Chapter 2

The white light faded as it released her, the way a held breath releases, and Frances Andersen found herself standing inside a six-pointed star etched into the stone floor, a tall faceted crystal burning cold fire at each point. The chamber around her was vast and underground. The walls climbed up into darkness overhead, covered shoulder to ceiling in markings that were between letters and diagrams.

Outside the points of the star stood five men in robes, arranged in a loose arc as though they had been waiting, mid-ritual, for something to arrive. They ranged in age from a man whose hair had gone fully grey to one whose black hair carried only the first threads of silver at the temples. For one full second, nobody moved. Frances stared at them. They stared back at her with the slack-jawed horror of men watching a very expensive plan fail in real time.

“It’s a woman.” The words came from the largest of them like an accusation, a barrel-chested man whose voice filled the chamber without effort. “That cannot be. We’ve spent the mana. There will not be time to — what in the name of every buried god happened?”

“A moment, I beg you.” This from a leaner man, younger, with the strained courtesy of someone trying to stay calm while everyone around him was not. “Allow me to consult the Spell Requirements Scroll before we declare the working a failure.”

“It does not signify what happened.” The big man’s voice did not drop. “The mana cannot be recovered. We are finished before we have begun.”

Frances found her footing, literally, she realized, dropping automatically into the same balanced stance she used on the strip, and then found her voice, which arrived a half-second later and considerably more annoyed than the stance. She took a deep breath. This was her time to be heard, not spoken to.

“Excuse me. Who are you people, where is this, and why can I understand what you are saying?”

The mages exchanged glances, a silent passing of the obligation to speak, until the lean one took it up.

“Forgive me. Let me make myself known to you. I am Magnus von Schatten, third son of the House von Schatten, tenured in Oracular arts at the Academy of Arcane Sciences. The summons you felt carries within it a secondary working, a gift of tongues, if you will. You shall understand any tongue spoken in this land, and your own words shall render themselves into the native speech of whoever hears you as long as the word exists in the tongue. It is a costly enchantment, my lady, though modest beside the summoning itself. Might we know your name, and your standing?”

Frances considered holding back. Then she decided that half-measures were a waste of time.

“Frances Andersen. No house, no standing, no title. I teach history for a living.” She looked around the chamber, at the crystals, the star, the ring of stricken faces. “Based on what I’m seeing and what you said, you people used magic to yank me through a wormhole into a different universe, one that apparently has magic, which means you want something from me. So let me just get ahead of it: please, please do not tell me there’s an evil Ring of Power that needs carrying to Mount Doom so I can personally stop Sauron from conquering the free peoples of this land. If so, I will turn around and walk straight back through whatever wall I came out of.”