26

Isolde turned twenty-five in front of a breathing door.

The stone moved inward every nine heartbeats. Its edge expelled warm air and closed again. Nine circles surrounded the arch, joined by channels as fine as veins.

“The station was built around a natural confluence,” Oren said. “The door regulates the pressure.”

“It also hides the fact that it’s still active,” Beren added.

The entrance lay beneath a quarry where patches of snow remained.

After the avalanche, Kaoran had spent three weeks at the medical post with a tube between his ribs and a fever.

In the fourth, he could walk to the door.

In the fifth, he began arguing with the healer.

In the sixth, he received permission to travel by cart.

The high routes stayed closed until the thaw.

They waited in valley shelters, gathering supplies and news of the stations.

Then they spent seven weeks traveling toward West-9, with detours around commission posts and the stops his chest required.

Summer had caught up with them before they found the door.

His shoulder had knit at a slight angle. His breathing still whistled when he climbed slopes. Kaoran rejected any description that included the word recovery.

“I’m alive,” he said. “The rest is administration.”

He waited on the surface with Tavra. The two lookouts had returned to the shelter to prepare for the captives’ arrival.

Alcen and Sera had taken a route toward the families of West-4. Before leaving, Alcen drew the station’s mechanisms. He also provided a list of technicians who could shut down the plates.

Oren had chosen to return to West-9.

So had Beren.

Rheskan accompanied them as far as the quarry. On the first night, he rose during a storm and followed a pressure east. He had been gone twelve days. Isolde received brief flashes: rock, wind, a blue light beneath snow. Then the bond went quiet.

Rheskan had known where to find her since their reunion. Isolde received the image of the mountains and stopped following the bond. He would show her the route when he wanted to come closer.

Oren set his palm against the door.

“We need human fire to open it.”

“How much?” Isolde asked.

“The bearer from Cendral was the intended key.”

“Me.”

“Yes.”

Oren lowered his hand.

“Going in may alert every station.”

“The western cores have fallen out of synchronization,” Beren said. “We have an hour before another route detects the change.”

“Forty minutes,” Oren corrected. “Varek will have adjusted the response.”

Isolde looked at the arch. Ydrael existed behind that breathing, leagues away beneath a different mountain. The confluence carried something of him to the door.

She pressed both hands against it.

Heat left her chest and traveled through the stone’s veins. The nine circles lit. The door inhaled once.

Then it opened.

The air inside smelled of iron, stagnant water, and burned skin.

West-9 descended around a shaft. Metal walkways joined nine platforms. In the center, a column of blue stone plunged until it vanished into darkness. Cables and chains ran from it to the walls.

Three chairs stood on the first platform.

People were tied to them.

A woman raised her head. Her hair was shaved, and circular marks covered her temples. The other two figures remained still.

Beren ran toward them.

“Nara!”

The woman tried to speak. A dry sound came from her throat.

Oren examined the clamps.

“They’re living conductors.”

“Since when?” Isolde asked.

Beren found a tablet beneath the chair.

“Nara’s been here four months. The others…”

He touched the first man’s neck. Then the second woman’s.

“They’re dead.”

Nara moved two fingers.

A chain answered at the bottom of the shaft.

The sound came from very far away.

Ydrael woke inside the stone.

Isolde felt an eye open beneath layers of rock. A closed claw. The weight of rings around a neck. Then came a wordless order: leave, cut the bond, get away.

The urgency filled her mouth with the taste of iron.

“He wants us to leave,” she said.

Oren looked at the column.

“The station has started charging.”

“We get Nara out and shut it down.”

Beren inserted a key into the first clamp. The metal refused to turn.

“It needs pressure from the shaft.”

Isolde approached the edge.

A stairway descended beside the column. Blue plates pulsed below. Every pulse made the door breathe.

“I’ll go,” she said.

“The station is waiting for you,” Oren replied.

“It’s also expecting me to leave Nara in the chair.”

Isolde took a rope, the short knife, and three iron wedges.

Beren handed her a lamp.

“The control platform is twenty meters down. If the column turns white, you have one minute.”

“One minute to do what?”

“To be out.”

Isolde began descending.

On the fifth step, she found a claw mark.

Four fresh grooves crossed the stone. A red scale lay inside one, still free of the dust covering the steps.

Rheskan had passed through during their separation.

Isolde touched the scale. She received a faint flash: the dragon inside another tunnel, clawing a wall as blue light tried to close around him. The direction changed before she could fix it.

Her fingers loosened on the lamp. She had been sharing routes with him again since Arkhe; now those twelve days without seeing him had a fresh trail.

She held the relief beside her worry about the plates. She would have to discover where the tunnel continued.

“Rheskan came through here,” she shouted upward.

“Did he get out?” Beren asked.

Isolde looked at the grooves. They pointed down.

“He kept going.”

She put away the scale and continued.

The stairs ended at a circular platform. Three wheels surrounded the column. The first regulated the door. The second held the conductors’ clamps. The third bore an engraved crown without points.

Rheskan had clawed the second.

Isolde set a wedge between the wheel’s teeth. The metal was cold. When she touched it, the urgency returned.

Run.

The impulse rose from her chest into her throat. She saw the door closing, Kaoran wounded on the surface, and Rheskan trapped beneath another mountain. Fear ordered a retreat in her own voice.

Beneath it, something slower appeared.

A claw rested on stone. It waited.

Ydrael.

Isolde stopped turning the wheel. Her fist was closed on the iron, and she was about to call to Beren to abandon Nara.

The claw remained still.

“Wait,” she whispered.

She searched for the image of the exit among all those crowding her chest. She recognized the door they had just crossed and Kaoran as she had left him above. She could hear herself giving orders before asking the dragon anything.

Then came Nara’s chair. An open chain beside it. The impulse carried a different weight, patient and exhausted.

Isolde loosened her grip.

“I’m afraid the door will close.”

The claw settled a little closer.

She had mistaken the urgency to leave for a will coming from outside. Ydrael waited as she separated the two. Above, Nara tapped again with two fingers.

Isolde listened to the rhythm until she could count it.

Beren was trying to keep Nara awake. He spoke to her between taps, and his voice reached the platform.

Isolde placed both hands on the second wheel.

“I’m going to open the clamps.”

Ydrael showed her the column full of pressure. If she turned the wheel, the discharge would pass through him.

“Can you move away?”

The answer was a neck immobilized by rings.

“Then wait.”

Isolde looked for another route. The chains entered the column through nine slots. One was broken, marked by Rheskan. Another bore dried blood. The third vibrated to Nara’s rhythm.

She set the second wedge in the chair’s slot.

“Beren, turn the key when I tell you.”

“Ready.”

Isolde slipped the knife beneath the chain and pushed.

Blue pressure entered through the blade. Her arm went rigid. A line of cold advanced toward her shoulder. She let go before losing her fingers.

The chain returned to the slot.

Ydrael showed her fire behind a wall.

“The plate absorbs it.”

The image changed. The fire passed through water before touching the metal.

Isolde looked down. A channel circled the platform. A film of mineral oil covered the water.

“You want me to cool the chain.”

Ydrael moved one claw.

Isolde heated the knife away from the slot. She plunged the blade into the channel. Water boiled around the metal. When its temperature fell, she slipped it beneath the chain again.

The plate tried to absorb heat that had already dispersed. Isolde used the knife as a lever.

“Now.”

Beren turned the key.

Nara’s clamp opened.

The discharge ran through the column.

Ydrael roared.

The whole stone answered. Isolde fell onto the platform. Her body arched under pain that belonged to the dragon and came with centuries of exhaustion. She saw nine chambers, thousands of links, and darkness crossed by red seams.

She saw Ydrael’s eyes.

They were ancient, golden, and awake.

“Nara is free,” Isolde said.

The dragon opened a claw.

Beren lifted the woman from the chair. Oren released the bodies of the other conductors. The tablets fell to the floor.

The column changed from blue to white.

“One minute!” Beren shouted.

Isolde looked for the stairs.

Ydrael showed her the third wheel.

“We have to leave.”

The crown without points began turning by itself.

“Ydrael, close the bond.”

The dragon kept his eyes open.

“Withdraw.”

The chain around his neck tightened. He pushed against it.

He refused the order.

Isolde felt his decision with a clarity that left no room to confuse it with fear, reflex, or her own desire. Ydrael wanted to hold the channel. He had waited years to reach a mind capable of listening to him.

“The station is going to break.”

He showed her a key beneath a city, a dark river, and roots of stone touching the Citadel. Then he showed her the prison. Cendral’s mountain covered part of it. The rest stretched beneath the kingdom like a buried wound.

The door could be opened from Caleryon.

Isolde saw a mountain crossed by a silver line. She remembered the seal on the tube from Skarde, the warning she had read before marrying Darian.

Cael.