Keystone (Gatewalkers) (33 page)

“I don’t think so.”

“It is coming this way!” Maelyn flung herself back against the stone rise of the tower.

Charlie darted to the window and thrust her head inside. “Rhys! Gwynne! We have a problem!”

***

Rhys could smell the smoke. That made matters serious indeed. “Gwynne.”

“Already gone,” Gwynne said, scrambling through the window.

Rhys took up Jack’s bag from under the table and slung it over his arm. He hesitated, glancing over the room once more, and Gareth’s body sprawled on the floor.

No. There was nothing here worth taking.

With some difficulty, Rhys climbed up to the hole he’d made in the roof and hauled himself up through. As he broke out of the room, he received a full face of smoke.

“Jack! Gate us out of here!” He jumped down to join the others, clustered together on the roof.

Jack shook his head, grimly pressing his lips together. He took his bag from Rhys and rummaged through it. “A wreck. All a wreck!” He grew paler and paler. “My books! Half my books are gone!”

“Time, Jack!” Rhys snapped.

Bright orange and yellow licks of flame sparked at the courtyard edge of the roof. Fire consumed with eager speed. The roof would not hold long.

Jack fumbled out a piece of chalk and frantically scribbled marks on the roof. “Not enough time,” he muttered. “Not enough time! I don’t have my books….”

True. They had no time to waste like this.

Rhys called to the Keystone, reaching for the white hot core of power. It answered in a hundred scattered stars, five of them brighter and stronger than the rest. One of them was close enough to reach, hidden in the boy Gwynne’s stomach. The power eagerly sprang to his call, circling him. He could feel the Gates, some open, some closed.
 

The Great Gate ripped open before them. Rhys felt it deep in his gut, a sudden shockwave more powerful than a lightning bolt. He shoved Mae through, Jack on her heels.

Gwynne flung himself through the Gate as Rhys grabbed Charlotte’s hand and pulled her through the Gate with him.
 

***

Returning to the bridge was to return to her nightmares. Mae closed eyes and ears against the chaos surrounding her, this time in body as well as mind. A scream built within her until she feared it would burst from her chest. She smothered it ruthlessly. She could not afford to lose herself here.

Mae.

Mae stiffened, drawing her hands away from her ears.

“Maelyn!”

She knew that voice. She thought she had imagined that voice, the one that urged her to fight against the Mara’s mind magic. She let her feet carry her into the twisting “floor,” trusting them to carry her when her eyes told her only lies. Trusting them to find him.

Find him they did.

At first all Mae could see was a dark mass within a writhing nest of translucent black chains, then she could discern the shape of a winged man dressed in ancient armor.
 

The Guardian of the Gate.

“I remember you,” Mae whispered. When High King Aneirin taught her how to use the Keystone,
 
the Gate she opened had not taken her to another world. It took her here. To him. She remembered. When she was here on the bridge, frightened and lost, he found her and brought her back to the Gate to Seinne Sonne. He showed her the way home.

Mae abruptly realized that far above them was the gallery containing the sealed Gate, or else they stood on its ceiling. He left the Gate vulnerable. To save her.

“You,” Mae said. “
You
are the one who took my bonds.” The Mara must have added more of them. Or had she truly been enwrapped in that much darkness?
 

From within the nest of shadows, the Guardian bucked against the restraints. “Mae! Break me out of this. You can do it now. With your mind and body reunited, you have the strength. Come!”

***

The world turned in a crazy spin around her. Charlie clung desperately to the floor as it turned into wall, then ceiling. Though she remained plastered to the “floor,” gravity seemed to have nothing to do with it.

“Charlie!”

Charlie turned blindly toward Rhys’ voice, reaching out for him.

The moment Charlie clasped Rhys’ hand, gravity settled safely to the floor, and she could make a twisted sort of sense out of the jumble. Stairways and catwalks rose up, down, sideways, and upside-down, and at any given moment several were shifting or twisting or turning to connect with a different doorway, each of which were different in style. It was as if the designers of Hogwarts had used an Escher painting for reference.
 

“What kind of world is this?” Charlie still felt a little dizzy looking upward.

“It is not a world,” Rhys said. “It is the in-between. The bridge.”

“Charlie! Rhys!” Gwynne’s voice came from above them. Charlie looked around, and almost lost her footing. He stood on a “wall” next to an archway. “Stay there!”

Gwynne took the stairway next to him, which brought him closer, but turned him upside down to their perspective.

“We should not linger long in one place,” Rhys murmured, gripping Charlie’s hand more tightly.

To emphasize his words, a crack sliced open beneath Charlie’s feet with a sound like tearing metal.

Charlie jumped away from it with a gasp, knocking into Rhys. She eyed the changing labyrinth, and carefully started edging along the catwalk toward Gwynne.

 
Gwynne clambered across a bridge and lowered himself onto another stair. “I saw the princess, but I lost her.” The stair chose that moment to change, swinging up and around, and placing Gwynne almost right over Charlie’s head. But sideways.

Charlie felt/heard several more rips nearby. She guessed that the “bridge” wasn’t meant to have people climbing around in it.

“Hurry!” Charlie called up. She couldn’t see any easy way to get to Gwynne, nor the other way around.

Gwynne looked down at them, gauging. He took a half step back, and Charlie guessed what he was doing.

He jumped.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I Am the One

Gwynne didn’t fall, like one would normally fall on a real world with real gravity. He floated down toward them, but as he did he changed. His limbs grew longer; his features changed, becoming less boyish, and even his hair grew longer. In the space of a few seconds he became a teen, then a young man, older and older until Charlie feared Gwynne would be older than Rhys looked before he reached them.

Just as white crept into Gwynne’s hair, the process reversed itself, making him younger again. When his feet touched down on the same level as Charlie and Rhys, Gwynne was a boy again. Albeit a few inches taller and a few years older. He now looked closer to twelve or thirteen than nine or ten.

Charlie darted out and snatched up his hand before he could be separated from them again. His tunic wasn’t as loose on his bony shoulders anymore, and the ragged sleeves covered even less of his skinny arms.

“I won’t do that again,” Gwynne said, his voice on the squeaky verge of breaking. His face was pale and his green eyes were wide.

The ground beneath their feet rippled, an ear-splitting screech driving straight into Charlie’s head.

“Move!” Rhys bellowed. He ran, yanking Charlie and Gwynne in his wake.
 

The mad dash became an uphill struggle as the “floor” beneath them turned into a sharply sloped ramp. Charlie barely kept her footing, stretched between Gwynne and Rhys.

With a groan, the catwalk shuddered. Gwynne lost his precarious balance, his feet sliding out. He still clung to Charlie’s hand. Rhys grabbed for a handhold, but found nothing but air. A second jolt threw him down and all three of them began sliding down the smooth catwalk.

All of them scrambled to slow their descent, but the steep slope sent them inescapably down. Charlie lost her grip on the boys. They tumbled onto a stone floor – or what seemed like a stone floor – surrounded by a gallery of arches.

One of the arches was ribboned in red, nothing but pitch black beyond it. Another Gate?

Abruptly Charlie realized that in this space, the world held still even though she wasn’t holding Rhys’ hand. Charlie pushed herself to her feet and helped Gwynne untangle himself – his legs were longer than he was used to.
 

“Look, it’s Jack!” Gwynne said.

“Jack!” Charlie cried, starting toward him, but Rhys grabbed her wrist and held her back, his face grim. She took a closer look.

Jack stood upright, but his eyes were blank, his face pale and bloodless.
 

“Dead again,” Gwynne muttered.
 

At his words, Jack crumbled into a heap, revealing the woman standing behind him.
 

“The Mara,” Rhys said.

Charlie slowly backed away from the approaching Mara, keeping herself between it and Gwynne.
 
She turned her hand to grip Rhys’.

“I’ve waited for you a long, long time,” the Mara said, her eyes fastened on Charlie. Those eyes. There was something about those eyes, the shape or the color or something…. Charlie couldn’t pin it down. They seemed to change from moment to moment even though they stayed the same.

The Mara lifted her hand and crooked a finger in beckoning gesture. Charlie felt something pull in the center of her chest. Her foot slid forward.
 

Rhys interposed himself between Charlie and the Mara. “You cannot have her.”

Charlie distantly felt Gwynne tugging on her hand and heard his frightened whisper. “Run!”

Why would she need to run? She had to pin down those eyes. The back of her mind vaguely recognized that there was something about eyes that she was supposed to remember.

The Mara smiled. Gently. Warmly. Hungrily. “If one cannot use the key to a lock, breaking the lock must suffice. Come, child.”

Rhys lunged at the Mara. She dissolved into green mist, evading his grasp, and coalesced behind him.

“You forget,” the Mara purred. She grabbed his head. Black chains snapped around Rhys, trapping limbs and torso, driving him to his knees. “This is
my
realm.” The chains wound around his face, covering eyes and mouth.

Something inside Charlie’s chest twisted. “Rhys….”

Forget him
, whispered through her mind. Gwynne’s hand ripped away from hers. An ethereal touch at her chin redirected Charlie’s gaze to the Mara’s eyes.
Come. Face your destiny.

The Mara turned Charlie to face the Gate. The thick red ribbons crisscrossing it blazed against the black opening.

Destroy it.

***

Mae shivered, every muscle in her body fighting against the instinct to cower to the floor. She ground her teeth together to keep her jaw from quivering. The Mara paid no attention to them on the ceiling, but it was all she could do to make her self move. Even so, it was as if someone else’s hand reached out to grasp at the
 
shadowy bindings. Her hand passed through them with nothing more than a sensation of clammy cold.

“I cannot,” Mae hissed, hardly daring to speak the words for fear of being heard and drawing the Mara’s notice.

“Mae, you can’t use your hands. Use your
mind
. You have the power.
Wield
it.”

Mae shook her head. She had no magic. She could not fight the Mara’s power. “I cannot. I could not fight it without your help.”

“You resisted the Mara long before I could help you. You
can
break these, Mae. You must.”
 

Mae thought again of William, of the days before they realized she had no talent for magic, when he tried to teach her the trick of it. To shape what she wanted in her mind, and then….

Mae reached again to grasp one of the chains, her hand closing around the writhing black ribbon. She could feel it. She could feel it in her hand, cold and pulsing like a live thing. Her fingers squeezed it tight. She pulled, holding her breath for fear she would lose her grasp on the insubstantial wisp that somehow held harder than iron. Like a rope, it pulled away from its fellows. With a sharp wrench, she twisted it away from him. It shattered in her hand.

She did it. She broke one of the bonds.

Mae grasped another with both hands, more confident in her grip. It broke away. Another. Another.

She could do this. She looked up at the ceiling/floor, where the Mara now stalked the bound vampire. Occupied.

This method was too slow. Breaking the chains one at a time would take an age, and every moment he was away from the Gate was another moment that the Mara could use.

With her mind Mae created a sword of shadows, taking form in her hand, its edge sharper than glass. It looked as insubstantial as the chains.
You can break these. You must.

With an indrawn breath, she swung it high and sliced down through the layers of chains. They resisted her sword, but she made it sharper, stronger, pushing against their poisoned bondage. It sliced through a layer of chains. They shattered and fell away, dissolving to nothing.

She could see him more clearly now, no more a shadow but a man. The chains ensnared arms, legs, torso. They wrapped around his neck and dragged at his wings.

The entire bridge screeched. Cracks broke through the masonry, leaving black gaps. Mae choked down a screech as her feet nearly lost their grip on the “floor” beneath them.

***

Gwynne dove behind a pillar before the Mara could turn her eyes on him.
Not getting’ me, you aren’t.
He’d seen what happened when she fed blood to the fang faces, and it wasn’t happening to him! This was bad. This was
so
bad.
 

Gwynne cautiously ducked down and peered around the pillar. Her expression glazed, Charlie walked steadily toward the sealed Gate. The Mara, confident in her work, turned her back on Charlie to plant her clawed hands on either side of Rhys’ face. So much for him. At least she wasn’t considering Gwynne as a threat, and he wanted to stay that way.

Keystone!
Gwynne recognized the magical texture of another Keystone shard. He dashed to another shadowed arch and surveyed the room, trying to pinpoint that bright flash of power.