only a few feet behind Sarah by the time the invisible force she had been pushing against gave way to a crack of white. I cried out as Sarah collapsed, but Yvera surged ahead and caught her, sweeping her up into her arms as we dashed one after the other through the two-foot crack.
The brilliant light dimmed as soon as we entered, revealing a plain corridor of smooth stone.
“Close them!” I told Yvera urgently, and she nodded in agreement. We both deposited our living burdens on the cool flagstones as gently as was expedient—I tried not to cast a worried glance at Sarah and failed—and dashed back around to take one door each.
If this was a gate, it was unlike any I had ever dealt with before, but I wasn’t about to argue with the methods when our lives were on the line.
From behind, the arched double doors were clearly stone—completely visible and very much present. They were also perfectly balanced, otherwise it might not have been possible for even drakón to push them closed. The door moved easily with a steady push from my hands, and I thanked the Flame to the depths of my soul.
The last sound we heard as the doors came together was the lish’s deafening roar of fury at losing its prey.
Then…silence.
Yvera and I stood panting for a moment with our hands braced against the stone. Then we looked at each other, both of our eyes wide, as if neither of us could believe that was it. I knew I couldn’t.
Would the gate remain on the mesa, or would it vanish? If it stayed, could the lish or the frostworgs see it? Would the lish be able to force or break it open?
We waited, tense with dread, but moments ticked by with…nothing.
The lish had been close enough to have reached the doors by now, if it were still present and were (or had ever been) visible to it. Yet we heard and felt nothing through the stone. Not even the slightest tremor.
“Can you feel…a gate?” Yvera panted.
A good question. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the doors, spreading my awareness out wide like a net. I opened my eyes and shook my head. “I can’t feel anything. But then, I couldn’t feel them before, so I don’t know if that means much.”
“Good enough for me,” Yvera gasped, and she turned around and slid against the doors all the way to the ground. I copied her a second later, and we both sat for at least a dek, staring dully at nothing as the adrenaline faded and exhaustion washed over us.
I was the more rested of the two of us, and even I was sorely tempted to just curl up where I was and not move for deken. But then my eyes fell on Sarah and Kor, sprawled on the floor a few feet away from us.
A spike of fear gave me the boost I needed to get on my hands and knees and crawl to Sarah. I knew from before that Kor would be alright once his body had time to recover from his energy drain and spirit’s captivity. But Sarah.…
She was frighteningly cold as I turned her over, but maybe that was just from the recent chill and the difference in our running temperatures. Still, I fretted over that as I moved on in my examination; the coldness of her body couldn’t be good for her right now.
Fortunately, she was breathing regularly, if a bit shallowly, and I felt a pulse, if weak. I scrounged up some last few drops of energy for a quick scan of her body and found nothing particularly amiss. Her nutritional levels were depleted—no surprise there with how little food I’d gotten into her system that day—and all signs pointed to an unideal body temperature, but other than that, she just felt empty of spark.
I sighed as I ran a gentle hand over the crown of her head. Opening those doors had saved all our lives, but it must have cost every drop she had.
Then it hit me.
We were…alive. All four of us. More or less conscious, more or less enlivened. But alive.
And, so it seemed, safe. Both in no small measure to the young woman lying next to me.
I let out a heavy breath.
“How…is she?” Yvera asked, almost reluctantly.
“She needs warmth and food,” I answered tiredly.
Yvera snorted. “Don’t we all.”
I looked at her with barely the energy for a raised eyebrow. “You feel like eating?”
“Flame, no,” she said with an exhausted sigh, sinking into the corner. “All I want is sleep. The next century ought to do it.”
“Go ahead,” I said, staggering to my feet. “I’ll take the next watch.”
Here was as good a place for us to sleep as any. The corridor extended in a straight line as far as I could see in the dimmed lighting—provided only by strips of some pearlescent material along both edges of the ceiling. As troubling as was the thought of collapsing at the foot of the gate where the deadliest kind of foe could be waiting just on the other side, we didn’t know what lay ahead in this foreign place, either, and none of us had the current capacity to find out. I was willing to bet we would be undisturbed by anything that might lie ahead if we stayed here. I could smell no trace of any recent passerby or occupants—only the staleness of abandonment, which fit the profile of an ancient Moontouched stronghold.
Given all those thoughts going through my fatigued mind, the soundest strategy I could think of was for us to rest where we were before pressing ahead. If the lish started breaking down the gate, well—at least we would have an early warning.
“Ben,” Yvera protested, straightening. “I should go first.”
I’d begun pulling out all our cushions, but I spared her a glare that dared her to argue. “I’ve already had some sleep tonight, remember?”
She winced. “Kor thought it was a good idea, too.”
“I don’t care if the chief minister thinks it’s a good idea,” I retorted. “You don’t drug me again, do you understand? Especially when we’re out in the open.”
Especially when Sarah’s life is on the line, I thought but didn’t say. Yvera seemed to have taken a strange disliking to Sarah for some reason I couldn’t make out, and I wasn’t about to try right now.
“When it comes to your safety, you can’t countermand me,” she said defiantly. “I’ll drug you again if I have to in order to save your stupid hide.”
“I’m not trying to pin you down with a command,” I said in exasperation. “I’m saying this is a matter of trust. Of partnership. I’m saying that I can’t work with you like this if you’re going to be slipping dreamhaze or whatever it was you did into my tsha on a night when I need to be on my guard, just because you and Kor ‘think it’s a good idea.’”
She was silent for a moment as I finished arranging all the cushions together.
“I promise not to do it again unless it is an absolute emergency and I have no alternative. How is that?” she said stubbornly.
“Good enough for now,” I said as I picked Sarah gently off the floor and brought her over to the hodgepodge of cushions.
“Wait, why’d you put them all together?” Yvera demanded, just noticing the arrangement.
“We all need warmth, this corridor is too cool to be of much help there, and I don’t know if we can risk a fire.” I set Sarah gingerly down at the one edge and put a pillow under her head. “We’re sleeping together tonight.”
“Ugh,” Yvera said, wrinkling her nose as she glanced at Kor.
“I’m not saying you have to snuggle with him,” I said in exasperation. I got out a blanket, unfolded it with a flap, and let it drift over Sarah. “There’s room for you to have your space. If not, get out some more cushions. But it won’t kill you to share the same blankets. We’ve done this before, remember?”
“In a blizzard,” Yvera said mutinously.
“Well, we were nearly just in one.”
I sighed as I went to grab Kor and saw her still-rebellious expression. “Look, Yvera, I’m not forcing you. It’s just a suggestion. Sarah and Kor could use at least one of us to give them body heat, and since you’re the less rested of the two of us, it makes sense for you to go first, but if it makes you that uncomfortable, forget it.”
“Fine,” she growled. She pushed up onto her feet and somehow managed an exhausted but still petty march over to the pile of cushions. She fell dramatically into the middle just as I was laying a blanket over Kor.
“Want me to tuck you in?” I teased.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” she said with a crooked smile and only one eye open. She’d already pulled out a pillow and was looking half asleep.
“I’ll accommodate you, this time,” I said with an exaggerated eye roll. “Seeing as you’ve just saved my life again.”
“Dontchu forget it,” she mumbled, other eye drifting closed as I tossed a blanket over her, letting it overlap Sarah’s and Kor’s. As soon as it settled, I reached over them all and tucked the blanket right under her chin, just the way I knew she liked to sleep. Her eyes blinked open, and she gave me one of her rare vulnerable smiles.
“Thanks, Ben.” Her eyes drifted closed again. She yawned hugely. “I’m glad…you’re not dead.”
“Me too,” I said with a weary chuckle. “Go to sleep, silly.”
“You’re silly,” she said childishly. It was an old exchange between us, from back when we were nestlings still young enough to sleep in the same room on a regular basis. Her eyes were already closed, and I could tell she’d be out in moments.
“Love you, Yv,” I said in amusement.
She mumbled something so quietly and sleepily that I wasn’t sure whether the words came from her conscious self or her dreams. “Not same.”
I stared at her in confusion for a moment, then shook my head and shrugged. She always started spouting nonsense when she got this tired. There was no point in trying to make sense of her words now, when most likely they meant nothing at all.
as I drifted awake at dawn. I realized why when I felt a warm breath against my chest, and an accompanying greater warmth curled trustingly against me. From the size and temperature and smell of her, I knew at once who it was, and a shot of pure alarm went through me like a lightning bolt, waking me up at once.
Torch it, I even had an arm slung over her torso—more just to accommodate her against me than anything, but still. It would not be easy to—
Too late. To my horror, I felt Sarah stirring, perhaps in reaction to my sudden stiffness. In retrospect, I should have feigned sleep; that at least would have seemed more innocent. Instead, I jerked my arm off her as if she were on fire and rolled back—onto Kor’s outstretched arm and leg, which no doubt had been the initial reason for our forced closeness. Kor normally sprawled in his sleep, but torch it, right then he must have been taking up two-thirds of the cushions.
Sarah gasped at the same time that Kor grunted in protest—and shoved me back.
“Kor!” I exclaimed as I rolled back toward Sarah. Fortunately, this time I braced myself on my forearms over her, but it still did not make me look good in the slightest as our eyes met under the blankets. Her face was perhaps the most flushed I had ever seen it, and I was sure mine wasn’t far behind.
“Sorry!” I blurted as I pushed myself off her and onto my heels in unoccupied territory. “Sorry! I—I wasn’t—I didn’t—”
Flame help me, I couldn’t even finish a sentence.
Now who’s snuggling? Yvera asked me darkly.
I wasn’t! I shot back in alarm. Kor—
Seemed like you were enjoying yourself to me, she interrupted.
Meanwhile, Sarah had sat up and was laughing shakily. She cleared her throat of sleep phlegm and said, “No, I’m the one who should be apologizing. I got pretty cold last night, huh?”
“Cold,” I said, cheeks still flaming. And still, apparently, unable to articulate a full sentence. “Yes. Last night. Cold. All of us. Tired and cold. Very.”
Even though my back was to Yvera, I could feel her eye roll at my brilliant explanation.
Sarah shivered, no doubt at the sudden absence of the blankets that I’d shoved away from us both as I sat up. “It is chilly here.”
She began looking around, eyes wide. “Wherever…here is.”
“Where in the name of the Flame are we?” Kor grunted, squinting as he propped himself onto his elbows.
“Good question,” Yvera said. I glanced back at her and saw her leaning in one corner by the gate. Her arms were folded, and one foot was propped against the wall. “Why don’t we ask the one who brought us here?”
“Me?” Sarah asked, cheeks flushing again under her glare. “I have no clue. I still don’t know why I even could see the darn thing.”
“Unless my last few memories are failing me,” Kor drawled as he inclined his head in her direction. “I told you why.”
“All you said was.…” she began hotly, but her voice trailed off, as if she couldn’t even say the word.
“Moontouched,” Kor said with careful emphasis. “I assume Ben covered at least that much for you?”
“I can’t be Moontouched,” Sarah said. “I’m human.”
“Actually,” Kor said with a yawn and a stretch as he sat up. “Though your human blood is predominant, I think a more accurate term would be a very diluted amón. You are a descendant of the Second Covenant, Sarah. You have to be.”
“What proof do you have of that?” she shot back.
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
She jutted her chin stubbornly, eyes blazing. I should have been intervening or at the very least getting us ready for the no doubt long day ahead, but I could only stare. I’d never seen her like this before. In the…thirty-some-odd deken I’d known her.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Alright, Ben clearly hasn’t covered that,” Kor allowed with a glare in my direction, making me feel a squirm of guilt. “For now then, I rest my case on this point: your doorgem.”
“What about it?”
Kor held up one finger. “One, it lit up at all. That shows you have the Blood of the Covenants right there. The gem doesn’t have power of its own, Sarah. It draws from that of the user. And if our records are accurate, pure humans do not have power—not the kind it can draw on.”
Sarah remained silent, but her face was still set. My heart didn’t know whether to rise or sink at this glimpse of a stubborn streak in her. On the one hand, it was a healthy and very welcome sign: she was going to need a core of iron to stand up under the weight her Tree had called her to bear. I knew that better than anyone.
But…her clear dislike of this reality did not bode well for her willingness to bear that weight.
She had a choice, of course. The Tree did not force anyone into any role or task. The result was always better for the greater good if one did as She advised, of course, but She never forced. Sarah was within her rights to refuse, and I would be the first to admit that—when considering her needs alone—she would be happier and safer doing so.
But that would be disastrous for me, and so many others. Even if I did not fail to protect her, even if the Tree had another prepared and gave me a second chance, I simply did not have the time now to find the next one. I needed Sarah to be willing. I needed the help only she could give me now. Desperately.
Kor held up a second finger. “Two, it turned white.”
“So?” Sarah asked. “Seems meaningless to me. That’s not any of the colors Ben mentioned.”
Yvera snorted and Kor looked like he was trying hard to be patient. “That’s because white was the color of the Moontouched clan.”
Sarah’s stubborn expression faded. For some reason, her eyes darted to mine. I don’t know what she saw there, but whatever it was, it cracked her open. She clutched at her chest, sending a shot of alarm through me. Was she hurting? Was she sick? Could she not breathe?
But she spoke, if faintly. “You believe it too, don’t you? You believe I’m Moontouched. That’s what you meant when you said the doors would open because of who I was.”
“Yes,” I said hoarsely.
“Moontouched,” she continued in that faint tone. She held her hands in front of her and stared at them as if she’d never seen them before. “I…saw…doors no one else could see. And then I opened them. They took something inside of me to do it, just like the gem did. Moontouched doors.”
“So we think,” I said gently. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Those doors.…”
I trailed off for a moment as I glanced behind me at them. Although right now, they were shut so seamlessly that I almost couldn’t make out the split in the stone that divided them. If I’d come upon them from this side for the first time, I might have thought it was a stone wall.
I swallowed and looked back at Sarah. “They’re not a gate, Sarah. Or…at least, not like any I’ve ever encountered before.”
“And that’s saying something,” Kor added. “I may be the expert on most things, but as Heir, Ben is our person for gates. Even I have studied them in depth ever since becoming leftwing.”
Not to be left out, Yvera said tersely, “And all three of us have been through more than our fair share, especially over this past year.”
“All that to say,” I said. “I don’t know what happened last night. By all rights, we should be dead right now…or worse. The only explanation I can think of that makes any sense is that those doors appeared…and opened…and worked all because of you.”
“Was that what the Tree was talking about, when she spoke to you?” Sarah said, clutching herself as if to stave off freezing. “About what we would learn? That I’m.…”
I had to fight an intense battle to stop myself from reaching out to pull her in to share my warmth. I settled for grabbing the blanket behind me and throwing it around her. Her grateful look up at me made it harder to breathe for a second.
Once I’d settled back a safe distance away from her, I answered. “I don’t think so. All of us more or less had guessed who you were by then, and the Tree was talking about something I didn’t know. Maybe that was about the doors themselves. Or maybe it’s whatever…this place is.”
I looked around, but even though it was day now and the pearlescent lights were brighter, there still wasn’t anything to note other than plain, smooth, square walls, similar large flagstones that made up the floor, and those strips of light. Still going on straight ahead as far as I could see. Although…now that the lights were brighter, I could almost make something out in the distance.…
“I assume from all of your expressions that you still have no clue where we are?” Sarah said. I was glad to hear her voice return to a more normal tone.
“None,” Kor said with a scowl.
Sarah chuckled, as if even she knew by now how much Kor hated saying that. “Well, I know this isn’t much comfort to you three, but I’m glad for once to not be the only one feeling lost.”
“Well, now that it’s daylight, and everyone’s awake, let’s get ready to find out, shall we?” I said, getting to my feet.
While Kor got up and Yvera came over to help arrange things, Sarah stayed where she was and looked up curiously at me. “How can you tell it’s daylight?”
I blinked down at her. “You…can’t?”
“Human, remember?” she said.
“Amón,” Kor corrected, earning him a scowl—but not a denial—from her.
Yvera snorted. “Even amón can tell when it’s day.”
“Diluted amón,” Kor allowed. With his back to Sarah and in a voice so quiet hopefully she didn’t hear, he added, “For now.”
“I get it—you can tell when it’s daylight,” Sarah said impatiently. She seemed to be becoming bolder around us. Maybe that was her getting used to us, or maybe we were rubbing off on her. Whatever the reason, I was glad to see it. “I’m asking how.”
“It is our energy levels,” I said quickly, before either of my wings could answer in either of their unhelpful ways. “Our power returns with the dawn, no matter which sun it is or how far removed from that sun we are.”
I looked ruefully at the stone ceiling. “Though being inside or underground does slow down our renewal. If we don’t get outside soon, we won’t reach our capacity before the sun passes its zenith and we fade again.”
At that, Sarah got to her feet, brow pinching with worry. “Given how dangerous our lives have been, I gather that’s bad.”
Yvera’s response was to the point. “Very.”