It was almost dawn when Eleanon and Bingaleal heard Inardle approach their eyrie atop the mountain.
“Is Lister still asleep?” Eleanon said as Inardle crouched down beside them, and she nodded.
“He stayed awake for hours, wondering about the pyramid, sending his senses scrying south,” she said.
“And?” Bingaleal asked.
“He felt nothing other than the fact of Kanubai’s death,” Inardle said. She paused, looking at the faces of the two birdmen, trying to read their expressions. “And you?”
Eleanon and Bingaleal glanced at each other.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” Bingaleal said. “Three are more powerful than two.”
Inardle nodded, relieved and pleased that they had waited. They must, like her, and like Lister, be desperate to discover precisely what had happened at DarkGlass Mountain.
“Should we do this?” she said.
“Are you having doubts?” Eleanon said.
Inardle gave a short laugh. “Of course! And you have no doubts? Don’t tell me that.”
“We need to know,” said Bingaleal. “There is only one reason we have come on this adventure south with Lister. To grab some power and destiny for ourselves. Maybe this Lord of Elcho Falling will prove the road to our ultimate destiny, maybe there is some other path for us…we need to know, Inardle.”
“Yes,” said Inardle, now settling down cross-legged, as did her companions. “We need to know.”
They sat facing one another in a small circle. Eleanon raised his hands before him, frowning in concentration. For a moment, nothing, then a tall glass pyramid appeared within the cup of his hands. In dimension and height it was the same as the glass spires the Lealfast had given Isaiah, Lister, and Ba’al’uz, but unlike those spires, this was of a dark, almost black, glass and was very slightly twisted, as if a hand had corkscrewed it while the glass was still hot from its making.
“Lister would panic if he knew we had this much power,” Bingaleal said, looking at Inardle as he spoke.
“I shall not tell him,” she responded. “He knows nothing about what we truly are.”
“It is better the world does not know,” Bingaleal said, “just what powers we do command.”
“Shush!” Eleanon said. “Concentrate!”
Bingaleal shot him an irritated glance, but did as instructed, and all three gazed intently into the dark, twisted spire.
For several heartbeats nothing happened, then the spire glowed with light, cleared, and all three Lealfast found themselves looking directly into the Infinity Chamber.
Several Skraelings huddled in one corner, but the Lealfast’s attention was completely absorbed by the man-shaped creature of blue-green glass who stood with his back to them. He was moving his hands very slowly over the tortured, blackened glass walls of the Infinity Chamber and, as his hands passed over the glass, so the glass was restored to its full golden beauty.
The creature paused, becoming aware of the intruders, and turned about unhurriedly.
“Who are you?” said the creature. “I know you somehow.”
The three Lealfast glanced between themselves, then Eleanon took a deep breath and answered.
“We are the Lealfast,” he said. “We traveled a while with the Skraelings. You are…?”
The creature smiled, just a small uplifting of his mouth. “You do not know?”
Again the three Lealfast exchanged a glance, coming to a silent decision, then Bingaleal spoke. “You are the One, who the Magi once worshipped, and for whom they built the pyramid. You are perfection incarnate, and you are Infinity.”
The One lowered his head in assent. “I am all of those things. You wish to speak with me? Why?”
“We do wish to speak with you,” said Eleanon, “but we thought the Skraelings with you might like to be allowed to go hunt. I am sure our conversation would bore them.”
The One’s eyes narrowed, then he waved a hand in dismissal at the few Skraelings who remained within the Infinity Chamber. “Hunt,” he said. “Now.”
The One waited until the chamber was empty. “You wanted them gone,” he said. He paused, considering. “I know you now. Lealfast you may call yourselves, but you hold within you the learning of the Magi who once honored me. How else could you have built that dark spire you use so effortlessly, or even the ones you gave about to others…yes, I know of them. And how is it you command the powers of the Magi?” His voice hardened, just slightly. “Come, tell me now, if you value my benevolence.”
“You know of Boaz and his battle with the pyramid, Threshold?” Eleanon said.
The One bared his teeth slightly—they were curiously translucent—and they glimmered in the soft light of the Infinity Chamber. Two thousand years ago the renegade Magi, Boaz—a member of the Persimius family—had turned against his brethren and the One incarnate within the pyramid, seeking to destroy both the cult of the Magi and the pyramid. The One could not be destroyed—no one had the power for that—but the idea that Boaz even thought to make the effort had infuriated the One.
And made him wonder if the Persimius family might try again.
Like Kanubai, the One had no love for Elcho Falling or its master.
“Boaz caused the Magi to be disbanded,” said Eleanon. “Many died, or killed themselves so that they might not have to endure a world which no longer permitted worship of the One…of yourself. But a few took what they could of the Magi’s hoard of books and scrolls before their libraries were burned, and they traveled north, escaping the soldiers that Boaz’s brother, Zabrze, sent after them. These few Magi arrived in the far north after years of travel and travail.”
“They taught you,” the One said.
“Yes. We welcomed them, for they brought a tantalizing glimpse of a future we had not considered, and power that we had never dreamed existed.”
“Tell me,” said the One after a considered pause, “are you loyal to the Lord of Elcho Falling?”
Inardle opened her mouth to speak, but Bingaleal forestalled her.
“Not necessarily,” he said. “It would depend very much on what we might find at the end of the path the Magi showed to us.”
The One’s mouth curved upward in a wide smile. “We shall talk some more, I think,” he said.