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shortly."
"I am willing to go first," the ondan said.
He stepped forward and pressed his hand against the wall. His entire body
glowed with the same unearthly fire that had surrounded Giraud's hand when he
put it in the light. No further doors opened, though; instead, the ondan
simply disappeared.
"Good design," Giraud said softly. "They bring us all the way up a blind
tunnel, and the only way through to the keep is by magic. If we don't do what
they want, they just leave us in here. We might be able to get out through the
door at the bottom, but I wouldn't bet on it."
I said, "And these are the people who are supposed to help us, are they?"
"Look," Ha said, "if they're still safe and sane, their security measures must
be worth something. Right?"
"Maydellan Ha. You will please step forward to the wall now and rest your
hands against it."
"Both hands?"
"Both hands."
Ha suddenly looked less confident of the good intentions of the keep's
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denizens.
I looked at him and shrugged. "Go on. If we can't trust them, everything is
lost anyway."
The dwarf sauntered forward and rested his hands on the stone. Like the ondan,
he vanished.
We waited again, this time longer. I looked nervously at Giraud, and he gave
me a quick hug. "It will be all right," he said.
"I know. I'm just scared. What if we've come all this way and they can't do
anything?"
"Then at least we know we tried."
Small comfort, looking at the end of the world, to think you tried to stop it.
I said nothing of the sort to Giraud.
"Giraud dar Falcannes, step forward and rest your hands against the stone."
He handed me the reins to his horse and took a deep breath. Then he nodded
sharply and stepped forward. "See you on the other side," he said. He laughed.
I didn't. "See you on the other side" was what warriors in all the old stories
said to each other when they knew they were facing death and expected to be
killed at any moment. The old heroes Blaylock and dar Sturmran and the
Fanged One were all supposed to have said those very words as they bravely
stepped forward into the maelstroms of blood and misery that were to be their
doom. "I'll see you in the keep," I corrected, and then the green light took
him away from me, too.
The horses shifted restlessly. I looked around for some place to tie them, so
that when I was called, they wouldn't be left alone to panic and hurt
themselves. But the stone walls were smooth. So I dropped the reins on the
ground, busied myself with removing all the tack and piling it against the far
wall, and let them roam. If the bards in the keep intended to bring them after
me, they would certainly know how to retrieve them. And if they didn't, I
didn't want the poor horses trapped in the passage with saddles and bridles
still on.
"Isbetta dar Danria, please come forward."
I knew what to do. I placed my hands on the stone wall and waited. For just a
moment nothing happened. Then I felt a tingling, warm and soft as kitten fur,
that brushed all over my body. At the same time, the world turned green but it
wasn't as simple as that. It would be easy to assume that I could still see
the passageway and the horses and the tack and our few meager supplies, and
that these had all been dyed green by the light. That was what
I'd expected. Instead, though, green was the sum total of all I could see.
Details and objects dissolved in the featureless emerald light, and the whole
of the world ceased to exist except for the single color and oddly, because
green was all there was, after a moment I couldn't see that, either.
Then the pleasant tingling went away. The unpleasant blindness didn't.
I felt hands clasping my wrists, and heard two voices saying, at almost the
same time, "Walk, please," and "Don't hurry her, Durral I don't think she can
see us."
"I can't," I said.
I heard one exasperated sigh. "She would come through gate-blind."
"Sometimes it takes a moment for sight to return," the second voice said.
The first voice, the one identified as belonging to Durral, had been the voice
my three companions and I had heard while we stood out on the riverbank and
waited in the corridor. The second voice was younger, female, and with a
gentleness to it that made me think she didn't hate me, even if Durral did.
After no time at all, Durral said, "She's had her moment. Can't you see
anything yet?" He didn't try to hide his annoyance.
"No. Nothing."
"She's a sensitive," the woman said.
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Durral disagreed. "She's lying."
I felt a breeze brush by my face, and had the uncomfortable feeling, when it
was far too late to do anything about it, that I had been tested in some way.
"Well, fine, then. She isn't lying," Durral said. "We can lead her blind."
I locked my knees and refused to budge. "What did you do?" I said. I felt
helpless, standing there with two people I couldn't see hanging on to me, not
knowing whether I stood on the edge of a cliff or in the center of a room, or
whether the three of us were alone or on a dais in front of a thousand waiting
people who silently watched and judged me.
"We could, but we aren't supposed to and you know it. The rivergate is
disorienting enough for the people who come in by it. Don't do anything to
unsettle her further." The woman paused, then answered my question. "I just
moved something in front of your face, Isbetta; moved it very close to your
eyes. If you had been able to see it, you would have blinked."
"Oh." I felt terribly helpless. Frightened. I wondered if I had been blinded
forever by my passage through the rivergate. Then, however, I realized that
the darkness was beginning to resolve itself into areas that were darker and
ones that were not so dark. I blinked, hoping to help the transition along,
but bunking did nothing.
Time, however, helped a great deal. "I'm beginning to be able to see
something," I said, "though everything is still very dark."
"Wait a moment," the woman said.
I had to wait longer than a moment, but eventually darkness receded and my
vision returned.
"Now we need to get her along to Inquiries, Cynta or do you intend to find
something else you can baby her about?" Durral asked. He was short and
muscular, broad-shouldered and broad-faced, with dark straight hair pulled
back in a heavy braid, and pale, angry eyes.
Cynta had sounded older, so I was surprised to discover that she appeared to
be about the same age as me. She was taller, though not tall. Her black hair
curled loosely down to her shoulders, and her eyes, as dark as the ondan's,
looked at me with a kindness and a compassion that I hadn't seen or felt in
years. I could be her friend, I thought. Under different circumstances, if I
weren't the one who wrecked the world. I looked away from her her kindness
made me feel even guiltier than I had before.
I looked down at my boots and my filthy leather breeches and asked, "Is that
where my friends are?"
I didn't get an answer. Instead, Cynta said, "Durral is right. We need to take
you to Inquiries."
Inquiries had sounded ominous when Durral had mentioned it; it didn't sound
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