Rachel tried to calm herself. For the moment she was free. The moment would not last. How best could she use this opportunity? She could not imagine successfully using Edomic to bluff her way all the way out of Felrook. There would be too many guarded checkpoints. With Galloran’s army outside, the whole fortress would be on high alert. But the lurkers were not far.

Lowering her head, Rachel reached out with her mind for the torivors. All she could sense was a direction, not the halls she needed to travel to get there. She began making her best guesses. She walked down a hall, turned a corner, and then quickstepped down another. She was up too high. More and more the torivors seemed directly beneath her. She needed stairs.

She passed a pair of soldiers who paid her no mind. Apparently, mysterious cowled figures were not an uncommon sight.

Eventually Rachel had to backtrack. A locked wooden door blocked the new way she wanted to go. She knelt and peered at the keyhole, then spoke a quiet Edomic command. She willed a twisting movement from the moving parts inside the lock. It had worked on 90 percent of the locks Ferrin had provided. It worked on this one.

The door clicked open, revealing a short hall. Behind an unlocked door she found a stairwell. Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, she felt much nearer to the torivors. They were still lower than her, and off to the side. Her path toward them led her around a corner and into the view of two armed guards flanking an iron door. They wore the armor of conscriptors, and they clutched poleaxes. Swords and daggers hung ready at their waists.

Rachel knew that if she turned around, she would attract more attention than if she proceeded. Beyond the iron door the hall continued and then rounded a corner. If she walked past the guards and around the corner, she could regroup and figure out how to deal with them.

“Who goes there?” one of the conscriptors inquired before Rachel reached them.

Keeping her face down, Rachel stopped walking and shook her head, hinting that they shouldn’t question her identity. She waited in silence.

“We have to ask your business down here,” the other conscriptor apologized, obviously concerned about who he might be addressing.

Maybe she could fake her way through this. Rachel did not try to disguise her voice, but she made it cold. “Maldor should have warned you I was coming. I am here to inspect the torivors.”

“Inspect the torivors?” the first conscriptor exclaimed. “Who are you?”

“That is none of your affair,” Rachel replied harshly.

“I’m afraid it is,” the other guard said, starting to sound rankled.

Switching to Edomic, Rachel suggested they flop to the ground. Both complied, their dropped weapons clattering. Rachel suggested that they keep still; then with a command and an effort of will she levitated both poleaxes and held the blades to their throats.

The combination of suggestions and commands left her feeling taxed, but she tried not to show it. She stood with her head bowed and her hands behind her back. The men were no longer pinned by her will, but the weapons at their throats seemed sufficient to keep them still. “Will you open the door, or do you mean to delay me further?”

“We don’t have the key,” the first conscriptor said, no defiance in his tone. “Only the emperor comes here, and never often.”

“I know,” Rachel lied, showing the keys she had taken from the guard upstairs, perfectly aware that none of them would open this door. “I am asking whether you intend to keep wasting my time.”

“If Maldor sent you,” the second guard responded, “and if you have the key, you are welcome to enter.”

With a word and a gesture, Rachel sent the poleaxes sliding down the stone floor of the hall. “Stay on the ground until I am gone, worms. See that I am not disturbed.”

The guards remained motionless on the floor. Rachel stepped past them and scraped a random key against the keyhole. She uttered a quiet command and felt the workings of the lock stir, but not enough to grant her access.

Despite her increasing heart rate, Rachel tried to stay calm. The mechanisms of some of the trickier locks at East Keep had to be turned left first, and then right. While she continued to rattle the key against the keyhole, Rachel uttered a pair of commands, first twisting the innards of the lock one way, then coaxing other moving parts in the opposite direction.

The lock disengaged, and Rachel opened the door. Deciding that it would be most convincing to offer no additional comment, Rachel stepped through and closed the door. She was left in total darkness.

For a panicky moment she envisioned lurkers all around her. No, they were in the vicinity, but she still could not sense them clearly. Some barrier still intervened.

Starting at the doorway, Rachel felt her way along the wall to a corner three paces from the door. Following the next wall, after several small paces, she discovered a step down. She was on a landing at the top of a stairway. The stairs descended directly toward where she sensed the torivors.

Feeling higher along the wall, Rachel found a sconce holding a torch. She lit the torch with a word and removed it from the sconce. The trembling flame revealed a long stairway, probably forty steps. Unsure how long she had before the guards she had bluffed would initiate an angry pursuit, Rachel rushed down the stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs, a short hall ended at a large mirror. Closer inspection revealed that the mirror was a polished metal door perforated by a grid of tiny holes. Eight pegs resided in the centermost holes of the top row. It was a lock like the ones Jason had described at the Repository of Learning and at the lorevault of Trensicourt. She had no idea how Edomic might help her open it. Inserting the pegs by trial and error would take weeks or months or years. Maybe longer.

Rachel could perceive the torivors behind the door. Can you sense me? she wondered, projecting the thought with all of the energy she could muster. I need to speak with you. Can you answer?

Although she could discern their collective presence, she recognized no individual thoughts. She was on her own opening the door. If she failed, this entire excursion would be for nothing. More likely than not, the day would dawn with her chained in the dungeon.

Rachel studied the door. It looked as though it had been fashioned from the same metal as the torivorian swords. The door itself was not going anywhere. But the door was anchored into the stone of the wall.

As soon as her thoughts turned to the message from Darian, Rachel knew what to do. Summoning her inner strength, she spoke a command to turn all the stone around the perimeter of the door to glass. She felt the directive succeed. The stone took on a glossy sheen and gained a hint of smoky translucence.