I raised an eyebrow as I glanced at him. “And how are you going to get up?”
“I’ll jump. You’ll catch me.”
“You’re putting a hell of a lot of faith in my catching skills.”
“Because I figure you would not want the father of your child staked.” He cupped his hands. “Up you go.”
I stepped into his hands and, with a grunt of effort, he flung me high. I grabbed at the ragged ends of the pit and hauled myself onto solid ground, then hooked my feet on either side of the doorframe and leaned back over the hole.
“Okay, go for it.”
He leapt up. A heartbeat later his outstretched hands were in mine. I gripped them fiercely, but his weight hit like a ton of bricks and just about ripped my arms from their sockets. I hissed in pain but slowly inched backward, drawing him with me. After a few seconds, he released one hand, caught the edge of the pit, and drew himself up beside me.
I rolled onto my back, breathed a sigh of relief, then scrambled upright. With the shield still in place, neither of us could shift to energy form within the building, so the sooner we got out, the better. I jumped over the loading bay railing, landed neatly, then ran for the gap in the door. Azriel followed me out, and a heartbeat later, we were standing in the burned-out remnants of my living room. I spun around, scanning the room, but couldn’t see anything different. And the front door still appeared locked. Which meant either my father hadn’t yet delivered on his promise, or it was sitting outside. I strode across the room, unlatched the door, then stepped out onto the metal landing to check. And there, tucked into the corner shadows of the top step, was a small brown box.
“Found something!”
Azriel appeared beside me as I opened the box. Inside were two black cords twined with a silverish thread that had an almost ghostly glow about it, and a note. I quickly unfolded it.
The cord will allow both entry into the temple’s inner sanctum and the rooms I shared with the chrání, it said. There is a second for the reaper, as you should not access the temples without his guidance. It is a dangerous place.
I glanced at Azriel. “Why would the temples be dangerous?”
“Because while the priests no longer physically guard the gates, there are… remnants… left behind.”
My eyebrows rose. “Remnants?”
He nodded. “They are not ghosts, as such. More echoes of the beings they once were.”
“So when Aedh die, their energy doesn’t return to the stars like the reapers?”
“They do, but the Aedh priests have sworn an oath to protect the gates, so remnants of their beings remain.”
“I wouldn’t have thought echoes of beings would be all that dangerous.”
“You have not yet encountered the echoes of the priests.” His voice was grim. “Trust me, if they decide you are an intruder, they can cause great harm.”
“Then let’s hope we don’t encounter them.” And that the sorceress did. I glanced down and read the rest of the note. “The third key lies in the southeast, on a palace whose coat of arms lies the wrong way around.”
“Which,” Azriel said, “apparently means as little to you as the previous clues, if your current expression is anything to go by.”
“Yeah.” I folded the note and shoved it in the back pocket of my jeans. “But Google helped us find the last one, so maybe it’ll help with this. Besides, finding the third key isn’t our priority right now. But there is another problem.”
Azriel raised an eyebrow. “The Raziq?”>He stopped beside me. “No. There is no lingering resonance in the air, and there surely would have been had these stones – positioned as they are on a major ley-line intersection – been used.”
I frowned. “So where the hell is she? I mean, she has to know we’re onto her now. You’d think her first port of call would be these stones and the gray fields. Surely she’d want that gate opened before we could stop her.”
“That is presuming, of course, she has created only one gate.”
I glanced at him sharply. “What makes you think she’d have more than one gateway?”
“Because, in many respects, it would make sense to do so.” He cupped my elbow and tugged me over to the far wall, away from the tunnel’s entrance and out of the immediate sight of anyone who might enter. Not that, I suspected, he actually expected anyone to enter.
“Why? I mean, creating gates that size” – I waved a hand toward the two stones – “has to take a lot of power, even if it is standing in the middle of a ley-line intersection.”
“Yes, but does it not seem odd to you that we found this building very easily? It’s not as if a great deal was done to conceal its presence.”
I frowned. “Well, it wasn’t exactly easy. I mean, the paper trail alone was hell —”