For a moment that seemed to stretch on into eternity I could not find my voice, stunned as I was by the declarations of my sister. What she suggested was treason of the highest order. Though I had witnessed much betrayal in my fifty young years, this went far beyond the realm of acceptable defiance, and we both knew it. The only possible punishment for her actions-the mere suggestion of such actions-was death.

Lhradrul seemed to sense my horror, gliding across the intervening space like a baleful specter blown by a whispering wind, the movements of her legs-if indeed they moved at all-hidden behind waves of ebon silk. Her eyes remaining riveted to my own, she drew closer until even her conspiratorial whisper drowned out all sound in my world, "You want to see, don't you? You want to see more…"

As though entranced, I felt my head nodding slowly, distantly, as if I were experiencing the sensation secondhand. Deep in my throat something strangled my words and made me feel desperate to breathe, and for the first time I realized that it was fear. Fear of this stranger who now threatened to demolish the world I knew with her hubris.

Somehow, I managed to choke out words in an unsteady voice I scarcely recognized as my own. "Show me…"

My sister required no more encouragement. Immediately she took my hand and, still moving with the grace and ease of a phantom, lead me quickly through the maze of shelves overflowing with arcane lore to a hidden place in the darkest corner of the room where the careless stacks of books had been swept aside to create an open area on the floor.

The mundane scene before me banished the demons of my imagination, restoring within me the courage to speak with my own voice, of my own thoughts. "I see nothing but more books, sister. Are these where you found the spells?" I questioned while indicating a particularly tall stack of compendiums with the air of disgust one might attain while pointing out a moldering corpse.

"Ah, my poor, naïve little sister," Lhradrul shook her head, adopting if only for a moment some degree of the noble countenance for which she was known so well, "The books merely got me started down the path. There is only so much one can learn from old stories written by dead women, after all. I have found a much more current font of wisdom from which to drink…"

Had I not already suspected her to be mad, the thought certainly would have occurred to me then. Aside from the slaves and male consorts, no one outside our lineage dwelled within the labyrinthine confines of our fortress-home, and Lhradrul had long since surpassed any relative I knew in her knowledge of the arcane. "There's no one here, sister. Perhaps you have been studying too long without proper sustenance…"

She only smiled. That simple, knowing smile. "Look again sister. Not with your eyes-look deeper this time."

For a moment I remained skeptical, thinking my sister had lost touch with reality, as so often was the case of wizards who grew too powerful before their time. There was still a nagging doubt, however, an inexplicable sensation that sent shivers up my spine. Heaving a sigh of exasperation, I did as my sister asked, closing my eyes.

<Read On....>