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Interim VII

Mount Alban: 60th of Spring

I

"So this," said Torisen, "is what the Jaran Matriarch meant about Mount Alban not being where it ought."

He was standing in the college's vaulted lower hall which looked perfectly normal, with one exception. So had the entire establishment as they had approached it, apparently untouched by the surge of weirding which had just rolled past at cliff-top level and the tremor which had run before it. He should have guessed, though, that the ghostly light spreading inside the cliff-face from window to window had had nothing to do with welcome. Now here was this ghostly stair molded in weirding mist and all the internal structure above too, as far as he could see, except for the shadowy lines of its ironwood skeleton.

"Hello?" he shouted up the glowing well. "Is anyone there?"

"They'll never hear you above," said Grimly.

The Wolver sat down on his haunches and began to lick a raw foot-pad. They had come over thirty leagues since sun-rise, exhausting several changes of mount, but he had insisted on running most of that distance. Better sore paws than more saddle sores. Now, however, he wasn't so sure.

Torisen had turned away, swearing under his breath. To have come so far, only to be thwarted again . . . . After a winter of hiding at Kothifir, this rush to reunion had caught him up like a spring thaw. He didn't know to what end he was hurtling, what would happen when, at last, he and his sister met, but meet they must. Soon.

Frustration sharpened by urgency turned him back to the stair's foot, set loose the innate power of a Highborn in his voice: "Dammit, COME DOWN!"

Grimly goggled, the fur slowly roaching up along his spine. Something was coming down the stair. At first, it seemed no more than wisps of smoke rising off each step in turn, then indistinct feet, legs, body, head—a complete ghost silently, steadily descending.

Torisen went back a step, almost tripping over the Wolver who had scuttled around behind him. His throat felt scraped raw by those ill-chosen words of command. What in Perimal's name had he summoned? Something in the set of those broad ghostly shoulders, that deliberate, grim tread . . . .

"Iron-thorn?" he breathed. "Brier? Dammit, Rowan, shut that door!"

Too late. A gust of wind swept into the hall around the steward's stocky form, rattling last autumn's leaves under her feet. The ghost on the stair faltered, then unraveled. Gone.

Rowan hadn't seen it. Expressionless as her scarred face always was, her tense carriage as she hurried down the hall betrayed a problem of her own.

"Don't tell me Kallystine has caught up with us!" Torisen exclaimed involuntarily.

Rowan almost smiled. "Not that. My lord . . . Blackie . . . we've found something you should see."

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Framed