Sayvensdee, the 17th of Frost, 768 A.E.

  Makan’s prophecy of clear sailing all the way to Aetheline, or at least as close as they could get with a boat, turned out to be true. For that none was more thankful than Anthea. She had hoped to leave the island of Zaraig without ill memories of her visit there, but the pirates had robbed her of what peace of mind the ill-kept city of Rihyas had left her with. That made Miniya the only island they’d not had to kill someone to get away from, and she had a feeling that Sagira’s own sacrifices to free herself from Ife’s contract had not been fully shared with her yet. That they’d had to fight nearly everywhere they’d gone so far was not a good omen for what laid before them in Aetheline.

  The Crooked Ridge wasn’t exactly hospitable and welcoming either, which only increased the feeling of unease running through the group. There was a reason why Aetheline was the only permanent settlement on the nearly thousand-Kilome long island. That reason was that the Crooked Ridge was almost entirely mountains and sheer cliffs. In some places the cliffs were over a hundred Mayters straight up from the waterline and several hundred more Mayters of rise tapering back away from the seas.

  The Crooked Ridge was surprisingly narrow in many places too, forming something of a knife-edge that made up the southwestern section of the Broken Crown. Only in the area around Aetheline and to a lesser extent an area to the west of Aetheline was it very wide. Of course, that was probably why they had chosen the meat, the thickest part, of the island to build Aetheline. Aetheline laid on a mountain situated at the center of the thickest part of the island, which was easily five or six times as thick as the thinner parts of the spindly mountain ridge.

  Yet for such a remote location, it had a grand entrance. On the northern side of the Crooked Ridge, only twelve or so Kilomes horizontally and about five Kilomes vertically away from the city, there was a wide staircase carved through the mountains. The foot of the staircase descended all the way down to the waterline, where a broad landing had been outfitted to allow docking of incoming ships.

  When they had first seen it, Rolf had stared at it in disbelief that was mirrored by all of the others save Anthea, who had heard stories of the city’s approach and had expected it.

  “Why would people who don’t use boats build stairs all the way down to the water where they’ve provided a place to dock?” Rolf wondered aloud.

  “Future planning maybe.” Makan suggested, but even he looked to Anthea for explanation.

  “We never planned to be confined on the mountaintops forever. It was supposed to be an invitation to lowlanders to interact with us. It’s a symbol of our openness and willing to work with the lowland races.” She explained.

  “That was before they started burning villages, right?” Rolf asked dryly.

  Anthea just shrugged. She had no way to answer for the crimes of her people, especially people who didn’t see to care much for her.

  Rolf and the others busied themselves preparing the ship for docking. Lines were cast out to secure on the cleats and posts provided on the stone wharf. As the ship slid into rest, Bedros leapt the distance between The Fourth Chance and the wharf with relative ease, wanting to be freed of the vessel and onto solid ground as quickly as possible.

  He took with him most of their baggage – mostly a collection of rations, various beverages they’d stored in the Flextainers that had survived thus far since their flight from Cenalium, and bits of mountain climbing gear that they’d hastily assembled in Rihyas.

  Anthea grinned at the way he playfully pranced around the stone shelf her people had carved into the cliffs. After many Dees on a ship recently, it did him good to be able to stretch out his legs. He tossed his head and strutted around with his shoulders back and his head high – something that had been impossible under the short ceilings of both the Ula and the Fourth Chance.

  While Makan set Rolf and Nishan to work securing the vessel for their departure, Anthea and Sagira disembarked. Bedros gave each of them a steadying hand as they hopped off the ship and onto the stone. Neither of them particularly felt like going for a swim in the frigid waters, so his offered hand was welcome. Plus, it was quite cold, and his calloused hands were pleasantly warm.

  “I think I will be wishing I was as hairy as Bedros before the Dee is out.” Sagira said enviously as she regarded his heavy fur.

  Bedros chortled, his head bobbing up and down as each heavy exhalation let loose a cloud of steam. He gestured rapidly, if deliberately, to Anthea, who translated for him with a wide smile on her face.

  “He says he might have to take you as a mate if he ever finds you with as much fur on you as a woman of his kind.”

  “I could do worse.” Sagira said with a wink, as if she were truly considering such a thing.

  Bedros laughed again and was still laughing when Rolf crossed from the boat onto the Wharf. He looked at the three of them suspiciously and shook his head.

  “I don’t think I even want to know.” He announced, checking to make sure he had all his weapons. The barrel of his long rifle poked out over his shoulder and there was a hand pistol in a sheath on each of his thighs. His sabre hung from his side for when things got too tight and up-close to use the pistols.

  “We were merely discussing the building techniques used here.” Sagira informed him, her dark face shaping a mischievous smile.

  He snorted in disbelief. “Yeah, right.”

  Nishan was the next off the boat. He, like Rolf, was wearing a heavy coat lined with fur. Somehow, his bronzed face looked less fitting inside the heavy hood than Rolf’s paler face, or so Anthea thought. The Kerathi were known to be quite comfortable with the cold, and Rolf showed no discomfort even though she felt chilled to the bone already. She wasn’t exactly carrying around any spare weight to keep her warm though.

  “Admiring the scenery?” Nishan asked.

  They all nodded in turn, but it was clear that he knew something was going unsaid. He knew though, that it was nothing major, so he did not pursue it further. Instead, he offered Makan a hand to pull him over to the wharf.

  Makan was easily the second most-laden member of the six. He wore a second layer of clothes over his Mueran Seaskin clothing and had been most every Dee since they’d left Rummas. Todee though, he also had a pair of gloves and had a hood on, including a flap of leather that covered the lower portion of his face just up to his eyes. Across his back he had a sizeable pack filled with all manners of extra supplies.

  He pulled the facemask down and looked at all of them. “We might not get a chance to come back, so I want to make sure we’re not wanting for something halfway up.” He said, explaining his baggage.

  “Then we are ready?” Anthea asked hopefully, eager to get moving not because it would not be arduous, but because motion would keep her warm.

  “I need just a moment, if you would.” Makan said, nodding back toward the Fourth Chance.

  “Take your time.” Rolf offered for the rest of them, who felt the same way.

  Makan nodded and turned back to the ship, setting his pack on the ground and kneeling on the wharf beside the boat. His hand went out to the nearest line that tied the vessel up, grasping it like a herder might grab a foal or a father might touch a child. It was clear that something personal was happening, so the other gave him space, backing away a few paces.

  Makan lowered his eyes and touched his palm to the crown of his head. He offered silent thanks to Fallu and the other Gods he felt he owed thanks to at that particular moment, particularly Tulis, who had granted them fairly calm seas on their journey from Rihyas. There was no special ceremony to it, for Makan had always felt that the Gods don’t want ceremony as much as sincerity. What he offered them in obeisance was given in the purest of intentions he could muster. He would not dress up his simple thanks with fancy words or rituals. He merely offered them his thanks with a Mynette of silence and devotion of thought.

  When he stood finally, picking up his pack with him, he let his eyes sweep the vessel from bow to stern. It had been like a homecoming to him to set foot on a Mueran vessel once more, even if she was finer than what he had once owned and sailed by himself. He had respected her and she had treated him well. It was a good parting of ways, for now at least.

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  As he turned, he regarded his friends warmly, and with them he looked at the staircase before them that ascended far into the mountains. They could only see so far up the stairs, far enough that the steps became individually indistinct and eventually disappeared where they took a right angle to hook around a peak.

  The stairs had a mostly slate gray look to them – a somewhat different color as the mountains around them – though some were tinged with the shine and sparkle of minerals hidden within them. It was a daunting sight to see so many of them stretching up into the wine-colored peaks, some colored red or purple in the light of the sixth Ouer.

  “That’s a lot of stairs.” Makan announced bleakly.

  They all looked at him.

  “I had thought you would offer us something more profound than that.” Nishan said with a laugh.

  Makan shrugged. “Sometimes simple is the way to go. What I said was what I felt.”

  “Shall we climb?” Anthea asked.

  Makan nodded, and while they were not particularly waiting for a sign from him to go on, he had been acting as their unspoken leader since they’d boarded the Mueran ship, so it seemed fitting for him to give the go-ahead. “Let the renowned captain of the Fourth Chance lead the way.” He said, grasping the straps of his pack and shouldering it as he stepped forward.

  “You knew?” Rolf asked, dumfounded by Makan’s use of the ship’s modified name.

  “I know everything that happens on my ship.” Makan replied, flashing Rolf a wide grin before he pulled his facemask up to cover his features.

  Sagira fell in beside him, with Anthea and Bedros behind them. Nishan slid in to start the third row.

  “Doesn’t miss a thing.” Rolf muttered under his breath, hurrying to match his pace with Nishan.

  Two Ouers later, the light had left them, and they’d stopped in a wayhouse at the first landing provided by the builders. They’d ascended several hundred of the wide steps, each one exactly like the last other than being higher up. Thankfully they builders had made the steps both deep and broad, so there had been a place to sit and rest on the tread of a step without any worries of falling off if you were careless. Each was about three Mayters deep and about a third of a Mayter tall. These dimensions were not surprising to Anthea, who knew her people’s love of the number three and its multiples or fractions.

  Stepping that high repeatedly was rough on the knees, especially for Makan, who was a bit shorter than the rest of them and more heavily burdened. After an Ouer, he had redistributed his baggage for the rest of them to help carry, following Sagira’s suggestion he do so, even though he had not complained.

  Yet for all the cold of the mountains and the Saysuhn they were in, the steps were not covered with the occasional ice or snow that coated the mountains around them. They were a bit warmer than the air, which often made them generate a slight hazy fog when the winds were still enough to not drive it off. This became even more apparent in the failing light of the Dee when the last glimpses of the sun had refracted off the mist, giving the steps a very foreboding appearance. Rolf had said something about it looking like the stairs into Nelius’ afterlife that had earned him a series of dirty looks, but from the looks on some of their faces, it was clear that he was not the only one to have thought something like that.

  There were no protests when Anthea wordlessly headed toward the wayhouse carved into the mountain face, lighting the way with a crystal pod. Rolf had insisted on checking to make sure that the room was clear before she entered, which it had been, but they had all gladly went inside and huddled around for warmth. Bone-chilling cold has a way of removing any shyness one might feel about proximity to another warm body.

  They might have gone on, but there was not a one of them that had not been tired and stiff from the cold winds that whistled down the unnatural cleft the builders had carved in the mountain. There was no idea when the next stop would be either, or they knew they’d not last long exposed to the elements all night. Even Bedros, for whom the stairs were actually built on a comfortable scale, was exhausted. Dees on end of not being able to stretch his legs adequately had left him sore and unprepared for such a climb.

  Inside the room, they discovered a stoppered steam vent that led up through a pipe in the floor, and within Mynettes of opening it up, the room was a cozy temperature. A heavy flap of something Anthea thought might have been the same rubbery material as the Flextainers were made from hung across the entry to trap the heat and light inside. With the dark walls of the room standing no more than six Mayters apart from each other, a trio of crystal pods lit the chamber up quite well.

  While they cooked an herbal broth with potatoes that they had already cooked over the steam vent, tongues began to loosen as they looked at the faces that stared back at them from around the food pot.

  “I have misgivings.” Rolf announced, his eyes searching for similar feelings in his companions.

  “Go on.” Sagira urged him, her own eyes mirroring his thoughts.

  He struggled for a Mynette to put his concerns to words. “I don’t know how wise it is to march right up to the gates of this city and present ourselves. That is what we are doing, right?”

  “I suppose I had not really considered exactly what I am to do when I get there. The feelings or tugs at my being that this enchantment gives me tell me that I must continue. We are going the right way.” Anthea replied.

  “Then you feel it even now?” Makan asked.

  “More strongly than ever.” She admitted.

  Rolf clucked his tongue and frowned, his hand scratching absently at the mark on his chest hidden by his clothes. “Yet I imagine a moth drawn to a flame instead of a prodigal daughter returning home triumphantly after being feared to be lost forever.”

  “Didn’t your father plan for you to go there?” Sagira asked. “Surely he had some reason for wanting to go there.”

  Anthea frowned sourly and looked down at her hands. “I wonder at what point we stopped talking about my father possibly being at Aetheline waiting for me. Always now we mention him wanting me to go there, but never is it mentioned that he may still live.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sagira offered, but it was Bedros’ hand on Anthea’s shoulder that seemed to comfort her more.

  “I guess it’s time I face the truth. The chances that he somehow survived that fall from Cenalium’s cliffs are not good. They never were. I have been clinging at gossamer threads that break apart even as I grasp for them.”

  “Then what do we do?” Rolf asked.

  “We go on. What lies atop this mountain is not just a city, but also the crux of our journey. I feel in my heart and soul that Aetheline will define our reason for coming. It will show our journey to be ended, and things will be right with the world, or it will send us out once more to continue our travels and continue toward and end I cannot yet see.” Anthea said, her words the soothsaying of someone with greater knowledge than those who listened could possess. “I wish for the former but expect the latter.”

  “We may have to fight when we get there.” Nishan suggested.

  “Then I must rely on you once more, friends, for I fear that my body does not have in it another enchantment like Rummas. Makan was right to stop me from doing another enchantment on the way here when the pirates came after us. I have relied too strongly on my abilities and not enough on you. After all, you were chosen by this enchantment because you could be of help to me.”

  “No, if anything we have been too weak for you. Some of us would have died on Rummas if not before.” Makan said, and his expression illustrated the feeling of ineptness that Anthea realized he must have only felt grow every time she had to save them.

  Bedros grunted and nodded.

  “Perhaps, if I’d have planned more than just reacted to my instincts, things would have gone better. Perhaps I’d have been able to avoid putting us in situation after situation that only I could save us from. From the first Dee I left Cenalium, I’ve simply let the enchantment carry my feet from place to place, and while it has led me to each of you, I have hardly thought about my actions.”

  “There will not always be time to react calmly and think things through. Sometimes all we have are instincts.” Nishan replied, his golden-brown eyes smolderingly bright through the steam.

  Anthea felt her pulse quicken when she met his brown and gold eyes with her own violet-shaded ones, and from the hunger in his expression and the subtle pulse of his blood in the veins of his neck, she could tell he felt something similar. She swallowed hard and looked away, trying to focus on what she had been saying.

  After a moment, words came back to her, and she said them quickly. “I can only ask of you all, that you take me as far as Aetheline. There we will see together what the Gods have assembled us for. We will have to decide, each one of us on our own, when we see what they have set before us if we still want to go on.” Only when she finished did she realize how adult her words had been, and yet even after all she’d been through, she still felt so young.

  “I will see it through.” Makan said first, and a chorus of others succeeded his voice.

  “As will I.” Sagira said.

  “And I.” Nishan added.

  Bedros grunted in agreement, leaving only Rolf to respond. Anthea caught her breath and her hands clenched at the dark fabric of the clothes Nishan had bought for her back on Rummas.

  Rolf looked at the faces around him, and his hand strayed once more to the mark of Cainel in a vicious shade of reddish-purple that lay beneath his clothes. He felt the branded mark upon on his chest smolder and warm his heart. “I will not falter now. I have come too far. Just know that my misgivings make my eyes sharper to see the enemy and my mind shrewder in terms of dealing with them.” He said with a soft smile.

  Anthea’s heart lightened immediately, and she let out the breath she had been holding. “Thank you all. Bear with me as we travel up these countless stairs, and I will do my best to see this thing to its end.” She touched her middle and forefingers to her forehead and spoke. “Maletos and Haestos willing.”

  Bedros thumped his chest and nodded, pledging his dedication once more, not that it had ever been in question.

  “Fallu willing.” Makan added, touching his palm to the top of his head as he added his own prayer to his God to Anthea’s.

  Nishan smiled wolfishly and touched his inner wrists together... “May Uman dream us a good fate, and Gandahar give it his blessings.”

  Sagira looked around at the faces around her and joined in their communion as an Elegian would among friends. She kissed her fingertips and touched them to her temples. “Juria’s grace upon us, and Rishalt’s strength and wit.” She said, looking at each of the people around her in turn, though her eyes rested longest on Anthea and Makan.

  It was Rolf’s turn, and he would not let them down. “May the brothers Comrain and Cainel guide our footsteps, one to strengthen our sword arms and the other to keep our bellies full.” He pressed the knuckles of his two fists together and bowed his head slightly.

  Anthea smiled around at her circle of friends. “With so many Gods listening to our prayers, I think we have a good chance in this. Let us do all we can and leave them not wanting for more from their servants.” None of them could ask for more in that moment. Her words stood unchallenged and unremarked upon. The task that loomed before them was greater than any words anyway.

  Zehnsdee, the 20th of Frost, 768 A.E.

  “I’m better at the close-up work, Anthea.” Sagira answered, almost apologetically as she turned and ran after the others.

  Edelweiss, pride of mountain heights,

  Restore our strength;

  Vanquish our foes and take away our woes.

  For this you grew, for us stay true.