Aeron watched Sarim leave, deep in thought. I never should have mentioned the tower, he grumbled in his mind. Sarim didn't need to know about my lessons with Oriseus. Then again, the High Invoker may have been right.

He stood, pushing himself up from the desk. Halfheartedly he began to rummage through the stacks of paper and flip idly through the tomes. Many were incomprehensible to him; Master Telemachon had had a full lifetime of learning, and Aeron couldn't even begin to make sense out of most of his research. One book, marked by a twisted serpent sigil, caught his eye. He picked it up, skimmed a few pages, and found a slip of yellowed parchment caught between two leaves, covered in Telemachon's crabbed handwriting. It was a column of letters beside strange, curving marks and dots.

He struggled to place it for a moment, chewing his tongue. Wait! The Rauric scroll, the yugoloth's bracelet! It's the same lettering! Aeron dropped the book and clutched the scrap of paper in his hands, peering at it. The letters were in ancient Rauric, arrayed in a single row. One mark or whorl stood under each. He realized that he was looking at a letter-for-letter conversion-the key he needed to understand what was in the mysterious scroll he'd taken from the library months ago.

Should I take this to Sarim? he thought. He hardly even considered the notion before dismissing it out of hand. He'd see what he could make of it first. If Sarim confiscated it or demanded the old Rauric scroll, Aeron would never know what was hidden within. He folded the parchment, slipped it into his sleeve, and hurried back to his own chambers, sealing Telemachon's room as he left. The shadows were growing long as he crossed the quadrangle; the afternoon was fading to dusk.

In his chamber, he bolted the door and sat down with the old scroll. The Rauric text was a circuitous, meandering narrative by an old scholar named Derschius. Aeron had assumed that it was a straight translation of the mysterious second column of writing, but now he suspected something else entirely. In fact, now he thought that it might not have anything to do with Derschius's work. Ancient scribes had often scraped or written over older texts, especially if they didn't seem useful. Derschius had probably had no better idea than Aeron what the other column of text said.

Ignoring the scribe's scratchings, Aeron looked carefully at the first lines of the odd text. On a piece of blank paper, he carefully copied the symbols in the exact sequence, leaving plenty of space between each line. Then, using the key he'd found in Telemachon's office, he searched for each symbol's corresponding letter. When he had finished the first line, it read, "The Chants of Arcainasyr, as declaimed by Macchius the Ebon Flame."

"It's an artificial alphabet," he breathed in amazement. The words themselves were in ancient Rauric, but each letter had been replaced by an arbitrary symbol. Macchius, or whoever had dared transcribe the chants, had invented the cipher to mask its contents. Aeron frowned, wondering what in Faerun he was looking at. Nothing in the title meant anything to him.

And it can't be completely artificial, he realized. The markings on the yugoloth's bracelet matched these symbols. They have power, significance. It's not a mundane fabrication to hide this text only. Aeron set his pen to the tip of his tongue, thinking. Deciphering the old scroll might be dangerous. If the symbols could bind a yugoloth, they could certainly carry curses as well. "Well, I won't know until I start," he said aloud. He pulled out a sheet of common parchment and set to work by the yellow light of the late afternoon, his pen scratching in the stillness of his chambers.

At the appointed hour, Aeron set down his pen. Pale and shaken, he rolled up the chants and, after a moment's thought, stuffed them into an unmarked scroll tube, stashing a simple text on alchemy over it to conceal its presence.

It didn't seem like a good thing to leave lying around. Absently, he dressed and stepped out into the cool night. The late summer heat had finally broken, and the night was cool, windy, and damp, with scudding clouds concealing a crescent moon.

He hadn't had a chance to make a complete translation of the scroll, and he doubted he would ever finish the work. The chants deserved to be left in obscurity. Aeron understood exactly where the ancient Imaskari had found their power, and it sickened him. Each chant was a litany of destruction, a hateful incantation of decay and foulness. Many were framed as prayers to nameless deities who had poisoned the ancient world with lies, shadows, and war.

Oriseus had once asked him how humans wielded magic through the Weave and dared him to imagine a way in which a sorcerer could wield magic without touching the Weave. Now Aeron knew. Creatures such as the yugoloths-and even fouler things-came from beyond the circles of the world. The sorcerer-lords of the Imaskari had won their power by binding dark spirits of the planes beyond in their own bodies, gaining unspeakable power at the cost of their souls. Just as the Weave was tied to the life of the world, shadow magic was intertwined with forces of chaos and decay that fed on the world.

Aeron hoped that there was a chance that he had misunderstood Oriseus, that in the forgotten lore of the old Imaskari mages he'd found something clean, a redeemable power, but he didn't think it likely. He had to go through with his appointment to make sure that what he suspected was true. If it was not, then he had no reason to fear Oriseus. But if it was, the scroll of Macchius and Oriseus's own words would damn him.

He circled the ruins slowly until he spied a faint light bobbing in the darkness ahead. "Hello? Lord Oriseus?" he called, advancing slowly.

"Here, Aeron," the conjuror replied. He emerged from the tumbled heap of cold stones, holding a blue-glowing staff in front of him. The eerie light shadowed his features in a macabre fashion. Oriseus grinned fiercely, stalking forward. "Are you ready?"

Aeron closed his eyes, hoping that he could conceal his true fears from the High Conjuror. "I am," he answered. Behind Oriseus, Aeron noticed several other cloaked shapes waiting, students and some of the younger masters. Dalrioc Corynian glared at him with ill-disguised contempt, but held his peace. Aeron took an involuntary pace backward, glancing at Oriseus. "What are the others doing here?"

Oriseus shrugged. "You are not my only student, Aeron. Here we all are equals. Now, let us be about our night's work."

"And what exactly is that, Lord Oriseus?" From the shadows of the tower's ruins stepped Master Sarim, dressed in his yellow robes. "You won't mind if I attend, will you?"

"Master Sarim. This is an unexpected surprise." Oriseus's face was inscrutable in the darkness, but Aeron could sense the irritation in his voice. The conjuror glanced at the ring of students and sorcerers behind him as if to ferret out the individual who'd informed Sarim of their meeting time.

"I won't interfere with your lesson, Oriseus," Sarim continued. "Go on. Pretend I'm not here."

To Aeron's surprise, Oriseus's face split into an ingratiating grin. "Of course, Master Sarim. We are honored by your presence. I shall proceed." He turned away and took a few steps into the cracked rubble that mantled the pyramid. Exchanging silent looks, Aeron and the others followed in a rough semicircle. The lean sorcerer halted suddenly, stooped, and brushed dirt and overgrowth from a red-black slab gleaming among the stones. "Help me clear this," he instructed, and two of the nearest students knelt to assist. In a few moments, they'd uncovered a man-sized stone that didn't match any of the rubble or foundation stones nearby.

"What's that?" demanded Dalrioc Corynian. He hadn't bothered to get his hands dirty with the work.