The Golden Door

The bell tolled on and on, summoning the people of Oltan to witness the Gifting. And the people were obeying the call.

The eager ones had begun assembling long before the bell began to ring. They stood four and five deep all along the fence, chattering and pointing at the rock, the walkway, the platform, the fortress gate, and the huge piles of bonfire wood that studded the beach above the high-tide mark. Most of these people held smaller versions of the flags already flying from the fence, so that the whole length of metal net was a mass of fluttering red, and Olt’s symbol was everywhere.

The rest, the great majority of Oltan’s citizens, came only when they heard the bell. They came reluctantly, trailing beneath the snapping banners, to stand in silence behind the eager ones like rocks brooding over a flock of noisy sea birds.

As the sun sank slowly toward the horizon, the space bounded by the fortress road, the fence, and the Flying Fish was filled, and latecomers crowded the streets all around.

Very few people had dared to stay away. Olt demanded their presence, and Olt’s word was law.

Having found Rye deaf to his pleas to see reason, Hass had stormed to the doors of the boathouse and dragged them open.

“Only look!” he had snapped. “Remind yourself of the true state of things. Then tell me you are not mad!”

Standing just inside the doorway, Rye could see the crowd and the whole broad curve of the harbor shore beyond the fence. He could see the fortress, dark against the sky, and the wooden walkway leading down to the viewing platform and onto the rock of sacrifice. He could see that the tide was rising.

He stared, his mind filled with the plan that had come to him. The enchanted serpent scale and the silken hood were in his hand. He was shivering all over.

The fence keeping the crowd back did not extend as far as the boathouse. Directly in front of the open doors, beyond a narrow strip of sand, a little jetty stretched into the water, its piers already almost hidden by the rising tide. Here, on the sheltered side of the bay, the waves were calmer than they were in the middle, where the broad white beach faced the open sea.

The waves were crashing on the sand in front of the fortress, and already foam was surging up to the rock. The platform and the walkway were deserted, but not, Rye knew, for long.

“Come to your senses, boy,” Hass muttered beside him. “It’s begun. The bell is tolling. Nothing will stop it now.”

“I must try,” Rye said doggedly. “One of the seven is my friend. Another, my brother dearly loved. My brother gave his life trying to save them. And …”

And if that is not enough, the powers given to me carry their own responsibility, he thought, but did not say. They may have been passed to me in error, but in accepting them, I accepted this.

This … this nightmare.

He tore his eyes away from the surging sea. The sky was beginning to color. Time was growing short.

“You have two things I need, Master Hass,” he said in a level voice. “All you have to do is turn your back while I take them. No one will ever know that I did not steal them. Whatever happens, you will not be blamed.”

“It is not that, boy!” Hass glowered. “Or not only that. I would help you, believe me, if I thought for a moment you could save the prisoners and put an end to Olt’s miserable life. But I know it’s impossible. I know I’d merely be helping you to go to your own death. I can’t —”

He broke off as a chorus of shouts and cheers rose from the watchers at the fence. The fortress gate was opening.

Grim-faced soldiers marched out of the courtyard, wheeled left, and moved down the road that led to the city, halting and turning about only when the track was packed with their bodies, blocked from end to end.

Standing at attention, the soldiers watched sourly as helmeted Gifters swaggered through the gateway two by two. Burly and menacing in red and black, their scorches at their hips, the Gifters strode down to the platform, then moved on to line the lower part of the walkway on both sides, all the way down to the rock.

“You see?” Hass muttered. “The fortress, the walkway, and the rock are sealed off. There is no way, no way at all, to reach the prisoners now.”

“By land there is not,” Rye agreed.

Hass tightened his lips. He turned his eyes to the waves thundering in to the shore, and the brown bulk of the rock of sacrifice rising from a bed of foam.

“No boat could reach the rock in this tide, boy,” he said grimly. “And even if it could, without being swamped or dashed to pieces, it certainly could not get away from shore again.”

“I was not thinking of using a boat,” Rye said. “A boat would be seen at once.”

Hass gaped at him. “You — would swim?”

Rye nodded. “It is the only way.”

The torches set around the walkway, the platform, and the rock burst into blazing life. Bern, his helmet tucked under his arm, stepped out of the courtyard and stood aside, his head held high. Then, gliding through the gateway, gliding a hairbreadth above the ground, came Olt’s sea serpent throne bearing Olt himself.

The serpent’s snarling head and rigid coils were mottled with black where the scales had flaked away. And Olt, shriveled, blotched, and staring, looked like death itself.

The sight was so ghastly that for a split second there was utter silence. Then Olt’s skull-like head turned stiffly, jerkily, and his hollowed, malignant eyes glared out at the crowd.

A small child screamed in terror. Bern made a quick signal and the Gifters lining the walkway began to cheer, drowning the child’s cries. The crowd at the fence followed the Gifters’ lead, roaring and waving their flags. The people behind cheered, too. They knew better than to keep silent.

Hass gave a low groan and pressed his forehead against the boathouse door.

“Master Hass, you are my only hope,” said Rye urgently. “I need a tool that will cut through metal. And I need some of the repellent you use to guard your boats from serpents. Will you help me?”

Hass raised his head and stared again at Olt hunched on his decaying throne.

“Yes,” he said heavily. “I know I’ll live to regret it, but the Heavens forgive me, I will.”

He was as good as his word. Just moments later, Rye’s stomach was rebelling at the stink of the vile yellow-brown grease being spread over his chest and back.

“What is it made of?” he asked, wrinkling his nose.

“Kobb skin,” Hass replied, bending to scoop another handful of grease from a bucket by his side. “Those long oily strips that grow like a mane on a kobb’s back fall out twice a year. They wash up on shore like seaweed. We collect them and boil them down to make the grease.”

He straightened abruptly and caught a glimpse of Rye’s unguarded face. What he saw there made him blink.

“Kobbs are ferocious monsters of the sea,” he explained in a voice that had no expression. “Quite common in these parts. I wouldn’t have thought there was a child in Dorne who hadn’t heard of them.”

“K-kobbs? Of course I — I have heard of them,” Rye stammered, feeling his face grow hot. “I just — just wondered why kobb grease repels sea serpents.”

“Because kobbs prey on serpents,” Hass said, regarding him closely. “Serpents think twice about attacking anything that smells of kobb. The grease is not a perfect repellent, but it is far better than nothing.”

“My brother Sholto invented a mixture to repel skimmers,” Rye said, thinking only of turning his companion’s mind away from his lapse.

“What is a skimmer?” Hass asked quietly.

A heavy silence fell between them.

“Master Hass, Dorne is my home, I swear it,” Rye said at last. “But I have spent my life far from the coast.”

Hass regarded him thoughtfully. “Then how strongly can you swim?” he asked in a level voice.

“Very strongly, I hope,” Rye said, glancing at the scale in his hand. “I will know when I try.”

Hass cursed under his breath. Without another word, he stripped off his shirt and wiped the fresh handful of grease over his own chest.

“What are you doing?” Rye asked, bewildered.

“You’re off your head, boy,” Hass said grimly, reaching for more repellent. “You’ll drown in that sea. I’ll go in your place.”

“No!” Rye cried. “You would be seen! The Gifters would kill you the moment you reached the rock, and the sacrifices would go on!”

“And you won’t be seen, I suppose?” Hass jeered.

“No,” Rye said. And realizing that there was only one way to convince Hass of what he said, knowing that his only way forward was to trust, he shook out the silken hood and put it on.

Invisible, Rye walked to the little jetty. Hass’s long metal cutters, strapped to his back in a hastily made canvas sling, were very heavy. The foul-smelling goat-hide bag of grease hanging from his belt was heavy, too. The two together weighed him down.

His bare feet made deep marks in the sand. Above each fresh footprint, the ghostly shape of the cutters flickered dimly in the air, because the cutters were made of metal and resisted the magic of the hood.

It did not matter. No one but Hass, standing, stunned, at the boathouse doorway, was close enough to see these faint traces of Rye’s passing.

Rye had abandoned his shirt, boots, and socks. But the little brown bag still hung around his neck, and the bell tree stick was in his belt.

He had left the stick where it lay at first, but at the last moment, he had retrieved it and pushed it back into its place.

The bell tree stick had been with him from the beginning. As a weapon, it had been useless, but it was a symbol of home. It had helped him believe that the time would come when he would see Weld again. He would not part with it now.

He reached the little jetty. The water heaved before him, dark and mysterious, slapping angrily against the old wooden piers, which were encrusted with shells of many shapes and colors.

Rye hesitated, suddenly terrified by what he was doing. This was not the warm, rushing gutter water of Weld, in which a boy could wade, and laugh, and think himself adventuring while facing no danger greater than the chance of getting his trousers wet. This dark, heaving water was part of a great sea where monsters thrived. It was alien to him — alien to all human life.

He looked down at the glimmering scale in his hand. It was such a small, frail thing in which to trust. But then, the braided ring, now back in the brown bag, was a small thing, too, and it had saved him when he had least expected to be saved.

He heard the crowd at the fence roar, and turned quickly to look.

Olt’s throne was on the platform, facing the rock. Bern was standing beside the throne, a dagger glinting in his hand. Behind them, seven Gifters were strutting through the fortress gateway, each one proudly leading a prisoner in chains. Sonia was first in line. Her golden-red hair looked like flickering flame as the wind tossed it around her head.

Rye took a deep breath and waded into the water. It was cold enough to make him gasp. He could feel the sting of salt, and the tide plucking at his ankles like sly fingers, trying to pull him off his feet.

Closing his hand more firmly on the disc, he took another step. The water rose abruptly to his waist.

Instantly he felt an agonizing stab of pain in his closed hand. He yelled and snatched his hand out of the water, expecting to see some vile creature clinging to it, stinging and biting.

But there was nothing. And when he opened his tightly closed fist, his stomach turned over.

The serpent scale no longer lay freely in his hand. It had sunk beneath the surface of his skin. Surrounded by a ridge of puffy, reddened flesh, it glimmered in the center of his wet palm, flat and shining, like a burn or a scar.

It had become part of him. The water had made it part of him.

Rye shuddered, fighting down waves of nausea. Even as he watched, the angry red ridge that surrounded the scale was fading and shrinking. In moments, it had disappeared completely, and the scale looked as if it had been embedded in the center of his palm since the day he was born.

On impulse, he lowered his hand into the water again and held it just beneath the surface. The serpent scale brightened. It winked up at him like a gleaming blue-green eye.

And in that moment, Rye’s shock and sickness vanished. Energy surged through him. His arms and legs tingled as if cold salt water was rushing through his veins. He felt the tug of the tide, and exalted in it. The wild water ahead no longer seemed fearful and alien, but beckoned him. Its call was almost irresistible.

Forcing himself to stay still, Rye glanced quickly toward the fortress, measuring the distance to the rock. The seven Gifters and their prisoners had reached the viewing platform. The prisoners were being forced to kneel in a semicircle before Olt’s throne.

Rye’s heart twisted as he caught sight of Sonia. She was already on her knees, being held down by the Gifter standing behind her. Faene was second to last in line but she, too, was already kneeling. A feebly struggling man at the end was being pushed down beside her. Rye looked for the small, black-haired girl Olt had so despised, but could not see her.

He blinked. Surely in Olt’s chamber there had been three male and four female prisoners. Now there seemed to be three females and four males.

The man at the end of the line was still resisting. The chains binding his wrists and ankles glinted in the light of the lowering sun as he struggled.

Olt bared his teeth and flicked a finger. The man’s body jerked. Slowly he sank to the ground. And it was only then that Rye realized who he was.

The man was Dirk.

Rye took a deep breath, and dived.