It hits me all at once. I did it. I rescued Hector. We could turn around right now, beat the approaching winter over the pass, and be in Basajuan a little early.
The thought fills me with warm relief, but it’s short-lived. There is something else I must do first.
Mara is the one to open conversation. “Lord Hector, you said something last night about another bearer?”
He pokes at the fire with a stick, crunching embers into ash. “Franco said there are two. I tried to get him to tell me more, but he wouldn’t.”
I turn to Storm. “Do you know anything about this?”
He shakes his head. “Though, it makes sense that someday, someone would be born with a Godstone that didn’t fall out. It hasn’t happened for millennia, not since your people came to this world. But I suppose it could.”
My limbs tingle with . . . excitement? Dread? An Invierno bearer would be my enemy. And someone who grew up surrounded by sorcery might be formidable indeed. But what sets my hands to trembling, what squeezes my chest so hard it hurts to draw breath, is the simple possibility that there is someone out there like me.
“Did you hear anything else?” I ask. “Anything at all?” I wince at how pathetic and pleading I sound.
“About the other bearer, no,” Hector says. “But he mentioned something called the Deciregi.”
“The ruling council. Yes, Storm told us about them.”
“And I overheard talk of a gate. Another sendara.”
I sit forward. “Oh?” Ximena and I speculated that there might be two gates, one that leads to life and one that leads to the enemy. The Scriptura Sancta alludes to both. If so, I most certainly destroyed the first when I brought a mountaintop down onto the zafira.
Hector is nodding. “They called it the sendara oscura.”
“The gate of darkness,” I whisper.
“Franco pushed us hard. I thought it was because of the early winter. But I then I realized our urgency had to do with the gate. They think it’s closing. Or maybe dying.” Hector frowns. “I’m not sure what that means exactly, but that’s what they kept saying. ‘The gate closes.’ It was like a mantra they passed around, or a war cry.”
My mind whirls as facts fall into place like puzzle pieces.
“Have you heard anything like that before?” Mara says to Storm. “Anything about a gate?”
I already know what he’s going to say. “Yes. It leads to the source of power animagi draw on in the capital city. I would have been brought to the gate had I completed my training. What lies beyond is a secret, only revealed to full initiates.”
Hector regards me steadily. “We’re not going back, are we?” he says.
My path is as crystal clear as an alpine brook. “We are not.”
The others whip their heads around to stare at me, aghast.
“We’re going to Invierne,” I explain. “To the capital city.”
“Elisa, no.” Belén rises to his feet, his fists clenched. “I used to believe you had to go there to fulfill a prophecy, but I was wrong. We don’t know what that prophecy means. The ‘champion’ could refer to anyone. Let’s leave today. Now. Cross back over the mountains, head north to Basajuan, and be there in time for your council with Cosmé and your sister.”
The fire crackles, and a glowing cinder lands near the toe of my boot. As I watch it fade from fiery orange to dead gray, I say, “I’m not doing this because of a prophecy.”
“But it says—”
“It says, ‘He could not know what awaited at the gate of the enemy, and he was led, like a pig to the slaughter, into the realm of sorcery.’ I know it too well, Belén. It’s been hanging over my head for more than a year. Am I the champion that will be led like a pig to the slaughter? Am I going to die young or disappear like most of the bearers before me?” I grind the now-dead cinder into the dirt with my boot. “But it doesn’t matter. Scripture never makes sense except in hindsight. I must make my choices based on reason and observation. And I choose to go to Invierne.”
Hector’s face is resigned, and I know he understands, even if the others don’t. “Because their source of power is dying.”
I nod at him gratefully. “The gate is closing. Maybe we can help it along. Destroy it utterly, the way I destroyed the gate to the zafira.”
“We have a civil war brewing!” Mara says. “Going to Invierne would give Conde Eduardo even more time to shore up support. What about the people we left behind? Tristán, Lucio, Rosario.”
I wince. She’s not wrong. Prolonging our journey is a huge risk. It will put so many people we love in danger.
“The prince should be safe,” Hector says. “He’s too valuable.”
God, I hope he’s right.
Belén adds, “If the gate is dying, why not just let it die? Mara is right. We have a civil war to worry about.”
I lock gazes with Storm. “Because if it’s dying, Invierne will have to attack again before their power source is gone. Right, Storm?”
“Yes. I did not realize it until now, but yes.” Storm clutches the amulet beneath his cloak. It has become a reflex for him, the same way my fingertips always seek my Godstone. “The Deciregi have struggled to build support for another onslaught; we lost so many people in the last one. But if the gate is truly dying, our crops will begin to wither soon. Our mothers will become barren. They’ll have no trouble raising an army then. It will be even bigger than before.”
“So we go now,” I say. “And we destroy the gate before they can build another army. And then . . .” It’s so preposterous, so huge, so perfect. “We have what Invierne wants—knowledge of another power source. If we succeed, if we survive, I will use their ensuing desperation to bargain for peace.”
PART II
17
WE crouch on the lip of a high cliff overlooking Umbra de Deus, the capital of Invierne and the largest city I’ve ever seen. Steep walkways wind through warrens of stone cottages and stepped gardens, spired temples rise from impossible slopes, and stone plazas take advantage of every tiny plateau. The entire city catches the sunlight, sparkling brilliantly, as if it is made of tiny glass shards.
From this distance, the Inviernos look like insects crawling all over the mountainside. The steep, switchbacked highway leading to the front gate routes a steady stream of movement in either direction. It’s dizzying to watch. My own capital city could fit inside this one three or four times. Storm was right—the Inviernos outnumber us by a terrifying amount.
Hugging the base of the city on three sides is a twisting whitewater river. The eastern curve steams violently, sending tendrils of mist into the city’s lower streets. It steams because high above it and far away—though not far enough to suit me—are two cone-shaped mountains gripped by crooked fingers of glowing orange lava. Storm calls the mountains the Eyes of God, and he assures us they are safe, that they’ve been sending the earth’s fiery blood into the river for millennia.
“Seems like a dangerous place for a nation’s capital,” I observe.
“It’s a place of power,” Storm says. “Our ancestors believed the volcanoes gave them better access to the zafira.”
“And do they?”
“It’s a cause of great debate among the scholars of my people.”
Hector frowns. “I don’t like this at all. The only way in is through the front gate.”
“I have not seen a more perfect defensive architecture,” I admit with reluctant admiration. I would hate to lay siege to this place. I suppose they could be starved out over time, but the mountain slopes are too bare to sneak up unseen, too steep and dangerous to navigate at night.