“This gate is sealed except when it is needed,” said Bareil. “Guards are unnecessary except under a direct assault.”

“Then how are we to get in?”

He smiled up at me, and whispered, “This is your house, my lord. The locks and seals will know you.”

I hadn’t considered that I could just walk in. I was not stealing into a place where I had no legitimate business. If I wanted, I could stroll through the front doors of this place and proclaim myself home-though I didn’t think that would be clever.

We slipped around the shadowed edges of the courtyard and came to the great wooden door banded with steel. When I laid my hand on the thick latch, barbs of enchantment pricked my arm all the way to the shoulder.

“Press down as you would on any door handle,” said Bareil. “It should open to your hand.”

I did so. Nothing happened.

The Dulcé frowned. “I don’t understand. No one could change the locks without your permission, and you used this gate many times when you were a boy.”

True… In my first nine years, no one had ever really cared where I was or what I did, but fussy courtiers and tutors would forever attempt to ingratiate themselves with my father by reporting on my ignorance and undisciplined behavior. So I had sneaked away from them, down the narrow stair through kitchens and barracks and through the open doorway into the cluttered courtyard that lay on the other side of this very gate, knowing that everything I wanted awaited me just beyond it: freedom and adventure, weapons, combat, fear, blood, and death… war. Out on the walls of Avonar my friends the soldiers stared over the walls at the misty gray wall that was the Zhid encampment, gulped from flasks of ale, and laughed. I had wanted to laugh at fear and blood and death. No one in the palace would teach me how, but my friends, the soldiers, had. Yes, this was my door, in my house.

I pressed down again. This time the brass handle moved smoothly and quietly, and the massive gate swung open without the slightest pressure from my hand.

Now I led Bareil. Across the courtyard, through the labyrinthine way to the stair behind the kitchens. Only a few voices echoed through the passages-guards and servants who cared for the palace itself and functionaries who performed the hard daily work of governing. No royalty had lived in the palace since I’d been taken to Exeget when I was nine.

Our destination was not the living quarters I had so rarely graced, but the Chamber of the Gate, buried deep in the roots of the mountain underneath the palace. Downward and inwards, through minor galleries and guest quarters, past armories and long-silent ballrooms, into the ancient heart of the palace, burrowed deep into the rock. The stone of these corridors had not been cut and laid by any mason, even one who could cut with his singing or polish with a brush of his hand. Rather the walls were native stone that had been shaped and smoothed until the sworls of jasper and lapis shone of their own colored light. My steps accelerated.

I thought we’d made a wrong turn when the passage we traversed ended in a blank wall. But before I could turn to Bareil, the stone shifted-a mightily unsettling sight-and revealed a door of age-darkened wood that swung open at my touch. I had forgotten the door wards. Beyond the door lay the circular chamber of white and rose, its ceiling lost in white frost plumes. Only when I stepped through the door could I see the Gate-a towering curtain of white flame, rippling, shifting, shimmering, reaching exuberantly for the heights in the uncertain light. Cold fire that left the room frigid and sparkling like the clearest of winter mornings. Rumbling fire, exploding geysers of flaming brilliance that created constantly shifting patterns. Though the fire didn’t terrify me as it had when I was twelve, it still took my breath away. This was the legacy of my ancestors, one endpoint of a link that spanned the universe itself. My soul swelled and thrilled and wept all at once with the glory of it.

Bareil gave me the rose-colored stone. As he had instructed, I roused it to glowing life, creating a pool of warmth in the hollow of my hand. Then, with will and power, I shaped the path of the Bridge that lay beyond the Gate, so that it would lead me to the stone that matched the one I held.

“Shall I await your return, my lord? No one will alter the Gate path while I live.”

I had to leave the pink stone behind to keep the return path open. If anyone removed it from the chamber or reworked my enchantment, then I would have to travel to the Exiles’ Gate-the mundane world’s counterpart of this, the Heir’s Gate-in order to return to Avonar. That might be a journey of many days, depending on where the Lady Seriana was to be found. But I dared not get separated from Bareil and the information he carried.

I shook my head, unable to speak while I held the enchantment in my mind. Motioning him to leave the stone and stay close, I stepped through the curtain of fire and onto the Bridge that was my singular inheritance.