“So we can’t get everyone inside yet,” Anders concluded. “If the dragons show up, our friends will be trapped out in the entry hall with nowhere to run.”
“Then we’ll have to hope nobody shows up tonight,”Rayna replied. “I guess we could ask about how to make it more comfortable for them, at least. They probably don’t have a kitchen here, or if they do, I wouldnotlike to see inside it. The dust is so thick, there can’t possibly be any food left that anyone would want to eat.”
But a new idea had come to Anders, traveling through him with a quick fizz of excitement.
“No,” he said. “Last time we were here, we asked about the way to find Drifa.”
At the time, a path had lit up, but they’d had no chance to follow it, forced to run back and join the others. Now they had the chance to find out where their mother had been all this time.
Anders had spent all his life wishing he knew more about his parents—never even dreaming he couldmeetthem—and now more than ever, his heart desperately wanted that chance. Their mother would be on his and Rayna’s side, not the side of the wolves or the dragons. He could almost imagine her smile, her advice. It would besucha relief.
He ached for Hayn to be with them, but their uncle had been imprisoned by the wolves, and had disappeared during the Battle of Holbard. If he was out there somewhere, Anders had no idea how to find him. For now, the twins had to continue on without him.
Beside him, Rayna spoke. “Cloudhaven, please show us where Drifa is.”
For a moment, nothing happened. And then all the lamps and the strips of metal in the floor dimmed, until it was almost completely dark. Again the twins waited, and this time when the glow returned, it was concentrated in one long strip of iron along the floor. Pale bluish green, it stretched down the hallway, then turned a corner.
Anders slipped a hand into his sister’s and used the other to brace Kess against his chest, and together the three of them set off, following the path Cloudhaven had provided for them.
This was it.
After a lifetime as orphans, of never imagining they’d even know the names of their parents, were they about to meet one? Was Drifa really here? Was she still hiding after all this time? Why had she never come for them?
They hurried past door after door, the anticipation building inside Anders until it was almost unbearable. Deeper into Cloudhaven they went, the minutes ticking by.
Then they turned yet another corner and pulled up short—the path abruptly ended against a wall of solid rock.
The dead end was covered in row after row of text that glowed a soft blue, but Anders couldn’t understand a word of it, and he knew it wasn’t just because he wasn’t verygood at reading. These words simply didn’t make sense.
He scanned the lines of letters desperately, heart thumping, looking for any kind of clue as to what he and his sister should do next. Beside him, Rayna was whispering under her breath, and he knew she was trying to read it as well.
“There!” she said suddenly, one finger coming up to point. “That says ‘barda.’”
Anders craned his neck—she was right.Bardawas the word forbattlein Old Vallenite, a language that had been spoken centuries ago. Anders and Rayna themselves were Anders and Rayna Bardasen, named after the battle that had orphaned them. Or at least, their rescuers hadassumedthey’d been orphaned in the last great battle—the twins had been found on the streets as toddlers, after the fighting had ended.
“Perhaps it’s all in Old Vallenite,” Anders said. “This place is ancient, after all. But we only know two words of it,bardaandrót. Bryn taught us that one, remember, when we were solving the riddles to find the pieces of the Sun Scepter.”
He thought of Bryn, their classmate at the Finskól and a brilliant languages expert—he could picture her now, pushing back her sleek black hair with one impatient hand so she could lean in to frown thoughtfully at some ancienttext. Oh, how he wished she were here now.
“It could be anything,” Rayna replied, gesturing helplessly at the words. “Instructions on how to get through the wall to the other side, another riddle like the ones on the map, or a really good recipe for all we know.”
They tried pricking Anders’s finger and pressing a little blood against the wall, remembering how this had activated Drifa’s map, bringing it to life and making it obedient to their commands. The wall, however, completely ignored the blood.
They puzzled over other ideas, but eventually, Rayna sighed. “We’ll have to figure it out later,” she said. “We’ve made it all this time without her, we can last a little longer.”
Anders reluctantly agreed. “We can’t stay here all night, trying to guess what a wall wants.” He ached to find a way through the rock, to find out what was on the other side—whether his mother was truly there—but their friends were waiting. And their friends had gone to battle and lost their homes today, for him.
He took one last look at the glowing words, then stepped back. “Cloudhaven,” he said. “Our friends are camping in the entrance hall. There aren’t any beds there, there’s nowhere to eat.”
“There’s only one bathroom,” Rayna added, making him smile.
“Cloudhaven, please take us to something that will help make this place easier to live in.”
Just as they had the other times, the lights dimmed, then illuminated once more, a new path stretching away into the distance and around another corner. Anders and Rayna followed it, Kess perched on Anders’s shoulder as they walked past long rows of doors set into the rock. There was no way to tell what was behind any of them, and Anders’s curiosity tugged at him, but on he went.
The stone of the tunnel was dark, its edges rough, but although it might have felt like they were walking into somewhere forbidding, somewhere dangerous, Anders didn’t find Cloudhaven threatening at all. In the strangest of ways, he felt completely at home here. Still, it was with a flush of relief that he saw that this time, the path ahead ended at a wooden door, rather than a rock wall.
He and Rayna exchanged a long glance, and then Anders pushed up the bar that was holding the door closed. The hinges were silent as it swung open, as if they’d been oiled only yesterday. But he barely noticed that. His eyes were on what was within the room they had revealed, and it was...
