“It’s akey,” Rayna repeated, and he gave up, simply following her. There was no point in arguing with Rayna when she was in a mood like this. It was best just to hope she wasn’t leading him headlong toward anything too disastrous.
“Are we going somewhere?” Lisabet asked.
“You’d better come, you’re clever,” Rayna decided.“And Bryn, we need you. Ellukka and Det, you two tell everyone we won’t be long. I don’t think.”
“You’d better not be,” Ellukka replied. “We have a war to stop.”
“I think,” said Rayna, “this might be almost as important.”
Chapter Twelve
THEY WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO HEAD INSIDECLOUDHAVENwithout being part of a large group, and four was not a large group. But Rayna had let go of Anders’s hand and was already hurrying ahead, so there was nothing to do but run after her.
As Anders jogged along the hallway, though, his ears were straining, listening for noises, for any sign that an artifact warrior might be on the move.
Rayna took the turns quickly and confidently, and he realized where she was leading him just a few moments before the final corner brought them to their destination.
She came to a halt, the others panting behind her, in front of the huge stone wall that had blocked their way when they had asked Cloudhaven how they could reach Drifa. The same text as always was still glowing at them, the words in Old Vallenite and the mysterious code.
The blue letters made no more sense than they ever had. Anders looked at Rayna, and she pulled her augmenter off over her head.
“Bryn, remember how you said that if we were going to decode the message on the wall, we need a key?” she said.
Bryn nodded, her brow creasing in confusion.
“Well,” Rayna said, grinning, “you were right. Only I think what we need is an actualkey. We met two dragonsmiths last night, Tilda and Kaleb, and—”
“YoumetTilda and Kaleb?” Bryn gasped. “They’re hidden in the mountains, they never let anybody land there, how did you...?”
“Leif told us the way,” Rayna replied.
“You sawLeif?”
“We have a lot to catch you up on,” Rayna admitted. “And we will, as soon as we’ve done this. Tilda and Kaleb told us that our augmenters were keys, but they didn’t know what for. I think they might belonghere. Drifa herself said we’re descended from the founders of Cloudhaven, and these augmenters used to belong to her. Sounds to me like it could unlock a door at Cloudhaven, and this is the only one we haven’t been able to open.”
The other three sprang to life, working quickly to search every inch of the stone wall. Anders ran hisfingertips carefully over its rough surface, desperate to hurry but careful to make sure he didn’t miss even the smallest opening.
It was Lisabet who called out first. “Here,” she said, pointing urgently to the spot, and stepping back so Rayna could reach it.
It was a small, vertical slot, concealed in the shadow of a craggy piece of rock. Rayna turned her augmenter to match it and pushed it in.
It fit perfectly.
They all looked up at the rock wall, waiting for something to happen. But nothing changed.
“But it fits,” Rayna protested, “that’s the keyhole. Why isn’t it working?”
Now, though, it was Anders’s turn to have a hunch. He hurried down to the other end of the wall, searching at the same height. And sure enough, there was a matching keyhole.
He pulled his augmenter off over his head and, holding his breath, pushed it into place.
With a grinding noise, the glowing letters immediately began to change and shift, moving about on the rock wall. Whenever they met, they seemed to bounce off each other, like a crowd of people all trying to hurry in different directions, nobody willing to give way.
Eventually, though, a pattern began to emerge. The letters formed lines and clustered together into words.
“This is Old Vallenite,” Bryn said, backing up and beginning to mutter to herself as she worked out the translation.
The other three danced, jumping up and down on the spot, unable to contain their celebration.
