The Golden Door

It was growing dark as Rye walked quietly up the rocky track that led to the fortress gate. Looking down, he could see that the tide had overtaken the great flat-topped rock. The ominous iron rings and the remains of the Gifters’ cart were hidden under foaming water. The walkway was deserted. The serpents had gone.

Rye could have made the climb in moments if he had used the magic ring. But he had not used the ring. He knew that he must not make a sound, or set a stone falling, in case he betrayed his presence.

People were still milling around near the metal net fence, but he had threaded his way through them unseen. He moved up the track in the same way. Softly, disturbing nothing, like a ghost.

He had no idea of what he was going to do when he reached his goal. Light-headed with hunger and shock, he just walked, watching his feet. His mind was wholly occupied with the wonders of the crystal and the hood, and what Dirk would say about them when he saw them.

To be able to see through solid objects! To be able to make yourself invisible! No two powers could be so perfectly suited to a rescue. For the first time, Rye genuinely rejoiced that the little bag had come into his possession. Whoever it had been meant for could surely not have needed it more than he did now.

He had no plan, but when at last he reached the barred gate, he found he did not need one. The hood, and lucky chance, made his way easy.

Two solidly built middle-aged soldiers armed with swords were guarding the gateway. They stood rigidly at attention but looked tired and irritable. Rye could almost feel their longing to sit down, put away their weapons, and take off their boots.

As he hovered in front of them, trying to think of a way to trick them into opening the gate, there was the sound of marching feet in the courtyard, and the iron bars began to rise.

“About time, too!” the stouter of the two guards muttered out of the corner of his mouth. “The night guards should have been here half an hour ago.”

“They may not be coming even now, Chanto,” his companion muttered back. “It may be something else. There are many more than two men in there, by the sound of it.”

As Rye moved quickly to one side, a small army of Gifters swung through the gateway. Each man was carrying one of the thin black weapons that could be adjusted to search, to stun, or to kill. At the head of the band was Bern, the Gifter Rye had last seen in Fleet.

Bern stopped and barked an order. The other Gifters began arranging themselves in a double line right across the front of the fortress.

“Hoy, what’s this?” the guard Chanto demanded, catching roughly at Bern’s arm. “Gifters don’t guard the gate!”

“Tonight they do,” snarled Bern, shaking him off. “And they guard the prisoners in the holding pit as well. The Chieftain has decided that tonight’s too important to be left to a gaggle of old men.”

Chanto’s face went scarlet. “How dare —” he began, but Bern cut him off by thrusting a paper into his hands.

“Read for yourself!” Bern snapped.

He stalked back into the courtyard. At once, the gate rattled ominously and began to slide down.

“Better shake your tails, old men,” one of the Gifters shouted. “You’ll be locked out next!”

The other Gifters laughed and nudged one another as the angry soldiers hurriedly ducked under the closing gate, with Rye at their heels.

Bern had already disappeared from view. The courtyard, swept clean and lined with many archways leading into dimness, was deserted.

“Look at that, Nix!” Chanto muttered, passing the paper Bern had given him to his companion.

As the other guard glanced over the paper, Rye read it, too.

“Well, well,” the soldier called Nix murmured.

“Is that all you can say?” Chanto whispered angrily. “Don’t you see what it means? Olt suspects the Fortress soldiers of being in league with the rebels! It’s outrageous! Why, I’ve served him faithfully for thirty years and more! And he prefers to trust those Gifter louts —”

“Those louts have no doubts about the Gifting,” Nix muttered, gesturing at the helmeted men lounging outside the barred gate. “But many of us do. And Olt must know it.”

Chanto shook his head. “We may not like the Gifting, but we accept it’s necessary. We do our duty, as we always have, for the good of Dorne.”

“Perhaps,” Nix said. “But Olt’s taking no risks.”

“If you ask me, he’s taking a very great risk!” Chanto exclaimed. “The Gifters are untrained hooligans! And it’s pointless using so many men to guard the gate! The captain has told Olt over and over! The rebels have found another, secret way into the fortress — a tunnel or somesuch.”

Your captain is right, Chanto, Rye thought, remembering his dreams of Dirk crawling through a low stone passage. And you are right. Olt is taking a big risk, depending on the gate to keep the rebels out.

“True, we haven’t been able to find any tunnel,” Chanto was going on. “But how else did they get to the holding pit last night? How else did they save those two prisoners and escape themselves?”

“Olt prefers to think they did it with the help of a traitor in our ranks,” his companion said with a shrug. “Forget it! Time will tell if he’s right or not.”

“Time will tell?” Chanto raged. “What are you saying, Nix? What if the rebels attack again tonight? And we are all locked inside, forbidden on pain of death to leave our quarters?”

“Then the Gifters guarding the holding pit will have their chance to show what they’re made of, won’t they?” Nix drawled. “It won’t be our business to stop the prisoners being saved. And frankly, I’m glad of it. Come inside, Chanto. We aren’t supposed to be here.”

He took Chanto’s arm and hustled him through one of the archways to the right. A low buzz of talk drifted to Rye’s ears as a door beyond the archway was opened. Then the door slammed, and there was silence, except for the sound of the sea on the rocks.

Rye stood alone, looking uneasily from side to side. He had somehow assumed that once he was inside the fortress he would sense Dirk’s whereabouts.

Now he knew this was not true. He felt nothing — nothing at all.

Desperately he looked around, trying to find some sort of sign. And then he saw a small glint of blue on the cobbles just in front of one of the archways to his right.

He hurried toward the speck of blue, bent to it, and picked it up.

It was a smooth, round pebble.

A picture of Sonia flooded Rye’s mind — Sonia filthy with soot, mud, and fell-dragon slime, crouching to scoop up a handful of pebbles from the swiftly running water of the Fell Zone stream.

I like them, she had said defiantly when she caught Rye watching her. As if she expected him to think she was being foolish — childish, even.

Rye’s throat tightened painfully. He stared down at the little pebble in his hand.

So Sonia had kept the pebbles with her when she had changed her clothes in Fleet. They had been carried with her to the fortress when she was captured. And as she was carried through this archway, one had fallen from her pocket.

It was a miracle it had not been swept up along with all the dust, sand, straw, and other rubbish that had been tramped into the courtyard that day.

Then Rye would never have seen it.

It would not really have mattered anyway, Rye told himself. Dirk will know where Sonia is — where all the prisoners are. It is Dirk I have to find.

Yet somehow he could not just ignore the blue pebble. He could not.

He moved through the archway, and listened. He could hear nothing — not a footstep, not a voice. As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he slowly made out stone steps rising in the shadows ahead of him, and another set of steps to his left, going down.

A dank smell of rusting iron, mold, and damp, ancient stone rose like a vapor from the darkness of the left-hand steps. The smell was horribly familiar. It was the odor that had accompanied Rye’s dreams of Dirk crawling through rock, peering down into a deep stone pit, whispering anxiously of Midsummer Eve.

The holding pit was below, Rye felt it in his bones. At the bottom of the stone steps, he would find Sonia, with the other prisoners.

And at last he would find Dirk as well. For later, when the fortress was wrapped in sleep, Dirk and his rebel band would surely come creeping out of their secret tunnel to make a final, desperate effort to save the seven marked for sacrifice.

But Rye had only gone a little way down the left-hand stair when he stopped. Something was telling him that he was making a mistake.

He frowned, trying to make himself move on, but the feeling would not leave him.

Slowly he turned and went back up to ground level. He moved forward, to the set of steps that led upward.

Lying on the bottom step, almost invisible in deep shadow, was another blue pebble. And higher, on the third step, there was yet another.

Rye’s skin prickled.

This was no accident. This was no coincidence. The blue pebbles were for him. Sonia had known Rye would come after her. So she had left him a trail.

And for some reason, she had been taken upstairs, instead of down to the holding pit.

The holding pit was where Dirk would come. But Dirk’s plans were nothing to Sonia. Dirk had not been her companion since she left Weld. Dirk had not rescued her from the fell-dragon’s net, or hidden with her in the goat shed while the bloodhog prowled, or seen her snatched from the false grave in Fleet.

But Rye had. And now, in this most terrifying of all her trials, Sonia was trusting in Rye, hoping against hope that he could help her.

Rye knew he could not betray that trust. He picked up the pebbles and began to climb.

He found a fourth pebble, and a fifth, but after that the darkness on the stair became so complete that he could not see his hand in front of his face. He stopped, fumbled in the little bag hanging around his neck, and brought out the light crystal.

At first, the crystal flashed brightly, too brightly for safety, but he soon learned to keep it masked with his fingers so that only a dull glow shone on the steps ahead.

Spaces between pebbles lengthened, but every now and then, he would spy one and add it to the growing collection in his hand. With every stone he found, the feeling that Sonia was ahead grew stronger.

He climbed until his legs trembled beneath him. He climbed till he at last recognized how hungry and thirsty he was, and bitterly regretted that he had not forced himself to eat and drink in Fleet.

But at last, the steps ended, and Rye found himself standing on a broad landing, facing a stone wall and an iron door streaked with rust.

In front of the door lay two blue pebbles.

No message could be clearer, and as Rye picked up the pebbles, he knew that whatever Olt’s notice to his guards had said, Sonia was up here, behind that heavy, rust-stained door.

He pressed the light crystal against the iron and slowly a flickering, misty window appeared.

The window was not nearly as clear as the one in the tavern had been. Wondering nervously if the crystal’s power was wearing out and if this meant that the hood of concealment would also soon stop working, Rye squinted through the haze, into the room beyond the door.

A wave of heat flooded through him.

He saw a great, snarling silver head crowned with spines. Below the head, a glittering snakelike body coiled rigidly to make a savage throne. And on the throne, in the embrace of the lifeless but magically preserved serpent, sat a shrunken shadow of a man, wizened as an old, forgotten bell fruit long after summer had passed.

Rye knew that this was Olt.