"Good," Jenna said in satisfaction as Coryn finished the list. "Would you please help Donny with the books while I start collecting everything? Besides what I have stored here, we'll need most everything from Dora's load."

Coryn nodded and hurried back downstairs. The volumes were heavy, but she and Donny went down and up several times. Her face was red by the third trip. Dalamar had a fire raging and now closed a pair of flat steel doors cut into the sides of a cast-iron furnace-the largest firebox or oven Coryn had ever seen.

Jenna caught her eye and indicated a large book on the table, laid open to a page of arcane inscriptions. It was one of her personal tomes, not one of the ones Coryn had unloaded from the mules and carried upstairs.

"Hmm. I was just doing a little reading while you were bringing things up," the Red Robe explained. "I learned a few important things-unfortunately, though, nothing I learned seems to be good news."

Coming to peer over her shoulder, Coryn noticed an illustration of a small, pale stone on the open pages. The drawing was rendered in black ink, but, using great swirls and arrows, the mage who had made the drawing had indicated the power of the artifact.

"Yes, that looks like the Irda Stone, the one that Kalrakin had." Squinting at the strange symbols, she was surprised to realize that she could read the writing, though this was the first time she had ever seen such script.

"It is an artifact dating back to the Age of Dreams, isn't it?" Dalamar asked, coming over to join the women in examining the tome. His robe was already thick with coal dust.

"Yes." Jenna summed up what she had learned thus far for the other two. "It was created out of chaos-its power is very attuned to wild magic and has a parasitic effect. As you observed, it allows the one who holds it to absorb the power of any spells or magic-any enchanted weapon-that is used against it. Not only is the spell negated, but the Irda Stone actually draws from the spell and fuels the power of the one who wields the stone. And when Kalrakin wants to cast a spell, the energy stored within the stone will multiply the effect of his casting. To an unimaginable extent, depending on how much magical power the stone has had a chance to absorb."

"So I actually bolstered his magic when I cast the fireball, and the stone absorbed the lightning bolt? I made him stronger?" Coryn was dismayed to remember her losing battle with the sorcerer.

"You had no way of knowing what was happening, but yes, that's what transpired," Jenna said bluntly. "We're starting to understand what we're up against."

"Any clue in your book as to how he must have gotten the stone?" asked Dalamar.

Jenna shrugged. "Not really. It was held in the Tower of High Sorcery at Wayreth for thousands of years. But some time ago-the records are sketchy-it was granted to the Speaker of the Sun in Qualinesti, for him to use in combating the forces of the Queen of Darkness. There is no trace of it after that, but no doubt the Dark Knights expropriated it when they occupied Qualinost. Perhaps Kalrakin simply stole it from the knights, or the elves, as the elven realm was falling. Who would know to stop him?"

"He will be hard to defeat with magic," the dark elf noted. "But perhaps we can use uncommon spells to distract him, to get close enough to strike without magic, to slip a dagger between his ribs," he added coldly.

"We might," Jenna said cautiously.

"There must be some way to trick him!" Coryn exclaimed.

"If there is, we'll find it," Dalamar said fiercely, his words having a calming effect on the young woman. "We have much work to do."

"And time is wasting," Jenna added tartly, addressing Coryn. "Here-after you change your robe, put these on." The Red Robe indicated a rack of several leather aprons, sooty and worn. She handed the younger woman a pair of stiff leather gloves and some sort of bowl made out of the same material.

"No, it's a helmet-you don't want to burn your hair off, do you?" explained Jenna, amused at Coryn's obvious confusion. "Put it on and fasten it-I'll attach your face-plate before we open the furnace." She turned to Dalamar. "Bring more coal. The glass is almost melted, but we'll need to keep the heat up while we're working."

The dark elf had already removed his robe, Cory saw, looking trim and muscular in his trousers, boots, and suspenders. Like Jenna and Coryn, he, too, slipped into a leather apron and protective mask.

The leather bowl fit comfortably over Coryn's scalp, with a flap that protected the long dark hair she bound at her nape. Very curious now, Coryn allowed Jenna to attach a stiff visor at her forehead. When it fell into place, she could see out of two small, glass-covered holes; the rest of her face, from the helmet down to her throat, was protected by the barrier.

"Take one of these poles." Jenna said, sounding remarkably confident, Coryn thought, as she offered a long tube to the younger woman.

"This is platinum dust, powdered by dwarven smiths in the mines of Thorbardin," Jenna explained, removing a small vial from one of the many nooks and crannies over her workbench. "I obtained it at some expense years ago-this small bottle alone cost the equivalent of ten thousand pieces of steel. You will need three pinches of it, to start with."

Coryn had been about to reach for the vial; she looked up, startled. "These are such rare ingredients. How can you afford them all?" she asked.

Jenna's lips curled in an expression of wry amusement. "When you have magical powers, you find plenty of ways to get rich." She cast a glance at Dalamar, who was bringing several more buckets of coal to them. "You'll find plenty of ways to get poor, too," she added, with an amused shrug.

Hesitantly, Coryn took three pinches of the grainy, gray-colored powder, and dropped them into a clean bowl. In short order she added the other items as directed by Jenna, including talc, powdered charcoal, some crushed mint leaves, and a few shavings of hardwood. Dalamar, meanwhile, worked on his mixture, so that all of the spells would take shape simultaneously.

Next came the more exotic components: Cory painstakingly counted out twenty-five tiny black specks that, Jenna assured her, were dried bat's eyes. Then she broke apart a blue feather, from some bird called a parrot, and scattered the bits of fluff across the top of the odd-smelling mixture in the bowl. Finally came the tinder, dried bits of scrap purportedly made from seaweed that had been harvested from the bottom of the ocean, and then dried for ten summers in a desert climate.

"That, my dear, cost a sum of diamonds, twice as much,

by weight, as the dried seaweed." She looked at Coryn and actually grinned. She was enjoying herself immensely, Coryn realized. "I actually paid for that."

So was Coryn. "Who sells things like this?"

"I myself did, for a long time-many, too many years. Now that I have closed my shop, there are others-none so knowledgeable, nor with such a complete selection, as I was proud to maintain. I got this from an importer who brought it across the ocean from Kothas. Palanthas has more of such merchants than any other city in the world, though you will find magic-sellers in Sanction, Caergoth, Haven-even in rat-holes like Tarsis."

"Of course there are other ways to gain certain components," Dalamar interjected. "Go out yourself, snare a hundred bats, then dry them in a kiln so carefully that you can remove their eyes, their fur, and their feet, still intact. Takes a bit of learning, and time-but saves you the cost, and dealing with fools."

"I will learn how to do exactly that one day," pledged Cory.

She turned her attention to her glass, which had been heating up all this time. Following instructions, she gathered a medium-sized lump of the molten material on the end of one of the long tubes. Heating it carefully, she watched it soften, and turned the pole quickly to keep the gooey stuff from falling into the furnace. Soon it was soft and malleable.