Chapter 11 #3
Some time back, she’d noticed the emerald stones dulling.
At first, it had seemed to be a higher preponderance of the ocher dust, of which there was no scarcity in the spiral, but even the cleaner ones were more mossy.
Another hour and they were olive-colored, and by the time the sun made its path west of high noon, they were no more pigmented than sand.
The landscape had gone through a similar transition.
She hadn’t been in a desert, but her father, Wilder, had described the Golden Coast of the Southerlands as one color, far as the eye can see.
“You approach the world’s center,” Jesstin said slowly.
She followed where he was looking. There was a series of signs.
They were scattered, every twenty feet or so and on alternating sides of the road, and badly carved, like a child had been set to the task.
It reminded her of the approach to Forum Obscura.
He moved to the next one, on the right. “Nothing within will be as it was without.”
“Lawlessness reigns. Rules find no quarter here.” Elloven read the next ones. “Waste no question on whether even the very terrain is set to harm you. It is.”
“Huh,” Jesstin whispered. “Nothing ambiguous about that.”
“The existence of the magic that provides for your safety in Infinita Mori ends at the gates.” She strained through the glare of the midday sun. “What gates?”
Jesstin walked to a large rock. He pulled the map from his satchel and spread it with his hands, pinning it at opposite corners. The others rolled up. He looked at Elloven for help.
“There’s nothing on here that shows a gate or.
..” Jesstin pressed his finger to a point that was still near the outer edge of where he’d said the spiral was.
“We’re here. We agree we’re right here? Because this is last night’s havre, and this”—he jabbed another spot—“is the yew tree we thought seemed so strange because it was all by itself, no other trees. Just shrubs.”
He’d thought it strange. She hadn’t commented on it at all.
Elloven pinned the lower edge of the map and leaned in with an under-the-breath groan. “You know I can’t read it.” She backed away again. “But none of this inspires much trust.”
Jesstin’s brows fused. “I say we keep on until we find this gate, then we re-evaluate.”
Elloven lifted an arm, pointing for him to lead the way. He frowned again, which he’d been doing most of the day, but still, he didn’t question.
A small hill took them into a valley, which looked like everything else. Bland. Interminable. Hostile. It had her missing the color and liveliness of the localities.
The midday sun reflected on everything. It had grown hot ever since the signs, and she yearned for the relief of cool water on her face.
“What gates?” Jesstin remarked.
She wasn’t sure if it was his words that summoned them.
She’d been expecting something resembling an official barrier, wrapping around like a walled defense, but the shimmering entrance was merely two distinct pillars.
The bars had been painted with the same emerald color they’d seen before, but it had flaked away in most places and instead looked like a spackled swamp. “Well, fuck me into next season.”
“Ignis Implaca.” Elloven read the words arched between the two free-standing posterns.
It was the first sign she’d seen in the Infinitum written in a language that wasn’t natural for her.
Some of the letters had chipped away, but she had studied languages with her tutor, and though she didn’t recognize this one, it was similar enough to others for her to make a reasonable guess at the translation.
“Unrelenting flame. Or flame unrelenting. Undying? Unyielding?”
A man dressed in the undersized garb of a farm boy stepped through the bars. Elloven could swear she saw him materialize from inside them. He shuffled quickly, grappling for a large ring of keys tacked to his belt, and when they fell to the dirt, he fell with them with a haunting wail.
“Mate?” Jesstin went over to help, but the man clutched the recovered keys to his chest with a cornered look, and he backed off. “Hey, hey. We’re not here for anything like that. These your gates?”
The cowering man jerked his head back and nodded briskly. He shielded the keys as he stumbled to his feet and skittered back. “Mine to guard. Mine to warn.”
“To warn?” Elloven approached slowly, but he didn’t seem afraid of her at all.
“Keys work one way.” He folded his vest over the keys and tipped his chin down, as though the action could make the ring disappear.
Jesstin shot her a bewildered look, but she wasn’t in the mood to conspire in his confusion. “You’re saying you can unlock these gates but only to let us in? There’s no coming back out?”
“Yes, yes,” the man said. His eyes darted between them, beyond them.
Jesstin laughed. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s nothing keeping anyone in or out.” He gestured at the open landscape.
The man’s nose scrunched. “Try.”
Jesstin shook his head and started toward the edge of the right gate. His arrogance evaporated in an instant about three feet from the empty space. He took a step back, turned to his side, and retched into the dirt. A few murmured fucks followed as he wiped his face.
Elloven didn’t need her own demonstration. “So you’ll let us through?”
“You don’t read?” The man was aghast. “One way.”
“We read the signs. We understand,” she said sweetly.
“One way,” he said, emphasizing again.
“We’re only going one way, sir.”
It was hard to tell whether his furtiveness was more for his or their benefit, but did it matter?
They couldn’t go back. There was no other way out, and Jesstin would be as good as dead if he stayed.
And if the door to the Halls of Ilyn could again be opened, maybe they could help millions reach their eternal peace. Herself included.
But what would happen to her once they cleared the gate? Was it, in fact, a door? Jesstin had been told there were several doors, but his information had come from people who apparently knew very little. What if there was only one, and the gate was it? What would happen to her? To him?
Elloven realized the answer didn’t matter as much as she’d assumed it would. They’d been at the mercy of fate for weeks, and they could either stay, and accept an eternity of wallowing in the Infinitum, or take a leap of faith.
“Unlock the gates.” Jesstin’s mouth was still puckered, like he might be sick again.
“Please,” she said.
“One way,” the man mumbled, but the defeat in his voice was their victory. He ambled to the row of padlocks and, one by one, clicked them open. “No havres. No cloisters. No districts.”
“What?” Elloven stepped closer to hear better. “There are no safe places at night?”
“Always night on the other side.”
The sun baked both sides of the gates, but it wouldn’t be the first illusion they’d encountered. “Then how do we keep safe from the fiends?”
He dug into his pockets and threw two wooden talismans into the dirt. Elloven knelt to collect them. They were carved into the shapes of the protective sigils. “These might keep them away.”
“They might?” Jesstin asked. “You can do better than that.”
“When did you last send a traveler through?” Elloven asked, stepping between them.
The guard at first seemed baffled by the question. “Time has no quarter here.”
“When?” she gently asked.
He seemed unsure. “Never?”
No wonder he was so jumpy around people. Elloven surveyed the distance but knew it wouldn’t tell her anything. They wouldn’t know the horrors awaiting them until it was too late to turn back.
She’d been dreading it all day, but she finally addressed Jesstin directly. “It’s your map. Your mission. What do you want to do?”
Jesstin shook his head at the gate, then the man. “This has the Conductor’s scent all over it.”
She could suggest there was another route, another way, but they’d been traveling for months. The map, however flawed, was all they had, and it had led them there. “Does that change anything?”
He shrugged, still shaking his head. “Only way out is through. I hope.”
“Do you want to go or not, Jesstin?” Elloven couldn’t hide her exasperation that time.
Jesstin crossed his arms and spun toward her. “Are you going to tell me what I’ve done wrong or continue to act like I should already know?”
It wasn’t the reaction she’d expected. Did he really not know? Or was it misdirection? “Make a choice. I’ll follow either way.”
“Fine.” He cleared his throat and turned a smile no one would believe on the warden. “We’d like passage through the gates. We know we’re entering the bowels of eternal damnation, and as it turns out, that’s exactly where we’re headed.”
The warden’s earlier uneasiness was gone. His irises were so dark, she wondered why it hadn’t been the first thing she’d noticed about him. And was that a smirk?
The locks were already open. The warden reached for the gate and swung it open. He exaggerated a servant’s bow and waved to permit them through.
Jesstin didn’t look at her when he held out his hand. She was just as determined to avoid him when she grudgingly accepted it.
They were still a team, and the only certainty ahead was that it would be nothing like what they left behind.
Together, they stepped under the crumbling sign reading Ignis Implaca and entered the land of eternal night.