“Paithan! Where are you?”
“It’s Roland.” Paithan sighed. “Now what?”
“We’re up here!” Rega shouted. Standing up, she leaned over the rail of the staircase. “With the machine.”
They heard booted feet clattering up the stairs. Roland arrived, gasping for breath. He glanced at the closed door, the light welling from underneath.
“Is that where... this strange sound’s... coming from?” he demanded, sucking in air.
“What of it?” Paithan returned defensively. He was on his feet, eyeing the human warily. Roland was no fonder of the machine than was his sister.
“You’d better turn the damn thing off, that’s what,” Roland said, his face grim.
“We can’t—” Rega began, but stopped when Paithan stepped on her foot.
“Why should I?” he asked, sharp chin jutting outward in defiance.
“Take a look out the window, elf.”
Paithan bristled. “Talk to me that way and I’ll never look out another window as long as I live!”
But Rega knew her half-brother, guessed that his belligerent facade was covering up fear. She ran to the window, stared out a moment, not seeing anything. Then she gave a low cry.
“Oh, Paithan! You’d better come see this.”
Reluctantly the elf moved to her side, peered out. “What? I don’t see...” And then he did see.
It looked as if the entire jungle were moving; it appeared to be advancing on the citadel. Large masses of green were surging slowly up the mountain. Only it wasn’t the jungle, it was an army.
“Blessed Mother!” Paithan breathed.
“You said the machine was calling something!” Rega moaned. It was. It was calling the tytans.
23
“Marit! Wife! Hear me! Answer me!” Xar sent out his command in silence and it returned to him in silence.
No response.
Frustrated, he repeated her name several times, then ceased. She must be unconscious... or dead—the only two circumstances in which a Patryn would refuse to answer such a summons.
Xar pondered what to do. His ship was already in Pryan; he’d been attempting to guide Marit to the landing site when she had vanished. He considered changing course—Marit’s last frantic message to him had been from Chelestra. But at length he decided to continue to the citadel. Chelestra was a world made up of magic-nullifying water, water that would weaken his power. It was not a world Xar had much interest in visiting. He would go to Chelestra after he had discovered the Seventh Gate.
The Seventh Gate.
It had become an obsession with Xar. From the Seventh Gate, the Sartan had cast the Patryns into prison. From the Seventh Gate—Xar determined—he would free them.
In the Seventh Gate, Samah had sundered the world, created new worlds out of the old. In the Seventh Gate, Xar would forge his own new world—and it would be all his.
This was the true reason for his journey to Pryan.
The ostensible reason—the reason he gave his people (and Sang-drax)—was to gain ascendancy over the tytans and incorporate them into his army. The real goal was to discover the location of the Seventh Gate.
Xar was certain it must be in the citadel. He made the deduction based on two facts: (one) Haplo had been to the citadel on Pryan and, according to both Kleitus and Samah, Haplo knew the location of the Seventh Gate; (two) as Sang-drax had said, if the Sartan had something they wanted to protect, what better guards than the tytans?
Following Haplo’s coordinates, which would lead to the citadel, the Lord of the Nexus, accompanied by Sang-drax and a small force of about twenty Patryns, eventually reached Pryan. The citadel itself was easy to find. An intensely bright light, made up of bands of brilliant color, beamed from it, acting as a guiding beacon.
Privately Xar was astonished at the massive size of Pryan. Nothing Haplo had written had prepared his lord for what he found. Xar was forced to revise his plans, forced to think that maybe conquering this enormous world with its four ever-shining suns was going to be impossible—even with the help of the tytans. But not impossible if he were master of the Seventh Gate.
“The citadel, My Lord,” announced one of his people.
“Bring the ship down inside the walls,” Xar commanded. He could see a perfect landing site—a large, open area just inside the walls, probably a marketplace. He waited impatiently for the ship to set down. But the ship couldn’t land. It couldn’t even get close to the site. When it came level with the walls of the citadel, the ship seemed to hit an invisible barrier, bumping into it gently, not damaged, but unable to fly through. The Patryns tried again and again, to no avail.
“It must be Sartan magic, Lord,” said Sang-drax.
“Of course it’s Sartan magic!” Xar repeated, irritated. “What did you expect to be guarding a Sartan city?”
He hadn’t expected it, though, and that was what made him angry. Haplo had entered the citadel. How? The Sartan magic was strong. Xar couldn’t unravel it; he couldn’t find the beginning of the rune-structure. Such a feat was possible, but it might take him years.
Xar reread Haplo’s report, hoping for a clue.
The city is built up off the jungle floor, rising from behind an enormous wall, rising taller than the tallest trees. A towering, pillared crystal spire balances on a dome formed of marble arches that stand in the city’s center. The top of the spire must be one of the highest points in this world. It is from this center spire that the light beams most brightly.
But in Haplo’s case, the light had been white—or so Xar recalled. Not this dazzling array of colors. What had caused the light to alter its aspect? And most important, how was he going to get inside to find out? Xar read on. The center spire is framed by four other spires, duplicates of the first; they stand on the platform holding the dome. On a level beneath that stand eight more identical spires. Gigantic marble steppes rise from behind these spires. And finally, at each end of the guard walls stands another pillar. There are four such pillars, placed at the cardinal direction points. A path leads up the mountain straight to a large metal door formed in a hexagon and inscribed with Sartan runes—the city’s gate. The gate is sealed shut.
Sartan rune-magic would open the gate, but I refused to use the magic of our enemies. I entered by going through the marble wall, using an ordinary solvent rune-structure.
That is the difference, then, Xar reasoned. Haplo had entered by going through the walls. The Sartan magic must extend above the walls, like an invisible dome, to keep out flying enemies such as dragons. The magic of the wall itself was either weaker to begin with or had been weakened over time.
“Land the ship in the jungle,” Xar ordered. “As near the citadel as possible.” His crew brought the ship down in a clearing they found some distance outside the walls of the citadel. The huge warship was one of the steam-powered dragon ships used by the Sartan on Abarrach to sail the molten seas. It was completely refitted to suit the Patryns, and it drifted down easily among the treetops, sank into a vast bed of moss.
Shafts of the striated, multicolored light filtered through the thick foliage that surrounded them, slid over the ship, shifting around it in an ever changing pattern.
“My Lord!” One of the Patryns pointed out the porthole. A gigantic being stood near the ship, so near that had they been standing on the prow, they could have reached put and touched it. The being was shaped like a man, but its skin was the color and the texture of the jungle, so that it blended perfectly with the trees—one reason they had nearly landed on top of it and had not seen it until now. Its huge head had no eyes, but it appeared to be staring fixedly at something. It stood motionless, almost as if it were in a trance.
“A tytan!” Xar was vastly interested. He could see more of them, now that he looked for them. Six or so were around his ship.