Most of his resting time was spent, not in sleep, but in deep meditative trances that cleansed his mind of impurities the way the purges had cleansed his body. His breathing slowed, his pulse rate dropped, and his soul stored up energy for the big struggle he knew lay ahead of him.
After these weeks of preparation, when he was at last ready for the ordeal he must endure, the wizard Akar walked into his newly reordered storerooms and picked carefully from among the tools, powders, and amulets in his possession, until he had precisely those that could benefit him the most in a wide variety of emergency situations. He bundled his implements neatly into a tiny pouch around his neck, then left the storeroom and walked up the spiral stairway to the flat roof of Shahdur Castle.
Standing alone o
