“Hush.” I pushed my awareness of him down as I listened to the story the wind was telling me. A salty dust tickled my nose. Wind scoured empty slopes, spraying grains of dirt. A weight like hot, drying brine masked my face.

“The cleft is a gate,” I whispered. “All the movement in the city eddies around a hidden gate, like water swirling around a submerged and open mouth that’s sucking water into it. It’s as if we have one foot in the spirit world and one in the mortal world. Dust and salt and sand are blowing in from the mortal world. Gather everything up. I think we can just walk out of here through this hidden gate.”

“I see no gate.” He released me. “Of course, I didn’t dare shed my blood to look for one. Anyway, the hunters of my village only know how to cross through standing stones, and then only on cross-quarter days. I have no means of marking time here.”

“I’m a spiritwalker, Vai. I can cut gates between the two worlds and bring you with me whether you’ve shed blood or not as long as you slip through before the gate closes behind me. I can feel there’s a gate already half open, right off this balcony.”

Together, we sorted through the gear to divide it between the two of us. He tied the carpentry apron securely around his body, then scooped up a handful of glittering dust.

I shouldered the pack. “Hold my right hand. Keep your sword drawn.”

I sliced a shallow cut on my forearm. Where the wall of the cleft cut deeper into the base of the ziggurat, I smeared my blood. Grit stung my eyes as I pushed through, pulling Vai with me right through the rock.

Hot sunlight poured its heat over my face. We stood at the base of a crumbling mine shaft. Sun blazed through the opening above. It was brutally hot. Sweat drenched me just from the effort of standing and breathing. Around lay discarded pickaxes, awls, and baskets, as well as a pair of sleds on runners, heaped with raw salt. Horizontal shafts shot off in different directions, fading into gloom.

“Lord of All,” murmured Vai at my back. “We’re at the bottom of a salt mine.”

By the flavor of the air and the presence of the sun, I knew we had crossed back into the mortal world.

19

“Which way did we come from?” I whispered, trying to get my bearings.

He indicated a trail of scattered salt receding into the darkness of one of the horizontal shafts, then opened a hand to reveal the last bits of the dust he had gathered. “I left a trail to follow. This seems too easy.”

“Except for being stuck at the bottom of a mine shaft with no rope or ladder.”