Satisfied that his enemy was harmless, Haplo turned his attention to the runes burned into the wooden planks of the ship’s interior. He traced each one again in his mind—runes of protection, runes of power, runes to take him once again on the strange and terrifying journey into Death’s Gate, runes to ensure his safety until he reached the Nexus. He spoke a word, and the sigla began to glow soft blue in response.
Haplo breathed a deep sigh. He was guarded, protected. He allowed himself to relax for the first time in a long, long while. Making certain his hands were dry, he placed them on the ship’s wheel. It, too, had been enhanced by runes. The mechanism wasn’t as powerful as the steering stone he’d used aboard Dragon Wing. But Dragon Wing and the steering stone were now at the bottom of the sea—if Chelestra’s sea had a bottom. The rune-magic on the wheel was crude, it had been hurriedly done. But it would take him through Death’s Gate and that was all that mattered.
Haplo guided his ship away from the shoreline. He glanced back at the Sartan, who seemed to dwindle in size as the expanse of black water separating them grew larger.
“What will you do now, Samah? Will you enter Death’s Gate, search for your people? No, I don’t think so. You’re scared, aren’t you, Sartan? You know you made a terrible mistake, a mistake that could mean the destruction of all you’ve worked to build. Whether you believe the serpents represent a higher, evil power or not, they’re a force you don’t understand, one you can’t control.
“You’ve sent death through Death’s Gate.”
CHAPTER 3
THE NEXUS
XAR, LORD OF THE NEXUS, WALKED THE STREETS OF HIS QUIET, TWILIGHT land, a land built by his enemy. The Nexus was a beautiful place, with rolling hills and meadows, verdant forests. Its structures were built with soft, rounded corners, unlike the inhabitants, who were sharp-edged and cold as steel. The sun’s light was muted, diffused, as if it shone through finely spun cloth. It was never day in the Nexus, never quite night. It was difficult to distinguish an object from its shadow, hard to tell where one left off and the other began. The Nexus seemed a land of shadows.
Xar was tired. He had just emerged from the Labyrinth, emerged victorious from a battle with the evil magicks of that dread land. This time, it had sent an army of chaodyn to destroy him. Intelligent, giant, insectlike creatures, the chaodyn are tall as men, with hard black-shelled bodies. The only way to destroy a chaodyn utterly is to hit it directly in the heart, kill it instantly. For if it lives, even a few seconds, it will cause a drop of its blood to spring into a copy of itself.
And he’d faced an army of these things, a hundred, two hundred; the numbers didn’t matter for they grew the moment he wounded one. He had faced them alone, and he’d had only moments before the tide of bulbous-eyed insects engulfed him.
Xar had spoken the runes, caused a wall of flame to leap up between him and the advance ranks of the chaodyn, protecting him from the first assault, giving him time to extend the wall.
The chaodyn had attempted to outrun the spreading flames that were feeding off the grasses in the Labyrinth, springing to magical life as Xar fanned them with magical winds. Those few chaodyn who ran through the fire, Xar had killed with a rune-inscribed sword, taking care to thrust beneath the carapace to reach the heart below. All the while, the wind blew and the flames crackled, feeding off the shells of the dead. The fire jumped from victim to victim now, decimating the ranks.
The chaodyn in the rear watched the advancing holocaust, wavered, turned, and fled. Under cover of the flames, Xar had rescued several of his people, Patryns, more dead than alive. The chaodyn had been holding them hostage, using them as bait to lure the Lord of the Nexus to do battle. The Patryns were being cared for now by other Patryns, who also owed their lives to Xar.