Luck blessed her in the form of a warning from Bron. He pointed to the altar, then to either side of it. “Keep watching your step as you walk. The altar looks safe enough if you want to pray there. If you want a more secluded spot, there are prayer alcoves along the two paths. Just be careful not to touch anything. Parts of this temple were built with sorcerous stones abandoned by the lim-folk, and anything lim can be dangerous.”
He was obviously familiar with the temple layout and confident that if she decided to make a run for it, she wouldn’t get far. Disaris prayed her excitement didn’t play across her face. He’d just given her a rough map. The gate lay along one of the paths branching off from the nave. She offered him a quick bow of thanks. “May I explore before I decide where to pray?”
Something flashed in his eyes, then was gone. “Of course. I’ll leave you with some privacy. Remember what I said and call out if you need me. I won’t be far. I’ll hear you.”
She watched as he strode away, uneasy at the way his demeanor turned cool and his tone distant. There was no time to ponder over the change, no time to dwell on the fact that her last view of him might be his tall frame and broad back as he walked away from her.
The altar didn’t offer up anything of note. Its raised dais with a weathered slab of stone darkened by the old stains of sacrificial blood held nothing that looked remotely lim-made. No sigils or runes carved into prayers or glowing with lim magic. She left the altar to explore the path branching off to the right. The walls and walkways were like those she’d passed earlier, worn by time and tufted in grass with no evidence of a special stone housing a hidden gate. She hurried back the way she came and took the lefthand path.
She was more than halfway down its length and despairing that she’d ever find her prize when something caught her eye—a pavestone abutting one of the walls. Its ornamentation was like nothing else around it. Script, instead of flourishes, covered its defaced surface, barely legible anymore. Someone had taken a hammer to it, shattering its surface into small pieces.
Disaris swallowed a sob as she knelt for a closer look and stretched out a hand to hover just above the stone. Whoever had done this had a purpose. Nothing around the pavestone was touched. Someone—Daggermen, Daesin soldiers, the gods only knew who—had destroyed the pavestone for a specific reason.
“It can still work,” she told herself, reaching into her satchel to pull out the ragged frock she’d told Bron had been a gift from her mother. She spread it out next to her. “I can make it work.”
She flipped the garment inside-out, revealing an equally threadbare lining for the skirt portion. She pinched part of the cloth at the edge and ripped it away from the outer fabric. A quick glance around her showed she was still alone. If Bron orone of his men heard the sound, they didn’t find it concerning enough to investigate.
Tossing the lining aside, she straightened out the skirt. Symbols that mimicked the fragments of those on the broken pavestone decorated the fabric in lines and swirls of brown thread. They’d started out written in ink, copied from a parchment carelessly dropped and unnoticed by a Daggerman messenger.
It hadn’t taken her long to translate the runes, realizing they were instructions and a spell for how to operate the gate so that a messenger or spy could cross distances in the blink of an eye and deliver information between Baelok and the Daggermen’s main lair somewhere in Keforin.
When she first realized the implications of her discovery, she began planning her escape from Baelok. Those plans had crumbled to dust, along with the fortress itself, when Bron’s team of soldiers found her. Somehow, some way, Fate had replaced those plans with new ones, and she found herself exactly where she most needed to be in order to reach her sister.
She turned her head so that she eyed the sewn symbols askance. They changed shape in her vision, becoming letters she’d grown up learning to read in Master Feypas’s schoolroom. The pavestone’s damage might have rendered it useless, but she refused to give up. In her opinion, the stone was simply a sign post. The gate itself was a thing of lim magic, brought to life and controlled by spellwork, and she possessed the means and the knowledge to wrench it open and step across its threshold.
“Raise the hand and turn the key,” she read in a whisper, turning her hand in such a way that it appeared as if she inserted an invisible key into an invisible lock. “First left, then right, then left again.” She followed the instructions she’d sewn, her elation growing as violet light began to spill from the many crevices in the shattered stone and illuminated the broken runes. “Open thegate that can’t be seen. Cross the threshold that isn’t known.” More light poured forth, coalescing into a wide, spinning column the width and height of a man. Perspiration slid down Disaris’s neck, and the tickle of blood teased the inside of her nose as she read and recited the final lines of the incantation. “Walk the path that has no beginning, only an ending that begins.”
The violet light turned blinding as it spun like one of the whirlwinds Bron could summon. Disaris shielded her eyes with one hand and staggered to her feet. She’d done it. She’d opened the gate. Ignoring the terror wrenching her insides, and the welling sorrow at leaving Bron, perhaps forever, she took a first step toward the luminous gate. “I’m coming, Luda,” she whispered.
“NO!”
The deafening bellow startled her so badly, she almost fell, only to be slammed backwards onto the unforgiving ground by a heavy body cannoning into her with such force, it drove every last breath out of her lungs, leaving her with nothing but a thin wheeze. The sky above her was a shade of seawater blue, spangled in black stars and partially blocked by a silvery-white curtain of hair.
“Gods damn it, Disa!” Bron’s angry roar made her ears ring. “Are youtryingto die?”
In the winterof her fifteenth year, when Disaris mourned Bron’s absence with all the fervor of a grieving widow, she shared a kiss with a most unlikely person and gave them a power she never imagined would be wielded against her.
It had happened accidentally, a moment of recklessness that created impacts great and small, though Disaris didn’t know it at the time.
It began innocently enough, if not exactly welcomed. A game of Honesty or Bravery between the older adolescents at the winter festival of Spirius. They’d all gathered at the perimeter of the village square, under the bare branches of a sleeping elm. Experience and the wisdom passed down from those who’d gone before had taught them that as long as they remained in view of their parents or chaperones, they were mostly left alone, especially as the night wore on and the wine and spirits flowed more heavily and more often into cups.
That year, Disaris hadn’t been interested in celebrating. Bron had returned to Burnpool the past spring and hadn’t returned since, leaving behind only the memories of his smile when he crested the hill to greet her and the sweet touch of his lips on hers when she’d gripped her courage in both hands and kissed him. Nothing had ever felt so awkward and so wonderful in her entire life, and she still relived the all too brief time in her mind every night before she went to sleep.
When he’d left to return to his garrison, she had cried until she hiccupped, then cried some more until her mother threatened to drown her in the well if she didn’t stop. “My gods, girl,” she snapped one morning as Disaris stood beside her in the kitchen, making bread she salted with a steady flow of tears dripped into the dough. “You’ll drive me to madness with all the moaning and hair-tearing you’ve been doing this past fortnight. If I thought it possible, I’d send you straight to him at Burnpool just to get some much needed peace!” At Disaris’s sudden, brightening expression, Gheza glared. “It isn’t possible, so chase that out of your mind right now.” She had no sympathy for her daughter’s plight. “Leave the dough before you ruin it,”she ordered. Work in the garden. You can water my peas with all those tears you’ve been conjuring while you’re at it.”
As the months passed, Disaris cried less often and wrote letters to Bron every chance she could, long, rambling missives filled with observations about life in Panrin, along with quips, anecdotes, and good-natured insults. A single sheet of parchment cost her a hefty sum, and she took on odd jobs helping neighbors so she could earn coin to buy more parchment. She filled every bit of blank space on each sheet, front and back, and the two letters she received from Bron over the course of summer and fall had wrought smiles and excited dancing when a messenger arrived in Panrin with them.
No more letters came from Burnpool since the butchering season, and she’d been too busy helping her family prepare for winter to write her letters to Bron. By the time the Festival of Spirius arrived, with its great bonfires, feasting tables, and fast-flowing drink, she’d once more sunk into the depths of melancholy, missing her best friend. Even the hearty celebrations around her couldn’t lighten her mood.
Her parents and sister danced together among the crowds circling the twin bonfires built to beseech the gods for a mild winter, food stores that lasted, and the absence of sickness as they all waited for Spring to return. Disaris didn’t think her family would miss her presence if she sneaked off and returned home for an early bed. She might even write that overdue letter to Bron, using the last sheet of parchment reserved in her decimated cache.
That plan was wrecked when Nazlen stopped her before she could slip into the darkness. “No you don’t, Disa,” she said, catching Disaris’s arm and spinning her around. “You’ve turned into a dull old nanny-noggin,” the girl said. “Come join us! We’re playing Honesty and Bravery, and Suketh brought the wine.”
Disaris struggled to pull away. “Ugh, no. I hate that game. Every time we have to watch Katchel eat his own snot because Marich always challenges him with Bravery, and Katchel never refuses the challenge. It stopped being funny when we were twelve.”
Nazlen rolled her eyes, undeterred by Disaris’s resistance and low opinion of the game. “Stop being a wet rag and come with me. Please.”
In the end, Disaris gave in to Nazlen’s pleas and joined the other adolescents waiting for the game to start. Lanterns placed in strategic spots lit the circle everyone had formed, and several jars of wine stood stacked together in the circle’s center, waiting to be cracked open and shared.
