"I don't know, Frankie. It's coded language. A spell." "And it will make Morrighan say her secret name?"
"Yes. First the numerology of her name and then the name itself."
"This is all crazy." Frankie looked sick. You have to walk through the palace and somehow find the portal. Then, if you do manage to get there, you have to release this spell. How are you going to do that if Morrighan decides to open the door inside the portal and your brain gets pulped?"
Gabriel was silent.
"And that won't be the end of it." Frankie was thoroughly unhappy. "Assuming you survive your little adventure inside the portal, you then have to find your way out of the palace again. Which might be just a little difficult considering Morrighan's own mind will be scrambled egg by this time."
"I have no choice, Frankie."
"There's always a choice."
"No."
"I know why you're doing this. It's about revenge. You want to hurt Morrighan for what she's done to Minnaloushe."
He didn't answer.
"Revenge is the worst possible motive."
"It works for me." His voice was harsh.
"Gabriel-"
"It's not only revenge, Frankie. Do I want Morrighan to pay? Damn right I do. But it is not that simple. Morrighan is out of control. I'm the only one who can stand in her way. I know this is going to sound as though I've found religion, but for the first time in my life I feel as though my remote viewing powers were meant: not merely an accidental gift. If Morrighan isn't stopped, who knows what she'll get up to? And she'll be looking for someone new to train. Someone who will get hurt. I can't let her."
"You'll get lost. You're bound to. Think about it, Gabriel. Really think about it. Imagine the horror of walking endlessly through a labyrinth from which there is no escape."
"It won't happen."
"How can you say that!" She was shouting.
"I have a secret weapon."
Frankie stared at him in bewilderment.
"You."
They were lying in bed, hand in hand. The curtains at the windows were drawn. The door was shut. The darkness inside the room was all but absolute.
"Ready?"
Frankie's fingers tightened on his. "Yes."
"OK. Go."
Gabriel closed his eyes and willed his breathing to slow. He was doing his best to keep his body completely relaxed and to clear his mind of emotion. If he was too tense, he would involuntarily block Frankie when she tried to enter his mind. He needed to open up his inner eye and keep it slack. Clouds. Think of clouds. Clouds floating, weightless…
He sensed her tentative probings. She was hesitant, timid. But it felt instantly familiar. A soft, fragrant summery breeze. They used to scan each other often when they first started out. During his training at Eye-storm he had acquiesced to Mullins's scanning exercises, but he had never allowed any of his fellow RVs full access. He had never allowed his inner eye to slacken fully. Even with Frankie, he had held back.
But not tonight. For the first time in his life, he was about to place his life in someone else's care. No more going it alone. Frankie would be the first person to walk through his inner eye unimpeded.
Not the first person, he reminded himself. Morrighan had been the first. He shivered as he remembered the insolent confidence with which she had moved through his thoughts the night of Minnaloushe's birthday. That heavy musk and frangipani fragrance descending over his brain like a fog, his limbs growing weak, his groin tingling, the pleasure centers in his brain roughly stimulated so that all he wanted to do was give himself over to her completely…
He shuddered again and tried to concentrate on Frankie. Frankie whose signature was summery fresh, her presence inside his mind like a breeze. But it was so fragile, he thought, suddenly despairing. The thread was so tenuous-would it hold?
It had to hold. Frankie was the ace up his sleeve, the only way he could outwit the most ruthless opponent he had ever faced. Frankie was his one chance of navigating his way back through the house of a million doors. She was to be his anchor. With his mind tethered to hers, she would bring him back to safety. An Ariadne's thread leading him out of the maze. Assuming, of course, that he managed to survive whatever it was Morrighan had waiting for him inside the portal and if the aneurysm inside his brain tissue didn't suddenly spring a catastrophic leak.
Relax. Calm yourself. His heartbeat had speeded up again; he needed to slow his breathing. He tried to slacken his neck muscles, which had tightened in nervous anticipation.
He had spent the last hour memorizing Minnaloushe's code. He had sweated like a schoolboy cramming for an exam: the most important exam of his life. The text covered not even half a page, but he still had a rough time of it and was shocked at how weak his memory was. The mental strain to commit those lines to memory had been sobering. No mouse with which to point and click. No prompts, no icons to guide him. Just his own ability to internalize the information and draw on it at will.
Frankie was fully inside his mind now. Her hand inside his was still, and the grip of her fingers had loosened. Darling Frankie. Dapper, galant. The idea of going into the palace with him was deeply daunting to her; he knew that. But when he had asked her if she would follow him inside, she never hesitated. Such unconditional love-he felt humbled. Their destinies have always been linked, Frankie's and his. And they were about to embark on their longest journey…
His inner eye was now completely slack. It was time to interface with Morrighan. Would she accept him? But on that score he needn't be worried. She would accept him. Oh, yes. She was probably waiting for him already.
His right hand held Frankie's. His other hand was clutched around a locket. A locket with one black curl and one red. Red hair. Minnaloushe. For a moment sorrow washed through his entire body.
No time for grief now. No time for tears. Inside the locket was also a curl of the deepest black. Black as coal. Black as the feathers on the wings of a crow. The crow that was watching him with one beady eye. The bird so close to him, if he put out his hand he would be able to touch it.
For a moment the bird tilted its head quizzically, watching Gabriel as though debating on how to react to the intruder. But then it moved its weight from one leg to the other and started grooming its feathers.
He was inside. He was deep, deep within the palace.
Gabriel looked around him. He was standing in an enormous hall made of stone. The place had run to ruin. The tall windows, the delicate tracery of the frames still intact, were broken. There were holes in the thick walls, gaping squares of blackness, and the sweeping stone buttresses were crumbling.
There was a sound in the air. A wail. A long, falling cadence, the sound unbroken, like a frozen waterfall. He recognized it for what it was. He was listening to the sound of a mind in distress. Morrighan was grieving. He wasn't the only one who was feeling the pain of Minnaloushe's absence.
A movement at the corner of his eye made him turn around sharply. But it was only the crow. It had taken wing. It was flapping its way across the room and was heading for the open door and the passage beyond. After a moment's hesitation, he followed.
He stepped out into the stone passage. It was not really a passage, but a kind of mezzanine, bordered by a thin black railing. He placed his hand on the railing and his stomach felt suddenly hollow as he gazed down the vertiginous depths of a central shaft plunging to unimaginable depths.
The mezzanine on which he was standing was only one of many. From where he stood he could see the floors above and below: mezzanines, concentric tiers and galleries spiraling dizzyingly upward and downward, creating a disorienting distortion of perspective. And doors, millions of doors opening ceaselessly into the remotest distance: mystical replication.