“I don’t understand,” Laurel said, coming to stand by Jamison again.
“Your gate isn’t the only one,” Jamison said with a smile.
Laurel vaguely remembered Tamani talking about four gates last fall, when she had come to him battered and bruised after being thrown in the Chetco River by trolls. “Four gates,” she said softly, pushing back the unpleasant part of the memory.
“To the four corners of the earth. One step could take you to your home, the mountains of Japan, the highlands of Scotland, or the mouth of the Nile River in Egypt.”
“That’s amazing,” Laurel said, staring at the gate. Gates? “Thousands of miles in a single step.”
“And the most vulnerable place in all of Avalon,” Jamison said. “Clever, though, don’t you think? Quite a feat. The gates were made by King Oberon, at the cost of his life, but it was Queen Isis who cloaked the gates on the other side — and only a few hundred years ago.”
“The Egyptian goddess?” Laurel asked breathlessly.
“Only named after the goddess,” Jamison said, smiling. “As much as we’d like to believe otherwise, not all the major figures in human history are faeries. Come, my Am Fear-faire will worry if we tarry too long.”
“Your what?”
He looked at her then, his gaze questioning at first, then strangely sorrowful. “Am Fear-faire,” he repeated. “My guardians. I have at least two with me at all times.”
“Why?”
“Because I am a Winter faerie.” Jamison walked slowly down the earthen path, seeming to weigh his words as he spoke them. “Our gifts are the rarest of all fae, so we are honored. We alone can open the gates, so we are protected. And Avalon itself is vulnerable to our power, so we must never be compromised by an enemy. With great power—”