The Golden Door Read Free

Keep had rounded a corner just ahead and were marching toward them in single file. The heavy gold braid on the soldiers’ sleeves and shoulders glinted in the soft morning light. The white plumes on their helmets nodded and swayed.
    Fancily dressed oafs … Sholto’s contemptuouswords whispered in Rye’s mind, and for the first time in his life, he stared at Keep soldiers without respectful admiration.
    “What business could soldiers have had in the square so early in the day?” Dirk muttered.
    “They must have been expecting trouble,” said Joliffe, sounding gleeful.
    Sholto shook his head. “If that were so, they would not have left so soon. And there would be more than three of them.”
    Joliffe shot him an annoyed glance but said nothing.
    The soldiers passed by, nodding politely, as Keep soldiers were trained to do to show they were no threat to law-abiding citizens.
    Dirk, Sholto, Joliffe, and Crell returned the greetings casually. Rye muttered and ducked his head. Something unusual had happened; he was sure of it. He could feel the soldiers’ excitement — kept well under control but radiating from them like heat.
    “Perhaps there was skimmer damage in the square overnight,” Crell said. “Maybe there have been more deaths!”
    Everyone but Sholto crossed fingers and wrists.
    But when they reached the square, they found that the soldiers’ errand had been something completely unexpected.
    A large new notice had been fixed to the wall of the long, low meetinghouse that took up one sideof the square. A small knot of people stood before the notice, chattering excitedly. Dirk, Joliffe, Crell, and Sholto ran to look, with Rye hurrying behind them.

    Rye gaped at the notice, his head reeling.
    All his life he had believed that the Wall ofWeld was an unbroken circle, with no way in or out. He had never doubted it for a moment. It had been more than belief. It had been something he had known , as surely as he knew his own name. And now, suddenly …
    “Ha!” Dirk breathed. “Sholto, do you see that? Do you see it?”
    “I can read,” Sholto murmured. “So … old Tallus’s tale of the Sorcerer’s secret way through the Wall is true after all. Who would have believed it?”
    Rye looked up at him and felt a chill.
    Sholto looked quite calm — even slightly bored — but no one who knew him as well as Rye did could miss the fact that his dark, clever eyes were glowing as if lit by a flame from within.
    Rye knew that Sholto was thinking of what he could learn beyond the Wall. He was imagining himself tracking the skimmers to their source in the Fell Zone, where he was sure they bred, and finding a way to destroy them.
    The glow in Sholto’s eyes was the thirst for knowledge. And it was strong — strong enough to smother his natural caution.
    Sholto is not yet eighteen , Rye told himself feverishly. I do not have to worry about him. He is too young to accept the Warden’s challenge.
    But then he looked past Sholto to Dirk, and fear gripped his heart. Dirk, a head taller than Sholto and broader in the shoulders by far, was almost twenty.And Dirk was punching the air, his face alive with excitement.
    “At last, Joliffe!” Dirk cried, clapping his friend on the back. “At last, a chance to do something to help ourselves! By the Wall, I cannot believe it!”
    “Dirk, no!” Rye burst out. “You must not go!”
    “Are you mad, Rye?” snapped Joliffe. “How can we turn our backs on an offer like this? Do you not see the prize for success? Did you not read the sign?”
    “Did you ?” Rye retorted angrily. “Did you not see that each volunteer must leave the city alone? How can one man defeat the Enemy who is sending the skimmers? It would take an army!”
    Joliffe snorted. “Dirk, Crell, and I will join up outside the Wall, never fear.”
    “And as for an army, Rye,” Dirk put in, “well, for once, the Warden is in the right. In a quest such as this, a small band, moving stealthily, is better than