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Glys tightened her grip on the cudgel, in no mood for jokes. “What are you talking about?”
  Tarune spoke soothingly. “I have been sent to retrieve you. I can explain the visions, the dreams...”
  “How can you possibly know...”
  “Be calm,” interjected Tarune with sudden authority. “I represent no danger; but other forces yearn for your destruction. What do you think just transpired here?”
  Glys took a step back, glanced uncertainly at the dell. “A hallucination, a waking dream...”
  Tarune gave his head a quick shake. “It was nothing of the kind. You are awakening. I must lead you to Myradelle, for only there can you find safety.”
  “You’re not leading me anywhere,” retorted Glys. “I’m going home!”
  Tarune’s expression drooped. “I’m sorry. That is now impossible.”
  Increasingly unsettled by his self-assured manner, Glys slowly backed away, cudgel at the ready. Abruptly she spun and raced into the forest.
  Tarune called out to her retreating back, “I’ll await you here, Glys Erlendson.”
  There was no response. With a gusty sigh, Tarune lowered himself upon a mossy stump and thrust out his long legs.

  Glys ran through the forest in a pattern designed to confuse any pursuer. After a breathless ten minutes she took cover behind a gray sycamore and peered back. All was quiet, and after a few minutes she was sure that she had not been followed. But something was very, very wrong; either she was suffering hallucinations, or—and her cool, analytical side refused to rule out the possibility—she might be going mad. Whatever the situation, Glys knew that she must return home, and quickly.
She deftly climbed a tall spruce, and a few miles to the west spotted the red roofs of Bergen. Glys let out a low whistle; she had wandered far from the Erlendson house, and still could recall nothing of the journey. She pulled out her cell phone, only to find it damaged, useless.
  An hour later Glys gratefully reached the western outskirts of the city. Safe at last, she scrambled down a grassy ridge, to find herself in a neighborhood of ancient wooden houses, interspersed with commercial offices, warehouses and apartment buildings. She felt an annoying pressure building in her forehead, and wondered if she had suffered a concussion.
  As she searched for a phone booth, a few passers-by glanced reproachfully at her disheveled appearance. Embarrassed, Glys found her comb and quickly ran it through her frazzled hair, then wiped her soiled face with a handkerchief. For the moment there was nothing she could do about her dirty and torn clothes.
Rounding a corner, Glys came upon a wedding party gathered in front of a medieval stone church. At the edge of the crowd stood a burly policeman with his back turned to her. The young bride and groom exited the church. The crowd cheered and parted to allow their passage. The police officer stepped backward, bumping into Glys.
  He swung to face her, voicing apologies. Glys gasped in horror; the policeman’s face was impossibly long; two short horns protruded from his forehead; his hot, russet-red eyes bulged, and a long, narrow tongue lolled from his leering mouth.
  Glys shut her eyes, willed the hallucination to vanish... A heavy, taloned hand gripped her by the shoulder. She broke away and, pushing through a clutch of pedestrians, sprinted down the avenue. The police officer called after her in a deep, booming voice that only increased her terror.
  Racing around a corner, she plunged into a narrow alley and sank down between two piles of garbage-filled crates. Here she crouched on the cold flagstones, sick with fright.
Someone turned into the alley. Sweating, Glys peered through a gap between the boxes to see a young woman, ordinary in every respect, walk past her hiding place. Moments later an elderly couple strolled by, also quite normal. Glys leaned against the brick wall, hands balled into fists. She was indeed losing her mind; no other explanation was reasonable.
  Summoning every ounce of willpower, she rose and made her way down the alley. She would call her family and wait until they arrived. But what if they, too, had faces out of nightmares? Tears started from her eyes; it would merely be another manifestation of her illness, and she would have to bear it.
  As she walked, Glys gradually became aware of the sound of her own breathing, a complex susurration that reverberated in her ears. But listening closely, she realized that the sounds were something entirely different. The surrounding buildings seemed to expand and compress, as if the city itself were breathing. Now she perceived other sounds: the creaking of ancient wooden joints, the grinding of steel against concrete, the rumble of innumerable machines. The sounds assaulted every nerve in her body. The air she inhaled reeked of sulphuric acid, rotting food, mildew and a dozen other nauseating odors. Her stomach knotted; she had never before felt so miserable.
  Glys stumbled out of the alley. Across the street she spied a medical clinic; perhaps there she could find help. She tottered into the road—and directly into the path of an oncoming van. The burly driver hastily swerved to avoid her, then subjected Glys to an angry blast of his horn. Her nerves exploded at the harsh sound, and she half-ran, half-lurched across the street.
As her feet touched the grass on the sidewalk, a shimmering, golden curtain of illumination descended over her, obscuring her field of vision. Her nausea lessened to a bearable level, as did the haunting sounds; Glys sank to her knees, clutching at the cool grass and soil, the feel of which seemed to steady her nerves.
   After a minute, she felt strong enough to stand. The golden haze still obscured her view. She took a tentative step, but the moment her feet touched the pavement, the sensory assault returned with even greater ferocity. Glys wheeled around dizzily. Her eyes locked onto a forested slope at the end of a lane. The green foliage beckoned like an oasis, promising shelter and sanity. Heedless of the blaring traffic, she dashed across the street.
  As she neared the mouth of the lane, Glys almost collided with a tall, middle-aged man with an unfashionably luxuriant beard and moustache. A black, wide brimmed hat was pulled low over his face. One eye was covered by a silver patch; the other, the color of blue ice, fixed upon her with a piercing intensity. For a moment Glys’ leg muscles grew weak, and she despaired that the man would try to stop her.
   But then his lips creased in a somber smile and he stepped aside. Glys lurched past him and hurried up the empty lane.
The slap of her boots on the cobblestones further rattled her nerves. The peculiar breathing sound increased in volume, and Glys watched in alarm as the houses on both sides of the lane expanded as if made of rubber.
  The lane was rapidly becoming a steep incline. Glys had but a single, unwavering point of reference—the forested hillside now only twenty yards ahead. Panting and sobbing, her mind in chaos, she reached the end of the lane, and with a desperate cry leaped toward the green sanctuary...

  Tarune rose to his feet as Glys stumbled into view, bedraggled and wild-eyed. She collapsed on a mossy hummock.
  “What... is happening to me?” she asked in a low, defeated voice.
  “You have heard the Call,” replied Tarune gently. “You have been hearing it since you arrived in Bergen, and perhaps before. It cannot be ignored, as you have discovered.”
    She heaved a weary sigh. “I must get back to my family. I need help... I’m going crazy...”
  “No,” declared Tarune. “You are merely becoming aware of your true self.”
  Glys managed a bitter laugh. “Right—a psycho.”
  “An Enchanter,” he corrected her primly. “There is a significant difference between the two.”
  Glys shook her head and looked longingly in the direction of Bergen.
  “You cannot go back. You have now seen the world as it truly is; but you cannot tolerate its harsh reality, and the dissonance wracks your brain. Only in Myradelle will you learn to master this reaction.”

Excerpt from Chapter One, Part III

   Cooper wandered to the center of the chamber, an unwelcome claustrophobia trickling back into his mind. He glanced at Adam, who was coolly conducting an interview with Morris and Patterson. Cooper arched his eyebrows in sour envy; the young man unconsciously made him look insipid by comparison.
    Suddenly he felt a vibration through his thick work boots. Just anxiety, he thought; but the sensation persisted, and in fact seemed to be growing stronger. Feeling foolish, Cooper knelt down and put his ear to the cold floor. He heard a peculiar sound, like that of a thousand droning bees.
    “Morris,” he called out, “is anybody working below us?”
    The foreman spoke tersely over his shoulder. “Mister, we’re the only living things around.”
   “Then what am I hearing?” squawked Cooper in rising panic.

    Now Adam could also hear the droning sound. He felt the chamber shudder, and shot a glance at the reinforced ceiling.
    Patterson was calm. “It might be a quake, but don’t worry—the mine can handle a 7.0, and more.”
   But even as he spoke, Adam knew that this was no ordinary earth tremor.
   The buzzing became a roaring, grinding sound; the walls shook, steel beams groaned. Terrified, Cooper backed up until he collided against a stack of dust shields. Morris sought cover under a cross-beam yelling for Adam and Patterson to join him. Instead, Patterson shoved the young man into a loader cab and slammed the door.
    The grinding sound reached an ear-splitting crescendo. Adam watched in shock as a brown metal spike burst up through the floor, showering the chamber with fragments of stone. The lights exploded, and the dark chamber resounded with screams. An unseen boulder slammed into the loader, toppling it over and thrusting Adam into an even blacker void.

   Fingers of anxiety reached deep into Adam’s subconscious, pulling him back from the dark. He opened his eyes a crack, and for a long moment could not understand why he could see nothing. Gradually his senses normalized. He extended his arm, to discover that the loader had been crushed into a mass of twisted steel, and judging by his position, now leaned against a wall at a precipitous angle. He tried to rise, but found that his leg was pinned by the bent handbrake.
   The air was thick and dusty. Blood trickled down his face, tasting unpleasantly warm and salty. He gingerly touched his forehead, which had been lacerated by shattered glass. Fortunately his cuts seemed shallow, and he mopped away the warm fluid with the back of his hand.
    A helmet light flicked on from somewhere within the chamber.    “Adam,” croaked Patterson, the word ending in a hacking cough.
   Adam’s spirits rallied at the sound of his friend’s voice. “I’m okay,” he replied hoarsely, “but my leg is stuck.”
   “Don’t try to move,” instructed Patterson. “Maybe I can...”
   He broke off with a gasp. A dim violet illumin-ation filled the chamber, followed by a whoosh of displaced air. Adam craned his neck in a vain effort to see over the lip of the window frame.
   “What is it?” he shouted.
   Two shadows crept across the wall—hulking, nightmarish shapes that caused his heart to leap into his throat. He heard a harsh, grating voice mutter a few incomprehensible words. Footsteps, a gasp—then Patterson’s poignant scream was followed by the sound of metal impacting flesh. Something heavy hit the floor. Adam heard a guttural laughter.
    He spasmodically yanked at his pinned leg, then halted in terror, aware that he had revealed his presence to whatever lurked in the chamber. There followed a heavy silence, punctuated only by the sound of his own breathing; then a dimpled metal sphere arched through the loader window and landed at his feet. He recoiled with instinctive dread from the object, which projected an eerie gray light from small apertures.
   Presently Adam heard the sound of heavy footsteps retreating. Reflexively he reached for the camcorder. By some miracle it was undamaged. Gritting his teeth, he slowly lifted it over his head and pressed the record button... He felt, rather than heard the displacement of air. The tension in the chamber dissipated, and he knew that the mysterious entities were gone. Oblivious to the pain, he levered the throttle away from his leg with a chunk of broken steel. Slipping free, he smashed the remaining shards of window glass and scrambled out of the cab.
    The chamber was a jumble of stone and metal. Morris and Cooper lay dead, buried by the wreckage. Toward the center of the chamber lay a broad, square hole in the floor; Adam could not bring himself to examine it at close range.
    He found Patterson sprawled in a corner. His chest had been crushed by a massive blow; he was beyond help. Half-blinded by tears, Adam dropped beside him, cradled his head in his arms. A wail escaped from the center of his being, the essence of grief and loss.
    The unseen sphere began emitting a sharp keening sound. With a sob Adam lowered Patterson’s head to the floor. He rose and stumbled toward the shaft cage, clambering over boulders and ruined machinery. He managed to squeeze through the twisted door and leaned on the communicator. With a sinking heart he saw that the device had been fractured—he was on his own. Frantically he punched the ascend button; the machinery groaned, back-up relays activated, and the cage started to rise. Edward Patterson’s design had withstood the tremendous shock, and now Adam hoped it would save him from the disaster that claimed his friend’s life.
    Up, up rose the cage—twenty feet, then a hundred. Adam gripped the railing, sweating at the possibility of a sudden drop. He peered down through the grated cage floor. The staging chamber below was a blur of gray light. The keening from the sphere rose in pitch; its function was all too clear, and Adam willed the unfeeling metal cage to greater speed.
    The cage shook violently; gears screeched, then locked up. Adam hung in space. Peering des-perately through the grille of the escape hatch, he spotted the side level only ten feet above. He quickly opened the hatch, and scrambled up the interior ladder to the roof. The effort of climbing caused his injured leg to explode with pain; he bent to relieve the stress, and his camcorder slipped off his shoulders. Adam frantically clutched at the strap, missing it by an inch, and the camcorder dropped into the depths. He groaned in frustration.
    Ignoring the throbbing pain in his leg, Adam began ascending the emergency shaft ladder. Then he heard the sound he was dreading: a muffled explosion, followed by the whoosh of the shock wave roaring up the shaft. With a Herculean effort he pulled himself over the lip of the side tunnel and crawled into the safety chamber. Pressing an emergency oxygen mask to his face, he buried himself under a pile of heavy miner’s gear.
    The shock wave collided with the bottom of the cage, forcing it up past the side tunnel. Boulders, dust and shreds of metal shot into the side level and the safety chamber, tearing a cry of helpless rage from Adam...