She turned, crossing her arms. “What then?”
He held her gaze for a long moment, as though he had a thousand things he wanted to say, but all that came out was, “Never mind. Now’s not the time. We’ll talk later. After…”
She nodded and went to prepare a bath, so that she could be clean when she faced death.
Although she hated to do it, she had to leave Hero in Meer’s care, with the instructions that if he were to wake, Meer should notify Magda immediately. Honey, too, was left behind. And Damion. He argued, but she insisted, for her own reasons. If she lost today, she didn’t want him to do anything that might get him killed too.
As for the Enneahedron, she could only hope against hope that Kirk would work a miracle and return with it. She couldn’t go tearing through every house and every Pixie’s pockets searching. And it did her no good to reveal she no longer had it. Soon though, she wouldn’t have a choice. Everyone would know once she stood before the Crown.
A few hours later, she stepped out of Southterrace house, clad in her mother’s armor, which Meer had transformed from aged-but-serviceable to gleaming-forge-fresh.
At the edges of the field, the family waited. Some three hundred in all. Elders, children, a couple of younger Raes, sharp, calculating eyes studying her every move.
At the far side of the field, Lavana, also in her armor, silver-etched bronze. Across the expanse of green, the sun caught the metal of their breastplates and they were like two beacons igniting.
Once before, Magda had made this walk, from the damp field through the gate into Stonerise proper, entering the open courtyard, misty in the cool morning.
Warriors lined the rooftops above and guards stood before the stone doors, regarding her with expressionless faces. Never had it occurred to her that she might stand before the Spire’s East Gate a second time. Such a thing was unheard of. Raes who vied and failed rarely lived, let alone attempted to vie again.
From the inside, the stone doors, fifteen feet high and just as wide, were pushed open. Their groans and scrapes the only sounds. A cold breath of mountain air huffed out, chafing against the freshness of morning. A squad of warriors marched out from the shadows of the tunnel.
They moved aside in tight formation. Behind them, Zuriel.
“As the highest ranking minister from our family to the Crown,” he said, regarding her with icy green eyes, “I have been asked to escort you to Her Presence.”
Magda inclined her head, though she really wanted to seize him by the throat and find out if he had taken the Enneahedron. But even if he had, he would have never given it to her and it would gain her nothing to attack one of the Crown’s ministers.
He led the way into the upward sloping tunnel.
The dwarf kings of old had given the utmost attention to even this inner, rarely traveled pathway. Wide enough to allow three carriages to pass easily side-by-side, the grade was subtle so as not to tax too much. The stone underfoot was engraved with images of the great battles of the Godwars. The edges provided traction. In the grooves, water channeled, trickling down the blades of swords, over outstretched arms, along the backs of the fallen, and off to narrow slits of drains. Upon the curved tunnel walls, gods sprang forth, etched in relief, looming high overhead. Flame, fueled by natural gas funneled from deep within the mountain, leapt in blazing arcs from the god’s arms, filling their eyes with flickering life, pooling at their feet and in their hands, designed as much to intimidate as to illuminate.
But Magda only saw these wonders peripherally. Her focus remained on her breath and her pulse, both of which were trying to bolt out of her control.
In the back of her mind, she heard her mother telling her, all those years ago, “The difference between living and dying happens in one breath. The one you lose hold of is the one that will be stolen from you.”
Behind her, the shuffle of hundreds of feet, the echoing anxious whispers, but already she was losing her ability to hear them, her focus narrowing. She forced in a deeper breath and another, until the voices behind her grew in strength again. Not time yet to go into battle-mode.
The light ahead grew from a ghostly glow to blinding daylight as they exited the tunnel onto the lower concourse—a broad, heavily fortified, enclosed stone pathway.
Guards gazed down from both sides as the train was funneled towards one of the two entrances. The sheer, high wall ahead partially obscured the Spire Palace. Only the higher towers and the Spire itself were visible. Like in the tunnel, effigies of the gods had been chiseled from the mountain. They appeared to be stepping out from the rock face itself, shedding the stone from which they were born, twenty-foot tall giants with noble faces and watchful eyes.
Around the concourse, Zuriel led them to the Southern Sun Gate, which stood open. Though constructed after the Godwars had ended, every massive gate, every towering wall, every glowering god, spoke to the threat and the fear of attack.
The higher they climbed, the more their train was narrowed. Up through the High Sun Gate onto the middle concourse, which afforded a better view of the masterpieces of architecture above and below, but Magda did not stop to admire them.
The Palace’s outer buildings, carved from the mountainside, rose in twists like unicorn horns, with no visible windows. In fact, the windows faced towards the Palace proper like worshipful acolytes, their entrances hidden below ground.
Farther up and around the concourse, only wide enough for one carriage to pass, to the Low Morning Star Gate. Beyond, the steps grew steeper. Then through the next gate to the constricted belt of the upper concourse. Buildings here were bigger, conical in shape, flat on top, so that guards could be stationed above, shadow-shrouded faces hovering behind slits of windows.
Around again, through the dwarf gates, segmenting the upper concourse. The clouds thickened. The wind picked up, gusting in mournful groans.
Until at last, they stood before the Crown’s Reception Gate. Upon it, a giant disc, carved with the twisted likeness of the crown itself, and seven elongated prisms radiating out from the diadem.
With a clinking, rasping of metal against stone, the interlocking gate parted, like a shadow sliding away from the moon.
At the end of a short, close-in entry, the Crown’s Receiving Hall bloomed overhead in arcing petals of glass panels, joined together by veins of milky white stone. The ceiling’s diffuse light cast a misty glow over the grand hall. Supporting columns like knotted and intertwining branches ran in double rows on either side between which the family would assemble.
Magda’s pulse sprinted again. Reining it in and keeping stride with Zuriel took all of her concentration.
