Across the city, in a two-story stone cottage with a rear courtyard garden, a household woke in the dark. Voices rose in argument, a young apprentice and a much older one disagreeing over what they should do next. They threaded their way into Alessia Mistlewood’s mind, dragging it from sleep.

  She frowned as her mind cleared. It sounded like the little rats were standing right outside her door. A glance at the window confirmed it was still night and that everyone should have still been sleeping.

  “I really think we should wake her.” Varan was adamant, but Sindra was just as sure they shouldn’t.

  “We can’t, Varan. She’s tired from last night’s magic, and we’re tired from today’s garden. We should all be sleeping.”

  Varan persisted. “But she really needs to hear this.”

  Alessia heard an all-too-familiar note of stubbornness creep into the boy’s tones, and sighed softly.

  Doesn’t look like I’ll be going back to sleep, anytime, soon, she thought, sitting up and swinging her feet over the side of the bed.

  “Hear what, Varan?” Sindra persisted. “You know we can’t go waking her without good reason.”

  “I said she needs to hear it, not you,” Varan snapped back, and Alessia heard the sound of the door handle turning.

  “Varan!” Sindra’s protest came in a strangled whisper.

  Alessia rose and lit the lamp standing on her bedside table.

  “Varan,” she said, turning to greet the boy, as lamp-light filled the room with a warm glow.

  “Now, see what you’ve done…” Sindra muttered, following Varan into Alessia’s chambers.

  “Tell me what?” Alessia asked, focusing the youngsters on her, and not on the argument that was about to follow.

  “He won’t say,” Sindra cut in, earning a glare from Varan.

  “I saw a man standing over Sindra as she slept,” Varan stated, following as Alessia led the way to the small, round table set beside the window.

  She didn’t open the curtains, but set the lamp in the table’s center. Indicating the chair opposite, she spoke.

  “Tell me about this man,” she instructed, gesturing for Sindra to sit also.

  “There was a line of magic from him to her,” Varan continued, earning him a look of shocked horror from the older apprentice. “He was moving it back and forth, like he was looking for something.”

  He shivered, tucking his hands under his chin and rubbing them together.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Sindra demanded, but Varan avoided her gaze, keeping his eyes on their mistress.

  “And you weren’t dreaming?” Alessia demanded.

  Varan shook his head. “It was no dream. I was dreaming, but then I felt…”

  He paused, as though trying to find the right word.

  “I don’t know how to describe it, but it woke me, and I looked toward the…the feeling, and that was when I saw him,” he explained. “A tall man, big as that guard Xanthine’s making eyes at.”

  Sindra snorted, but Alessia indicated the boy should go on.

  “He saw me,” Varan admitted. “And I think he was surprised.”

  “How so?” Alessia asked.

  “I don’t know,” Varan admitted, “but if he was projecting himself through a scry, maybe he thought he was invisible?”

  “If he was powerful enough to project himself through a scry,” she said scornfully, “Then he would also have known projections can always be seen in the locations they are sent.”

  Alessia shook her head, the simple gesture drawing both their attentions.

  “Not always,” she told them. “He might have been using a variant of the spell that added a component of invisibility. In which case, he is powerful, and you truly shouldn’t have been able to see him.”

  She frowned, then continued, “But why such a powerful magic user would have been scrying on my apprentices, I don’t know. I’ve done nothing to draw any attention, and we’ve had…”

  She stopped, remembering the Tillerman’s visit. After a moment’s contemplation, she shrugged the coincidence away. The man had no reason to tell anyone of them…and, if he did, what was he going to say. It wasn’t like he knew anything that would get them into…

  What did he have me retrieve? she wondered, and marked it for something she’d check later. In the meantime…

  She studied Varan and Sindra, waiting until she had their attention.

  “Take me through it from the very beginning,” she instructed. “Everything you felt, all that you saw, and whatever you can remember of the man you saw.”

  Varan obliged, beginning with the sense of magic that had woken him, and following it with the growing terror he’d felt the longer he’d observed the intruder. He fumbled for words when he tried to describe what the man was doing with the magical tendril.

  “Go on, Varan,” Alessia prompted when he fell silent, and didn’t look like he could continue.

  The boy shook himself, his face paling as he continued.

  “I… It’s hard to describe,” he said, “but it was like he was using the magic to see what was inside her, like he was testing her to see if she had something he needed.”

  He gulped, his eyes darting from Sindra to Alessia.

  Alessia gestured with her hand, and he closed his eyes, keeping them closed as he spoke the next few words.

  "It was like he wasn’t alone,” he continued, “Like someone else rode with him.”

  “A second mage?” Alessia wondered, but the boy shook his head.

  “Like a…a presence,” he explained. “Something not…”

  He stopped.

  “Like a demon?” Sindra wanted to know, and Alessia waited for the boy’s emphatic refusal, but he didn’t.

  Instead, he gave Sindra a contemplative look. “Maybe?”

  From the tone of his voice, the suggestion didn’t quite fit, but it was similar to what he felt he needed.

  “So, something other planar, then,” Alessia concluded, and he nodded. The wizardess turned to Sindra. “How do you feel?”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Sindra looked from her mistress to Varan and back, contemplating her answer. How did she feel?

  “A little queasy,” she decided, realizing it was true. “Like I’ve eaten something I shouldn’t have, and it hasn’t agreed with me.”

  Alessia pressed her lips together, and shuffled her chair until she was sitting in front of the girl.

  “Let me see,” she instructed. “I’ll make sure nothing’s been done to you.”

  Sindra gave her a worried look, but didn’t flinch away when Alessia placed her hands on either side of her face. Leaning forward so their forehead’s touched, the wizardess reached for the spell she needed, calling on the magic she needed to power it.

  In her mind’s eye, she watched as a golden light spread from beneath her palms, spreading up the girl’s cheeks to crown her head in a lacework of light, before extending to cover her shoulders and back like a shawl. Slowly and carefully, Alessia guided the magic until her apprentice was completely shrouded in a glowing golden nimbus.

  Once she was done, Alessia crafted a second spell to help her interpret what the golden light revealed. To Varan it was as though the two women became statues, one carved in magic and light, and the other from colored stone, but he didn’t dare touch either to see if they were still flesh and blood or had been truly transformed.

  After what seemed an age, his mistress relaxed, raising her head and taking her hands from Sindra’s face. Pushing back her seat, Alessia rose, wiping her hands on her night-shift and moving a few paces away from the table and back again.

  Sindra watched her, seeming oblivious to Varan’s presence. Both apprentices waited.

  After a few more paces away and back, Alessia sat back down, taking Sindra’s hands in her own.

  “No damage was done,” she said, “but it was a fairly thorough probe and disrupted the network of your own talents. You’ll be tired, and the magic may not do your bidding as you intend it, until things settle back the way they were.”

  “But…why?” Varan asked, looking upset.

  “Because he was careless when he withdrew the tendril,” Alessia told the boy, then, to soften the blow, “and because he wasn’t too careful when he inserted it, either. He was searching with no care for either the flesh or spirit of the person whose essence he studied.”

  “Essence?” Sindra asked it, but both apprentices looked worried.

  “Essence,” Alessia confirmed. “The sum of your spirit, soul, talent and heart.”

  “But why would he want to study that?” Sindra asked.

  Alessia pressed her lips together. “There are a number of reasons,” she told them.

  “And none of them good?” Varan guessed.

  Alessia shook her head. “We need to find out who he was to know his motives.”

  “But a powerful mage…” Sindra began.

  Alessia caught the concern in the girl’s eyes, and decided not to lie. If someone were coming for her apprentices, it would be better if they weren’t unsuspecting.

  “It is concerning,” she admitted, “but until we can figure out the who, we won’t know the extent of the danger.”

  “So there is danger, then,” Sindra concluded.

  Alessia pursed her lips, thinking on it.

  “I suspect so,” she finally stated, “but nothing we can guard against until we have a better idea who it is.”

  She turned to Varan.

  “Fetch me the crystal from the knothole in your room,” she instructed.

  The boy’s look of surprise made her smile.

  “I knew of it almost as soon as you discovered it,” she told him, “and, while I was going to let you discover its properties and uses for yourself, that time is gone, and it is exactly what we need, now.”

  “Yes, Mistress.” Varan slid out of his chair. If he was disappointed by the turn of events, he didn’t show it. The concerned glance he cast in Sindra’s direction said he thought some things were more important.

  She listened to the sound of him running down the corridor, as she turned her attention to Sindra.

  “I’ll have the others watch over you,” she told the young woman, “But, for now, it’s important you rest and not use your magic for a day. Understood?”

  Varan returned as a pale-faced Sindra nodded her understanding, and Alessia turned her attention from her oldest to her youngest apprentice.

  “Thank you, Varan,” she said, when he handed her the eight-sided crystal. “That’s perfect.”

  Getting to her feet, she led her two apprentices to a clear patch of floor, and knelt, signaling they should do the same. When they had settled, she placed her index fingers, on either side of the crystal and rotated it until one of its triangular faces was turned toward her. Narrowing her eyes in concentration, she murmured the incantation she needed in order to discover the origin of the scry.

  As the last syllable drifted from her mouth, the facet blurred, and a picture began to form. Beside her, Varan drew a breath of surprise and the picture wavered. Frowning slightly Alessia tweaked the magic and the scene within the crystal steadied.

  It was more a portrait than a scene. As she looked into the crystal, the face of a man looked back out at her. The scene rippled as though water flowed between them, and Alessia knew beyond doubt she’d found the one who’d spied on them…but that was not all she saw.

  Is that a shadow? she wondered.

  Whispering another word to focus the enchantment, she tried to sharpen the crystal’s focus. It improved her view, but not enough to bring the shadow behind the man into focus.

  “Strange,” she murmured, and it was as though her words touched the water’s surface.

  She waited, watching the ripples slowly fade, as she tried to get a closer look at the shadow. It was definitely the shadow of another, and not the man she was observing, but… She couldn’t make it out.

  A presence? she wondered. A spirit, perhaps? Some kind of shadow creature?

  Making a note for later research, Alessia tried, once more to bring the shadow into focus. Adjusting the scry so she could see more of both man and shadow, she noted the shadow was man-shaped, but that was all.

  No matter what she tried, its features remained undefined.

  As though it doesn’t want to be observed…not even through a scry, she pondered. As if it shrouds itself from not just the world but any chance of being seen.

  Looking further only confirmed the impression of a shroud being cast between the face of the man looking down into the pool and that of the shadowy figure standing behind him. Reluctantly, Alessia released the magic and let the picture dissolve.

  “Now, we have seen the face of the one scrying on us, we shall try to see if we can replicate what Varan saw,” Alessia told the two apprentices.

  They nodded, their eyes bright with curiosity. Varan’s face was full of wonder and Sindra’s focus on the crystal so keen, she barely acknowledge Alessia’s words.

  Without explaining more, Alessia repeated the spell, extending it slightly to bring the events of the past to the fore. This time it was not the man who looked out at her, but the undefined shadow. The sides of the pool were gone, as was the man who’d stood beside it.

  Tweaking the magic caused the image to shiver and spin, until she saw the semi-transparent picture of the man standing beside a very familiar desk.

  As the image formed, both apprentices glanced toward the desk standing by the door, then watched the man who’d scried them, looking down at the desktop.

  “He was here,” Varan breathed, and Alessia could not help agreeing.

  She pressed her lips together, until they formed a thin line of anger.

  How dare he intrude into my home! How dare he!

  The picture wavered and she forced herself to calm enough to steady it. She would find out who he was. As the picture cleared, the man moved, stepping through the closed door and into the corridor beyond.

  The scry followed him as he stepped through the wall, hesitating before the door to the chamber shared by Zarine and Xanthia, her other two apprentices. Alessia tensed, and didn’t relax, when the intruder turned and took the few paces required to step through the wall leading to Sindra and Varan’s chamber.

  Alessia clenched her hands to fists, taking a deep calming breath as the intruder looked down at Sindra’s sleeping form and brought a long silver tendril into being.

  The girl gasped as the tendril snaked into the head of her sleeping image, and she raised both hands to cover her mouth as the man moved the tendril into her torso. They dropped to mirror where the tendril entered her body as the intruder shifted the tendril back and forth, like a fisherman manipulating a fishing line.

  They all froze, when the line stilled and he darted a glance across the room. Shifting the scry, Alessia brought a newly-woken Varan into view. Sindra cast the boy a horrified glance, even as the intruder jerked the silver tendril from her image’s chest.

  A second look from the stranger showed puzzlement, but Scry-Varan continued to stare, and the man stepped off Sindra’s bed and onto the floor, not taking his eyes from the boy. Again, Alessia caught a glimpse of shadow, but more as an aura than a separate entity.

  What is that? she wondered, but the stranger took a quick step to the side, studying Varan as he did.

  His frown grew deeper as he saw Varan’s head move to follow him, and he jumped back. When the boy’s gaze didn’t falter, the stranger smiled and extended a hand, which is when Varan screamed and hit the floor.

  The stranger’s smile faded, and he stepped back through the wall, vanishing from view. Rather than follow him back to the pool, Alessia ended the scry, then turned to her apprentices.

  Sindra looked like she might cry.

  “Who was it?” she asked, her voice filled with misery and revulsion. “How did he get in here? How did he even know to come?”

  Her voice rose, and Varan reached over and took her hand in his own. The girl gulped, then took a deep breath. When she spoke, again, she was a lot calmer.

  “What are we going to do, Mistress?”

  Alessia thought about it.

  “I don’t know who he is,” she admitted, “so we need to go somewhere safe until we find out who it is and how to defend ourselves against him. In the meantime, I can ward the cottage so he doesn’t know we’re gone.”

  “We’re going to the guild?” Varan asked.

  Alessia pursed her lips, looking none-too-pleased with the option, but she nodded.

  “We are. Roamer will shelter us. Varan, get Xanthia and Zarine. Sindra, start packing. Everything we can carry, for now. If Sophriel smiles, we may have time to return for the rest. The guildmaster will help us with that.”

  Varan gave her a look that said he wasn’t so sure, but he didn’t argue, and Alessia was glad. Her history with the master of Deverath’s thieves’ guild wasn’t something she’d ever shared…and she didn’t intend to, not if she could help it.

  Some things were best left in the past.