The Doktor's Spyglass

Chapter 15

A rushing came around his vision, and the dank cistern laboratory was swept away by an amber wind, enveloping him in a buzzing void of orange-gold that, suddenly, superceded all sensation of the world around him.

For an endless moment he was insensate, hanging in nothing, an infinitesimal point that merely observed without action. Then he felt himself growing, expanding into a rough facsimile of what he remembered his own form to be, a symbol of the being that was Key.

There was no sensation of movement, no sense of up or down; the void was endless and empty, a plain of light the color of the twinkling vesicles within Seffa's elekstone pendant.

Only his mind remained, a mind increasingly overwhelmed and experiencing a sensation he might have recognized as severe anxiety if he'd had the requisite body to present the appropriate symptoms. In place of a pounding heart and a tightening chest, Key had fragmentary, intrusive thoughts that roiled like leaves in a whirlwind.

In his rising state of panic, he wished for something to focus on—anything, a point, a star, a horizon.

He willed it, and suddenly it was there: a glowing, prismatic nodule that beckoned in the middle distance. He clung to the sight of it like a drowning man to flotsam, and found himself pulled inexorably toward it by a hidden tide that was only now making itself apparent.

Shimmering amber walls approached, an ethereal vault hanging before him. Key reached toward it involuntarily, his fingertips—did he have fingertips, here? He couldn't see them—yearning to touch the translucent amber glass.

Before he could draw himself back, something reached out and pulled him in.

* * *

Black marble, veined in gold, and tiered seats filled with black-garbed men.

He was not Key. And yet, in the back of his mind—if the essence that existed in this place could be called his mind—he knew that he was still Key, if removed from that person and that world. Here, now, he was a soldier. A knight? He felt himself sinking into a stranger's thoughts as is if into a sand pit: slowly, but inexorably.

He was seated in a wide, circular chamber, lit dimly by torchlight. Set in the midst of the black floor at the center was a ten-pointed star. He wanted to strain his neck, to look upwards at the ceiling, but he had no immediate control over the stranger's body. He could only look where the stranger decided to look, as if he was a passenger in the man's mind.

The man—a name swam to him from the man's most basic consciousness: Ektor—Ektor stared at the middle of the chamber blankly, waiting for something. He sat on a stone bench, close between two man in like attire. Their black robes were dark as night, and aside from the glittering marble and the golden sashes of one or two of the assembled gathering, the room was a pool of ink. The blackness pervaded not only the attire but the mood: faces were downcast. Men stared at the floor before them and out into space; one or two shed tears. All waited. All watched. The tension was palpable as a fog.

Ektor looked down at his hand and examined a gold signet ring, set with a black resin crest bearing the same ten-pointed star that adorned the council floor. Conclave, came the word, floating again to Key through Ektor's distracted mind.

Ektor looked up at the sound of a door opening, and through his eyes Key saw an old man escorted in under heavy guard. The man had raven hair shot through with silver, and wore the same black robes as the rest of the men. His face was downcast, but Ektor could see his bloodshot eyes glinting from within the curtain of his long hair. Behind the prisoner, a young man walked, chin held high, a longsword at his waist.