Grace looked up. The crystal that had channeled beams of sunlight from the outer chamber into the throne room had gone dark. Had the sun ceased shining? If so, then surely Farr was right.
“Look,” Vani said. The T’golstood nearby, holding Nim. Grace followed her gaze. On the dais, the gate still crackled like a door rimmed with sapphire lightning. Grace saw dark‑robed figures moving beyond, and many glints of gold.
“Who are they?” she said, half in wonder, half in dread. “Are they Scirathi?” She couldn’t see masks in the shadowed recesses of their hoods.
Travis was the closest to the dais. “I don’t know who they are,” he said, his voice hard, “but I’d bet the Great Stones those are the Seven of Orъ.”
Past the robed figures, Grace made out several long, rectangular shapes. They were stone sarcophagi. The gate seemed to be positioned slightly higher than the room on the other side, as if there–just like here–it stood on some sort of dais. Grace could just see inside one of the sarcophagi, glimpsing the gold‑skinned man who lay there, eyes shut as if asleep.
A sheen of sweat sprang out on Grace’s flesh. If those were the Fateless Ones, then the room on the other side of the gate was on . . .
“Earth,” she said. “It’s Earth on the other side.”
But where on Earth? And who were the black‑robed ones if they were not Scirathi?
“We’ve got to go through the gate,” Travis said. “Larad, bring the Great Stones. I think Farr’s right. Perihelion is almost here. We’ve got to bring the Stones in contact with the Seven.”
Yes, that was it, Grace thought, her cool doctor’s logic superseding the fevered chaos in her brain. She considered the knowledge they had gained from the symbols on the walls of the throne room. The universe had a fatal disease, of which the rifts were a symptom, and the only way to cure the patient was to reverse the imbalance that had caused the affliction in the first place. The Imsari had to be joined with the blood of the Seven.
Only what does that have to do with the Last Rune, Grace?Sfithrisir said only the Last Rune could heal the rifts.
Larad stared at the gate, wonder on his scarred face, then he was moving. Travis was already bounding up the steps of the dais.
“We must not allow ourselves to be separated,” Vani said, springing forward with Nim in her arms.
Farr followed after the T’gol, but Grace hesitated. Just a short while ago, for a few moments, she had returned to Earth by means of Farr’s silver coin. When they jumped into the abyss, there had been no time to consider where to direct the coin to take them; there had been only a split second to think of a place they both knew, they both could envision. One had flashed into Grace’s mind; with their hands clasped together, she had managed to transmit it to Farr over the last scraps of the Weirding. And that was where they had gone.
The Beckett‑Strange Home for Children.
They two of them had stood there beneath the blue Colorado sky for only a few seconds. Grace had stared at the burnt‑out ruin, unable to move or speak. The wind had hissed through dry witchgrass. This was where it had all begun. This was where she had first learned what it meant to be wounded. . . .
And where she had first learned the power of healing.
With that thought, the fear, the dread, and the sorrow within her evaporated. It hadn’t been a mistake to come to this place. Instead, it had reminded her of who she really was. Not a queen, not a witch, and not an heir to prophecy, but simply–finally–a healer. She had taken the silver coin from Farr, and with a thought they had returned to Eldh, to the bridge outside the throne room.
Grace left hesitation behind and raced after the others toward the dais. For a moment she had been terrified that if she stepped through the gate to Earth, she might never return to Eldh–to her fortress and her people. But it didn’t matter; she knew that now.
Grace had never meant to return to them in the first place.
She willed her legs to move faster. Travis had reached the top of the dais. He drew close to the throne.
A hand reached through the gate, groping.
Travis skidded to a halt short of the gate. The hand reached toward him, slender fingers extended. A woman’s hand. Several of the robed figures were clustered close to the gate, just on the other side. At their fore was the woman, a veil concealing her face rather than a hood. She was reaching through the gate. For Travis?
No. Her hand moved past him, toward the throne. The woman’s fingertips just brushed the arm of the golden chair.
Travis took another step toward the gate. The woman snatched her hand back through the blue‑rimmed portal, and while Grace couldn’t hear it, she was sure the other had gasped in surprise. The woman had just seen Travis. But why hadn’t she and the others seen him before?
This room is dim, Grace, and the room on their side is much brighter. It’s like being in a brightly lit house and looking out a window into the night; you can’t see anything.
The woman threw her veil back. Her face was too sharp to be lovely, but it was regal, commanding. Blond hair was pulled back in a severe knot. Her eyes were gold as coins.
Those eyes had widened, and her mouth was a silent circle of surprise. She stumbled back, away from the gate, along with the others in black robes.
“Who are those people?” Larad called out.
“I don’t care,” Travis called back. “Now, Larad.”
And he jumped through the gate.
“Father!” Nim cried, reaching out a small hand.
But Vani was already moving, leaping through the gate a fraction of a second after Larad. Farr went next; Grace was the last. She did not hesitate, did not look back over her shoulder as she passed into the circle of blue fire.
She braced herself for the cold of the Void, and for a fall through darkness. Instead she felt a tingling sensation, like the touch of leaves brushing past her skin, and a moment later she was through, standing beside the others on a dais beneath a golden dome, in a building that, classical as its design was, bore countless, immediately detectable signs–from the electric lights glowing around the perimeter of the room to the switches on the walls and the muted whir of a ventilation system–that it had been built by modern, Earth hands.
Grace glanced back. Behind her, supported by thin arcs of steel, was an archway of stone blocks carved with angular symbols. Strands of blue energy coiled around the stones. Beyond she could just make out the dim outlines of the throne room in Morindu. Why hadn’t they fallen through the Void?
Because the worlds are close now, Grace. Very close.
She turned from the gate, facing the six figures in black robes. Their hoods were pushed back now, like the woman’s veil, and the faces of the five men–all as sharp and ageless as the woman’s–bore looks of mingled astonishment and fear. The woman’s look of shock, however, had changed to another expression: narrow‑eyed rage.
“How can this be?” She pointed a finger at Travis. “How can you be here? We made certain you would not get in our way.”
Travis cocked his head, a puzzled look on his face. Then, slowly, he nodded, and Grace knew he had understood something, something the rest of them had not. She wished she could speak to him over the Weirding. Standing there, close to the gate, and the Imsari, and the Seven of Orъ–who slept in their sarcophagi around the perimeter of the chamber–it almost felt as if she could sense the Weirding’s glimmering strands. But they were too faint, too fragile to grasp.