“What are you talking about?” Rhoswen stared at him. “What light?”
He took a deep breath. Let it out again. He gestured toward the half-open door. “There is light spilling out of that room, a very bright, strong yellow light like sunlight in the middle of the day. Are you telling me you don’t see it?”
“No I don’t,” Rhoswen said. Now the whites of her eyes were showing too, just like the dog’s. She looked nothing like her usual sleek composed self. She looked disheveled, frightened and very young. “It’s quite dark, actually. I just figured since you’re Wyr, you would have good eyesight and you’d be okay with that.”
“Oh-kay,” said Rune. He pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. “Let’s go carefully here.”
He stepped toward the door and pushed it wider open slowly, watching to make sure that none of the light he saw—or thought he saw—spilled directly onto Rhoswen. The hallway brightened further as the door opened. It still looked like sunlight to him, and it felt saturated with magic.
He drew a line through the air with a finger. “This is where the light that I see ends. I want you to cross that with just the tip of your finger.”
Now she looked at him as if she suspected he was crazy, but she did as he asked and extended her forefinger until it crossed the demarcation he had shown her. They both stared at her finger, which remained unburned.
“Do you still see the light?” Rhoswen asked.
“As plain as day,” he told her. “But at least it doesn’t appear you are in any danger of burning from it. We should still go carefully.” He gazed at her as he considered. “Do you have Power or magic ability?”
She shook her head. “I have only what every Vampyre has, which is enough for telepathy or making a crossover to an Other land. It’s a by-product of the virus. When I was human, I was a complete dead-head.”
A dead-head, when used the way Rhoswen meant it, referred to someone who had no Power or magic ability whatsoever. It did not refer to a Grateful Dead fan. If Rhoswen didn’t have much magical ability, then she didn’t have many magical defenses. Rune shook his head. “Right. Well, magic is spilling out of that room, just like sunlight, and I’m not inclined to trust any of it. I want you to stay here.”
The Vampyre’s chin firmed. “Carling might need me.”
He refrained from rolling his eyes. It wasn’t his responsibility if Rhoswen chose to risk her life, and who knew, maybe she was right and Carling would need her. He said, “Fine, but I’m going in first.”
Rhoswen stayed behind him as he stepped into the doorway, into both magic and light. The soles of his boots landed on something shifting and pliable. He looked down. That looked like sand. It felt like sand.
If it walked, talked and quacked like a duck, if it tasted like a duck when he caught and ate it . . .
He took another step, and another. The barest outline of a shadowed room surrounded him. Superimposed upon the room was a brighter, hotter reality. He looked up and squinted into a pale blue, cloudless sky that held a burning yellow-white sun.
“Sentinel?” Rhoswen called him again. This time she sounded panicked. “Rune! You’re fading.”
He could just see her. She was a pale, insubstantial ghost-like sketch, as was the rest of the room. He called back, “I’m here. Can you hear me?”
“Barely,” she shouted. She sounded far away. “You’re disappearing right in front of me. What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” he shouted back. “I’m going to look around and see what I can find out. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“I’d much rather you didn’t,” she called. “I would like for you to come back now, please.”
But the mystery that lay spread out all around him was too compelling to ignore. Ahead of him was desert, and greenery, and the blinding glint of sunshine on distant water. Behind him was Rhoswen, the doorway and the island.