"We are not yet ready to move. Await instructions," the crisp voice ordered. "Do your part, and your debt will be paid."
The breeze was gone, and the voices with it. The sound was replaced by something that cheeped faintly, a real noise, not one plucked from the air by some weird power inside her. She looked around. Was there a bird up here?
Niko yanked out his handkerchief and gave her lenses a going-over. "Don't you ever clean these?"
"Of course I do!" She snatched the spectacles when he offered them, and shoved them on to her nose. "Now what?"
"Don't look directly at that heap of stones," he ordered. "Look at them out of the corner of your vision."
Obediently, she turned her head, putting the rocks at the edge of her left eye - nothing. She twisted her head at different angles, without results. Niko make a choked noise that could have been a laugh, or sneeze. She glared at him.
Silver flickered at the edges of her lenses. With a gasp, she turned to stare. The silver vanished. Slowly she looked up, staring at a cloud as it wandered overhead.
There, at the edges of things, was a glimmer of moon-pale light.
Soon she had the trick of it: she had to look at everything in general, and nothing in particular. With her eyes just slightly unfocused, she could see flickering bits of light everywhere on the rocks around them: symbols and pieces of letters. "How long will this last?" she wanted to know. "The magic on my specs?"
"As long as you have those lenses," he replied. "Just remind me to teach you how it's done before you get new ones."
Something cheeped again. Tris peered for its source. Was she hearing things?
"Remember I said I needed your help?" he asked, getting to his feet. "To find out what happened, I need to see into the past. It's one of the great spells - if I do it alone, I'll be so drained I won't be able to move afterwards, let alone go to Pirate's Point. If you would lend me some of your magic, it will be easier."
She blinked at him. "What do I have to do?" She had lent some of her power to Sandry once, but she had no idea how it had happened.
"I'll call it forth, as long as you agree to let me do it. Not just in words, Trisana. You must agree from within. You have to trust me."
She looked up into his eyes, set in their heavy fringe of black lashes. Trust him? He was her teacher. He had seen inside her, and told her she wasn't crazy - after her family had said that she was for years. Because of him, she lived where she was wanted; she could ride the winds. "Sure, Niko."
He took her hand. Immediately she felt something - a tug, or a twist. Through her spectacles, she saw a thread of light run through her fingers and into his, where it joined a river of fire inside him. The air tightened. Still holding on to her, Niko picked his way around the tower, one hand held palm-out in front of him. Pearly threads spun away from his fingertips, passing through air and stone around and ahead of him. Once he and Tris had come full-circle around the hole in the ground, they stopped. The threads continued to flow over the land, until they covered the entire hilltop like dew-wet spiderwebs.
When he released her, she could still see the thread that connected them. It followed Niko as he stepped to the edge of the cellar, drew his belt-knife and made a cut on both palms. "Any time you need to give a spell extra strength, seal it with blood," he explained casually, as if it hadn't been his own flesh he'd gouged. "Since we are mages of principles, we use our own. Some have been known to use the blood of others, willing or not." He watched as crimson droplets fell into the gaping cellar. "Should I ever hear of you indulging in such practices, Trisana, you will regret the day you met me."
Tris had one hand over her mouth. She didn't like blood, and there was something about Niko's coolly cutting into himself that made her stomach roll. "You don't have to worry about me, Niko," she told him once her belly settled. "Honestly."
He smiled grimly. "I trust not." Taking a deep breath - Tris felt her own lungs expand - he closed his eyes.
A flickering image appeared in front, around, and in some spots even through him. In it, the tower was whole. Two men in hats and cloaks walked into the picture. They carried something large and heavy, wrapped in canvas. A door opened in the tower's base, and a woman in a Guard's uniform beckoned them inside.
"It's Whiner and Gruff Man and the Drinker!" cried Tris. "It has to be!" The night before, she and the others had told Niko about the conversation they'd heard on the wall.
The vision wavered, breaking up; Niko was shaking. Tris glared at the glowing line that still ran from her to him, until it thickened and shone more brightly. The man took a deep breath, and stood straighter. The tower reappeared. The men walked out of it, the uniformed woman behind them. The men's burden was gone, but one of them carried the free end of a cord that led back inside. He put it down, and helped his companion kill the guard. They didn't see a burst of fire that set the cord ablaze. The flame ate its way along the cord and into the tower as they dropped their victim on the ground, and argued. Then came the blast. For a moment Tris thought she could see the tower come apart, stone by stone, each piece etched in fire.
The image vanished. Tris closed in as Niko staggered, and put an arm around his waist. Helping her teacher over to a large rock, she got him to sit.
"What was that?" she asked him, when he was settled.
He fumbled for his water canteen, and drank from it thirstily. He needed both hands to steady it.