The Golden Door

Keeping his head down and his hand closed protectively over the little bag, Rye edged through the crowd, toward the low building.

As he moved closer, he began to smell something very unpleasant. He wrinkled his nose. The odor of fell-dragon slime had been bad enough, but this was worse — a sour stench that almost made him gag.

The building was plainly some sort of tavern. The faint sound of music drifted from its lighted windows, but the sandy ground around it was deserted. No doubt the odor kept most people away. A sign swung, creaking, over the door.

Suddenly the door opened, releasing a gust of warm, vile-smelling air. Rye darted into the shadows at the side of the building and cautiously peered back around the corner.

Two roughly bearded men appeared on the step. For a moment, they lingered in the open doorway, frowning at the sight of the crowd still gaping at the serpents thrashing around the rock.

“Look at them!” one man growled. “Gawping fools!”

The other man grunted agreement.

“Well, by this time tomorrow night, it’ll all be over, thank the stars,” the first man went on, hitching at his belt. “Two weeks stuck on shore without being able to cast a net! How’s a man expected to live?”

“The catches will be bad for a while after this, too,” the other man grumbled. “Remember how it was last time? Serpents scare off the fish.”

“Ah well, we’ve all given our boats another couple of coatings of repellent while they’ve been beached,” the first man said. “We’ll soon drive the beasts off again. Why else has Olt banned us from the water these past weeks? Not for our safety, that’s certain. Well, I’m for home, Wilf.”

“And me,” said the other. “I’m hungry as a clink, but the wife makes me wash before I step into the kitchen. Says the stink of the repellent puts her off her food.”

“Funny,” the first man said. “My wife says the same, but I can’t smell a thing myself.”

They walked off together. Rye sidled to the doorway, and slipped through it just before the door swung shut.

He found himself in a dimly lit room crowded with long tables at which scattered groups of men sat drinking and talking.

On the wall opposite the door, there was a bar, where a few more customers stood arguing in low voices as a small, plump woman filled their tankards with foaming ale. An old man hunched on a stool nearby, playing a melancholy tune on a small accordion.

No one had noticed Rye come in like a shadow with the closing of the door. He looked quickly around, searching for a place where he could hide himself away.

A battered piano stood across the corner of the room nearest the door. The table beside it was empty. Perhaps the two fishermen he had overheard had been sitting there, because two empty tankards sat abandoned in the center.

Rye dropped to the floor, crawled rapidly between the wall and the table, and squeezed behind the piano. The corner was cramped and dusty, but at least he was out of sight.

He settled himself as comfortably as he could, then lifted the cord from his neck and opened the little brown bag. The crystal lit up the moment he touched it and he jumped nervously, even though he had been expecting it. He pulled it out, shading it carefully with his jacket, and used its glow to examine the other objects in the bag one by one.

The red feather. The tiny key. The honey sweet wrapped in paper. The transparent disc. The snail shell. The small round nut.

Every one of these things was powerful in some way. Rye knew it. But no matter how long he held each of the objects in his hand, he could not even begin to tell what it was supposed to do.

The only one that gave him any feeling at all was the transparent disc, which again made him fearful and queasy.

Quickly he put it back into the bag. He felt sick enough without it. Even behind the piano, he could smell the rank odor that he now knew was the sea serpent repellent used by the Oltan fishermen. Combined with the other tavern smells of ale and stale fish, it was making his empty stomach churn and his head swim.

After a few more minutes, he began stuffing the other mysterious objects back into the bag, too. They were telling him nothing. He was wasting precious time staring at them. The only thing he had learned was that he had not missed anything when he had searched the bag before.

There was no ninth object. Either something had been lost or stolen from the bag before it came into his keeping, or one of the eight things he had found carried two powers instead of just one.

He had to find Dirk! Dirk would help him work out what the remaining powers were. And in the meantime, he had the ring and the crystal to help him.

Then he remembered that he could not even start his search for Dirk until he had something to cover his hair.

Gritting his teeth in frustration, he roughly snatched up the last of the six objects, the little brown nut. And as he did, it broke apart in his hand.

Appalled, Rye gaped down at the two cup-shaped pieces of shell, and the nut’s gray contents spilling out into his palm. In his stupid, angry carelessness, he had broken one of the powers!

The shell had split cleanly. Perhaps it could be mended. Gingerly he poked at the gray filling and was surprised to find that it was not firm or sticky, but silky — almost like very fine cloth.

Balancing the light crystal on his knee, he took a pinch of the silky stuff between his fingertips and pulled.

It was cloth — the finest cloth he had ever seen or imagined. And as he held it up, he saw that it had been sewn into a shape, as if it were some sort of very simple bag, or …

A hood!

With shaking fingers, Rye slipped the hood on. It was a little large for him, and probably looked rather strange, but what did that matter? Many people in the streets of Oltan looked strange.

The important thing was, it covered his treacherous red hair. And the strings that fastened under his chin would stop the hood being snatched off by a thieving polypan or blown back by the wind.

Perfect!

Did this mean — could it mean — that the little nutshell actually had the power to grant wishes?

His heart pounding with excitement, Rye fitted the halves of shell together and wished fiercely for something to eat. But when he pulled the halves apart again, there was nothing to be seen inside.

Disappointed, he was just about to try again when there was the sound of voices close by, and benches scraped on the floor. Someone — two men, by the sound of it — had sat down at the table beside the piano. Rye stayed still, hardly daring to breathe.

“That’s better!” a deep, angry voice rumbled. “If I’d stayed at the bar, I’d have ended up wiping the floor with one of them. Buffoons! Glad that the Gifters found two replacements so quickly! Jabbering on about the rebels being spies and traitors!”

“Ah well,” a lighter voice soothed. “They’re just —”

“Seven young ones are going to die out there tomorrow night, Shim!” the first man spat. “And it won’t be a clean, quick death, either.”

“Makes you sick,” Shim agreed. “If life was fair, there’d be another way. But there’s not another way, Hass, by all accounts. And Olt’s sorcery is our protection — our only protection — against invasion by the enemy. Olt has to live, for all our sakes.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” the man called Hass muttered.

“What?”

“Sometimes I wonder if any invader could be worse for us than Olt. And sometimes I wonder if the danger of invasion isn’t just a tale Olt uses to make us let him do what he wants.”

“Bite your tongue, Hass!” Shim hissed in what sounded to Rye like real panic. “Don’t go saying things like that!”

“I wouldn’t say them but to you and Nell,” Hass said grimly. “And neither of you is going to report me for treason, I hope. Shim, you don’t have any children, but I do. Seven years from now there’ll be another Gifting, and my boy will be fifteen!”

Shim mumbled in reply, his voice very low.

Straining his ears to hear, Rye bent forward. The light crystal rolled off his knee and fell onto the floor with a clunk. He scrabbled for it frantically and just managed to catch it before it rolled under the piano and out of his reach.

“What was that?” Shim exclaimed.

Rye froze, his head down, his body awkwardly twisted, one hand on the floor, the hand that held the crystal pressed against the back of the piano.

He was badly off balance, but he did not dare to move. Sweat broke out on his forehead.

“Mouse,” Hass grunted.

“Sounded too big for a mouse.”

“Rat, then. Clink, even. Who cares? As I was saying —”

“Hass, we all hate the Gifting, but you’ve got to face facts!” Shim broke in furiously. “You know there’s an enemy across the sea. You know who he is. You know he’s been waiting his chance to come back and take revenge on Dorne, for choosing Olt as Chieftain instead of him!”

Startled, Rye raised his head. And to his utter astonishment, he found himself staring straight through a round hole in the piano, at two men sitting glaring at each other across the table.

One of the men — Hass, Rye guessed — was powerfully built, and had an untidy shock of black hair. He was looking moodily around, his chin propped on his hand. The other, Shim, was wiry, sandy-haired, and freckled. As Rye watched, Shim tipped his tankard and drank thirstily.

Rye blinked, dumbfounded. The hole he was looking through was like a small, round window — but a window that worked only one way, it seemed, for if it had been visible, the men would surely have seen it.

The clear space had slightly hazy edges and had appeared just above the place where Rye’s hand pressed against the back of the piano.

The hand that held the light crystal! Rye’s heart gave a great thud.

“Well, Hass?” the sandy-haired man demanded, slamming his tankard down. “Do you know it or don’t you?”

“I know that’s the story,” Hass growled, looking back at him. “What I doubt is that it’s true. Why should this Lord of Shadows in the west be Verlain? Verlain left Dorne centuries ago. He’s surely dead by now.”

“Why should he be?” Shim asked. “Olt’s the older brother, and he’s alive, isn’t he?”

“Only by foul means — and the Gifting is the latest and foulest of all.”

“Well, if Olt’s found a way, the other has, too. They’re both great sorcerers — and half Fellan, remember!”

“Maybe,” Hass admitted reluctantly. “But even if Verlain lives — even if he and the Lord of Shadows are one and the same — why should he be a threat to us? There are plenty of other lands to conquer — much greater, richer lands, too. Why should he care a straw about Dorne after so long?”

“Oh, he cares,” Shim said, his freckled face very grim. “He doesn’t forget, any more than Olt does. He’s out there, full of hate, and he’s grown very powerful. By the stars, man, how can you doubt it? You’ve heard the sailors’ stories!”

Hass snorted. “You’re mad if you believe sailors’ tales. They’ll tell you about sunken singing islands, and people that are half fish, and dragons that speak, and great ghost bells that ring when death approaches a ship … they’ll tell you anything!”

“That’s as may be,” Shim said earnestly, “but the Lord of Shadows is real enough. What’s more, nothing has been heard of him since his defeat in the Land of Dragons, where by all reports he was repelled by a magic more powerful than his own.”

“And what’s that to us?” Hass demanded.

“He’s angry, Hass!” cried the other, forgetting to keep his voice down. “He was cheated of what he dearly wanted. Wouldn’t that turn his mind back to Dorne, the place that first rejected him?”

Hass drained his tankard and wiped his mouth with his sleeve, shaking his head in disgust.

“It’s true!” Shim persisted, leaning across the table. “For all we know, his spies are among us now! And what about the other brother? The youngest? He’s been exiled from Oltan, maybe, and we were all told to forget his very name, but everyone knows he’s still in Dorne.”

“He swore to stay away. He wouldn’t —”

“He might do anything! Seven years is a long time to be freezing your rear end off on a windy cliff when you’re used to the good life. He might have sent word to Verlain that Olt is weakening and near to death. For all we know, Hass, Verlain’s warships are waiting out of sight on the other side of the island this very moment, in the hope that the Gifting will fail!”

Rye stiffened. The movement was slight, but it was enough to make him lose his balance. The hand clutching the crystal slipped, and as the magic window vanished, his head and shoulder hit the back of the piano, which jangled softly.

“That’s no clink!” Shim exclaimed. “Someone’s spying on us!”

There was a scrape and a thump as he jumped up. In two strides, he had reached the piano and was peering behind it.

His furious face stared in at Rye. Rye waited, dry-mouthed, to be seized by the collar and dragged out into the light.

But to his amazement, this did not happen. Shim seemed to be looking straight through him.

“Well, what is it?” Hass called impatiently.

Shim made a puzzled face, rubbed his stubbly chin, then backed away, out of Rye’s sight.

“There’s no one there,” Rye heard him say. “I could have sworn I heard a thud — a jingling sort of thud. I must have been imagining things.”

“No,” Hass rumbled. “I heard it, too. We’ll see about this!”

Again a bench scraped. And the next moment, a big hand was pulling the piano away from the corner, exposing Rye to the whole room.

Rye crouched against the wall, not daring to move as Hass frowned down at him. But then the man’s eyes slid over and past him without the slightest change of expression.

“Hoy!” the woman behind the bar shouted. “Hass! What are you playing at?”

By now, every face in the room had turned in Rye’s direction. Everyone seemed to be looking at him.

But plainly, no one could see him, any more than Hass and Shim could.

I am invisible, Rye thought, his heart thudding wildly. I am actually …

Slowly, very slowly for fear of making some tiny sound that might alert Hass, he lifted his hand to touch the silky hood that covered his head.

The hood was the cause of the miracle — of course, it had to be! Somehow, though it actually covered only part of him, its power veiled him completely.

“Push that piano back where it belongs, you villain!” the woman at the bar shouted, shaking her fist at Hass, only half in fun. “And if you’ve damaged it, there’ll be trouble! That was my gran’s, that piano!”

“Sorry, Mag!” Shim called hastily, his face reddening. “We thought we heard a clink.”

The woman looked outraged. “A clink?” she snapped. “There are no filthy clinks in my tavern!”

The fishermen at the tables and at the bar laughed and turned back to their conversations. Hass, looking sullen, pushed the piano back into its proper place with the scarlet-faced Shim hovering around him, trying to help.

But by that time, Rye had slid silently out of the dusty corner and was halfway to the door.