Leaning over his upturned face, she brushed aside his bangs and dabbed the sweat from his brow before kissing it. “I won’t be long.”
His eyes opened to stare up into hers and his hand swept through her hair before falling to his chest in fatigue. He did his best to smile, but in his gaze remained a great untouchable sadness. Taking the everbright lantern off the floor, she headed for the stairs with the wind following in her wake, leaving Athan alone in darkness save for the pale moonlight reaching down through ruin and shadow to embrace him.
30
The stone steps carved into the bedrock circled downward and ended at a small puddle of water that had gathered from the surface. Dnara held out the lantern, illuminating a carved granite room whose ceiling had begun to bulge and crack with tree roots now hanging downward like living stalactites. It smelled of damp and fungi, and a patch of white mushrooms crawled up the wall. Across from the stairs stood part of the once ornate outer wooden door, its painted carvings long deformed by mold and moisture. Only a third of the door closest to the hinges remained, looking as if someone had taken an axe to the rest of it.
“Keeper Ishkar would not approve,” Dnara muttered.
Pushing past the rotten wood, which flaked off with the gentlest touch, she came upon the intact inner door made of metal and centered with a large circular locking mechanism. Unlike the rest of the tower and the wooden door now at her back, the metal door gleamed under the lantern light without a speck of rust. Placing her palm to the door, she was surprised to find it warm despite the frigid chill filling the underground space. It also hummed with a vibration that buzzed through her fingertips, making the hair on her arms stand up and her scalp tingle.
Pulling her hand away, she momentarily wrestled with the urge to leave whatever ghosts existed beyond the door to their cloistered secrets. Holding the lantern up, she wasn’t even sure she could open such a large, heavy door on her own. And then there was the lock...
Inhaling deep, she shoved her doubts aside. She’d come too far and at too great a cost to give up now. She placed her palm back against the warm metal, closed her eyes and focused on remembering how Keeper Ishkar opened the door. It felt like an entire lifetime ago, the last time she’d been down in this place, trailing meekly behind Keeper Ishkar’s robes with a cold, buzzing collar around her neck.
Yes. That’s what the sensation from the door reminded her of: the low hum of a starstone. It was that same unceasing buzz, that same relentless vibration, ever present and uninterrupted; a constant in her life from one day to the next until the great wind had come and released her. That same wind curled around her ankles, billowing her skirts and winding its way up her body. No longer afraid, she welcomed its presence, smiled at its caress, and guided it through her hand to the door.
She could feel it flowing through the carved runes and lined patterns on the door, and in her mind she could see it. The runes and patterns illuminated with the soft glow of magic, all roads leading to the central lock. Whispered words called to her, asking to be spoken louder than the wind could express on its own. With another deep inhale, she opened her mouth and gave voice to the wind.
“Ilashn’i’nahsli.” Her voice resonated deep, speaking the word forwards as another voice spoke it backwards, ending at the other’s beginning and forming an infinite loop.
The door grew hotter, the illuminated runes brightened enough to blind her closed eyes, and the lock clicked as it turned counter-clockwise three-hundred and sixty degrees until it ended where it had begun. The buzzing stopped and the room dimmed until the everbright lantern regained its dominance over the darkening runes. The wind withdrew with one last playful tug on her hair, and she opened her eyes to an understanding of the words she had spoken.
“Welcome home, dearest child,” she whispered aloud, the words translated forwards, then she backtracked and read the words backwards to give them an entirely new meaning. “Answers await within.”
Dearest child? Surly that couldn’t be her. And what a strange language, to form such complex messages. She wondered at the work that must go into crafting those words, forming their exact letters, syllables and emphasis like the ingredients in a spell. And then, with a touch of shock, she wondered how she had come to know such a language.
The wind, Dnara assured herself. It was the only thing that made sense as she stood before the unlocked door. Or, a book she’d read on some night secreted away from Keeper Ishkar. A book she hadn’t been allowed to read, making her speaking the password feel like a lie. She was no one’s dearest child. The answers waiting beyond the door had not been intended for her.
“Probably Henrick,” she muttered the name of the redheaded apprentice who seemed to have been Keeper Ishkar’s favorite. “He always has to tattle when he finds me with a book, and he always has that arrogant grin that-”
Had. He had that grin, she reminded herself. Henrick, for all his annoying tendencies, was most likely dead. Judging from the ruins upstairs and the pieces to this puzzle she’d begun to put together, Henrick had been dead a very long time, if he’d ever truly existed at all. Unexpectedly, a knot
