Chapter 169 The Gate Wants the Truth

Chapter 169: Chapter 170: The Gate Wants the Truth

Dawn arrived with a boot to the head.

"Up," Lyra said.

Daniel groaned into his pillow. "Five more minutes."

"The test starts in thirty."

"Then twenty-five more."

The second boot hit him in the ribs. He rolled off the cot and landed on the floor of the tent with a thump, spitting out a mouthful of blanket. Lyra stood over him with her arms crossed, her hair in a tight braid and a smear of flour on her cheek from the breakfast tent.

"You have flour on your face," Daniel said.

"I do not."

"Left cheek."

Lyra scrubbed at the right one. Daniel watched this with deep and sincere pleasure until she noticed and kicked his shin.

"Ow."

"Get dressed."

"You kicked a man who nearly got a knife through his throat yesterday."

"You flirted with the knife." She stalked toward the tent flap, then stopped with her back to him. "Wear the good boots," she said, much more quietly. "The ones Cheeky mended. The gorge is rocky."

Then she was gone, and Daniel was smiling at an empty tent like a fool.

By the time the horn sounded, the whole camp had gathered at the mouth of the gorge.

It was a monstrous thing. Two cliffs of black stone rose on either side, so tall their tops vanished into the morning mist, and between them a narrow ravine wound away into the haze like the throat of a sleeping animal. Nine stone arches stood across the path at intervals. Daniel could see only the first, a grey ring of rock half-swallowed by fog.

Paul was already leafing through a thin notebook, muttering. "The Gorge of Nine Gates. Heaven’s Domain has used it for the second test for two hundred years. The records say it tests speed." He turned a page. "The records also say that nobody has ever been fast enough to pass it by speed alone."

"So it doesn’t test speed."

"It tests something. Nobody agrees what."

"Wonderful," Daniel said. "I love a mystery that might kill me."

Brick Head wandered over with a bowl of porridge in each hand and a third balanced on his head. "Are we running?"

"We’re running."

"I’m good at running."

"You’ve run into a wall twice this week."

"It was a fast wall."

Elder Jian climbed onto a stone platform and the chatter died. In the pale morning light he looked even older than before, but his voice rolled down the ravine like falling rock.

"The second test," he said, "is the Gorge of Nine Gates. Twelve kilometers. Nine gates, in order. Only the first one hundred participants to pass the ninth gate will advance to the third test."

A ripple of dread went through the four hundred and nine survivors. A hundred. Fewer than one in four.

"The top ten finishers of yesterday’s test receive a head start. Thirty seconds for tenth place. Thirty more seconds for every place above it." He glanced at the sky as if checking a clock only he could see. "First place will begin five minutes before the rest of you."

Five minutes.

Daniel did the math. Seventh place. Two minutes.

"I’ll be careful with that," Elder Jian added, "because nobody has ever used a head start well in this test. Begin positioning."

The starting line was a row of ten flat stone slabs set into the ground, each separated from the next by a couple of meters of dirt. Each slab was carved with a number.

Daniel found the seven and stepped onto it. A glance across showed him the rest: a huge, scowling man in iron-grey armor on slab three, a tall woman in white robes on slab five, someone who looked about twelve years old and very angry on slab nine.

On slab one, alone, stood Yun Xi.

She was still barefoot. She still wore the plain grey robe. In one hand she held a half-eaten dumpling, and she was chewing it with the expression of a woman considering nothing at all.

On the ridge behind the starting line, a crowd of spectators had gathered along the rope. Daniel spotted Fluffy at once. She was bouncing on her toes and waving a huge banner made from what appeared to be a stolen tablecloth, with MASTER written across it in enormous crooked letters. Underneath, in smaller and much neater handwriting, someone had added: (please don’t die).

Mittens, probably. He raised a hand. Fluffy shrieked. Cheeky pretended to ignore them both and failed badly.

Daniel turned his attention back to slab one.

The rules said not to leave your slab. Elder Jian had not said anything about talking.

"Morning," he called across six meters of dirt.

Yun Xi didn’t turn. "You’re on slab seven."

"You noticed."

"You’re loud."

"I’m friendly."

"Same thing."

Daniel blinked. He had used that exact line on Lyra, once, in the middle of a forest. He filed the thought away to be afraid of later.

Yun Xi finished her dumpling and wiped her fingers on her robe. When she finally looked at him, it was sideways, with the blank patience of a cat watching something that hadn’t yet decided to be interesting. "You sat under a tree for forty minutes."

"You watched?"

"I was bored. My partner was already on the ground." She said it without any pride at all, as if reporting the weather. "So I looked around."

"Three minutes and forty-one seconds." Daniel shook his head slowly. "Honestly, how? I want to know. As a professional."

"I asked."

"You asked."

"I said, ’Give me your card.’" She shrugged. "She did."

A long silence followed.

"That," Daniel said finally, "is the greatest strategy I have ever heard of in my life."

"It’s not a strategy."

"It’s elegant."

"It’s simple."

"Same thing," Daniel said.

The corner of her mouth moved. It was barely a twitch. If he had blinked, he would have missed it.

A translucent screen drifted into the corner of his vision.

[Target: Yun Xi]

[Affection Level: Unable to read.]

[Partial signal detected: Curiosity.]

Daniel stared at the last line.

Curiosity. Not affection. Not even close. But something had come through, a single thread of her mind leaking past whatever wall kept the system out.

He grinned.

"Don’t follow me," Yun Xi said, turning away.

"I never follow. I intercept."

"You’re slower than me."

"That’s what everyone says about my speed. Then I surprise them."

She glanced at him over her shoulder. For the first time, something flickered behind those plain brown eyes, too quick to name.

"Try," she said.

The horn blew.

Yun Xi stepped off slab one.

She did not run. That was the first thing the crowd noticed, and the murmur that followed was very confused. She did not leap, or sprint, or even jog. She simply walked, at an ordinary pace, bare feet padding across the stone toward the first gate, her hands tucked into her sleeves like a woman on her way to a market.

She made it ten steps before the mist closed behind her.

No dust. No footprints. Not even a sound.

"She’s walking," somebody whispered.

"Why is she walking?"

"Does she know it’s a race?"

The next horn blew thirty seconds later, and the next after that. Rank two, a calm young man with a golden crest sewn on his sleeve, shot into the gorge like an arrow. Rank three, the huge man in iron-grey armor, howled and followed him, kicking up a plume of dust. Rank four. Rank five. Daniel watched them vanish into the mist one after another, and listened to the time stretch.

When the sixth horn sounded, slab six went empty.

Daniel stretched his arms over his head. He cracked his neck. He rolled his shoulders.

"Master!" Fluffy’s voice carried down from the ridge like a trumpet. "FLUFFY IS CHEERING FOR YOU!"

"I can hear that!"

"DO NOT LOSE!"

"THAT’S THE PLAN!"

The seventh horn blew.

Daniel ran.

Not hard. Not fast. He ran like a man with an excellent plan and absolutely no urgency, loping up the ravine with his hands loose at his sides. The mist swallowed the camp behind him, and the sound of the crowd faded away, until all he could hear was his own breathing and the soft slap of his good boots on the stone.

The first gate came out of the fog all at once.

It was twice the height of a house, a ring of black rock rising out of the ravine floor, and carved into its keystone was a human face. Its eyes were closed. Its mouth was a long, deep slit, like a letterbox for a very large mailman.

The iron-grey giant from slab three was standing in front of it with his fists clenched. He was red in the face, and a thin vein pulsed in his temple.

"I told you!" the giant roared at the arch. "I want to bring honor to my sect!"

The carved eyes opened. They were made of light, pale gold, and perfectly empty.

"LIE," said the gate.

"I want to become the strongest warrior in the land!"

"LIE."

"I want to protect my family!"

"LIE."

The giant screamed and punched the arch with a fist the size of a melon. The sound cracked across the ravine. The stone did not so much as chip. The giant staggered back, cradling his hand, and noticed Daniel for the first time.

"Don’t bother," he said bitterly. "It rejects everything. I’ve been here two minutes."

"Hm." Daniel walked up and looked at the face. "What does it ask?"

"’What do you want most?’"

"And you lied?"

"I did not lie!"

"Then why did it say lie?"

The giant opened his mouth. Closed it. His face went through several unpleasant colors, and he turned away without saying a word.

Daniel looked up at the arch.

The light-gold eyes turned to him. When the voice came, it came from everywhere, deep and slow and utterly without mercy.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT MOST?"

Daniel thought about it.

He thought about the right answers. To survive. To win the Game. To protect my people. Every one of them was true enough. But he had a strong feeling that the gate was not interested in true enough.

So he told it the truth.

"A harem," he said. "A big one. Full of strong, beautiful, kind women who, for some inexplicable reason, actually like me. And a very, very long nap."

The giant behind him made a strangled noise.

The gate was silent.

It stayed silent for a long time. The golden eyes held on Daniel’s face. He had the distinct impression that somewhere deep inside the rock, something very old was reading the answer over and over, trying to find the catch.

"...TRUTH," the gate said at last.

The arch glowed. The mouth opened, and the space beneath it rippled like water, showing a long stretch of mist and rock beyond.

"That’s it?" the giant demanded. "That’s what you want most?"

"The nap is a close second."

"That’s insane."

"It’s a very honest kind of insane." Daniel gave him a friendly wave. "Good luck with the gate! Try wanting something less sophisticated!"

He was about to step through when he noticed the plaque.

It was set into the stone at the foot of the arch, a long bronze strip with names engraved down it in neat columns. The top line read:

Yun Xi. 00:00:07. Answer: "Dumplings."

Daniel stared at it for a long moment.

Then he started laughing, and he laughed so hard he had to put a hand on the arch to stay upright.

"Dumplings," he wheezed. "Of course. Of course that’s the answer."

The giant looked at him as though he had gone mad.

"Seven seconds," Daniel said, wiping his eyes. "She wanted dumplings, and she said so, and she was through before I had finished my first nap."

He stepped through the arch.

The mist cleared.

The gorge opened up ahead of him, and Daniel stopped dead.

Eight more gates stood along the length of the ravine, each smaller than the last, each smaller than a toy in the far haze. The path between them was a ribbon of grey stone twisting through impossible towers of rock. And high on a ledge on the far wall, tiny as a bead, a lone figure in grey was strolling along the cliff with her hands tucked into her sleeves.

She was already past the third gate.

She had not run once.

Daniel watched her for a long moment, and a slow, delighted grin spread across his face.

"Oh," he whispered. "You’re good."

Then he broke into a run.