Read The Key to Starveldt for Free Online Page B

metallic blues, greys and greens of a storm, while the backdrop overhead was gunmetal and black. The hawk was facing the door hinge, and Solace saw that its beak was open. A faint, almost indiscernible shockwave seemed to be coming from the raptor, flowing out of the image and into the door.
    ‘The Sign of the Singing Hawk,’ Solace said, softly. When nobody answered, she reached out for the handle, gleaming round and silver in the fluorescent light. Manx reached out and stopped her, placing a hand on her arm.
    ‘There’s no turning back from here.’ He spoke in a lowered voice, but his words still echoed. ‘You open that door, and we don’t know what will happen.’
    Solace squeezed his hand and met his mismatched eyes, concerned but unafraid.
    ‘That’s life,’ she said, simply. ‘Every door is a choice, and every choice is a door. This one, we’re walking through.’
    Taking a breath, Solace turned back to the door. The others clustered behind her, moving with the small, animal restlessness of a herd. As her left hand touched the metal handle, her right brushed the key to Starveldt; a gesture of prayer, or safety.
    Head bowed, Solace spoke. ‘We seek entry to the Rookery. We seek Liluye.’
    One heartbeat. Two.
    Beneath her skin the knob began to turn. The lights winked out.
    Enter
,
then
.

    One moment, Solace and her friends were walking through the door and into darkness, feeling the odd buzzing, clicking sensation that marked any passage through conjoined space – doorways where magic acted as a shortcut through the distance of reality. And then there was light: blinding, dazzling and absolute. For an instant, Solace thought that they’d emerged outdoors, and flinched. But the dizziness she’d braced for didn’t come. Bewildered, she risked opening her eyes, blinking furiously until her vision returned. Behind her, she was aware of muttered swearing – Jess, she guessed, or Paige – and felt someone bump into her. Clearly, she wasn’t the only one to have been blinded.
    ‘Greetings! Please, remain where you are.’
    The voice was lilting, unfamiliar, and female. Straightening – when had she stooped, exactly? – Solace stared and squinted. Her sight was still blurry. At first, all she could make out was a blue shape on a light background. As the figure approached, her focus tightened: it was a person dressed in blue? – a woman? – a
blue woman
?
    ‘Um,’ said Solace dumbly.
    The blue woman smiled, revealing a mouth full of the kind of white, absurdly perfect teeth usually unknown beyond toothpaste ads and the cosmetic dentistry of Los Angeles. Solace focused on the teeth: they at least were known quantities. The woman herself was a different matter entirely.
    Her skin was dusky blue, lighter on her throat and arms, as though she, like anyone else, would tan from the sun. She was impossibly svelte and shorter even than Paige, dainty as a child. Her face was alien: wide, too-large, almond-shaped eyes – their huge pupils limned with the barest ring of dark blue iris – set off ascetic cheeks, and ears like lobeless arrows swept back against the narrow carriage of her head. Even her hair, shorn in a shaggy pixiecut, was blue, the kind of deep, profound colour that dye endeavours to achieve, but never does. And there were protrusions on the crown of her head – two slender, waving sensors of which the only apt descriptor was antennae.
    Curiously, she was dressed in a blue toga, or perhaps sari. The woman’s left breast was bare, the final disconnect with any lingering sense of normality.
Wherever we are
, Solace thought,
it certainly isn’t Kansas.
    With fluttering, graceful steps, the woman moved forward.
    ‘I am Anise.’ Reaching up, she brushed Solace’s cheek before letting her hand fall back. ‘Do not be alarmed. You are safe.’
    ‘Wasn’t alarmed,’ Solace mumbled. Abashed, she forced herself to look Anise squarely in the eye. ‘Well, I was. But only a little.’
    Anise