—Letter written by Grand Magister Taliesin Belounnon to the acolytes of the Pyre

June 19, Year 998 of the Second Age

Once Rielle stepped inside the maze, the crowd’s cheering dimmed.

The doors slammed shut behind her.

She kept running down the path, dry grasses crunching beneath her feet.

The maze will burn quickly.

Already, she could smell smoke. But coming from where?

She climbed the nearest wall and had almost reached the top when a hard knot of fire shot down from the stands. It slammed against the wood, knocking her back to the ground. Head spinning, she watched flames spread along the wall.

No climbing, then.

She pushed herself to her feet and ran. The structure containing Tal was in the dead center of the maze. She reached a fork in the path—three routes. Left, right, continuing center. She thought quickly. If she’d been mapping the maze correctly, the path on the right would bring her to the maze’s outermost wall—and a dead end. Center would keep her running around the maze’s rim.

She turned left, heard a faint burst of cheers from the distant crowd above.

She smiled in relief. Left had been the right choice.

She raced down a corridor of walls capped in roaring flames. Wood snapped, showering embers across her path. Bile rose in her throat, along with a smoky black flavor that twisted her stomach. For weeks after her mother’s death, the taste of ash had lingered on her tongue.

Ahead: a door in the wall to her left, which should lead to the maze’s center.

She ducked through the door, turned right, raced down the path, then turned left—and skidded to a halt.

A stone wall blocked her path.

Outside the maze, the horn blasted once more.

Rielle looked up just as three knots of flame arced through the sky. Their impact crashed through the maze like fists against glass.

The crowd cried out in awe.

Tal.

Rielle turned and ran back the way she had come, the pressure of tears building behind her eyes. When she turned the corner, the path before her erupted into flames.

She screamed, raised an arm to shield her face, and stumbled back against the wall.

Rielle, where’s your mother?

Rielle, what did you do?

She bent over, hands on her knees, and made herself breathe until the memory of her father’s frantic voice faded.

Corien? She reached out with her mind, cautious. He had said not a word to her since she’d taken Audric into her bed, and she had not dared speak to him. But the angry flames devouring the path before her made her feel shrunken, brittle. Too much heat, and she would crack.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She had worked with Tal for years, had manipulated torches, candles, hearth fires. But these flames were different—wild and vindictive. She could hardly breathe, the heat stealing away her air.

Are you there? Corien, please, help me.

Another horn blast.

She looked up as three more arcs of fire shot across the sky.

“No!” she screamed. The crowd’s cries echoed her own.

She turned to face the fire blocking her way, fear punching a sob from her throat. She flung out her hands without thinking.

The fire parted, clearing a charred path for about twenty feet in front of her, and then collapsed. The fire re-formed.

Her hands shook. She wiped the sweat from her eyes. She couldn’t think, couldn’t find the empirium, not with these flames crowding her, not with Tal trapped somewhere behind her.

But she had to. Somehow, somehow…

She sank to her knees, watching bleary-eyed as the flames climbed. The twin biting scents of smoke and firebrand magic carved sour ruts down her throat.

Rielle, make it stop!

Rielle, she’s still inside!

She closed her eyes, crouched, ready to run. What had Tal always taught her? Prayer steadies the mind.

Fleet-seeming fire, she prayed, blaze not with fury or abandon.

She glared up through her lashes at the nearing flames. She let her eyes unfocus, breathing in and out with each familiar word.

The world shimmered gold.

Unless, she finished, I command you to.

She pushed off the ground and ran, shoving all her rage and grief ahead of her like a wave. The fire broke at her approach, flames peeling away up the walls to let her through. She heard them collapsing back down as she fled, felt the snap of flames against her heels. Turned a corner, and another, ducked under a doorway and came out in a circular clearing.

Seven identical doors surrounded her, including the one through which she’d entered. Despair swelled within her. Which way?

The sky was filling with smoke. As she knelt, closing her eyes, she heard more fire erupt behind her—to the left, then the right. Sparks scattered across the ground.

She dug her fingers into the dirt, imagined that every bead of sweat sliding down her body could seep into the earth, race off through the veins of rock in the ground like buzzing beacons.

She saw it in her mind’s eye: Gold knots zipping lightning-quick through the deep dense dark, seeking fire. Seeking Tal.

Warmth suffused her, but not from the fire.

From the empirium.

She felt it rise from the ground, called by her desperation. Heat bloomed up her arms and legs, unfurled in her belly, raced up her spine, and burrowed into the base of her skull.

When she opened her eyes, the world blazed gold. One door—second to her right—shone brighter than the rest. From down that golden path came the faraway sound of a man calling her name.

She blinked. The gold faded, and the world was itself again.

She launched herself off the ground, ran through the door, followed the path to the right, then right again, then left. Climbing flames surrounded her on all sides. Above the roar of fire and the crashes of the collapsing maze, she heard the crowd cheering and pushed herself faster. Flames chased her over a caved-in wall. She dropped and rolled, leapt up, kept running.

Another fork. She took the left path. Not fifty yards later, she hit a wall of stone.

The horn blasted; the fire arced overhead.

Then, three crashes. Very near. The wall just beside Rielle rumbled and groaned.

She whirled to follow the sound, then raced back to the fork, took the right path instead. Ran for a full minute at top speed, her side cramping. Dodged a buckling wall, shielded her face from a cascade of sparks. She could hear it now—a larger, roaring fire, straight ahead past a pile of smoking rubble that had once been a wall.

She climbed through it, kicking aside planks of charred wood, then emerged into a circular yard pockmarked with blackened craters. From the craters snapped trails of fire, and in the center of the yard, surrounded by rubble and walls of flame, stood a familiar building.