"Are Lar and Lord Ildirin still here?"

"They left long ago, taking their guards living and dead with them, not an hour after you fell asleep, though they're both expected to return this afternoon. I had plenty of time to talk to Lord Ildirin last night, while you were out dodging assassins and the ambassador was petrified, but there are still several matters to be settled and spells to be performed."

That disturbed Emmis. While it wasn't part of his official duties, he felt that his job included protecting Lar, and he couldn't very well do that if the ambassador left him sleeping here while he went roaming the streets in the middle of the night. "Why didn't they wake me?"

"I think they wanted to speak privately with one another. And I allowed it – encouraged it, actually – because you wanted to speak privately with me. Which you are doing now, though to very little purpose as yet."

"I'm sorry," Emmis said. "It's something I heard from a theurgist yesterday." He blinked in surprise at his own words – had it really just been yesterday that he spoke to Corinal?

"Oh?"

"Guildmaster, why have wizards put protective spells on the towers in Lumeth? The theurgist said there were several very powerful protections on them, but the towers themselves are sorcerous in nature, not any sort of wizardry."

Ithinia froze, staring at him. Then she demanded, "What do you know about the towers?"

"I… not much, just what the theurgist told me. There are three of them, and each one is a sorcerer's talisman hundreds of feet high…"

"Why was this theurgist telling you about them in the first place?" Ithinia snapped, interrupting him.

"Well, I asked. He consulted the goddess Unniel for me…"

"Why did you ask?"

"Because… I can't tell you."

"What? Why not?"

"I swore I wouldn't."

That was not literally true; he had merely accepted that Lar would have him killed if he revealed too much. Ithinia did not look as if she was interested in explanations at the moment, though.

"You swore."

"Yes." He didn't hesitate; it was only after the word had left his mouth that he found himself wondering whether he was absolutely sure that wizards couldn't always tell truth from falsehood the way witches could.

"Oaths have power, you know."

"I know."

"That was why the assassin lingered after its attempt had failed – your oath gave it the power to stay."

"I know."

"You need to be more careful what oaths you swear and what vows you make, Emmis of Shiphaven."

"Honestly, I don't swear them lightly, Guildmaster."

"So you swore not to reveal something, and that something led you to ask a theurgist about the Lumeth towers. Didn't he want to know why you were asking?"

"Not as long as I paid him, no. And I asked him a lot of questions; I don't think that one stood out particularly."

"But he told you that the Wizards' Guild has been warding the Lumeth towers for centuries."

Emmis blinked. "No. He told me wizards were protecting the towers. He didn't mention the Guild or how long it had been going on."

"He told you the towers were sorcerous, though."

"Yes. Which just seems… I mean, talismans hundreds of feet high? Holding back poisons?"

"He told you that?"

"Yes. And that they're guarded by wizards' spells, powerful ones. And I thought that since you're a Guildmaster, you might know why they're guarded that way."

"I do – but why do you care? I know the ambassador is concerned about a possible war between Vond and Lumeth, but what does that have to do with you, or with the towers?"

"Well, because… I can't tell you all of it."

"What can you tell me?"

Emmis grimaced; he knew he should have been ready for this interrogation, that it hadn't been realistic to think Ithinia would answer his questions without asking her own, but he wasn't ready. He was making it up as he went along.

"I think… I'm not sure," he said, "but I think someone may be planning to destroy the towers, and I wanted to know just how much trouble that would cause."

"Destroy them?"

"Yes. If they can."

"They probably can't, but still – who is this? Who is insane enough to attempt anything like that?"

"I can't tell you."

"Young man, you are being extremely annoying."

"I know. I'm sorry."

She stared at him for a moment, then sighed.

"All right," she said. "I'll tell you what I can, and when I'm done, you tell me as much as you can. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Emmis said, relieved. "That's perfect."

"Oh, it's anything but perfect, but it will have to do. Sit down; this may take awhile."

Emmis sat on the bed; Ithinia took the room's only chair.

"At the dawn of time," she began, "the universe, unable to contain so many opposed forces in its original compact form, tore itself in half. One piece became Heaven, home of the gods, the realm of light and…"

"I know this," Emmis interrupted. "The gods in Heaven, demons in the Nethervoid, and the leftover bits in between formed the World. What does this have to do with Lumeth?"

"As we wizards tell the story, this middle realm wasn't just left over; it was where the gods and demons collected the impurities they cast out of their own realms. All the good that had been in the Nethervoid was put here, and all the evil that had been in Heaven. Gods and demons watched as it all combined to form a new place, and were amazed to see it was possible for something to exist that was such a blending of light and dark, of good and evil – after all, hadn't the universe itself just ripped apart because it couldn't hold both? But this new creation didn't show any sign of repeating that.

"So they wanted to see what else it could do."

"And they created people," Emmis said. "Yes, I know. I learned all this when I was a baby."

Ithinia calmly continued, "But the middle realm was such a mess, such a disorderly collection of cast-offs, that nothing could live in it."

Emmis had been going to say more, but he stopped and closed his mouth. This wasn't part of the traditional creation story.

"So the gods and demons used all the forces at their disposal to make it habitable – or at least make the part of it we call the World habitable. We don't know how much they left a poisonous wasteland, but they raised up an immense plateau in the middle, where they divided land from water and cleansed the air above. And they did this using all the different powers that we now call magic – the power of the gods made the sun and set the cycles of days and years in motion, and the power of the demons made decay and death so that the World wouldn't ever be overwhelmed by its inhabitants. They used the chaos outside the universe to make life – we call that kind of power wizardry. They used witchcraft and dance and song and all the other magics to get everything just as they wanted it."

"Warlockry, too?" Emmis asked.

"No. Warlockry didn't exist; it's new. Which is why we weren't sure at first it was really a kind of magic at all, when it appeared twenty-two years ago. It must have come from somewhere beyond the universe, somewhere in the chaos."

"Oh."

"So no, they didn't use warlockry. But they did use sorcery. Sorcery draws on order the same way that wizardry draws on chaos, so the gods and demons used both, to keep a balance. They used sorcery to make air that could be breathed. The original gases that had covered the World were poisonous fumes; I'm told that if you go to the edge of the World and look over, you can still see them covering the wastelands below. They're said to be greenish-yellow and very unpleasant."

Emmis blinked. He had never heard of anything at all beyond the edge of the World.

"The thing about sorcery," Ithinia said, "is that it uses talismans. That's inherent in it; the power it uses, a force the sorcerers call gaja, must have a physical core, or it dissipates and stops doing whatever magic it's supposed to be doing."