CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
L AURIA
Night in the Silent Lands passed as slowly as the day had. I spent much of the time thinking up ways that the djinni might yet manage to kill me, as insubstantial as I was. If they could find a way to speak with me, they could threaten people I cared about—Tamar, Janiya, my mother, Zhanna. Rogue djinni could possess the unwilling. They could seize control over someone like my mother at a critical moment and leave her defenseless.
But even if they threatened people I loved—no way, I thought. I couldn’t hand myself over, not knowing what they planned.
But they’d find some other way. After all they’d done to bring me here, they’d find another way.
And what a great deal of trouble they had taken. They had seen my potential, even before I had the gate within; I remembered the djinn speaking to me through Jaran, back in Sophos’s harem. They sent me dreams and visions, and visitors with warnings. They had encouraged me to free the people I’d taken back to slavery, then gave me directions to Thais, which had put me in Kyros’s hands. What if he had just killed me? Perhaps they sent messages to him, too. Kyros had taken me to Penelopeia, where I had seen the picture of the drowned gate, and been shown a spell-chain lost under the water. Was it ever really there? I bet it was not. Then they’d whispered in Xanthe’s ear to free me, and whispered to her again when it was time for her to push me out of the palanquin into the reservoir, right over the drowned gate.
They could not force me to walk through. But they could lead me to that door and give me no other choice.
Kasim roused after a few hours and got up, looking around to see me.
“Who built the gate?” I asked. “Your people, or my people?”
“Yours,” he said, stretching, then held up his hand to show me something. The images I saw this time looked different. The details were missing, I realized after a moment. They were blurry or shadowed, impossible to see. Still, I could see the woman at the center, her long hair gathered loosely where it swept against her waist, her cat’s eyes shining red. Her anger rang in my ears like jangling brass bells. Then I saw a vast boulder of shifting iridescent colors—karenite—shattered into dust in a sudden hot white light. Then another light, this one growing brighter, and not fading.
“The angry woman,” I said. “She was one of you? And she opened the rift?”
“Yes.”
“And—the boulder of karenite. What was that?”
Kasim gave me a picture of a well. I didn’t understand, so he changed the picture of the well so that it held heat instead of water, then something else. Finally, he spoke aloud. “Like a well of…power.”
“How did she destroy it? The vision didn’t show that part.”
“It’s…not supposed to. That was forgotten so that it could not be done again.”
“And the gate. Who built it? Ancient shamans? It couldn’t have been the sorceresses…they drowned it.”
Kasim offered a new image. I saw a Danibeki man laying bricks made of karenite. Complete, the gate opened into darkness. I wondered what he had thought he was building. Of course, djinni had been around for centuries before the Sisterhood of Weavers had had the idea of binding them, making them slaves…
The image faded like mist as I pulled my hand away. The sorceresses drowned the gate, I realized. They can use the gate whether it’s drowned or not—everyone from our side who comes to the borderland sends their spirit through that gate.
They had always told us that the Sisterhood of Weavers flooded our ancestral lands because our ancestors fought them. It was a lie. They were hiding the gate.
“If someone destroyed the gate,” I asked, my voice shaking a little bit, “could the rift be closed?”
Kasim shrugged, but his face was intrigued. “Maybe,” he said.
I remembered Zhanna telling me there were many gates, but sorcery, at least, depended on the gate at the bottom of the reservoir. Without that gate, there would be no more spell-chains. There would probably be no more shamans.
Unless the djinni killed me here and built their own gate. Then there would be spell-chains, with us as unwilling servants.
I have to get back.
Near me, I saw a shimmer in the air. One of us. Kasim looked at it. “Shaman,” he said. I was certain he was right—it didn’t pursue Kasim and, anyway, it lacked the brilliant power lent by a spell-chain. I squinted, and thought I could see the outline of a man. He bowed toward Kasim.
I approached him; he gave no sign of recognition. After a few minutes another shimmer broke into the air. He had brought someone into the borderland with him. I didn’t recognize either of them. They conferred silently for a while, then one vanished abruptly. I seized the other, or tried to, knotting my hands around his wrists in an attempt to follow him back to my own side. But it was like trying to lay hands on smoke. He was there, and then he wasn’t; I was on my knees on the dark hillside. Or I would have been on my knees if I’d had a proper body here. Smoke, indeed.
I drifted back to Kasim. “It didn’t work,” I said. “Show me how your people do it.” I held out my hands.
Kasim touched his palm to mine. I saw a dark hillside, and the sparkle of the visitor; the djinn and the visitor clasped hands, and vanished together. The shaman saw the djinn. They don’t see me. Perhaps that’s the problem? But then he showed me a djinn clasping the ankle of a visitor, following him back like a burr caught on his clothing. That’s what I tried to do…
Another sparkle, in the distance. I flew toward it: it was a woman, again a shaman, but again no one I knew. When I thought she was about to leave, I threw myself toward her, wrapping arms and legs around her. I might as well have flung myself against moonlight or mist.
“How would they even have killed me?” I asked Kasim, settling down next to him again. “I’m not solid here. I don’t know how someone would kill a djinn, in my own world…”
Kasim raised his hand for a moment, and I started to reach to touch him, but he pulled away; he just wanted my silence. “The singing,” he said.
“It would have made me solid? For long enough to be killed?”
“Yes.”
The sky was growing lighter; soon I could see the sun break over the edge of the eastern mountains, like the morning when I’d watched with Zivar and Xanthe. The sky was clear today—a perfect blue. I should be able to feel the sun’s warmth, I thought; I felt neither warm nor cold, just as I felt neither hungry nor tired. I want to go home.
Kasim rose, suddenly. “Come,” he said, and began to walk deeper into the mountains, away from the city. His face was alive with sudden fear.
“What is it?” I asked, and he gestured for silence. Very faintly, beyond the sounds of birdsong and wind, I heard humming.
Were we already surrounded? I touched Kasim’s hand, trying to find out what he thought, but he was too afraid to be coherent. He seemed to want me to stay with him, but I wasn’t sure if this was because he thought he could protect me, or because he thought I could protect him.
Fly, or stay? I looked at Kasim’s terrified face, and knew that abandoning him, after he had saved me, was wrong. It might be better, but it would still be wrong. I had never yet regretted saving Tamar from the bandits…I stayed by his side.
Tamar, I thought. Tamar was home; Tamar was who I wanted to return to. I rubbed the scar on my palm.
Perhaps it was my thoughts of Tamar that drew her to me when she came through. I didn’t see her come through, and when I saw her and Alibek, I didn’t recognize them right away. I saw two spirits, and knew they must not be sorceresses, since the sorceresses never came through in pairs, ever. Even distracted by the humming—still faint, but growing louder—I paused for a moment to look. If the humming made me solid enough to kill, it seemed unlikely that I’d be able to slip through to the other side like a djinn.
Then one of the spirits took form: the outline of a man, flickering every now and then into the outline of a songbird. Alibek.
I need to make him see me.
He is not here alone. Could the other person be Tamar? I studied the other spirit: after a moment or two she also took form. Yes. It’s Tamar. “It’s people I know,” I hissed to Kasim. “Tamar.” I tried to grab her, and couldn’t. “Tamar. Alibek!”
They didn’t notice Kasim, either. They were no doubt talking with each other.
I tried again to grab Tamar. I tried to touch her hand, where she’d cut herself when we became blood sisters; I tried to touch her hair, which I’d helped her cut when we joined the Alashi. My hand passed through her, or she passed through me. I tried to grab Alibek. I nearly screamed in frustration.
We still couldn’t see the singers, but the humming was growing louder.
Alibek turned out, away from Tamar, and our eyes met. He could see me. I tried again to grasp his hand, to speak to him. “Listen, you need to help me. I know you hate me, but please believe, if you want to cut my throat once I’m back where I belong, it would be better than leaving me here…” He can’t hear a word I’m saying. But a moment later, Tamar turned. She saw me, and I saw her recognize me, but I was as intangible to her as to the djinni. “…in the underworld,” I heard her voice say. I shook my head frantically and held out my hands.
“Take my hands, Tamar,” I said. “Please. If there is a way back, it will be with you.”
Tamar held her hands out, and I tried again to grasp them, but I still felt nothing more tangible than air. “This has to work. This has to work, or there’s no way back…” And the humming… They were coming, I knew. They’ll build a new temple here—a shrine, to guard the gate… The humming was making me more solid, but Tamar was intangible here, so we still couldn’t touch.
Let our oath bind us, I heard Tamar’s voice whisper in my mind, and suddenly I could feel her hands clasp mine.
Go, I whispered back, and when nothing happened, I tightened my grip. Hurry.
There was a jerk, and I felt a moment of intense cold. I can’t breathe—and then I was through. With Tamar, in body—in fact, I was lying on top of her. I rolled off her and scrambled to my feet, and realized that she was being held on her back, helpless, by a djinn. I touched it, and opened my gate. At last, I heard, and it was gone.
I helped Tamar to her feet. “We’re in a prison cell in the Koryphe,” Tamar said. “Alibek is here, too. Your mother—they took her somewhere else. Everyone thinks you’re dead. I thought you were dead…oh, Lauria.” She gave me a tight hug.
“I wasn’t dead,” I said. “But you got me out just in time.” Tamar was taller, and her hair had grown longer. I stepped back a half step to look into her face. No one would take her for a slave now. “A prison cell? Is there a way out?” If they used djinni to hold the prisoners, did they still lock them in, or did the djinni make them careless? The cell door was barred.
“There’s a spell-chain over there,” Tamar said, and pointed to the far wall. “That’s where they get the djinni to hold us.”
No one had come to investigate our voices, and when I peered out, I saw no human guards. The spell-chain was out of reach, and cemented in somehow, not hanging loose from a chain. “Djinn,” I whispered, knowing they could hear me. “If any of you can open this door, and let me out, I will free all of you. I am the gate. You know what I can do.”
There was silence for a moment. Then the bar of our cell slammed back with such force it almost broke the door. I touched the djinn and set it free, then unbarred the next cell. Alibek lay on the floor inside; I could see the djinn embracing him, like a haze of light. I freed the djinn; I could see Alibek relax, but it took a moment before he took the hand I offered him and scrambled to his feet.
I picked up a piece of brick to smash the karenite, then hesitated. I was naked; we were in a prison. “I will help you, but I want you to help me. I need clothes. Tell me if there’s a guard at the door…”
“Weapons,” Tamar said.
“If you can bring us weapons without being noticed, do it.” I had been stumbling over my words, and now I backed up, to make the instructions more explicit, then shrugged. “If the Sisterhood Guard realizes that something’s wrong and comes down here to check on us, I’ll free you if I can, but I can’t promise I’ll have the chance. So don’t do anything to get us caught.”
The djinn flickered away. A few minutes later, a shower of loose clothing fell at my feet, including a pair of sandals. There were no weapons. “The guardswomen would notice the theft of their swords,” it said. “The armory is locked, and the sound of the lock breaking would attract attention.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“No one waits by the doorway at the top of the stairs.”
I glanced at Tamar and Alibek, trying to think if there was anything else I needed from the djinni before I freed them and we got out of here. “How did you end up here?” I asked Tamar.
“Xanthe came for your mother. Alibek and I were brought along because we were with her. Janiya escaped.”
Xanthe returned here. So what happened to Zivar? If they took my mother away, where is my mother? I felt something like heat rising inside of me, sending my thoughts scattering in a thousand directions at once, and tried to rein them in.
“We need to get out of here,” I said. “But first, I need to keep my promise.” I picked up a piece of rock that had crumbled out of the wall, and turned to the spell-chain.
“Wait—” Tamar said. “What if we need its help again?”
“We can’t bring this spell-chain along,” I said. “And I don’t want to stay here.” I smashed the six soul-stones with the rock. When I was done, Tamar raised her hand to point silently at one more djinn hovering before us.
“Do you need to free that one?” she asked.
I knew, looking at it, that this was not a bound djinn—it was one of the others. I shook my head.
“Maybe it can help us,” Tamar said.
“We can’t trust them,” I said. It approached me, and I flinched away.
Trust, I heard it whisper. Let me within.
A rogue djinn, here and now—was it Kasim? Had Kasim followed me back? Or was this a trick—one of the ones who had lured me through the gate, trying even now to seize control, to drag me back to the other side to meet the death they’d so carefully planned for me? Surely it is Kasim. If this djinn wished me ill, he could possess me and I couldn’t stop him. Or could I? I’ve never heard of a shaman or a sorceress being unwillingly possessed by a djinn; perhaps they can’t be, and I can’t either.
I closed my eyes, trying to listen to my own heart, and finally held out my hand. “Kasim?” I whispered.
I felt a burst of heat; the djinn had passed within me. When they passed through me, through the gate in my heart, I had felt that heat, but only momentarily. For a moment now I felt as if I were being consumed. Is this how it feels to be possessed? Surely not. Then the heat eased, and I could hear Kasim’s voice within my head. The mingling of our thoughts here was not like it had been in the Silent Lands. There, I’d felt a chaotic rush of pictures and feelings when we touched, as if his memories were being poured into me like water out of a bucket. Here, I heard a voice in my head that was not my own. He spoke words, cool and measured; here, he could borrow them from me like a set of boots. His words were slow and careful, unlike the rest of my whirl of thoughts. It was tempting to push away my own madness and cling to whatever he said as if his words were my own rational thoughts. I still can’t trust him, I thought.
Where is my mother? I asked Kasim. Where is Zivar?
Kasim stirred. I can go look, he said, and I felt him slipping away. It felt rather like peeling away the dead skin from a healed burn—not painful, just odd.
“He’s gone to look, hasn’t he?” Tamar asked. “Your eyes are different.” I nodded, remembering how Xanthe had always refused to meet my eyes.
“What happened to you?” Alibek asked. “Tamar thought you were dead.”
I told Alibek and Tamar about my escape with Xanthe and Zivar, our journey, the drowned passage and what I found on the other side. “They lured me there,” I said, finally. “I was their tool, to be used and discarded. By enticing me through, and killing me, they could use the gate in my heart as their own, anchored on their side of the borderland. We can’t trust them—we never could. They seek to make us their slaves, as we have made them ours.”
Tamar listened, her eyes steady. “How did you find all that out?”
“Someone told me—a djinn. Kasim. The one I freed from the spell-chain when we were with the sisterhood.”
“Yet you trust him.”
“Well—” I thought it over. “Yes,” I said. “I had helped him; he wanted to help me. He seemed to risk quite a lot, doing so. Judging by his fear.”
Alibek said, “So what you’re saying is, the djinni have an empire of their own; they have the elite, powerful few and they have the many ordinary people who get by as they can, just like here.”
I remembered the image Kasim had given me, of the free bread given to those who became prey to the sorceresses. “Yes,” I said.
“And we can’t trust the djinni in charge.”
“Definitely not.”
“But ‘the djinni’ don’t all agree. Any more than we agree with the Sisterhood.”
“Exactly.”
“Sounds like what we heard Damira say,” Tamar said. “Except she called them the barley-eaters and the rice-eaters.”
Kasim was back. I could not find your mother. But Zivar is not far—underground, like you, but with a human guard.
“I don’t know if we can help her without weapons,” I said.
“Does she have a guard?” Tamar said, anxiously. Kasim was speaking at the same time. I will seize the guard.
“We can do this, then,” I said, and started to follow the directions Kasim was whispering.
Tamar ran after me, catching my elbow. “What? Do what, and where are we going?”
“We’re going to get Zivar,” I said. Tamar fell into step beside me, Alibek following behind, even as part of my mind—not Kasim’s part—said, she’s following me, and she doesn’t even know what I’m doing or why I think I’ll succeed, and I’m the crazy one? “This will work,” I assured her. It was too difficult to give her the whole explanation.
We passed a stairway and went down another corridor. There was a light ahead, spilling out of an open doorway. It’s time, Kasim said, and I felt him leave again. When we reached the doorway, we saw that the guard had slumped to the floor, her eyes half-closed. The room was brightly lit with lamps. Inside, Zivar sat at a bare wooden table. There were jars of beads spilled out across it, and silver wire. She worked feverishly, twisting wire; the necklace was close to done, I realized.
“Zivar,” I said.
She looked up: her eyes were wide and hungry, and she scanned first my face, then Tamar’s, then Alibek’s. “You can’t be here unless I’m dead,” she said, her voice shaky.
“I’m not dead, and neither are you.” She was still sitting on her stool, and when I looked closer, I realized that she’d been chained to the wall, feet and wrists.
“They took my spell-chains. All of them,” Zivar said.
“And forced you to bind for them,” I said.
“They said—ten, and they’d set me free. Ten.” She pushed her damp hair back from her face. “I considered refusing, but then thought that perhaps, perhaps, I’d have a chance to use one of the chains before they took it away, and escape.”
“Is that the first?” I said.
She shook her head. “Third,” she said.
Alibek edged in to take a look. “That looks almost done,” he said. “Why don’t you finish it? The djinn will make it easier to get out of here.”
“Isn’t there some other way?” Tamar asked. “Lauria, what about your friend who followed you back? Could he help us?”
“Help us do what?” I asked, glancing at the guard. She had slid to the floor, and was slumped over, her eyes rolling back and a thread of drool coming from her mouth.
“We had this idea to help the Alashi,” Tamar said. “It was a joke, but now, well, if we could actually do it…” She took a deep breath and went on. “If we kidnap Kyros and steal the spell-chain that binds the great river, we think the Sisterhood will think that Kyros stole it. I think I know where the spell-chain is. Janiya had a guess—we think it’s at the top of one of the really high towers, the ones you can only get into with a palanquin.”
I shook my head. “A rogue djinn can’t carry a palanquin. The binding gives them their strength. Unbound, they have eyes and ears but not much more. They can’t do anything—well, other than possessing people.”
“But when you freed him from the spell-chain, he moved the bandits…”
“He still had the strength from the spell-chain, even though the binding had been broken.”
Zivar had stopped listening; she had gone back to twisting wire as quickly as she could. She clearly intended to finish the spell-chain whether Tamar liked the idea or not.
Tamar touched my hand. “Once we steal the spell-chain, we can free the river,” she whispered.
All that water. I remembered how it had looked, shimmering in its vast bowl. With the spell-chain, I wouldn’t have to hope my helper snatched me away from the water in time to avoid being swept away—we could just smash the stones, free the djinni who’d stood there for centuries. And expose the gate, I thought.
Without the gate, there will be no more sorceresses, no more Sisterhood of Weavers. No more enslavement of Kasim and the others who are desperate enough to live in that valley.
I wondered what Tamar would say about that idea. Or Zivar. Or Alibek, for that matter. Well, we can’t free the river and have the gate stay open. It would make it far too easy for another person with an inner gate to stumble through.
Zivar had almost finished the necklace now; Tamar bit her lip and averted her eyes. One link undone, Zivar closed her eyes for what seemed like mere heartbeats, then closed the final link.
She opened her eyes: the djinn hovered beside her. “Break my chains,” Zivar said sharply. There were four sharp snaps and the chains fell away. Her eyes alight, she looped the spell-chain over her head and leapt to her feet. “Stealing a spell-chain, you said? Kidnapping Kyros? Let’s do it. Come on.”
I took a moment to rob the guard of her sword and boots, and tie her with her own belt. Kasim left her and joined me in my mind again. Up, he said, and we ran for the stairs.
We came up the stairs into the heat of the day. I could almost see Zivar’s fever rising off her like steam; I wondered if my own was as visible to her. There was no one at the top of the stairs. Up, Kasim urged again, and I saw another staircase across the hall and followed it. Up. He was scouting ahead; I could feel him leaving, returning, and leaving again. It made me feel dizzy and a little sick—or maybe that was the sudden heat, and the ache of hunger in my stomach.
We emerged onto a small balcony, a fair way up. Now what? I asked Kasim.
Send the slave for a palanquin, he said. Take it and get out of here.
“Send the slave—the djinn—for a palanquin,” I said to Zivar. I turned to Tamar. “Where’s the spell-chain you want to steal?”
“I think it’s there,” she said, and pointed.
It was one of the needle-like towers that rose up, built by djinni and inaccessible except by palanquin. She was still speaking—saying something about gates and the magias—but I found my own thoughts seized by a flood of memories that weren’t my own. Yes, I thought, and I wasn’t sure if my certainty came from myself, or from Kasim. There. It’s there. “Let’s go,” I said.
“We need to wait,” Tamar said, eyeing me nervously. “We still need the palanquin.”
I tried to nod crisply. “Well, of course,” I said. Tamar exchanged a glance with Alibek; I ignored it.
It seemed to take hours for the palanquin to arrive. The one that arrived, finally, was scarlet and gold silk, and very small. It was as luxurious inside as any larger palanquin—the interior walls were lined with blue and green silk, embroidered with golden pictures of fish. We piled inside and the djinn took us up. It took us up fast—my stomach lurched and my ears felt as if they were underwater, then suddenly out again. Tamar pressed her hand to her head. Then we stopped. “There’s a djinn out there, just outside the window,” Zivar said. “Lauria?”
I drew aside the curtain and looked out. There was a djinn; it hovered in the air just outside the window. We were just out of reach.
“Can we move in a little closer?” I asked.
Zivar looked out and mulled it over. “There are djinni who were bound by sorceresses who are now dead. It’s still risky to tell them to kill someone, because sometimes they kill the holder of the chain, but there are times that the dead chains are used that way. If you’re right about what’s up here, this will be one of those times. If we come too close, it will kill us.”
“I have to touch it in order to set it free.”
“Yes.” Zivar sighed. “We could just get out of here, you know.”
I met her eyes for a moment. She was nervous, but I could see excitement lurking. “You don’t really want to do that,” I said.
Zivar looked out at the djinn again, then at me. “Lean out,” she said. “We’ll hold you.”
Tamar and Zivar pinned my legs. Alibek took my left hand, bracing himself against the edge of the palanquin. I inched forward, leaning out toward the djinn. I found myself looking straight down at the ground. That is a long way down, I thought, and was momentarily almost overwhelmed with nausea. A long, long way down. The people below me were so small I could barely make them out; the flying birds below me looked the size of insects. Just pretend that’s what they are—bugs, crawling things. A tiny world, not the distant real one. Don’t imagine falling…hitting…
I reached for the djinn. It was still beyond my hand. “We need to be a little closer,” I said. “Carefully, so I don’t fall.” I heard Zivar’s voice murmuring to her djinn. Despite her instructions, we moved with a lurch, and I felt Alibek’s hand tighten on mine.
I’ve trusted my life to my worst enemy, I thought. I didn’t dare look up at Alibek; I wasn’t really positioned right to look at him, anyway. All he has to do is let go. The weight of my fall would pull my legs away from Zivar and Tamar.
“Trust me, Lauria,” Alibek said softly. “I’ve got you.”
I wriggled forward a little more. Almost there.
The djinn turned on me; with the part of my mind that was Kasim, I could see its face, wild with anger, mad from its years of solitude and slavery. Die, I heard it scream, as it came at me like a thornbush caught in a whirlwind.
I flung open the door in my heart. Go, I screamed back. Find your home.
The djinn tore through me like a barbed arrow; it had aimed to tear me to pieces, and even thrown through into its own land it came close to succeeding. My body jerked, trying to escape the agony and nearly wrenching away from the hands that held me. I screamed. There was a sharp pain in my shoulder, and then I found myself lying on the silk rug of the palanquin.
Kasim?
Silence.
Had he been forced through the door when I opened it? Had he dragged the other djinn through in order to save me? I had no idea.
“Lauria? Can you hear me?” Tamar asked.
My mind was quieter now, at least. “Yes,” I said. “I’m all right.” My chest ached, and I rubbed my breastbone with my clenched fist. “Are there any others?”
“I don’t think so,” Zivar said.
“Then take us in.”
Here at the top of the tower, there was a tiny balcony to land palanquins on; there was also a stout door, locked. “Break it,” Zivar said to her djinn, and it smashed the door open.
“I’ll go first,” I said. “In case there are any more…”
The room was empty. Built into the wall was a strongbox: the djinn smashed it open. One final djinn emerged. “I am the guardian and the messenger,” it said in toneless, perfect Greek. “I was bound first by Nikephoros, apprentice to Sostrate, apprentice to one of the First Twelve; I was re-bound most recently by Lydia. What say you of Athena and Alexander?”
I looked at Zivar. She shook her head, her eyes wide with alarm. “Free it,” she hissed. “If we give the wrong answer, something bad is going to happen.”
That was clearly already the wrong answer; I could see it pulling back from us, whether to give the alarm or take us all prisoner or both, I wasn’t sure. I stepped forward, grasping with my fists, feeling the djinn solid under my hands for an instant, like carved rock—and threw open the door. This djinn passed through like melting smoke. We say of Athena, praise her, and praise her name, and praise her Weaving. We say of Alexander, that he is a fit servant for our mistress. Now you know the answer, if you are asked again… and it was gone.
I stepped forward and took the necklace out of the strongbox.
The necklace that bound the Syr Darya was not quite as big as I had imagined. It weighed less than a good cooking pot. Still, where most spell-chains looped twice or even three times around the neck this chain would loop at least twenty. The strands glittered with cut glass and gemstones, but also glinted with the shadows of karenite—this spell-chain held scores of karenite beads, each binding a different djinn. They were in one chain, so they worked together. The guardian-messenger I’d freed had probably carried instructions to the rest. Surely there’s another way to speak to them…Well, I could summon them all here, that would be one way to free the waters… I picked up the necklace.
“Wait,” Zivar said, her voice tense. “You are a sorceress. As am I. Why should you have this?”
“I’m not going to keep it,” I said.
“So you say.”
I handed it to Tamar. “Tamar is no sorceress,” I said.
Zivar shrugged and acquiesced.
“Now let’s get going before anyone notices we’re up here.” Tamar started toward the palanquin, then paused. “Do you know where we’ll find Kyros?”
“No. Kasim—” I bit my lip. “Let me see if I can find Kasim and ask if he’ll come back, and scout for us again.” He could find Kyros unseen, and lead us there…
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and closed my eyes. Surely the gate in my heart opens both ways. Can I pass this way to the borderland? Or at least look through? Behind my closed eyes, I imagined a door, wood and iron with a latch. Hello? I nudged it open a crack, and peered through into the shadowy darkness. Anyone here?
I felt a jerk as if someone had grabbed the front of my shirt with both hands and yanked with all their strength. And then I stood, facing a furiously angry white-robed woman, in that central hall of the temple in the djinn city.
“You fled us,” the woman said.
“You were going to kill me!”
“We need a gate. Need one! It is your duty to return—you must. Swear it.”
“I’m never coming back. I’m doing this my way.” I felt dizzy and strangely weak, standing there—like I had felt those times that I had spent too much time at the bottom of the lake. I need to get back—get back—
And there I was, hunched on the floor, Tamar’s arm shaking my shoulders as she tried to rouse me. I sucked in a deep gasp of air and realized that I had not been breathing in my absence. No wonder I felt odd….
“Did you find him?” Tamar asked. “Is that Kasim?”
There was a flicker of light in the room with us—a djinn. “That’s not Kasim,” I said. My voice was hoarse. “This isn’t one we can trust. Why did you come back with me?” I addressed the djinn. “What do you want?”
“Will help,” the djinn hissed.
“Sure you will,” I muttered.
“Give it a chance,” Tamar said. “Would it serve their purpose for you to die here?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then it’s to their advantage to help you get away.”
“They set me up to get caught by Kyros,” I said.
“But if you were caught now…”
“The Sisterhood would cut my throat and figure out what to do about the gate later, I think,” I said. I tried to laugh to cover my own nervousness, but it sounded ghastly. “Maybe the djinni want a gate here.”
“No,” the djinn said.
“If you want to be helpful, find Kyros for us,” I said. “Tell us where he is, then possess him so that we can take him with us easily.”
“Show me Kyros.” The djinn approached. Nervously, I put out my hand and summoned a memory of Kyros to my mind. The djinn touched me; I felt a feather-light brush against my thoughts. “Stay. I will return in a moment.”
It was gone.
“Stay?” Zivar said. “Let’s get out of here. Forget Kyros. You have the necklace to free the river—what do you need Kyros for?”
“She’s right,” Alibek said. “It would be nice if we could make it look like Kyros stole it, but the Weavers aren’t idiots—they’d probably figure out what happened. Just freeing the river would be enough of a disruption.”
There’s something they’re forgetting, I thought. Something they told me back when I first returned. It came to me a moment later. “My mother,” I said. “She’s with Kyros, isn’t she? I’m not leaving without my mother.”
“I thought you didn’t even like your mother,” Zivar said.
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to abandon her here!”
“No,” Tamar said. “You’re right. We’ll stay, and look for Andromeda.”
The djinn was back. “I’m not letting you in my mind, so don’t even ask,” I said. “You’ll have to tell us where to go as we fly down. Can you possess Kyros?”
“No. He has a strong will.” The djinn’s glimmer brightened for a moment. “Like you.”
We climbed back in to the palanquin and descended from the height. I felt pressure build in my ears as it had when I’d been diving to the bottom of the mountain reservoir. The djinn guided us to a tower; I recognized the enclosed garden where I’d passed time as a prisoner, below. “Within,” the djinn said when I pointed at a window.
“The rogue djinn may not be able to possess Kyros, but Zivar’s bound djinn could hold him,” I said. “Keep him from speaking—which is important, because he has a spell-chain.”
“It’s not going to be able to do that and hold up the palanquin at the same time,” Zivar said. “Let’s land this on the roof and go down the stairs.”
It was high noon. The sun was scorching hot on our heads as we climbed out of the cramped palanquin. I shaded my eyes with my hand as we went down the stairs from the roof. There was a single door at the bottom. “Is Kyros behind this door?” I whispered to the rogue djinn.
“Yes.”
I glanced at Zivar. She gripped her spell-chain; I could see her lips moving, instructing the djinn. She waited a moment, her eyes intent. Then she nodded.
I swung the door open.
And found myself face-to-face with Xanthe.