“That can’t be.” Jesstin turned it over in his hands. “I can’t explain why, but it can’t be.”
Elloven could, but she had no heart for it. The science she understood didn’t apply to the netherworld anyway. “Let’s keep going.”
“This doesn’t alarm you?”
“Many things alarm me, but a river running in two different directions and relocating itself from one end of a magical world to the other is, strangely, not one of them.” She shifted her satchel and kept on.
“El, wait!”
Her shoulders pinched tight in anticipation of him finally addressing her attitude, but he didn’t, and it was, to use his word, alarming. The only thing that would keep pigheaded Jesstin from pushing was if he already knew why she was upset with him.
Some time back, she’d noticed the emerald stones dulling. At first, it had seemed to be a higher preponderance of the ocher dust, of which there was no scarcity in the spiral, but even the cleaner ones were more mossy. Another hour and they were olive-colored, and by the time the sun made its path west of high noon, they were no more pigmented than sand. The landscape had gone through a similar transition. She hadn’t been in a desert, but her father, Wilder, had described the Golden Coast of the Southerlands as one color, far as the eye can see.
“You approach the world’s center,” Jesstin said slowly. She followed where he was looking. There was a series of signs. They were scattered, every twenty feet or so and on alternating sides of the road, and badly carved, like a child had been set to the task. It reminded her of the approach to Forum Obscura. He moved to the next one, on the right. “Nothing within will be as it was without.”
“Lawlessness reigns. Rules find no quarter here.” Elloven read the next ones. “Waste no question on whether even the very terrain is set to harm you. It is.”
“Huh,” Jesstin whispered. “Nothing ambiguous about that.”
“The existence of the magic that provides for your safety in Infinita Mori ends at the gates.” She strained through the glare of the midday sun. “What gates?”
Jesstin walked to a large rock. He pulled the map from his satchel and spread it with his hands, pinning it at opposite corners. The others rolled up. He looked at Elloven for help.
“There’s nothing on here that shows a gate or...” Jesstin pressed his finger to a point that was still near the outer edge of where he’d said the spiral was. “We’re here. We agree we’re right here? Because this is last night’s havre, and this”—he jabbed another spot—“is the yew tree we thought seemed so strange because it was all by itself, no other trees. Just shrubs.”
He’d thought it strange. She hadn’t commented on it at all.
Elloven pinned the lower edge of the map and leaned in with an under-the-breath groan. “You know I can’t read it.” She backed away again. “But none of this inspires much trust.”
Jesstin’s brows fused. “I say we keep on until we find this gate, then we re-evaluate.”
Elloven lifted an arm, pointing for him to lead the way. He frowned again, which he’d been doing most of the day, but still, he didn’t question.
A small hill took them into a valley, which looked like everything else. Bland. Interminable. Hostile. It had her missing the color and liveliness of the localities.
The midday sun reflected on everything. It had grown hot ever since the signs, and she yearned for the relief of cool water on her face.
“What gates?” Jesstin remarked.
She wasn’t sure if it was his words that summoned them. She’d been expecting something resembling an official barrier, wrapping around like a walled defense, but the shimmering entrance was merely two distinct pillars. The bars had been painted with the same emerald color they’d seen before, but it had flaked away in most places and instead looked like a spackled swamp. “Well, fuck me into next season.”
“Ignis Implaca.” Elloven read the words arched between the two free-standing posterns. It was the first sign she’d seen in the Infinitum written in a language that wasn’t natural for her. Some of the letters had chipped away, but she had studied languages with her tutor, and though she didn’t recognize this one, it was similar enough to others for her to make a reasonable guess at the translation. “Unrelenting flame. Or flame unrelenting. Undying? Unyielding?”
A man dressed in the undersized garb of a farm boy stepped through the bars. Elloven could swear she saw him materialize from inside them. He shuffled quickly, grappling for a large ring of keys tacked to his belt, and when they fell to the dirt, he fell with them with a haunting wail.
“Mate?” Jesstin went over to help, but the man clutched the recovered keys to his chest with a cornered look, and he backed off. “Hey, hey. We’re not here for anything like that. These your gates?”
The cowering man jerked his head back and nodded briskly. He shielded the keys as he stumbled to his feet and skittered back. “Mine to guard. Mine to warn.”
“To warn?” Elloven approached slowly, but he didn’t seem afraid of her at all.
“Keys work one way.” He folded his vest over the keys and tipped his chin down, as though the action could make the ring disappear.
Jesstin shot her a bewildered look, but she wasn’t in the mood to conspire in his confusion. “You’re saying you can unlock these gates but only to let us in? There’s no coming back out?”
“Yes, yes,” the man said. His eyes darted between them, beyond them.
Jesstin laughed. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s nothing keeping anyone in or out.” He gestured at the open landscape.
