The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [264]
Aryn clasped Beltan’s hand. “You’re not the only one who’s slow at catching on, cousin.”
“He wants to finish what he began a thousand years ago,” Falken said, voice hoarse. “He wants to do what together the Old and New Gods prevented him from doing once before.”
“Which is?” Beltan said.
“Mohg wishes to break the First Rune and reforge Eldh in his own image, enslaving it and all of its people forever.”
These words left them speechless. Outside the lane, the crash of stone had ceased, and the soldiers had done their work, for the streets of the Second Circle were clearing.
Vani moved with lithe steps and peered out. “I do not like this.”
“What is it?” Melia said, drawing closer.
Vani turned around, her gold eyes gleaming. “My brother, Travis, and the others. They should be here by now.”
Only as she said this did Grace realize it was true. They had been so caught up in their discoveries they had forgotten about Travis, Sareth, Durge, and Lirith.
Falken scratched his chin. “Doesn’t it take some time to go through the gate? I just assumed it did.”
“No,” the assassin said, her words sharp as knives. “Transport through the gate is instantaneous.”
A frown lined Beltan’s face. “I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“What does it mean?” Aryn said.
Vani met each of their gazes in turn, and Grace felt fresh, new dread well up inside of her.
“It means,” Vani said, “that something has gone wrong.”
88.
This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be.
Travis blinked as a brisk wind kicked up gritty dust in his face. Tumbleweeds danced and rolled across the broad dirt street that stretched before him. Wooden buildings lined the street, their sharp square fronts jutting up into the blue-quartz sky.
“This does not look like Tarras to me,” Durge said in his rumbling voice.
That was an understatement. Travis opened his mouth, but it was too hard to speak. The unnatural cold of their passage still gripped him. As he watched, frost evaporated from their clothes in curls of steam, sublimating under the bright force of the sun—a sun that seemed at once whiter and smaller than the sun that shone above Tarras.
Lirith shook her head, moisture glittering in her black hair. “Sareth, what is this place?”
The Mournish man took a step forward, his wooden leg stirring up more dust. “I do not know, beshala. Nothing about it is familiar.”
But it is to me, Travis wanted to say. He knew this place. But how? He remembered stepping through the gate, and the freezing gray nothingness of the void.…
The void. But there shouldn’t have been a void, not when passing from one place to another in Tarras. The gray emptiness existed only between worlds.…
At last understanding cracked through the ice that encased his brain. They weren’t in Tarras. They weren’t even on Eldh. This was Earth.
Not just Earth, Travis.
Yes, there was McKay’s General Store, as well as the opera house, the assay office, and the Mine Shaft Saloon—
The Mine Shaft? But the saloon couldn’t possibly be there. He had watched it burn down with his own eyes. Yet it was. Which meant this could only be one place.
“It’s Castle City,” he murmured.
The others gave him sharp glances.
“You mean your home village, Travis?” Durge said. The knight’s brown eyes went wide. “This is your world?”
Travis staggered forward. “Yes, it is. But …”
But something was wrong.
“What happened to us, Sareth?” Lirith said. The witch laid a hand on his arm, her gaze imploring.
The Mournish man hefted the black stone artifact. “I cannot say. The gate was acting strangely. I suppose some magic of the demon must yet have lingered on the air, distorting the power of the artifact.”
“But we have one last drop of the scarab blood,” Durge said. “Can we not use it to go back?”
Travis hardly heard them. His brain raced. What was going on here? The storefronts, Elk Street, Castle Peak looming in the distance—all of it looked familiar. But it all looked