Wolves at the Gate Read online

over the place.

  She groaned and shoved him off her. The movement seemed to be enough to pull him back together, and he was on his feet a second after her. With grim humour in his face, he said, "Don't do that again."

  "I don't fancy having to run for the walls." She glared at him. "Unless you think whatever that was went undetected?"

  He didn't even bother to shake his head, instead stepping closer and taking hold of her arm. For a moment his approach made her spine tighten, but she let it stand, turning her focus to the matter of the next Gate. Were those footsteps she could hear in the corridor outside the annexe?

  The memory of Chag's witnessing was waiting for her, along with a tidal surge of logic fatigue that fuzzed her vision to spots. She let the rush fade, waiting until her mind cleared to drive her will down into the floor, and into the wall of the distant tower. She had to fight the instinct to cringe as she connected to the two patches of Realmspace together. Who knew how violent the Gate would have to be to get through this time?

  Tensing every muscle she could, Pevan lashed out, smashing the two parts of the Court against each other. The room spasmed, and the door crashed open. Light in colours too nauseating to look at fountained out of the Gateway as it opened, and between them, Pevan and Chag managed to stagger into it. He wrapped his arms around her desperately as they fell. The last thing she saw before crossing the threshold was a Court Guard standing paralysed in the doorway.

  As the Gate took her, Pevan's head came alive with fiery pain. It spread out in jagged rifts until she felt like her brain was tearing apart. The rags of grey matter folded back through themselves, and through themselves again, turning her inside out and back in again. Seconds dragged in a gravity-less limbo, flecks of colour and light rushing past.

  Pain of a more mundane sort - the thump as her lower back struck the low rampart of the staircase - announced their exit from the Gateway. It took a long moment of frantic scrabbling before Chag pulled her upright and put an end to their teetering. She lost control of the Gate, felt it slipping out of her grasp.

  It was as if someone had fired a slingshot at point-blank range into the bridge of her nose. Her head snapped back hard enough to stab pain down her neck. She grabbed Chag's shirt for balance just as he spread his arms in a burst of feathers. He leapt at her, and somehow she got a good enough hold that he carried her with him, up and away.

  The thousand-foot spire of the Court swung back and forth behind them as Chag fought them aloft. Pevan buried her face in his shoulder, gritting her teeth against the shudders of her battered Gift. Black feathers trailed in their wake, shaken loose by Chag's frantic flapping. She would have to drop and take her chances with her own wings before long.

  She hung on, a shiver running through her.

  ***

  About the author

  R. J. Davnall has been telling stories all his life, and thus probably shouldn’t be trusted to write his own bio. He holds a PhD in philosophy and teaches at Liverpool University, while living what his mother insists on calling a 'Bohemian lifestyle'. When not writing, he can usually be found playing piano, guitar or World of Warcraft.

  R. J. Davnall on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/eatthepen

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  Blog: https://itsthefuture.blogspot.com/