That if we don’t stop the Enemy, millions of people are likely to die.
The calculus of death made for the coldest of logic. If you accidentally caused a few innocents to die while trying to save a few million, was it justified? Military leaders would say yes, but collateral damage was such a tidy term for the spilled entrails of guilt and death. Her own training and instinct told her to protect civilians, not endanger them. “I’ll think about it. Maybe there’s another way.” She took a steadying breath. “I’ve got a couple questions about the timing and the gate. You said we won’t be building a gate, but reopening the one used to bring the children here, which is a lot easier. But the nodes that gate is tied to aren’t stable. Or they won’t be after Reno flies through that construct, which he hasn’t done yet as far as this realm is concerned, but he will. The gnomes said they couldn’t build a gate on an unstable node.”
If you recall—his mental voice was exceedingly dry—our Enemy will be working extremely hard to get the nodes stable.
Lily frowned dubiously. “But when will they be stable? Reno thought it would take the G.B. between two hours and twenty hours to get them stable again after Reno flew through the construct.”
We will have to hope she doesn’t finish at the low end of Reno’s estimate. We have no way of dealing with her if she’s free to turn her attention to us. Our goal will be to get as far from her avatar as we can as quickly as we can.
He kept missing her point. “But if she’s still stabilizing the nodes, we won’t be able to open the gate!”
Ah. I discussed that with your grandmother. She says the nodes will not be as unstable on this side as they will be in Dis.
“That does not make sense. How can one side be seriously unstable and the other side okay?”
“I don’t know. She tried to explain—something about space being elastic, but matter very stubborn—which I’m afraid didn’t mean a bloody thing to me. But reopening a permanent gate is a very different matter from building a new one. She says mildly unstable nodes won’t keep us from reopening a permanent gate, though it might affect how many of us can use it. Reno will have to advise us about that.
“It is a permanent gate, then?”
Gan believes it is. If she’s wrong, if it was a temporary gate, it can still be reopened, but will collapse rather quickly. Grandmother doesn’t know how quickly.
So they could probably open the gate. Not certainly, but probably. And it might stay open long enough for them to get out of here. Or it might not. “If Grandmother thinks she’ll be able open the gate—”
Not her. Cynna. Grandmother apparently has the same limitations regarding gates that dragons do.
“Cynna’s supposed to reopen the gate?” Lily caught her friend’s eyes, which were as startled as her own must be. “I don’t think she knows how.”
“Plus I’ll be depleted, remember?” Cynna said. “I won’t be able to Find my hands in front of my face at that point, much less open a gate. Reopen one. Whatever.”
Lily passed that on quickly.
A pause. Grandmother says she can refill Cynna magically. You could do this, too, but there is no time to instruct you, so she will do so. She will also instruct Cynna. She says . . . Another pause, as if he were waiting for Grandmother to finish telling him what she said. Cynna is to call up the clan memory about gate building to refresh her mind on the concepts.
“I can do that,” Cynna whispered after Lily passed that on. “But we need to take the kids to Earth, not Dis. God knows I want to go to Dis. Cullen . . .” She stopped. Swallowed. “But we have to get the kids safe, not take them into the middle of a battle.”
Lily relayed that.
I haven’t told you about that part of . . . get to Xitil . . . dangerous, but it gives us a chance. We can’t . . . for the same reason the dragons didn’t open one when they lived in China.
“Wait. Your ‘voice’ is getting faint. I missed some of what you said. Most of it, really. What’s that about the dragons?”
His mental voice remained maddeningly soft, making her want to turn up the volume. But she caught all the words this time. When they lived in China, they didn’t open a gate to Dragonhome.
“They didn’t?”
No. I have more to tell you about . . . ancient history. Dragon history. That will have to wait until . . . need to rest, but gate between Dragonhome and . . . very bad.
She wasn’t sure if he was telling her to rest or saying that he needed to. “I’m missing parts of what you say. My mindsense is getting thin and I’m not catching everything. Why can’t we open a gate to Earth? Dis is not a good place to take the kids.” Being full of demons and a mad demon prince, not to mention their Great Enemy’s avatar.
The membrane between the two realms . . . excuse me. She says that membrane is a terrible metaphor. The whatever-it-is that keeps realms separate is brittle between Earth and Dragonhome. She . . . think of this dividing strata . . . thick, but brittle. The amount of power . . . form a gate through such strata is likely to fracture . . . think of the way very dry dirt cracks. Power would bleed into both realms . . . fires and earthquakes. Lots of power. Really big fires and earthquakes. If we opened a gate between Earth and Dragonhome, neither . . . safe for the children. Or anyone else.
“That won’t happen with a gate between Dragonhome and Dis?” Lily whispered.
She says not.
“What about crossing? That’s not the same as a gate, right? Gan—”
The rock wall exploded. It exploded out, sending chunks and shards flying out into the empty air. And also Cynna.
Lily shot to her feet and leaped the three feet between her and the huge new hole in the wall and jolted to a stop, staring.
The moon was up and nearly full. It flooded the scene with light, plenty of light to see Cynna floating about fifteen feet away and fifteen feet above the ground, her eyes wide with shock. A muscular man with braided mustaches hung in the air beside her. His shenyi was crimson and gold.
Zhu Dìqiú, Master of Earth. Aka Dick Boy.
Dick Boy scowled at Lily, ignoring the woman he’d hauled out to leave hanging in thin air. He shot a stream of Chinese at her too rapid for her befuddled brain to take in.
“Slower,” she said, her jaw clenched tightly enough to make it hard to get the word out. Tight enough to make her head pound, too. She forced her jaw to loosen, forced herself to speak more courteously. “Speak more slowly, please. Your dialect is strange to me. I did not understand.”
“You met secretly with Alice. You will tell me what you spoke of with her.”
“It was not a secret m—”
Cynna screamed. Her body remained still. Rigid. Frozen in place by Dick Boy’s TK, unable to react to whatever agony gripped her except with that scream. Lily thought of what Kongqi had called jùdà téng, a form of body magic that caused agony. And of the guard Alice had disciplined. No lasting damage, Alice had said. God, she hoped not. Dear God.
Cynna fell silent. Her head drooped forward. No other part of her so much as twitched.