“You never chose to come here,” Maldor eventually summarized. “You never even really chose to resist me. Yet here we sit, enemies by circumstance. I imagine you would like to see your parents again.”

“More than anything,” Rachel confessed. Was it wrong to reveal that? It might make him sympathize with her. Was he capable of sympathy?

“Tell me how you discovered your aptitude for Edomic,” Maldor invited.

She paused. This was a dangerous subject. He didn’t want anyone using Edomic. She could get people in trouble. What did he want to hear?

“I know you have skill with Edomic,” Maldor said. “Be forthright. If we can come to an understanding, you may save your friends a great deal of suffering.”

Rachel explained how she first learned to ignite fires. Instead of naming Drake, she claimed she had learned from a stranger in the woods. She told how Chandra had taught her to move objects, because Chandra was dead and Maldor couldn’t harm her. Rachel admitted that the more she practiced, the more will she could force into her commands.

“How do you feel when you execute an Edomic command?” Maldor asked, the eyes of his puppet watching her intently.

“Good,” she said. He watched in silence. “Really good. More alive. It’s hard to describe.”

“No description necessary,” Maldor said. “I know precisely what you mean.” He regarded her quietly. “I have wavered of late in my opinion of Edomic adepts. Someday, perhaps far in the future, I may regret not having an heir. Do I really wish to see my knowledge perish with me? Show me what you can do. Move something in the room.”

Rachel hesitated, trying to strategize. Should she downplay her abilities? She could try to make a tiny Edomic command seem challenging. Or would it be more advantageous if Maldor thought she had real potential? If he was looking for a possible heir, the latter might be the case. Then again, he might only have mentioned an heir to fool her.

“Just use your talent,” Maldor encouraged. “Show me. You’ve been captured. Your friends have been captured. Your only leverage is my interest in you. If you have a gift for speaking Edomic, I assure you that my interest will increase.”

She looked around the room. A wooden cask roughly the size of a watermelon caught her eye. She issued a terse command that sent it crashing up into the ceiling. The cask fell heavily back to the floor, cracking without fully rupturing.

Conrad burst into the room, sword in hand. Torvic held up a palm to stop him. “I asked for a demonstration of her Edomic abilities,” Maldor explained. Conrad nodded and withdrew.

The displacer puppet turned his attention back to Rachel. “Impressive. The cask did not appear light, and you handled it with ease. You have come a long way in a short while. Tell me, how large of a fire can you ignite spontaneously?”

“At least the size of a person,” Rachel answered.

“Interesting. What else can you do? I know you spent time with the charm woman.”

“I can influence animals.”

“Many accomplished wizards never master that ability. I would like you to try an exercise.” He shared with her the Edomic command to summon water out of the air, and the command to hold it in the form of the sphere. “Then you can call heat to make the water boil. Try it, please.”

Rachel asked him to repeat the commands, which he did. Mustering her willpower, she spoke the first command, trying to envision the water particles all around her, an invisible mist. As she felt the water responding, she spoke the second command, visualizing where she wanted the water to gather. Soon a sphere of water just smaller than a racquetball hovered between her and Torvic. While using her will to hold the sphere in place, she summoned heat until the water steamed and boiled. Once the water reached a boil, it became indefinably slippery, fell, and splattered against the floor.

When the water hit the floor, Rachel let out an exhausted breath. It had taken all of her focus to hold the water together. She felt like she had set down a heavy weight.

“I am very impressed,” Maldor said. “You have never gathered water from the air before?”

Rachel shook her head. “Never.”

“You have real promise,” Maldor mused. “Beguiling potential. Of course, it would require centuries of extensive tutelage and hard work if you were to approach that potential. But over time you could develop into a sorceress of formidable abilities. How would you like to live for a thousand years and uncover secrets mortal man has never known to wonder about?”

“That sounds interesting,” she said, partly intrigued, mostly trying not to offend.

“The secrets of Edomic are lost to Lyrian,” Maldor said. “I am the last custodian of that knowledge. I am the only one left who can teach you. And you may be the most worthy student I will ever encounter. You could be a terrible threat to me. My survival instincts warn me to crush you in your infancy. To help you develop would be to repeat the tragic folly of wizards past. Yet how awful to lose all of that promise! Adepts have become so rare. You are young and innocent. If we could strike the proper arrangement, complete with certain safeguards, this could evolve into a mutually beneficial relationship. How determined are you to return home?”

“I really want to,” Rachel said frankly. “I worry about my parents. They probably think I’m dead.”

“Would you walk away from the potential to become a wizard of universal renown, profound knowledge, and unfathomable power simply to see your parents? Would you walk away from centuries of meaningful life for decades of mediocrity? I know firsthand that Edomic does not function in the Beyond. Here you could be extraordinary. There you won’t be nearly so exceptional.”

Rachel considered the question. Maldor was evil, so to learn from him might mean forsaking everything she was. But what if the alternative was death? And what if she could strike a bargain to save her friends? Did part of her want to use the excuse of saving her friends as an excuse to gain knowledge and power?

“You’ve been to the Beyond?” Rachel asked, hoping to stall.

“I have. Among other things, it is where I hid after Zokar fell.”

“Really? How long were you there?”

“Lyrian and the Beyond are growing apart,” Maldor said. “They have been for millennia. Eventually there will be no way left to cross from one to the other. It is impossible to ascertain when that day will come. The passage of time does not always correspond between our realities. A year here might be ten there. A year there might be a hundred here. The ratio is inconstant. You may go home and find yourself wandering your world decades before you were born, or a thousand years in the future. I once spent a few days in the Beyond, and hundreds of years passed here in the interim.”