Ten statues milled about on the far edge of the abyss, eyes flickering, their stone minds too dull to determine how to follow their prey. One of them strayed too close to the edge and toppled over. The others seemed not to notice.
Grace realized that Farr was still holding her tight in his arms. She did not resist. It felt good to believe she could be held that way by him, if only for a moment. Then, slowly, she pulled away. He let her go.
“Is everyone all right?” she said, standing. It was a ridiculous question. None of them were all right, not after that. However, Farr and Larad picked themselves up, and Vani nodded.
“Statues shouldn’t be able to move,” Nim said, her round face solemn.
Grace couldn’t disagree. She turned around. Now that they were close to it, she could see that the golden tetrahedron was indeed large, over fifty feet on a side. The triangular door seemed to be open, but she could see only darkness within. It took her fragmented thoughts a moment to re‑form, then she remembered what they had to do. She started toward the door.
Farr grabbed her arm. “You can’t go in there.”
She did not speak. Instead, she simply looked at him. He jerked his hand back as if stung.
“All the stories say it’s death for us to enter,” he added weakly.
Grace took another step toward the door. “We have to. That’s where she took Travis.”
Nim wriggled from Vani’s arms, slipping to the floor. “He is Fateless,” the T’golsaid. “His kind may enter there.”
“What about her?” Larad nodded toward Nim. “Can’t she enter there as well? Can’t she open the way for us?”
Vani shot the Runelord a black look. “She is a child, not a tool. You cannot simply use her!”
“Like you used her to return to Earth?” Grace said, her voice scalpel‑cool. She had not meant the words to cut, but by the way Vani flinched they had, and deeply.
“It’s all right, Mother,” Nim said. There was no longer fear in her small voice. “I want to go in. I want to find my father.”
Vani seemed beyond speech. She made no effort to stop Nim as the girl moved past Grace, to the door.
Farr made a sharp motion with his hand. “Stay close to her. It’s our only chance. If she is truly a nexus, then the threads of fate will untangle in her presence.”
“And if she’s not?” Larad said, raising an eyebrow.
“Then our own fates will be crushed, and cease to be.”
Grace tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. Only a dead man has no fate, Vani’s al‑Mama had said to her. Two times Travis had died and been reborn: once in the fires of Krondisar, and again in the desert outside Morindu. That was why he was A’narai.
And what about you, Grace? Will you be reborn if you die in there?
She doubted it.
Nim stepped into the triangle of darkness. The others followed in a tight knot: first Grace, then Farr and Larad, and finally Vani. For a moment Grace feared she was lost. The darkness closed around her. She could see nothing, feel nothing. A scream rose in her throat, but she had no mouth with which to give it voice. She was the flame on a candle. The darkness constricted around her, a dark hand to snuff her out.
“This way,” said a small voice in the darkness. Nim.
Grace felt herself being pulled as if by a string tied around her middle. Then the darkness vanished, replaced by a golden radiance. A shuddering breath filled her lungs. She was alive.
So were the others. Larad stood next to her, looking astonished and vaguely ill. Farr was gazing around them with a look of fascination on his face, but Vani’s eyes were locked on something straight ahead. Nim took a step forward, holding out her small hands.
“Father!”
It took Grace’s dizzied mind a long moment to take everything in. They stood along one wall of a large, three‑sided room. Triangular doors were cut into each of the other walls; the other two bridges were visible beyond them. The chamber’s walls were carved with countless symbols, and they tilted in as they soared upward, meeting overhead in a single point from which the red‑gold radiance emanated. The room was capped by a crystalline prism. The prism must catch some of the beams of light that spilled through the windows in the dome outside, Grace thought, focusing them and bringing them inside.
In the center of the chamber was a dais: three‑sided like the room with several steps leading up to it. On the dais rested a chair made of gold, its back shaped like a gigantic spider. In the chair sat a figure. Iron shackles bound his arms and feet to the chair, but there was no point to them.
The man on the throne was dead.
The body had shriveled to a desiccated husk eons ago. The arms and legs were no more than bones held together by dried tendons like old twine. Papery skin peeled away from bare ribs. What might once have been a royal robe of crimson was reduced to a few shreds dangling from sharp shoulders. The skull leaned back against the throne, yellowed teeth bared in a fleshless grin, empty sockets staring.
A hiss, like that of an angry cat, drew Grace’s gaze downward. Ti’an knelt on one of the broad steps before the dais. Below her, lying on the dark stone, was Travis. His serafilay crumpled on a lower step, and he was naked save for a short linen kilt. She had anointed him with oil, and his skin gleamed in the metallic light, taut over sculpted muscle. He was beautiful–far more so than when Grace had first met him years ago–as if he was a statue himself, formed of gold.
His eyes were closed, but his chest rose and fell; he was still alive. Only not for long. Ti’an bent over him, one hand cradled beneath his head, turning it to one side, the other wrapped around a curved knife. A golden bowl sat on the next lowest step, ready to catch the flow of his blood once she opened his throat.
Ti’an hissed again, a look of anger on her lovely, eternal face, glaring at the intruders. Then she bent again over Travis. She lifted the knife, ready to strike. They were too far away to stop her. Even Vani would not be able to reach the dais in time.
The knife flashed, descending.
And Nim screamed.
The girl had screamed before, but not like this. Her cry did not cease after a moment, but continued to rise in volume and pitch, careening off the walls, doubling, trebling, until the very air seemed on the verge of shattering. Nim’s hands clenched into fists at her side; her spine went rigid. Still she screamed, her head thrown back and eyes clenched tight. Larad pressed his hands to his ears. Farr staggered. Grace felt as if her skull was going to explode.
Ti’an stood, her dark eyes smoldering like coals. She opened her own mouth, and a second scream sounded, rising on the air. It was not a human sound, but rather a piercing siren, as shrill as Nim’s. Farr grunted, sinking to his knees. Larad staggered back against the wall. Vani’s eyes were shut, and her arms were crossed before her in a warding gesture. Spikes of pain stabbed at Grace’s ears, driving deep into her brain. She could feel the very structure of her being weakening, as if she was a thing made of glass, crazed with cracks. Another moment, and this would destroy her.
Nim’s scream ceased. The girl collapsed to the floor in a small heap. Ti’an closed her mouth. She gazed at the motionless girl, then turned and bent back over Travis.
Vani was the first to recover. “Nim!” she cried, running toward the girl.
Farr started moving a moment later. Ti’an glared at him, thrusting a hand in his direction. The dervish ceased moving. He stood still, staring forward, and a thin line of spittle trickled from the corner of his mouth. Grace looked at Larad. Could he do something with the Great Stones? No, he was staring like Farr, motionless, a blank expression on his face.