“That is her door,” Kaiholo said, and lifted a snake-patterned brow at Widsith. “Hast thou been here?”
“No,” Widsith answered.
“Privileged as thou art,” the tattooed man murmured.
Reynard wondered at the patience of these suitors, and how they felt about each other—or the high object of their devotion.
“Still too dark,” Kern said, and wandered off to explore this level, his silhouette fading until he was no longer visible. Then he emerged from the far side and announced, “Someone hath provided.” In one hand, like an eagle clutching a bundle of twigs, he displayed four sticks with glassy knobs. Kaiholo and the others gratefully took one apiece. Kern then spun his stick in both hands until the knob gave off a dim gray glow. The others, and then Reynard, did likewise.
In the powdery pools of illumination these sticks provided, little creatures scuttled away. Weirder still was an aura, no more than a hint, seen only when looking away, of a kind of dim firelight beyond the glow of the sticks, ascending high along this wall, with passing suggestions of huge shadows… All of which vanished as soon as he looked at them directly. He did not ask about these. He was not sure he wanted to know.
They passed the wingless corpse of a drake, and their gray lights and presence caused commotion among hundreds of little feasting creatures. Reynard had never seen such as these. Some seemed formed of rare gems, and others resembled rodents made of plates of metal that took the shapes of muscles and fur and ears, with eyes like illuminated rubies. These flowed back to resume their consumption of the drake, though with irritated awareness of these new men.
“After she harvested the wings, she had some large metal beast drag it here for her pets,” Kaiholo said. “Such treats do not last long. To complete her great cloak, she will need to gather permissions from whichever faction is victorious in the krater lands.”
“Then it is a war,” Widsith said.
“Will she take thee with her?” Kern asked Kaiholo, glancing at Widsith.
“She doth not reveal our fate,” Kaiholo said. “Or dost thou mean the Pilgrim?”
“Either,” Kern said. Reynard was still thinking over the phrase “great cloak,” presumably made of drake wings. A cloak for whom?
“When dealing with a power just beneath the sky,” Kaiholo said, “I assume nothing, and advise ye likewise. What I do not give credence to is the tale that thou, Pilgrim, wast once taken by her as a lover!”
Kern grumbled that he shared that disbelief.
“Even so. She did not bring me here,” Widsith said.
“Kept secrets?” Kaiholo asked.
“As one of her station should,” Widsith said.
The steps were solid enough, but also infested with more tiny crawling things, which managed to mostly escape their feet. Reynard felt an edgy investigation of the cut on his head and brushed something away with a moan of disgust.
“Patience,” Kaiholo said. “We will soon be there.”
“She maketh a cloak for herself?” Reynard asked, unable to hold back curiosity any longer.
“Queen Hel, I presume,” Kaiholo said. “Only she could wear it. Ah, we are here.”
They had reached the top of the steps and a broad portico that followed the curve of the upper wall. The passing shadows and hints of firelight were left behind, to his relief. Sunlight blocked by leafy boughs outshone their glowing sticks. At Kaiholo’s example, they left the sticks propped against a wall. Smells of cooking meat and perfume issued from the far reaches of the portico, which was lovely in a shaded way, like a residence in a castle built of dreams. Here the small scavengers had given way to knee-high, furry creatures shaped like jesters’ hats, with a pair of stalked eyes on their peaks, and four or more scurrying feet to support them.
“These be not so threatening,” Kaiholo said, “but watch the hidden corners. This high lady hath peculiar things in her garden.”
Nobody came to greet them. Kaiholo proceeded first. Kern had to stoop as the ceiling had dropped a couple of feet. Columns like the insides of broken shells, spiraled and pearly-pink, became more frequent. The far walls were covered by a mural more pattern than picture, as he had heard from his uncle were found in Moorish palaces, but in motion, steadily progressing through shades of gray and green. His uncle had also told him, one long night at sea, about those regular shapes, which he said held clues to navigating seas and crossing land—but that did not seem to be their purpose here.
They paused cautiously between two columns. Beyond the columns, a cold fire flickered.
Kaiholo looked over his shoulder. “Caution is wise when meeting those just beneath the sky,” he said. “Adore, worship—but do not fear. Even for those who have known favor, time passeth and moods change. Truth, Pilgrim?”
“Truth,” Widsith replied. “What hearest thou about her mood toward me?”
“Nothing. I find her hapless drakes. I am not her procurer.”
“I have been in the Ravine off and on for years and seldom seen her,” Kern said.
“Thou art a monster, and so thou art allowed to stay? ” Widsith asked. Kern asked in turn, with a wicked grin, what monstrous trait gave the Pilgrim access.
Reynard reached out to touch a spiral’s rose-pink smoothness, very like broken seashells on the beaches of Southwold.
“This place is cold,” Kern said. “But I see no ice. Ice everywhere but here!”
Reynard looked up at a small scuffing sound. The others alerted as well.
“She is here,” Kaiholo said. Now it was Widsith’s turn to suck in his breath. Reynard wondered why he was afraid. Had they not been lovers? Had he not pleased her?
Was it possible to please such a being?
He tried to clear his thoughts.
Like sap streaming through ghostly vines, light slowly grew around them in vegetal tangles, weaving through a space beyond the first ring of columns. The cautious visitors observed, transfixed by both wonder and concern, while the veins of light filled in the spaces around them. Now they saw that they stood on one side of a low, wide chamber filled with rank after rank of disks, bigger than most shields, arranged upright like plates in a cupboard. The disks appeared to have thin edges almost as sharp as knives. All gleamed with their own inner light, and each was different from the other.
“Hast thou seen these before?” Kern asked Kaiholo.
“Only heard of them,” Kaiholo answered. “And thou, Pilgrim?”
Widsith shook his head. “They are new to me.”
“Shaded moons stolen from the darkest nights!” Kern said.
“Quaint,” Kaiholo said, picking at his teeth with a patterned finger.
They approached the first row of disks. Reynard tapped one. Each disk was hard and translucent, as wide as Reynard was tall. He touched the nearest disk’s rim. It did not cut, but made a bowed ringing sound at the roughness of his finger.
“Do that the right way, it might bid thee enter!” Kern suggested.
Reynard stooped to peer into the center of the first disk, and found shapes beneath the shining surface: shoals of fish swimming through dark curling weeds, all caught in a moment of stillness, and graced with more artistry than he had ever seen. Bolder than the others—so far—he stepped up to the next disk and bent to peer again. In this one he saw layer upon layer of strange, great trees, falling back in a thick blue fog, as if in some ancient morning, perhaps the morning of the world. Other shapes rose between the trees, and he realized that lizards the size of houses lurked in that fog, as well as bird-like creatures that perched on stone pillars and spread their wings like cormorants. But these were neither birds nor drakes, and each grinned with a mouth full of teeth no seabird had ever possessed.