Keystone (Gatewalkers) (34 page)

Behind the sealed Gate.

How had it gotten there?! No way was Gwynne trying to go after it.

Then Charlie reached out and touched the Seal.

***

Charlie’s feet paced steadily toward the Gate. She dimly heard something happening behind her, but it was none of her concern. Nausea coiled in her stomach, but she couldn’t imagine why.
 

 
Charlie reached out to touch a pulsing red ribbon.

“Charlotte!” The deep, male voice was like a dousing of cold water, bringing Charlie out of her haze.

It felt like she had her hand pressed to a sheet of red glass. Glass with a wide crack through the center, radiating tiny spider webs that flaked off tiny shards. A fresh crack sliced under her hand.

Behind the glass, she saw a green eye in a shadowed face. A bright green eye glazed with pain. Maelyn’s eyes. Gwynne’s eyes.

“Charlotte Marie Donahue.” The man behind the glass invoked her full name, chasing out the last wisps of the Mara’s mind magic. “Don’t break the Seal. Not yet. But when the time comes, it needs to be you.” He flinched as another crack radiated outward.

“You sent Lallia?” The words came out as a whisper. Him. The one behind the blood Seal. High King Gwalchmai. Alive.

He flashed a familiar grin with a crooked tooth. So that was where Gwynne got it from. He was one of Gwalchmai’s descendants too. “That’s right, Miss Hero. You’re a Gate Breaker. One in a lifetime. You distort the magic that touches you.”

Gate Breaker?
She was touching the Seal.

***

A shudder ran through the entire room. Gwynne felt it from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. The Bridge itself made an audible groan that hit him in the gut.

The Mara whipped around, startled. Her eyes swept the room and Gwynne ducked back behind a pillar. Did she see him?

“Come out, come out, little mouse,” the Mara sang. “I know you’re hiding in a hole.”

Gwynne looked desperately for a new hiding place, but all he saw was more pillars. He couldn’t see a way back to the rest of the bridge either.

But he did see Jack’s hand twitch. Bugger. He was alive after all. Alive again? Whatever.

Cracks webbed across the Seal with a series of crackles and pops.

Running out of time. Gwynne knew enough to realize that all kinds of nasty would be set loose if the Seal on the Gate broke. He couldn’t let it happen.

“Why do I have to play hero?” Gwynne muttered. Because he was the only one who could. Gwynne took a deep breath and let it out in a huff. “I’m gonna regret this.”

Belting out a war cry at the top of his lungs, Gwynne dove from the shadows to sprint at Charlie. He slammed into her side, intending to knock her away from the Seal, but her hand stuck. All he did was smash his nose against her shoulder.

“I’m in trouble!” Gwynne grabbed Charlie’s arm and yanked. “Come on, ye blasted squirrel. Move!” He braced his foot against the seal and heaved.

With an earsplitting boom that Gwynne felt all the way through his gut to his spine, the Seal split in half.

***

“Listen!”
 
Gwalchmai said. “You must –”

A deep crack tore through the Seal. Gwalchmai broke off with a gut-wrenching scream.
 

Charlie felt something reach though the crack and touch her. It instantly sucked the warmth from her with the cold of the grave, diving to her bones and deeper. It clutched at her mind with skeletal fingers, sucking the air out of her lungs and reaching for her heart.

Arms around her shoulders ripped her away from the Gate. It felt like her hand left a layer of skin behind. Contact with the Seal broken, she tumbled back into her rescuer. He fell with a squeal.

“Gwynne?” Charlie said incredulously.

“Move!” he shrieked.

Charlie had no time to process it. The floor buckled under her with a deep moan. She rolled aside as the stone floor crumbled away, leaving nothing but a black hole.

Charlie scrambled away from the hole, clutching Gwynne’s arm.

The Mara screeched.

***

“What is happening?” Mae demanded. Everything was falling apart. Very literally.

The Guardian groaned as if in pain. “The Seal is breaking.”

Breaking? How could it be breaking?

“Mae, leave me,” he said. “Free Rhys.”

Free the vampire?
Mae looked up. The Mara had turned her back on him, now flitting between the arched pillars. He’d been trapped in the same kind of mind bonds.

“The Seal
cannot
be broken yet,” the Guardian said. “Free him!”

Mae steeled her trembling spine. “Why did you trade yourself for me?”

The shape of his helm hid most of the Guardian’s face, his eyes hidden in shadow, but she could see his mouth, strong and firm and masculine. A white scar marked one corner of his lips. She could see his smile. He reached out to her through the clinging wraps of mind magic. Mae took his hand, blindly trusting.

He caught her up, crushing her to him. His mouth descended on hers like a swooping hawk, hungrily devouring her with a kiss that branded her to her soul. She could either drown in it, or return it. Return it she did, opening to him and seeking to sear him as deeply. He moaned her name against her lips and the sound struck her to the core. She wrapped her arms around his neck, molding herself to his armor. One of his hands laced through her hair, pressing the kiss even deeper, the other hand encircling her waist. She never paused to think of consequences.

“God forgive me,” he muttered, then shoved her away. Mae felt her feet leave the floor, and suddenly the floor became ceiling.

***

You distort the magic that touches you.
“Gwynne,” Charlie snapped. “Is the Mara magical?”

“What? She’s nearly
made
of magic. Of course she’s magical!”

Touch her. All she had to do was touch her. Right?
 

With a defiant yell, Charlie flung herself on the Mara, grabbing at anything she could grip. The Mara shrieked and writhed, but Charlie clung like a leech. The Mara’s face changed, turning twisted and ugly, her eyes black and her mouth full of jagged, crooked teeth. She snapped at Charlie’s face.

Charlie flinched with a gasp, but didn’t let go. The Mara spat curses, raking her nails across Charlie’s arms and drawing blood. Charlie tightened her grip.

You distort the magic that touches you. You distort the magic that touches you.
It had to be having an effect. Otherwise the Mara would have turned to green mist by now. It had to be working!

Or was it? Was the Mara faking? Or using mind magic? Charlie searched for that telltale sensation that meant she was being manipulated. Nothing.

The Mara stopped struggling, her face settling into thin, sharp features, her hair short and black. Her head twisted around on her neck to face Charlie. Her eyes flashed yellow. “Magic bane,” she whispered, layered with several different voices.
 

The floor beneath them shrieked and rippled like a waterbed instead of stone. A huge tear ripped open under Charlie’s feet. Her stomach jumped into her throat as she fell. She let go of the Mara, flailing for the edge of the floor. The Mara instantly dissolved into mist.

A cold, long-fingered hand clamped around her wrist, jerking her to a halt, dangling inside the rip, under the floor. She flung her head back. Rhys!

Cold vines of shadow snaked around her ankles, pulling her downward toward the empty darkness.

Don’t let go
, Charlie silently begged. She reached up to grab his wrist with her other hand. Her weight stretched her arm to its limit, tears squeezing into her eyes as pain hummed through her tendons. The gaping nothing below her crept up to wrap around her legs, pulling slowly and inexorably. Charlie’s breath came in shallow gasps. It felt like the air was so thin there couldn’t possibly be any oxygen in it.
 

Rhys braced his other hand on the edge of the tear and pulled. The sharp edge of the floor sliced across his palm. The darkness refused to release her.

More stones crumbled as the floor bucked. The rip tore further, jarring Rhys’ supporting hand free. His upper body now hung over the emptiness, and Charlie could feel it stretching black fingers upward along her body toward him.
No.
No, it couldn’t pull him in with her.

“Let go!” she gasped in panic.

Instead, Rhys grimly reached down to grasp her wrist with both hands.
 

Gwynne’s head appeared over the edge of the rip. He reached down to grab Rhys’ upper arm and pulled, but he had as much success as Rhys.

Charlie closed her eyes and forced her fingers to unclench. Her arm slowly began to slide free of Rhys’ slick grip.

“Charlie!” Rhys shouted, naked panic in his voice. “Reach up your other hand!”

Charlie mutely shook her head. The darkness had her firmly by the waist now and vines of it climbed up her arm. “Let me go before it reaches you!”

“Never,” he said and pulled against the darkness.

The ground beneath him crumbled.

The darkness swallowed them up as they fell into an endless chasm. No sight, no sensation other than wind ripping past and Rhys’ grip on her wrist. No sound but a hollow, roaring echo. Then Rhys’ hand tore away, leaving nothing at all.

***

The roaring emptiness spat Charlie out into bright, cold sunlight. She tumbled onto hard, frozen ground, biting into her hands and knees.
 

As she struggled to get her bearings, another solid body collided with hers, knocking her back down. A chorus of moans and groans signaled that more than one body had fallen out of the thin air to join her in the heap.

Of all the
- Charlie wrestled free and whirled on them. “You stupid, stupid… stupid!” She couldn’t come up with any better word. The entire party had followed her. Rhys, Gwynne, Jack, even Maelyn.

She barely registered Rhys’ stricken face before he grabbed her and pulled her into a crushing hug, squeezing any further words out of her lungs. She clung back, suddenly so grateful that he’d been so stupid. Whatever else happened now, she wasn’t alone.

They were all in this together.

 
Then she looked over Rhys’ shoulder and let out a gasp.

They’d landed on a windswept plateau on the side of a mountain. Across the valley before them, another rocky peak rose, capped with ice crystals in brilliant colors that captured the light of the setting sun and blazoned it across the sky in rippling rainbows. In short, it looked nothing like Seinne Sonne.

“Is this Kanzas?” Rhys asked.

“Toto, we’re not even in Oz anymore.”

Epilogue

Archmage Taliesin approached the large, glass balcony doors leading off the main chamber of his quarters and stepped outside. The wind was strong in the cool of the evening, and the sight of Iomara coming to life in the darkness was like watching a kindling flame. Taliesin had to admit to a certain pride in his city. She soldiered on, even as the rest of the kingdom struggled with uncertainty.
 
The view was truly magnificent, and with a note of regret he thought of how little he had opportunity to enjoy it.

Try as he might, Edouard simply was not meant to be king.

A stir of activity exploded at the palace gates. The watch rushed to pull them open, admitting a ragged knot of people. Taliesin gripped the banister of his balcony very hard. Less than a dozen souls out of all those who went in search of Princess Maelyn.
 

Oh, ho, what is this?
They returned with an extra. He appeared to be a tall, thin youth with blue eyes and a bristle of blond hair that he repeatedly ran his hands across. He also often rubbed a finger along his nose, as if pushing up a pair of spectacles, though as the youth gazed about the courtyard like a youngling at a country fair, there seemed to be nothing wrong with his vision.
 

Taliesin considered summoning the youth, but decided against it for the moment. He saw Captain Meryl among the survivors, and no doubt the good captain would make his report soon. Taliesin was glad to see that he hadn’t lost yet another loyal man.

Meryl turned his eyes upward, toward Taliesin’s balcony, and held high a battered pack, formerly belonging to one Rhys, Death Wind of Alta.
 

Success.

From the pocket of his cloak, Taliesin produced a small pouch, saturated with spells of preservation and protection. He opened it and withdrew a sleek black device. With an ease of long practice, he turned it on and selected a certain application.

A young woman’s face appeared on the small screen, framed with deep pink hair. “Well, we’re alive and we’re not stuck on the bridge. But as best we can tell, we’re now lost in space.”

***

***

On the floor of the tower, smoke curling through the room, the Blood Prince’s corpse twitched. Its eyelids fluttered, then its muscles convulsed as a new entity took up occupancy. A moan tore from its throat. The body felt so
heavy
after so many years on the brink of nothingness. The vampire’s blood flowed sluggishly in its veins, its lungs drawing oxygen reluctantly. Its lips curled into a smile over its fangs.

Freedom.