A sound woke him, a strangled gasp. He thrashed and fell off the chair. Rosethorn surged from her pillows, eyes starting from her head, clawing at her throat.
Seizure. The word came from nowhere. Seizure, she was having a seizure—
She was turning blue. Blue, from lack of air.
Sandry raced in, looked, and screamed for Tris and Daja. How long? she mind-spoke, frantic. How long has she been at this?
Don’t know! he retorted, and grabbed Rosethorn’s hands. He felt her mind and magic pull away, no, fall away. She dwindled in his power’s eye, as if she had gone over a long, long drop.
He did remember Lark’s warnings about being with her as she died. He remembered and ignored them. Gathering himself, he leaped after Rosethorn, seized a trailing rootlet of her power and clutched it tight.
Tucking himself into a ball, Briar Moss plummeted after his dying teacher. Desperately he threw back an arm-vine, twining it around the towering magic hidden inside the shakkan.
Sandry roused to a thud and a gagging sound. She scrambled into the sickroom in time to see Briar thrust a sun-bright flare of power into Rosethorn, a shining bridge to a place filled with shadows. That place had opened a door inside Rosethorn.
“Tris! Daja!” she screamed, and asked Briar how long Rosethorn had been unable to breathe. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. He was gone, chasing the person he loved best into the shadows. He threw out a snaking vine of magic in his wake, letting it coil around the shakkan.
Sandrilene fa Toren took a deep breath. She too remembered Lark’s warning, but there were other issues here. Death had seized her parents and the nursemaid who was like a mother to her. It was time to make a stand. Death would not take Rosethorn. Death would not take Briar. And wasn’t it lucky she’d had some days of rest once the cure was found?
She knotted her magic briskly around Briar’s swiftly fading power and jumped into the shadows in his wake. As the darkness pulled her from the sickroom in Discipline cottage, someone—two some-ones—grabbed her hands.
Who anchors? Tris wanted to know. She briskly sank hooks of lightning into Sandry as the noble’s power stretched, a rope between the three girls and Briar. I don’t know if the shakkan will be enough to hold us all.
Who else anchors? Daja inquired calmly. As if you had to ask. Her power was at full spate, restored from her magical workings with Frostpine. Some of it she hurled into the ground like a lance, feeling it shoot through earth and rock, spreading in an almost plantlike way. She solidified that system, making roots of stone. The other end of her magic she threw around Tris, wrapping her tight.
Sandry drew strength from the chain of girls, feeling lightning roar through her magical self. Shadows jumped back as she bore down on the streaking comet that was Briar. Knotting lightning to shape a net, she threw it over the boy and pulled, until the net caught on the center of Briar’s power and held. He was not going to die. They would not let him die.
Briar knew the girls had him, had anchored him in the living world. He was glad to have their company and their strength, but if they thought he would come home without Rosethorn, they were wrong. He couldn’t let her go. He’d allowed Flick to die—wasn’t that failure enough for anybody?
Things were strange, where he was. Sounds and images that were haunting and familiar coursed through him and were gone before he could tell what they were. He could learn things here, he realized, important things, things that no one else knew. Just one might lead him to all he wanted; something made him sure of that. It might be riches, or every secret of growing things. Knowledge was there; he just had to pick one aspect and follow.
Something brushed his cheek. A tantalizing flower scent drew him from his path. His bond to the shakkan tugged at him, making him stop. What was he doing? None of the hints that lured him away felt like Rosethorn.
He opened his hand, inspecting the wisp of her that he’d grabbed when they started to fall. Now he stood in his own skin, or something that felt enough like it to be comfortable. His feet—bare, as they’d been for most of his life—pressed flat gray cobblestones on a gray street in a gray city. There were no windows in the towering citadels all around him, no doors. There wasn’t a hint of green anywhere he looked, and no other people. He did see other streets, hundreds of them. They opened onto the dull avenue where he stood.
How was he supposed to find Rosethorn? Even weeds or hedges or the tiniest bit of moss would know Rosethorn’s name and murmur it to him. This gray maze was dead.
Not entirely. Sandry’s magical voice was a thin whisper. He could feel her straining to hold onto him. We aren’t dead, which means you aren’t.
He turned. A shining rope stretched to infinity behind him. Groping his back with a hand, he discovered it turned into a web of fibers that entered him in a hundred places. In it he could feel the girls.
I ain’t coming back without her, he said regretfully.
We never asked you to, Sandry retorted. Look at that thread you have in your hand. I bet she’s at the other end.
Briar looked. She was right. Wrapping it around his fingers, he began to follow it.
Something jarred her. Tris looked back to the magical blaze that was Daja. What’s going on? she demanded. I don’t need any diversions, you know!
Sorry, Daja said sheepishly. People are shaking me, trying to make me let go.
Well, tell them to stop, snapped Tris. We’re busy!
Sandry murmured to Tris.
Sandry says, tell them if they break our rope, they’ll lose us all.