convincing.
Peering around a stack of casks, she made herself keep still.
He had come to a gate.
It was green bronze, set deep in the wall, glistening with snail trails, corroded with age.
Great rivets studded it. Rusted chains hung across it. With a silent leap of her heart she saw the Havaarna eagle, its outspread wings almost lost under layers of verdigris.
Her father glanced around and she ducked back, breathless. Then he tapped a swift combination into the globe the eagle held; she heard a click.
Chains slid and swung, crashing down.
In a shower of spiderwebs and snails and dust y the gate juddered open.
She leaned out, desperate to see what lay behind, to see Inside, but there was only darkness and a smell, a sour, metallic stink, and she had to dive back hastily as he turned.
When she looked again he was gone, and the gate was closed.
Claudia leaned back on the wet bricks and breathed out a soundless whistle of damp breath.
At last. Finally.
She had found it.
THE ALARM screamed in their teeth, in their nerves, in their bones. Finn thought it would bring on a fit; terrified, he scrambled for the slit, against the icy wind that howled through it.
The Beast was gone. Even as Keiro climbed over Finn and grabbed Gildas, k dissolved; suddenly they were all tumbling in a cascade of fragments, and then they slammed against the wall, a chain of bodies held only by Finn's grip.
He yelled with the agony. 'I can't hold you!'
'You bloody will!' Keiro gasped.
Terror stretched him. Keiro's hand slid, an agonizing jerk. He couldn't do it. His hand scorched.
A shadow fell on him. He thought it was the Beast's head, or a great eagle, but as he twisted in despair and stared up, he saw k swoop in through the slit, humming with contained power, a silver ship, an ancient sailing ship, its sails a patchwork of cobweb, its ropes tangled and dangling over the side.
It loomed above them, and very slowly, a hatch opened in its base. A basket was lowered, swaying on four immense cables, and above it a face looked over the side of the ship, a hideous, gargoyle face, deformed by goggles and a bizarre breathing apparatus, 'Get in,' it rasped. 'Before I change my mind.'
How they did it he had no idea, but in seconds Keiro had tumbled into the wildly rocking basket; Gildas hauled after him. Attia leaped, pausing only for a moment, and then Finn let himself drop, his mind so black with relief that he fell without fear, and didn't feel himself land, until a welcome silence exploded into Keiro's yell in his ear. 'Get off me, Finn!'
He struggled up. Attia was bending over him, concerned. 'Are you all right?'
'... Yes.'
He wasn't, he knew, but he leaned past her to the edge and he looked over, giddy with the swaying, the icy wind.
They were out of the Cave, above the plain, miles above the City. It lay like a toy on the plain, and from this height they could see the scorch marks and the fumaroles around it, as if the land itself was the skin of the Beast that rumbled beneath, fuming with wrath.
Clouds wisped across, vapors of metallic yellow, a rainbow.
Finn felt Gildas grab him, the old man's voice delirious with joy, snatched away by the wind. 'Look up, boy! Sec! There are Sapienti still, with power!'
He twisted his head. And saw, as the silver ship spiraled upward, a tower so narrow and impossibly high that it seemed like a needle balanced upright on a cloud, its top glimmering with light. He felt his breath frost and condense on the rail, crack and splinter, each ice shard polarized by the tower, each crystal aligned as if by a magnet. Gasping in the thin air, he gripped the old man's arm, shaking with cold and fear, not daring to look down again, seeing only the minure landing place at the needle's tip grow bigger, the slowly revolving globe at its apex.
And yet, high as they were, above them for miles and miles, the night of Incarceron extended into the freezing sky.
THE HAMMERING woke Jared in a cold sweat of fear.
For a moment he had no idea what it was, and then he heard her whisper, 'Jared!
Quickly, it's me!'
He sat up and stumbled over, tugging the scanner off the frame, fumbling for the latch. As soon as he lifted it, the door flew open, almost hitting him in the face; then Claudia was inside, breathless and dust-smeared, a filthy shawl around her silk dress.
'What is it?' he gasped. 'Claudia, has he found out? Does he know we have the Key?'
'No. No.' She had no breath; she plumped down on the bed and bent double, clutching her side.
'Then what?'
She raised her hand, making him wait; after a moment, when she could speak and looked up, he saw her face was lit with triumph.
He stepped back, suddenly wary. 'What have you done, Claudia?'
Her smile was bitter. 'What I've longed to do for years. I've found the door to his secret.
The entrance to Incarceron.'
A WORLD THAT HANGS IN SPACE
22
'Where are the leaders?' Sapphique asked.
'In their fortresses,' the swan replied.
'And the poets?'
'Lost in dreams of other worlds.'
'And the craftsmen?'
'Forging machines to challenge the darkness.'
'And the Wise, who made the world?'
The swan lowered its black neck sadly.
'Dwindled to crones and sorcerers in towers.'
Finn carefully touched one of the spheres. It showed him his own face, swollen grotesquely in delicate lilac glass. Behind him he saw Attia come through the archway and stare around.
''What is this?' She stood amazed among the bubbles that hung from the ceiling, and he saw how clean she was this morning, her hair scrubbed, the new clothes making her seem younger than ever.
'His laboratory. Look in here.'
Some of the spheres contained whole landscapes. In one, a colony of small golden-furred creatures slumbered peacefully or dug in sandy hillocks. Atria spread her hands on it, flat on the glass. 'It feels warm.'
He nodded. 'Did you sleep?'
'A bit. I kept waking up because it was so quiet. You?'
He nodded, not wanting to say that his exhaustion had made him fall onto the small white bed and sleep at
