"Which way?" she whispered.

"The Students' Hall. I want to see if my old rooms have been disturbed. I left some valuable notes and materials there," Aeron said.

"Do you really think that no one would have bothered to clean out your chambers in five years?" Eriale asked.

Aeron shrugged. "It's worth a look." He turned and knelt to face Baillegh. "Stay here, and keep out of sight. We'll come back for you after we've scouted things out." The hound whined softly and licked his face, but she sat down and worked her way into the heavy undergrowth.

No one was in sight, so Aeron stepped out of the shrubs and dusted himself off, straightening his servant's tunic. Eriale followed, adjusting her skirt. The path by the wall skirted the quadrangle, circling the perimeter of the college grounds. "This way," he said quietly. Eriale fell in a half-step behind him, trying not to shiver in the eerie chill.

They didn't even see anyone else until they reached the Students' Hall. As they hurried past the open end of the quadrangle, Aeron stole a surreptitious look at the heart of the college-the great library, the halls of learning, and the two long fieldstone halls facing each other. Across the wide space, a small handful of forlorn figures criss-crossed the area. The bright red robes of a Master of Conjuration caught Aeron's eye, but it didn't seem to be anyone he knew, and he didn't want to be caught staring if it was. He also noticed a handful of workmen in common clothes hustling back and forth across the open court. Eriale tapped his arm discreetly, and Aeron picked up his pace and turned his head forward to maintain the charade.

They skirted the main entrance to the Students' Hall and slipped in the smaller servants' door at one end of the building. This led into a large linen room, with laundry tubs and shelves stacked with white sheets and heavy blankets. One stout maid was at work scrubbing out some clothes, but she didn't even look up as Aeron and Eriale entered, so Aeron scooped up an armful of folded sheets from the shelf. With a nervous wink, Eriale helped herself to a bucket and rags at the same time.

Aeron found the servants' stair leading to the second floor, a dark and cramped passage with smooth-worn steps. At the top, he opened a narrow door and stepped out into Crown Hall, his home for almost a year of his life. Despite the urgency of his mission, he stopped, caught by the powerful memories. It looked much the same as it had when he'd left. Yet he was also struck by the differences, too. At first he thought that he'd come to the college during a break of some kind, since the hall was empty, echoing and silent. In his days, there'd always been a handful of novices gossiping by someone's door, a student striding grimly to or from his studies, some indication of life and energy. But the hall felt barren and cold to him.

"You stayed here for a year?" Eriale whispered.

Aeron shook his head. "It was different then. Things have changed for the worse. Come on, my room was over here."

He turned right and followed the corridor, halting at the sixth door on the right. To his relief, the facade still bore the complicated sigil he'd marked as his own. To be certain, he leaned close and put his ear to the door, straining to listen for any sound within.

Voices rang out sharply from the end of the hall. Aeron straightened and looked before he could help himself. A pair of students in their tabards and caps stood outside a door, talking in low voices. They seemed older than the students Aeron had remembered-these weren't teenagers, but a pair of grown men.

"Aeron!" hissed Eriale. "Don't stare!"

He nodded abruptly and set his hand to the door, trying it. Naturally, it was locked. He turned his shoulder to conceal his actions from the two students down the hall, and quietly spoke the spell of opening he'd used to enter his room. To his surprise, it worked flawlessly, and he let himself into his room. Eriale stepped in on his heels, sliding out of the hallway and out of sight.

The room was very close to the way he'd left it; his personal effects were still in the same places, and no one had bothered to remove the furniture or even to strip the bed. A few mundane books remained on his shelves, but Aeron could tell at a glance that most of the important ones had been removed, including his old spellbooks and the scroll tube in which he'd hidden the Chants of Madryoch the Ebon Flame. "Damn," he muttered.

"I wonder why they never cleaned out your room?" Eriale said.

"Well, they did in their way. Most of my spellbooks and some scrolls and texts aren't here anymore." Aeron sat down at his old desk, his chin in his hand. "No one knew where I'd gone when I first fled. It must have been months before they decided I wasn't coming back."

"The books were your only important belongings?"

Aeron nodded. "Yes. I suppose that Oriseus or one of his masters probably searched this room personally. They wouldn't bother to remove anything except materials they thought they might have a use for."

"The servants wouldn't have come in to check on you?"

"They might have been instructed not to, on the chance that I might return."

Eriale strolled over to the window and gazed out at the muddy apron of ground beyond the dormitory. She leaned forward to study something outside. "Aeron, what's this?"

"What?" Aeron stood and moved over to gaze out the window over her shoulder.

Outside, the ruins of the Broken Pyramid were not just ruins anymore. The rubble had been cleared away from the stone foundation of the ancient monument, and an effort was underway to rebuild it just as it had stood hundreds of years ago. Aeron gaped in shock; he'd never imagined that it could be rebuilt. But the smooth dark stone rose forty feet into the air, ending in a jagged course of stone blocks. The whole edifice was ringed by rickety scaffolding, and sheds for stonecutters and carpenters had been raised at the foot of the structure. A handful of masons were at work on the ground, cutting the blocks for the next course.

"What are they building here?" Eriale asked.

"It looks like they're raising the Broken Pyramid again," Aeron said. "The ruins of an old Untheric obelisk used to stand there. It was nothing more than a heap of rubble, with a few old walls still standing. Oriseus must have decided to rebuild it." He frowned, watching one mason patiently chisel away an uneven corner. "Where are all the workmen? This looks like a place where dozens of men could work without getting in each other's way."

"It's the end of the week."

Aeron grimaced. Not everything had to have a sinister purpose behind it, he reminded himself. But he did not like the look of the pyramid. He could feel the magical power imprisoned in the heavy stone blocks, as if each stone that had been laid down completed one small part of a vast and potent whole. The ebon sheen of the smooth rock drew his eye, refusing to allow him to look away. When complete, the spire would be a focus for the Shadow Stone, a magnifier of some kind.

"Aeron?" Eriale glanced at him with concern.

"I'm fine," he admitted after a moment. "The implications of this frighten me, that's all."

"Do you sense the stone?"

Aeron met her eyes and returned his gaze to the rising pyramid. With the trepidation of a man reaching out to touch an angry snake, he allowed his vision to blur and shift, trying to sense the eddy and flow of the Weave around the tower. He could feel the stone nearby, but its chill emanations seemed muted, like sunlight passing through a thin cloth. The monument would change that when complete; it would offer a conduit from the realms of shadow into the waking world, a breach through which the stone's corrupting influence could stream undiminished.

"It's there, but it's in the plane of shadow," Aeron said after a long moment. "Close at hand, but a world away."