The only change to this side of the forest was the increasing shatter of lightning that brightened the grim layer of clouds, casting the jungle into shades of dark emerald. Each blast carried no thunder, only a silence that felt heavier afterward.
This heft might be because the air grew thicker with both moisture and a fierce energy that could be tasted on the tongue. It smelled like the swamp after a lightning storm.
As they continued toward the source, Nyx’s shoulders climbed toward her ears, her head ducked lower. Aamon felt it, too. He no longer growled, as if fearful of drawing attention this way. All of his fur bristled as he slunk alongside her.
It grew so threatening that it felt like a wind pushing against her. Frell and Rhaif shared worried glances, too.
Just before she could take it no longer, the jungle suddenly ended.
She stopped in surprise, as did all the others.
Ahead, a towering archway opened in a tall stacked-stone wall. The rampart was only visible from steps away. To either side, the forest shoved tight against the wall, with vines scrabbling up it, but the bulwark held firm.
Nyx recognized the shape of the arch. It was the same as the one framing the stairs below: two legs of stones leaning against one another, forming a point at the top. Only this one was ten times as tall as the other.
They all edged closer, the Kethra’kai with reverence, Nyx and the others warily. Only Shiya continued forward, limping on her damaged limb.
Past the gateway, the jungle stopped. Bare stone, as black as the cliffs behind them, spread outward. Another spatter of lightning lit the expanse. Its brightness stung her eyes, bringing with it a freshening wash of those strange energies.
Nyx blinked away the dazzle and headed with the others under the gateway. The tall walls swept in a huge circle, enclosing a space as large as the first tier of the Cloistery. She remembered when she had first entered that school. She felt the same way now: lost and overwhelmed, feeling too small to enter such an intimidating landscape.
Within the walls, two circles of standing stones formed concentric rings, the outer taller than the inner, as if the stones were bowing down to the giant structure in the center. There, a double set of arches stood crossed at the middle and climbed twice the height of the walls, enclosing a cube of the same white stone as the terrifying carved pillars.
She stared around the breadth of the walls. Another three gates opened to the jungle. Each exit was marked by towering columns in the outermost henge ring. A pyramid of crystal crowned each one. Across the expanse, one of the crystals shimmered brighter in the gloom—then blasted forth with a jagged bolt of lightning. It struck the dark clouds overhead, briefly cascading smaller chains across their undersides.
The entire group ducked from the brilliant display, even the Kethra’kai.
Shiya ignored it and continued hobbling across the space. She passed the outer ring and headed toward the inner one. Rhaif hurried after her, drawing them all along.
Frell ran low with Nyx. “Keep close. If this is truly Shiya’s home, we best stay in her shadow.”
And in her good graces, Nyx added silently.
They caught up with the bronze woman at the inner ring and followed her toward the crossed arches at the center. Closer now, Nyx made out the shadow of a doorway inset in the cube.
As they crossed toward it, Nyx glanced to either side, to the dark jungle looming over the walls all around. She remembered the horrors out there, natural and otherwise. The threats reminded her of a hermit back home, a friend of her dah. The man had lived deep in the M?r and eked out a living by brewing firewater, a batch said to be as hot as flashburn. He protected his brewery with a labyrinth of fencing reinforced with insidious traps. He didn’t want anyone learning his secrets.
She studied where they were headed.
What needs this much protecting over centuries of time?
Finally, the door under the cube’s shadowy lintel revealed itself. They had all seen its likeness before. It was a copper oval, twice as large as the one they had passed through to enter the tunnel. Here, too, tangles of copper and bronze tendrils wound into the white cube and black stone.
The group gathered a few steps away from the cube.
Nyx turned to Xan. “Have you been through there before?”
The elder leaned on her staff and shook her head. “I do not possess the strength of song to move that door.”
Shiya clearly believed herself capable.
The bronze woman limped under the lintel and lifted both palms, as if testing invisible winds. Then she lowered her arms and began to sing. It was soft at first, the lightest breeze, wistful and quiet, then layers built within it. Nyx heard the firmer chords of an ancient foundation, first building, then crumbling. A rhythm overrode it, marking time, ringing the passing of centuries. An aria of hope, as light as the first notes but far brighter, tried to hold back a darker storm of bass undertones—only to be overwhelmed in the end. It was a mournful composition of time and loss, of pasts forgotten, of hopes dashed to ruins.
Nyx understood.
This was Shiya, declaring who she was, offering her truest name. The bronze woman stood at the doorstep and stated as simply as she could: Here I am.
As that grief swelled, a familiar reef of glowing strands—bronzed and tarnished, but still beautiful—flowed out with her song. They spread to the copper door, but unlike back at the tunnel, the strands were rebuffed, ruffling into incoherence against the stubborn metal.
Shiya drew them back, sang them brighter, and tried again.
Still, she was refused.
Shiya’s shoulders slumped, marking her despair.
Nyx turned to Xan, remembering the other door. “She needs your help. Like before. She’s too weak, possibly not fully herself, to open the way alone.”
Xan nodded and thumped with her cane to stand with Shiya.
Frell leaned closer. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure,” Nyx whispered.
Xan started to sing, expertly merging her melody with Shiya’s. The elder didn’t try to control that song, only support it, to lend her strength to the bronze figure.
Shiya drew upon that font and spun her song higher, both thickening the strands and shaping them at their ends to a fine delicacy. It was so beautiful to see. Shiya would not fail now.
Nyx was wrong.
The design of tarnished bronze reached the copper and sought to meld through it—and failed yet again. The filigree tangled to ruin and washed down the door and faded.
Xan turned to Nyx and held out her hand.
They need even more strength.
Nyx knew she must try. She walked on numb legs to join them, stepping to Shiya’s other side.
The bronze woman still sang in chorus with Xan. Nyx listened, closing her eyes, her head nodding to find the rhythm. She waited until the beat of her heart found it, too. She let it build in her chest, inhaled more deeply to stoke it, then teased it out, letting it flow into their song, fueling each note with her own, building that wave higher.
Even with her eyes closed, she saw Shiya try again, weaving herself, her past, her need, into shiny bronze strands. They wove into a complexity that defied all dimensions. Shiya again cast its beauty at the door.
Nyx gasped as it collapsed into ruin once again, a wave broken on sharp rocks. Shocked and dismayed—both at the failure and at the loss of such beauty—she fell back a step.
We can’t do this.