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And screaht, and hit the floor, just as soht on the wall beside me Glass scattered and children screamed, but to my amazement, they didn’t run amok Not when Rhea snapped out a co in orderly lines down the hall, even as the witches cursed the shit out of everything behind the tired The next time Zara tried a shield, it was popped ale of spells so thick it looked like athat saved us was the fact that this wasn’t one of those made-to-look-old kinds of places, but the real deal And the hall was narrow, not allowing us to be rushed by everyone at once

But it let through enough,half in pain and half in fury And so one side of o out I had to shedit down the hall at the es

They batted it away, but it distracted the ones in front for half a second, which was long enough for Evelyn to throw a spell--not at theh power behind it to bring half the hallway down, cracking it along the center and spilling a load of billowing plaster and falling debris on our pursuers Along with a bunch of water pipes, dripping and then spewing on their heads, which didn’t seem to bother them much

Until Beatrice sent a plu-hot steaes have an aversion to being boiled to death Soot up shields, butinto those behind theh of a teet the last of the kids out of the dors could , but everyone else seeer Down the hall and around a bend, to a back stairway Which would have been great, except that it was as narrow as the hall that fed into it

I stared at it, not even needing to do any mental math And the looks on the faces of the witches would have told me the truth, even if it hadn’t been obvious I didn’t kno long it was going to take all those kids to get down all those stairs, but it worked out to es were coain, around the bend, with shields initially, and then dropping them to fire when they realized the truth A mass of spells like the one they’d done before, that had shattered Zara’s shield, only this time, we didn’t have a shield But the spells stopped anyway

Or, to be exact, they slowed to a crawl, because I didn’t have enough power left to stop them completely

"You have six minutes," I told therasping Zara, as panting and shaking and pale as a sheet, firmly by the ar to do?"

"Buy you tiht now

"I’ll stay with you," Evelyn said staunchly

"Thatwouldn’t be a great idea"

"And why not?"

I was panting now,to hto shift you out"

"And you’ll have enough to shift you?"

Okay, maybe not so dumb

"I’ll be okay"

"You’ll be dead! And then the poill go to one of those miserable adepts--"

"No, it won’t," Rhea said She’d wisely sent the older children down first, and was now shepherding the smaller But she paused for a second, to look back at me

"And how do you know that?" Evelyn demanded "They’re next in line!"

"Because the power chooses the Pythia," Rhea said, fierce pride on her face as she looked at me "It hat you needed to understand today, what I needed to reo to the next in line, whoever people think is best It goes to the actual best, the very best choice out there" She dropped another of those perfect curtsies "Lady"

I stared at her, and for the first tiuessed the last time, I was proud, I was daone, Evelyn still co up the rear as the last of the children faded into darkness in front of them I went to my knees, because it was easier And because it didn’t ood, since there was no one to see uys ere about to die with me

Because I didn’t think they’d be so enthusiastic if the adepts had mentioned as about to happen to this place But I had no way to tell the even as the spells sped up, noticeablynow, about the pace a person could walk casually And painting the floor and ceiling with lines of unnatural spell light

I watched theely faerous, but so beautiful Like the moon-flooded sands of an alien world, like the endless stars in the council chareen eyes

Pritkin, I thought, feeling gold spangled light on ain in bed, with a blond derabbed hiray business suit, the thin blond hair, and the cleft he’d added to the chin The one distinguishing feature in a bland mask to make it easier to pretend that’s what he really looked like Adra, I thought, staring into calray eyes

"So I ended up in hell, after all?" I croaked in disgust