“Vohanna,” I muttered.
Glancing wildly around, I searched for some way to reach the witch’s crystalline lair. Then to one side I glimpsed a set of wide, bronzed steps that anchored that lair to the ledge upon which I stood. Bryce was getting heavy. I switched him from my right shoulder to my left, then raced around to the steps and up them. They ended at a silver door in the wall of the black sphere. I tried it. It was locked.
In raised metal relief in the door’s center there loomed a tusked and horned skull of what is called among Talerans, a bane—which is supposedly the offspring of a demon and a human ghost. The mouth of the skull was open, the tongue extruded like a finger-less palm. On impulse, I pressed down on that tongue.
There came a quiet snick and four holes irised open in th
