Salvistar’s opposite, Karigan thought, but she had never heard of Seastaria.

“She has come to you as aithen, a protective spirit and guide.” Enver still appeared to be incredulous. “You are truly favored. And,” he added, “cursed.”

“Cursed?”

“Great powers interfering in your life.”

Oh, she thought. That was nothing new. But if the day horse could help protect her from Nyssa, it was an interference she could tolerate.

THE AEON IIRE

“The bad air should have cleared by now,” Cole said.

“Let us go see, then,” Grandmother replied.

At last, the excavation had been completed. The massive seal stone had been removed from the chamber of the Aeon Iire, and now she could go see the iire for herself. As she, Cole, and Immerez walked down the passage, their lanterns sent shadows jumping across stone walls.

“I’ve sent a messenger off to Birch,” Immerez said, “requesting reinforcements.”

“That’s fine,” she replied.

Slaves passed in the opposite direction, burdened with the last baskets of rock and soil to be removed, ushered up the passage by guards. Lantern light fell upon the sealed entrances to tombs with their ridiculous iconography of the death god warning away trespassers. Even if Grandmother had wished to gain access to those old burials, she’d no fear of false gods. Westrion held no power over her. In fact, she intended to demonstrate the power she wielded over him.

The passage sloped sharply downward, and Grandmother had the sense of walking toward the center of the Earth. The air grew stuffier, damper, smelled strongly of soil and wet rock. Cole had made the slaves clear the floor so that it was smooth to make the walking easier.

As they approached the chamber, she felt uneasy as she neared the living dark, or rather a dead dark that was yet animate. It wanted to feed on the mind, to steal one’s life force, to destroy and bring suffering into the world. The chronicles of her people, it appeared, had been right about the existence of the portal, the Aeon Iire.

At last they came to a stone archway with the boulder that had blocked it pushed aside. It was not high, nor grand, but roughly hewn of solid granite and incised with more of the glyphs and pictures made by the Sacor Clans of old. Like the high wall that bordered Blackveil Forest, the Sacoridians had neglected other ancient sites such as this one to their peril.

Grandmother and her companions stepped into the chamber beyond the arch, and on the walls of bedrock, the glyphs became more alarming and forbidding, as though they were yelling at her to turn away, to go back. In fact, there was some residue of etherea present in the glyphs that must have once been wards.

The ceiling was low, made also from natural bedrock. She could not imagine what it had taken to carve the chamber. The work of her slaves was nothing in comparison. Staring down from the ceiling was a huge, crudely rendered, but well-preserved image of Westrion, the god of death, his wings spread, his hawk’s eyes sharp. He looked wrathful and ready to slay with his sword any who approached the iire, the supposed portal to one of the underworlds of the heathen Sacoridians.

In the very center of the chamber beneath the image of Westrion was the iire. It was circular in shape, a shield of metal that rested on the ground, but not just any metal, star steel. Forged, it was said, by the god Belasser, who made the stars his furnace. Heathenish legend, of course, but even so, it was a creation of untold magic. Symbols more ancient than even Old Sacoridian, and of some otherworldly tongue, moved fluidly across its shining surface. She could not say precisely what they meant or represented, but she assumed they were protective glyphs of some kind that strengthened the already impregnable seal.

Immerez bent over to look at it, reached out to touch it.

“No!” Grandmother cried. He jumped back. “Do not touch it. There is no telling what would happen to you if you did.” Instant death, she guessed.

She approached the seal herself, feeling its warning like a high-pitched whistle just above her hearing, a pressure in her head. There was also the sensation of dread, of the malfeasance it imprisoned beneath. Demons and dark spirits clawed at it for escape, shrieked for release, hungered for the living. She shuddered. Only a great magic could restrain such wild evil, but there was nothing that couldn’t be broken.

She studied the smooth steel, tried to make sense of the symbols, but they folded and coiled and tangled as they swam across the seal’s surface. They looked alive, if such things could live. There was not a speck of dust on it, no rust, no tarnish, no pitting, or deterioration. Had it weakened, the world would have been endangered, according to the chronicles. She could feel the truth of it.

Though the seal appeared intact and in perfect condition, she observed that a few of the symbols moved sluggishly, as though tired. Or dying. That was very interesting. Very.

On impulse, she produced a brown hair from her pocket, taken from the Green Rider who was the avatar, the avatar who should be protecting the seal. She dropped the hair onto one of the sickly symbols. It curled around the hair, and there was the most subtle of gleams, and the hair was gone. Was it her imagination, or did that one symbol grow just a little more lively? Only a very tiny bit, but still . . .

“Now what?” Immerez asked. “Now that you’ve found this iire thing, what are you going to do?”

“You leave that to me,” she replied. “You worry about our readiness.”

She was so entranced by the symbols swimming across the seal that she was barely aware of Immerez’s departure. Cole had stationed himself at the entrance to the passageway. No one else came or went.