The Burning Stone

As he came up beside her, she pulled her hands from the gate and turned to regard him evenly. “Come,” she said. He had to follow her. He didn’t dare pause to touch the gate, to see what she had seen. To whom was she talking?



Now each stair step was like one carved by titans, knee-high, and the poor horse had to scramble like a mountain goat from ledge to ledge. But it was a hardy creature; like all Quman horses, it had never received any pampering. Those who couldn’t keep up were killed and thrown into the stew pot. It was a strong little horse, fit for a chieftain like Bulkezu to ride, it had the heart of a prince, and no damned stairs were going to keep it from following.



He was out of breath and had to stop to get his wind back when they came to the seventh gate. He had to stop to lift a hand over his eyes, because the sight of the gate blinded him, all blue-white fire, not stone at all, not wood, but some substance that was as bright as a blacksmith’s forge and yet as cool as the winter air. He feared it, and he stayed well back, but he could not help but stare because he knew in his gut that beyond that gate lay a place no man had ever before seen, that no man could ever see.



He saw movement, coming closer, the flutter of wings within a burning fire as though some terrible creature were about to emerge out of the brilliant gate to engulf him.



He screamed. And then something dark and hot and heavy shadowed his eyes.



“Quickly,” she said, dragging him forward by the elbow.



He whimpered, struggling, and finally yanked off the creature that shrouded him. She had thrown his cloak over his head.



“Do not look back,” she said. “The veil is thinning. They have become aware of that which lies far below them, and they are terribly dangerous. If they touch you, you will be burned to ashes in one blink of an eye.”



“Was there truly something there?” he gasped. “What was it?”



“I think in your tongue you call them ‘angels.’”



All at once, the path cut sharply to the right. They passed under a corbeled archway topped by two massive stones carved to look like lionesses, fierce and protective. His ears rang to the sound of three deep thunderous notes, and blood trickled from his nose. She let go of his arm, and he staggered in her wake out into an oval plaza paved entirely with marble and ringed with hip-high marble walls cut so perfectly that when he knelt and ran his finger along the thin crack that joined two, he found no mortar within, only the perfect fit of two blocks of masterfully-dressed stone.



The wind cut unmercifully up on this height, and he was glad to have the cloak to swing over his shoulders as he regained his balance and stood. It was a cloudless, cool night made stinging by the wind’s roar. Sea ringed the island, shushing rhythmically at the base of the rock. No clouds concealed the heavens. The Queen’s Sword, Staff, and Cup glimmered in the east; the light of the bloated moon, now setting, had washed away the western stars, all but the brightest ones. He knew the boldest of the stars and constellations. Any child did who stared at night up at the heavens, hoping to see an angel.



Had he seen the shadow of an angel, there at the seventh gate?



“Zacharias.”



She hobbled the horse by the gateway and strode to the wall to lean out. Her body shone with an uncanny glamour, like polished bronze. The skin skirt swayed around her hips and thighs, and the fold of her arms concealed her chest. A gold chain curled loosely over her wrist. She inhaled deeply.



“Can you smell it?” she said. “Day and night are in balance again. Spring has come. The world between is rich with growth. How long it has been since I have smelled such richness!”



He stared at her, bewildered. How could it be spring? They had reached the sea a few weeks after the winter solstice, no more. It had only taken them one night to cross the sands and climb the island fort. Hadn’t it?



The gleam of dawn twilight edged the eastern land on the far horizon as the moon sank below the western waves. She pushed away from the wall and raised her spear, shook it once, twice, three times. “Come. Follow in my steps.”



From the archway she walked in a straight line toward the center of the plaza. He followed her, but the closer he moved toward the center, the more he felt that the ground began to melt beneath him, that he was walking first on stone, then on mud, then through sludge that dragged at his feet as it soaked away his strength. A shallow pit lay at the center of the oval, and here Kansi-a-lari knelt. He had to crawl to get there, pressing through air that seemed more like water pouring against him, a channel opening out of the pit. At its edge, he felt forward and suddenly he was falling, sliding, spinning, until he fetched up with a bump against Kansi-a-lari, who stood at the center of the shallow incline with her feet braced on either side of a depression just large enough to hold a human heart. His forehead ached from the impact. Her closeness made him dizzy, something overwhelming in her scent, or her power, or the air. He looked up.