Gardens of mist (the traveler s gate chronicles collection 2)

It’s not like I didn’t know what could happen to people out in the Mist.I’ve lived in the Gardens my entire life.. “Took me a long time to find out where you lived,” Adrian said.. “You b

Title PageCopyrightWARNINGWelcome![Series Title]Gardens of MistMaelstrom of StoneThe Steel Labyrinth[Sequel Page]

GARDENS OF MIST

Will Wight

www.WillWight.com

Copyright © 2014 Will Wight All rights reserved Cover art by Patrick Foster.

What follows is a small collection of short stories set in the universe of the Traveler’s Gate Trilogy, which begins in the novel

House of Blades.

If you have not read House of Blades or its sequel, The

Crimson Vault, then you will not understand the following

stories.

It’s okay; it’s not your fault I understand You’re still

handsome and/or pretty.

If you were simply browsing the Kindle Store and this book caught your eye, I urge you to close this preview and go check out

House of Blades I’ll wait.

If you’ve already read the Traveler’s Gate Trilogy—or at least the first two books—then come on in, my friend!

These stories are intended to give you a closer look at the Territories and characters that we didn’t get to explore in the main trilogy If you’d rather stick with Simon, Alin, and Leah, I’ll

understand! City of Light will be available in early 2014, and I hope

it meets your approval.

Still with me? Then buckle up We’re headed off the map.

Here there be dragons.

Welcome to Elysia, young Traveler.

You will have heard many stories about what it means to be one of us Do not be fooled No outsider understands our purpose They think we are here to lead other Travelers, to make the

decisions that they cannot.

This is true, and it is not true.

They think we are here as a last resort, as an ultimate power,

to keep the Incarnations in check.

This is true, and it is not true.

They think we are here to balance the other Territories, to keep them from obtaining too much power and upsetting the natural balance.

This is true, and it is not true.

What I am about to tell you is known by few, and understood

by even fewer: we are not here to lead, or to threaten, or to

eliminate threats In the course of our duties, we will do all these things, but ultimately we are here for a single purpose.

We are here to guide We are here to lead by example,

inspiring other Travelers to live up to their own potential We

should be as beacons in the darkness.

Welcome to the City of Light.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Page 1

The Traveler’s Gate Chronicles

(Collection #2)

G ARDENS OF M IST

Compassion, tied to the Rose Light, is also the virtue most necessary for leading Travelers of Asphodel To protect their minds, they cut themselves off from each other This is understandable, perhaps, but it is also a tragic weakness If we are to heal them, we must first show them what they lack.

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 4: Rose

Today, I learned why Damascan magistrates don’t accept eyewitnesstestimony gathered in Asphodel

It’s not like I didn’t know what could happen to people out in the Mist.I’ve lived in the Gardens my entire life I was born here, in a hollowed-outtree on the edge of the Midnight Fields Every day, I step out of my door andwalk into the Mist without a second thought I’m not rich enough for acarriage, and I have to get to work somehow

I give the Mist nothing to feed on, so it can’t touch me My emotions are

my own, locked up and held tight until I’m back between four walls I’m noTraveler, bending the Mist to my will, but I know how to survive That’s why

it always surprises me a little when someone vanishes into the forest and isnever heard from again, except as a drifting voice on the wind

Don’t they know any better?

It’s not fair of me, I know, but I expect everyone to know the rules ofAsphodel like I do

First, you don’t walk into the Mist unless your mind is clear as good glass.When I walk outside, I’m a saint in human skin You couldn’t get a rise out

of me if you stabbed me through the foot

Second, you don’t stop and smell the flowers The bigger and brighter theblossom is, the more it wants to eat you Nobody survives a day in theMidnight Fields unless they learn this lesson

Third, you don’t trust anything you see in the Mist Not ever

It’s hard for some people to remember the last rule, which I guess Iunderstand If you can’t depend on your own eyes, then how do you knowwhat’s real?

The answer: you don’t But it’s easy to forget that

Which is what killed Adrian Corydon

I never had a problem with Adrian He was about forty years old, and had

been working in the Fields ten years longer than even I had He rescued me,one day, when I was foolish enough to let myself get distracted by a herd ofwild bulls and forget that I was standing in a patch of purple blossombells.They had dissolved through my shoes and started digesting my ankles by thetime Adrian pulled me out, and I never felt a thing.

Even when the pain set in, I didn’t scream I didn’t allow myself to thinkabout my shredded, bleeding feet I knew better; the Mist was all around

So anyway, I remember Adrian as a good guy Not everyone thought thatway

Adrian tended to get a little angrier than he should, a little more stressed

He let the work in the Fields get to him, and sometimes he raised his voice inthe middle of the Mist One time, he staggered into our work site, stoleanother guy’s hoe, and waved it in the air while screaming about how hiswife didn’t respect him He had a bottle in his other hand, and I had no doubtwhat it contained Adrian was partial to a particular recipe of nasty liquormade of yellow starvine sap It was cheap, he could brew it at home, itburned like a bonfire, and yellow starvines were known to produce the mostpleasant hallucinations of any of the flowers in the Midnight Fields

That was only one of the Adrian stories that floated around my work poollike kites on the wind Adrian was a big, bearded guy, and he threw hisweight around even where he shouldn’t Some people resented him Otherswondered about his wife, Phelia Was she safe? Did he hurt her? Maybe wedidn’t see her as often as we should…

Looking back, it was all a recipe for some kind of disaster, but I didn’tnotice at the time I tended my own garden, as they say in Asphodel, and leteveryone else tend theirs I keep to myself as much as I can I’ve been thatway for years, ever since my own wife left me for a merchant back inDamasca

“It’s not you,” she said “It’s this place It does things to you It’s notnatural.” She walked through a Gate, and I never saw her again

I didn’t feel anything, though The Mist was excited that day, and I didn’twant to stretch my luck

You’re right, I should get back on track Adrian Corydon I was sleepingwhen it began

Someone pounded urgently on my door, which woke me immediately Noone’s ever urgent in Asphodel There are other things in Asphodel, worsethan the Mist, and they’re attracted to signs of panic

I still live in the hollowed-out tree I inherited from my parents, and it’s not

a big one I barely had to roll out of my hammock to unlatch the door andpush it open

Adrian stood there, right outside my door, his boots planted in a big puddle

of Mist It’s winter here—Asphodel has seasons like normal, though I know alot of Territories don’t—and the air was cold enough that I regretted everysecond I held the door open Adrian, though, he was soaked in sweat Hisbeard clung to his chest like a pile of soggy leaves sticking to the forest floor.His hands spasmed opened and closed, like he couldn’t wait to get his fistsaround someone’s neck, and he had to lean one forearm against mydoorframe to stay upright

“Took me a long time to find out where you lived,” Adrian said He waspanting like he had run all the way here from town

By “town,” I mean the cluster of huts and homes around the MidnightFields that we affectionately called “the town.” Enough people lived therethat it probably qualified as a village, I guess

“All these trees look alike.” I held the door out a little wider, inviting him

to step inside

As he walked past me, I smelled no spirits on him, just sweat and theclean-water tang of the Mist on the winter air At the time I thought thatmeant he was sober Later, I told myself that of course he had been drunk,and I just hadn’t noticed Now, I don’t know what to think

With the Mist safely locked outside, I let my irritation bubble up from theplace where I’d shoved it down I don’t know anyone that likes being wokenfrom a sound sleep in the middle of the night I’d spent the whole previousday hoeing my row and picking blossoms in the Fields, just as Adrian himselfhad The last thing I wanted was a mystery visit infringing on my allottedeight hours of sleep

“What do you want from me, Corydon?” I asked

It wasn’t the most hospitable thing to say, I’ll admit, but he must not haveminded too much He laughed

“Don’t worry, it won’t be a long visit I need to ask you a question.”

“Then get to it,” I said “My bed’s not getting any warmer.”

Adrian rubbed his hands together and blew on them, as though to capturethe heat “I don’t have many friends, you know Nobody who would take meseriously I haven’t talked about this much, but lately I’ve been…seeingthings, hearing things At the edge of my eyes It’s like I can’t turn around

quite quick enough, but I know something was there.”

I couldn’t help the hint of humor that crept into my voice “You been out

in the Mist too long, Corydon?”

Adrian wasn’t born here, like me, but he was the next thing to it I couldn’tthink of anyone who had walked the Gardens longer than he had He shouldknow better than to give in to fantasies born in the Mist

Adrian jabbed a finger at me “That’s it! That’s just it I don’t see anything

moving in the Mist I don’t see dead relatives, or walking nightmares, or

anything else that Mist-touched people claim to see It’s the Mist itself that’smoving.”

“The Mist moves all the time, Adrian,” I said The Mist, for all itssupernatural properties, is still water in the air It moves with the wind justlike any cloud

“I know what it does,” Adrian snapped “Don’t treat me like a new hire,you know better than that This is different Sometimes I think the Mist ismoving around behind my back, you know Reaching into me, pulling stuffout The anger, the fear, the…you know what I mean One day, I’m afraid theMist is going to get what it wants, and everything I’ve pushed down all theseyears is going to bubble up to the top and come bursting out of me It’s going

to keep on coming, up and up, and the Mist is going to feed and keep feedinguntil there’s nothing left of me at all…”

His voice drifted off He didn’t seem to need a response, for which I wasglad If I had reacted honestly at that moment, it would have been to run out

of my house, into the night, and to keep running away from this potentiallyderanged madman

I’ve seen dozens of people whose sanity has been eaten away by Asphodel.None of them are what I would consider safe living companions

I don’t know why I didn’t leave right then Maybe something he said rangtrue in me Maybe I just wanted to know But I had to ask the next question

“Why did you come to me with this?” I asked I had a positive opinion ofAdrian, but we were hardly friends In many ways, I barely knew the man

“You’ve been around longer than anyone,” he said “You know what theMist can do to folks And there was your wife And…well, I don’t want thisconversation getting around, if you understand me.”

I did Not only did I stick to my own company, and was therefore notlikely to spread any rumors, most people around here considered me thelonely guy who lived on his own because his wife had left him for mysterious

reasons I couldn’t ruin Adrian’s reputation in town because, frankly, no onewould listen to me.

“I understand,” I said That probably didn’t sound too gracious, so I tried

to offer him what advice I could “Listen, if you want my opinion, I’d sayyou should go home Get a good night’s sleep Talk to your wife, if you can.But more than anything, keep control of yourself You’ve managed to keepthe Mist out this long; you can do it a little longer.”

Today, as I look back on this conversation, I wonder if I should have saidsomething different Maybe I could have said something else, something thatwould have helped

But, like you said Probably my imagination

I managed to scrape up a couple more hours of sleep before the next knockcame This time, I wasn’t nearly so irritated I knew what was coming I’vealways had a sense for bad news

The foreman of my harvest crew—my boss—stood outside, holding aglowing cluster of pink night-roses like a lantern She was one of the fewbald women I knew, and she had tiny black eyes like a pair of beetles

She was also a Gardener, a Traveler with the power to call on the plants ofAsphodel Despite my exhaustion, I straightened my back and bowed myhead in respect

“I beg your pardon for waking you,” she said She wasn’t really sorry, butgood manners were a matter of survival here Provoking someone else can bejust as bad as letting yourself get provoked

“No pardon necessary,” I said “Is there a problem in the Fields?”

The foreman lowered her bundle of glowing flowers, shifting the pale pinklight away from her face “Phelia Corydon is dead We need you to help findAdrian.”

Her words stunned me, but a tendril of Mist was creeping in my door, so Ilet the cold swallow my reaction “Of course Let me get my coat.”

Perhaps luckily, we weren’t the ones to find him We wandered around inthe cold and the dark for only an hour before we came across a small crowd,maybe ten or twelve people I knew most of the faces They were gatheredaround a tree, all talking at once Some of them held bundles of night-roses,like the foreman; others lit their way with more traditional lamps, or evenwickwood torches

The crowd stood in a mass, facing a bloody mess at the foot of a tree

Despite all my years of training and conditioning, I almost lost control ofmyself when I saw what lay there on the Mist-shrouded ground

Adrian Corydon sat with his back propped against the tree He was just aswet as the last time I had seen him, but this time his clothes were soaked inblood Adrian didn’t have a scratch on him, but his wife lay in a heap next tohim Her once-white nightgown had been stained dark red

I didn’t stop to look for further details The ground lurched, my stomachtwisted, and I had to look away before I called the Mist to me

The foreman demanded answers in a calm, reasonable tone As thoughthere was no corpse at her feet Rule number one in Asphodel: stay calm.I’m still not sure if Adrian heard her or not, but he spoke anyway Hisvoice quaked with emotion released: fear, anger, horror, relief, I’m not sure

“It was the Mist It got me It got me at last I told you it would It set a trapfor me, do you see? It’s just a trap.”

By the end he was pleading, reasonable At his feet lay a bloody huntingknife, of the sort we used to skin bulls or peel the bark off shellvines

When he said all that, we knew what had happened We’d all seen itbefore He’d panicked in the Mist, let it get to him It had eaten him from theinside out, twisted him, turned him into something that couldn’t tell thedifference between reality and nightmare It was best to put such people out

of their misery

So we did They did, I mean I was with them, but I wasn’t with them, do

you know what I mean? I think, even as dark as it got, part of me knewsomething was wrong I didn’t do anything

I didn’t say anything either I didn’t tell them what Adrian had told me, or

beg them to stop I put all my effort into keeping myself absolutely calm

I wouldn’t want to let the Mist in

They were a quiet mob Quiet, and efficient They had a rope up and over atree before the sun’s first rays crept over the forest

Adrian kept repeating, over and over, “It was the Mist, you understand? Itgot me It wasn’t me, it was the Mist!”

At first, he was as calm as usual, but as they dragged him closer to the rope

he got more and more frantic Which, of course, just made them drag himfaster Excited by his emotion, the Mist pooled closer, twisting toward him inquesting tendrils as it looked for a gap in his mind

On its own, the Mist is harmless We live in it, work in it But when itsenses prey, it’s more deadly than a wildfire Everyone around is in danger.The foreman was the one who finally got Adrian’s head in the noose Herbeetle-black eyes were cold when she ordered the drop

They lifted him up, pulled the rope tight, and dropped him short

He kicked a few times, the Mist surged up, and then they both went quiet

“Well,” the foreman said, “that’s that I’ll expect to see you all at work intwo hours.”

Without another word, everyone went home Even me I couldn’t sleep, but

I tried; I knew I would need my strength for today’s work Besides, disposing

of madmen was familiar work for anyone who stayed in Asphodel any length

of time

Not that it was usually quite so…graphic Or personal But I repeated that

to myself until the sun rose higher and the bell chimed, letting all the harvestcrews know to report to their fields

As I did every morning, I picked up my equipment: hoe, gloves, hat, spade,shears I made sure it was all in place, and I made the usual hike down to theFields

When I got to the edge of town, a little collection of propped-up woodenshacks next to the tangled rainbows of the Midnight Fields, I noticed twothings First, no one was working Everyone on my crew was gathered up inthe town, silent, tools hanging forgotten at their sides

Second, a woman with loose, stringy hair was walking from worker toworker, asking a question that I couldn’t quite make out A woman in a whitenightgown

Eventually, as I knew she would, she made her way over to me

“Have you seen Adrian?” Phelia Corydon asked She had panic in her

eyes, but none made it into her voice “I woke up, and he wasn’t there.”

Later, the foreman made it very clear that I should not have told her Shealmost had me brought up on charges before the Overlord By telling Pheliawhat happened to her husband, I might have made her vulnerable to the Mist,and thus endangered all of us

But as it happens, Phelia Corydon acquitted herself well I told her thestory that I’ve just told you, and she didn’t scream She didn’t attack me, orbreak down into tears, as I might have in her place

Like a true woman of Asphodel, she made a mask of her face Then shespat at my feet

Without looking at anyone else, she walked into town I don’t know whereshe was going, but I heard later that she had reclaimed Adrian’s body andwas taking the case to the Overlord It’s probably true

So I’ve told you the whole story, even the parts that I should probablyleave out, for my reputation’s sake But as I said already, I don’t have much

of a reputation

I know, I should have realized immediately what the Mist had done to us Ishould have insisted that we take Adrian inside, wait for morning, andexamine the evidence

It hasn’t been long I’m still shaken by the whole thing I’ve had enoughpractice staying calm that you’d think I’d be able to keep my head in anysituation, but I’ll tell you what: this one gnaws at me

But, given time, I’ll pack it away Shove it down I’ll bury the memory sodeep that I don’t feel anything, so it can’t be used against me As much as Ican, I will forget Adrian Corydon

M AELSTROM OF S TONE

There is always time for patience…

-Elysian Book of Virtues, Chapter 5: Green

When Chloe etched the final rune into her knuckle-sized sapphire, it feltlike being let out of prison

She dropped the sapphire—cut into two dozen facets, all covered in fresh,blocky runes—on her workbench, next to a sprawling collection of her tools “That’s one sapphire heartstone done!” she called into the swirling tunnels

of her house “In record time! You should go ahead and retire, I’ll take overfor you.”

She always tried to make jokes when she needed to leave the house in ahurry Sometimes she could slip away while her grandfather chuckled

Chloe pulled her padded leather jacket on with one hand and opened thedoor with the other Maybe, if she were only quick enough, she could make itoutside

The scuff of her grandfather’s slippers behind her warned Chloe that shehad been too slow

She spun around, favoring him with a bright smile “I was just heading out,grandfather…I mean, ah, Grandmaster Ornheim Can I get you anythingwhile I’m out? Something to eat, or…”

Chloe’s grandfather, whose name was once Deiman Uracius, looked likenothing more than a village child’s idea of a wizard He sported a white beardlong enough to reach his belt, had he worn one But of course he didn’t,because that would mean forgoing his traditional thick, brown robes Rings ofprecious metals and gems flashed on each of his fingers: plain halfsilverbands; gold rings set with sunstone; rune-etched rubies; obsidian bands with

small caps of iridian sand On his face, as always, he wore that small,

infuriating, invincible half-smile

Nothing will ever disturb me, that expression said Nothing ever could If gold coins rained from the sky I would not laugh, and if the sun failed to rise

I would not weep.

Grandmaster Ornheim laced his ring-speckled fingers together and fixedhis granddaughter with that same not-quite-smile “I am proud to be yourgrandfather, Chloe, you know that But it is important you not call me that.”Chloe would be lucky to get out of this without a twenty-minute sermon on

Enosh cultural propriety “I know that, Grandmaster, I apologize.”

The Grandmaster took no more notice of her words than a golem wouldhave Less, if the golem were well made “Not even in private Our habits inprivate never fail to carry over into the public sphere.”

“Perhaps the reverse is true as well.” Chloe snapped her fingers as thoughshe had just realized something “That would explain all the lectures! Youdon’t give enough of them to your students, so all the undelivered speechesbubbling up within you must carry over into the private sphere.”

Her grandfather’s patient smile didn’t flicker “Your tolerance is nearlyinhuman You absorb every word of my wisdom with the patience of amountain, and yet you still find time to put every one of your tools up in itsproper place How do you do it?”

She was becoming too predictable; he hadn’t even glanced over at theworkbench Chloe let her shoulders slump—she needed to show him that shewasn’t happy about this—and marched over to the workbench, hurriedlyscooping up her tools and dumping them into the appropriate rack, drawer, orbox

Grandmaster Ornheim strolled over to stand beside her, plucking hercarved sapphire up from the surface of the workbench “This is functional.Clean I can see how this might work quite well, actually.”

“Of course,” Chloe said, but she couldn’t help a little spark of pride Shehad worked for hours on that heartstone, after all, even if she hadn’t done itwillingly

“Have you any thoughts on the golem?”

“Oh! Yes, hang on…” after a moment she found it: a glass jar of sparkling

golden sand Iridian.

She poured a handful of iridian into her hand, and then willed it into the

air A tendril of sand rose, following her thoughts, spreading out into agleaming sheet of tiny stars

“I was thinking something like a bird, you see.” The sand condensed into aglittering model of a stationary bird She wasn’t sure what kind of bird it was

—there were no birds native to Ornheim, so she had only ever seen them ontrips outside—but this model looked like a bird to her “I’d like a light rockfor the body, maybe something volcanic, I’m not sure.”

“And the skystones?”

“Here, here, and here.” At each word, a hole appeared in the iridian bird:

one each at the tip of the tail and at the end of both wings “Before you say

anything, I know it will be a little unbalanced, so I’d plan to put the

heartstone here, in the middle of its back.” Some of the spare iridian floated

around the bird’s back, encircling where the heartstone would go

This was the one part of the process to which Chloe had actually investedtime and effort Anyone could carve the runes of a heartstone; the processwas mostly tedious memorization and hours of mindless drudgery She would

rather spend her time in the mines Designing the golem itself, on the other

hand, actually took a degree of creativity, even artistry

Plus, in her personal opinion, skystones were amazing With only a little

mental effort, an Ornheim Traveler could make those little blue stones riseand hover in midair She had begun practicing with skystones since she hadfirst felt her bond to Ornheim’s vast earth

Grandmaster Ornheim waved his hand, and the iridian wrenched itself

from Chloe’s control, flowing back into the jar in a sparkling golden river.One tendril of sand even reached back out and pulled the lid back on “Verygood You’ll be ready to assemble your golem soon, but don’t get ahead ofyourself You’ve got plenty of time.”

This from the man who would spend six weeks studying a block of marblebefore he first touched it with his chisel “Yes, Grandmaster.”

Before her grandfather could say anything else, Chloe turned and pulledopen the door Some of her friends were going Beneath today, and if she waslucky, she might get there in time to join them

Grandmaster Ornheim’s hand rested softly on her shoulder, and she almostscreamed in frustration

“I hope you’re not leaving quite yet.”

“No, I’m not,” Chloe said, in the most unconvincing tone possible

“You need to—”

“Yes, I know You tell me every time.”

The Grandmaster stroked his beard, always playing the venerable oldteacher “You do? Then tell me, what must you do before leaving?”

Chloe briefly wondered if she could just start running How far would shemake it before her grandfather brought her back? It was an unfair thought, ofcourse, since Grandmaster Ornheim would never physically stop her fromleaving His disapproval, along with the inevitable lecture when she returned,was enough to keep her in place

Besides, she owed him more than that Even if he sometimes made herwant to slam her face into the side of a boulder

“An Ornheim Traveler must always stay and watch the Cycle,” she recited.

“It is by the flow of the Maelstrom that our lives are guided, and we mustrespect that flow.”

“Lest we be crushed beneath it,” her grandfather finished “Sit Watch theCycle The City Beneath has existed for hundreds, perhaps thousands ofyears It will still be there in an hour.”

An hour? In her estimation, she could learn the Cycle safely in one look It

wasn’t that much different from glancing at a clock, after all Not in principle,anyway

Chloe walked up to the edge of the cliff outside their house and leaned onthe railing Her home—like everyone’s home, here in Ornheim—was carvedinto the side of one of the more stable mountains A path three or four paceswide stretched out from the front of the house like a porch, terminating in aseemingly endless drop down to Ornheim’s dark surface Only Master-levelOrnheim Travelers were allowed to descend that far

Master Ornheim Travelers, or those few who fell through the thin woodensafety railing Chloe didn’t spare much thought for the drop, though She hadlived with that threat for most of her life And she had better things to worryabout

Above her whirled a Maelstrom of Stone, flying and dancing in an endlesscycle

Rivers of shining golden iridian drifted by, twisting like giant ribbons on

an invisible breeze A star-shaped chunk of rose quartz the size of a barnrolled in a lazy orbit around an inverted mountain with a flat top It lookedlike it had been torn up from the ground by the roots As Chloe watched, shesaw specks of blue flickering toward the bottom of the floating island It waskept aloft by veins of skystone, then

A stone titan plodded by, looking like a craggy face the size of Chloe’smountain Its dull eyes were fixed on some invisible point in the distance.Some people built villages on stone titans; they avoided great danger, andtended to visit water sources quite often Chloe could never imagine living on

a mountain that wasn’t stationary, herself

The sky of Ornheim remained in constant motion There was no backdrop

of sun or stars, as there might have been in the World Above, but layer after

layer of spinning, walking, shifting, dancing, moving stone in every shape,

size, and color Legend had it that Ornheim was nothing more than anunimaginably vast cavern, with a ceiling out there in the distance, but Chloe

didn’t place too much faith in that theory For one thing, how would a roofthat big stay up?

After only a few minutes of staring out at the Cycle, Chloe began to grow

bored The ribbons of iridian were circling her mountain, making a full round

once every eight or nine minutes The chunk of rose quartz, on the otherhand, only took twenty-eight seconds to encircle its island, and was getting alittle closer each time The island itself seemed to drift randomly, though itlooked mostly stable The rose quartz star and its inverted island would crashtogether eventually, though that was hardly remarkable Rocks the size ofsmall towns slammed into each other all the time here, with a noise likethunder

Nothing else even remotely interesting was happening nearby She had agood grasp on the Cycle, or at least the part of it that affected her What wasshe going to gain by standing here waiting? The Cycle took more than a fewminutes to change

Chloe had almost turned away when she noticed a flash of green on thesurface of the floating island, maybe fifty paces away

She spun back to look, since anything that deviated from the Cycle wasworth investigation But the island’s rose quartz “moon” quickly rose,blocking her view

She waited the next fourteen seconds in utter impatience, mentally beggingthe chunk of rock to hurry up and cross over to the other side, so that shecould see what was happening on the island’s surface

After the most agonizing quarter of a minute she could remember, Chloealmost cheered when the chunk of pink quartz floated to the other side

That was when she recognized what she had failed to notice before Thespeck of green was not a rock formation, but a girl A dark-haired, tan-skinned girl in a green dress

Chloe let out an involuntary gasp There was a girl, who looked to be lessthan Chloe’s own age, out in the Maelstrom itself Alone Even GrandmasterOrnheim would not have traveled beyond the mountain without a goodreason and extensive preparation, and he likely would have brought help.The spiky ball of rose quartz floated by on another orbit, reminding Chloe:

it was going to crash into the island It might take minutes, hours, or even aday, but when it eventually happened, that girl would die

Saints above, what am I supposed to do?

“Grandfather!” Chloe screamed She seemed unable to tear her eyes away

from the girl in the green dress No, I can’t call him that, he won’t answer to

that “Grandmaster Ornheim!” No response “Grandmaster!”

He may have left That wouldn’t be too unusual; he was a Grandmaster,after all Ornheim was his backyard, and he could come and go as he pleased.Did she have time to go look for him? Did she have any other options?

Her grandfather, she knew, would tell her to wait Observe There is

always time for patience; that was one of his favorite sayings Another of his

most common: You must learn the board before playing your first piece.

Chloe respected her grandfather, and patience was the way of Ornheim.Carving a golem’s hearstone took weeks, and building its body could takemonths Learning to read the Cycle took years; learning to navigate theMaelstrom took a lifetime There were no shortcuts in Ornheim, andendurance always yielded results But she simply could not justify doingnothing while a girl died in front of her eyes

She wasn’t sure what exactly she could do, but surely something would be

better than nothing That, or it would result in two bodies lost on Ornheim’ssurface instead of only one

One of the giant ribbons of iridian floated by, and Chloe got a terrible idea.

Before she could think about it too much, she vaulted over the railing andinto empty space

For a sickening instant, her stomach lurched, and she wished with all herbeing that she could take it back She was going to fall into the hazy, browndistance, and—while she didn’t know exactly what waited on the ground—she was pretty sure that she would get there by means of a sudden, violentstop

Then, in response to her mental screams, the river of iridian flowed down

and cushioned her fall Not that it felt much like a cushion at all, really; it feltmore like slamming face-first into a beach But she would take what shecould get

She had initially imagined using the iridian to form a bridge and letting the

girl cross The problem was that it was far beyond the scope of her abilitieswith the substance Maybe Grandmaster Ornheim or one of his top students

could do that, but Chloe certainly couldn’t Not yet Commanding iridian

took great concentration and physical stamina, both of which increasedexponentially when you tried to do it at a distance Chloe’s only hope was to

stick as close to the iridian as possible, carrying herself over to the island,

and then hopefully both of them back