Free her! Tris shouted to the darkness, but there was no reply. His feeling of dread grew steadily stronger. Kait's image grew dimmer, though her hand was pressed against the glass and her eyes begged for his help.
Show yourself! Tris demanded, but again, no answer came.
He found himself blinking at the light of Royster's candle as the librarian bent over him worriedly. The fire in the hearth had died, and Tris knew the night was far spent.
"You saw Kait again, didn't you?"
Tris realized that his hands were shaking. His shirt was wet with sweat, and his heart pounded. "It was so real. I could see her face pressed against the glass. I heard her crying for help." Haltingly, he found the words to recount the rest of the contact. Royster listened intently, frowning.
"It was real. I'm not a mage, but I'm sensitive to the working of magic. I felt the magic myself, that's why I came. You say that Arontala laid a spell over the palace to drive out the ghosts that protected your father?" At Tris's nod, Royster thought for a moment, then moved to the books that lay on a table in Tris's room. He set down his candle and paged through the yellowed volumes, muttering to himself. Finally, he motioned Tris to join him, and
ran his finger beneath a passage in the diaries of the Obsidian King.
"Look here," Royster said. "This tells about how the Obsidian King, who was a great Summoner, started to draw on the spirits of the dead for power. At first, he drew from them to work magic that helped them. But later, as he turned to the darkness, he drew from unwilling spirits to enhance his own magic. At the end, he slaughtered captives, and then bound their spirits so that he could draw on them for a reserve. He fashioned a great crystal orb in which to capture souls and hold them until he could draw from their life force for his power."
"The Soulcatcher," Tris murmured, remembering the glowing red orb in Arontala's library that he glimpsed the night of the coup; the same red fire in the crystal pendant around Alaine's neck in the Citadel.
"When your grandmother fought the Obsidian King, the Mages of the Light opened a doorway to the abyss, so that Bava K'aa could drive him into the void, and he would be trapped in the abyss forever."
"But she didn't."
"No. Because of her love for Lemuel, for the mage whose body the Obsidian King possessed, Bava K'aa could not bring herself to destroy the orb. That orb is what you call Soulcatcher. Bava K'aa gave it to the sons of Dark Haven-the vayash moru-to guard. The currents of magic run strong below Dark Haven, and the Flow runs through the foundation of the great house itself. So the Obsidian King remained trapped in the orb, in Soulcatcher, on the edge of the Abyss all these years, waiting to be freed."
