James Ward - Pool of Twilight

She settled for interesting. She needed to remember an incantation she had heard only once before, spoken by her first master almost a century ago, in a long-dead language whose name she had never known. Evaine forced a grin. The uncertainties were what made life worth living, she reminded herself.

What is this place? Gamaliel's thoughts spoke in her mind. The great cat stalked warily around the base of the mound, whiskers twitching. There is magic here. Old magic. I can smell it on the air.

Evaine nodded as she rummaged through her pack, assembling the items she would need. "This is a very ancient place, Gam. Only a handful of these standing stones remain, scattered about Faerun. No one is certain who built them, or even what sort of people they might have been. But one thing is certain. They were powerful magicians. I doubt there are any alive today who could forge a stone such as this."

I imagine you might, if you put your mind to it.

Evaine scratched the cat's ears affectionately. "Now I remember why I like you so much," she laughed.

Gamaliel closed his eyes in pleasure. How could you have forgotten?

The sun was high overhead in the pale winter sky by the time Evaine had everything prepared for the spell. As she and Gamaliel ascended the mound, the midday light seemed to grow curiously dim. Soon it proved difficult to see anything but the rough black stone that loomed before them.

"Here, Gam, hold this in your left hand."

The cat winked his eyes in mild annoyance. His form blurred. A moment later the barbarian stood next to the sorceress.

"That assumes I have a hand to hold things with, Evaine," Gamaliel rumbled.

"Which now you do," Evaine replied smoothly. She pressed a single, dark green leaf into his hand. She placed a similar leaf into a small hollow carved in the side of the stone. Next she used a glistening powder of crushed crystal to trace a large spiral incised in the center of the stone. Finally she scattered the crimson petals of a dozen snow-heart blooms. A faint, delicately sweet fragrance rose from them. Evaine took a deep breath. Facing Gamaliel, she reached out and tightly gripped his right hand.

"Now, don't let go of my hand, Gam, not for anything. And I mean anything. All right?"

He nodded. "As you wish."

Evaine swallowed hard, closing her eyes. She had spent the last three days trying to recall the long-forgotten words. It had not been easy, and she couldn't be certain she had remembered them all, or even that she had remembered their correct pronunciation. She tried not to think of the consequences if she made a mistake with even a single word. At the least, the spell would simply fail. At the worst, she and Gamaliel would discover what it felt like to be turned inside out.

She began the incantation.

Strangely fluid, almost inhuman-sounding words rose and fell in a trilling cascade. The queer syllables were even harder to enunciate than Evaine had imagined. In moments her throat was aching, her lips numb. She ignored the dull sensations. Once begun, the incantation had to be finished.

Only once, for a single, terrifying moment, did she falter. The strange, meaningless words seemed to fly from her mind as she lost her place. Panicking, she could feel her concentration slipping. She couldn't remember the spell!

Suddenly she felt a reassuring pressure against her right hand and a calming presence invade her mind. It spoke no words, but instead filled her with a feeling of confidence. She drew in a shuddering breath, feeling her panic recede. The words of magic tumbled from her lips once again. She sent a mental message of gratitude to Gamaliel.

She spoke the last word of the spell. Suddenly the whole world went black.

The clearing was gone, as well as the sky above. The only sensation was a blast of cruel, bone-numbing cold. It felt as if all her flesh were being stripped away, leaving only her bones, bare and exposed to the malevolent chill. And yet, faintly, almost imperceptibly, she sensed a warmth in her hand and held on tightly.

Forms rushed out of the darkness.

Had Evaine's tongue not been frozen solid, she would have screamed. They were monstrous: leprous, malformed bodies glowing with putrescent yellow light, with rotting, wart-covered flesh dripping off spindly limbs in quivering chunks, and bulbous, fly-covered eyes staring at her mindlessly. The abominable creatures grinned, teeth gnashing like shards of broken glass, the expressions devoid of any emotion save ravenous hunger. Evaine shuddered in revulsion.

She felt the grip on her right hand loosening. Gamaliel! He was going to reach for his sword. But he dare not!

She clamped her fingers down hard.

No, Gamaliel! she shouted in her mind. You promised you would not let go of my hand!

She felt the hesitation, the indecision. The swarm of misshapen monsters came closer, long purple tongues dripping foul yellow spittle. For a terrifying moment she felt no response from Gamaliel. Then the grip on her hand tightened once again.

The tide of abominations streaked by. The din of their jabbering was deafening, the festering stench they exuded stupefying. They writhed as they passed, their many-jointed arms undulating, their shard-teeth flashing.

But they did not so much as brush up against Evaine and Gamaliel. Who the denizens of this nameless dimension were, Evaine did not know. But the success of the spell meant that as long as she and Gamaliel raised no hand against them, the beasts would leave the two interlopers alone.

The last lurching stragglers hobbled by, their limbs more stunted than the others, their flesh even more soft and bubbling. Then the hideous things were gone, and Evaine and Gamaliel were alone in the frigid darkness.

A heartbeat later that darkness shattered.

A new, bitter cold blasted Evaine. Tiny, stinging particles of snow bit into her cheeks. Before her, half-buried in snow, was another standing stone of roughly hewn black porphyry.

"Where are we?" Gamaliel shouted above the roar of the wind.

Evaine gazed at the land around her. They stood on a jagged needle of granite. Snow-covered slopes angled down in all directions into a sea of blinding white, surrounded by a rocky wall that seemed to reach all the way up to the hard blue sky.

Despite the cold, Evaine felt a surge of elation.

"The Dragonspine Mountains!" she shouted triumphantly.

Evaine wearily dusted the powdery remnants of crystal from her coat and tunic.

"It's no use, Gam. The mountains seem to be interfering with my locating spell. The peaks are too rich in iron ore. They're affecting my spell like a magnet affects a compass."

She warmed her hands above the small flame dancing inside the copper brazier she had used to work her magic. The cold was not so unbearable here in the shelter of the pine forest. She and Gamaliel had quickly descended from the sharp, windswept peak where the standing stone had transported them, moving below the timberline and into the vast, silent stands of fir and pine that blanketed the slopes of the mountain. Fine, granular snow dusted the needle-strewn ground among the trees, and the branches above shielded them from the fury of the wind.

It had taken most of the afternoon for Evaine to cast her locating spell, and by now evening was drawing near.

"Can you sense the pool at all?" Gamaliel asked, crouching down beside the sorceress. The leather fringe of his coat traced fine parallel lines in the snow.

"A little. Enough to get a general sense of its direction from here. But I can't tell for certain how far away it is." She pulled a rolled sheepskin from her pack and smoothed it out before her. Inside was a crackling sheet of parchment, the map she had created with the help of Ren o' the Blade.