“Nim!” Farr shouted. “The mask. Take his mask!”

“Mother?” came Nim’s quavering voice.

The sorcerer looked up, trying to paw his way farther up Nim’s legs to reach the edge of the bridge. There was a sound of cloth rending as Nim’s robe tore in Farr’s grip.

Vani was halfway across the bridge. “Do as he says, daughter!”

Hanging by the back of her robe, Nim reached down and pulled at the sorcerer’s mask. It was loose, and came away easily in her hands, revealing the scarred ruin of the sorcerer’s face.

“Let go of me!” she shouted, and hit the sorcerer in the face with the mask.

The Scirathi let out a cry of pain. His hands gave an involuntary spasm, then tried to regain their grip on Nim. Too late. Weakened, slicked with blood, the sorcerer’s fingers slipped free. His robe billowed out like black wings, and with a gurgling cry the Scirathi vanished into the chasm.

“I can’t hold on!” Grace cried as Farr’s body started to slide over the edge. However, the dimness unfolded, and Vani was there; she pulled Farr up with one hand, hauling him to his feet.

“Mother!” Nim cried, holding out her hands.

“My daughter,” Vani said, taking the girl and holding her tight. Nim’s arms wrapped around her neck, and the girl, so brave a moment before, began to sob. Carefully, Vani, Grace, and Farr made their way back over the bridge to the others. A quick examination revealed that most of the blood on Nim was likely the sorcerer’s. There was a small cut on the girl’s arm, but it was already scabbed over.

Vani held Nim tightly, her own face—usually so stoic— streaked with tears. “I promise no one will ever harm you again.”

“I know,” the girl murmured, calm now, though her cheeks were still wet. She leaned her head on Vani’s shoulder and turned her gray-gold eyes toward Travis.

Travis started to reach toward Nim, then changed his motion and took Grace’s hand in his. “How?” he said simply.

Grace held up her free hand. In it was a silver coin, a symbol engraved on each side. Even without looking closely, Travis knew what the two runes were; one was the rune Eldh, and the other was the rune Earth.

“How did you get that?” he said, reaching into the pocket of his serafi. However, his fingers found the silver coin he always carried with him.

“It’s Hadrian’s,” Grace said in answer to Travis’s confused look, handing the coin to Farr.

Then Travis understood. Brother Cy must have given the silver coin to Farr before transporting him to Eldh, just as the strange preacher once gave the two halves of the coin Travis now carried to him and Grace. The coins were bound runes— ones of unusual power. They had the ability to return the bearer to his home world, to the place envisioned. When Farr and Grace leaped into the abyss, Farr must have used the coin to transport them to Earth as they fell. Then, just as quickly, Grace had used the coin to bring them back to Eldh, only this time on the bridge just behind the sorcerer. It was brilliant.

And Farr had thought of it, not Travis. A strange, hollow feeling gnawed at his chest.

“Magic is getting weaker,” Travis said, looking at Farr. “When you jumped, how did you know the coin would still work?”

“I didn’t,” Farr said, the words crisp. “Though I had an idea it would. The Imsari still function, and the coins seem to be forged of a magic, if not so deep, then deep all the same. It was an educated guess.”

Travis squeezed Grace’s hand. “That was incredibly foolish.” Despite the gnawing feeling in his chest, he smiled. “And incredibly brave.”

“More the first one than the second,” she said. “I wasn’t sure Farr’s coin would work for me. But it did. I suppose because I had been granted one once.”

Where did you go, Grace?Travis leaned in close to her. You were on Earth for a few seconds. Where were you?

By the expression on her face she had heard his thoughts, but she looked away.

Vani moved to Farr. She laid a hand on his arm; her gold eyes shone like moons. “I can never repay you.”

He shrugged. “I don’t want payment. A simple thank you will suffice. For Grace as well as for me.”

Vani nodded. “Will all my heart, I thank you both.” However, as she spoke, her eyes were fixed only on Farr.

“So now what?” Larad said to Travis. “Do we leave, or will you enter the throne room?”

His words shocked Travis. He had been so focused on getting to Morindu to retrieve Nim that he had not considered what might happen if they succeeded. Three thousand years ago, secrets of sorcery had been buried with Morindu. Now the city had been uncovered again. What might he find if he entered the throne room? What wondrous powers might he gain?

None of that matters, Travis. You didn’t come to Morindu for magic, but to find Nim. Now you have, and only one thing is important—finding the Last Rune and binding the rifts in the sky. If it’s not too late.

He opened his mouth to say this, but before he could Nim let out a gasp, her eyes widening into circles of fear.

Vani gave Nim a worried look. “What is it, daughter?”

“She’s here,” the girl whispered.

“Who do you mean? Who’s here?”

“The gold lady.”

Nim pointed, and all of them turned around. On the far side of the bridge, a woman stepped from the triangular door in the side of the gilded tetrahedron. She appeared young—no more than twenty-five. A shift made of glittering beads dripped over the curves of her luscious body, and a red gem adorned her brow. Her hair and eyes were both black as onyx, and her skin was a deep, burnished gold.

Avhir breathed an oath in an ancient tongue, and a sweat broke out on Travis’s skin, as if the temperature inside the dome had suddenly shot up.

“It cannot be,” Vani said, her voice thick with awe. “Yet there is only one woman who could have entered there. Ti’an.”

Farr gave her a piercing look. “Who is Ti’an?”

“The wife of the god-king Orú,” Vani said.

The gold-skinned woman sauntered toward them across the bridge.

38.

Thunder rattled the panes of the library’s windows as Deirdre shut the journal and leaned back in the chair. What time was it? How long had she spent reading and rereading the pages covered with Albrecht’s elegant handwriting? The day had seemed to grow darker as it went on, and the light of the tin lantern had receded to a flickering circle around the desk. By the cramp in her neck and the pounding between her temples, hours had passed. However, the gnawing in her gut was not from hunger.

“It’s all a lie,” she murmured to the gloom.

Everything she had been taught about the Seekers, everything she had believed in—the Motto, the Book and the Vow, the Nine Desiderata—all of it was an elaborate deception, perpetuated over centuries, and wrought so that the Seekers would diligently perform the work of the Philosophers without ever knowing—or even guessing at—the truth about their nature.

We’re puppets, Deirdre. For four centuries they’ve been pulling our strings. We’ve been doing their work, helping themget closer to their magic elixir—a potion that will grant them true immortality. And now they’ve nearly got it.

Anger rose in her, but it was drowned by a wave of sickness. To be betrayed in this way—it was like discovering the world was flat after all, and the sun was a hot coal no more than five hundred miles away. The lie had made so much more sense than the reality that had been revealed to her, yet much as she craved to go back to not knowing, it was impossible. She could not go back. Knowledge was a knife that cut deeply, and whose wounds never healed. The Philosophers were charlatans, nothing more.

Except he was different than the others. Marius.

Deirdre reached out a shaking hand and brushed the cover of the journal. She had read the final few lines so many times she did not need to turn to that page to see them; they were burned into her brain.