This was the deep desire of Aidan’s heart—that all things would end. If anything was left alive outside the Forever, her reign could never truly be secure. And she deserved to reign supreme for all time because of what had been done to her mother. And to her.
All things were in place and accounted for. Only one thing rankled. Surmise had proved to be beyond her reach. Not really a Dreamworld, not really Between, and not subject to the rules of either. Her only hope was that since it was woven from the fabric of the Dreamworld, perhaps it too would fade out of existence.
There was nothing she could think to do about it, and so she chose to dismiss it from her mind. It was time, now, to put her plan in motion.
Spiraling lazily down through the air, she alighted in front of the Gates. Huge they were, even to her in dragon form. When she shifted so as to manage the Key, they seemed to grow taller and blacker. She felt small and vulnerable in her human skin, frightened all at once.
A new emotion, fear. A thing she hadn’t felt since the time almost beyond conscious memory when she and her mother had fled from one place to another to stay in hiding from her father. No shelter for her anywhere in the world, then. She was not fully human or dragon, nor was she of the Dreamworld. Nobody wanted her, everybody feared her. But she had grown past that, learned to shift and blend and bide her time.
Fear would not stop her now, even though a sense of wrongness filled her with foreboding. Up close, the Gates gave off a subtle vibration that was at odds with her body. It pulled her heartbeat off its regular rhythm, made it impossible to draw a full breath. Her bones felt like they were being jarred apart.
Her hands shook too hard to hold the Key. It dropped to the ground and she bent to pick it up once, twice, three times.
She glanced at the giants. They could stop her now, if they chose. It would only take a moment for them to reach her. In dragon form she could easily elude them, but in dragon form she couldn’t open the Gates. Her plan had been based on speed and had already failed.
The giants didn’t move, but what they did was worse. They began to laugh, a sound that rattled across the plain like thunder, echoing off the impenetrable barrier in front of her. Louder and louder. As if they’d known all along that she was going to fail and had come to bear witness.
Aidan tried once more to navigate the Key, but the vibration this time dropped her to her knees. Involuntarily and without her will her body shifted back into her dragon form, and she unleashed a scream of rage that shook the Gates and stopped the laughter from the first ranks of giants. Tough as their hides were, they were not impervious to dragon fire and she felt it building, ready to flame.
But she held herself back. Oh, they would pay. They would all pay. But there was still a chance to get through the Gates. The One still lived, as far as she knew. Aidan wanted her to suffer, had locked her into Wakeworld for that reason. Dream deprivation would be a terrible death for a Dreamshifter. Long and slow, with the insanity creeping in and no means to beat it back.
But if she still lived, she could be made to open the Gates. Aidan not only had the pendant, she had also taken skin and hair and blood from the One, and a simple spell would serve to find her. Which meant that the plan had not failed. Not yet. Circling high above the plain before winging away to a quiet space to do the spell she had been taught long ago, Aidan’s eyes caught unexpected movement on the mountainside across from the Black Gates, and she flew across to investigate.
As she looked down on all that moved below, exultation filled her breast. Perhaps there would be no need to waste time on a fiddly little spell. Fate had presented her with a much easier way.
Thirty-eight
It wasn’t much of a passage. Through it Vivian could see nothing but daylight. There was no telling what lay on the other side, or even how much time had passed since she fell. Hours, days, even weeks or years. But the clean air drew her, along with the promise of finding water and food.
Poe decided the matter, as he had done so many times before. He slipped through the crack and out of sight. As always, Vivian followed. It was a hard scramble up a pile of loose stones that cut into her bare feet and scraped the palms of her hands. The crack itself was about the height of a tall man, and narrow. If she’d been heavier, she would not have made it. As it was, the sharp edges of stone carved into the skin of her shoulders and thighs as she eased through.
But then she was free and clear.
A cold wind blew against her and she staggered under the assault, naked and shivering.
She stood with Poe beside her on a narrow ledge, halfway down a sheer cliff with no obvious way either up or down. Her range of motion was restricted to about a ten-foot space. To her left, the ledge narrowed and ended. To the right, the cliff bulged outward. The shelf continued around it, but only about three inches’ worth. Enough for an experienced climber, maybe.
Not for a small and weary woman.
Poe huddled against the cliff wall, away from the wind. Looking back to check on him, Vivian saw that the cleft she had climbed out through had closed behind her. Even if she had wanted to, there was no going back to the purgatory of the Dreamshifters.
A desolate valley spread out below—rock, sand, and sagebrush. On the far side another mountain loomed, its summit shrouded in dark clouds. Familiar. She had seen it in dream after dream, nightmare after nightmare. At its base, what could only be the Gates, made of a stone so black it sucked up all the light. Even in full sun, the area at their foot was in permanent shadow. All across the valley floor, tall shapes stood in symmetrical patterns. Standing stones, she thought at first. Giant chessmen, except that as she watched they moved, and her heart convulsed in a beat of fear as she remembered Zee’s talk of giants.
They made the Key, she reminded herself. They crafted the Black Gates. There is no reason to think of them as enemies.
Dragons wheeled and soared above the mountain, for all the world like a flock of birds except that their wings made a constant thunder and raised a dust storm on the plain below. Vivian tried to reach out to them, but there weren’t even murmured voices in her head, now, not so much as a faint response. Grief at this broadsided her; she had fought so long and hard against the dragon power, hating and loathing it, and now that it was gone she missed it.
Which figured. It would have been nice to fly down off this inconvenient perch, because she had no idea how she was going to get where she needed to go. Or anywhere, for that matter. It would be ironic to die of cold and hunger on the side of a mountain after everything she had already survived.
Closer than the dragons, another bird flew, large and black. She watched him, envious of strong wings and the gift of flight. Poe made a small sound almost like a whimper, and she wondered whether he felt the lack of wings. The bird croaked solemnly, as if in answer, and then fluttered down at her feet.
Weston’s raven, she was sure of it. And if he wasn’t with Weston, then something was wrong. Not dead, she told herself. Just lost somewhere, or in trouble. As am I.
The wind died down a little, shifted its direction. In the relative silence she heard voices from around the buttress.
“Strategy? Direct line across the center? Or circle to the left and try to stay out of sight?”
“First thing we have to do is get down. I can’t see how we will do that unnoticed.”
“And if they notice us?”
“They may do nothing.”