We had practical matters to see to for the next hour. Our injuries were not severe. Our attackers, their bodies laying sprawled peacefully about, almost as if merely sleeping, would need to be buried. Magister Ai would see to that. They were, of course, Morul-Om, as Magister Ai was able to surmise by their clothing and accents.
We noted that they had made to capture Gena, but seemed willing to kill me. Lady Iltara had insisted to me that they were not hers, but this gave us good reason to doubt her: these would be the orders we would expect her to give if she wished us ambushed now.
We regained the trail through the pass and made steady progress: more achy and weary than we had wanted to be at this time of the morning, but altogether tolerable.
It wasn’t long before we arrived. The short cliff faces beside and above us parted as we came to a smooth slope down, just a few dozen yards, onto a wide shelf in the eastern face of this mountain. This would have been the camp. Behind us, the narrow pass, where a hundred heavily armored soldiers would have packed into ranks to try to block the charge, while above them on those cliff faces the doomed skirmishers lay in ambush. On this wide shelf, a camp for thousands of soldiers. The sick and injured, the camp followers and pack animals, and perhaps some reserves had been waiting here. Had it been blown clean of the mountainside by Ae’s fury?
And looming above us, the fourth summit from the south, where the god of the range had pronounced death just an hour ago.
“This is it,” Hester said. “A way to the Halls, here? I don’t see…”
“It’s probably not a tree this time,” I said.
“I have a feeling,” Gena said. “Hester…”
Between Hester’s knowledge of military affairs, Thrain’s account of the battle, and Gena’s quick and precise reasoning, we reconstructed the scene: where General Sekmet would have stood in command; where he would have positioned his forces and his lieutenants so he could effectively signal them, and where they would have first made out the charging cavalry and the goddess at their head. From there, we worked out where they would have known that her forces were fully committed: the point of no return. Then, where they would have ordered their ambush; finally, where Ae would have been the moment she laid them low.
Retracing our steps to that point, it was clear. A beam of sunlight shone on the rock, wide enough for a woman and her horse.
“In we go,” I said. “Take my hand.”
We stood in the beam of light, and I cast the spell to call a mote of light to my fingertips. We crossed over into the Halls.
The three of us glanced about. The air was thick and damp, and a chorus of birds, bugs, and frogs pressed in on our ears, seeming to fill the mass of air to its capacity. We couldn’t see far in any direction on account of the verdant, leafy undergrowth. A thick canopy completed the rainforest, providing nearly perfect shelter from the sky. Except for one clearing, which we stood in. From here, we could look directly up into a hole in the canopy, and there the strange stars were suspended.
A path through the brush, laid in flagstone, led away from there, in what felt like was the east.
I felt something else odd. I felt rested. My foggy-headedness, my giddy and eager embrace of the excitement of the day, had parted, leaving behind only a crystalline understanding.
We stood, after all, in a realm of thought and will.
“Hester, I need to explain something,” I said.
I glanced over at him. His brows were even with concern, but not disgust. I hoped it was an early premonition of victory.
I glanced over at Gena. She met my eyes squarely.
She knew.
“Before I go on,” I said, turning back to Hester, “I need to ask you to forgive me.”
“I tire of this,” he said, with a nip at the edge. “We have important things to be doing.”
“Lord Claude said to me—he must have said to you, too—that the search for truth cannot be heresy. Do you believe that?”
Dismay colored Hester’s face. “I believe; that is enough. And my father is a good man. Out with it.”
“The point is… I’ve gotten to the bottom of it. We’ve gotten to the bottom of it. Our first clue was Lady Iltara’s mastery over a domain of dreams. Dreams, malleable, strange, and ephemeral though they may be, are… tangible, in some ways. Think of it as a realm, alike to our own.
“Our second clue was our passage through the Halls. Ae’s realm, strange, remote, and, we suppose, reactive to her will. Here we are again.”
Hester was not a man of logos or letters, but they say that the warrior’s cunning is to see the thrust in the two steps their opponent takes before delivering it. His brow twitched, and he drew a little, irregular breath of realization.
“And that Lady Iltara would seek out a goddess’s own weapon for her ends,” I continued. “And that she would declare independence from her god-king. It’s all been before us all along. Magister Akabu Ai’s judgement, verdict, and execution was just the final confirmation. He, too, rules a realm, in a way. He brought us to it. And there, his word was the only law.”
“I have never known Magister Akabu Ai to lie. He says he is not a god, no?”
“A matter of semantics, I believe. Say he is a god, say he is not a god. The name does not matter. You saw! He commands life and death where his will might be felt.”
Hester was silent, staring into the undergrowth, his hand resting on his sword’s crossguard.
“He has sworn himself in service, so he thinks himself not a god, is all. But perhaps we shall take his word for it. Then…”
“You are saying they are alike. If not gods, then you mean to say that Ae is a mere wizard?” he muttered.
“Yes. Mere only if you think such things… mere.”
Hester shook his head. His face was drawn tight.
“That is not a flight of hubris,” I said. “I’m not boasting on behalf of all wizards. I’m an apprentice; I’m not supposed to. But the point is, what are they, if not magicians more powerful than I?”
“Sister,” Hester said, turning to her for backup. Then he saw the steel in her eyes. “… Sister?”
“Well?” Gena said, a faint smile on her face illuminated by the eerie nightly light of this realm. “Pray hear his wizardly counsel, even as you forgive his wizardly… idiosyncrasies.”
Hester gaped. “That’s not a very nice thing to say about him, even if what he says…”
“Idiosync… you know what, never mind,” Gena said.
It seemed natural to take the laid path, so we did, venturing out to that-which-we-supposed-to-be-the-east. The jungle to our sides seemed impenetrable but still and peaceful. The strange un-light permitted a certain tasteful blanket of shadows in the undergrowth, but somehow it seemed clear that they harbored no hazards, or predators, or ambushers. Just an incredible population of frogs, judging by the ambient noise.
This was good, because my donkey had not made the transit into Ae’s realm of thought and will. Gena and Hester had to take turns helping me along.
Fortunately, was only a few minutes before we turned a gentle corner and saw the sudden clearing. It was hard to make out what we could see between the trees and brush until we got closer, but soon it became apparent that it was a great, broad coastline, and that the path we walked upon led out along a small, sandy cape. At its end, at the top of a built-up hill, stood a lighthouse. It shined in the un-light, glinting beneath the stars, a spike of steel driven into the tip of the cape. At the top, a wizard’s light shone, bright and perfectly clear. The seas beyond it were flat, still, and empty, reflecting the stars above in a mirror shine. So still they were that only a careful look at the horizon revealed their presence, else one might have thought that the coast and cape were suspended above empty sky.
As we lurched along the path, we were approached by two figures. Both wore bronze cuirasses ostentatiously molded with ornamental muscle, loose tassets, knee-high greaves, and red-crested full helms. Both carried spears in their hands and short swords in scabbards. Students of history and students of war (and all of us were one or both) would recognize at once the full war kit of a classical-era soldier.
Then a few steps later we saw that there were no soldiers beneath the armor. Anywhere you might have expected to see skin—the thigh above the greave, the shoulder below and the cuirass, the neck below the helm—instead there was nothing.
And still the figures marched toward us, until we met partway along the cape, closer to the jungle than to the tower.
We stopped. They stopped. The empty helms rotated slowly, as if to have a look at us.
A voice rang directly between my ears, a voice that might have belonged to a big man, with a slight overtone of amusement: “on Ae’s business, eh?”
“Yes,” Hester said without hesitation.
“This way.” One of the figures turned on its heel and made back toward the lighthouse. The other silently gestured toward me, offering a disembodied vambrace to use as a crutch. Unlike Gena or even Hester, who could be felt shifting their backs and bodies to take my weight, the floating armor seemed immovable, able to take any load with infinite, unyielding strength. Despite the bare bronze I had to lean on, it made for a much smoother, more comfortable walk the rest of the way down the cape.
The soldiers led us straight to the door of the lighthouse, an archway into whose stones had been carved an elaborate relief depicting a battle: rearing horses, human bodies in strong, dynamic poses, and breaking weapons. At the keystone was a horse and its rider, in her hand a tome unfolded.
Directly through the archway was the top of the lighthouse. It was a strange sensation: we looked into the archway expecting to see the interior of the lighthouse, but instead we saw an open sky, a steel floor, and a railing, all of which should have been several dozen yards above us.
We walked through onto a wide steel disk. The sphere of light, bright and blue like the jagged edge of a lightning bolt, hung above us, its lowest point about eight feet above our heads. It was painful to look upon, so we kept our eyes down instinctively (our armored hosts seemed to have no need to do so). Behind us stood a freestanding archway, this one composed of plain, smoothed stones, leading back out toward the jungle.
Opposite us, visible only by squinting to keep out the magelight, stood a figure in a helm, topped with the ancient lieutenant’s blue crest, and a cape. It turned. Underneath the cape was another identical muscle-cuirass and assorted bits of armor.
The six of us stood. The caped figure seemed to regard us.
“What brings visitors here? We receive few,” it remarked. Its voice was feminine, high-pitched and even, like a horsehair bow across a string.
“What is this place?” Gena asked, answering the question with a question.
The figure glanced up at the orb of light, then back at us. “A place of the past,” it said, its empty voice coming from somewhere above my neck. “That might be easily found. Or perhaps never lost at all.”
“You are the spirits of this place, I take it?”
“Yes.”
“This was the site of a great battle.”
“A great triumph!” The “big man” armor boomed. “Never has there been a more resounding blow struck.”
“A terrible triumph,” whispered the armor upon which I leaned.
“And a… lighthouse,” I observed.
“That it might be easily found,” the lieutenant repeated, nodding.
“The Charge of the Fifty Lords wasn’t only Ae’s first battle,” Gena said, “it was her last one. And the last time she would even order armies into the field at all. She has not been to the field in many centuries. But she remembers clearly, I take it.”
“Of course,” said the boisterous man-armor. “Would be hard not to remember the glory and the thrill! Even having been gone for fifty score years! Or was it fifty-five score?”
“She remembers. That is why we doubt she shall return,” the quiet one breathed.
Hester and I stared. Gena seemed unsurprised.
“He’s right,” the caped armor said. “You know, of course, that she abdicated rule centuries ago and withdrew to the monastery. Why would she need to make war?”
“A threat? The Old King on the march again?” Hester ventured.
“Her children are more than match for that dusty old relic. Shouldn’t you know, lord heir?” The energetic armor elbowed Hester convivially with a bronze vambrace.
“And she thirsts no more for conquest,” whispered the armor at my elbow.
“And there you have it,” their blue-crested leader said. “We three behold this place, for what is a place of meaning if it is not beheld? And now you share the view. It does gladden me.”
I stared into the stars, strange and infinite.
“Tell us. Is Akabu Ai a divinity?” Hester said.
“Humph!” said the man-armor.
“No, he is not a divinity,” opined the blue-crested lieutenant.
“But of divinity,” whispered my aide.
“Ask mysterious questions, get mysterious answers,” said the man-armor. The tone seemed to bear a shrug, though he had no shoulders to physically shrug.
“Surely you don’t mean he is her son,” Hester said.
“He does mean that, but only in the same way you are her beloved child,” the lieutenant replied.
“So then…” Hester muttered, thinking.
“We have heard your debate plainly,” the lieutenant said. “You carry it at the forefront of your minds.”
“You needn’t ask,” whispered the aide.
“She is, of course, a divinity. The divinity,” declared the man-armor.
“And yet it is all so much semantics. What is divinity? What sets her apart from you, or from Magister Ai? We cannot say for you. Not that we are not permitted. We but lack the ability,” concluded the lieutenant.
“But behold, her place of meaning,” whispered the aide.
Our debate so non-resolved, we spent some time in quiet rest. Hester was, of course, eager to continue, but I wished to behold (and make notes) of the stars, and Gena seemed to find a simple, genuine pleasure in the place, content to gaze at the beautiful and eerie land, sea, and sky. The suits of armor resumed their posts as we did so.
When it was time to go, we descended the tower by way of the archway, and we asked of the sentinel spirits if there might be a path east.
“I would hardly consider it a path,” the loud one rumbled. “But you may find a way east. Why should you not?” It gestured out over the unbroken plane of the sea. “And perhaps, even, an easier journey than the climb down the mountain, what with your broken leg.”
“I’d say so,” I said. “We would be grateful to make use of a boat. But…”
The normally talkative spirit soldier was suddenly silent. It pivoted slightly to face Gena, who stood facing the sandy shore of the cape. She looked up at us, then gestured back at the shore, where a small boat, not more than twenty feet with a removable mast at its center, lay, ready to be pushed into the water prow-first.
“A realm of thought and will,” she said. “We will make our way.”
“We will see to your pack animal,” the soldier said, anticipating the rest of my thoughts. “We have our ways.”
“Go in her light,” the whisperer bade us as he lowered me into the boat.
“Always,” Hester beamed. “No matter what the man-ticks might say.”
“Pardon?” the helper whispered.
“Semantics,” I whispered back.