It was nearing the tenth bell. The servants whose activities concluded with the day were all in their beds and most were on their way to sleep. Those whose duties required them to toil way through the night were already in their departments, and most of those in the bowels of the pace. Quiet conversation filtered to Lance from distant pces in the barracks, but Laramy and Fat John, at least, were well and tucked into their beds, ignoring all that transpired around them in favor of a blissful night’s rest.

  He looked to the window by his bunk, saw there the spider in its web. The spirit…or whatever he was…lounged near the eye, his forelimbs twitching against the threads, his abdomen contracting rhythmically as he groaned against a pain which defied Lance’s understanding.

  “Lothor?” he whispered.

  “Yes?” came his baritone growl.

  “Can you open the shadow cast by my bed?”

  “With ease.”

  “And if I asked you to keep the Wraiths from seeing me, could you do that, too?”

  “If there is such a need.”

  “Then…then I think you should. If it’s not too much to ask.”

  “That you ask is enough, child. It is enough.”

  Motion at the edge of his bed drew his eye. He watched as the shadow extended and deepened, knew Lothor had opened a portal into his domain. As the moon shed its light through that window, cast silver beams into the barrel-shaft chamber, he pushed back his coverlet, and rolled over the edge of the bed.

  Cold embraced him as he plunged through shadow, and arrived in an abyssal realm in which sight was lost to him.

  “I don’t know where I’m going.” He said.

  “It is not my pce to guide.” Lothor said. “Not alone. But there is another. One who will answer if you seek her.”

  “But this is your home. Isn’t it?”

  Lothor chuckled. “No. Home is a pce far from here. This is but an expression of who I am.”

  “Then—”

  “We work together, those of my kind. In all things, we must. There are those I will refuse to work with. You should know this. But they are few. Who you seek is a spirit of guidance. I am merely a spirit of pce.”

  “But they're here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Call to her.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “You have a need.”

  “If I stay here too long—“

  “The heightened resistance those others feel is my will railing against them. It is reciprocal, this pain. That they should, in their hubris, seek to compel me to do as they wish…I cannot stop them, but I can make their passage more difficult. Were they in my home, I could keep them from using me, but we are far from there, you and I. I am not as strong in this pce.

  “She is the same. But call to her. Express your need.”

  “O-okay.”

  He seated himself on the ground, not trusting himself to keep from wandering off within the shadows.

  “I want to go to the Teacher’s Tower, but I don’t know the way.” He said. “Where is it?”

  A lilting, alto voice broke through the quiet and the gloom. “Know me, and I will come.”

  “Who am I to know?”

  “In the autumn I fly away from cold and toward it in the spring, but always I know where I am going, and where I come from.”

  I’m never going to get this. “Are you summer?”

  A soft chuckle.

  “No, that doesn’t make sense.” He said. “Maybe you’re time. But that doesn’t help me.”

  “You have a need.” Lothor intoned. “But it is not my pce to express that need.”

  “He knows you?” the newcomer asked.

  “He has seen, friend. Seen the way. Seen it in truth.”

  “Then he is friend to us.”

  “He is.”

  “What am I going to do.” Lance mumbled. I don’t have time for this. I should have asked Peter to meet me here, in my barracks. He could have taken me straight there.

  “A different perspective.” The newcomer said. “If you should hide from me, I will find you. If you should y in one pce, I should know. If you should move, I will feel it. Wherever I have been, there is the way back. Wherever I should go, I arrive without fail.”

  “There is a way back?” Lance said. “You know where you’re going.”

  “Yes.”

  “You navigate.”

  “Yes, yes.” She giggled.

  “Then you use directions.”

  “I am!”

  “What is your name, spirit?”

  “It is Shana. Call me, and I will answer. Always, I will answer.”

  “Shana? Will you guide me to the Teacher’s Tower. To Master Gregor.”

  “I will.”

  As if the petals of a flower unfolded around him, a new sense bloomed in his soul. Lothor’s energies merged with those of this new spirit, and thin lines were thrust forth from his feet and the top of his head, angling down with the distance until, at the edge of his vision, they merged together. He felt something tugging him in one direction, and climbed to his feet, the space between those lines diting and the angle sharpening.

  A few steps. The angle inclined, became steeper. A few more and the pull shifted in a different direction. He followed it for a few more steps, and was met with a vertical line which emerged almost at his nose.

  “Is he here?”

  “Reach?” Lothor said.

  “He is here.” Shana added.

  He lifted his arm, touched darkness above him. Shadows pulled apart, revealing a snatch of the world outside. A dimly lit room devoid of furnishings. He touched that window, and shot through.