The Burning Stone (Crown of Stars 3)

She smiled enigmatically and indicated the water, as if suggesting he, too, bathe his face in preparation for the ordeal ahead. “The cosmos is like wood much eaten by insects. It is riddled with holes and passages through which people can travel. Some holes are natural. Some are built with magic in long-ago times. That is why we come to churendo, the palace of coils. Here the three worlds meet. Here we can descend the spiral path and the gate will open to that place where now he is hidden.”

“Your son,” murmured Zacharias. She didn’t look old enough to have an adult son, and yet she didn’t look young either. She said nothing, only waited, and at last he crawled forward cautiously and dipped fingers in the pool of water. It was cool and, when he splashed it on his face, it stung, a little briny. But it seemed harmless enough.

He had saved out water for the horse, and he let it take the precious liquid out of his cupped hands as Kansi-a-lari readied her pack and pouch, straightened her skin skirt, and hoisted her spear. It was a cool morning, without the bite of winter. Fog bound them on all sides; he couldn’t see the distant shore nor could he see the sea at the base of the island, although he heard it as a steady sigh and murmur.

“Is it really spring?” he asked. “Could we have traveled so far in one night?”

She examined him in silence, then untied one of the ribbons fastened just below the obsidian point of her spear and trailed it like a snake across the surface of the brackish pool. “We are the—what do you call them? To move the boat, what you use to pull at the waves?”

“Oars?”

“We are the oars. We stir the waves of the deep pool, like so.” She drew the ribbon along the surface in a circle that crossed its starting point, became another circle, and wound back to the beginning. “We have far to travel on the coils of air and earth.” The ribbon dripped as she lifted it from the water. “In the palace of coils you can leave behind where you are doubting in your heart.” She let the ribbon fall back into the pool and it lay there on the surface, twining slowly to an unseen current. She tapped her breastbone. “Throw where you are doubting into the pool. Then it will stay here while you descend.”

He had so many doubts, but none of them were things he could hold in his hand. And yet hadn’t his grandmother always said that a wildflower was a good enough sacrifice to the old gods as long as it was given with a true heart? He had seen strange things. Maybe it was time to throw his doubts away.

He reached for the leather thong inside his robe and pulled out the wooden Circle of Unity which his father had carved for him long ago. Pulling it off, he held it out. “I have seen many things I never knew existed. I will walk the path of truth, not blind tradition. I will keep my eyes open.”

He dropped the Circle into the pool. It vanished with a plop, and as the waters closed over it, it dragged down the ribbon with it until both disappeared. The pool lay smooth and still, but he could see nothing below the surface.

“Come,” she said.

He took the horse’s reins and walked after her through the corbeled archway. The stone lionesses seemed to curl down to sniff at him, their massive shadows as heavy on his back as if they pushed at him with furled claws, but surely that was only his imagination. The path cut sharply to the right and they began to descend deocil.

After three steps he felt dizzy; he doubted. They had ascended deocil. The path had cut right to enter the plaza, hadn’t it? How could they descend in like manner? It was as if the path were leading them forward, not backward, as if they were walking toward a place that didn’t yet exist, rather than returning to the place where they had started.

He began to shake. His skin felt like a thousand spiders were crawling on it, and he was so tense he could scarcely get one foot in front of the next. Only the steady plod of the horse dragged him along, only the taut line of Kansi-a-lari’s back moving before him drew him in her wake. It was hard to focus, but there was light burning ahead so blinding in its blue-white radiance that he struggled to reach it even when her hand stayed him, even when her sharp whisper hissed out a curse—or a prayer.

“Grandmother,” he cried, staggering forward toward the light.

The Aoi woman cried out. She jerked him back just as the gate flared and bright wings of light unfolded, so pitiless in their brightness that his face burned as though fire scorched him. A fulgurant arm reached for him as if to drag him through the blinding gate, or haul itself out. He cried out and flung himself sideways, and Kansi-a-lari caught him and yanked him to safety.

He screamed, and then he was running and panting and, finally, falling. He knelt there with grit on his knees while the horse nosed his back. He smelled scorched cloth and felt the sting of a burn along his back and on his cheeks.

“Come,” she said, and he heard fear in her voice although she had never seemed afraid before. “The veils are thinning. We must go on.”

It wasn’t easy to flounder after her, and yet although the burning gate was lost along the curve of the wall, he was afraid to stay behind. What if they had followed him? What if they touched him again and he was burned to ash? She walked with a stride that never faltered, never doubted; she had thrown it all into the pool and truly left it behind. Had he?

“Pale Hunter,” he breathed, steadying himself with a hand on the horse’s reins. It plodded stolidly along beside him, flicking one of its ears impatiently. “Give me strength. In the name of my grandmother, lend me some of your power now.” Was that the wind, or the breath of the Moon? Was it night now, or day? A cooling wind breathed across his neck, and his aches lessened. The path sloped steadily downward.

She had gotten so far ahead of him that she was already leaving the malachite gate when he first caught sight of it around the opening bend in the path. Had she paused there? Had she spoken again to the voice that had called her “cousin?” He was bolder, now. Hadn’t he, too, cast away his doubts? Either the old gods would protect him, or they would not, and she had never warned him against this gate whose multicolored bands of green made him think of meadows cut by the spring fields sown by his people, in the land of his birth.

He paused to catch his breath before the malachite gateway, and pressed a hand against the cool, gleaming stone.

There is a silver-gold ribbon running through the heavens, twisting and turning through the spheres until he cannot tell one side of the ribbon from the other, or if it even has two sides at all but only one infinite gleaming surface without end, ever-dying and ever-living. The cosmos streams around him, great billowing clouds of black dust, bright flocks of blue-white stars so brilliant that they can only be the birthing ground of angels, vast expanses of void so intense that he feels an abyss yawning at his feet, a huge spiral wheel of stars spinning in an awesome silence that might be the future or the past or merely the prayer of the gods. Yet the planets and the Moon and the Sun still chart their interminable course, he hears the chiming sweet melody of the wheeling heavens, and he reaches out to touch it because it is so beautiful. But his hand cannot pass through the gate. The green stone dims and fades, and he sees on the silver-gold pathway winding through the heavens the shape of an island whose size he cannot comprehend; it could be as small as his hand or as large as Earth because the universe has no boundaries he can make sense of, he can neither measure nor span its girth.

Seeing the island far, he sees it as suddenly near, as though he were briefly an angel, set free to wing his way through the churning heavens. It is a dry land, green fading to brown fading to dust. There is no rain. The animals are dying. The corn no longer sprouts.

o;Come,” she said.

He took the horse’s reins and walked after her through the corbeled archway. The stone lionesses seemed to curl down to sniff at him, their massive shadows as heavy on his back as if they pushed at him with furled claws, but surely that was only his imagination. The path cut sharply to the right and they began to descend deocil.

After three steps he felt dizzy; he doubted. They had ascended deocil. The path had cut right to enter the plaza, hadn’t it? How could they descend in like manner? It was as if the path were leading them forward, not backward, as if they were walking toward a place that didn’t yet exist, rather than returning to the place where they had started.

He began to shake. His skin felt like a thousand spiders were crawling on it, and he was so tense he could scarcely get one foot in front of the next. Only the steady plod of the horse dragged him along, only the taut line of Kansi-a-lari’s back moving before him drew him in her wake. It was hard to focus, but there was light burning ahead so blinding in its blue-white radiance that he struggled to reach it even when her hand stayed him, even when her sharp whisper hissed out a curse—or a prayer.

“Grandmother,” he cried, staggering forward toward the light.

The Aoi woman cried out. She jerked him back just as the gate flared and bright wings of light unfolded, so pitiless in their brightness that his face burned as though fire scorched him. A fulgurant arm reached for him as if to drag him through the blinding gate, or haul itself out. He cried out and flung himself sideways, and Kansi-a-lari caught him and yanked him to safety.