I felt for the ball of his pain in the back of my mind. I had almost forgotten it was there, I had grown so used to it. There it was. It was more intense than before—and when I felt for it mentally I had to pull back—as if it were too hot to touch with my thoughts. As soon as we were safe we would have to tend to his injury. If it felt this bad as an echo in my mind, how terrible must he feel in reality?
As we got closer the spray made the rocks more and more slippery. Oh, please don’t fall, Tylira. A dunking right now would not just slow us down. I’d pull Rusk in too and we’d lose all the supplies. I just had to keep my grip. Gah! I gasped as a flood of water poured over my head and I shuffled another two steps on the ledge, clinging to the wall with all my might as the water tried to dislodge me.
The deluge ended just as suddenly as it had begun when my head plunged out of the water on the other side. The shelf widened under the falls and I shuffled over to where I could stand easily, nervous as the tether writhed between Rusk and I. Would he make it or end up pulling me over the rock and into the pool?
But no, there he was, plunging out of the downpour and shaking like a dog. He gave me a shadow of his old boyish grin and pointed behind me. I turned to look and sighed with relief at the tall metal door frame that stood at the top of a set of steps. There was nothing behind it. Just a door at the top of a set of steps. No wall or cave or stone cliff face, just a door standing there like it led to an imaginary house. My heart lurched.
“Well, you were right about a door. Although I don’t think it leads anywhere,” Rusk said. He laughed, just a cynical chuckle at first, but then a full out laugh.
The blood drained from my face. An’alepp. I was going to kill her. A door to nowhere when we most desperately needed to go somewhere—anywhere—to flee our pursuers.
I hurried to look at the back of the door. There really was nothing there. I could see the back of the door. Maybe it was an illusion, with mirrors or something. I ran up the steps, pounding on the dull grey metal. There weren’t even runes or decorations on it. Just a plain, metal door with a skim of rust over the surface and on the frame—thanks to the waterfall—and a set of numbers on raised lumps of metal at one side. Symbols. How useless.
There was a handle, but no amount of tugging or turning budged it. Useless...
“An’alepp,” I screamed into Ra’shara, “You betrayed me, you old bat!”
Rusk sat on the bottom step, head in his hands, still rocking with laughter—or maybe sobs. It was up to me to figure something out.
I ran my hands over the symbols on the side of the door. They meant nothing to me. They were laid out in a grid, three by three. Tentatively, I pushed one with my finger and gasped, pulling my hand back when it depressed. It sprang back into place with a click.
“They’re numbers,” An’alepp said, appearing in Ra’shara.
“How do you know? And why did you bring us here to die behind a waterfall in front of a useless door?”
“I know because in my day that’s how we wrote our numbers. They were called Arabic numerals.”
“Numeracy was invented after the sand wars,” I corrected. “High Tazmin Azerath gave numbers to us.”
“This was before then.”
“Then it must require that I depress the correct numerals, which is absurd since I don’t even know what numbers these represent. They’re completely counter intuitive! No stalks. No bushels!”
An’alepp laughed in harmony with Rusk who was still laughing in the real world.
“I’ll tell you which ones to press. We based the code on the prophecy, although we always worried that it was nothing but a wild imagination and too many hallucinogens. When Drusica first connected to the Common, she could see things in the threads and she wrote down what she saw.”
“Just to let you know, there are a lot of soldiers on their way here and they’ll kill us if they get here before you finish the history lesson.”
“Then this time I will not pass on wisdom, but merely knowledge. Get ready to input the code.”
“How do you know it’s right?”
“I’m the one who programmed the door.”
“Programmed?”
“Did you want the history lesson or the code?” she asked, stuffing her hands into the puffy garment she always wore. There were some sort of hidden slots for them. It occurred to me that perhaps she was not just very old, but very foreign, too. Was it possible that some of my ancestors came from somewhere else? No, that was unthinkable. Our bloodlines were pure.
“The code,” I said.
“Nine—for the ninth daughter.”
“And that would be...?”
“The one on the top right.”
“Then twenty-five for the number of generations in the future. That’s the bottom middle numeral and then the one right in the middle.”
“Twenty-five generations? Are you kidding me? There shouldn’t be a door here at all! It should be rusted away.”
“Your understanding of how to tap into the Common is limited by the imaginations of your contemporaries and predecessors, girl. Much more can be done than you imagine. Now finish inputting the numbers. The last one is four. That’s the one on the left in the middle.”
I pressed the four. “And what’s that for?”
“The month that the world will end.”
“It’s the third month now—almost the fourth.”
“You don’t say.”
The handle made a clicking sound and eagerly I pulled on it. The door swung open and beyond a swirl of mist blocked everything from view.
“Rusk,” I said in a strangled voice, “I think you should come here. It’s time to take a leap of faith.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Leap of Faith
The laughing stopped and he stumbled up the steps behind me, steadying himself with a hand on my shoulder.
“What is that?” he said in awe.
“I have no idea, but I think we have to step into it.”
Sweat pricked my skin at the thought of stepping out into that fog. Was it only fog or something more? Anything could be beyond it—or nothing. We could just fall forever into mist under mist under mist. At least we’d have each other.
Sucking in a deep breath and strangling my fearful thoughts, I leapt into the mist. The feeling was strange – like being taken apart and then put back together again, although that wasn’t it at all. It was like having someone measure every tiny building block of your body, categorizing it and then tagging it with a ribbon. No, it wasn’t that. It was like ... well, it was like something I’d never felt before and no matter how much I tried to explain it to myself, I couldn’t. A voice spoke in my mind, just like in Ra’shara, in a calm, soothing, feminine tone, but not in any language I had ever heard before. Was she speaking the language of those numbers on the door? What had An’alepp called them? Arabic?
Just when I started to fear that the sensation wasn’t going to end, I felt something solid under my feet and stumbled across uneven ground, coughing and covering my eyes from a bright light. I was on a steep, tall hill covered in a hand’s depth of moss and thick with trees taller than any building I had ever seen. Where leafy frond ought to have been, there was nothing but finger-long prickles. A large black bird sat in the one nearest me emitting a sound like a boom-flute. Hoop Hoop he said in his dull baritone.
In the distance, the ground fell away and below were thick mists that parted occasionally to reveal a still sea and other spire-like emerald hills in the distance. Was this the Ribs of Ochrand? It looked exactly like the stories and bard tales.
I looked behind me for Rusk, but he wasn’t there. The tether extended through a swirling mist in a door frame that was the twin of the one I had entered. Had he decided not to jump? I tugged on the tether, but it was like it was affixed to solid rock. It didn’t budge.
Oh no. What would I do if he didn’t come through the mist? I couldn’t just sit here. Would I need to go back? I shivered, remembering the strange sensati
on and foreign voice. That option was unappealing. Had he been set upon by Amandera’s guards? Perhaps he hadn’t joined me not because he didn’t want to, but because he was fighting for his life. And he’d be tethered to this door as surely as I was tethered to it. I couldn’t leave him. Not after Alsoon.
I walked to the mist, reaching out, but the mist was solid as stone. Perhaps it went only one direction, or at least only one direction while it was in use, because the tether was still in there, so maybe the door thought it was in use? Would it allow Rusk through? Would we die like this—starving at the end of a four-foot tether, neither of us able to leave the place where we were tethered? He could at least chop off his own hand, although that would likely mean his death. I had none of the supplies and no weapon. Why had I jumped through without thinking? Would I never learn that acting before thinking always ended in trouble? How did Rusk put up with that?
I was going to die before I could tell him how grateful I was for Alsoon. I’d begun to take his presence for granted—after all, he was chained to me. It felt—hollow—that he was gone. Who would I argue with? Who would sleep next to me at night?
I sat down on the step. Had it only been a few minutes, or a full hour? Worry filled me, but it was too cloudy to track the sun and although I was feeling chilled, I wasn’t sure if it was the chill of evening or of fear at being alone and tied in place in a strange location. The minutes dragged on. I thought of Rusk; of the strength in his hands and the determined look in his eyes and of that little dimple in the center of his chin. I’d never kissed it. I wished I had.
The tether slackened and then all at once Rusk came barrelling out of the portal, stumbling over the uneven steps and colliding with me. We fell together onto the moss. I was on my back with the light grey sky and waving trees above me and he was laying on top of me, his face inches from mine and a look of intensity in his eyes. It was like he couldn’t believe it was me. Like he thought he’d never see me again.
“In a hurry?” I asked. Why was I suddenly so breathless?
His eyes widened. “You just leapt right in.”
“I have a tendency to do that,” I said.
He laughed, and the way his body shook against mine made me want to wrap my arms around him and kiss him. It was so good to have him back. It was like I’d remembered something important. For the second time that day I leapt in.
I took his face in my hands and kissed him, long and slow. I was remembering how it felt to think I’d lost him. I was remembering him defending Alsoon. I wanted him to feel what I felt right now. When I pulled back he was panting, his lips curled in the most appealing look of shock I’d ever seen.
“What are you doing?” he said.
It was like a bucket of cold water over my heart. “Kissing you?”
He cleared his throat awkwardly and stood up. I scrambled to my feet beside him. He turned his back and I thought he would have liked to walk away if it hadn’t been for the tether.
A lump formed in my throat. Fine. So, he didn’t want me. So what? It wasn’t like I was desperate. I was a beautiful royal with a chance at becoming heir to the throne. I could find someone else. So then why did his rejection cut me to the quick?
I wrapped my arms around myself protectively. He was scrubbing at his face and hair with his hands, his back to me. He whirled suddenly to face me. His eyes looked brighter than usual.
“I thought I’d lost you, and ... I thought that meant I could go back and save my sisters and return to my home,” he said.
Don’t make things easier for me, Rusk. Just hit me square in the jaw with how happy you were to be rid of me. I shifted my feet under the weight of my emotions, but refused to back away. I was Tylira Nyota. I didn’t back away from anyone.
“I tried to follow anyway, to be honorable, but the door wouldn’t let me through. That was when I realized,” he swallowed like he was having trouble speaking, “that I didn’t want you gone. That without you I don’t have anything bright or hopeful left. I’ve gotten used to you flinging yourself into danger and towards glory like a flaming arrow shot from a bow. I don’t know that I want to live in a world without that. Everything else just looks ... empty.”
My mouth had fallen open while he spoke. I shut it with a click. I wanted to speak, but my mouth felt like it was full of wool. I swallowed.
“Are ... are you saying that you want to stay with me?” I asked.
He tensed. “Yes.”
“It’s just,” I said, biting my lip in the pause. “No one has ever chosen me but my mother and Alsoon.”
“Your mother,” he said, his voice brittle.
“Yes,” I said twining those arms around myself even more tightly. I felt small and easy to break. His eyes were filled with resignation. I knew what came next. He’d pretend nothing had happened and go back to being my advisor and all this would be over. All I had to do to make that happen would be to do nothing at all. But I was Tylira Nyota, and I didn’t back away from anyone – especially someone who had turned out to be golden after all. “I think I might be falling in love with you.”
His eyes grew brighter, shiny with emotion and close to tears. He was so motionless that it was like he was made of the same steel as the door. Perhaps he was afraid that if he moved he would spoil it the way I’d been afraid that not moving would ruin everything.
I crept through the moss of the fairy-tale forest, afraid to break a spell until I was inches from him—so close I felt the heat of his skin and his warm breath gusting over me, so close that I was aware of every muscle and of the musky male scent of him, so close that my mind began to swim with nervousness. I took his face gently in my hands for a second time, feeling the rough skin on his jaw and the stubble from not shaving, against my fingers.
“Wait,” he said, breathily.
“Don’t run this time,” I said so faintly that I almost breathed it out. Then I leaned in, and delicate as a dragonfly landing, my lips touched his. I stroked his face with my thumbs and fingertips, but I kept my kiss gentle and light. He couldn’t be scared of a kiss like that.
In answer, he grabbed my waist roughly and drew me in, flush against his body.
“What are you doing?” I gasped, echoing his words.
“Kissing you,” he said, and where my kiss had been butterfly light, his was tiger fierce. It lit a fire in me, it rooted a longing so deep inside that it must have tangled up with my spine. I knew as certain as I knew my own name that I would never be my own again. I would always belong, at least in part, to him.
“Don’t jump without me next time,” he whispered, breathing into my hair. “I want to be daring right along with you.”
“Deal,” I agreed, holding him close. I felt so warm and safe with him, as if nothing could ever hurt me again. Despite everything that had happened, this moment made it feel like we could still succeed. We could find the Teeth of the Gods, use them to save his family and maybe extract ourselves from the machinations of Canderabai. I wanted to stay with him like this forever.
Violent hands ripped me away from him.
“Again?” Rusk snarled, fury in his voice.
But there were too many hands on us, pulling us apart. At least half a dozen men in Amandera’s colors held Rusk and strong hands were on my waist and shoulders. I lost sight of Rusk as I was steered away in a different direction. They turned me to face Amandera. I reached out to Ra’shara, and then her hand shot out, seizing my heartstone and my connection shattered.
She smiled, like a terrible angel, lovely and evil. “Where one person can find a way, another can find the same way. Don’t think you are the only one with an ancestor trying to help her.”
I had thought I was. Was An’alepp helping Amandera keep up with me? My belly felt like ice. Had she betrayed me when I finally trusted her?
Amandera wrapped my heartstone in cloth and then placed it in a small metal box, closed it tight and pushed it into a leather satchel at her waist.
“Oh, I forgot that they don’
t teach you about this at the Silken Gardens. You were supposed to learn it once you started your real training,” she said.
“I’ve learned more than enough to beat you,” I said. If she thought I’d just give up, she hadn’t been paying attention these last several days.
“Not without the heartstone. Without that, your ability to touch Ra’shara is gone. And so are your vicious lightnings. They were exhilarating, I’ll admit, but your control of them was negligible.”
“What are you going to do with us?” I asked her, glancing at Rusk.
“That will depend on what you decide next, Tylira,” Amandera said, and I didn’t like her smile at all.
Chapter Thirty: In Amandera’s Hands
Amandera swept past and out towards the vista beyond, her armsmen hauling us along behind her. In her red sarette, she stood out in stark contrast to the dark green trees, thick moss and misty sea beyond. After a difficult walk over fallen trees, and boulders disguised under hand-high moss, we emerged on a cliff side, looking out over the sea.
“Bring the supplies and start setting up camp here,” Amandera ordered. “Once the others are through, I want scouting parties to divide up this island and bring us information as quickly as possible.”
I glanced at Rusk. He gave a half-shrug as if to acknowledge Amandera’s capability. What was the choice she was going to ask me to make? I hoped it didn’t have anything to do with Rusk. She looked at him with curiosity and a certain level of hunger in her eyes. What exactly was it like for a young, vibrant woman to be married to an ancient husk of a man like the High Tazmin? Was it possible that she had dalliances on the side? Was she thinking of Rusk that way?
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