“Such matters weigh too grievously to be spoken of in passing, and we must begin the rite. I had planned more teaching, but Stian could withdraw his consent as sudden as he granted it. Get thee to the center spire.”
The flattish summit of the rock encompassed only a few quercae around, and most of it comprised the jagged edges of great fractures, impossible to balance on. Even the more solid center was laced with cracks. Deep inside the rock, the rain froze and melted and froze, threatening to splinter it yet again—to its grief, as I had learned not an hour since. But as a spear thrust into a body’s heart, a slender spike of harder stone protruded above the surface to the height of my shoulder.
Kol, of course, reached the spike in two easy leaps. Filled with misgivings about rites that took place atop such perilous perches, I stepped after him, only to wish fervently that I had remained on hands and knees. Every step across the gaping blackness of a crevice sent my stomach plummeting, no matter that most were narrower than my foot. Time and distance reshaped themselves in Aeginea, why not length and breadth as well? Had a crack yawned and swallowed me whole, I would not have been surprised.
Once I joined him, Kol whipped out the length of braided thong that tied up his hair and bound one of my wrists to the narrow column. “Hold up,” I said. “What are you—?”
“The binding is to keep thee safe, rejongai, lest thou shouldst move untimely and fall. Stian insists we work thy remasti here, and not solely that the exposure might discomfort thee. This rock is called Stathero and plunges deep into the heart of this mountain, which is his sianou. Stathero hath a mighty presence, and wind is necessary for this passage as water was needed for the first. But thou needst not worry. I made my own remasti here and emerged unbroken.”
Stian’s sianou. I was not soothed. Stian valued Kol.
My uncle motioned me to stand straighter. “We must imagine that the rain hath sufficed to cleanse thee. I understand this passage comes hard upon thy first. Thy separation gards have not yet settled into their pattern, and thou hast much to learn as a wanderkin. Yet thou art full grown already and resilient, I believe, thus new changes should not daunt thee. Art thou willing to continue?”
I nodded, but kept my mouth closed lest my stuttering resolve declare this lunacy gone far enough.
He inhaled deeply and bowed. I returned the formality as best I could, tethered like a wayward goat. But then a blast of wind staggered me. My fingers closed around the black spire, and my free hand as well, and I wished heartily for a thicker leash.
Kol briefly touched his hands to my shoulders. Then, impossibly, he began to dance. His unbound hair billowing wildly in the wind, he spun on his toes about the perimeter of the rock. One misstep, one miscalculation, and he must crash to earth. No winged angel, he had leaped from the high branches of the ash tree, not flown, and Stathero reached more than three times the ash tree’s height. In fascinated horror I watched the stars grow hazy and the moonlight dim, and I heard no music but the howl of the wind. “Kol, do have a care.”
By the time a breathless Do not be afraid appeared in my head, I could not heed it. The bluster atop Stathero had grown to a shrieking gale, tearing at my hair and rippling my skin, lashing me with particles of ice and whips of cloud. Had I the benefit of clothes, they would have been torn away. My own gards pulsed a dull gray-blue, yet all perception fled as if the south wind blew straight through my head to empty it of thought, of prayer, of memory, of identity, and the north wind reached deep to snatch the very breath from my lungs. The world shrank to a roaring knot of black and gray, threaded with the blue lightning that was Kol. And then the lightning struck and set my back afire.
Somewhere Kol’s voice called to me, but I could not heed it for the burning. The wind tore my free hand from the column and raised me in its giant’s grip. Bound only by Kol’s tether, I fought the wind, drew in my limbs, and crouched lower to find purchase on the rock. I touched my hand to the cold surface and released magic, but I could summon no thoughts save Let me be somewhere else than this and Please don’t let it blow me off the edge and some fool’s apology for causing such chaos atop the broken rock. Roaring, devouring, the lightning reached over my shoulder to fire my breast, and I closed my eyes and screamed…
“It is done, rejongai. Thou art—” The hands that had untied my wrist and now rested so gently on my scorched shoulders withdrew abruptly. “Stian! Sagai! Come up, quickly.”
I was far too weary to heed unexplained urgency. My head rested on my arms. When had I last slept? The bitterly cold world whispered hints of rosecolored light around my eyelids. The wind had settled to a modest bluster, but something blocked it, so that it touched my face only now and then. My legs felt odd. Kneeling. Cold. Heavy. I didn’t bother to look. Moving, thinking, choosing what to do next…those tasks waited far beyond me. I craved sleep.
Approaching voices. “…never seen such…not precisely a hole, but a niche…to fit…”
“…some error in thy kiran…”
“My kiran intruded not upon this rock, sagai.” Kol stood over me as he pronounced this chilly conclusion.
I wished they would take their bickering elsewhere. A sunbeam touched my cheek, a lancet that pricked my veins, infusing warmth and light, as if I had drained the Bucket Knot’s prize butt of mead. The fond memory of my favorite sop-house roused such a prodigious thirst as no man had ever suffered. The wind and lightning had surely burned out every dram of moisture in my body, and I would lick old Stian’s toes did I imagine he had brought a wineskin with his grim company. As I had no wish to be subject to further insults, I kept my heavy head where it was.
“Didst thou sense a breach, Stian? What does it mean that he could do this?”
“No. And I cannot—” The elder Dané bit off his words. Did I not think it ludicrous, I would have called him frighted. “Get him beyond my boundaries, Kol. But let him not stray from thy sight until I come to thee.”
The knots in my burning back did not relax as Stian’s angry presence receded and vanished.
“Come, get up, Valen,” said Kol, tugging on my arm. “Thou’lt have to extricate thyself.”
I lifted my boulder of a head, stared at the Dané’s toes, and realized my eyes were below the level of his feet. So the rest of me…I blinked, squinted, and peered downward.
I sat in a hole—actually more like a small, dark cave hollowed from the surface of the rock. My legs were tucked around a small protrusion, preventing Kol from pulling me straight out.
I looked up at my uncle, whose face was shadowed against a brightening sky. “This isn’t usual, is it?”
“No. This is not usual,” he said, dry as sunburned leaves. “Somehow your remasti has caused an unnatural change in Stian’s sianou, one of the most stable locales in all the Canon.”
“The wind,” I said. “Never felt such a wind. And lightning.”
He gave me his hand, and I untangled myself from the rock that appeared to have melted and hardened again in just such a tidy nest as to hold me. “The wind did not do this, rejongai. Thou hast done it—and if by accident rather than intent, that is perhaps worse. Assuredly were this known among the long-lived, knee breaking would be the kindliest remedy proffered thee.”
I did not want to imagine consequences worse than crippling. Nor did I want to remember my prayers for shelter or think of what power might shape rock. Such wonders could have naught to do with Valen the Incompetent. I stepped out of the little bowl. Movement and the resulting sting front and back reminded me of the occasion for my presence atop this hellacious boulder. Apprehensively I glanced down. Gods among us…