Silas glanced upward. “Kii? We’re ready for you, if you really think you can do this safely.”
Kii gave a high, bright call. “It’s not my first rodeo, cowboy.”
Darien wondered where the phrasing came from. Not Lucinda, for sure. Kii must’ve had other sorcerers, in those other lifetimes. They hadn’t known her long enough to find out a tenth of what made up that hawk. Courage, though. No doubt about that one. Darien held his breath as Kii began her dive.
At the top right of the frame, the destination space sat painted over, empty of runes. In a circle around it, were the glowing pale-green lines of match, and follow, and Kii, and Home. Kii’s eyes were fixed on that space.
“Going Home,” she called out, her voice harsh and wild, exalted. “The call’s so strong. Follow me. Catch me if you can.” She closed her wings and became a feathered bullet. As she neared the rock face, Darien’s Othersight revealed a wave of magic building around her, like the wake of a speedboat. It rippled, curled, rose, shining bright, a rainbow that defied the visual spectrum. The shape of the hurtling falcon wavered. Reformed. Wavered again. And then, just before she would have broken her neck on the stone, Kii vanished. A scatter of dust and dirt slid down the rock wall.
The crest of the magic wave hit the open space in the runes and flashed through the spell, shining and brilliant, yearning, calling, a pull toward Home so strong Darien’s heart hurt. Or maybe that was his eyes, watering with colors the human mind couldn’t recognize. He wrapped his magic around the spell, a shield and a buffer, keeping that rainbow tangled through the runes as it began to ebb.
“Go!” Silas said hoarsely, as the black fog of the gate flashed side to side and filled the doorway. “Hurry. Run!”
Jasper didn’t argue, just sprinted through the gateway. Magda was close behind, and Lyyll plunged through, but whirled there just inside, her magic still flowing through Darien’s hands. Pip hesitated, looking at Darien.
Words were hard to come by, tangling in Darien’s mouth. He gripped Silas’s arm tighter and managed, “Pip, Grim, go. We’ll be last.”
The familiars leaped into the dark fog and vanished. Darien felt rooted to the alien soil, the magic he and Silas and Lyyll spun spreading out, rooting deeper into the rock and dirt, but thinning in the middle, growing fragile as spun glass.
Lyyll burbled something at them, then called, “Come!”
“Come on.” Silas rocked forward a step. “Slow and steady.”
Sounds right. Darien shuffled a step with Silas. Then another. Another. The gate began shrinking back again, like tide ebbing. The sides thinned now, the center gained.
“Faster. But smooth.” Silas tugged him along with his elbow in the clutch of Darien’s fingers.
Darien’s toe hit the strand of magic across the arch and the whole spell rang like a bell. He couldn’t see properly. Rainbows sparkled in an aureole around everything, around the grass at his feet and Silas’s head and the edges of the gateway.
“Here,” Silas murmured. “Step in. One more step.”
Darien closed his eyes and let Silas’s arm guide him, lifting his feet obediently over the unseen threshold. Coolness closed around him, but the rainbows still flared behind his eyes. He clung to Silas’s arm. Lyyll nearby said, “You are inside.”
“Are you all right?” That was Jasper’s voice. “Should we keep going?”
“Yes.” Silas sounded as wavery as Darien felt. “Someone else lead.”
“I will.” Grim. “I can sense the way Home now too.”
“It’s odd.” Pip didn’t have his usual pep. “Like someone’s sucking on my stomach. Do you think we’ll change forms when we get there, Grim? I like being a dog.”
“The only way we’ll know is to go see, pup. And the sooner the better. I don’t like the feel of this portal.”
Silas moved forward, and Darien followed obediently, his eyes still shut. He could probably have opened them. The brilliance of the gate rune structure must be behind them now. But the spell he was powering felt so brittle he didn’t dare change anything. So he shuffled along, Lyyll’s presence at his side shining brightly behind his closed lids, his fingers digging into poor Silas’s elbow. “Sorry,” he murmured, not loosening his grip.
“You’re keeping this thing afloat,” Silas returned. “Hang in there. Hang onto me.”
Unnecessary directions. Darien focused on feeding his own power and Lyyll’s slowly and steadily into Silas’s, powering the spell stretching behind them as they moved forward. After a few minutes Grim said, “I see it. Easy now. All together.” More steps, shuffling over ground that was smooth but clingy, trying to trap Darien’s feet. Then Silas stopped and Darien opened his eyes.
Right ahead of them, an opening began expanding, the space beyond it warmly lit, flickering gold and orange. Pip said, “Home,” in a tone that made Darien’s throat ache.
Grim eased forward. “We’re here. Everyone out. Slow and easy.”
He stepped through the gate. In the transition from dark to bright, Darien couldn’t see if Grim’s shape changed. Pip came back to Darien’s side. “I’m staying with you.”
Magda moved out next, then Lyyll, and then the portal flared around Darien and back at its source, the spell broke. Elastic recoil brought the gate charging toward them from behind, a freight train of rainbow light.
Silas shouted, “Jump!” and grabbed Darien’s wrist, jerking him forward, leaping through the opening. Pip barked and bolted forward at his side. They staggered through together into a space of flickering lights and odd scents and a hum and a pulsing bell.
Magda whirled, pushed back past them, and threw up her shields wide in front of the portal. Behind them, the gate spell hit the opening and crashed, splintering in a wave of magic against Magda’s shields and around them. A shower of fragments that Darien saw as shredded runes blackened as they fell, and vanished before they hit the floor.
When the echoes stopped ringing in Darien’s ears and he found his balance, he saw they were standing in the center of a tall domed room. Around him, mellow lights like candles flickered in transparent holders. The bell, sounding like an alarm, clanged a few more times and fell silent.
And ahead of him, on the other side of where the gate had been, stood a small figure perhaps as tall as his hip, shaped like a gingerbread cookie made of rainbow dough. It raised three eyes on long stalks, looked him up and down, then did the same to Grim, crouching in front of him, still in cat form. “It’s… you!” the rainbow dough-boy said to Grim. “What in the worlds have you done?”
Before Grim could speak, Lyyll began leaping up and down and burbling. The dough-boy gestured, tossing a flick of brilliant magic toward Lyyll, and although the burbles continued in Darien’s ears, he could understand the words behind them. “Yes!” Lyyll was saying. “Oh, yes! I’m out. I’m not trapped. Thank the clan mothers and all the shining stars. I’m out!”
The rainbow figure waved one of those eyes back at Grim. “You brought a Yyygrdiil and not one, but four, humans into our space. With unstable magic. Explain.”
Grim coughed. “It was necessary. There’s something very wrong with world-gating in the human realm. They’re getting demons crossing over without warning. And the route Home for familiars is blocked.”