Winter Door (27 page)

Rage looked around and saw a small door to one side of the arch. “Let’s go through here,” she whispered.

Billy nodded, and Rage felt the hair on her neck stir, for as they made their way to the small door, several of the fliers turned their heads to watch them go.

“Uh-oh,” Billy said. The doorway only led to the bottom of a set of stairs. “We’d better go up,” he said. “Maybe we can find another way to the main gate.”

They climbed slowly because the staircase was narrow and curved, and an unconscious man and a sleepwalker hampered them. They came to the end of the stairs and to another door. It led them onto the watch-walk that ran along behind the crenellations of the walls of Stormkeep. There were gray fliers stationed along it, armed with lances, and they all turned toward them.

“Now what?” Rage groaned as some of the fliers began to draw nearer, lifting their lances.

“There is only one way out of this,” Billy murmured determinedly. He stepped boldly away from the turret door, forcing Rage to move out along the battlements. She glanced over the wall and felt sick. Another tremor shook the fortress and she clutched at the wall, but Billy shouted, “See what power our mistress has? Your master should have known better than to hold her servants as prisoners. You must let us go, lest she smash this place to rubble.”

“What are you doing?” Rage whispered.

“I command you to carry us to the settlement below, where our mistress awaits us, then I will release your master,” Billy went on, ignoring her.

“Release Stormlord now,” the nearest creature responded in its dry, clicking voice.

“First take this girl and the man with her down to the settlement, then I will release your master, and you can take me down.”

“I won’t leave you,” Rage said. “All we have to do is wait until we wake!”

“There is no time,” Billy said softly. “These things are starting to smell violent. Go, Rage Winnoway, whose name is also Courage. I will make them bring me down with the Stormlord!”

Rage prayed he could hold them off with the threat of harming their master. “Billy, he was wrong, there is no darkness in you.”

“Take them down now,” Billy said loudly. One of the flying creatures swooped at Rage, and as its cold, hard hands closed about her, he added, “If you drop her or harm her or the wizard, I will throw your master into the abyss.”

Rage couldn’t imagine Billy doing such a thing, but she hoped the flier clasping her under its arm believed him. It reached for the wizard and tucked him under its other arm. The flier’s wings whirred and they rose in the air, clearing the wall. There was no time to say anything to Billy because the moment they were clear, the flier turned and dived straight down! Rage would have screamed if she could have found the breath for it, but in what seemed like seconds, the creature banked its wings, and they were gliding to land not far from the outer rim of a settlement.

The flier released them and took off again immediately.

Rage heard someone calling her name, but her eyes were riveted to the flier as it soared back up to Stormkeep. Once it vanished over the wall of the fortress, she hoped to see it reappear with Billy and the Stormlord in its arms. Instead, a tiny figure climbed onto the top of the wall.

“What is happening?” the wizard asked in a groggy voice.

“Billy is up there,” Rage whispered, clasping her hands together so hard that they hurt.
What was he doing and where was the Stormlord?

Billy was falling.

Rage screamed and dropped to her knees, pleading with the fates to wake her so that she could wake Billy before he hit the ground. But she did not wake. Billy fell and fell, down the gleaming black walls and into the abyss. Rage was only dimly aware of hands lifting her to her feet.

“No,” Rage whispered, closing her eyes, but the ghastly sight of Billy falling seemed to go on and on against the inside of her eyelids. The ground shuddered as if it shared her grief. Then someone was cupping her face with warm hands, and she opened tear-blurred eyes to see Elle’s face.

“Billy,”
Rage gasped.

“Hush, darling heart, I saw it, too,” Elle said, her face raw with grief. “Come away now. There is nothing you can do here.”

The wind had grown bitter, and the snow fell so thickly that each breath was choked with it. Rage let herself be led back into the settlement, into the summerland meetinghouse where Thaddeus was waiting. He took one look at Rage’s face and grew pale. Elle explained swiftly what had happened.

“He died because of me,” the wizard rasped, and there were tears on his cheeks. “First his mother and now the boy.”

“If anyone is to blame, it is me, for it was my idea that he and Rage go to Stormkeep,” Elle said. “But what is the use of trying to lay blame? It will not change what has happened.” Elle took the wizard by the shoulders and shook him once, softly but insistently. “You did not kill him, my friend. Billy Thunder chose to save you and Rage, and it was a deed both bravely and brightly done. You must not diminish his actions by assuming responsibility for them. He sought to free you because he knew that we could not close the winter door without you.” She looked at Rage. “And he saved you because he could never see
you
hurt, whom he loves above all others.”

“If only we hadn’t tried to get out,” Rage sobbed. “We could have just waited and kept the Stormlord talking, but the gray flier hurt Billy, and I…I threw the sleep dust without thinking it through—”

“You spoke with the Stormlord?” Elle broke in.

Rage nodded. “He said this world had been created as a sanctuary for him, and that the people and other creatures here came here through gaps. He said he closed the gaps at first and let the people stay because they were aligned. I suppose he meant that they were like him. But then they had children who dreamed of flowers and sunlight and blue skies and wanted them. That’s what he hates most of all and why he means to leave the winter door open.”

“Yearning,” the wizard murmured. “He built this world to offer nothing so that he could kill yearning in himself. But the world is flawed because
wanting
to end pain and
wanting
not to yearn are themselves desires. Such a paradox would naturally create gaps. But a door is not a gap….” He frowned in thought.

Rage could not speak, as fresh grief at Billy’s loss flowed through her.

“Hush,” Elle said, touching her cheek. “You must try to sleep now. You are exhausted and overwrought with sorrow. Sleep has healing properties.”

“I wish I could wake,” Rage sobbed.

“I am sorry,” the wizard said brokenly.

Rage bit back the desire to agree. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said huskily. “Billy always knew what he was doing, even when he suffered for it.” She thought of him jumping through the night gate after her, condemning himself to a life as a dog, rather than as a person who could reason, imagine, and decide his own destiny.

“It’s so unfair,” Mr. Walker said. Rage looked over to see the hollow-eyed little man levering himself up on his bed. “Life is seldom as just as the stories would have it.”

“All of you must get away from this place,” the wizard said. “The purpose of this world is to force all who dwell here to the end of their darkest desires.”

Rage opened her mouth, but at last, and too late for Billy, she felt the inexorable pull and the world spun away.

She resisted waking, wanting to drift forever in the place between waking and sleeping so that she would not wake to the pain of an existence without Billy’s sweetness and kindness and his true, steadfast love. In all her life, there had been no one else whose love she could trust so well. Mam was slipping further and further away, and her uncle wanted to leave. Perhaps he had already gone. Even Logan was going away. Without Billy, she would be alone.

It was terribly cold and dark. The coldness became a kind of numbness in which Rage couldn’t remember Billy’s face, nor the feel of his arms about her. It was like losing him a second time, but even the pain of losing him was fading away. Rage thought of the deadness of the Stormlord’s face and understood that
this
was what was inside him. She roused then, knowing she did not want to die, because alive she at least would have the joy of remembering Billy and their lives together. She tried to wake, but the falling had its own pull and she could not break free. Fear came and was sucked away, leaving a gray emptiness. Rage felt herself begin to fade.

Suddenly a terrific starburst of pain filled with shocking heat and color struck her. She reached out and clung to the pain, knowing it was a lifeline back to her body. She clawed her way up, climbing the pain, feeling it more fiercely and welcoming it. Then, just as suddenly, there was no resistance, and she was slammed back into her flesh with such force that she woke gasping and aching all over. It was difficult to open her eyes, as if she had not made it all the way back into her body, but she forced her eyelids apart.

Logan Ryder was peering anxiously into her face.

Rage screamed.

Logan jumped back, a look of such comical fright on his face that Rage started to laugh hysterically. Sitting up, she realized that she was lying by the fire and not in her bed. There was no Billy beside her, which opened the wound of sorrow.

“Oh, Billy,” she said brokenly, and began to cry.

“Jeez,” Logan murmured, sitting heavily on the nearest chair. “Is this the way you always wake up?”

“You don’t understand,” Rage wept.

“I guess not,” Logan admitted. “I tell you, Rage, getting to know you has been some roller-coaster ride. First there are those things that chased us, then I’m in the middle of a dream about hiking in the hills, and all of a sudden I’m dreaming I’m in that playground opposite the school and there’s you and this boy I never saw before but he thinks he knows me. You keep calling him Billy, like your dog. Then we hear those werepigs howling, and you and the boy Billy start talking all of this crazy stuff. Then you tell me to wake up and just like that, I do. That was weird enough.

“I tried to call you the next day, but there was no answer. Then Mrs. Do-gooder tells me the power is out all over the area because of the storms, so I think that’s it. But then last night I dream of you again and this time you’re lost in a storm. So I start feeling like maybe the dreams are some kind of message and you really are in trouble. I called and called but no answer, and I think what the hell, the storms have stopped for now, so I hike out of town and boost this trail bike from a guy I know and come up here. It was a hellish ride and I nearly wiped out about ten times, but I finally get here. There’s no light but I hammer like crazy at the door, then I come round the house tapping on the windows.

“All of a sudden Billy Thunder leaps through the curtain and bashes against the glass so hard it’s a wonder he didn’t smash it. I swear I nearly had a heart attack. He was barking like a maniac, and I thought at first he must be rabid, but then I saw his tail was wagging, and he runs to the door, and you’re not gonna believe this but he flips the latch from the inside and lets me in! Like Lassie or Flipper or something, and then he’s dragging at my leg. He herds me in here and you’re laying there like…Well, I come over and you weren’t breathing. I shook you and I called your name and finally, I got scared, and I slapped you. I guess you’ll have a bruise, but you groaned and started breathing. It was still hard to wake you, but then you do wake and scream and laugh and start crying all in about five seconds.”

Rage was staring at him with open-mouthed astonishment. She had never heard him say so many words all together before! Then something in his amazing monologue penetrated her astonishment.

“You said
Billy
…jumped at the window?” Rage whispered, hardly daring to move. Dimly she was aware that her cheek was throbbing.

Logan nodded. Then he turned and looked around. “He was here just a second ago. Hang on.” He got up just as Billy hurtled through the kitchen door and ran straight at Rage like a catapult. He knocked her back and licked her face frantically, whining and barking and huffing. Rage hugged him and kissed him, weeping and laughing.

“Wow,” said Logan, who was still standing. “This is too much. If you go on like this every time you see one another, I don’t know how you have the energy to do anything else in a day.”

Rage started to laugh. She laughed so hard her stomach hurt, but she couldn’t stop. Logan ended up laughing, too, though he still looked confused. At last, Rage managed to gasp to a halt, and then she looked back at Billy, who had not taken his eyes off her face, and sobered abruptly.

“You’re alive,” she told him, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and began to cry again. Not the wild tempest of tears she had first shed out of sheer joy and relief, but quiet, desperate tears, because she really had thought he had died. Hard tears, Mam always called tears like that because they felt like stones melting in you and running out.

Logan came and knelt on the ground beside them. “Rage…,” he said helplessly, reaching out to pat her shoulder awkwardly. “I…what’s wrong? Can I help you?”