“I think it’s time you answered a few questions, friend,” Anders said.

Deirdre gave him a sharp look. Was he trying to take over the questioning, to keep them from learning everything they might?

“I’ll do this,” she said. Anders gave her a surprised look, but before he could protest she bent over the sorcerer.

“Where is the arch you stole from Crete?”

The sorcerer made a gurgling sound low in her throat.

“I know you can understand me. You just spoke English a moment ago. Now answer me.”

The gurgling became words. “I will tell you nothing.”

She was wrong about that. The drug on the dart had been a potent mixture, one intended not only to paralyze the body but soften the mind, to make it pliant and cooperative.

“Where is the arch you stole from Crete?” Deirdre repeated. “If you tell us, we’ll give you a drop of the blood. His blood.”

Beltan gave her a sharp look, but she shook her head.

“I do not know,” the sorcerer hissed. “Now give me the blood of power! It will heal me.”

Deirdre made her voice hard. “You’re lying.”

The Scirathi muttered in a language she did not understand, then spoke again in English. “I do not know, I tell you. We gave it to them, and they took it. That is all.”

Anders raised an eyebrow, and Beltan let out a low grunt.

“They were working for someone else,” Deirdre said.

Beltan leaned over the sorcerer, gripping her shoulders. “Who did you give the arch to? Tell us!”

The drug had taken full effect by then. The sorcerer spoke rapidly, almost babbling, spittle trickling from her lipless mouth. “I do not know who they are. I do not care who they are. The arch means nothing to us now. We need a gate no longer. The worlds draw near. Soon the walls between them will come tumbling down, and we shall return. We shall take what should have been ours long ago. And both the worlds will tremble before the might of the Scirathi.”

Anders let out a low whistle. “That doesn’t exactly sound like cause for celebration.”

It didn’t. The sorcerer’s words sent a chill through Deirdre, even though she didn’t fully understand them. She decided to try a different tactic. “If you’re so powerful, why steal the arch for these others? Why do someone else’s bidding?”

“Knowledge.” The sorcerer writhed in Beltan’s grip. “They gave us knowledge we did not possess. We did not know she was here—we did not guess it. But they told us where to find him, and of the blood of the scarab that flows in him. We sought him out, to slay him so that he cannot stand in our way. But instead we found her. Like a perfect jewel she is, one beyond worth. We were dazzled, and so we took her. . . .”

“Nim!” Beltan roared. “Where is she? Where have you taken her?”

He shook the sorcerer—violently, so that her head flopped— and Deirdre gripped his arms, forcing him to stop. If he killed her, they would learn nothing.

The sorcerer let out a high, keening sound. At first Deirdre thought it was a sound of grief. Then she realized it was laughter.

“They have taken the child unto the Dark,” the sorcerer croaked. “After so long, all its secrets will be ours. She is the key that will open the way. . . .”

Deirdre bent over the sorcerer. “Nim is the key that will open the way to what?”

“Him . . .” The sorcerer’s head lolled back and forth, eyes fluttering shut. Her voice was nearly drowned in a wet gurgle. “The arch . . . blood so near . . . the seven cannot . . . be far.”

They were losing her. “The seven what?” Deirdre said, shaking the sorcerer herself in desperation.

“Sleep,” the sorcerer breathed in a faint exhalation. “Sleep . . .”

Her body shuddered once, then went still.

25.

The sun beat down on them like a molten fist. They had been in this place only minutes, and already Travis could feel his skin beginning to crisp. He used a hand to shade his eyes against the glare as he gazed up at the top of the sand dune.

“Can you see anything from up there?” The air parched his throat and lungs.

A dark form glided down the lee side of the dune toward him. “We are in Moringarth,” Vani said. “Of that much I am certain. We are not in the wasteland of the Morgolthi, so our circumstance is not as bad as it might be. But we are near its edge, I would guess, so it is not good either.”

The Morgolthi. Travis had heard tales of it among the Mournish. They called it the Hungering Land. Eons ago, it had been a land of prosperous city-states, strung like glistening pearls along the River Emyr. The river was the lifeblood of ancient Amún, carrying traders between the cities and bringing water to the fertile farmlands along its banks.

Then came the War of the Sorcerers, when the wielders of magic rose up against the god-kings who ruled the city-states and sought to usurp their place. War consumed city after city, and the river ran red with the blood of ten thousand sorcerers.

In the final conflagration, the land was shattered, and the course of the River Emyr was changed, so that its life-giving waters flowed west to the sea, not east across Amún, and the once lush land of city-states became a sun-blasted desert, a place of thirst and death.

Dead though it was, the Morgolthi had given birth in an unexpected way. Over time, the blood of sorcerers that had drenched the sand dried, became dust, blew into the air, and was carried by the wind to the lands of Al-Amún, where civilization had sprung up anew, and across the sea to Tarras and the other cities of southern Falengarth.

The dust was breathed in by thousands upon thousands of people, and power yet lingered in it, for when enough people had taken the dust into them, their collective hopes, and desires, and fears became manifest. So the gods of the Mystery Cults were born. . . .

There was a sharp but distant sound, like a far-off gunshot.

“Travis!”

Only when pain crackled through his jaw did he realize Vani had slapped him.

He staggered back. “What was that for?”

“You did not respond to my words. You must guard yourself in this place. It is said the air of the Morgolthi is strangely sweet to a sorcerer, that it can intoxicate him like wine.”

“But I’m not a—”

Travis clenched his jaw shut as she gave him a piercing look. He tried to breathe more shallowly and not to think of the powdery traces of blood that must still swirl on the air in this place. “The sorcerer must have brought Nim here. Once it’s been opened, a gate has only one exit. That means we can’t be more than a few minutes behind them. Did you see their footprints from up there?”

“A few minutes is all the wind needs to scour the sand clear. We will not be able to track them that way.”

“So what do we do?”

“The sorcerer will go north, toward human habitation and water. It is his only choice to survive, and ours. We must do the same.”

“Great,” Travis said. “And which way exactly is north?” He turned around. Sand dunes undulated away from them in every direction.

Vani looked up at the sky. Sweat slicked her coppery skin, and she had unbuttoned the top of her leather jerkin. “The sun has risen in the time since we came through the gate. East lies in that direction, so this way is north. We must hope we are not far from a settlement. Come.”

She started along the trough between two dunes, keeping close to the lee side of the dune on their left, out of the worst of the wind. However, they were soon forced to abandon the path when it veered east, and instead they struggled up the windward side of a dune. Sand hissed through the air and made Travis think of the bodiless spirits of the morndari. They could pass through solid matter, and the sand seemed able to do the same. It dug into any bit of exposed skin, stung their eyes, filtered through their clothing, and worked its way deep into their ears and noses.