“Yes, yes, he rescued you from the dying world with his righteous right hand less than two thousand years ago. I’ve heard you tell it.” The anger in his voice is palpable. “Little queen, don’t you realize? We Inviernos have always been here.”
I stare at him agape, even as the rightness of his words spark inside me. Behind him, one of the insect birds flits through the branches of a eucalyptus, alights atop the ruined building, and begins to groom its rainbow wing with a spindly black leg.
“Your people came, bearing magic we’d never seen,” he continues. “They changed us, made us less than we were. Changed themselves too, the legend goes, though I don’t know how or why. They scattered across the land now called Joya d’Arena, and we fled before them into the mountains. After that, they changed the whole world. Your country wasn’t always a desert, you know.”
I’m shaking my head, with uneasiness rather than denial. If what he says is true, then my ancestors were interlopers. No, thieves. But surely one cannot be considered a thief when one is taking only what God gives? God offered us this world. All the scriptures say so.
My old tutor did tell me our great desert was an inland sea before a mysterious cataclysm forced the water deep below ground. So maybe what Storm says is partly true. Maybe we created the desert somehow. But how? “That makes no sense,” I say aloud. “God wouldn’t—”
My Godstone leaps, and the tugging on my navel becomes a dagger in my gut.
Storms gasps. “I don’t like pain.”
I bend over, clutching at my stomach with one hand, even as I grab Storm’s shoulder with the other and push him forward down our path. “Just . . . keep . . . moving.” I can hardly put one foot in front of the other. All I want to do is drop to the ground and curl up, knees to chest. Maybe this is what Father Nicandro meant when he said my determination would be tested.
I have a lot of determination.
But a few steps farther and the vise on my abdomen twists suddenly, and I tumble to my knees, panting. I will crawl if I have to. I will—
“It’s worse for you, isn’t it?” Storm says, looking down at me with irritation.
I nod, unable to speak.
He stares at me a moment. Then he sighs, squats down, grabs one of my arms, and loops it over his shoulder. He stands, pulling me to my feet. “Just a bit farther, Your Majesty.”
I swallow my surprise and concentrate on moving my feet as he drags me down the path.
Just when I think the pain can’t get any worse, when my body wavers between vomiting and passing out, we break into a small clearing. In the center is another ruined building, as perfectly round as a tower. But its summit has long since crumbled, leaving it merely the height of a man.
Chains rattle.
A pale face with eyes the color of a hazy sky peeks out from behind the tower. White hair streams from a middle part on his sunburned scalp, all the way to the ground. It’s the gatekeeper.
Chapter 28
HE has the flawless face of an animagus, but his stooped shoulders and rheumy eyes make him seem as old as the mountains themselves.
“Two!” he squeals. “Two apprentices!” His Lengua Classica is thick and muddled, like he has a mouthful of pebbles. “I must be one of God’s favorites,” he says, “to be so blessed.” He steps from behind the tower to reveal tattered clothes of indeterminate color and filthy bare feet in rusty manacles. The skin of his ankles bulges up around the manacles so that it is impossible to see where iron ends and flesh begins. I have to look away.
“Who are you?” he asks. “I’ve felt you coming for hours now. Or years?”
I try to speak, but I can’t. I am nothing but pain and that awful tugging.
“Oh, yes, that,” he says. He flicks his fingers, and the pain disappears.
Relief floods me, and desperate gratitude starts to bubble on my lips, but I bite it back. I straighten cautiously.
“Are you the gatekeeper?” I ask.
“You first!” he says, clapping. “Tell me who you are. And come here, come here. Let me get a better look at you.”
I edge forward. He lunges toward me, and I recoil, but his manacles have caught him. He is chained, I see now, to the tower. He cries out in frustration, stomping on the ground like a child throwing a tantrum. Then he collects himself, and the frustration melts from his face as quickly as it came. “I believe you were about to tell me who you are?” he says with preternatural calm.
I’m careful to stay just beyond the reach of his chains when I say, “I am the bearer.” And after a moment of silence: “And a queen.”
He taps his lip with a crooked, dirty finger. “Not very good at either, are you? Your heart screams your inadequacy.” He turns to Storm. “And you?”