With Me

The wand would not lie flat.

Maeril had set it inside the smallest chalk circle, on a square of undyed linen. One broken end rested against the cloth. The other lifted a finger’s width above it, trembling toward a direction the floor did not provide.

She lowered her hand beside it without touching.

The pull ran through the scars of her palm and tightened behind her blind eye. Two weeks of charts, burnt ink, and questions asked beyond the borders of sense had brought her here. The answer was still a piece of ruined wood trying to leave the room.

“Nearly,” she said.

Vajra stood beyond the outer circle with the Blackstaff planted against the stone. At each turn of her wrist, one of the lines around Maeril grew brighter. The chamber had been emptied of everything that might burn, break, or be mistaken for an invitation. Their packs waited beside the door.

Rishi lifted Maeril’s first. He settled it where she could reach the straps without stepping across her working, then checked the fastening of his healer’s bag. The dark staff Sirael had given him leaned against his shoulder. He tested the wrap around his right wrist once and left it alone.

Grim had a book open in one armored hand.

He turned a page, looked at the wand, and turned back.

“Does that improve?” Maeril asked.

“No.”

“You could close it.”

“Then I’d know less about what’s going to kill me.”

She laid a pinch of silver dust along the gap in the inner circle. “The book is a guide, Grim. It is meant to help.”

“It says not to trust a door because you understand the wall.”

“Sound advice.”

“You gave me an entire book that agrees with me and then brought me here anyway.”

Rishi took his staff in hand. “You came.”

Grim’s tusks showed briefly. He closed the book hard enough to lift chalk dust from the floor and forced it into his pack. “Waterdeep has become unhealthy for people with my former employment.”

Vajra glanced at him. Grim busied himself with a buckle.

Maeril checked the components at her belt by touch. Thread, bone needle, chalk, the little packets she had sorted and sorted again. The wrapped mirror filled much of her pack. Beneath it lay her spellbook and the other book she had refused to leave behind, its portable pages less useful to planar navigation than the foreword’s address might yet prove.

She had packed food where neither could be damaged by it.

“Every spell I could reasonably prepare,” she said, drawing the last short line. “Which means the first problem will be administrative.”

Rishi’s mouth moved at one corner.

She wanted to put her hand there. Instead she looked down at the wand.

Firemind had held it while stone took him. Elisa had crossed. Chime had followed. The remnant before her contained neither a voice nor a final message, only the damage left by an act performed too late for the man performing it.

Maeril brought the two ends closer.

The linen darkened beneath them.

“Do not try to join it,” Vajra said.

“I’m not.”

“The tension changed.”

“Yes. I have its attention.”

She shifted her knee away from a line beginning to smoke. The pull sharpened. For a moment she could feel where the original passage had torn free of its maker: an opening held against terror, widened for one person, crossed by another small presence before the break.

She followed the direction of that break. Nothing in it knew Elisa’s name.

Rishi crouched outside the chalk. His eyes moved from her hand to the bloodless pressure around her mouth.

“What do you need?”

“When it opens, take the pack. I will need both hands until Vajra has the edge.”

He nodded.

Vajra studied him across the circle. “You know how to endure danger.”

Rishi looked up.

“That will not tell you which rules govern it.”

He received the warning without lowering his gaze or arguing with it. Beneath the quiet, his weight had already shifted forward.

“Elisa first,” he said.

Vajra’s fingers tightened around the Blackstaff. “Then listen when Maeril tells you where you are.”

“I will.”

Maeril let one breath out slowly. “I should clarify how much I will know.”

Grim stopped fastening his pack.

“The residue leads toward Sigil. It remembers the kind of threshold Firemind opened. It does not remember the room where Elisa landed.”

“We don’t know where we’re going,” Grim said.

“We know the city.”

“Apparently the city is made of doors.”

“Which gives us a generous number of opportunities to be wrong.”

“How reassuring.”

She looked at him with her good eye. “This will spend what is left. There will be no second opening from this end.”

His complaints stopped. He checked his sword’s clearance against the pack, then moved nearer.

Rishi looked once toward the chamber door. Below them, other hands worked over stone fragments fitted together on a table. Beyond the tower, Waterdeep had begun learning to sleep again. He could not carry either unfinished task through with him.

He brought his attention back to Maeril.

“Ready.”

She closed the inner circle.

The broken wand rose from the linen. Both pieces stood upright, separate, and the space between them lengthened. A hairline crack appeared in the air above her hand.

Maeril spoke into it.

The first word brought pressure down across her shoulders. The second turned the crack until its lower end nearly touched the floor. At the third, every circle in the chamber pulled toward it.

Vajra struck the stone with the Blackstaff.

The outer lines held. Maeril felt their resistance reach her through her knees, a firm boundary against which she could set the opening. She spread her hands. The crack widened reluctantly, catching on itself, its edges ragged with tiny backward motions.

Her left wrist shook.

Rishi was beside the pack before she could ask. He lifted it onto her shoulders while she kept both hands raised. One strap caught against her braid; he freed it, settled the weight, and withdrew.

The wand cracked again.

A strip of linen curled into ash below it.

“Now,” Vajra said.

Maeril drew her hands apart another inch. The opening widened to admit a body. Whatever lay beyond it gave back no trustworthy depth. Her eye slid over it as though trying to measure a hole cut into moving water.

Rishi stepped toward the near edge.

She caught his sleeve with two fingers. “With me. I need to read where it takes our weight.”

He adjusted at once, bringing his staff close along his right side so it would clear the opening. His free hand found her forearm without gripping it.

Behind them, Grim muttered, “Good posture and expensive chalk. That’s what I’ve chosen.”

“Keep close,” Rishi said.

“I have read enough about being half a pace late.”

Vajra moved the Blackstaff. Pressure lifted from Maeril’s hands and caught along the outer boundary. For a heartbeat the opening held without her.

She used it.

Her boot crossed first. The floor ceased to be where her body expected. Rishi moved with her, his forearm firm beneath her fingers, and she placed the next step by feel.

The chamber stretched into a narrow band of light behind them. Grim’s armor scraped the edge of it. Vajra remained visible at the far end, braced over the Blackstaff, her face severe with the effort of holding three lives beyond retrieval.

Then the wand broke for the last time.

Maeril heard the chalk lines fail one after another, sharp little snaps in the receding room. She tightened her hand on Rishi’s arm.

Waterdeep vanished behind Grim’s shoulder.