The rejection stung. I turned away.
While the others took care of dinner, I retreated into the tent, pulling out my notebooks and the temple book. I’d discovered all sorts of interesting things over the last few weeks, but nothing the others would care about right now, so I kept them to myself.
I huddled in my corner of the tent and turned on the lantern, temple books spread around me. My notebook was almost full with all the translations and facts I’d collected.
I’d only been working a little while when Cris came into the tent and sidled up to me. -Anything new?- His presence made my corner of the tent wonderfully warm.
“I think I’m getting to a part that explains how the temple key works.”
He nodded, just a flicker of shadow.
“When Meuric had me trapped in the temple, I pressed a lot of the engravings on the key.”
-Hmm.-
I spent a few more minutes double-checking my translations before I went on. “All this would have been nice to know before I went in there. Okay, the symbols all do different things inside the temple. Horizontal lines make floors, and vertical lines make walls.”
-The square creates doors.-
I nodded. “Inside or out, depending on whether you slide the one half inside the other. I was really lucky, making that happen before Templedark. If I hadn’t done it before the poison took effect . . .”
-You would have escaped when the light came on again.-
But Sam, Stef, and so many others would be dead now.
Cris hummed soothingly. A tendril of darkness slipped around my wrist, over my hand, and between my fingers.
I closed my eyes and tried to pretend like shadows were enough. Like Sarit’s voice on the SED was enough. But inside me, a hollow grew larger.
I tapped my pencil on my notebook where I’d drawn the silver box, and each of the symbols etched into the metal. “You’d think I would have guessed, having nearly been killed in one, but the circle creates pits inside the temple. The depth depends on how long you press the button, I think. It’s hard to tell.”
-And the diamond?-
“Turns things on their side. Or upside down.” When Meuric had trapped me inside the temple, I’d witnessed everything flip over. There’d been a pit in the center of the room, and suddenly it had been crawling up the wall and over the ceiling like a spider. When I’d pushed Meuric beneath it, he’d fallen upward. “There are instructions for combining buttons to make stairs and things, but it’s a little confusing.”
-The temple is confusing.-
I leaned closer to him. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I wish we’d found another way.”
Roses bloomed in the shadows. -I’d do it again.-
My heart ached, and when I closed my eyes, all I could see was the knife in Cris’s hands, the blade looking as though it had been dipped in gold as he plunged it into his chest. All I could see was him sacrificing himself to save Stef and me. And now he was this. A shadow. A soul without substance.
Voices sounded, and footsteps thumped the ground. When the others walked in, Cris jerked away.
I dropped my face back to my studies, flipping through the books to scan for anything related to dragons. After I’d read through the library archives on my SED, I’d started on the temple books. Maybe they’d be able to tell me something we didn’t already know about dragons. And if we were to meet dragons, I needed to know everything. So far, the most interesting thing I’d found was an ancient animosity between dragons and phoenixes. But that didn’t help me, really.
“What I want,” I muttered to Cris, “is to know more about the dragons’ weapon.” The books contained frustratingly little on the topic.
-I wish we’d been able to help more with possibilities for those symbols.- Cris sighed. -Let’s go over the alternate translations tonight. Maybe we’ll discover something new.-
I smiled at Cris, at his hope, but it was unlikely we’d have any revelations tonight. We’d already been over the passage a hundred thousand times.
They fight with the weapon that destroys all.
Or maybe They love the instrument of consuming.
Or even They fear the tool that builds and destroys.
Or none of those. With so many symbols possessing multiple meanings, it was impossible for me to guess what these symbols meant in this context.
“Three more earthquakes today,” Stef said as she lit another lantern, pushing back the coming night. “And another hydrothermal eruption near Templedark Memorial.”
I checked on my SED. The earthquakes had been large, but not as massive as that first one.
“It’s getting bad there,” Whit muttered.
“Anything from Orrin?” Stef asked.
“I got a message from him earlier. He said there’s a fever going around, and they’ve had to stop traveling. Rin is treating everyone as best as she can, but it’s difficult without access to the medicine she’s used to.”