23 #4

Silen dictated the accounts. The boys copied figures and seals. Tavra read the names of the people transferred. Each person checked a page before handing it over. Kaoran organized the packets along routes that shared no bridge, harbor, or family.

Isolde laid out the chronology on the floor.

First came the mine purchases and the transfer of technicians. Then came the shafts, the chains, and the first disappearances. Cendral concentrated the battle over a prepared confluence. The rupture fed the taxes, the military expansion, and the regency. The project kept growing under civil names.

Nine stations surrounded an empty space.

“The Scar,” Alcen said.

“Do they all feed the same point?” Isolde asked.

“At first, they looked for small fractures. Varek changed the design after Cendral. Now the stations push toward the center.”

Beren looked up from the copy.

“A complete opening.”

Alcen nodded.

“The new cores can be synchronized.”

“When?”

“When West-9 receives the last conductor.”

“What conductor?”

Alcen pointed to Rheskan, who kept watch from a hill.

“Dragon blood bonded to human fire. They obtained a sample at Cendral.”

Isolde put a hand to the scar beneath her ribs.

During the battle, she had bled on the stones. So had Rheskan.

“They brought us there to test the bond.”

“Varek’s order spoke of a bearer,” Alcen said. “I never saw the name.”

Kaoran leaned over him.

“Did Darian know about that order?”

“His military reports ended with the choice of ground. The technical pages traveled by another channel.”

Beren brought the renewals to the edge of the drawing.

“Four years of orders here.”

Isolde placed the first beside the military report so both dates were visible.

Kaoran watched her in silence.

Isolde completed the last line of the chronology: full opening, date pending.

Ydrael moved beneath the stone.

The drying shed’s floor vibrated. Jars knocked against one another. Rheskan raised his wings and looked east.

Isolde received an ancient will, exhausted by centuries of pressure. Ydrael had sensed the drawing of the nine stations through her. He showed her a fissure filled with blue roots and a chain descending far beyond Cendral.

He also showed her a door.

The door’s seal had been erased.

“He knows we’ve found the pattern,” Isolde said.

“Does he want us to go to him?” Neira asked.

Isolde listened to the pressure.

“He wants us to stop pushing from outside. Every core we attack without shutting off its feed can open another fissure.”

Alcen covered his face.

“That’s what we did for years.”

“Now you’ll tell us how to stop it.”

“Oren has the shutdown plans.”

The Pass of the Missing appeared on the map once more.

The healer finished bandaging Kaoran and approached Isolde.

“Your master needs rest.”

“He’ll have it.”

“In a bed. Under a roof.”

Kaoran pointed at the drying shed.

“I see both.”

“For weeks.”

“Snow will close the pass in a few days,” Alcen said. “Sera and Oren will be trapped there.”

Isolde looked at Kaoran.

“You can go with Neira.”

“I can choose my own path.”

“The healer has to examine your shoulder before we leave,” Isolde said.

“She examined it last night.”

“And today you can barely lift the bowl.”

Kaoran looked at the hand resting on the table. He moved it a little, as though he needed to test it away from her gaze.

“If I stay, you’ll be without someone who knows the old passes.”

“You can show them to Beren.”

The answer surprised her with how hard it was to offer him that way out. She wanted to take him with her, and she wanted him a hundred leagues from the plates. For hours, she had been turning both desires into orders.

The healer brought over a chair.

“I’ll tell you how far he can travel. Then you can decide with that fact before you.”

Kaoran sat down. During the examination, he closed his eyes and stopped arguing. Isolde waited beside the map, without answering for him when the woman asked where it hurt.

When she finished, they agreed on a cart to the foot of the pass, stops at the first sign of worsening pain, and another examination at the guides’ shelter. Kaoran would teach Beren the routes in case he had to stay behind.

“You’ll be angry if I get off early,” he said.

“Very.”

“Then I’ll give you warning.”

Isolde moved the map closer to his chair.

At noon, the nine packets left.

Neira took her mother and a copy toward Bren. Silen left with two miners. Yssa received another in a secluded cove. Tavra gave three to families from the stations. The boys took different paths under new names.

Beren chose to accompany Isolde.

“I found my family,” he said. “Oren and Sera are still inside the same chain.”

Alcen walked beside him with the rope loose around his waist.

“If my daughter is dead, I want to know where they left her.”

“She’ll get there alive if Varek still needs you,” Tavra said.

“Afterward, you can decide what to do with me.”

Tavra put away her knife.

“Afterward.”

Isolde kept the copper plate and a complete copy. She avoided carrying originals. The evidence now had nine custodians and a road to Caleryon.

They still lacked the seal that turned the pattern into an order.

The first snow fell as they left the coast.

In the mountains, the Pass of the Missing began to close.