Xan hung from her staff, drained and exhausted, and admitted the same. “We are not strong enough to open this.”
Shiya remained straight, but the song slowly faded from her.
Nyx shook her head and mumbled, “That’s not it.”
Frell pressed her. “What do you mean?”
Nyx glanced back, picturing the power in their chorus. “It’s not that we’re not strong enough. It’s more like we’re locked out.”
Then she knew the answer.
She snapped straighter.
Of course …
Rhaif noted her reaction. “Nyx?”
“Someone changed the lock,” she mumbled.
She remembered her struggle with the scyther’s helm, how it had fought her as surely as this door did now with Shiya. Nyx swung her attention to the seamless copper. She knew this door’s metal was no crude helm, but something far more daunting.
Xan pulled higher on her staff. “What are you saying, child? Can you mend this?”
Nyx breathed harder.
Not by myself.
She reached inside a pocket, to a paper-thin curl of white bark. Kanthe had given it to her after she buried Bashaliia. He had stripped it from the leafy sentinel over her little brother’s grave, a sacred tree that the Kethra’kai called Ellai Sha, or Spirit’s Breath. She remembered Kanthe’s instructions to her. If you wish to speak to those who have passed, you whisper into the curl, then burn it at a camp’s fire, where the smoke will carry your message high.
She didn’t have a campfire, but she prayed that the fire in her heart would be enough. For any hope in opening this door, she would need to draw all she could from her time with Bashaliia, to commune with the gifts that he had left inside her. To do that, she needed to foster a deeper connection to him.
She closed her eyes again and lifted the curl of bark to her lips. She whispered from her heart, speaking to that past inside her, trying to stir it to life. “Little brother, hear me. I need you. More so than ever before. Please wake and add your song to mine, so I can share the sight I need.”
She kissed the curl and held it to her lips, feeling a stirring of their connection. It was still there, even with him gone. She squeezed her eyelids tighter, struggling to hold those tenuous threads closer to her heart. They were so fragile and delicate. Even by opening her eyes, she might lose them. She used the crimp of bark to help maintain that bond to him. She felt the rough texture in her fingers, smelled the slight scent of tea from the tree bark.
She took a breath and sang again, not in harmony with Shiya, but with the keening of a young bat, a brother who had given his life for hers, who shared his mother’s love and milk, who had never abandoned her.
Not even now.
She pined for him and used her grief as power. She cast out his song in her voice, through her throat. She sang and keened his memory, his faithfulness, his sacrifice. As she did, his unique sight opened inside her.
He allowed her to share it, as he always had.
She stared at the door with her eyes closed. As her little brother’s keening reverberated off the door and returned to her, she saw the copper with perfect clarity, far more than she had with the steel of the scyther’s helm. The copper was no longer seamless but riven with imperfections and blemishes. Its ancientness was as evident as the wrinkles of a wizened old man. Yet, that was only its surface. Bashaliia’s song—her voice—delved deeper, showing alignments and inclusions and veins buried there.
She read a ghostly pattern and saw how it had been changed.
She lifted her free arm.
Xan and Shiya understood. Their combined chorus rose again. With her new sight, Nyx recognized their strength. It was indeed plenty. She watched from the side as Shiya built her pattern, the key to this lock. Nyx saw it was right long ago, but not any longer. She identified which threads were misplaced, which would no longer fit this door, or where a knot was twined slightly askew. She added her own song, unique to herself, while not losing her connection to Bashaliia.
She extended her strands and filled where Shiya’s pattern was empty, withdrew what was wrong, and reknit what was necessary. Once done, she compared it to the lock in the door—then swept her arm down.
On this signal, Shiya cast all her force forward and struck the door with it.
A deep intonation reflected her power back outward, shivering all their threads, turning all their songs discordant, even her connection to Bashaliia.
As it all collapsed into darkness, something appeared, just for a moment. Fiery eyes stared out of the darkness at her. She read approval in them—and something else, another message. But before she could understand, they were gone.
She opened her own eyes.
Once again, she was left hollowed out and weak, her legs shaking. Still, she held her place as her vision clouded over. Such efforts clearly took more from her than mere strength. She struggled with her eyes, returned again to a near-blind state.
Then another jagged bolt of lightning flared silently behind her. The flash reflected off of the copper, brightening the surface enough for her to see it. She watched the door swivel open into darkness with an exhalation of long-dead air.
“You did it,” Frell gasped out, rushing up behind her.
“Not me,” she whispered, still clutching a tiny curl of bark.
SIXTEEN
THE AGONY OF SHATTERED GLASS
Histoire can foretell the future, as surely as a well-trodd’d path can lead eyow home. But stray from that track & eyow may be lost forever.
—From the introduction to Lessons Found in Faded Ink, by Leopayn hy Prest
53
WRYTH RUSHED HEADLONG into the forecastle of the Tytan. His cloak billowed ash behind him. He panted hard. His thighs still burned from his mad gallop across the breadth of Havensfayre. He had left his horse, lathered and shaky, with one of the warship’s stable boys, who had looked aghast at the hard use of the steed. Wryth had tossed the leads and run through the bulk of the Tytan to reach Haddan.
The liege general noted the flurry of his arrival and strode from a spot where a navigator peered through a farscope. Haddan crossed to meet him.
“What’s wrong?” the general asked.
Wryth drew up to him, gulping air. He held up Skerren’s orb, trying to catch his breath. His vision blurred from the tears still struggling to wash the soot from his eyes. His heart pounded and pounded in his chest.
“Another…” he gasped. “Another signal…”
Dizzied by both fatigue and excitement, he fought to collect himself as the room spun. “It struck moments ago … when I was off by the crater.” He swept a shaking arm toward the ship’s stern. “Impossibly strong…”
Haddan stared down at the crystal orb in Wryth’s hand. His brow bunched as he squinted at the lodestones. “What happened to your instrument?”
Wryth understood the general’s dismay. Half of the lodestone slivers had settled through the heavy oil and were piled on the sphere’s bottom. A few still remained, pinned in place and spinning lazily. Wryth pressed the meat of his thumb over a crack in the crystal, stanching a leak of oil.
“The signal hit with such power that the orb came close to flying out of my hand.” He clutched the crystal harder, fearful that another signal might strike at any moment.
Back in Havensfayre, the orb had suddenly wrenched in his palm. He had grabbed it with both hands to secure it. Still, it had quaked violently, cracking along one side. As he had stared down at it, the lodestones had trembled with urgency, the copper threads glowing in the oil. Then one after the other, the slivers had ripped from their pins and were blown by those invisible winds to the back of the globe. The remaining pieces had shivered and fought to hold their place, like sails in a gale.