Midwinter

Darting up the stairs, Mauritane reflected that it could not have been possible for the girl's voice, not much louder now than it had been in Jem Alan's office, to have been audible at all from the North Tower. He grew more wary with each step, and by the time he reached the first landing, he was walking, his blade drawn and held at the ready.

At the first landing, the spellturning of the structure became noticeable. The stairs above were faintly doubled, one set of steps was superimposed on the other, as though seen through thick glass. From the landing, a pair of boardedup doors let onto the second floor, their locks rusted and worn with age.

"Father! Somebody! Help me!" The girl's cries became shrieks, still coming from farther up the stairs. Mauritane began to run again, taking the stairs two at a time, his eyes moving in every direction for potential threats. He stopped again at the second landing and listened again. The shrieks were muffled here, but they were not from above this time. Two more doors faced Mauritane, identical to the ones below. They, too, were boarded up, though Mauritane could see that the boards on the nearer one were fairly loose. Pulling a dagger, he wedged the blade beneath the board and strained against it, feeling the homemade nails slowly give way.

Mauritane's muscles hummed from the exertion, and it felt strangely good to be in action again, regardless of the circumstances. His face reddening, he pried first one board, then another from the door and examined the lock. It was a simple keyed affair, one easily picked with the tools he'd liberated from the prison armory. As he knelt, the screams grew more and more muffled and eventually faded.

"Damn," he said, finally managing the lock. The door swung open with effort, hanging from hinges that were nearly rusted shut. The passage beyond was dark, but there was a light some distance away. Before Mauritane's eyes, the light became two lights, then four, then eight, then one light again, depending on how he turned his head. It was a disorienting sensation.

He stepped lightly over the transom and into chaos. The floor gave way beneath him and he stumbled forward to right himself, only to discover that he was suddenly sitting up on the frame of the door through which he'd just passed. When he'd crossed into the hallway, his sense of direction had pinwheeled backward over his head in a quarter circle, so now the wall had become the floor, and the floor was now the wall in front of him. The light source was now above his head.

Mauritane began to feel queasy. Looking back through the doorway, he saw the stairway exactly where it had been, only now the stairs appeared to be sideways, their steps clinging to the wall beneath him.

"Salutations," said a voice above him. Mauritane jumped and looked up. Standing on the ceiling was a man in ancient costume, wearing a long white wig and a frock coat that hung upwards to fall at his feet.

"I am the Prince Crete Sulace, Lord of Twin Birch Torn," said the man, speaking in an ancient dialect Mauritane struggled to comprehend. "And you are trespassing in my home."

an abduction

Mauritane attempted to stand, but the room shifted again around him, and he landed at the other man's feet, his thigh resting painfully on his sword hilt.

"Perhaps I should leave the way I came," said Mauritane.

"That would be unwise," said the man, drawing his rapier and holding the point to Mauritane's neck. "You are an intruder in my home and I intend to know your business before I have you flogged."

Mauritane sat up slowly, feeling the pressure at his neck give a bit. "If you are indeed the Prince Crere Sulace," said Mauritane, speaking in Elvish, "then I am more surprised than you. For your home has been a prison these many years and you have been thought dead for centuries."

"Centuries! You are mad!" said the man. "Perhaps you are better off on a Foolship than in my dungeon." He jerked Mauritane roughly to his feet with a strength not suggested by his narrow frame. "Now come out of this room before we both drop out of it. It's been spellturned recently and, I fear, quite badly."

Mauritane let himself be guided from the room by Crere Sulace's sword. He was led down the dark hallway's wall and around a bend where, without warning, his orientation shifted again and he found himself propelled toward the stone floor. Twisting his body, he managed to land on his back without much pain, but the continual shifts in perspective were nauseating.