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careful study of the devices stored in the Tower’s vaults.
    Some of Reilloch’s vaults were buried in the deep foundations, others were hidden high atop isolated towers, and a few were in extradimensional spaces that could be reached only through specific doors or chambers in otherwise innocuous portions of the fortress. Most were protected by spells of sealing and concealment that were virtually impenetrable. The vaults containing the most dangerous items were also guarded by lethal spell traps, terrible sigils that would utterly destroy anyone trying to pass them without knowledge of how to do so safely.
    The first two vaults Araevin checked were secure, their spells of closing still intact. Araevin quickly inventoried their contents anyway, and found that nothing had been removed. That makes sense, he realized. Raiders after a specific target could not afford to waste time deliberately locating and opening each vault, not unless they were confident of defeating the circle in its entirety and holding the Tower in the face of every counterattack that could be thrown at them. Most likely it would be a single vault that had been attacked. He descended into the mazelike levels below the great hall, and found another vault undisturbed. That was not the case with the fourth vault he checked, however.
    At the end of a long, low corridor with a ceiling of groined stone stood a door of iron and adamantine
    leading to a place known as Nandiyerron’s Armory, after the archmage who had built the room a thousand years before. Araevin turned into the corridor leading to the armory, and realized at once that something was amiss. Whispers of spectral magic, the remnants of deadly spell traps even he did not understand, whirled and drifted in the heavy air of the passageway, and the door at the far end stood open. The walls and floor were deeply pitted with black, bubbled stone, as if great gouts of acid or fire had been loosed there, and the stink of hot stone still lingered.
    Philaerin lay crumpled before the open door, his staff broken in his burned hands.
    “Eldest… .” Araevin whispered.
    He picked his way down the scored passageway and knelt beside the high mage. A black, even hole had been blasted through the center of Philaerin’s chest by some slaying spell, but none of the attackers had managed to so much as scratch him otherwise. Araevin glanced at the passage around him, trying to guess at how many spells had been thrown there while the battle raged in the tower above. Demons, yugoloths, and such monsters summoned from the infernal planes did not leave bodies behind when they were slain—they returned to the foul hells from which they had been called forth. Philaerin might have repelled a few attackers, a small army of them, or none at all, but the battle had gone on long enough for many spells to damage the passageway.
    Araevin rose and stepped into the vault of Nandiyerron, quickly examining what was left of its contents. All the Tower’s vaults stored a number of relatively minor items, such as rings bearing protective enchantments, or arms and armor that any wizard or priest of middling power might make. He was not concerned about things like that. It was not good that such devices had been stolen, but they were not truly dangerous. On the other hand some of the vaults held uniquely dangerous items, things that could do great harm in the wrong hands. And Araevin saw at once that something important was indeed missing from the vault.
    “The Gatekeeper’s Crystal,” he said aloud. “Damnation.”
    No one knew who had made the Gatekeeper’s Crystal, or even when it had been made, but it was a powerful weapon indeed, an artifact that could easily disjoin and destroy magical wards and protections of any sort. The device consisted of three similar shards, each a dagger-shaped wedge of pale unbreakable crystal. Tower Reilloch held only one of the shards. The other two were lost, as far as Araevin knew. But perhaps