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Bayan gave a sharp whistle of anger.
Ai, God, Bayan had known all along. Why had Hanna thought that a commander as observant as Bayan hadn’t known the whole time what was going on in the ranks of his army? He’d just chosen to overlook it, in the same way he choose to overlook Wichman’s assault. All he cared about was defeating the Quman.
Given their current situation, Hanna had to admire his pragmatism.
“What do you mean, Wichman?” Biscop Alberada had a way of tilting her head to one side that made her resemble, however briefly, a vulture considering whether to begin with the soft abdomen, or the gaping throat, of the delectable corpse laid out before it. “What sin has young Ekkehard polluted himself with?”
“Heresy,” said Wichman.
3
LIATH walked as if into the interior of a pearl. The glow of the Moon’s essence drowned her vision, a milky substance as light as air but so opaque that when she stretched out her hand she could barely see the blue lapis lazuli ring—her guiding light—that Alain had given her so long ago. Her ears served her better. She heard a susurration of movement half glimpsed in the pearlescent aether that engulfed her. The ground, although surely she did not walk on anything resembling earth, seemed firm enough, a sloping path like to a silver ribbon that led her spiraling ever upward.
She had not known what to expect, but truly this nacreous light, this sea of emptiness, seemed—well—disappointing. Shimmers undulated across the distance like insubstantial veils fluttering in an unfelt breeze. Had she crossed the gate only to step right inside the Moon itself?
A shape flitted in front of her, close enough that its passage stirred her hair about her face, strands tickling her mouth. It vanished into the aether. An instant or an eternity later, a second shape, and then a third, flashed past. Suddenly hosts of them, their hazy forms as fluid as water, darted and glided before her like minnows.
They were dancing.
She recognized then what they were: cousins to Jerna, more lustrous, less pale; some among the daimones imprisoned by Anne at Verna to act as her servants surely had come from the Moon’s sphere.
They were so beautiful.
Entranced, delighted, she paused to watch them. Beat and measure throbbed through the aether. Was this the music of the spheres? Swiftly ran the bright tones of Erekes and the lush melody of Somorhas. The Sun’s grandeur rang like horns, echoed by the soft harp strings that marked the Moon’s busy passage of waxing and waning. Jedu’s course struck a bold martial rhythm. Mok gave voice to a stately tune, unhurried and grave, and wise Aturna sounded as a mellow bass nimble underlying the rest.
They turned and they shifted, they rose and descended, spun and fell still. Their movements themselves had beauty just as any thing wrought by a master artisan is a joy to behold.
She could dance, too. They welcomed her into the infinite motion of the universe; if she joined them, the secret language of the stars would unfold before her. In such simplicity did the cosmos manifest itself, a dance echoing the greater dance that, hidden beyond mortal awareness, turned the wheel of the stars, and of fate, and of the impenetrable mystery of existence.
She need only step off the path. Easier to dance, to lose oneself in the universe’s cloudy heart.
“Liath!” Hanna’s voice jolted her back to herself. Was it an echo, or only her imagination?
She stood poised on the brink of the abyss. One more step, and she would plunge off the path into the aether. Staggering, she stumbled back, almost toppling off the other side, and caught her balance at last, quite out of breath.
The dance went on regardless. In the splendid expanse of the heavens, she was of no account. Her own yearning might bring her to ruin, but nothing would stop her whichever choice she made.
That was the lesson of the rose, which needs tending to reach its full beauty. Its thorns are the thorns of thoughtless longing, that bite the one who tries to pluck it without looking carefully at what she is doing.
She had come so close to falling.
With a bitter chuckle, she climbed on. At last the path parted before her, the silver ribbon cutting out to either side along a pale iron wall that betrayed neither top nor bottom. A scar cut the wall, a ragged tear through which she saw a featureless plain. Was this the Gate of the Sword, which heralded the sphere of Erekes, the swift sailing planet once known as the messenger of the old pagan gods?
As if her thought took wing and brought form boiling up out of the aether, a figure appeared, a guardian as white as bleached bone. It did not, precisely, have mouth or eyes but rather the suggestion of a living face. The delicate structure of its unfurled wings flared as vividly as if a spider had woven the threads that bound bone to skin. It barred her path with a sword so bright it seemed actually to cut the aether with a hiss.
Its voice rang like iron. “To what place do you seek entrance?”
“I mean to cross into the sphere of Erekes.”
“Who are you, to demand entrance?”
“I have been called Bright One, and Child of Flame.”
That fast, as though in answer to her words, it thrust, attacking her, and she leaped back. Instinctively, she reached for Lucian’s friend, the sword she had borne for so long. Drawing it, she parried, and where the good, heavy iron of Lucian’s friend met the guardian’s bright sword, sparks spit furiously. It struck again, and she blocked, jumped back, checked her position on the path, and made a bid to cut past it.
Yet where it had not stood an instant before, it stood now, sword raised. “You have too much mortal substance to cross the gate,” it cried triumphantly, its voice like the crack of the blacksmith’s hammer on iron.
The breath of hot wind off Erekes’ dark plain weighed her down. She was too heavy to cross.
