“There,” I said, pointing down a street lined with small houses.
“What’s down there?” Jace asked.
Not answering, I moved quickly, drawn to a faint glow. I found it there on one of the houses—the picture. Valiant had been right. I did know it when I saw it. It was a halo with wings, the symbol of the angels. A glow pulsed slowly from the picture.
“A gateway. How did you know it would be here?” Jace asked, amazed.
“I followed the glow.”
Jace traced his finger across the picture. “This is the door to the Treasury. The relics have to be beyond this wall.”
Drake looked for a way into the building, but the house’s doors and windows were sealed shut. “I wonder how we get in.”
“There has to be a trick to it.” Jace pressed his hand to the stone wall. “Angels protect their treasures with wards.”
“ ‘For in the midnight hour, the sun and moon will shine, and a new hero will rise, his mind unlocking the secrets within,’ ” I quoted softly.
Jace’s head jerked around. “Where did you hear that?”
“From the Pilgrims.”
If Jace was surprised that the Pilgrims had shared secret information with me, he didn’t say anything.
“That is the solution,” he said. “…in the midnight hour…sun and moon…” I could almost see the gears turning in his head. “I believe this gateway can only be opened at midnight.”
“Well,” I said, sitting down on a boulder beside the house. “It looks like we’ll be here awhile.”
By midnight, nearly the whole expedition had gathered around that little house. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. The Pilgrims had wanted me to be the one to find the relics, and now Colonel Fireswift was on his way to claim the glory for himself. I didn’t give a damn about glory, but I wasn’t about to stand by while someone who’d done nothing took it all for himself.
Our collective minds had puzzled out that midnight was the hour the gateway could be opened, and that the sun and moon represented light and darkness. We had to shine some light on the symbol, something to penetrate the darkness.
Captain Somerset cast a small flame in front of the angel mark. When the picture failed to react, she grew the flame. It continued to pulse along in the same, slow way with no signs of change.
“What if the mention of the moon is literal?” Claudia said. “What if the gateway reacts to moonlight?”
Jace looked up. Moonlight streamed through an opening in the rocky ceiling, but the moonbeam didn’t come down at the right angle to touch the symbol on the wall. Jace drew his sword, putting it into the moonlit stream, turning the blade. The pale light bounced off the steel. He shifted the angle until the stream hit the angel symbol. Everyone held their breath for one long moment, but nothing happened.
“Well, that was anticlimatic,” commented Lieutenant Lawrence.
“I haven’t heard you offer any idea,” I told her.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” she said with a derisive smile. “The text says you need the moon and the sun. We need sunlight and moonlight together in a single stream.”
“You mean an eclipse,” I said.
“You know, you’re only half as dumb as you look.”
I ignored the jab. “Ok, dazzle us. Save the day. Show us the spell that creates an eclipse.”
The smile wilted from her lips. Ha! I had her there.
“I take it from your extended silence, that you don’t have that kind of magic.” I said sweetly at her. “You know, you’re only half as powerful as you look.”
She stepped forward, but she was cut off from me when the crowd parted, making way for Colonel Fireswift and his team.
“I see we’ve found the gateway,” he said, glancing at the angel symbol on the house. His gaze shifted to Lieutenant Lawrence. “And one of you had the brains to figure out the key to opening it.”
“Leda was the one who told us the puzzle that will allow us to open it,” Drake said.
Colonel Fireswift shot me a sardonic smile. “Congratulations, you can repeat back something you were told without understanding what it means. You must be so proud.”
I calculated how many strikes I could get in before Colonel Fireswift hit back. I decided the answer was one, if I was lucky. Which meant it wasn’t worth the risk. I needed to get faster and stronger, and I didn’t care how long I had to train to make that happen. Colonel Fireswift looked down on everyone like they were the muck beneath his boots, and one day I would wipe that superior look off his face. That I swore on everything that was holy and unholy.
“Lieutenant Lawrence had a good idea with the eclipse,” Colonel Fireswift said, walking toward the symbol. “Let’s explore that.”
“He never praises anyone,” Claudia whispered to me. “He’s only praising her because he’s figured out that you two are mortal enemies.”
“The whole mortal enemy thing is all on her end,” I replied in a whisper.
Colonel Fireswift was so busy listening to himself speak that he hadn’t even heard us.
Claudia snickered. “He’ll sure be vexed when he realizes that her obsession with Colonel Windstriker is the reason you too don’t get along.”
Magic rumbled overhead. The rocks of the ceiling began to rearrange themselves. I glanced at Colonel Fireswift, who was directing their movements, shifting the hole in the ceiling so that the moonlight hit the angel symbol directly. Squinting, I watched a blinding light flash to life in front of the moon, as bright as sunlight. The tiny sun spun in the air like a disco ball, moving in front of the moon. I gaped at Colonel Fireswift. He’d just summon his very own personal sun.
The combined light of the moon and sun streamed down in a single beam, shining against the angel symbol on the wall. The house rumbled and groaned in the light of the potent magic spell, but no doorway opened up.
The underground city began to rumble and quake, the walls of the buildings exploding under the weight of the falling ceiling. Colonel Fireswift issued a sharp order to retreat, and we all ran as fast as our supernatural powers could carry us. We managed to get out without anyone getting killed, but the entire sunken city section was now buried under several hundred tons of rock.
Colonel Fireswift glanced down at the collapsed entrance, then shot me an irked look. “What have you done? What game are you playing at?”
I wanted to point out that it was his haphazard reorganization of the ceiling that had brought down the roof, but before I could get myself into trouble by talking back, Claudia called out.
“It’s Wardbreaker!” she said, pointing up at the cloaked shadow running along the rooftops.
“Get him!” Colonel Fireswift snapped and, we all scrambled up the bridges and buildings that would bring us to the Lost City’s upper levels.