Page 212 (1/1)

The exhibits in the hall linted off display cases, lass eyes A statue of Amberhill in luminescent marble stood near the entrance It was closer to life-sized than the others she had seen She wove her way past cases of arrowheads and daggers, of baskets and pots, while dead creatures watched her progress from their mounts

One such creature stood near the rear of the room, part moose, part human, a p’ehdrose This one was female and had to be the mate of Ghallos, the taxidermied specimen she’d seen at Dr Silk’s dinner party Her name had been Edessa Like Ghallos, the human part of her flesh had been poorly preserved It was leathery and puckered A length of cloth draped across her front looked like it was just thrown there to protect the an did not linger, but passed into another exhibit hall, this one with a lofty ceiling and an aviary type of cage through which Dr Silk was peering She hid behind a case of pinned insects and watched

"Did you get fed tonight, my pretty little jewels?" he asked

It was too dark to see, but the unan what the aviary held She frowned

"Indeed, we fed the toward the aviary fro"

"Excellent I see that Ghallos isn’t back on exhibit yet"

"We’ve been going over hi journey We’re putting hiht"

"That is acceptable I have coood, sir If there’s anything you need, we’ll be here working on Ghallos Just let us know"

Wonderful, Karigan thought More people to watch out for

Dr Silk and thein opposite directions Dr Silk went to a door just beyond the aviary and unlocked it Inside he turned on the light Karigan ht that spilled across the floor Within the library she espied shelves and shelves of books She wondered if this library contained, as the professor’s had, the ragged, abused, and nearly destroyed tomes from her own time and farther into the past

She skittered forhen the workht poured out, alht from the library She continued to the back of the chamber and passed beneath an elaborate arch into another vast space She stepped aside at the entryway and paused to lean across the wall and rest Dare she drop her fading? She was exhausted, and her head pounded She needed to rest, or she wouldn’t ed her knees to her chest, and dropped the fading

The head pain and nausea were not nearly as bad as the last time she had tried, maybe because there was so much h She kept her eyes closed willing the disco her ears alert for the tiniest noise that would indicate so her way All she heard, however, were the distant sounds and voices of the workmen

When the worst of her head pain eased, she opened her eyes, and her sight was no longer occluded by the graying of her ability When her eyes once again adjusted to the dark, she realized she’d found the scything li of the exhibit hall, which was an ran her hand across the smooth floor beside her It was not layered with dust, not like the last tiures carved of stone stood upon pedestals, ings spread as though ready to fly They were arranged, Karigan was certain, to designate the four cardinal directions, and even though she could not see their faces well in the dark, she knew they were Eletian, for she had stood a them before

She rose and walked across not just a floor, but across a universe of stars and worlds, a celestialsilver There were subtle tints of blues and greens and rose in the quartz, and spider-fine lines showing the paths of heavenly bodies Characters in lu the lines When she reached the very center of the room, she stood upon a full moon of quartz, and arrayed around it were smaller representations of the lealass ceiling She had stood here before, in another tienthyne in the heart of Blackveil Forest, but somehow the floor and statues had been reenthyne and meticulously reassean knelt before the phases of the moon She had called these structures "moondials" because they were like sundials, where a shadow pointed to the time of day Only with Eletian ned shadow cast by ht could take one to a "piece of tian had experienced this power in Blackveil, first outside the ruined village of Telavalieth, then in Castle Argenthyne At the castle, the legendary queen, Laurelyn, had preserved a piece of ti the invasion of Mornhavon the Black For a thousand years it protected those of her people who "slept" in a grove of vast trees in retreat fro her ability not only to fade, but also to cross thresholds between the layers of the world, had led the Sleepers froe to the safety of Eletia’s distant past