Page 93 of The Stolen Throne
I look at Bene. “I can’t reach it. Can you?”
The Devourer gives a full-body shake. “It is solid, unmovable.”
“What about the channel?” Vos asks.
The narrow waters that separate Little Tyndra from the mainland? “Maybe. I was able to work our cages out of the ground when Eidolon’s soldiers had us at the temples.”
Vos nods. “And you made glass spikes easily enough there when we were escaping. The waters must keep it from getting as cold there.”
Pella’s brows shoot up. I guess no one shared that story with her. She’d probably love knowing that I managed to impale myself in the process.
I’m focused on Bene, though. “It’s loose under the water. How long would it take you to get there and back?”
He doesn’t have to get all the way to the twin temples, just to the channel that separates Little Tyndra from the mainland.
“The return trip shall require roughly a quarter of a day. I am faster in my larger size. However, traveling to the waters in the size I am currently will involve a full day, perhaps more. Especially if these winds keep up. Then another quarter day to the temple.”
I tell the others.
“Do we even want to get to the temple?” Pella asks.
We all look at her, and she holds up both hands. “If it’s gotten as bad as the woods now that whatever is…errr…awake…”
Son of a viper. “I can try a portal again.”
Not a lot of hope there, given my previous failures, but I did make the sand stairs easily enough. Maybe my powers are strengthening slowly?
“Okay, here’s the plan.” Vos clasps his gloved hands behind his back. “Forget the temples. We go by foot north toward Wildernyss. When Bene finds us, Meren can use some of his sand to try the portal thing. If that doesn’t work, Bene flies us to Wildernyss.”
“I cannot fly that high,” Bene says. “I do not know if it is the goddesses’ magic or my own, but too high and my sand falls apart.”
I groan out loud.
“What?” Vos demands. I tell them.
Vos looks up to the skies, and his shoulders rise and fall in what is an obvious attempt not to yell. Guess I’m not the only one with that urge. “Fine,” he says, lowering his head. “Bene gets us to the one working bridge between Wildernyss and Tyndra, and we go up that way.”
He means the flimsy ladder that is an excuse for a bridge. The sister to the one the Hollow destroyed while Reven and I were still on it.
Hells no. I’d rather trade my soul than try that again. If that isn’t incentive to make my portal work…
“All agreed?” Vos asks.
We nod.
“This is really going to suck,” Pella mutters beside me.
I look off over the rolling fields obliterated by ice and snow and wind that’s already beating at us, and the cold finally penetrates enough to send a full-body shiver racking through me. We’re still leagues away. At the very least, we have a day or more of travel—on foot, in this weather, with Cain injured, and with Reven dealing with whatever he’s dealing with.
Hells.
Bene looks to me, almost as if asking permission. Or maybe trying to feel his goddess, who hangs around my neck.
“Go,” I tell him.
He spreads his wings and takes off into the sky, tossing about like a falling leaf until he disappears in the swirl of snow-filled air.
This is going to be rough.
