The boiling well hissed like an angry copper serpent.
Surrounded by sulfur crusts and weeping dark rock formations, the circular pool of heat salt water bubbled at ninety degrees. It cast dense plumes of white, stone-scented steam toward the cave ceiling. Around the rim of the well, five men who shared the same bone structure, the same silver-grey eyes. The same deepest terror of loss stood huddled over a slate planning table.
Young Ren Vale leaned against a smooth dark rock block. His left arm was held tightly across his chest in the rigid ram’s-horn splint.
Mental friction was no longer a dull headache. It had become an overwhelming sense storm. He was sustaining four summons outside the Speculum at the same time. Because of that, their memories washed over his conscious mind in conflicting waves. He tasted the bitter almond wine of royal banquets from Lord Ren. He felt the phantom chill of high-sky frostbite from the Marshal. His pulse raced with the twitchy, fight-or-flight rush-soaked terror of the Coward. And his fingertips ached with the ghost of forty years of diamond polishing from the Artificer.
For five seconds, Ren forgot the name of his mother’s childhood street in Low-Khorat.
