The rest of them followed behind, footsteps metallic and dull, along a path I'd trod before. And hopefully, after this, never would again.
*
Navigating the maze was terrifically easy this time around. I’d done it enough times in my nightmares since Manny had gone through to the void/maybe-not-void. There, things often went wrong—I lost Manny into the fire maze as he got ahead of me and turned a corner, and I failed to catch him up again, shouting his name and running as fast as I could through the searing walls as my skin bubbled with blisters … or he had a misstep in the room with the stone pillars and the raining sand, and he fell down onto spikes … or he slipped in the caves, fell down into a hole we hadn’t realized was there, eaten by darkness, and this time my panicked shouts echoed …
No matter how many times I’d been through this place wrong, I knew how to do it right.
And anyway—the puzzles had been deactivated too. Why leave them on, when there was no prize here anymore? Seekers, present and future, might happen upon Yyrax and its labyrinth of puzzles by accident, and then the Antecessors might find themselves with some short piece of entertainment if the hazards were left running … but anyone worth their salt would know that this place had been bested. Word spread in the Seeker community, and fast.
The fire room was smaller than I remembered it. Then, of course, we’d been forking turns left and right, our available space made even smaller by the fact that deviating a couple of inches left or right could mean the difference between first- and third-degree burns. Now that I saw the room was little more than twenty meters along either wall, it seemed crazy to think of just how long we’d been stuck there—and just how close the both of us had come to collapsing and succumbing to the flames.
Once again, I felt a wave of utter disgust run through me at the Antecessors—worse, having felt intimately their morbid interest the moment Manny was about to cast himself into a void.
That pressed on me, as we wove between Earth and Yyrax, back and forth as we retraced the steps that I had taken a month and a half ago. It was the one factor that made me unsure if my conjecture were true: the Antecessors had been excited by the thought of Manny entering the void, of him dying there. So perhaps it was a true void after all.
Or perhaps there had been something on the other side; something that had kept my brother from returning anytime in the last fifty-one days.
I did my best to quash the thought. I’d know, one way or the other, soon.
And finally we got there: to the crystalline core in the center of the arena—the room where I had been awarded the Superbia Balteum, where I had become one with the Antecessors, and where I had watched my brother cast himself out of this world—and, quite possibly, out of all of existence.
Burnton’s voice echoed in the back of my mind. He’s still in here, Mira.
I clutched my compass tight, knuckles whiting.
He had to be.
“This place is creepy,” Carson murmured.
“It wasn’t like this before,” said Borrick. “When it was lit, it was kind of pretty.” He chanced a glance at me. “If that’s not a really morbid thing to say here.”
I swallowed, but my throat gave only a dry click. “It’s not.”
The chamber, crowded by the five of us (once again, I made a mental note to have a chat with Bub about finding some better armor, something more form-fitting and less dangerous to stand within arm’s length of), was dull. No light came through it, from within the faceted crystal walls, shining out of the pink pillar in the middle of the room, tapering in the middle and widening to floor and ceiling, or indeed glowing from anyplace within the chamber itself, sourceless yet brilliant, as when I’d last stepped foot in here. We’d had to whip out flashlights, and the beams swung about reflected eerily off the walls’ surfaces. Against the pitch darkness that was our backdrop, they were star-like … or perhaps a hundred tiny glowing eyes–
(Antecessors)
–peering in at the gang of trespassers who’d dared to come here.
“Do you know where he vanished?” Borrick asked.
“The compass will tell me,” I said. “Close to one of the corners.”
“What if there’s more than one void?” asked Heidi, as I tracked about the room’s edge. “What if it’s all voids, the whole way through?”
“Turtles all the way down,” Carson muttered under his breath.
“It’s not,” said Borrick. “How would we have got in?”
“Except for the exit then, dummy.”
“It’s not all voids,” I said distractedly. Worlds flickered by on the compass face. I took in not a single one of them—my eyes awaited one image and one image only.
The dark fuzz of void mist.
“It’s here,” I breathed.
The others crowded forward. Borrick peered over one shoulder at the compass face. Heidi glanced around the other.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“It looks right to me,” said Borrick.
“How can it?” she said. “The room looks identical whichever way you look at it. We could be standing around a hall of mirrors for all we know.”
“Except you’re not looking any taller,” Borrick said sniffily, “so we’re clearly not.”
“You still look ugly though.”
“It’s definitely here,” I said, pushing through them, to Carson. Gripping him by the arm—I saw him wince, but I couldn’t unhook my fingers, not yet—I said, “I need you to open a gate for me—there.”
His eyes flicked past me, to the spot on the wall I indicated. Nodding, lip bit, he said, “Okay.” He ferreted in his manbag a moment, shoving university pamphlets aside, a thin paperback whose spine read HOW TO ACE YOUR COLLEGE INTERVIEW—and then out came the ring he’d pilfered from Borrick.
“Step aside,” I ordered the others.
They moved.
Carson and I stood before the crystal wall—the place where Manny had cut through and vanished.
His fingers shook.
So did mine. I balled them into fists, the edge of my compass cutting into my skin, hand clutched so tight around it.
Carson inhaled. “Here goes nothing.”
Ring between his left thumb and forefinger, he raised his right hand … my heart thrummed wildly, a hummingbird’s beat … and swiped it down.
A cavity opened on the wall. Edges shaking, for the first few seconds it was hardly a crack, like a tiny, thin opening worn in the wall of a cave by the flow of water. I held my breath, waiting as its edges danced frenetically—
And then it lurched to its full size in one great spasm. Tall as Borrick, wide as Bub, it still danced and jerked, little runners shooting off a couple of inches like fine hairs.
Through the gap was misty darkness—and a tilted, jagged crag of fractured rock, set against a deep plum sky.
My heart leapt.
There wasn’t a void here after all. There was a world, a fractured place, like those brought into being by the first Wayfarers …
Which meant Manny could still be alive.
10
Heidi breathed a flurry of profanities. Carson sucked in a breath. Bub let out a noise of awe, a throaty rumble that was the orc equivalent of a low ‘ooh’.
For a moment, I could only stare.
Borrick was less gobsmacked. Which did not mean he was not gobsmacked—I was pretty sure he was, seeing as his eyebrows had drifted far up his forehead and imprinted it with lines suggesting he was of more advanced age than the mid-twenties I pegged him at—but instead he said, “It’s all lies. All of it.” He turned his wide eyes onto me. “I know you explained it all before, but … seeing this … it goes further than the Antecessors. Seekers have been lying too.”
“For protection,” said Heidi, sounding strangled. “It has to be—to save lives.”
Apparently this didn’t matter to Borrick at the moment, though. He plowed on. “There are no voids. After everything we’ve been told—there are no voids.
It’s nothing but worlds, all the way down.”
Heidi frowned. I thought she’d pull him up on the twisted quote, but instead she said, “This doesn’t mean there aren’t any voids. It just means this one right here isn’t a void.”
“You heard Mira’s conjecture,” he said.
“Emphasis on the word conjecture.”
“You’ve all seen plenty that suggests voids don’t exist at all. How much more evidence do you want?”
Heidi huffed. “Mira, tell him—”
“I have no idea whether there are millions of voids, none at all, or any number in between,” I said, “and quite frankly, I don’t care. All I care about is that this one here isn’t a void—and that means my brother might still be out there. Now excuse me, please.”
“What are you—?”
Line launcher unhooked from my belt, I stooped down by the room’s central crystal column. Unfurling the silver reel of elvish rope, I looped it back around and around the crystal, in the center, where it tapered to its thinnest width, perhaps eight inches across—plenty enough to hold, should something terrible go wrong.
“I’m going through there.”
“You’re—wait, slow down a minute,” said Heidi quickly. “You don’t know if it’s safe yet.”
“My brother is out there—”
“Possibly out there,” Heidi cut across. “Also possible, and it pains me to say this, but—he might still be out there, lying dead in a heap, because the air in that world isn’t breathable. Or the world could be about as far from its sun as Jupiter, and he’s frozen into a block of ice. Or a hundred other possibilities.”
“I have to try—”
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t,” said Heidi. “I’m merely suggesting you at least test this other world before you pitch yourself blindly into it.”
Tests—right. In my excitement, and desperation, to get my brother back, I’d gotten way, way ahead of myself. Heidi’s cutting in had given my brain a chance to get a little better into gear, less on the leap-before-you-look track and closer to a more trepidatious one—because, after all, I couldn’t get Manny back if the worst had happened. Throwing myself straight in without checking this world out, like Heidi said, could be a one-way ticket to following in Manny’s footsteps.
“Right,” I said, straightening. “So, I’ll just …”
“Stick your hand through or something,” said Heidi, “to check it’s not freezing cold.”
“If it’s too cold, just doing that could give her frostbite,” Carson murmured.
“Frostbite of the fingers is a bit better than frostbite of the head though, don’t you think?” said Heidi. “Although,” she added after a moment’s consideration, “why don’t we chuck Borrick in to conduct our tests? Nothing of value lost if that goes wrong.”
His lips thinned, and a comma-shaped shadow pressed in between his eyebrows as he frowned at her. “Or we could throw you in and see how you fare.”
“Shut up,” I said, “both of you. All right?” Taking a deep breath, I extended my hand to the spasming void Carson had opened in the wall … and then slowly pushed it through.
It was like pushing my hand through an invisible membrane. Not the gate itself—that was quite simply a hole, between this world and the next one—but rather the atmospheric pressure must have been different, thicker in the next world, enough that it was detectable. It was almost like putting my hand into water—although this was most certainly not wet.
It wasn’t frigid, either. Cool, yes, but frostbite didn’t await me in this world.
I brought it back through, and flexed my fingers for good measure.
“It’s okay?” asked Carson nervously.
“Seems fine.” I turned my hand over, checking for blemishes, anything visible and lasting caused by the thicker atmosphere out there. Nothing though—just slightly cooled skin, as though I’d pressed my hand against a refrigerator door.
A little puff of greyish fog came into the chamber with me. So thick it had hardly been displaced by the portal opening, only a small amount of it whispered in.
The plume condensed quickly, sinking to the floor and flattening out.
Borrick braced a hand on the wall, bowed low, and sniffed.
“Poisonous?” Heidi asked hopefully.
“No real odor at all,” said Borrick.
The mist had condensed entirely now, forming a grey-green puddle on the floor. Borrick stuck his finger into it, coating the tip, and then sniffed at it more closely as he rose. Frowning, eyes pinched into a squint, he said, “It’s a little bit … stagnant, I think. Like a pool of dirty water.” He sniffed, deeply, almost touching his wetted finger to his nostrils. “But really faint.”
“Is it just mist?” Carson asked.
“It’s thick mist,” said Borrick.
A little of it was creeping through the gateway now.
“It’s like it’s oozing in here,” Heidi said with a hint of disgust.
“Why’s it moving so slowly?” Carson wondered.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” I said. “Hold onto me, will you?” At Borrick’s raised eyebrows, I said, “I’m sticking my head through to check it’s breathable.”
“You’re anchored by the line launcher,” said Heidi.
“The line launcher won’t yank me back in if I pass out.”
“And Borrick will?”
Both of us ignored her. Borrick clutched my outstretched arm, one hand around the wrist, the other snagged about the elbow. Adjusting his hold for maximum purchase—his fingers were solid, but they didn’t cut into me, didn’t hurt—he nodded. “Okay. Go.”
I half-emptied my lungs … and then pushed my head through the gap of slowly oozing fog.
The whole sensation was so peculiar. The fog parted around me, but with a great lethargy like I’d never witnessed. Thick, it pressed against my face, cooled it, condensing immediately against my skin. Once again, I had the sensation of having pressed myself into water. And I suppose I had, although this was a very thick, dark vapor, swallowing the land, except for that distant crag rising steeply and out of sight.
I breathed in, though every instinct in me warned me not to.
Nothing happened.
I mean, it smelled pretty much like Borrick said—a kind of muted brackishness, like a pool of water that had only just crossed some hard-lined threshold between non-stagnant and stagnant. But it didn’t burn my throat on the way down, it didn’t make my lungs feel heavy or hot, or cause me to retch, or the world to dim and my body to sway.
I pulled myself back in.
Borrick released me.
“It’s breathable,” I said.
“Definitely?” asked Heidi.
“She came back in without having coughed her lungs out of her chest, didn’t she?” Borrick countered.
“One breath isn’t very much,” said Heidi.
“You want me to stick my head out there and huff it in for ten minutes?” I asked. “I breathed in; I’m fine. It’s okay.”
“Some dangerous gasses don’t have scents,” said Heidi.
Carson nodded. “Like carbon monoxide.”
My frustration was rising, with the both of them—her, possibly deservedly for slowing me down, though definitely not when she only had my safety in mind; and absolutely not justified in Carson’s case. “Well, unless either of you brought a carbon monoxide detector, that’s a risk I’m going to have to take,” I snapped.
“Got one of those in there?” Heidi asked Carson, indicating his manbag with a nod.
“Uhm, no.”
“Well, rats,” I said. “Guess I’ll just have to suck it up and hope for the best.”
Heidi began, “Mira—”
“I need to do this now,” I said, affixing the line launcher on the rear of my belt, right in the center of my spine. “I appreciate your looking out for me, honestly I do, but Manny is in there somewhere. The longer we talk, the worse his chances.”
I could pra
ctically read the response Heidi wanted to give on her face: He’s been gone for fifty-one days. I don’t think a couple of minutes will make much degree of difference at this point. Nevertheless, she held it in, and said instead, “Get into any trouble, give the line launcher a tug, and we’ll pull you in, yeah?”
I nodded, heart thrumming. Her concern was touching, and clearly present, given that she knew the line launcher could reel me in under its own power. Still. Touching. “Got it. See you back here in a few.”
“Good luck,” Borrick muttered.
“You can do it, Miss Mira,” Bub rumbled.
“Uhm … g-good luck.”
“Thank you.”
I stepped to the edge of the room, where the portal juddered—stepped off—
A disconnected thought burbled through my mind—what if the gateway collapsed and sliced the elvish rope in two?—but it was too late. I’d left the crystal chamber behind—and suddenly I was falling, the mists screaming around me as I canted, twirling around and around in a wet grey blur—
What’s happening!?
The horizon spun and spun—behind me, the elvish rope flew out of the line launcher, the reel screaming as it fought to unwind with enough ferocious speed to keep up with me—the mists churned around me, and I glimpsed, as I whipped around, the trails I cut through it, fog too lethargic to close—
I hit rock. An escarpment angled at me, sharp jags. I cried out, saw stars—I was pitched back into the air, like a cyclist powering down a hill and then launching off a ramp—the world turned again, rolled—
And then I finally slammed into earth and stopped.
I lay still. All the breath had gone out of my lungs. And so much pain … I winced, when after a few long minutes of lying and catching my breath, I forced myself to move, pressing upward. A long scrape marred my right arm all the way from elbow to wrist, beading with blood. Crimson was dripping into my eye too. I pressed a gentle finger to my forehead—a cut there, running down into my eyebrow.
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