“Water tower?” She laughed.
But I had a point, if you thought about it. It was starting to feel like those old Terminator movies between us. If I killed her now, I could imagine her skeleton dragging itself across this pit with glowing red eyes until it could kill me a thousand more times.
She stopped laughing. “Why are you here? Think about it, Ethan.” She lifted her hand, and I felt my throat beginning to close. I gasped for air.
I tried to back away, but it was pointless. Even with her dog chain, she still had enough power to make my not-quite-a-life miserable.
“I’m trying to get into the Great Keep.” I choked. I tried to inhale, but I couldn’t get a real breath.
Am I even breathing, or am I only imagining it?
Like she said herself, she’d already killed me once. What was left?
“I just want to take my page. You think I want to be stuck here forever, wandering through a maze of bones?”
“You’ll never get past Angelus. He’d die before he’d let you near The Caster Chronicles .” She smiled, twisting her fingers, and I gasped again. Now it felt like she had a hand around my lungs.
“Then I’ll kill him.” I grabbed at my neck with both hands. My face felt like it was on fire.
“The Keepers already know you’re here. They sent an officer to lead you into the labyrinth. They didn’t want to miss out on the fun.” Sarafine twisted around at the mention of the Keepers, as if she was looking over her shoulder, which we both knew she wasn’t. An old habit, I guess.
“I still have to try. It’s the only way I can get home.”
“To my daughter?” Sarafine rattled her chains, looking disgusted. “You never give up, do you?”
“No.”
“It’s like a sickness.” She rose from her throne, crouching on her heels like an evil, overgrown little girl, dropping the hand that was choking me. I collapsed onto a heap of bones. “You really think you can hurt Angelus?”
“I can do anything if it will get me back to Lena.” I looked straight into her sightless eyes. “Like I said, I’ll kill him. At least part of him is Mortal. I can do it.”
I don’t know why I said it that way. I guess I wanted her to know, in case there was any small part of her that still cared about Lena. Any part of her that needed to hear I really would do anything under the sun to find a way back to her daughter.
Which I would.
For a second, Sarafine didn’t move. “You actually believe that, don’t you? It’s charming, really. Shame you have to die again, Mortal Boy. You certainly amuse me.”
Light flooded into the pit, as if we really were two gladiators competing for our lives.
“I don’t want to fight. Not with you, Sarafine.”
She smiled darkly. “You really don’t know how this works, do you? The loser faces Eternal Darkness. It’s simple enough.” She sounded almost bored.
“There’s something Darker than this?”
“Much.”
“Please. I just need to get back to Lena. Your daughter. I want to make her happy. I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, and I know you’ve never wanted to make anyone happy but yourself, but it’s the only thing I want.”
“I want something, too.” She twisted the fog around her in her hands until it wasn’t fog at all but something glowing and alive—a ball of fire. She stared right at me, even though I knew she couldn’t see. “Kill Angelus.” Sarafine started to Cast, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Fire shot from the base of her throne, spreading in all directions. It moved closer and closer, turning from orange to blue and purple flames as it ignited bone after bone.
I backed away from her.
Something was wrong. The fire was growing, spreading faster than I could run. She wasn’t trying to stop the flames.
She was the one making them grow.
“What are you doing?” I shouted. “Are you crazy?”
She was in the very center of the flames. “It’s a battle to the death. Absolute destruction. Only one of us can survive. And as much as I hate you, I hate Angelus more.” Sarafine raised her arms over her head, and the fire grew, as if she was pulling the flames up with her.
“Make him pay.”
Her cloak caught fire, and her hair started burning.
“You can’t just give up!” I shouted, but I didn’t know if she could hear me. I couldn’t see her anymore.
I hurled myself into the fire without thinking, falling toward her through the flames. I wasn’t sure I could stop, even if I wanted to. But I didn’t want to.
It was Sarafine or me.
Lena or Eternal Darkness.
It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to sit there and watch anyone die chained like a dog. Not even Sarafine.
It wasn’t about her. It was about me.
I reached for the manacles around her ankles, beating on the iron with a bone at the base of her throne. “We have to get out of here.”
The fire had completely surrounded me, when I heard the screaming. The sound tore across the barren dirt, rising into the air over the pit. It sounded like a wild animal dying. For a second, I thought I saw the distant golden spires of the Great Keep flicker at the sound of her voice through the flames.
Sarafine’s burning body arched back, writhing in pain, and started to crumble into tiny pieces of burnt skin and bone. There was nothing I could do as the flames consumed her. I wanted to close my eyes or turn away. But it seemed like someone should bear witness to her last moments. Maybe I just didn’t want her to die alone.
After a few minutes that felt more like hours, I watched as the last bits of the Darkest Caster in two worlds blew into cold white ash.
It was too late to get out.
I felt the fire crawl up my arms.
I was next.
I tried to picture Lena one last time, but I couldn’t even think. The pain was unbearable. I knew I was going to pass out. This was it.
I closed my eyes….
When I opened them again, the pit was gone, and I was standing in front of a quiet doorway in a still hallway, in a building that looked like a castle.
There was no pain.
No Sarafine.
No fire.
Exhausted, I wiped the ash out of my eyes and sank into a ball at the foot of the wooden doors. It was over. There were no bones beneath my feet, only marble tiles.
I tried to focus on the doors. They were so familiar.
I’d seen all of this before. It was even more familiar than the feeling I had when I saw Sarafine coming toward me.
Sarafine.
Where is she now? Where is her soul?
I didn’t want to think about it, and I closed my eyes and let the tears fall. Crying for her felt impossible. She was an evil monster. No one ever felt sorry for her.
So that couldn’t be it.
At least that’s what I told myself, until I stopped shaking and stood up again.
The pathways of my life had doubled back on me, as if the universe was forcing me to choose them all over again.
I was standing in front of the unmistakable doorway to all other doorways, to all other places and times.
I didn’t know if I had the strength to go any farther, and I knew I didn’t have the courage to give up. I reached out and touched the carved wood of the ancient Caster doorway.
The Temporis Porta.
CHAPTER 33
The Wayward’s Way
I took a deep breath and tried to let the power of the Temporis Porta flow into me. I needed to feel something other than shock. But they felt like two regular wooden doors, even if they were about a thousand years old and framed with Niadic script, an even older lost language.