He lay for a moment on the deck, trying to draw his shattered self back together, attempted to shake off the feelings of grief and dreadful loss and fear that assailed him—all in the name of Alfred. A furry head rested on the Patryn’s chest, liquid eyes looked anxiously into his. Haplo stroked the dog’s silky ears, scratched its muzzle.
“It’s all right, boy. I’m all right,” he said, then knew that he would never truly be all right again. He glanced across at the comatose body sprawled on the deck near him.
“Damn you!” he muttered and, sitting up, started to give the body a wakening kick with his foot. He was reminded, forcibly, of the young and beautiful corpse in the crystal tomb. Reaching out a hand, he shook Alfred’s shoulder.
“Hey,” he said gruffly. “C’mon. C’mon and wake up. I can’t leave you down here, Sartan. I want you up on the bridge where I can keep on you. Get moving!”
Alfred sat up instantly, gasping and crying out in horror. He ^mtched at Haplo’s shirt, nearly dragging the Patryn down on top of him. “Help me! Save me! Running! I’ve been running… and they’re so close! Please! Please, help me!”
Whatever was going on here, Haplo didn’t have time for it. “Hey!” he shouted loudly, straight into the man’s face, and slapped him.
Alfred’s balding head snapped back, his teeth clicked together. Sucking in a breath, he stared at Haplo and the Patryn saw recognition. He saw something else, completely unexpected: understanding, compassion, sorrow.
Haplo wondered uneasily where Alfred had spent his journey through Death’s Gate. He had the answer, deep inside, but he wasn’t certain he liked it or what it all might mean. He chose to ignore it, at least for the time being.
“Was that? … I saw …” Alfred began.
“On your feet,” Haplo said. Standing up himself, he pulled the clumsy Sartan up with him. “We’re not out of danger. If anything, we’ve just flown into it. I—”
A shattering crash amidships emphasized his words. Haplo staggered, caught himself on an overhead beam. Alfred fell backward, arms flailing wildly, and sat down heavily on the deck.
“Dog, bring him!” Haplo ordered, and hurried forward.
During the Sundering, the Sartan had split the universe, divided it into worlds representative of its four basic elements: air, fire, stone, and water. Haplo had first visited the realm of air, Arianus. He had just returned from the realm of fire, Pryan. His glimpses into each had prepared him, so he had supposed, for what he might find in Abarrach, the world of stone. A subterranean world, he imagined, a world of tunnels and caves, a world of cool and earthy-smelling darkness.
His ship struck something again, listed sideways. Haplo could hear, behind him, a wail and a clattering crash. Alfred, down again. The ship could take such punishment, guarded as it was by its runes, but not indefinitely. Each blow sent tiny tremors through the sigla traced on the hull, forcing them a little farther apart, disrupting their magic ever so slightly. Two had only to completely separate, one from the other, open a crack that would grow wider and wider. That was how Haplo’s first trip through Death’s Gate had ended.
Making his way forward as rapidly as possible, tossed from side to side by the erratic motion of the heaving ship, Haplo became aware lurid glow lighting the darkness around him. The temperature increasing, growing hotter, much hotter. The runes on his skin began to glow a faint blue, his body’s magic reacting instinctively to reduce his temperature to a safe level.
Could his ship be on fire?
Haplo scoffed at the notion. He had passed safely through the guns of Pryan; the runes would most assuredly protect against flame! But there was no denying the fact that the red glow was burning brighter, the temperature growing warmer. Haplo quickened his pace. Emerging onto the bridge with some difficulty, due to the lurching of the vessel, the Patryn stopped and stared, amazement and shock paralyzing him.
His ship was sailing, with incredible speed, down a river of molten lava.
A vast stream of glowing red tinged with flame yellow surged and swirled around the vessel. Darkness arched above him, made darker by contrast to the lurid light of the magma flow below. He was in a gigantic cavern. Vast columns of black rock, around which the lava curled and eddied, soared upward, supporting a ceiling of stone. Numberless stalactites hung down, reaching for him like bony, grasping fingers, their polished surface reflecting the hellish red of the river of fire beneath them.