“It won’t make a difference,” Raith said. “We’ve combed every inch of the city already, and we’ve used searching spells and other magic. They are not here.”
“Yes, but what about outside the city? Jade Forest or . . . the Wandering Woods!” He clapped his hand together, remembering what Kate had told him. “Kate said there was something strange that day we went back to find the daydrakes. She said she felt cut off from her magic. It sounded to me like the way the collars work that the League uses on captured wilders.”
Raith’s brow furrowed. “She never mentioned it to me . . . but if the golds were trying to hide and imprison wilders, that would be a way to do it.”
“That settles it then,” Dal said with an eager clap of his hands. He walked over to the wardrobe next to the door and swung it open to reveal the cache of weapons inside. He pulled out a sword, revolver, buckler, and belt and handed them to Corwin.
“You’re going to need these.”
Corwin grinned, pleased to see that Dal had had the foresight to gather his weapons from the armory. He accepted them with a grateful nod.
“If there is a shield spell active in the woods,” Raith said, “we’re going to need more than common weapons.” He turned to Dal. “I need three gemstones, rubies or emeralds. Something of that value.”
Wordlessly, Dal turned back to the wardrobe and withdrew a gold-hilted dagger, encrusted with rubies. A family heirloom, Corwin knew, the only one he possessed and likely ever would.
Dal handed Raith the dagger. “Do whatever you need to it.”
Raith took the dagger, turned to the nearest table, and proceeded to pry out three of the rubies with the tip of his knife. Once done, he held the rubies in his hand and spoke the words of an incantation. The lines of the spell spread across the glistening red surfaces.
“Here, keep these with you when you enter the woods.” Raith handed one each to Corwin and Dal, keeping the third for himself. “The spell will allow you to see through magical disguises.”
“You’re not coming with us?” Dal cocked an eyebrow.
“If there is something in the Wandering Woods, we will need help,” replied Raith. “I will meet you there as soon as I can.” He pointed a finger at Corwin and Dal in turn. “But if you find anything, stay hidden until I arrive.”
“We’ll wait as long as we can,” Corwin said, “but hurry.” He wouldn’t promise not to act, though. If there was a chance of finding Kate, he doubted any danger would be great enough to keep him in place long.
34
Kate
KATE WOKE TO DARKNESS AND a strange pressure at her throat. Disoriented and confused, she raised her hands to her neck and gasped as her fingers brushed cold, hard metal. A mage collar. At once the memory of what had happened flooded into her mind—of visiting King Orwin and being attacked by Maestra Vikas. Now here she was, imprisoned by the Inquisition.
She tried to sit up only to whack her head against something hard above her. Raising her hands, she felt the wooden lid. She was inside a box of some kind, a crate—one that was moving. The motion was the familiar chaotic bounce of a wagon.
Kate pounded on the lid with the side of her fist. “Let me out of here!”
“Be quiet,” a voice shouted back, followed by a violent thud against the top of the crate. Powerless to do anything, including bend her knees or shift onto her side, Kate lay there and listened, fear simmering inside her. She thought about Corwin, wondering how he’d reacted when she’d been attacked, if he’d simply stood aside and let her be taken. She didn’t know. But either way she couldn’t count on his help now.
Sometime later, the wagon came to a stop and she heard the creak of wood as someone pried off the lid. She blinked against the sudden light in her eyes, the man who appeared over her nothing more than a shadow.
“Get up,” he said.
She struggled to her feet, swallowing words of protest as she saw the three gold robes, all with maces at the ready. She stood no chance of escaping. Her only weapon was her magic, but the collar at her throat blocked her from it as surely as if it were night.
The nearest gold grabbed her arm and hauled her off the back of the wagon. With her eyes finally adjusted, she realized it was late, almost night, but she didn’t think it was the same night.
“Kate! Are you all right?”
She looked up, her heart lurching into her throat as she spotted Bonner on the other side of the wagon. He too wore a mage collar. “What happened?”
“Be quiet.” The gold shoved her forward. “Move along, both of you.”
Bonner fell into step beside her and took her hand, squeezing her fingers with a tremulous grip. The sharp scent of fear-laced sweat hung in the air around him.
Glancing about, Kate took in the sight of an unfamiliar keep ahead of her, a massive towering fortress. Rounded like an amphitheater, it seemed to be made of a single continuous piece of stone with no visible sign of mortar or blocks. It had no towers and no windows, as if it were meant to keep everyone and everything out—or to keep something else within. By contrast, however, the battlements surrounding the keep looked incapable of protecting anything. Huge gaps in the wall left by crumbling stone made the place feel ancient and ruinous.
Where are we? Kate craned her head to look behind her. The answer stole the breath from her throat when she spotted slender, white-barked trees through a hole in the battlements. The Wandering Woods. Which could only mean this was—
“The Hellgate,” she whispered aloud, and saw Bonner jerk his head at her in alarm. She shared the feeling. They should’ve been at the gold house, awaiting the Purging, not here, in a place of myth and legend.
The magists led them through the opened door into the fortress. Despite its size, it was simply constructed, with a single outer corridor surrounding the vast main hall at its center. Dozens of platforms rose up around the room all the way to the ceiling. But instead of seats like in a true amphitheater, the platforms held cages with daydrakes trapped inside. Kate shrank back from the sight. The drakes’ black scales glistened in the light of the torches hung from the walls. There were enough of them in here to raze an entire city.
“It’s the gold robes,” Kate said, and Bonner nodded solemnly. “They must be behind the attacks.” On Storr’s orders, she felt certain.
The golds stopped in front of a row of empty cages on the ground floor and forced Kate and Bonner inside two of them, locking them in. Then they walked away, leaving them alone in the dark, damp space.
“Is this really the Hellgate?” Bonner asked, peering around.
Kate pointed at the dropped floor just beyond the cages. Instead of stone, iron bars crisscrossed over a wide, deep hole. She could feel the warm air seeping out from it like the exhaled breath of some slumbering giant in its depths.
Bonner shuddered, but couldn’t do much more than that. The cages were clearly made for animals, long but too short even for Kate to stand up in.
“No one will ever find us here,” Bonner said.
Kate didn’t reply. It was pure chance that she and Corwin had stumbled across the drakes that day in the Wandering Woods, and magist magic must’ve kept them from finding more when they came back with the search party. Not that the golds needed magic to keep this place hidden. Belief in the Hellgate had fallen into myth, its true existence forgotten except in stories. But centuries ago people feared it. They stayed away, allowing the land surrounding it to grow wild, to swallow it up until the golds freed it from its own wasting death, a ready-made secret fortress.
“How were you discovered?” asked Bonner, pulling her from her thoughts.
Kate told the story quickly, stating how when she’d visited the king she’d set off some sort of magist trap, one she guessed had been left by Storr, same as he must’ve done to her father before. “But how did they find out about you?”