The trip up the road to the gate took less than an hour, but uphill as it was, it felt longer. Not that Persephone was rushing, and no one else showed any signs of being in a hurry. For once, Arion walked at the front of the party. She moved no faster than before; everyone else just walked slower.
“You’ve done amazingly well at learning our language,” Persephone told the Miralyith after she jogged to catch up so they could walk together. “It took me years before I was capable of holding a real conversation in Fhrey, and here you’ve managed Rhunic in little more than a month.”
“Rhunic is not a…” She hesitated. “Not a difficult language. So much is similar. For example, lyn and land, and dahl and wall, and so many others are almost the same. Also helps that I spent more than a thousand years working with sounds.”
“A thousand?” Persephone said, then cringed. She was so stunned by the admission that the words slipped out. “I mean you don’t look…you don’t act…”
“Aren’t you sweet.” Arion smiled kindly. “I’m two thousand years and two hundred and twenty-five days to be exact.” She paused in thought. “No, twenty-four.”
Two thousand years!
“Is that old for a Fhrey?”
“It certainly isn’t young,” she said with a smile. “Some of us live into their third millennium, but not many.”
“You look so young.”
“It’s the hair,” Arion said, looking up as if she could see what wasn’t there. “If I grew any, it would be white.”
“Why don’t you grow some? Nyphron and the other Fhrey have hair.”
“Tangles and knots interfere with both the actuation of power and the manipulation of the Art. Even our clothes…what we call asicas…only drape. There are no ties or…” She looked perplexed. “What is the word for ‘button’?” she asked in Fhrey.
Persephone stared back at her. “What’s a button?”
Arion opened her mouth to speak then closed it. “It’s a device for holding material closed, very useful for non-Miralyith.” She smiled.
“Might want to introduce them to Roan,” Persephone said. “She recently invented the pocket, you know.”
“What’s a pocket?”
Persephone opened her mouth to explain then shook her head. “Never mind. She can show you.”
They walked on in silence, the climb making it difficult to hold a conversation. Esbol Berg—the mighty towers and gate of Neith—loomed ever larger as they approached. The fog retreated, though the sun never fought clear, leaving the sky a muted gray. The great Esbol Berg wasn’t built; it was carved by nature from the face of a dizzying cliff that itself had been hewn from the steep side of the massive mountain, a façade of grandeur. Columns, piers, capitals, and plinths were sculpted into the face. The gate itself, while only twenty or thirty feet across, stood eight stories high. The pair of doors, each a vertical sliver, were impossibly tall. Persephone was pleased to see they were standing open. If not, all of them working together couldn’t have pulled those gigantic slabs back. Still, she was confused.
“Why are the doors open?” she asked, looking back at the three dwarfs, who trailed along at the rear of the troop because of either their shorter legs or their better understanding of what lay ahead. She hoped for the former.
All three looked at her oddly.
“The gate.” She pointed. “If you fear this demon’s escape, why leave the doors open?”
Understanding dawned on the Dherg, followed by looks of surprise.
“Closing those doors would do nothing,” Flood said. “They are cloth before a charging aurochs.”
Persephone looked at Arion, but the Fhrey walked merrily on as if without a care.
“If such doors as these can’t hold it, what did you use to trap it?” she asked Flood.
“No cage in Elan could contain that beast, except perhaps the one it came out of, which is now ripped open.”
Frost said, “There isn’t a door we could build that would contain it.”
“Then how did you keep it trapped for thousands of years?”
“We didn’t,” Frost said. “We confused it.”
“We got it lost,” Flood said.
“Our ancestors spent generations upon generations digging tunnels through this mountain and down into the heart of the world,” Frost explained. “There’s more down there than up here, you know. Inside, we found oceans of water and seas of molten rock, caverns of crystals, chambers of salt, and rivers of metal, marvels you can’t imagine, wonders of legend. There’s another world beneath us, and that’s where the legions led Balgargarath on a merry chase. It can sense movement, you see. The demon is like a spider in a web. It feels the quiver of stone, and travels to it. Heroes led Balgargarath deep into Elan while others placed knockers—clever devices powered by dripping water—that make a clack the same as a hammer. The knockers were spaced and timed so that just as Balgargarath got near one, another would catch his attention. Once caught in this system of clicks and clacks, Neith was declared off limits to ensure that no one disrupted Balgargarath’s eternal trek.”
“What happened to the heroes?”
“Why do you think we call them heroes?”
The path grew steeper the closer they came. Behind them, the view expanded with the height and the dwindling mist that by then clung only to the edges of the sea. The port city of Caric was larger than she had realized, with streets running off and intersecting at various points that were hidden to her while she was there. The city formed a large half circle that cupped an inlet where ships lay along several long piers. Looking straight out, Persephone saw a thin line of land across the sea. Rhulyn, she thought. So far away, and yet just seeing it, reminding herself it was there, made her feel better.
Persephone and Arion paused on the porch until they were all gathered. She felt the ground shake. Dust and dirt, pebbles and chipped rocks fell like hail. They all jumped under the lintel.
“What was that?” Moya asked.
“Balgargarath,” Rain said.
“He knows we’re here? Is he coming after us?” She reached for her sword.
Rain knelt down and placed an ear to the stone at their feet.
“What’s he—” Persephone started, but Frost held up a hand to stop her.
After a minute or two, the quiet little man with the giant pickax stood up and shook his head. “He doesn’t know about us. Just working his way up. After we pushed him off the knocker trail, he’s been destroying them. Only a couple left, I think. So we don’t have much time.”
“Don’t suppose you could do anything from here?” Frost looked at Suri and Arion hopefully.
They shook their heads, and Arion added, “Nothing useful.”
Frost sighed. “Then in we go. Oh, and walk lightly.”
—
Suri prepared for the war she would wage with herself. The door to Neith was open, and it didn’t look easy to close. That was good. As long as I can get out, I’m fine. Suri expected it to be dark inside; caves usually were. This one was bigger and fancier than any she’d seen, so she figured it would be darker, too, though even she wasn’t certain how that was possible. After all, dark was dark. Either way, Suri wasn’t overly fond of caves. She wasn’t happy with any place that had walls. Caves were less disturbing than buildings as they lacked doors. Doors were the real culprits—doors that sealed.