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“I feel a little sick,” I said.

Galva nodded.

I walked a bit farther in, bow ready but more relaxed. I took a closer look at the figure, which was thirty feet high if an inch. One of the heads was male, one female, the third something in between.

All were beautiful.

I looked around now for the source of the light, but I saw neither lamp nor candle.

It was as if the air itself glowed.

Now, and I know you’ll be little inclined to believe this, but I swear it, the statue did swivel its three heads and look at me.

It spoke, though the lips of it never moved, and it spoke with three voices in harmony—male, female, and something else.

“What a curious thing to say to us first,” it said.

“What?” I said, my eyes bugging half out of their head-holes.

“I feel a little sick,” they said, and then all at once the man growled, the woman sighed, and the other laughed.

“Forgive me,” I said. “You’re my first god. Or gods. Or at least the first I believed really might be. What … what would you like me to call you?”

They didn’t answer for a moment.

Galva whispered, quickly, “I did not know you understood Ispanthian so well.”

“It isn’t speaking Ispanthian,” I said.

“Yes, it is,” she said, and we shared a look.

“Names are ephemeral,” they said. “And you care only for what I can do for you. As we care only for what you can do for us.”

“Should we kneel?”

“I don’t care.”

“I’d rather not kneel. Kings like it, but I don’t like kings.”

“I don’t care what you like.”

“That’s all right. We were hoping—”

“We know what you want.”

“I thought you might.”

“Almost all who come here have been mastered by these mountains and want out of them. It was so even when they had no snow on them.”

“Yes. That’s it, please. Please get us out of these kark … out of these mountains.”

“I can get some of you out of these mountains. Do you know what we want?”

“No.”

“No. Or you never would have found this place. What’s more, you never would have looked for it.”

“So … what is this thing you want?”