Nowhere else! Only here at Wold! The Woman Upstairs lay like a statue on a tomb, but her bed was smooth with soft linens, her pillows fluffy with down, her coverlet embroidered in gold. A thick cushion lay on the floor beside the bed, and it was there that Xulai knelt, tasting blood on her lip where she had bitten it, her face already wet with guilty tears.
She hoped, she prayed, the Woman would not ask her to go again. She hoped, she prayed, perhaps the Woman would not even speak. She touched the quiet hand. . .
And the Woman spoke! Silently, in her mind, only a few words.
“Xulai! You must. There is no more time. Only tonight or all is lost! I am lost!”
Xulai recoiled as though she had been slapped across her face. She felt a silence so deep it was like an abyss to the center of the earth, the word “lost” echoing forever downward, each echo striking at her heart like the clangor of a great bell.
There was nothing Xulai could say. She had never heard anger, terror, hopelessness, from the Woman Upstairs, never, never before! All the excuses she’d been practicing on her way up the stairs withered into nothing. All her delays crumbled and she was thrust onto her feet as though someone had lifted her from her knees and pushed her! She fled, hearing the repetition of that word. Lost! Echoes thundering down the abyss. Lost! The hammer at her heart. Lost! Her feet pattered into the hall where the footman still slept, through the hidden door onto the back stairs, down the stairs, gaining speed as she went, leaping, two and three steps at a time like a cliff goat fleeing an ice panther, a rabbit fleeing a hound, a child fleeing terror, except that her desperation took her toward the terror rather than away from it.
At the bottom of the stairs she caromed off a pillar as she changed directions, the clatter of her shoes loud in her ears as she went out her hidden door into the kitchen garden. There the gravel scattered behind her as she fled past rows of turnips and onions, almost colliding with the orchard wall. She darted through that gateway into the moon shadows of untrimmed poppleberry trees, their tangled branches wrestling with one another in the light wind. Then she was at the tall outer wall, the one the watchmen walked at night, at the big gate, barred and locked against the world but holding at its side a tiny stoop gate, one large enough only for a child, or a man so hunched over he would be unable to attack or to defend himself as he entered. Though she had prayed that she would not have to use it, the key to the little gate was already in her hand. The lock clicked; the gate swung open and shut. This time she did not hear the tiny metallic sound of the gate relocking itself, the sound that twice before had held a knife-edged snick of inevitability, cutting off all hope. Over the panicky thudding of her heart she did not hear the gate open and close again behind her.
The moonlit path stretched across open ground to the forest edge, where a sparse stand of oak saplings, their leaves dried and rattling, gradually gave way to the somber darkness of ancient pines. Near the last of the oaks, half-hidden by the evergreens, a tall pillar of white stone loomed pale against the shade. There she stopped, throwing a frantic look over her shoulder. She could not remember coming through the kitchen garden, she could not remember unlocking the gate, yet how could she have come this far without unlocking the gates? Above and behind her, Woldsgard Tower thrust its prodigious arm into the darkness, the five clustered bird lofts at its top holding back the moonlit clouds in the east. Lights burned up there in the lofts, softly yellow, and she choked down a customary sorrow at the thought of the one who lit them and watched there through the night. No time for sorrow. No time. Lost, everything lost.
She had come this far twice before, she reminded herself. The first time, her journey had ended in panicked flight back to the safety of the walls when the white stone had spoken to her. The Woman Upstairs had said nothing about speaking stones. The second time, the stone had been blessedly silent and she had gone farther into the wood, though threatened at every step by the same shadows that were piled around her tonight. They lay under the trees like pools of troubled smoke, moving uneasily as though something hungry swam within them. The thought of the possible swimmers shriveled her heart, which caught; her throat, which closed; her eyelids, which squeezed themselves shut.
“Think,” the wagon driver’s voice whispered in her mind. “Just think.”
Slowly, she forced both jaws to unclench, eyelids to open, hugging herself tightly. I’ll be very, very quiet. I won’t brush against anything. If I don’t bother them, they won’t bother me.
A fine resolution, but it was no more helpful than in the past. As she moved down the path the shadows came with her: charred stumps of twisted darkness seeming to writhe in agony like burning creatures, sinuous ropes of tarry blackness that oozed serpent-like from crevices in the rock. Last time she had actually heard them hissing. “Think!” the man had said. Very well, she would think. She would think about being . . . furious! She was not accustomed to anger, but she knew how it felt. She was angry at the sleeping footman who was supposed to keep watch. Angry at the other one who called her names and laughed at her when she cried. Angry at Great Bear, who always, always told her to be quiet and not ask questions. Angry at herself for the strange feelings she had some of the time. Most of the time. So she would be angry! Let the shadows bite her. Let them kill her! Being killed could be no worse than hearing the Woman Upstairs saying, “Xulai! You must do this. My soul hangs upon your loyalty. I am lost if you do not do as I have bid you.”
“But, but,” she had planned to say, “but Great Bear told me . . .” Great Bear, though he was afraid of nothing, had taught Xulai that fear was appropriate, that she should be afraid of many things: the rear ends of horses; dogs one had never met before; armored men with their visors closed, all in a great rush to get somewhere without looking down. Even as she remembered these warnings, she knew she would rather face an army of murderous horses, furious men, and ravening dogs than spend one more moment among these rippling, crouching, slithering shapes that stopped her breath and froze her legs into immobility.
Except for that voice! Always before, always, it had been calm, gentle, loving, without harshness, without threat. Tonight it had spoken with tortured despair. It had panted, begged, almost screamed in her mind, inexpressibly agonized, at the very end of its strength. It had said that this was the last, the only time left, or she was lost. Again the word rang, reverberating. Lost . . . lost . . . lost. . .
“Think!” the wagon man had said. Why else had he come if Ushiloma had not sent him? She must have sent him, so Xulai had to pay attention. Think! No one speaking as the Woman had spoken could be that tired and go on living. Not the bravest or the finest. No one could ask for help from that agony and not be answered. No one. It would be better to die than to fail! She said it over and over in her mind, Not this time, no, no, not this time, I will not, I will not fail . . . , the words like a drumbeat, moving her feet in time, repeating, over and over again, until she looked up in surprise to find herself already at the second stone, the place she had been last night when she had heard something huge crunching toward her through the trees. She had run, then, for the second time, weeping at her cowardice. The Woman Upstairs asked for so little, so very little, and she had failed . . .
She fed her anger with shame. Very well! Let the monster come if it would. Let it squash her if it would. She bit her tongue until the blood came, tasted it, focused every nerve on the taste of it, praying to Ushiloma, protector of the motherless, to carry her onward, to that place she had her eyes fixed upon, that faint gloss of light upon stone, that pale patch among the ferns where the moon struck a glint from the third and last pillar. Tonight the first and second stones had not spoken at all. Perhaps they were holding their tongues, trying to help her, listening to her prayers.
Ushiloma, dandeoras eg bashlos, bunjimar. Aixum! Great Mother who watches over the motherless, you have sent help. I hear! She repeated it silently, focusing on that vagrant moon-gleam, that evanescent glimmer that came and went behind the screen of branches:
there it was, within reach, the third pillar, the last one. The distance from the second stone to the third could be no more frightening than the way from the castle wall to the first pillar. Think! She had done that twice and survived it! She had gone to the second stone and survived it! Tonight she had to finish it or declare her love, her sworn duty, her very reason to have been a specious, trivial thing.
Tasting blood once more, she heaved several short, gasping breaths, stiffened her legs, and stepped purposefully along the path, refusing to creep, keeping her eyes fixed on the moon-glossed reflection, no matter how often she lost it behind a frond of fern, behind a needle spray of pine, in momentary darkness when a shred of cloud covered the light. She might lose it a hundred times, but she would find it again, she would go on walking, there it was again, and she would . . .
And without knowing how she had managed it, she was at the edge of the clearing where the temple stood, its bulk elaborated with carved shapes that were barely discernible beneath centuries of moss. A lump had formed in her throat and she tried to swallow it, but it would not go down. What came next? She was actually here! What came next?
“Make your obeisance to the third stone and ask permission to go on.” That’s what the Woman had said, days ago.
More falling than kneeling, she laid her forehead on the ground, feeling the impress of dried needles, old leaves, something soft and unpleasantly squishy on her forehead that stuck there when she lifted her head. “I, Xulai, come at the order of my kinswoman, Xu-i-lok, the Woman Upstairs. I beg you let me pass to the shrine.”
“Speak up, child,” said the stone. “Can’t hear a word you say!”
She had been prepared for it to say something, but speaking up was impossible. She had used up all the voice she had. The stone was very tall, though only the gods of stone knew where its ears were. If it had ears. Or a mouth. She bit down on her tongue once more, tasted blood once more, and forced herself to stay where she was.
Think! The answer might be there if she would just think. What should she think? Think about what the stone had said, or how it had said it. That would do. The stone had spoken without menace. Its tone had been inoffensive, even kindly. Kindliness should be met with good manners. Precious Wind, her teacher, had spent years teaching her good manners, and they were all there, in her head, ready for use when needed! Still, she had to swallow several times before she could say the words a little louder.
“Ah. Well,” the stone murmured when she had spoken, “go on then! About time someone came to fetch it.”
Xulai rose, brushed the squishiness off her forehead with the back of her hand, bowed again to emphasize how well mannered she intended to be, and returned to the path. The third pillar had been the last; the shrine itself was just over the bridge that crossed the water she heard chattering nearby.
“Just a moment,” said the stone.
She turned back, mouth open, suddenly fearful and furious, both at once. What now? Couldn’t they just let her get on with it?
“You didn’t say thank you,” said the stone.
Taking a deep breath, she dropped to her knees once more, pressing her forehead to the ground. “May I offer thanks, a multitude of thanks, oh stone.”
“Very pretty,” said the stone. “Not that I need a multitude, but it’s nice to know some children still know their manners. Precious Wind has done a good job with you! Go on now.”
Xulai set her feet on the path, noticing with some surprise that she was not trembling. Her feet moved quite solidly and steadily. Indeed, she felt . . . what? Not quite cheerfulness. But the stone had been approving! Approval was good. Even better was being reminded of Precious Wind! No one in the whole world was more calm and poised and well mannered than Precious Wind. And, thinking about it, as the wagon man had bid her, if the stone knew Precious Wind, then the stone knew about Princess Xu-i-lok, who had advised her to make the obeisance but had forgotten to say anything about stones that talked, though, again, if Xulai had thought about it at the time, she would have noticed that she was to ask permission. Well, if one asked permission, presumably permission would have to be granted, and if not in speech, then how? So it was clear, if one thought about it, that the Woman Upstairs had implied that the stones would speak.
Perhaps the stone even knew who Xulai was, or what she was, which would be a good sign, almost an omen, for it would mean Xulai wasn’t really alone out here.
The sound of water had grown louder. Ahead of her a streamlet came chattering from the left, bickered its way around a mossy boulder, and continued alongside the pathway, still fussing with itself.
“Nan subi dimbalic, Poxiba. E’biti choxilan, landolan,” Xulai murmured to herself in Tingawan before restating the idea in the language of Norland. “No bad creatures, elder kinswoman. Just the company of the water as it talks to itself.” Imagining herself accompanied by a group of elders was a way she had invented of keeping herself from feeling too lonely. Over the years, she had created a whole family of elders in her head, some of them quite ancient and wise. They all had names and histories and sayings, their considerable wisdom accumulated from many sources, some of them unlikely. It suddenly occurred to her that having all that wisdom in her mind might have helped more if she’d paid more attention to it! Why was she such a baby?
A dozen paces ahead of her, the brook squabbled with another boulder that forced it to turn right under the stone bridge that led onto the paved forecourt of the temple itself. All of it—bridge, forecourt, and temple—was swaddled in moss velvets and liverwort lace with ferny frills around the edges, having become, so Xulai told herself in sudden surprise, as much a living being as it was dead stone. Why, at any moment, it might creak up from its foundations and stumble off into the trees, its dappled hide dissolving into the fabric of the forest.
The thought stopped her only for a moment, and she was actually smiling as she hurried the dozen long steps that took her across the arched bridge. From the forecourt, two hollowed granite steps ascended to the temple floor. Several paces within the temple, a few more steps would gain the altar platform, which Xulai circled carefully while keeping her eyes away from the carvings around its edge. Even veiled in moss, they could catch hold of one’s eyes, captivate one, melt a person down into the stone to become one with it, or so the Woman Upstairs had said, though that threat had not greatly bothered Xulai. Things one was instructed not to look at were far less fearful than things that forced themselves upon unwilling eyes.
From the far side of the bridge, Abasio, who had followed her closely each trembling step of the way, heard a sound behind him. He slipped between two trees into a web of darkness, leapt over the quarrelsome streamlet, and circled the temple with a few long, careful strides. From among the trees behind the temple, he saw Xulai drop to her knees. Now what? She was trembling, her eyes shut, thinking. “Good for you, girl,” he murmured to himself. “Good for you, little maiden!”
The Woman Upstairs had said, “In the floor behind the altar. A triangular stone, small, not heavy, but you’ll need something sharp to pry it up with.”
Her fingers closed on the awl in her pocket. She had taken it from the shoemaker’s stall just as he had been closing his booth for the night. Just before suppertime the castle yard bustled and echoed in a confusion of men shouting, wagon wheels grinding on the stones, horses clopping toward the stables, women screeching for their children. The shoemaker, dressed all in shiny leather like a cricket, had been eager to get home to his new wife. He wouldn’t look for the awl until morning, and by then, Xulai would have pushed it back through a hole in the shutter. If she ever got back to the castle. If she could find the right stone, one triangular stone among a great many stones that looked more or less triangular.
“Oh where?” she whispered. “Where?”
“Think!” said the voice of the wagon driver, as though from beside her ear. “Think!”
She thought, Stone, and there it was: one that glowed and trembled, almost calling her
by name! Xulai inserted the awl at one edge and pried it up. The cavity below held a small wooden box. She thrust it into her pocket, at the same instant hearing voices! People! At least two of them on the path and coming quickly toward the temple.
She replaced the stone and quickly scuffed dirt into the cracks around it, scattered a few pine needles over it, and moved away from the altar. She could not go back the way she had come. She had been told not to leave the path. There was no path! The only shelter was among the shadows she had been so frightened of . . .
The voices came closer. She tried not to breathe, suddenly realizing the awl was not in her hand, not in her pocket. Then, suddenly, an arm was around her, a voice in her ear.
“Shh. Here’s your awl. Slip under my cloak. Be still.”
Abasio! She scrambled against him, burrowing into the darkness of his cloak, letting him cover her like a cloud as he crouched, then lay in the darkness between the trees, among the leaves, ferns before their faces, her body between his side and his cloak, his arm holding her gently there, invisible. She sighed, drawing closer to him, feeling his warmth.
“What was that?” demanded a high, imperious voice.