Jandra let the prime number that locked her helmet run through her mind once more. She and Hex were in the Thread Room, looking at the rainbow gate. They had already sent Adam and Trisky through, and the other long-wyrm riders had returned through the gates they had entered.
The situation at the Nest wasn't good, but there was little more she could do. The matriarch had recovered from the anesthetic smoke and taken command once more. She'd ordered Graxen and Nadala taken away in chains, and Jandra didn't feel she had enough of an understanding of the situation to protest this decision.
Jandra had spent much of the night healing injured valkyries. She'd also been waiting for news of Blasphet-the valkyries who searched the tunnels hadn't yet found his body. But, Jandra couldn't believe he wasn't dead. She'd seen his severed tongue, after all, and for all of Bitterwood's flaws he wasn't a liar. If he said he'd killed Blasphet, he had. Could he possibly have done something so awful to the body it could never be found? It was best not to think about it.
Besides, she had other things to focus on. She suspected that Jazz would know almost instantly that her helmet was locked once they were together. The genies communicated at radio frequencies-with Jazz a hundred miles away and a mile beneath the earth, and Jandra in a room beneath the surface of a lake, she was reasonably confident that Jazz couldn't listen in to her conversation with Hex right now.
"You know, this isn't your fight," she said. "You've never even met Zeeky. I have a score to settle with Jazz, but you don't need to get yourself killed on my account."
"On the contrary," said Hex. "I feel that confronting this Jazz is required if my beliefs mean anything to me at all. I've spent much of my life developing my philosophy. I believe that all law is ultimately a shackle, and that all kings are ultimately tyrants. If I don't trust power to a king, how can I rest knowing that Jazz wields even greater power? I told you earlier that I don't believe we must be the puppets of fate. This would-be goddess imagines herself as a puppet master. It's my duty as a warrior-philosopher to cut her strings."
"Warrior-philosopher? Is that what you are?"
"My last official title was assistant librarian," Hex said. "Confronting a god as an assistant librarian is a risky undertaking; a warrior-philosopher, however, is suited for the task."
Jandra smiled. She appreciated Hex's dry humor. She handed Hex a silver ring that she'd created from the dust in her pouch. It was scaled to fit his talons; on her, it would have been a bracelet.
"Wear this," she said. "It might come in handy."
"What does it do?" Hex asked.
"You've seen me turn invisible. I do it with the aid of the silver dust. It fills the air and configures itself into a billion tiny mirrors that carefully guide the light around me. I've taken that dust and shaped it into this ring with a preprogrammed command to form an invisibility sphere around you. Unfortunately, I can't make the sphere big enough to cover you if your wings are fully outstretched. The illusion falls apart once you get much past a twenty-foot diameter. Too many gaps in the integrated mirrors. So, it won't work if you're flying, or fighting all out. But it might help you hide, or ambush someone as long as you stay compact. Keep your wings and tail tucked in, don't stretch your neck too far, and no one will be able to see you."
"How do I activate it?"
"I'm keeping it simple," she said. "All it needs is a good jolt of kinetic energy. Just hit it against something hard and part of the ring will flake off and form the field. There's only enough dust in the ring to work a half dozen times, so use it wisely."
"Thank you," said Hex, sliding the ring on. "Though, I confess, stealth and invisibility aren't my style."
"Not your warrior style," said Jandra. "But it may come in handy for a moment of philosophy. Jazz can probably see straight through the illusion, but maybe not. Here's what I do know about her: despite all her seeming power, she's only human. She's no doubt enhanced herself physically; she can probably heal from grievous wounds almost instantly. Mentally, she seems to think she has the right to do anything she wants because the world owes her. She claims to have saved the world from environmental catastrophe."
"Do you think she did?"
"No. I think like most people she wants to believe her presence makes the world a better place. She pushed a bunch of her memories into my head that I think are supposed to make me sympathize with her. For instance, I have this memory of her when she was only a teenager; she's crouching on a beach covered with oil, cradling a dying seagull. I can feel her sorrow, her genuine longing to keep this from ever happening again. Two years later, she was the mastermind behind the bombing of an oil refinery. She killed nine people and triggered economic turmoil that ruined the lives of millions. She's given me this as one of her good memories, one of the things she's most proud of. She wants me to see that while her methods may be harsh and violent, she's always striving for the greater good."
"Just as my father justified war in the name of peace, and oppression in the name of order," said Hex. "If there's one thing I've learned about life, it's that those with the most passionate convictions can justify the most savage cruelties."
"I don't know that I agree with you," said Jandra. "You're passionate about your beliefs, but it hasn't left you bloodthirsty and ruthless like Jazz. Or like Bitterwood, now that I think about it. You're a living contradiction to your own assertion."
"If there's a second thing I've learned about life, it's that any truth I can sum up in a single sentence is almost certainly going to snap once I place the weight of reality upon it."
"One thing I've learned from these new memories is not to be intimidated by Jazz any more. She may be powerful and smart, but she's not omnipotent or omniscient. She's just a woman with a human brain in a human skull. Not to be gruesome, but I've seen what you can do to a human skull. We stand a chance if we get close enough. I believe we can beat her."
"Well then," said Hex, moving toward the gate. "The time has come to once more test a belief against reality." He leapt, vanishing into nothingness.
As he did so, the rainbow seemed to vibrate, and the air around it shimmered with countless tiny prisms that faded as quickly as they'd formed. Yet in that brief flash, Jandra was certain that she'd once more heard her name spoken by Zeeky. Bracing herself, Jandra stepped into the rainbow…
… and now the void was endless. Rather than emerging from the other side, Jandra was adrift in darkness and silence. She couldn't breathe; she couldn't feel her heart beating within her. The disembodied sensation felt the way she imagined death must feel. And yet… she wasn't dead. She was thinking. What was happening to her?
She tried to summon fire around her hands to break the darkness, but she couldn't feel her hands. She wasn't certain she even had hands any more. It was as if all that was physical about her had been stripped away and she was left as only a mind.
"Jandra," a voice whispered.
"Zeeky?" she asked, despite lacking a throat or mouth to form the words.
"Follow my voice," said Zeeky. As she spoke, the darkness split and a sliver of light formed. Jandra wanted to move toward the light, but didn't know how. She had no limbs to push herself with. Panic seized her. The presence of a way out of this void and her inability to reach it left her feeling trapped.
Then, hands that were not hands pressed against her, or the idea of her, and pushed.
Jandra landed hard on a concrete floor in a gray, windowless, room. The presence of gravity felt both reassuring and confining. She was pinned to the cold, hard surface by the weight of her body. The light here was dim, but after her encounter with the void even this faint illumination felt like daggers stabbing her eyes. She threw her arm across her face to block the light. She took long, slow breaths, welcoming the air across her lips after her brief encounter with airless, lipless nothingness.