"Well, if the spirits in question are those of Plainsmen, it's no doubt a dark and bloody quest that promises plenty of mileage and casualties. With my imperiled brother at the end of it.

"Sometimes, though, ghosts don't want a journey at all. Instead they come to urge the living… to avenge their untimely murder.

"I doubt that. If it's Plainsmen, they'd no doubt keep it in their own family like the Pathwardens do, or the di Caelas. Every family has enough intrigue and betrayal without calling in outsiders. And it's beyond me what Brithelm would have to do with a murky tale of vengeance."

I cast the greaves aside, rummaged through my other belongings, and picked up the brooch.

"Damn! Elazar and Fernando will drum me out of the Order if they don't have their self-righteous mitts on this at once."

But the brooch jogged my imagination, and leaning back in my chair, I held it to the light, speculating further.

"Then again, ghosts sometimes announce the prospect of treasure…"

But those days were over. Though a faint greed stirred at the back of my attentions, I could not dwell upon it long. Avarice grew silent at the thought of poor Brithelm, spectral knife at his throat.

It was then that the centermost opal began to flicker. A faint light, fixed at the heart of the stone, expanded, deepened, until it seemed to split the gem like a column of fire in darkness. The room about me tumbled into blackness, as though the only source of light in the world came from the stone in my hand.

I gasped, breathed in moist, subterranean air, carrying with it the chilly smell of mud and water and stagnant time. It felt as though I had fallen into the stone or lay submerged in sunless caverns.

The white light at the center of the opal took on shape, definition, resolving itself into a thin, pale arm, a pale hand clutching a long, menacing dagger.

I grabbed the arms of the chair and waited. No doubt it was the hand I had seen before-the hand at my brother's throat. I steeled myself and looked more closely into the stone, searching intently for movement, for other light, for any sign or clue or landmark that would locate the vision in the world I knew and understood.

Instead, I saw only the light and the hand and the dagger, and finally, beyond these a faintly glimmering visage-the pale face of a Plainsman, marred by a diamond-shaped patch over his right eye. Then a voice rose on all sides of me, whispering back and forth in the stunned darkness of the room.

Do not fear, it consoled, though the consolation was brittle, hiding beneath it a dark, icy current of menace. Do not fear, young man, for your brother is free of harm. He is simply a way I have discovered to… gain your attention.

"Forgive me if I find that hard to believe, having seen him last with a knife at his throat," I retorted. For all my attempts at bravery, my voice sounded thin, almost frail in the enormous, shifting vault of the room in which I felt I was sitting now-felt I was sitting, though for the life of me, I could not have told you how I had moved from my cramped little chambers into some monstrous, dark rotunda.

Your energy is most welcome, the voice explained. For in energy is the beginning of commerce.

I gripped the arms of the chair even tighter. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

Slowly the patch lifted, and the empty socket glowed with the dead light of phosfire-the pale green light that illumines nothing but the source of the light itself. It began to change shape, taking on a head, four arms, a tail, until a salamander glimmered and writhed on the black floor of the room. Turning quickly and more quickly in a rapidly tightening circle, the creature took its own tail between its jaws and, swirling yet more rapidly, became a spinning blur of light that suddenly became the face again, this time bright with sharp aquiline features.

His hair was dark, beaded, and disheveled. His unhooded eye was like a black opal, in the center of which lay a column of fire, wherein lay the same face. It seemed that the image in front of me repeated itself forever, each time smaller and smaller, like reflections in reflections, born of facing mirror to mirror.

It means it is time for commerce, Sir…. The voice paused expectantly.

"No names. At least not yet," I whispered.

Except that of Brithelm, perhaps? taunted the echoing voice.

I leaned forward, cupping the brooch in both hands. The room reeled, then steadied.

"Just… just what is the nature of this commerce?" I asked.

Simple, the face responded, now moving its thin lips in accord with the words I heard around me. My commerce is a simple purchase-your opals, if you wish to see your brother again.

"I see. As ransom."

The face in front of me wavered, turned in the half-light. Behind it, if only for a second, I caught a glimpse of glistening rock in the darkness, of a pale cascade of stalactites or stalagmites-I never could remember which one was which.

"Ransom" is not our word for it. We prefer "reunion."

"I see." I fell silent and tried to avert my eyes from the stones. It was as though the face was everywhere I looked, reflected upon the dense and billowing darkness around me.

"Well, then, the opals are yours, obviously. I shall be glad to restore them. They are here, in my hands. Yours for the taking."

I am not fool enough to ascend among you, the voice scolded. Instead, I would have you bring them to me.

"But where in the world are you? Or where under the world, I might ask?"

For a moment, the face dimmed in the brooch. The room fell silent, and I could feel the closeness of the walls about me, as if I had been restored to my own chambers.

A clever one, you are. All brave and Solamnic and ever so bright.

"And altogether willing to hand over a mess of opals for my brother. Providing, that is, that I know where to hand them over."

You would like that, wouldn't you? To converge on a spot with dozens of your kind and to muscle your brother away from us.

Even the criminal, it seemed, mistrusted me.

"Yes, I would like that. But there are not dozens of 'my kind,' whatever that is. Nor would I wish that on the world. Look, this is something more basic than tactics, more basic than your deals and your transactions. Quite simply, I want my brother safe, and I have the opals that will assure his safety. You have my word for that."

The opals themselves will tell you what you need to know, the voice replied mysteriously and ominously. In them lies the map of my darkness. In them lies the path to your brother. Follow the stone beneath the stone, and you will come to all of us soon enough.

Suddenly the gems dulled, the fire in the center of the brooch extinguished, and the room was flooded in candlelight. I stood up, breathed deeply, and looked around me. The room was as I remembered it, but the window was ajar, and a faint hint of a chill had crept into my chambers.

Again I looked at the brooch, which a moment before had flickered and boded in my hand. Now it seemed harmless, quite lovely but useless for anything more than clasping a cape about the neck of a young and unsettled Knight.

"I am right on the edge of adventure," I told myself. "Or of disaster. Or maybe I am only talking to rocks."