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.
And yet even so beyond this there is more.
The burning stone still flares, although its fire has been weakened by the cataclysm that tore through Earth and heaven alike. The river of aether runs in a trickle, like a stream late in summer when the water has almost gone. With winter rains, it will refill—but in the span of the heavens, who knows how many earthly years or centuries that will take?
Beyond this crossroads the aether spills outward. For there is no end to it. Does the aether filter from the heavens down onto the Earth, or does it well up also from the heart of the Earth into the heavens? What if there is an infinite circle of aether, a strip made of only one side whose reach, ever cycling, must be never ending?
Beyond the realm of the fixed stars lies an infinite span. Clots of black dust tangle in shifting clouds. A nautilus of light churns around a dark center. Nests of blue-white stars glow hotly, the birthplace of angels. A spiral wheel composed of unnumbered stars whirls in a silence so vast that it has weight, so deep that it is fathomless.
This is the Chamber of Light, the end and beginning of all things.
Not all change comes upon things from without. All this lies within us as well. We just have to find it.
Then she was yanked free, gasping and choking.
A fluttering against her wrist, like the brush of moth’s wings, pulled her back to Earth, a very light touch to cause such a rude awakening.
One of the creatures squatted an arm’s length away. It made no immediate move, now that it had her attention. She stared at it, but she could not tell if it stared back. It was impossible to determine if the bulges had a fixed point they focused on, and she supposed it was possible that it did not “see” in the same manner she did. How so, then?
She had no way to ask the question.
It tapped a rapid pattern onto the floor. All around, barely seen above the slope of the hollow, the others paused in their study. Like her, they waited. It tapped again. Wondering, she rapped her forefinger one, then twice, then three times on the floor. Was this a form of communication?
Her companion made no reply. It wore no facial expression she could comprehend. She thought she recognized it as the one with pewterlike skin, which had passed her in the tunnel and, she believed, guided her here. It had worn the glowing armband, although a different one carried that armband now.
Pewter Skin rose, shuffled up out of the hollow, and halted by the mouth of the tunnel. There, for a while, it subsisted as might a statue, moving not at all. When she did not move, it vanished into the darkness beyond.
After a moment, it reappeared, tapped again, turned and vanished; reappeared, tapped, vanished; reappeared.
She rose. “I see what you are trying to communicate,” she said aloud. “I am no harm to you. I would like to understand your books.”