After that, she was vigilant, and they did not catch her unawares again. However, she was forced always to keep moving. By the time she gave birth to Nim she was on a ship sailing north. For the next three years she kept traveling from place to place, never staying in one spot for more than a month or two, and never daring to return to a location where she had been before, for fear they would be waiting for her.
When she finished, Travis and Beltan could only stare at her. Through the door they heard Nim humming as she drew. At last Travis forced himself to speak.
“So have you learned what the Scirathi want with you?”
“They don’t want me.”
“Nim,” Beltan said, his voice hoarse. He stood, pacing around the table. “It’s Nim the sorcerers want, isn’t it?”
Vani nodded, her expression haunted.
Beltan slammed a fist on the countertop. “The filthy Scirathi–I will kill them all with my bare hands.”
Sparks shone in his green eyes. Alarmed, Travis rose and moved to him, touching his arm. For a moment Beltan was rigid, then he sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry, Travis. It’s only . . . we’ve just met her, and now they want to take her away.”
Travis looked at Vani. “What do they want with her?”
“I would that I knew,” Vani said, gazing at her hands splayed on the table. “But whatever the reason, the Scirathi have grown more relentless in their pursuit these last weeks. I could not stay anywhere more than a few days before I was forced to flee. That was why I sought out my people and asked for the gate. I knew it was the only way to escape.”
Travis gazed at the piece of the artifact. “How did you open it, Vani? The gate.”
Beltan gave him a startled look.
Travis sat again. He slid his hands across the table toward her own but did not touch them. “The blood I filled it with beneath the Steel Cathedral would have been consumed when you and Beltan returned to Eldh. So what blood did you use to open the gate?”
Vani opened her mouth, but no words came out.
“It’s all right, Mother,” said a small voice behind them. “You can tell them. I don’t mind.”
Nim stood in the kitchen door, holding a piece of paper.
“Tell us what, sweetheart?” Travis said, keeping his tone light, unsure how much she had heard.
The girl pranced to the table and set the paper down. “How we came here. Look, I drew you a picture. It explains everything.”
Travis turned the paper around. The drawing was made up of simple but expressive lines. At the bottom of the paper was a small black triangle. Above the triangle was a large circle with wavy edges. On either side of the circle stood a stick figure, one tall, the other short. The shorter figure held a hand toward the triangle. Small black shapes like teardrops fell from the little figure’s hand onto the triangle.
Only the drops weren’t tears, Travis knew. A sweat sprang out on his skin.
Vani picked up the paper, folded it in half, and gave it back to Nim. “It’s time for you to go to sleep.”
“I know,” the girl said. “I can put myself to bed. I just wanted my fathers to kiss me good night first.”
They did. Beltan picked her up and hugged her, and Travis gave her a solemn kiss on her forehead. She ran to the door, then stopped and looked at Vani.
“I’m lucky, Mother,” she said.
Vani’s gaze was thoughtful. “How so, daughter?”
“Most children have just one father. But I have two.”
With that, Nim was gone. Travis and Beltan sat again at the table. Vani stared at the door where the girl had vanished.
“How?” Travis said simply.
Vani didn’t look at him. “She told me to do it. I refused at first–older though she seems, she is only three–but the sorcerers were close behind us, and I knew my people would not be able to delay them for long. I had little choice. And I learned early on that she knows things. Things she shouldn’t know, yet does all the same.”
Beltan pressed his hand to the inside of his right arm.
“So her blood activated the gate,” Travis said, feeling ill.
“She didn’t even cry as I pricked her finger with a needle.” Vani hesitated, then touched his hand. “Somehow, through some magic of the Little People, she truly is your child, Travis. Even as she is my child, and Beltan’s. She is what she is because of all of us.”
Travis struggled to comprehend. How could Nim really be his child? The Little People had tricked Vani and Beltan, making each think the other was Travis. The two had lain together, and Nim was conceived. But it was only illusion; he hadn’t really been there. Or was it some enchantment of the Little People? Some magic that had taken something from all three of them and imparted it to Nim?
“There’s something else I have not told you.” Vani circled her hands around the onyx tetrahedron–the topmost portion of the gate artifact. “It has been three weeks since I came to Earth. It took me that long to find you, for I began my search in Colorado.”
“Sorry,” Travis said. “We didn’t know we needed to leave a forwarding address.”
Vani did not smile. “I kept the lid of the gate artifact so that I might remain in contact with my people. While a Mournish man or woman’s blood is not enough to open the gate–”
“It’s enough to send a message,” Travis said. “Yes, I know. Are you saying you’ve heard something?”
“Hold out your hand.”
Travis did so, and she set the onyx tetrahedron on his palm. It was warm, and he felt a hum of magic. Blood flowed beneath his skin. Blood of power. Just the proximity to it was enough to awaken the artifact. A tiny, transparent image of a man appeared above the tetrahedron.
It was Sareth. He held a knife, and there was a dark line on his forearm.
“Sister,” the image spoke in a reedy but clear facsimile of Sareth’s voice, “I returned from the south, from Moringarth, only today, and our al‑Mama tells me that you are already two weeks gone. I wish that I could speak with you in person. But I fear, whatever dark wonders you might tell me, the news I bear would be darker yet.”
A grimace crossed the image of his face. “I must be brief. Let me say this: I think it is fate you chose to journey to Earth. In Moringarth, I spoke to a dervish, and though what he told me seems impossible, I am certain it is true. The burial place of Morindu the Dark has been discovered. Already the Scirathi seek it out, and our people move to hinder them and reach the city first. And, sister, this news is even stranger than you imagine, for the dervish who brought it to me is a man from Travis Wilder’s world, a man named Hadrian Farr. He says word must be sent to Travis, that the time draws near when he must return to Eldh and–”
The image of Sareth flickered, then vanished. The tetrahedron grew cool and heavy in Travis’s hand. He could feel both Vani’s and Beltan’s eyes on him as he set it on the table. His mind buzzed, and his hands itched. What had Sareth been about to say before the spell of blood sorcery ceased? What was Travis supposed to return to Eldh and do?
They want you to raise it, Travis. To raise it from the sands that swallowed it long ago. Morindu the Dark, lost city of sorcerers.
He shoved his chair back from the table and stood.
Beltan’s green eyes were worried. “What are you doing?”