I’d killed him.
When he was reborn, he’d spend his life trying to kill me. He might even tell the Council what I’d done. I could show them what I’d found in his pocket, tell them what had happened before he returned, but it was unlikely they’d believe me. I was the nosoul.
Jammed shoulder aching, I hauled myself into a sitting position and studied the device. It gleamed silver in the everywhere-light, and had five pictures engraved in the metal. They were a horizontal line, a vertical line, a square, a circle, and a diamond. None of them looked like a door, and I couldn’t tell if touching one would activate anything or not. They weren’t buttons.
For a moment, I feared I’d made a mistake—hadn’t I? I’d killed him—but this was Meuric. He wouldn’t have come in here unprepared. He’d probably been the one to create the door in the first place, just to get me out of the way. There’d been nothing else in his pockets, so everything necessary to activate this device must be here already.
Or not. What if this was tied to only Meuric’s soul, the same way the scanners in the city could detect which soul was which?
“Janan?” I whispered, just in case he was still there and inclined to help. Only the temple heartbeat pulsed in reply.
The last thing I wanted to do was lock myself in here, but wasn’t I already trapped? I had to take a chance and hope I escaped. Then I could raid Meuric’s house for some kind of instructions.
The horizontal line was first; I touched that.
Nothing happened.
Same thing with the vertical line and the square, so perhaps that meant I had to do something else to them. “But what?” Frustrated, I squeezed the device and considered throwing it into the pit.
Something shifted inside the device. With a soft snick, the pictures all rotated and the metal slid into itself, as if one half was hollow.
I had no idea what I’d done, but as soon as I looked up, the wall shimmered and groaned. In the same dizzying way the room had turned upside down, a gray blur appeared on the white stone, expanding into a door-size hole. I couldn’t see anything beyond.
Stay here, or go through the mysterious door? I drew in a shaky breath and found my feet. Before I made it halfway, the edges of the door flickered and whitened.
My entire body hurt, and fire stabbed my shoulder every time I moved my arm, but I sprinted for the door before it closed and I was forced to repeat whatever I’d done to the device.
I stepped throuIcy wind battered my face, and sleet obscured my vision. My first instinct was to run as far from the temple as possible, but—I swayed and pressed my backpack against the now smooth wall where the door had been—I’d emerged on a ledge, high above the ground. If not for the weather, I’d have been able to see everything. I’d never been so grateful for sleet before.
Carefully, I tugged off my backpack. I considered letting it go—I had the door device and my knife in my coat—but this had the books from the temple, as well as the charred remains of Sam’s song. If it came to it, I could drop it, but for now, I put the backpack on in front of me. Balancing would be awkward, but I would compensate.
Just as I steadied myself to get my bearings, a dark shape formed in the gray: long and slender, huge black wings.
A dragon.
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Chapter 28
Rage
THE TEMPLE THROBBED against my back as I pressed harder against it, trying to become invisible. My door was gone, and too easily, I could recall how Sam had described the dragon acid. I could imagine myself burning and itching, my skin boiling until I saw bone. I didn’t want to die. Not in the temple, or by falling off, or by dragon.
I considered opening another door only for a heartbeat; there was no telling what I’d find inside, or if I could get back to the ground level to create a new door. I couldn’t risk it.
Thinking invisible thoughts, I planted both palms on the warm stone and tried to calm my vertigo and terror. The dragon’s wings spread wide, glittering in the strange templelight.
Right. Warm stone. That would at least keep ice from making me slip, but there was still water. The ledge was only a foot deep, which didn’t leave much room for me to keep my balance.
The dragon’s jaws gaped as it flew nearer, but before it speared me with teeth as long as my forearm, blue light shot from the ground, piercing the roof of its mouth. With a roar, it veered and dove at its attacker. Wind from its wings nearly forced me off the ledge, but I dug my heels in and clenched my jaw, as if that would keep me from tumbling to the market field.