Chapter 20
“Mort,” Celaena said, and the skull knocker opened an eye.
“It’s terribly rude to wake someone when they’re sleeping,” he said drowsily.
“Would you have preferred it if I had knocked on your face?” He glared at her. “I need to know something.” She held out the amulet. “This necklace—does it truly have power?”
“Of course it does.”
“But it’s thousands of years old.”
“So?” Mort yawned. “It’s magic. Magical things rarely age as normal objects do.”
“But what does it do?”
“It protects you, as Elena said. It guards you from harm, though you certainly seem to do your best to get into trouble.”
Celaena opened the door. “I think I know what it does.” Perhaps it was mere coincidence, but the riddle had been worded so specifically. Perhaps Davis had been looking for the same thing Elena wanted her to find: the source of the king’s power. This could be the first step toward uncovering that.
“You’re probably wrong,” Mort said as she walked by. “I’m just warning you.”
She didn’t listen. She went right up to the hollow eye in the wall and stood on tiptoe to look through. The wall on the other side was still blank. Unfastening her necklace, Celaena carefully lifted the amulet to the eye, and—
It fit. Sort of. Her breath caught in her throat, and Celaena leaned up against the hole, peering through the delicate gold bands.
Nothing. No change on the wall, or on the giant Wyrdmark. She turned the necklace upside down, but it was the same. She tried it on either side, backward, angled—but nothing. Just the same blank stone wall, illuminated by a shaft of moonlight from some vent above. She pushed against the stone, feeling for any door, any moveable panel.
“But it’s the Eye of Elena! ‘It is only with the eye that one can see rightly’! What other eye is there?”
“You could rip out your own and see if it fits,” Mort sang from the doorway.
“Why won’t it work? Do I need to say a spell?” She glanced at the sarcophagus of the queen. Perhaps the spell would be triggered by ancient words—words hiding right under her nose. Wasn’t that always how these things happened? She refitted the amulet into the stone. “Ah!” she called into the night air, reciting the words engraved at Elena’s feet. “Time’s Rift!”
Nothing happened.
Mort cackled. She snatched the amulet out of the wall. “Oh, I hate this! I hate this stupid tomb, and I hate these stupid riddles and mysteries!” Fine—fine. Nehemia was right that the amulet was a dead end. And she was a wretched, horrible friend for being so distrustful and impatient.
“I told you it wouldn’t work.”
“Then what will work? That riddle does reference something in this tomb—behind that wall. Doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does. But you still haven’t asked the proper question.”
“I’ve asked you dozens of questions! And you won’t give me any answers!”
“Come back another—” he started, but Celaena had already stalked up the stairs.
Celaena stood on the barren edge of a ravine, a chill northern wind ruffling her hair. She’d had this dream before; always this setting, always this night of the year.
Behind her sloped a rocky, wasted plain, and before her stretched a chasm so long it disappeared into the starlit horizon. Across the ravine was a lush, dark wood, rustling with life.
And on the grassy lip of the other side stood the white stag, watching her with ancient eyes. His massive antlers glowed in the moonlight, wreathing him in ivory glory, just as she remembered. It had been on a chill night like this that she’d spotted him through the bars of her prison wagon on the way to Endovier, a glimmer of a world before it was burned to ash.
They watched each other in silence.
She took a half step closer to the edge, but paused as loose pebbles trickled free, tumbling into the ravine. There was no end to the darkness in that ravine. No end, and no beginning, either. It seemed to breathe, pulsing with whispers of faded memories, forgotten faces. Sometimes, it felt as though the darkness stared back at her—and the face it wore was her own.
Beneath the dark, she could have sworn she heard the rushing of a half-frozen river, swollen with melting snow off the Staghorns. A flash of white, the thud of hooves on soft earth, and Celaena looked up from the ravine. The stag had come closer, his head now angled, as if inviting her to join him.
But the ravine only seemed to grow wider, like the maw of a giant beast opening to devour the world.
So Celaena did not cross, and the stag turned away, his steps near silent as he disappeared between the tangled trees of the ageless wood.