She met his eye. “I heard the briefings, Gabriel. This was always a wild hunt. We’re committed. But at this point, Al Rashidi could be wrong. You could be wrong. Everything is already wrong. Open the gate again. What’s the worst that happens?”

Gabriel smiled. There was something about Sauce that made him feel . . . calm. Maybe because, when he was ready to slit his wrists all those years ago, she’d been there. Maybe . . .

Maybe . . .

He grinned. “An ancient god from beyond the stars emerges and eats our souls,” he said.

Sauce shrugged. “Sure. That could happen.” She shrugged again. “What if this is the right gate? We could lose hours . . .”

He turned the key.

The gate opened.

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

There was no causeway.

A red, red sun lit a world of ash. The ash was pale grey and almost completely uniform and stretched away to a red horizon, and everything was tinted with that red except the next gate portal, a few miles of heat distortion away across the plain of ash.

No ancient god awaited them.

But there were bones. Charred bones.

As far as the eye could see, resting on the fine grey ash, there were bones.

In the foreground, nearest the gate, was a dragon. Part of its skeleton was buried in the fine grey ash, but the vast skull was obvious, and one whole wing that trailed away to the right until it vanished out of sight, perfectly polished to a gleaming white by the windblown ash.

Gabriel raised a shield and stepped through. He was wary of using power for a variety of reasons, but precautions seemed necessary.

Sauce came at his shoulder, and Daniel Favour and Wha’hae, too. They walked out onto the plain, and the ash resolved itself into an endless sand of powdered bone.

A wind stirred the ash and it rose, choking them. The scouts pulled up scarves. Gabriel closed his flying helmet.

The wind rushed past them like a charge of cavalry.

It subsided.

Under the bones of the dragon were other bones.

“I might as well check the next gate,” Gabriel said.

Sauce shook her head. “These places are all horrible,” she said slowly. “Had God no mercy? Look at them.” She bent, and lifted the skull of a Quazitsh. A freak of the wind exposed a vein of them, as if a regiment had all died here. They were so tangled together that they might have died in a vast embrace—hundreds, or thousands, of salamanders . . .

Gabriel put an arm around Sauce. “We’re lost,” he said. “I have to see. I have to check everything. It’s all a nightmare, Sauce. But it was never going to be easy.”

She smiled. “We don’t do easy, do we, Cap’n?” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “Don’t die. You’re glowing like a lamp.”