'll disappear.'
Heboric laughed.
At the landing, Kulp was making moaning sounds, his breath oddly harsh and laboured. She pushed herself upright, stumbling as pain closed iron bands around her ankles. Gritting her teeth, she hobbled to the stairs.
The eleven steps left her reeling with exhaustion. She fell to her knees beside the mage and waited a long minute before her breathing steadied. 'You all right?'
Kulp lifted his head. 'Broke my damned nose, I think.'
'From that new accent I'd say you were right. I take it you'll live, then.'
'Loudly.' He rose to his hands and knees, thick blood hang' ing in dusty threads from his face. 'See what's ahead? Ain't had a chance to look, yet.'
'It's dark. The air smells.'