Travis struggled to his feet. He stood on the expanse of rough rock; the others were there as well. However, the surface was no longer level with the desert floor. Instead, they were on top of a pinnacle. The ground had fallen away to either side, and a torrent of sand rushed around the pinnacle. Before them loomed a dark mountain. Travis craned his neck, looking up. Sand poured like gold waterfalls between lofty spires and broad domes, tumbling down past sheer walls of onyx stone. Then he drew in a breath, and a feeling of awe came over him.
It wasn’t a mountain. It was a city.
The sound of thunder rolled away across the desert. The torrent of sand flowing to either side of the rock pinnacle ebbed, then ceased. Black domes and spires no longer thrust upward, but stood still and stark against the yellow sky. A few streams of sand trickled from the walls, then even they dwindled and were gone.
Travis stared at the onyx city, unable to move or speak. Over three thousand years ago, the sorcerers of Morindu had chosen to destroy their home rather than let it be taken. With a bloodspell of terrible power, they had buried Morindu deep beneath the sands of the desert. Now, the touch of his own blood had reversed that spell, awakening the city again.
Just like Travis, Morindu had died beneath the sands of the Morgolthi. And had been resurrected.
“Your blood,” Grace murmured. She took one of his hands in hers; his scraped knuckles were crusted with sand. “Your blood did this, Travis.”
No, not his blood. It was the blood of Orъ that flowed in his veins. The city had known the blood of its god‑king. And it had answered.
Vani stepped to the edge of the pinnacle, her black leathers dusted with sand. “This is why the Scirathi feared you, Travis, why they wanted to kill you. They knew you could command the city. They knew you were fated to raise Morindu from the sands of the Morgolthi, just as the Mournish knew. And now you have.” She turned to look at him, her gold eyes shining.
Travis sensed all their gazes on him; it wasn’t a good feeling. “So how do the Scirathi plan to control the city?” he said, trying to deflect attention from himself. “If they intended for me to be dead when they reached it, they must have had some other plan for raising Morindu.”
“Nim?” Larad said.
Farr shook his head. “Powerful blood runs in her veins, but it is not the blood of Orъ. They could not use her to raise the city.”
“Yet, if what you say is true, if she is a nexus,” Vani said, “then fate is changed by her very presence.”
“The throne room,” Avhir said. The tall assassin approached Vani. “Where Orъ was shackled, and where he slept. Was it not said that only the Seven Fateless could enter?”
Vani nodded. “For anyone but the A’narai, entering the throne room was certain death. Orъ’s power was so terrible that the very threads of fate were twisted in his presence.”
“You mean like a nexus?” Grace said, her regal visage pale with dust.
Travis gazed at the city. “Nim.”
“They mean to use her to enter the throne room,” Farr said. “To find the god‑king Orъ. And to take his blood.”
Larad stopped shaking sand from his robe. “But Orъ cannot possibly still be alive after three thousand years.”
“Perhaps not,” Farr said, his dark eyes on the city. “But it may not matter. If even a small amount of his blood remains, in scarabs or vials . . .”
The others gazed again at Travis. He knew what they were thinking; they had all seen the transformation that a single drop of Orъ’s blood had wrought in him. What would the Scirathi do with such blood?
Maybe not anything, Travis. Magic is weakening. Maybe the Scirathi are too late.
Or maybe they weren’t. Magic was losing its strenth, yes, but not the Imsari; they seemed as powerful as ever. And so did Travis’s blood–how else could it have reversed the spell of destruction cast upon Morindu the Dark over three eons ago? Orъ’s blood might yet have power the Scirathi could wield.
And even if it didn’t, the Scirathi still had Nim.
When the city had risen, great clouds of dust had billowed into the sky, masking the glare of the sun. Now the dust had begun to settle, and the sun broke through. Once again heat rose in a choking miasma from the desert floor.
“Come on,” Travis said. “One way or another, we have to go in there.”
Avhir found steps hewn into the side of the pinnacle. People from Morindu must have climbed to this place thousands of years ago, perhaps to gaze at their dark city. Or perhaps to watch for the armies of their enemies approaching. In minutes they reached the bottom.
“The gate must be there,” Vani said, pointing to a pair of delicate spires set into the wall that ringed the city.
Master Larad turned his shattered face toward her. “Will we be able to open them?”
No one answered the Runelord. It was a half mile from the base of the pinnacle to the city, and there was no shade or shelter anywhere in between. A parched wind dispersed the last of the haze on the air, and the sun glared down from the sky like a furious eye.
They ran. The T’golsurged ahead, hardly leaving prints in the sand. The others lumbered behind. In moments they were sweating, and after a minute Grace, Larad, and Farr all began to grimace in pain.
You can’t feel it, Travis, but the sand is burning them. Any hotter, and it would melt into glass. If you don’t do something, they won’t make it.
“Larad, the Stones.”
The Runelord could not manage words, but he held out the iron box in trembling hands. This time Travis took only Gelthisar, the Stone of Ice.
“ Hadath,” he murmured. Again he spoke the rune of frost, and again.
The sand remained cool only for moments before the sun baked it again, but each time he spoke the rune of frost Travis directed the force of the runespell just ahead of them. Grace, Farr, and Larad were no longer limping, and they were able to make rapid progress. They reached the wall of the city. Vani and Avhir were already there.
Travis looked up, awestruck again. The wall was a hundred feet high, fashioned of the same glassy black stone as the spire. No crack or crevice marred it, and there was no sign of any gate or doorway.
He glanced at Vani. “I thought you said the gate would be here.”
“It is here.” She reached toward the wall, but her hand seemed to spring back before she could touch it.
Travis understood. It was like the door in the tower. It was a spell woven in lines of fate. One fate was that there was no gate in the wall; that was the possibility they saw now. But there was another possibility. . . .
Travis approached the wall and reached out a hand. As it drew close to the black stone he felt resistance. He gathered his will, pushing his hand forward, as if through thick mud.
The resistance parted. His hand touched smooth stone.
The surface of the wall rippled, like dark water disturbed by a cast pebble. Then the ripples vanished, and Travis was no longer touching solid stone. He looked up. Where before there had been only blank wall, there was now an arched opening wide enough for five men to pass.
“Interesting,” Larad said. “How did you do that?”
Travis lowered his arm. He was not a nexus, a center around which threads of fate spun; not like Nim. He was the opposite of that. Lines of fate were not drawn to him, but rather repulsed. Twice he had died, and twice he had been reborn.
“ A’narai,” Vani murmured.