Chapter Thirty-Eight
Running into a wall of fire went against every instinct I possessed.
Be brave, I told myself.
When we reached the flames, they immediately engulfed us, the heat unbearable and excruciating. I heard my sisters calling out in pain, but we pressed forward.
And I ran into the far wall, beyond the fire.
I turned to look at my adelphia and none of them had been burned. We had felt the fire, but it hadn’t harmed us.
“Are we immortal now?” Ahyana asked with a short laugh.
The fire suddenly disappeared and the bioluminescence turned on. The room filled with a high-pitched, otherworldly laughter.
“What is that?” I asked.
“If I had to guess, I would say the goddess of mischief,” Zalira said. “She’s an Alodian goddess. Our father used to tell us stories about her. She enjoys illusions and tricks.”
Ahyana shook her head. “That didn’t feel like an illusion.”
The fact that none of us had burned meant that it hadn’t been an actual fire.
“If this was her test, then we should expect everything past this point to be real,” Io said. “I don’t think there will be any other illusions.”
“Is there a goddess of cute baby animals and rainbows?” I asked.
“If there was, she’d probably send both to attack us,” Zalira responded.
A door suddenly appeared in the wall where we all stood. It opened. We walked through it into another short hallway that led to yet another door.
The sign on this one said:
Vigilance
Io read it out loud and I pulled out my xiphos. I put my hand on the door handle to open it. “Are we ready?”
The others also got their weapons out and nodded.
It was a room the same size as the one we had just left. It was lit up and we could see everything. Long, thick stalactites hung overhead.
And in front of us was a field of sickly yellow flowers. Their blooms were pointed up, almost like a triangle.
Io uttered a curse so foul that Ahyana gasped.
“What is it?” I asked, alarmed at her reaction.
“Manticore’s teeth.” Io spit the words out. “If we step on or brush against their petals, they will release a deadly poison that will kill all of us in seconds.”
Zalira looked as dazed as I felt. “How do you know what kind of flower it is?”
“Daphne joined the temple because her younger sister was killed by manticore’s teeth. She wanted to learn all that she could about plants and flowers to help others. It’s the first thing she taught us—what flora could kill us.”
The door slammed shut behind us, and I supposed it was locked like the other one. The only way out was through, just like before.
“What goddess would set this as a test?” Ahyana asked.
“The goddess of poison, maybe?” Io offered. “Combining her power with Dea’s?”
“Can’t you do anything?” I asked Io. Plants were her specialty.
“I’ll try. Dea Khloe.” She held her hands up and closed her eyes.
But just like with Zalira, nothing happened.
“I can’t feel the magic,” she said.
Had we been cut off from it? That seemed unfair.
“We’ll have to be careful. I’ll go first,” Zalira said. I was about to say that I would do it, but she turned to me and said, “You bring up the rear.”
“Take off your tunics,” Io told us as she shrugged hers over her head. “We can’t risk something accidentally hitting one of the flowers.”
Our clothes brushing against them would make them release their poison? It sounded as if they were highly sensitive. We took our tunics off, putting them into our bags. It left us in the pants and shirts Rokh had given us, which thankfully were tight.
“If we stand here long enough, do you think the flowers will start coming toward us?” Ahyana mused with an attempt at levity, but I suspected they probably would.
I had nightmarish images in my head of the flowers stepping out of the ground and walking over to us on legs made out of roots.
“Here I go. Step where I step,” Zalira said as she walked into the field. I held my breath as she placed her right foot down carefully and then did the same with her left.
Ahyana went behind her, followed by Suri, Io, and then me. I could see Io trembling in front of me but she soldiered on.
We all fell silent as we concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. I could only imagine the kind of stress Zalira was under, as she was responsible for making sure that we all passed through safely.
Sweat dripped down my back as I watched Io and then put my foot in the spots hers had just vacated.
Zalira was nearly to the end when Io suddenly froze in front of me.
Petrified that she’d accidentally knocked into a flower, I said, “What’s wrong?”
“I have to sneeze!”
If she sneezed . . . there was no way she could keep it from hitting the flowers. “You have to hold it in.”
“I’m trying!” I heard the fear in her voice. I reached forward and put my hand on her shoulder. Her body twitched as if she was about to sneeze, but she convulsed slightly as she kept her sneeze internal.
I sighed with relief.
“Are you good?” Zalira asked.
“We’re good. Keep going,” I told her.
My whole body ached from the tension of trying to do everything perfectly. My breathing became more labored, sounding overly harsh in my ears.
“I’m through!” Zalira called.
That meant we were close. Just a few more steps.
“The door appeared,” she told us. Both Ahyana and Suri had cleared the field, and Io was two steps away.
I saw Zalira open the door. When she did so, one of the stalactites by the entrance fell from the ceiling and crashed into the ground. I looked up to see them all swaying above us.
A bitter, silvery taste filled my mouth as fear chilled my bones. Those stalactites were going to fall on top of us and kill us.
“Run!” I yelled. Suri grabbed Io and she jumped to the edge of the field. I did my best to carefully but quickly pick my way through the remaining flowers, terrified that I would accidentally hit one.
A stalactite landed a few feet behind me, and the air suddenly had a sickly smell to it.
The poison!
I reached the edge of the field and broke into a full sprint for the door. My sisters were all in the hallway beyond, and as soon as I crossed the threshold, Zalira slammed the door shut.
We were all breathing hard, waiting to see what would happen. Would the poison come through the seams around the door?
But a moment later the door locked and a new one appeared on the other end of the hall.
“We made it,” Ahyana said.
“And we managed to outrun the poison,” Io said.
“Maybe we should keep moving to make sure,” I said. I liked the idea of putting several more doors between us and the poison-flower room.
Io went down the hall first and read the sign on the door.
Wisdom
“Do you think we’ll have to make some sort of wise choice?” Ahyana asked.
Zalira shrugged. “Maybe we’ll be tested on our knowledge. Like what we learned at the temple.”
Or maybe “Wisdom” was the name of a three-headed monster who waited on the other side of the door.
Io opened the door and walked in.
Another large room. And in the middle were two large statues, approximately twelve feet tall, facing one another. They had been hewn out of the earth itself—they were a contiguous part of the stone surrounding them.
“What are those?” Zalira asked.
“Sphinxes,” Io said. “The head and chest of a woman, the body of a lion, wings of an eagle, and a tail like a snake. The gods use them as guardians. They are special to the goddess of wisdom.”
“What happens if we walk between them?” I asked. Because this felt like a trap.
“Maybe we can climb over their bodies and avoid the pathway,” Ahyana said.
That idea had some merit. Because the idea of walking forward and being caught in the middle of the two statues, their gazes fixed on us, felt wrong.
The door behind us slammed shut and locked.
I couldn’t fight off the shiver that danced down my spine. “I suppose that means we’ve started this test.”
Not knowing what else to do, I took out my sword. It wouldn’t do me much good against rock, but it made me feel better to be holding it.
I walked farther into the room, keeping my eye on both statues.
What if they weren’t the test? They might be a distraction. I scanned the room and kept moving forward.
Were we supposed to show our wisdom by choosing our path? I didn’t understand what to do.
All I could do was keep walking, closer and closer to the statues.
The sound of rocks churning and groaning surrounded us, much as we’d heard when we’d very first entered the cave. Was a door opening somewhere?
My heart slammed against my ribs when I realized the sound was coming from the statue on the right.
It turned its stone head to look at us, its golden eyes glowing. It blinked and I took a step back.
By the goddess.
Then the sphinx opened its mouth to speak, and its voice was ancient and rough, as if it had been created from deep in the earth. “Dea’s savior, I have been waiting for you.”