door, leading past the window on its meandering climb over mossy stones.
The short steeple in the center of the castle’s roof cast a long shadow over her, providing some cover for her familiar climb. She grasped the vine and began scaling the wall, poking her toes into the tiny cracks between the stones as she pulled her way up the slippery surface.
After swinging herself to the window’s ledge, she pushed her head between the bars, then grunted softly as she forced her torso into the elaborate bedchamber.
Sapphira pushed her veil up and tiptoed into the corridor. The waning sunrays streamed through a stained glass window on one end, red and blue panes filtering the orange light and casting eerie colors across her path. She glanced both ways and leaned against a railing that overlooked the lower floor. No one was in sight. She had seen Morgan twice during her other visits here, and Naamah once, but she had managed to avoid them . . . barely. Getting caught meant certain death for her and probably for Paili as well.
Sidestepping the creaky boards, Sapphira scooted down the stairs, then hurried along a maze of corridors until she found a thick wooden door slightly ajar, as usual. Picking up an unlit torch from a nearby basket, she nudged the door open wide enough to squeeze through. She descended the stone steps, and the tiny sliver of light from the doorway above faded.
Gripping the torch more tightly, she whispered, “Grant me fire to light my way.” The top of the torch flickered, then blazed with light. Sapphira grimaced and whispered again. “Not so much!” The fire died down, giving just enough light to illuminate each step as she continued the deep plunge.
When Sapphira reached the bottom, she padded quietly across the hard dirt floor, following a glow of wavering lights in the distance. Twenty lanterns, some lit and some unlit, hung on each side of a pair of iron gates that blocked a rectangular entryway through a solid wall. The gaps between the black bars were too narrow even for her to squeeze through. The first time she had tried, her head had become wedged, and she spent nearly an hour freeing herself. Finding no way to get in that night, she finally gave up and went home. Since then, however, she had figured out how to pass. It had taken years of thought, but she finally deciphered the code and had since made it through the gate many times. The secret was in remembering Mardon’s control room combination.
Waving her arm across the field of lanterns, she whispered, “Sleep!” and every wick fell dark. Then, pointing at the first lantern on the left, she said, “Awake!” and it flashed to life. After repeating the command to the next five lanterns, Sapphira leaned her head toward the gate’s locking mechanism. A faint click sounded. She waved her hand at the lanterns again. “Sleep!” They all darkened.
She sidestepped toward the lanterns on the right and pointed at the first nine in order, commanding them to awaken. Then, after listening for the lock to click, she waved them back to darkness. Finally, moving to the left again, she lit thirteen lanterns. The lock clicked more loudly and the iron frame swung open a few inches.
Sapphira quickly restored the lanterns to their original condition and entered the gate, closing it behind her, careful not to let the lock reengage. Still carrying her torch, she padded into the dungeon’s anteroom, a huge chamber with rocky walls all around and a high ceiling, reminding her of the caverns in the lower world. Except for the gate behind her, three wooden doors, much like the one at the top of the stairs, stood as the only way out.
It was at this point that Morgan’s sorcery and Mardon’s scientific wizardry always baffled her. Every time she came, the doors led to something different a pit that plunged into darkness; a winding path through a dismal, uninhabited tropical forest; an endless meadow with deep hoofprints as the only sign that anyone ever journeyed through the grassy expanse; and a deserted, rocky wasteland with a gorge that carried a flaming river at the bottom. Since her vision cleared as she approached a door, and sadness shrouded her mind, she knew the doors were portals to other dimensions that somehow stayed open for anyone to stumble through, perhaps to be lost forever.
Sapphira regripped her torch. It was time to choose a door, maybe for