The unnatural silence of the sparse grassland, with its thorny shrubs and low-lying pale grasses, tore at her heart. Like a mute, the land could no longer speak in the many small voices common to Earth. The stillness oppressed her. Light made gold of the hillside as they walked up and over the height, bypassing the watchtower. She was grateful to come in under the scant shade afforded by the pines. Even the wind had died. Heat drenched them. A swipe of her hand along the back of her neck came away dripping.
She halted at the forest’s edge, such as it was, breaking from pine forest into scrub and giving way precipitously to the hallucinatory splendor of the flowering meadow.
Under the shadow of the pines she slid her bow back into its case and let the spray of color ease her eyes. Eldest Uncle stood beside her without speaking or moving, beyond the thin whistle blown under his breath and an occasional tinkle of bells as he shifted the haft of his spear on the needle-strewn ground.
“How do I walk the spheres?” she asked finally, when Eldest Uncle seemed disinclined to move onward or to say anything at all. “Where do I find the path that will lead me there?”
“You have already walked it.” He gestured toward the flower trail that led down to the river. “Why do you think I bide here, out of all the places in our land? This place is like a spring, the last known to us, where water wells up from hidden roots. Here the land draws life from the universe beyond, because the River of Light that spans the heavens touches our Earth at this place.”
Wind stirred the flowers. Cornflowers bobbed on their high stalks, and irises nodded. The breeze murmured through crooked rows of lavender that cut a swathe of purple through tangles of dog roses and dense clusters of bright peonies. Marigolds edged the trail, so richly gold that sunlight might have been poured into them to give them color.
The view humbled her. “I thought you camped here because of the burning stone.” She gestured toward the river, and the clearing that lay beyond it, where she had first crossed into this land.
“There are many places within our land where a gateway may open at intervals we cannot predict. It is true that the clearing in which I wait and meditate is one of those. But it is this place that I guard.”
“Guard against what?”
“Go forward. You have walked this trail many times in these last days.”
Wind cooled the sweat on her forehead and made the flowers dance and sway in a delirious mob of colors. Why hesitate?
Reflexively, she checked her gear, all that she had brought with her, everything and the only things she now possessed: cloak and boots, tunic and leggings; a leather belt, small leather pouch, and sheathed eating knife; her good friend Lucian’s sword; the gold torque that lay heavily at her throat; the gold feather that Eldest Uncle had once given to her, now bound to an arrow’s haft; the griffin quiver full of strong iron-pointed arrows and her bow, Seeker of Hearts; the lapis lazuli ring through which Alain had offered her his protection. The water jar did not belong to her, so she set it down on the path. When she stepped forward, crossing from shadow into sun, the blast of the sun hit her so hard she staggered back, raising a hand to shield herself.
Something wasn’t right. Hadn’t she learned more than this, even in her short time here in the country of the Aoi? Every spell, drawn out of an interaction with the hidden architecture of the universe, must be entered into correctly and departed from correctly, just as all things have a proper beginning and a proper ending.
By what means did a sorcerer ascend into the spheres? How could any person ascend into the heavens in bodily form, because the heavens were made up of aether, light, wind, and fire? Mortal substance was not meant to walk there.
Would she have to study many days and weeks and even months more, before she could walk the spheres and seek out her true power? Even if she ought to, she could not wait.
On Earth, days and weeks passed with each breath she exhaled here in this country. In the world beyond, her child grew and her husband waited, Anne schemed and Hugh flourished and Hanna rode long distances at the mercy of forces greater than herself. What of the Lions who had befriended her? What of Alain, whom she had last seen staggering, half dead, through the ruins of a battlefield? Where was he now? How could she leave them struggling alone? How much longer would she make them wait for her?
In one day and one night, as measured in this country, Cat Mask and his warriors would come hunting her.
It was time for her to go.
Yet how did one reach the heavens?
With a ladder.
She shut her eyes. Wind curled in her hair like the brush of Da’s fingers, stroking her to sleep. Ai, God, Da had taught her exactly what she needed, if she had only believed in him.