The Betrayal

The betrayal came from inside their group.

Ilyan disappeared in the middle of the night. He took the map, the only copy of the route they had traced from the Archive, rolled in its leather case and slid out of Cael's pack so quietly that no one heard.

Mara blamed herself. She sat in the dark with her sword across her knees, her face a mask of anger and shame. "I knew," she said. "I knew there was something. I told myself it was only that he was lonely."

Cael blamed everyone.

Noah, who had liked Ilyan, who had once spent an hour teaching him to play a card game with a stolen deck, said nothing at all, which was worse than anything he could have said.

Elias blamed no one.

Not until he found Ilyan at the seventh Gate.

It was the last place on the map, a high terrace on an ice-scoured peak. The wind howled across it. Seven pillars of black stone stood in a ring, and in the center of the ring, shimmering with a weak cold light, was the outline of a door. It was sealed. It had been sealed for longer than recorded time.

Ilyan stood in front of it, small and thin against the sky. He held the map in both hands, and he was crying.

"I had no choice," he said.

"You always have a choice," said Elias.

It came out sounding much harder than he intended. He had meant it kindly. He had meant to say you can still stop. But the words had a bitter edge, and they sounded like an accusation, because under them was the memory of every moment that Ilyan had stood quietly at the edge of their circle, listening.

"They have my sister."

"Who?"

"You know who."

A figure stood behind him.

It had been there all along, Elias realized, behind the pillar. It was tall, and crowned with a faint halo of blue lightning that flickered against the setting sun.

Zephar.

The god stepped forward. He wore a gentle expression, almost sad. He laid one hand on Ilyan's shoulder with a paternal tenderness that made Elias's skin crawl.

"Open the seventh Gate," Zephar said softly. "And your sister will be returned."

Ilyan accepted.

It was not a loud acceptance. He did not say yes. He only bowed his head and turned back to the door, and Elias saw the tremor run through his shoulders, the whole thin body going slack with defeat. He had been alone too long. He had been offered the one thing he wanted most in the world, and the price had been the only thing left.

Elias ran.

He ran across the frozen terrace with the wind tearing at his coat, shouting Ilyan's name, shouting don't, shouting words he could not hear himself say. He felt the mark burn in his palm. He reached for the boy's arm.

The Gate opened.

The world screamed.

It was not a sound. It was the absence of every sound. Elias felt it first in his ears, a sudden, impossible pressure, as though all the noise in the world had been sucked out through a straw. The wind stopped. His own shouting died in his throat. The crash of the ice, the cry of birds, the thud of his heart, all of it dropped away into a silence so total that it had weight.

Then a voice appeared in his mind.

Finally.

Elias saw a vast darkness between stars.

It stretched in every direction, endless and cold, strewn with points of light like a spilled box of beads. And in that darkness something opened its eyes.

They were not eyes as he knew them. They were openings, slow and deep, like the doors of a house that has been shut for ages, now swinging wide. He felt himself being looked at, not as a person is looked at, but as a mountain looks at a pebble, or a sea at a swimmer.

He understood why the gods had been afraid.

It was not evil.

That was the thing that made his skin crawl. It was not hateful, or hungry, or cruel. It was older than the difference between good and evil. It was older than the idea of a difference. It was simply vast, and awake, and looking.

Zephar fell to his knees.

"No," he whispered. His crown had gone out. The god's face was wet. "No. Not yet. It's too soon."

The thing looked through the Gate.

And smiled.