First Apprentice

Chapter 15

Light exploded around me in streaking comets and suns as if Joel's summons called down the heavens. Maybe it did.

I had traversed the Gates before. Uncle Manfred visited Marstallis, the Marstow Clan's abandoned world, every summer. Grandfather despised camping in all forms, something about patrolling and spending centuries living in a tent. Traveling through Gates requires linking one gate's seal with another. Endellion likened it to handing off a baton using people instead of sticks.

This wasn't traveling.

Selim touched my mind. A light show morphed into a sea cliff. "My original anchor point," he whispered. I blinked and his presence disappeared.

I replayed the scene and matched it to the one around me. Joel wasn't traveling as a sealer, I realized. He manipulated the Gates and their subplanes as if he were a gate himself.

"Not a gate," Joel whispered in my ear as the light merged into a pinpoint, "a master guardian". Fingers interlaced with mine, he raised our hands and touched the circle of light.

The light shimmered.

Shadowy figures raced around us, faceless and aura-less. A gate I had only seen in my dreams loomed in the center of a cavern. A chill swept through me when I spotted the scorch marks radiating out from the seal as if someone doused her in water then struck her with lightning, repeatedly. Other places were chiseled like they tried cutting the seal away and failed. Black soot coated her surface so thick I couldn't tell if she was wood or stone. I suspected wood though.

According to legend, Melantha became a gate alone. Multiple souls meant stone like the Central Keystone's obsidian. Even if they later consume additional souls, singles are always wood.

Praying my imagination was playing a nasty trick on me, I blinked. The gate remained in all her dying glory.

For years, Endellion and Grandfather theorized about inexperienced sealers, magically weak maintainers, planned decade, and a litany of other excuses for what I felt each night. Endellion said the gate instinctively called to me because she sensed my power while Grandfather wondered if she was one of my ancestors. Seeing her for the first time confirmed my worst nightmares.

This was deliberate, meticulous, and planned with each scar building on another.

Inflicting such wounds required forcing the gate to remain in a single spot for long stretches of time, which was only possible at the anchor point. The Dracon famously built their council chambers and then their capital around hers. They watched someone do this to her. They condoned it.

A primal roar rent the air. My throat vibrated. Joel pushed me behind him. I glanced down at my hands. Scales and claws. When did I shift?

"Alannah?" Joel whispered.

"This isn't natural," I whispered to him. "They're torturing her to death. Those idiots are trying to start another war."

"I know."

Left unsaid was the devastation caused by a keystone's death. Each gate created a subplane or a world as the common folk called them. Each keystone bound fifty-four lower gates plus its own world. Taking out a keystone caused a chain reaction, which made all the lower gates unstable. Without a keystone, the seals on the lower gates eventually failed. Then the subplanes collided and millions died.

The largest death toll during the second war was not caused by an army. It occurred when seven subplanes collided at once following the partial destruction of the Marstow Gate. Following the second war, the Border Guard and the clans linked all the keystones together, allowing them to share magic among themselves. This provided greater stability for the patched gates. However, the Border Guard imposed ban on soul sealing meant those patched gates were never rebuilt and were still in service, weakening them all.

The Dracon were risking their entire clan. For what? More territory or were they trying to regain the power they lost when Endellion slipped her leash and helped Rainer found the Border Guard?

Invisible knives stabbed into my temples as her magic latched onto mine. I clenched my teeth and hissed, shoving her back. Sky blue strands materialized around me. Waving in an unfelt breeze, they twined around my fingers. One snaked inside my tunic. Joel's magic flared. The strands fell away, repulsed.

The gate's spell broke. I took a shuddering breath and blinked away the spots in front of my eyes. Only then did I become aware of the crowd milling around. Terry stood in front of the seal with a flute pressed against his mouth. Red flames raced down its length, making it a temporary construct of blood and magic, not wood. Terry flew through the seal, feeding the gate blood and magic with each note.

It wasn't enough.

Given her condition, ten ancients wouldn't be enough.

Icy fingers crept up my neck. When my magic batted them away, I touched another mind. It was fleeting. If I hadn't grown up with Endellion's stories about the Well she and Rainer constructed, I would have dismissed it as my imagination.

Souls cannot exist without a body, either a gate or living flesh. Even Dracons with a true wraith form like myself will die if we stay in it too long.

Except here.

The Summoner's Well was Endellion and Rainer's greatest achievement – a way to preserve souls for the gates.

Joel tugged my left sleeve down over my wrist and tossed a wary glance at a piper standing beside Terry. The piper's aura reminded me of Endellion's. Instead of one base color, he had multiple shades of blue mottled together.

"Master Guardian Donovan," Joel whispered. "It's best you stay clear of him until we have a proper cover."

I nodded in understanding. Donovan the Betrayer – Endellion's half-uncle and one of the greatest war chiefs in my clan's history – was not someone I should meet without a sentirus-clad cover story.

Joel pressed his hand against my lower back and guided me into a little-used corridor. Spider webs hung from the ceiling and dust clouds rose with every footstep.

"This passage will take you to the surface," Joel said as he wrenched his medallion off his neck and dropped it over my head. "Don't argue. I can communicate through the Well."

He tapped a black stone in the center. "This is the seal for the common path. Don't turn it off. Once you reach the surface, you will see a group of guardians and sealers standing around a large parade ground." He grabbed my shoulders. "Find a guardian about my height with a scar here," he placed his finger below his left eye and drew it to his chin.

"His aura looks like mine with Endellion's markers," Joel said. "Show him your wrist and let him organize the sealers. You worry about the summon. There's a seal in the bedrock that links it to the Well. Summon the Central Keystone there. Then pour as much magic as you two can safely spare into the Well. The Central Keystone will know when he's had enough. I don't have time to prepare an illusion. Avoid your half-state if you can. Go."