had flashed by on her portal screen in rapid succession, so only a few faces stayed in her mind. Still, Gabriel might have seen how the girl got there. He and Roxil were waiting at the door while she was at the springs, so they might have seen someone come in.
“If only you could talk!” Sapphira groaned. “Now we’re all stuck here with a new mystery, and we’ll never find our way out!”
As her voice echoed, repeating her plaintive call, she raised her finger to her lips and bit it. Maybe there really was no way out. Yereq was dead. Her exit portal was gone. If she really was already in the world of the living, how could she get to the surface? If Acacia were here, they might be able to work together to create an exit, but the only new portal she had ever made was in the presence of Enoch’s Ovulum. And where was Acacia now? Was she dead, too? Lost and wandering with Paili in a strange dimension?
Grief flooded her mind. She gnashed her teeth and pushed her bare toes against the rocky floor until they hurt. Even with the phantom forms of Gabriel and Roxil hovering nearby, she felt more alone than ever, and their lurking presence made it worse. This wasn’t just an underground tomb in the land of the dead. It was haunted by ghosts.
She stepped on the hearth that abutted the chamber and touched the ring on the girl’s finger—a rubellite!
“Are you a dragon child?” Sapphira asked, giving the girl’s wrist a gentle tug. “Wake up,” she called in a singsong voice. “Wake up, whoever you are.”
She slapped her own hand. No! No singing! Waking her up might kill her, too!
Standing on tiptoes, Sapphira looked at her closely. There was no response. Her freckled alabaster face and pale pink lips stayed perfectly still, though her chest expanded and contracted ever so slightly.
Sapphira blew out a relieved sigh. Good. The girl stayed asleep.
As she continued gazing at her pretty face, she felt drawn to her, a strange emotional attachment to this sleeper from the land of the living. “I’ll get you out of here,” she promised. “I’ll get us all out of here, so help me God!”
Chapter 3
ELAM’S JOURNEY
Elam waded through an ocean of knee-high wildflowers, scattering pollen from dozens of orange, purple, and yellow blossoms. A wash of delicate scents bathed him in perfumed air, but he hadn’t come to this field to enjoy the sights and smells. He had to find the path and follow it.
Pushing aside a swath of long-bladed grass, he searched the ground for a red petal. For the last several miles, a trail of red flowers, intermixed with a rainbow of other colors, had guided his steps, but they had suddenly ended about a hundred yards back.
“Follow the trail of blood—the red flowers,” Merlin had told him. “Then enter the Forest of Molech and look for Glewlwyd, the gatekeeper.”
Elam stopped and swiveled his head. Nothing but grass and flowers as far as the eye could see. Why would the trail of blood vanish? Could Merlin have been wrong somehow?
Pulling off his cloak, he trudged back to where the path of red flowers ended. After laying down a small shoulder bag, he plucked a blade of grass and sat among the flowers, glad to give his legs a rest. Since he wore lightweight khaki trousers and a short-sleeved tunic, the warm sun felt good on his bare arms, but the hooded cloak was ready at his side, just in case. Merlin had told him that nights in this land were unpredictable, sometimes muggy and warm and sometimes breezy and cold.
As he chewed on the end of the blade, he stared across the vast field, his eyes barely above the tiny blossoms. He had often heard about this land, the second level in the Circles of Seven. The Bible referred to it as Hades and sometimes Sheol, which was the name his father, Shem, and his grandfather Noah called it in their stories.
Smiling, Elam pushed his cloak under his head as he lay back. Those were the days! Noah was the best of storytellers. Always ready with tales of life in the ark—tales of riding out the great storm, feeding hundreds of squawking, baying, and howling animals, and helping them bear their young, including the delivery of a calf from a cantankerous elephant.
A yellow petal fell on his nose, jerking his mind back to the task at hand. Only