TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate

  'No feat is beyond them,' the adept agreed. He glanced aside, nodded in salute to the watching presence of a golden eagle, perched in mantled majesty on a broken shaft of dead fir. 'You seem recovered, now. As you choose, you may pass through our gates. One will meet you there, and escort you into the sanctuary.'

  Without even a breath of disturbed air in warning, the adept blinked out of existence.

  Elaira yelped, startled. In belated chagrin, she realized the snow by her side bore no trace of another set of footprints. Yet she still seemed to feel the warm grip on her arm that had braced her through the onset of breaking crisis. 'How do they do that?' she asked empty air.

  No one and nothing replied but the wind, howling in gusts off the summits. Upslope, the stripped fir loomed empty, the eagle apparently flown. That oddity chafed. Elaira had not seen the bird spread tawny wings, or heard the whoosh of its feathers as it launched into upward flight.

  Ahead, the switched-back descent to the hostel led between frost-split rock, salted with snow and the hammered-steel glimmer of glare ice. Urgency only redoubled the hazard. Elaira averted another near fall as her boot toe grabbed in a crevice. Whipped on by her worry for Arithon s'Ffalenn, she would not slow her step. She clambered down the last slope in a rush that landed her, winded and scraped, before the gateway to Whitehaven hostel.

  There, despite tumult, the massive hush claimed her. She stopped short and stared, as every wayfaring traveler must who would contemplate the act of entry.

  The pillars before her were cut from merled granite, veined with quartz like gouged patterns of lightning. The uncanny, whorled symbols crafted by Ath's Brotherhood marched across the faced stone, bands of ciphers that teased and confounded the eyesight: a shimmering movement that seemed wrought of light, until the blink of an eye changed the formless dance to a play of ephemeral shadow.

  Elaira had experienced such carvings before, at the old hostel at Forthmark. Abandoned and reclaimed as a Koriani hospice, the stonework there was as strangely alive. On hot summer days, she had sat by the shaded walls, feasting on wild grapes, while the southern sunlight scattered chipped reflections off the shale scarps napped through the sheep fields. There, the ancient works of Ath's adepts had weathered with time, a willing ladder for climbing vines, or catch pockets for moss and rainwater. Between the arduous courses of study into advanced arts of surgery and healing, she had paused often to ponder the residual mystery.

  These pillars in the lofty peaks of the Skyshiels were as old, and as gouged by the trials of the elements. Yet here, the carvings were not disused. Nor did the forces that rang through them reflect the same gentle state of neglect. The power that greeted Elaira's arrival was distinct, a delicate touch against thought and skin as precise as the point of a needle. She reeled under the uncanny impression that her clothing, and every item she carried, became subject to exacting scrutiny: as though leather and laces and oyster-shell buttons could speak, and comment on her record of stewardship.

  For that unsettled instant, the frigid winds of the abyss seemed to flow straight through her. 'Merciful maker!' she gasped, driven a startled step back. 'What have I done?'

  Here, fingered by the uncanny magics wielded by Ath's adepts, she understood just how far their knowledge ranged beyond the craft worked by the Koriani Order. Such attention to detail became frightening, that a knife or a garment might be held in the same conscious regard as a person. Broken into cold sweat, Elaira understood that all freedoms would be observed without parity inside the bounds of these gates.

  Tempted to bolt to escape such a paralyzing self-examination, she held firm. The forces that probed her were intense, unremitting and precise, but not hostile. Only lies would be shredded as she crossed that dire threshold. Yet the price demanded was self, laid bare. No doubt remained that on the far side she would be greeted by someone who knew her. From her strength to her most ignominious weaknesses, she would stand fully exposed. A perilous vulnerability lay in such knowledge. Henceforward, the adepts would have gained the power to address her by her true Name.

  Swept by a rippling shiver, Elaira fought down her wave of blind panic. 'Fatemaster guard me.'

  Naught remained in reassurance, except to abide in trust. For time beyond memory, the adepts had adhered to their gentle need of compassion.

  Elaira stepped through, startled to find the strange pressure melted before her. She felt lifted, light, all at once more aware of the sun-carved shadows cast across crusted snow than of the pillars themselves as she passed them. Whatever strange field of spellcraft they wove, the effects absolved her of worry. Unbidden, her spirits unfolded into a rush of bubbling joy.

  Once inside, as though conjured by some fey, wild trick, the promised adept hastened forward. Her host proved a tiny, wizened old man with a sparkle in his jet eyes. His smile scored his dark-skinned, bearded face into merriment and laugh lines. He enfolded her numbed hands into seamed palms with the same exuberant welcome.

  'Elaira, affi'enia, come this way.' His peppery, fast dialect marked his descent from the insular southshore desertmen. The diminutive term he chose for address was derived from the ancient root word that meant dancer, although his precise turn of phrase was not known to her. 'Walk in Ath's blessing, and find ease for the heart within this hostel's sanctuary.'

  He drew her forward, amused by her evident relief that his pigeon-toed step impressed footprints. 'The others you saw earlier were not flesh at all, but projections, a thought that was formed by intense concentration and focus.'

  Elaira jerked to a stop. 'But they were so real!' She fingered her wrist, unable to contain sharp surprise, that the strong arm that had assisted her after collapse had been no more than an apparition. 'The one who helped me, his touch felt as solid as yours.'

  The adept chuckled outright. 'I never claimed their substance was less than my own. Ath's creation is myriad.'

  As she flushed, embarrassed for such an impetuous inquiry into his Brotherhood's grasp of the mysteries, he gave her hand a congenial squeeze. The spark that enlivened his eyes acquired the glint of thrown diamond. 'It is thought that spins form, not the other way around. Were you not fooled by your bodily senses, you would see the true way of the world. Thoughts and feelings combine to make dreams, and, in fact, they are the more real part of you. Did you come here to encounter the truth? Change will follow. If you wish to remain as you were, I suggest you step back through that portal.'

  'I came to learn,' Elaira insisted. Consumed with dread for Prince Arithon's fate, she lacked the spare resource to argue the nature of ephemeral philosophy. Her shaken nerve was scarcely enough to hold her to steadfast courage. This place offered no shelter behind falsehood or platitude. The incomprehensible, power of the gate ciphers struck home the irrefutable risk: her quest for forbidden knowledge had already cast all that she was into jeopardy.

  Far more than cold air left her trembling. Chased from the shadow of self-recrimination, she acknowledged her fear. The choice to go forward might destroy all her sensible constraints, even lead her to defy her oath of obedience to her order.

  Yet her love for Arithon ran deeper than cowardice. No course remained but to drown her misgiving under the tatters of courtesy. 'Please, if you will, brother, show me the way a seeker enters your sanctuary.'

  The adept smiled again, his walnut-toned skin crinkled with unutterable delight. 'Dear lady, with all my heart, join our company and be welcome.'

  Bone weary, and emotionally numb, Elaira trailed his light footstep over the wind-sculptured snow. Arched entry and pillared anteroom passed by as a fitful blur. She registered the impression of profound quiet, then a young man's kind hands removing the weather-stained wool of her mantles. She stared down, startled to find the reflection of a windburned face with waif's eyes gazing upward from underfoot. Then the flyaway hair snapped to snake ends and elf locks made her realize the image was her own. The tessellated marble under her step had been honed to a glossy, high polish. The surface was eerie, far
too refined to have been smoothed by tools in the hand of an artisan.

  Unwitting, she must have questioned aloud, for the desertman offered his cheerful explanation. 'A speaker to stone would have sung the right lines to lay the marble into alignment.' He steered her arm, gentle. 'Please follow?'

  She was led down a pillared loggia. Walls and groined ceiling had been intricately carved with parallel lines of strange characters. To one who had mage talent, their presence spoke in hushed tones of sound and light. Elaira found their shapes eluded analysis by direct sight. She marveled as the effects of their presence stroked her skin and eased weary flesh like a tonic. The spiked edge to her worry softened and smoothed, gifting a detached awareness.

  'You won't be separated from your feelings,' the adept reassured. He directed her toward an arched portal to one side. 'The sanctuary is a gateway to unmasked power. To enter, one must pass through the stream of the prime life chord. It is therefore necessary to calm the tumult from the supplicant's heart and mind.'

  Doused in dizziness, then lifted by upending vertigo that Hushed her to shivering goose bumps, Elaira caught and grasped the adept's offered arm. 'What's happening?' She felt as though the bones of her skull had dissolved, leaving her unmoored and drifting.

  'You are a born talent, and a vibrantly clear one at that.' The adept steadied her wavering step. If aged features and small size lent him the semblance of frailty, his touch owned a tensile-strength confidence.

  Elaira clung to him in shameless gratitude, reminded of the resilience laid by quenching and fire into a tempered-steel blade.

  'The part of you that remembers harmonic balance is rising to match a higher range of vibration,' the adept explained. 'Few have the inner sensitivity to notice much more than a passing moment of faintness. If you find the sensation beyond bearing, you can choose not to enter the sanctuary.'

  They had reached the high arch, raised out of dark stone, and incised with patterns that bewildered perception. The quality of the rock seemed to reject solidity, one moment the absolute black of the void, and the next, the velvet of fathomless night, scattered with pinprick white holes that were stars.

  'I have to go forward,' Elaira said, desolate. Though she could not feel the step of her feet on firm ground, and her head whirled in giddy gyrations, she held steadfast. 'If I falter through faintness, please support me. Hope must lie ahead. Behind me, there is no path I know that won't lead to a poisoned future.'

  'As you will.' The adept gave her an encouraging nod, then drew her across that dread threshold.

  She was falling, fast and far, her flesh like a boulder dropped into a night sea. Drowning in density, her mind broke away, whirled and winnowed like a spark sucked up a vast flue. Light pierced her, blinding. She cried out, not from pain, but from startlement; fear dissolved on a breath to unbridled amazement. She had spiritwalked before, but never like this, stripped from the cocoon of Koriani discipline and the rigid array of self-limiting spells of protection.

  Each thought became chain lightning, flaring and branching in all directions at once, until the building layers of reverberation framed patterns of overlaid energies. Elaira strove to quell bursting tension. Trained enough to know that unconscious terror would find resonance here, and perhaps raise a harmful backlash, she tried vainly to contain her unruly mind.

  'Relax, you're quite safe.' The adept's voice served to anchor her. Mazed confusion re-formed into shapes that had meaning, and she realized he still walked beside her. His flesh had acquired a glow that shed sparks, as though his moving presence was surrounded by thousands of swarming fireflies.

  Elaira wept for the sheer beauty of his face, and her tears fell as moonstones and diamonds. She glanced downward to see where they lit, or if they would splash upon landing, and saw herself changed. The sturdy boots she had worn in the mountains were gone, her leggings and wool clothing along with them. As though dreaming, she had been reclad in silk that shimmered in changing colors, now peacock blue, now green and gold, now moon silver in iridescence. Her bare feet were embraced in cool grass strung silver with dew, the flesh gone pearlescent and strange. Nor did she stand under a roof any longer. The sky overhead glimmered with starlight. Around her, a twilight grove of tall trees sheltered bell-shaped white flowers that shed perfume of enchantment. Set like veined opal amid fragrant turf, a melodious spring trickled over a bed of white stones.

  'Where is this place?' Elaira whispered, amazed. Unabashed in delight, she watched a brown-and-white thrush flit down from a branch and bathe in the shower of water.

  'You stand in the sanctuary of Whitehaven.' The adept raised his hand in salute to the bird, which shook off a white mist of spray, then alit on her shoulder, singing. 'Here, power walks that will lead you to know that your dreams are the most vital part of you.'

  Struck dumb with wonderment, Elaira raised a finger and stroked the thrush's flecked breast. It blinked, cocked its head, and snuggled into her warm skin, perhaps aware of the times she had shared her bread crusts with its winged brethren. 'This is my dream?' The air held the loamy afterscent of rain, and from somewhere, the crisp tang of a breeze wafted in from a fair-weather ocean.

  'This is your self, wrought in symbol and metaphor.' The adept's sweeping gesture encompassed the trees, with their fey, wild majesty and their vast roots clothed over in flowers. 'The world you know outside is the same, but in this place, the innate power of your nature expresses itself more freely. The expanded resonance of Ath's presence is most patiently maintained by our brotherhood of adepts. Here, you can ask, and perceive the connections that bind your life into patterns of pain by free will. If you wish to explore, you'll find the terrain more vast than you know, as astonishingly diverse as your wildest flight of fancy.'

  'I can't ask for myself,' Elaira said, torn. Her distress carried impact. The thrush took wing and flew, and a white flower at her feet shed petals like pearls over the tips of dew-drenched grasses. She bent, contrite, and plucked up the shorn flower head. Her hands caught the dust of sifted pollen like a blush of dawn gold. 'One that I love stands in peril of his life. The Warden of Althain once spoke a prophecy that said our destinies are entwined.'

  'The fate of all beings is one vast, woven tapestry,' the adept amended in mild kindness. He paused by a boulder cushioned with moss, cupped a small azure moth like a jewel, and freed her before he sat down. 'Sethvir, in his wisdom, often knows with precision how closely the threads of individual personalities spin together. Emotion drives the template of choice and thought. Those dynamic forces align the desires which bring events into manifestation.' He glanced up, his dark features graced with transcendent caring. His form shed soft radiance, even the white cloth of his robes blurring into opalescence, hazing his presence in light. 'Therefore, look to water, brave lady. The spring will reveal how your being is tied to the one named as Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn.'

  Elaira stepped forward. Water was her natural element for clear scrying. Though the immanent proximity of truth made her shrink, she was no spirit to mire herself in sheltering lies and self-blindness. Even unstrung by doubt and trepidation, she found the strength not to waver. She folded to her knees at the verge of the spring. Overcome by the muffled thunder of her heartbeat, she gazed into its limpid surface.

  'Ath lend my love guidance,' she murmured, resolute. 'Let my order not gain the foothold they crave to lay claim to Arithon's freedom.' Mild chills doused her skin. Sure awareness stole through her that in this place her appeal would be heard. Given wings by the focused intensity of her thought, something somewhere already moved in response to deliver an answer.

  No moment was given to ponder what force her need had set into motion. The springwater coalesced to a burst of white light that dazzled her vision and blinded her . . .

  * * *

  In the snow-clad desolation of Daon Ramon Barrens, Arithon s'Ffalenn awakened, disoriented. A murderous headache shot fiery sparks across the dark screen of closed eyelids. Crippling nausea upended his gut. Cur
led in a knot amid rivers of blind pain, he spewed up a gagging mouthful of bile. The return of his senses was scarcely a boon. Everything hurt. As sound touched his ears, his awareness shimmered through a needling shower of torment, those details he managed to grasp through discomfort promising small chance for improvement.

  His body was dumped left side down on chill snow, wrists and legs tightly bound. The cut-leather sinew bit into his flesh. His boots were torn off. Someone's rough hands gouged and ripped at his clothing, stripping his weapons and knives.

  Around and above him, the voices of men tangled in what seemed an unnatural altercation. As though fueled by spells, their unease and terror shrilled into a dissonance that charged the very air with an electrified, volatile sense of danger.

  'Should kill him now!' someone pressed from the sidelines.

  A gouge at his ribs, as his hunting blade was snatched from its sheath, then used to slit open his sheepskin jacket.

  'Can't do that,' came the shaken reply, laced in a raw breath of garlic. 'You want a sorcerer's haunt at your back? Gut him dead, and I promise, worse trouble will stalk us. In a body that breathes, at least we can see where he is. If he tries spellcraft or shadows again, we'll simply bash him unconscious.'

  'Do that now,' another man urged in a frightened, cracked treble. 'You know if we tie him onto a horse, somebody else has to walk! Won't reach the ruins before sundown on foot. Are we fools to risk a night in the open with the accursed spawn of evil on our hands?'

  A grunt, then a pawing hand heaved him over. Arithon received a dizzied view of the sky. High above, in faint gold, he thought he glimpsed the outspread wings of an eagle, circling. As he squinted to be sure, a mailed fist bashed his ribs. Slammed into a coughing battle to draw breath, he scarcely felt the tug as his main gauche was yanked clear of the sheath at his hip.

  A bone in the teeth of a scrapping dog pack, Arithon had no shred of strength left to raise even token self-defense. Wave after pounding wave of new pain pressed him speechlessly prostrate. He gasped in limp misery while enemies bandied his fate back and forth, caught between their cringing fear and their bristling, aggressive paranoia. 'He's skin and bones starving, with a lump on the head that should leave him dizzy till morning.'