The Liberator?

Leuthra squinted through the settling merel-dust at the last seven stairs above her, at the open doorway. The next-to-last doorway, if the proclamation had ben true, before she would meet the queen she’d come to challenge. She hadn’t expected to get this far; she’d thought there would be guards, monsters, poison in the air… but so far it seemed the queen might mean to keep her word: the one brave enough to challenge her alone would meet her alone. Certainly she’d kept her word about the speed and thoroughness with which any larger rebellion would be crushed. Leuthra wasn’t fool enough to trust her, for all that--hence

the merel-dust pouch at her belt.

The handful of dust she’d thrown lay still and gray on the stone steps, on the threshold; at this height she couldn’t see the floor of the chamber inside. No glimmer of purple in the dust betrayed spellwork laid on the steps to suck her in or to turn her into a stone or a sigh. The only ominous thing was the dustlessness of the third and fourth stairs above her. Clearly they were seemings, not true steps. It seemed a feeble protection--even if she’d stepped out onto emptiness she might well have been able to clutch at the steps above and pull herself back up. Of course, there was