The gate had no business being in the middle of Thornwood Forest.
Mira Vane was twenty-two years old, the youngest journeyman cartographer in the Aldermoor Guild, and she had spent the better part of her career learning that every map had secrets. She had not expected the secrets to have teeth.
The structure was barely visible in the undergrowth—two standing stones the height of a man, connected by an arch of blackened iron that the Guild records described as “decorative remnants, origin uncertain.” She had found the records in the restricted vault at the Aldermoor library, which suggested that someone, at some point, had considered them worth restricting. She had noted this. She had come to Thornwood Forest anyway. It was a character flaw she had made a kind of peace with.
The morning was cold and the forest floor quiet under six inches of early-autumn leaves. Mira set up her surveying equipment with the careful efficiency of someone who had learned not to rush measurements. The compass reading first. The needle behaved normally—south was south, north was north, the standing stones aligned roughly to the solstice axis, which was interesting—and then she stepped between the stones to take her second reading.
