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It took them until dark to reach the mountain. It took another two hours to walk the steep path to a small plateau on the mountain, where they’d made camp, eaten, and gone to sleep.
Ailish woke the next morning at the first light. When she opened her eyes, she found herself robbed of the ability to breathe. High above her was the first of the two mountain crowns, and the ice-tipped point was beautiful.
As soon as they’d eaten a cold meal, they started climbing the steep and narrow trail leading to the mountain’s spear-like peak.
By mid-morning, the sun’s rays broke through the misty clouds to brighten the day for a few hours before the gray would return. The two Nevaens and the Dark Master had discovered what the People had known for a millennium. The sun here never stayed in the sky for long, not at this time of year.
They reached the base of the mountain’s peak an hour later. The peak itself, rose an unclimbable three hundred feet above them. They stopped to rest and eat at a flat open area at the junction of the trail’s split. While most of The People sat and ate, Ailish, Haliled, and Nomar walked toward the fork in the pathway, which looked as if it circled the base of the peak.
“Where now?” she asked the Woman of the Village. “Up, left, or right?”
Haliled’s shoulders shook with her laughter. “Up? Can you see all these people trying to climb upon this needle?” She took several steps to the left and pointed. “We go left to the valley of the second crown. The path to the right leads to the sea.”
Following her, Ailish looked down from her vantage point to gaze at the ice-shrouded sides of the mountain. The path to the left went gradually downward between the crown and a jagged line of what she could only think of as small bumps in the mountain. She was sure these ... bumps rose high above her head. But stranger than the bumps, was how the snow seemed only a few inches deep on the path.
Ten minutes later, the large group was assembled and began the trek to the second and highest of the two peaks. A half hour after they’d left, the path began to rise again, and continued to do so. At what seemed the halfway point to the second crown. She stopped for a moment, knelt next to Yar, and pressed her forehead to his. Go, scout! Then she looked at the second peak. There.
She remained joined with Yar as he ran ahead in a mile-eating lope. Behind her, the line of people continued forward as the path continued its rise.
It took Yar twenty minutes to reach the top of the pathway. And when the giant cat looked around, Ailish could not believe the reality of what she saw through his eyes. Just below Yar was a green plateau, spreading from where Yar stood to the base of the second. But the most significant and impossible thing about the plateau was its green and lush grass, which was completely devoid of snow. And she sensed rabt and other small animals—like the cavern, the plateau had life.
As Yar scanned the plateau, he paused to stare at something. Where the grass touched the mountain’s side, something on the slope reflected sunlight. What?
Haliled, there is something shiny in the side of the mountain. I saw it but know not what it is. She pushed the mind image to Haliled.
The Woman of the Village turned to her. Through your aoutem you did see this?
Yes.
It is where we go ... where you go. The entrance is sealed with crystal.
Ailish closed her eyes. So far had they come, so long had they spent on the road, and with the journey’s end in sight, she was no longer sure of her emotions. She sighed and called Yar back to her.
It took them another hour and a half for everyone to reach and gather on the grassy plateau. There, while The People set up camp, Haliled and the Elder, Ziza, led Ailish and Nomar, who dragged Jalil’s litter with him, to the face of the mountain, and the shiny entrance to whatever awaited within.
Haliled went to the crystal sheet, looked it over and turned to Ailish. “Come closer, place your hands on the crystal.”
Ailish looked from the crystal to Haliled. “What’s inside?”
The woman shook her head and, smiling, said, “No one has ever seen the inside.”
“Sealed since the beginning has it been ... you guard, and you protect, but you know not what you do so for?”
Haliled frowned. “Mistaken are you, Ailish. We know what we do, and what is inside, is for your eyes alone. Your eyes and his,” she added, pointing the Jalil’s litter. “Come, feel the wall.”
The moment her skin touched the crystal, a low vibration began to pulse through her body. In the following seconds, the wall of crystal glowed with a soft pale blue. “It feels ... alive.” She stared at the deepening color. The crystal was about twenty feet across and ten feet high. Within it, streaks of other colors began racing up and down in strange patterns.
She drew her hands back from the crystal, which continued to glow, and then placed them back on a different spot. The pulsing inside her grew stronger. “It’s warm.”
She looked at Haliled, then Nomar. “Do you feel the pulsing?”
Both shook their heads, but Jalil, still in the litter, said, “I feel it within me, running through me. I have never experienced its like.”
“Nomar,” Ailish said.
The Free Blade went to the litter and lifted Jalil out. Holding him in his arms, and with Ziza next to them, he stepped close enough to the crystal for the old Master to put both hands on the sheet. The moment he did, he laughed. “Yes, it is stronger,” he said as the colors changed within the crystal, swarming with reds and violets, the colors bounced everywhere without a patter.
“Ailish, place your hands next to Jalil,” Ziza said.
She pressed her palms to it, closed her eyes, and was unexpectedly joined with Jalil. Did you? she asked.
No, he said quickly. It must be the crystal.
“Open the doorway,” Haliled said in a low voice.
How do we do this?
She sensed Jalil’s mental shrug, then felt his mind change. Ask it to open.
We?
Again, he shrugged. Then, so joined were they she did not realize she was hearing him with her ears and not her mind. “Open, now.”
Nothing happened.
You try, he told her.
Ailish closed her eyes and pictured the crystal sheet opening. “Open,” she whispered aloud.
There was a skip in the vibration, then a flash through the crystal, then nothing. What you did seemed right, but it did not work, Jalil said silently. Thoughts?
Ailish stared at the crystal, watching the random directions in which the colors moved. As she studied them, she placed her hands over Jalil’s. The colors swarmed together and then spun in circles around their hands.
“We must both ask, and we must both picture the crystal opening,” Ailish said. Yes?
Yes! Now!
With their hands as joined as their minds, they pictured the crystal gone and both commanded, “Open.”
A loud groaning filled the air as beneath their fingers the crystal began to shake and vibrate. There was a screech coming from the very core of the crystal and echoing everywhere. The pulsing grew stronger, until she and Jalil’s bodies were pulsing in tune with it. The colors exploded within the crystal sending rainbow streaks weaving and churning through it. Reds and blues, violet, yellow, and greens blended and parted in an ever-changing wheel of colors.
Joined solidly, with their bodies vibrating, and the colors moving fast across the crystal, Ailish took Jalil along with her as she drew all her energy and his into herself and pushed.
The crystal’s colors flocked together. The groans of the crystal changed, rising upward until it reached a note that, like the peal of a bell, echoed through the plateau and bounced from the sides of the mountain.
The sound ended suddenly. Beneath their still-joined hands, the crystal shuddered and moved to her right. “Stuck,” she said, and pressed her hands harder on his. “Open,” she shouted.
Small pieces of rock began to crack and drop from where the crystal was set in the mountain. A moment later, the crystal sheet vibrated so hard they had to pull their hands away and step back as more small chunks of the rock face of the mountain rained down.
Finally, the crystal freed itself and slid into the mountain.
