Zach Brenner's Arc

Chapter 7 of 86

The three hooded men left the tavern together. Raven pulled up her own hood and slipped out after them. Zach followed, keeping to the wall. Raven walked beside him, her cat ears twitching under the black cloth. She caught what he could not. "They keep saying a word," she whispered. "Blood. Owed. And a wall." The rest broke apart in the noise of the street. Zach leaned in. "How far back can we stay?" "Not close," she said. "They turn their heads. They're watching for a tail." The men moved fast through the narrow lanes of the walled city. Stone houses pressed close on both sides. Raven set the pace, holding Zach back with a hand on his arm each time he crept too near. Twice one of the men glanced over his shoulder. Each time Raven yanked Zach into a doorway. They lost words but kept the trail. The men turned into a dead-end alley. Zach and Raven stopped at the mouth of it. They pressed flat against cold stone and watched. The three men walked to the far wall. One of them laid his palm against the bare rock. The wall glowed. A seam split down the middle, and a door swung open. Light spilled out. The men stepped through. Then the door closed. The wall went dark and solid again. Zach ran to the spot. He pressed both hands to the stone. Nothing. He pushed. He shoved his shoulder against it. The wall did not move. He drew back and struck it once with his fist. Cold rock, and pain up his arm. "There's no seam," he said. He ran his fingers over every inch. The wall was smooth and whole, like the door had never been there. Raven pulled him back by the cloak. "Stop. Someone will hear." Her voice was low and hard. "We can't open it. Not tonight. We don't know the trick." Zach turned. Anger and want burned in him. The road north was behind that wall. His only path home ran through Darkthorne, and Darkthorne's men had just walked through a door he could not follow. "Then we wait," Raven said. "We watch this wall until it opens again. That takes days." She looked at his empty hands, then at hers. "And we don't wait unarmed." They found an inn near the square and paid for a room for several nights. Zach dropped his cloak on the narrow bed. Before they climbed the stairs, Raven led him to a weapons stall in the market. She bought a crossbow and tested its pull. Then she lifted a long dagger, checked the edge with her thumb, and slid it into her belt. "If that door opens," she said, "we go through fast, and we go through ready." The wall stayed shut. But now Zach knew where the road began, and he had time and steel to break it open.