The Great Cathedral was, as its name suggested, a pretty grand affair. It dwarfed the Cathedral in Panja, its central spire reaching a good hundred feet in the air, with its lesser towers stretching at least sixty. The entire building was made from the same golden sunstone as Viora’s altar inlaid with gold and brass designs. Stained glass windows depicting what were probably significant events in the church’s history but were lost on me bathed the antechamber in colored light, coating the myriad people who filled the room in shifting hues.

More importantly, Sense Imbalance went haywire the moment I stepped inside the place. The whole building seemed to lurch, and I had to close my eyes and gather my balance before I could walk completely into it. My stomach churned, and my head ached slightly. It took me several seconds to regain control of myself, and I wondered why in the hell Inquisitors would have an ability that almost incapacitated them in the presence of the very thing that they sought.

“It’s not really an ability, John,” Sara admitted quietly in my thoughts. “It’s more of a…side effect, I suppose is the best term.”

“Side effect? What do you mean?”

“Well, as you know, you’re not really part of this world. You don’t belong here, and your mind knows that subconsciously. I have to work pretty hard to keep your senses and mind attuned to this place, and that requires the world’s energy field to be fairly smooth and constant. When it’s not, it messes with my ability to keep you stabilized, and you feel it as nausea and a headache.”

I suppressed a frown. “So, what I’m sensing is disruptions in this world’s magical field?”

“No, you’re feeling disruptions in its native energy field. Every world has one; it’s what connects it to the greater Doorverse. That’s something different than its magical field, although it’s related to its tech rating and biodiversity since a world’s energy field can disrupt or enhance advanced technology and limit or accelerate evolution.”

“And when the field is too disturbed, no Doors leave the world?”

“Exactly, although it’s usually not world-spanning. It’s a local effect; if you get far enough away from it, you can find Doors again. And even if something totally disrupted the entire world’s field, eventually it’ll settle into a new configuration, and the Doors will open once more.”

“You know, I’ve been wondering about something. How did Menogra open a Door on Kuan? Wasn’t the world in total chaos? Shouldn’t that have sealed the Doors shut against her?”

“I…” Sara hesitated. “I honestly don’t know, John. Everything I know about the Doorverse says that she shouldn’t have been able to, but obviously, she did. I can only guess that she has powers that defy my understanding of the Doorverse.”

I shivered, remembering that the ancient, godlike woman had sworn vengeance on me, and my hand touched the scar on my chest almost unwillingly. She’d cursed me, and I had a feeling I was only beginning to feel the effects of that curse…

I shook myself from my melancholy thoughts and looked around the room. People of all stripes crowded the antechamber. I saw raggedly dressed beggars and fine-looking nobles, craftsmen in their stained or burned smocks and merchants with bodyguards. And, of course, plenty of acolytes dressed in white robes moved through the crowds along with Sorvarajis in white and gold. I watched for a minute or two, noticing that for the most part, the acolytes roamed the crowd, speaking to people, while the Sorvarajis remained sort of aloof and apart. Every so often, an acolyte would bring someone to one of the Sun priests or priestesses, and a flare of red-gold solar raju would wash over them, followed by a surreptitious exchange of coins.

“So, to get healing here, you have to pay for it?” I muttered softly, but apparently my little urchin guide’s ears picked up my words.

“Officially, sir, the Cathedral’s stance is that anyone who comes to devotions can be healed or blessed. The fact is, though, that there are only so many Sorvarajis, and they only have so much magic. They say that people aren’t paying for the magic, they’re paying to get ahead in the line, and the Pretmarajis seem fine with that.”

I nodded, but even as he spoke, I noticed that not every Sorvaraji operated that way. Two of them, a woman of late middle years and a man who looked to be in his thirties, moved among the beggars and poor, ignoring the wealthier people and healing the lower class, instead. I supposed that every group had its idealists, and I was looking at two of them.

“We’ll want to go this way, sir,” Ferka said, pulling on my sleeve to get my attention. “I’ll show you how we move around in the Cathedral without getting tossed out.”

I tore my gaze away from the crowd and followed the boy through a set of doors and down some stairs, into the lower levels of the Cathedral. Ferka guided me down several halls, always seeming to know where he was going. We ducked occasionally into empty rooms or down darker corridors to avoid acolytes and Sorvarajis moving about on their daily routines, but otherwise we encountered no real difficulties as Ferka led me deeper into the Cathedral.

I’ll be honest, part of me wondered if the boy wasn’t leading me into a trap of some kind. After all, he had appeared at a fortuitous time, when I needed someone to guide me around the city. It was possible that whoever kept attacking me knew where I was and set Ferka on my path, just to lead me to this place. I didn’t think it was likely, but I kept my hand close to the pistol on my chest and held my raju ready just in case.

Ferka led me into a room that stank of unwashed bodies and mildew, and I quickly realized why as I saw sacks full of dirty laundry stacked against the walls. “Here we are,” the boy said proudly, moving to the nearest bag and rummaging around. He glanced back at me and waved to another pile of dirty clothes. “Go ahead and find something that fits you.”

I stared at the clothes a bit distastefully. “Why can’t we steal clean robes?” I asked dubiously.

“Because the people who clean the robes watch them to make sure they don’t get dirty again,” the boy replied without looking at me. “They might notice us taking them. And we don’t steal, we borrow. We’ll put them back when we’re done.”

I sighed but moved to a bag and began rummaging. It wasn’t the first time I’d worn deliberately dirty clothes as a disguise; body odor was a powerful deterrent to most people, after all. They didn’t usually get close enough to realize I wasn’t who I said I was if I reeked. Having done it before didn’t make me happy about it, though, and my current Perception of 24 seemed to make the stench far more potent.

It took me a few minutes to find a white and gold robe that fit, wasn’t ridiculously stained, and only stank slightly. I pulled it on over my head, then took it off and removed my sword as I realized it stuck out ridiculously beneath the robe. I hesitated before stuffing the blade into the rearmost pile of clothes. Hopefully, no one would come to grab the laundry before we got back. I finished to find Ferka already waiting for me, dressed in a white acolyte’s robe.

“Okay, sir, the thing you have to remember is that we aren’t going to be sneaking anymore,” the kid told me seriously. “We have to just act normal, like we belong here. Otherwise, people will know that something’s wrong.”

“I think I can handle it,” I said dryly.

“Good, because it’s one thing to get caught being in the wrong place in the Cathedral. They just tell you to leave. If they catch us pretending to be Sorvarajis, though, they’ll punish us.” The boy shivered. “They might even give us to the Vanatori.”

I nodded to the kid seriously. “I’ll be careful, Ferka. I promise.”

“Okay. Let’s go to the Archives so they can kick us out, and we can leave.”

He led me deeper into the Cathedral, down more stairs and through winding side passages. I swore that some of the passages we took led us nearly in circles, bringing us back to a corridor we’d just left. When I mentioned this to the boy, he nodded in agreement.

“Yes, sir. Those passages have magic that protects them, and we have to go around that. It won’t let anyone through who doesn’t belong there, and it punishes those who try.” The boy shuddered. “I don’t much like magic, sir.”

“Why did you come down this far, then? Why not turn back when you found the magic blocking your path?”

Ferka looked uncomfortable for a moment. “Because–because sometimes, magic hides the best stuff to steal,” he admitted. “I was hoping to find something valuable enough that me and Melania wouldn’t have to live on the streets anymore.”

I nodded in understanding. “You know, though, that trying to sell anything that valuable would be a bad idea, right?”

He frowned. “What do you mean, sir?”

“I mean, most honest merchants aren’t going to buy anything extremely valuable from a young boy who’s obviously from the streets, Ferka. They’re more likely to hold you and call the guards because they’ll know it’s been stolen. And the not-so-honest merchants would probably just kill you and take whatever you’ve got–and maybe your sister, as well.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “It sounds like you know a thing or two about the dodgy life, sir.”

“We all have a past, Ferka,” I chuckled, patting his shoulder. “Mine was dodgier than most.”

We made our winding way through the Cathedral’s basement, now three floors below the street level. The walls here felt cold to the touch, and some of them shone with condensation. I realized we’d gone beneath the water line; that seemed like a really stupid place to keep a bunch of books to me, in all honesty.

“Well, unless they use magic to ensure the books stay dry,” Sara pointed out. “Which I’m sure they do.”

“Good point.”

We returned to the main corridor, and I saw a glowing light up ahead, around a 90-degree bend to the left. I halted, touching Ferka’s shoulder as I did. “Is that it?” I murmured curiously.

“Yes, sir,” he replied just as quietly. “You can see the magic that’ll keep us out. Once we turn the corner, they’ll stop us and yell at us for coming near the place.”

I nodded. “Why don’t you stay here?” I asked rhetorically. “No point in us both getting yelled at, is there?”

“None at all, sir,” he said in a relieved voice.

I slipped ahead, walking normally but as quietly as I could manage. I could feel the magic spilling out around the corridor, the harsh red light of solar raju designed to damage instead of heal mingling but not entangled with the softer golden glow of the magic that obviously provided light in the depths. The glare was so bright that I almost missed the thin threads of solar raju woven across the corridor in front of me, humming a dull, angry crimson that blended into the light beyond. These I carefully avoided, stepping around or ducking beneath them as appropriate.

“I take it these are an alarm system of some kind?” I asked Sara silently.

“They seem to be. My guess is that they connect to a larger spell-form somewhere in the Archives, and disrupting them activates that spell-form to warn the people down here of intruders.”

That explained why the priests down here had been waiting for Ferka when he approached the last time. Hopefully, they wouldn’t be waiting for me as well–unless we’d tripped other alarms that I’d missed on the way in, of course.

“That’s not very likely, John. If I’m right about how the system works, then the farther away from the main spell-form you put the alarm, the more power you have to pour into it to maintain it. That would make it shine brighter to your magical senses. I doubt you missed anything like that.”

“Unless you’re wrong in how it works,” I pointed out.

“True, but those threads were too thin to be a spell of their own. They have to be part of a larger spell-form, and setting them up as tripwires is the only thing I can think of that makes sense.”

I slipped quietly down the passage, stopping a foot or so from the corner and hugging the wall. I squatted down, then slowly and carefully slipped my head out, examining the entrance to the Archives. The passage around the bend glowed not only with golden sunlight but with magic, woven thickly about it. A pair of wooden doors stood open at the end of the passage, giving me a narrow view of a brightly lit space beyond. Lush, orange carpet covered the floor of that room, and what looked like a central path wound between tall shelves that reached above my view no matter how far back I looked. Most of the shelves were turned so I couldn’t see their contents, but two of them looked filled to capacity with books of every color and size.

As I watched, a woman walked over to one of the shelves, pushing a set of rolling stairs. She climbed up, retrieved a book, and descended, never glancing in my direction. I waited for another minute, but no one else appeared; either everyone was busy in another part of the Archive, or there simply weren’t that many people inside it. I suspected it was a little of both, in all honesty.

I withdrew my head and made my cautious way back to Ferka, who stared at me curiously. “You’re right,” I lied to him. “There are people there, standing guard, and they don’t look friendly. No point in aggravating them.”

“No sir, there’s not,” he agreed, then seemed to hesitate. “Why–why were you walking like that, sir?”

I stifled a chuckle as I imagined what my careful passage must have looked like to the boy. “There are tripwires all over the corridor,” I hedged. “I was just avoiding them.”

He peered down the hall, squinting his eyes. “I don’t see any,” he said dubiously.

“They’re very well hidden,” I shrugged. “You probably triggered them last time without even knowing it. That was probably why they were so angry at you. People who belong here must know to avoid them.”

The kid nodded slowly. “Yeah, that makes sense,” he agreed. “So, now we can leave?”

“Well, I still have to give someone my message,” I pointed out. “Maybe one of the Sorvarajis back in the first room can help with that.”

“Only if you’ve got the coin,” he reminded me. “And I could probably find the person you want and give them the message myself for a lot less.”

“That’s a good idea,” I smiled at him. “Go ahead and lead us back to the entrance, and I’ll think about it.”

We stopped back at the laundry room to return the soiled robes, and I retrieved my sword, which was thankfully still where I’d left it. Ferka led us back to the main antechamber, and I gave him the note Viora gave me and instructed him to deliver it to Pretmaraji Nandru.

“You can tell him where we’re staying if he asks,” I told the boy. “When you’re done, head back to the Knife. I’ll wait for you there. You’ll get today’s wages when you get back there, as well.”

“As you like, sir.” The boy vanished into the crowd once more, and I left the Cathedral, stepping out into the lowering sunlight.

Despite what Ferka probably thought, I considered the day a complete success. I’d found the Archives, and thanks to Sara, I could find my way back again easily enough. It was warded, of course, but I hoped I’d be able to deal with that.

“You probably can,” Sara agreed. “Those protections are powerful, but since they’re totally solar raju, they’re also unstable. You should have no problem taking them apart–but then, everyone will know that someone was there.”

I frowned at that thought. She was right; if I took down the wards without restoring them, I’d be basically putting up a sign saying, “An intruder was here! Lock this place down!”

“Is there another way through them?” I asked. “Can we bypass the alarm system? Or hide from it somehow?”

“Hide from it? Hide how?”

“We had alarm systems back on Earth, too, just technological ones instead of magic ones. Some could detect motion or body heat, but if you muffled the sensor with a blanket or glass, it wouldn’t pick you up. Maybe we could muffle my body so that the wards didn’t realize I was there.”

“That…might be doable,” she said after a moment. “Actually, that could be very doable, John, thanks to your twilight raju. That’s a good idea!” She seemed excited by the prospect, and I couldn’t help but grin at her enthusiasm.

“I’m glad you like it. Let’s head back to the room and see if we can work it out.”