Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

Cautiously, she slipped down into the hollow and crept up to the lip of the pool. She knelt. A cool, sweet current flowed upward out of the pool’s depths, pouring over her. She felt it through her clothes, through her skin, all the way into her heart.

Reaching, she brushed a hand down and touched the surface.

Like lightning, it struck, and she fell.

The river that is aether links the farthest reach of heaven to the deepest pit within the Earth. It runs shallow, denuded by the great cataclysm, but it runs nevertheless. She flows with it through the tributaries of Earth. It runs upward and outward, thin as a thread, and she rises with it, on it, seeing as with Eagle’s Sight.

There are Ashioi, marching along a road. They are fitted out in bronze armor and feathered shields. None of them have human faces; they all wear warrior masks. Behind them lies a stone crown and before them lies a walled city, with its gates closed and guards patrolling the walls.

There is Ivar, riding alongside a raggle-taggle company of men and women and children who look like nothing so much as refugees.

o;How high are your walls, Father?” Ivar asked with a laugh, although he didn’t mean his comment to sound so cutting.

“Faith keeps them strong,” said Ortulfus without the least sign of irony. He frowned at his refugees. Their tight group was spreading out into a straggle, the faster like a rope tugging on those who lagged behind. “Faith is all we have.”

6

OF course it made perfect sense to Liath that, at the heart of the world, she would find a library, a repository of knowledge.

Of course she settled by the entrance, in a quiet spot, and sat and watched them, trying to make sense of their purpose and their manner of language. After all, if there was a book, she would some day wish to read it!

Typically, a goblin would tap along the wall beside one of the holes and, after completing a set of tests at various compass points around the hole, would withdraw the scroll and carefully unroll it into a flat sheet. The copper armband, pressed into the unrolled fabric, caused the writing to unveil by means of a magic she did not understand. It seemed the language was read by touch; she simply saw no evidence that they read through their eyes or by speaking words aloud.

At length, after napping and eating, she wandered again among them—or among a different group, perhaps, as she could only tell them apart with difficulty. The tone of their skins, like those of the Eika, had substantial variation; in addition, each had a distinctive pattern of growths crusting its skin. Whether male or female she could not tell.

What riches did they peruse?

Theology? Mathematics? Physics? It seemed unlikely that the science of astronomy concerned those who dwelled under the ground, but geometry surely held their interest, for she had seen the proportioned chambers through which their maze of tunnels ran. They seemed savage in appearance, clothed only in barbaric ornaments, but they had devised the secret of writing, so surely the mechanical sciences engaged them. All sciences are matters of use before they become matters of art. How far they had come in matters of art she could not know, because she had no way to communicate. Did they possess the art of logic? Ethics? Physics? Did they search out and consider the causes of things as found in their effects? Had they recorded somewhere the reason for the tremblings and shakings that afflict the Earth? Was it true that the collapse of buried mountains deep within the Earth caused tremors? Or that the pressure of gusting winds in subterranean caverns tilted the ground and caused it to swing briefly this way and then that? What of the rivers of fire that flowed in the bowels of the Earth? Surely, living underground, they had wondered why gold is soft and iron is hard. Out of what arises the color of a gemstone? Was it true that death did not put an end to things through annihilation, but only broke up their constituent components into new combinations?

So many questions!

Of what essence were the goblins formed? Was there metal mixed within them? Had they any kinship to the Eika? All this remained a mystery. That these creatures existed at all astounded her. Of course she had heard the stories, tales told by grandmothers and old uncles at the hearthside in the cold of winter when folk must huddle indoors to protect themselves against the bitter cold. Back in those days, she had dismissed the stories.

But just as things cannot be created out of nothing nor, once born, be summoned back to nothing, tales do not spring from empty vessels. So the philosopher wrote.

Here walked the ancient ones, the crawlers in the deep, fabled miners, known also as goblins.

They moved in a pattern, some shuffling out while others shuffled in, all seen by her within that faint pulsing glow emanating from the pool. The substance in the pool was not air, not liquid, not flame, and certainly not earth.

Cautiously, she slipped down into the hollow and crept up to the lip of the pool. She knelt. A cool, sweet current flowed upward out of the pool’s depths, pouring over her. She felt it through her clothes, through her skin, all the way into her heart.

Reaching, she brushed a hand down and touched the surface.

Like lightning, it struck, and she fell.

The river that is aether links the farthest reach of heaven to the deepest pit within the Earth. It runs shallow, denuded by the great cataclysm, but it runs nevertheless. She flows with it through the tributaries of Earth. It runs upward and outward, thin as a thread, and she rises with it, on it, seeing as with Eagle’s Sight.

There are Ashioi, marching along a road. They are fitted out in bronze armor and feathered shields. None of them have human faces; they all wear warrior masks. Behind them lies a stone crown and before them lies a walled city, with its gates closed and guards patrolling the walls.

There is Ivar, riding alongside a raggle-taggle company of men and women and children who look like nothing so much as refugees.

There is Hanna, ascending the road that leads to the gate of Quedlinhame. Behind her rolls the wagon carrying Mother Obligatia, who is propped up so that she can take it all in. After all this, her grandmother still lives!

And there is Sanglant! He rides with an army behind him, moving through forested country on a well-traveled road that she suddenly recognizes as the eastern reach of the Hellweg.

There flutters a daimone, but it is caught as in a haze; she shifts her gaze upward, toward the moon, and between one breath and the next, one step and the next, she vaults up the ladder and passes like lightning through the gate guarded by a daimone armed with a glittering spear as pale as ice. The sphere of the Moon gleams with a pearl’s luster, but she crosses beyond it as with swift and unerring steps she mounts the ladder—for the ladder itself holds the structure of the aether within it. Through the blinding sea of whiteness that is the sphere of Erekes. Beyond the horned gate of Somorhas and its rosy glamour. Through the blazing furnace of the Sun, and crossing the vast charnel house that is Jedu’s angry lair. The daimones who live in the upper spheres watch her pass, but lifted on the current of aether, she is too fast for them to catch or to threaten, even if they wanted to. They have seen her before, or will see her again—it is difficult to tell. They recognize her; they know who her kinfolk are. That is enough.

The feasting hall of Mok lies drowned in incense. Its heavy scent drags at her, but she pushes on, she pushes up, as the soul must, seeking release. The storm winds of Aturna buffet her, but she climbs past their darkness and into the dazzling realm of light toward the golden wheels that thrum and turn ceaselessly. Higher and higher, until she comes to the realm of the fixed stars, the white hot firestorm, as terrible as it is beautiful. Her mother’s home, permeated by the elements of white fire and blue aether. A welcoming place. She need only choose, and she can leave her mortal body behind and return to her kinfolk.