Still, I keep going, though blinded, and the parallel to destiny’s path through a person’s life is inescapable—
A glow up ahead. Otherworldly, as if something magical is coming for us.
Surely, evil wouldn’t be golden against the fog.
“Let me go first,” Merc says.
“No, we go together.”
“Why do you not listen—”
“You have no more idea what’s up there than I do—”
“—when we have no idea what is up there—”
“—so we might as well both find out—”
We’re arguing as the mist disappears as abruptly as I dove into it with Lavante, like the cover is a solid block we walk out of.
The horses stop without being asked. Then again, considering what’s ahead, there’s no farther to go. The mountain range has indeed curved around to the ocean, just as Merc’s map detailed, but what confronts us was not shown on his parchment.
The gate is the largest and most fortified I’ve seen, and like the translucent barrier Lalah managed to break down, it secures the vast gap between two of the pointed elevations with utter surety: Running from the grassy ground up to the very sky, the flanks lock into every nook and cranny of the passage that was cut into the black-and-brown spires. And the pair of hinged halves lock against a great vertical pillar.
The whole lot of it drips with condensation, as if it’s alive and sweating from the effort of keeping closed.
“Quite the construction,” Merc remarks. “Why use boards when you have the tree itself.”
That’s when I notice what it’s made out of. An entire forest has been felled and bound, countless stripped trunks lined up horizontally and stacked in dozens of rows. Secured by mortar, and bolted in groups by great metal bands, they form the cage door that locks whatever is on the other side out.
Except then I glance back, and decide that more likely it’s keeping where we are coming from contained—and contained we be.
“There are hinges.” Merc urges his horse forward. “So it opens. Or used to.”
Testimony to the gate’s age is in the staining down the exposed, weathered wood from the salt in the air corroding the metal banding system. The passage of time is also in the debris that’s built up at the whole of the base—which seems to be a kind of sawdust? Perhaps the bark wasn’t so much stripped asit fell off, the wear of the many years disintegrating the arboreal casing into a reversion back to the soil that once nurtured the roots of its very origin.
I let Lavante go on his own wander, and no surprise, it’s to dip his head and suspiciously sample the grass. Whatever flavor it is, the green blades pass inspection, for he begins munching in earnest, putting one foot in front of the other as he chomps a trail closer and closer to the newest thing we must get through.
Exhaustion doesn’t so much creep up on me as leap into my body.
It’s as my head falls back that I measure the sky. That star is still up there, brighter than ever, looming like a portent that, considering the way things have been going, I know for sure is not good news.
And then I get a proper look at the top of the gate. There’s a parapet that runs across the obstacle as if the builders knew with weight so great, framing reinforcement was required not just at the sides and center, but all along the height. It’s also a prime defensible position.
Merc glances back at me. “No bell to ring.”
“I don’t know if visitors are welcome from this side of things.”
“Can you blame them—”
The sound is like thunder, except it has a metal ring.
One side of the gate begins to vibrate, to the point where rain kicks off from the bundles of trunks, the drops falling on my face and hair, even as Lavante backs away. Just as I think the metal bands are going to pop and the forest is going to fall free to roll over us, there’s an earthquake.
Lavante jumps into a splayed stance to stay on his feet, but Merc’s horse has the opposite reaction. He bucks and tries to bolt, forcing Merc to sink into the stirrups and fight for control over the bit—
The seal breaks with a crack that resonates through my chest, and I exhale as a rush of wind comes at us through the small opening. That’s when I smell something unbelievable: Flowers. I catch the scent of meadow flowers, and there’s a beam of sunshine that pierces in, landing on the grass where Lavante was nibbling.
I once again palm the crystal knife, and Merc, who’s gained control, points his broadsword in the direction of the aperture.
