Damon put one hand on Annarais's shoulder and gave a quick jerk of his head back in the direction of the tower. He stood up, helped Annarais stand, and without a word they backed away.
"Pick up the corpse!" ordered the assassin. "Put it in the wagon."
Now the golem complied. It grabbed the body by the ankle and hoisted it into the air. Gears whirred as the golem turned to place the body in the wagon.
Damon and Annarais reached Jervis, arms still wrapped tightly around himself.
"It's no trick," hissed Damon. "Let's get out of here."
Jervis's eyes fell on the blood on Annarais's hands. "Angels of mercy," he swore, "it's true."
With the sounds of the metal man behind them, the three apprentices stumbled through the large, black rocks that bordered the beach, waded the frigid stream that fed into the sound, and came to the base of the cliff where a switchback trail began. Jervis glanced back nervously.
"How long will that spell last?" he asked.
"She's dead," panted Damon. "What happened? What was that thing? Who-"
"Jervis is right," said Annarais. "The assassin's bound to notice sooner or later."
"She's going to turn back and get us all," said Jervis. He leaped up onto a boulder and tried to spy over the other stones. "How long do you think Sabra's spell is going to last, now that she's-" Jervis stopped short. "What are we going to do?"
"Keep moving," said Damon. "We've got to get back to the tower. Come on."
Jervis stood still, his arms hanging limply at his sides.
"That's the first place she'll look. We've got to split up, hide, get away, maybe get a boat."
"The tower will be safer," said Annarais. "We can get our fighting staffs. She can't get in. We know our way around, and there's lots of places to hide."
Jervis looked past the trail. Below them was a steep, rocky slope that led to countless recesses, inlets, grottos, and tidal pools. "Go die in that damn tower," he said, "She'll get you, just like she got Sabra. I can make it on my own. I did it before. I'll do it again." Without looking back, he started picking his way recklessly down the jagged rocks of the slope.
"Jervis!" yelled Annarais. "We need to stick together!"
Eyes focused on his precarious path, he yelled, "Shut up. I've got to get to safety."
"Jervis!" Annarais repeated her plea, but Damon grabbed her arms from behind and compelled her on.
"He might be right. Let him go. Let him do what he thinks is right, but don't wait here. That assassin will come back when Sabra's spell wears off. Let's go."
Damon moved ahead and pulled Annarais behind him. The switchbacks seemed to go on forever, one after the other, until it was hard to say how long they'd been climbing, how many times they'd turned, and how far they had left to hike. The cliff they were climbing- which they had climbed hundreds of times-hung over a deep sound. It had once been a strip mine before the ice and the beginning of the thaw. The cliff itself was eroding with the thaw, and the tower was doomed to slide into the water with it. Master Wane was fond of saying, "It's a wise man who knows his house is built on sand."
When Damon and Annarais were halfway up the side of the cliff, they heard a scream, nearly inhuman in its urgency.
"Did you hear that?' asked Annarais.
"It sounded like Jervis," said Damon. "Don't stop." He shoved her forward. Annarais nodded, and they continued hiking, the silence broken only by ragged breathing and Annarais's curses.
They were both winded when they finally reached the top of the cliff, but they had renewed urgency since hearing Jervis's scream. They scurried to the great, mechanical door at the base of the tower, tripping over rocks and their own feet. The tower rose up more than fifty feet above them. It looked like an old-fashioned lighthouse. The underside of the balcony that surrounded the top floor extended out from the wall. From the ground up to that balcony the walls looked like blank stone, though the apprentices knew there were plenty of windows. Illusions hid them all.
Damon and Annarais were damp now from sweat and sticky from brine, their stringy hair sticking to their faces and shoulders, their clothes chafing their skin. They stood on the broad stone step at the top of the stairs that led to the door, leaning against the massive, latchless door, panting. The door had always seemed to Damon to be like a great, metal mouth. It was far older than the tower, something Master Wane has salvaged from ages past. The door was smooth, but the mechanisms that surrounded it were complex, with pistons, gears, and counterweights.
"What do-" Damon bent over, bracing his hands on his knees. "What do you think happened to Jervis?"
Annarais closed her eyes and leaned against the door. "I don't know, but let's talk about this inside."
"Neither life nor death," began Damon, reciting through his panting the litany that would open the door, "but existence." He paused to catch his breath. "Neither chaos… nor order… but existence." The litany defined how his master's style of magic differed from the other fundamental types of Dominarian magic. The litany was complete, but the door stood impassive.
Damon glanced at Annarais, trying to hide his desperation.
From over the cliff, they heard the rocks knocked loose, falling down the steep slope. It was the sound of pursuit.
"Oh, great heaven," whispered Damon, and he took Annarais's hand.
She stood upright, centered herself for a moment, and spoke the litany. It was as if the litany spoke itself, playing her lungs and mouth the way a musician plays a flute. "Neither life nor death, but existence. Neither chaos nor order, but existence."
With a great commotion of machinery, the iron doors swung up and apart. The two apprentices rushed inside, into the high-ceilinged atrium. The doors clanged shut behind them. Exhausted, they sank to the floor and leaned against the door.
"They won't be able to get in," said Annarais.
"But, we've got to prepare, just in case," replied Damon.
The two apprentices split up, trying to prepare for the arrival of the Stromgald assassin, although neither knew what it would take to stop her. Annarais took the far stairs two at a time. At the top, she raced along the curving walls, heading for the sparring room at the other end of the corridor. She flung the door open and grabbed two metal-shod fighting staffs from their wall bracket near the door.
Meanwhile, Damon looked around the atrium. He closed the wooden shutters on every window and dropped bars into the holds to secure them. Obscured by illusion or not, an open window was a way in. He ran up to the second floor, whose curving, shadowed hallway overlooked the atrium. Here was their kitchen as well as their personal cells, their study rooms, and the sparring room.
He found Annarais in Jervis's cell, standing there with the window unsecured, holding a large, round shell in both hands. The heavy shell had been one of Jervis's treasured finds.
Without looking up, Annarais said, "Master Wane says your life is like the nautilus's shell. It starts very small, and it gets bigger and bigger as you grow. But you know what he forgot? It ends." She put her finger into the empty opening where a living thing had once made its home. "All that's left is something for someone to find on the beach-a trinket."
A mighty boom reverberated through the atrium. Damon jumped, and Annarais's hand flew to her mouth. They hurried out into the hallway and looked one story down to the floor. Another boom sounded from the door into the tower.
"We can't fight her golem," said Annarais.
"We can hide," returned Damon. "Maybe we can get to the training room. Maybe we can even make it to the top, to Master Wane's chambers. He talks to other wizards far away. Maybe he has a magic glass, something we can use to call him. Maybe he can get here, or just get us out." Like closing the shutters, he suspected it was a futile effort at best.
"The training room," said Annarais. "I know the key."
She slipped back into Jervis's room and came out with the fighting staffs. She tossed one to Damon. The booming persisted. Damon followed Annarais to the end of the hall next to the sparring room's door. There stood a wooden door carved with sigils in a wavelike pattern. None of the apprentices had ever been up to the training floor without Master Wane, and he had always opened the latchless door himself. Annarais placed herself in front of it, biting her lip. With her two hands, she made a slow, unpracticed series of gestures and then looked at the door.
"I don't understand." She was becoming more frustrated every minute. "That's exactly what he does. Exactly! Why won't it open?" She repeated the gestures. The boom sounded again, this time accompanied by the sound of metal straining and giving way.
"What are you thinking?" asked Damon.
"I'm trying to get through the damn door," snapped Annarais, her voice strained.
"No," said Damon, putting a calming hand on her shoulder. "What are you thinking while you're doing it?"