Carol Berg - Son of Avonar

“Turn back to the riddles,” I said. “Maybe we missed one.” Baglos and I pored over the page in the gray light, searching for any that might have been written later than the original description of the little girl’s game. The later entries were written with a pen slightly wider at the tip than the originals. Still only five, plus the additional phrase the Writer had inserted with the telltale pen. Not phrased as a riddle, it had never seemed significant. “What is this again, Baglos? He asks if his daughter is not a marvel, but I don’t remember the exact words.”

The Dulcé read, “The day will come when men proudly cry out the name of our race, and it is my Lilith that will shine in their memory.”

“Cry out the name of our race…” My gaze met D’Natheil’s. With a trace of a smile, he bowed and returned to the edge of the lake.

Baglos whispered to me anxiously. “Will the name of the Dar’Nethi show us the Gate, then?”

“No. Not Dar’Nethi . …” Would D’Natheil think of it?

The Prince stood for a moment, eyes closed, the wind ruffling his light hair and the shabby cloak that could not obscure the truth of him. Then he opened his arms wide and cried out in a voice that thundered through the desolation, “J’Ettanne!” And as his voice called back to him through the thin, cold air, I felt a great release, as if the very stones had let go a monumental sigh at the command to share their long-held secret. Whispers and murmurings were all about us just beyond the range of hearing, quiet laughter, tears, whispers of pleasure, of love, of sorrow and grief and prayerful wonder, buzzing unseen like tiny insects about our ears, chaos existing in tandem with the wintry silence. But any expression of amazement was stilled in deeper awe of the doorway that now stood open in the stone cliff across the lake, an opening no less than fifty paces wide and three stories in height.

Without speaking, we repeated our journey around the lake, never taking our eyes from the incredible sight, never giving thought to pursuit or danger or anything beyond our moment’s wonder. The twin columns supporting the massive stone lintel were covered with the most graceful and intricate carvings: birds, beasts, flowers, all so perfectly worked that one could feel the life of them as they crowded the white stone. In the center of the rectangular lintel was carved an arched triangle, with a floweret in each sector it scribed.

The Prince stepped first through the gaping expanse. It was only right. The stronghold was part of his realm, marked with the emblem of his family. Baglos and I followed close behind. It was dark inside, but the Prince whispered the word illudie and torches blazed on every wall. I caught my breath as the great cavern came to life. Never had I seen a space of such beauty.

The cavern was so enormous, we could not see the roof of it. It was as if the whole mountain had been hollowed out and the stone walls polished smooth, displaying the mountain’s embedded treasury of tourmaline and jasper and lapis as magnificent waves of rich blues and greens, dazzling murals no human artist could replicate. Shining veins of quartz glittered in the torchlight like faceted gems, and a wide staircase with no visible supports twisted its way up through the center of the gleaming air to reach at least four levels of columned galleries carved from the cavern walls. The stairway and the galleries were connected to each other with a series of arched bridges, so delicate and graceful they could have been spun by a magical spider. And the bitter wind of the iron-gray lake was left behind, the air inside the cavern fresh and pleasantly warm.

A raw and desperate longing scribed D’Natheil’s face, even as he turned to the task in hand. “I need to explore the place a bit. A wall of fire shouldn’t be difficult to find.”

“I’ll stand guard, my lord,” said the somber Dulcé, drawing his sword and taking a position near the gaping doorway to the outside. “Do as you need.” With his ferocious glower, he looked quite small and foolish.

The Prince nodded graciously. “Thank you, Dulcé. We shouldn’t need your warding for long,” he said. “If I can’t do what I’ve come for within the hour, I don’t think it will matter.”

Then, like a desert-bred child visiting his first garden, he began to wander. All my own weariness was forgotten as I trailed after him into room after room of marvels: an amphitheater whose dark-painted ceiling was inlaid with bits of faceted quartz, so that the flickering torchlight gave the illusion one stood under star-scattered skies; an immense refectory, its gigantic wooden tables perfectly free of dust, crockery bowls and neatly laid spoons awaiting the next feast; the kitchens, huge stone hearths and chimneys bored into the mountain’s heart. We explored workrooms, granaries, storerooms of all kinds, sewing rooms, map rooms, a library with so many shelves of books and scrolls that wooden-railed walkways spiraled up six men’s height or more in front of us—everything needed to support a population of many hundreds.

Climbing the wide staircase took us to rooms of all sizes, sleeping chambers, I guessed, though all were empty of furnishings. On the uppermost level, the gallery that overlooked the central cavern did not make a full circuit of the walls as did those at the lower levels, but instead opened into a long, narrow passage that delved deep into the back wall of the cavern. The torches were smaller there, and the walls rough-hewn and very much older. Promising. While D’Natheil was still opening doors off the main gallery, I explored the narrow passage. A hundred paces in, the passage ended in a wall of rock.

Disappointed, I started back, only to find D’Natheil just coming into the passage. “Nothing here,” I said.

But he shook his head, and I followed his gaze over my shoulder back toward the aborted way. The light nickered and the rock… shifted… and a pair of massive wooden doors stood in the center of the wall that had appeared to be solid stone only moments before. The doors were smooth and undecorated and dark with age. I could easily believe that no one had touched them since the days of J’Ettanne himself. No handle or latch was visible, but at the Prince’s first touch they swung open, silently and easily as if the hinges had been oiled just the previous day.

The passageway beyond the doors was chilly, and the light emanating from the arched opening at the far end was an odd bluish-gray. Another hundred paces and we entered an immense chamber, its walls, ceiling, and floor colorless and obscured by swirling, icy fog. A constant low-pitched rumble, unlike anything I’d ever heard, caused my hands to clench and my jaw to tighten. And so instantly confused were my senses of perspective and direction, only the stone beneath my feet gave me anchor. I felt as if I had stepped off the edge of the world.

But the moment’s sensory uncertainty vanished when we walked a few steps farther into the chamber and saw the curtain of flame that reached from the colorless floor all the way to the murky heights. Flame was the only name I could put to it, though its color was a bruised blue, darker than the coldest heart of a dying hearthfire.

“The Gate,” I said, raising my voice a little so as to be heard over the deep-pitched rumble.

“Yes.” D’Natheil’s voice was scarcely audible.

“And the Bridge?”

“Just beyond the wall of light.”

“Then we’ve truly reached the end of our journey.”

The Prince gazed upwards, face shadowed by the dark magnificence. “When we first entered the cavern, the image of a city passed through my mind—a glorious city of graceful towers, of gardens and forested parkland, encircled by mountains sculpted of green and gold light. Here will that city, that world, and all that exists in it live or die.”