Sky Lands: The Gift Stones

by TL Rese

I went to the other side of the altar, to the area where I’d last seen them. There was nothing except the temple wall, the stones solid beneath my hands. I thought I might pass through it, but when I stepped forward the wall struck rudely against my body. The flame was starting to wane, the fire suspended in the copper basin without wax or wick. Oil pooled at the bottom, reflecting the blue of the fire. Soon, it was gone, evaporating into a twist of smoke. And all that shone was a wan beam peering in from a high window, close to the ceiling.

  In the thin light, I could see drifts of dust. The pallor colored with a yellow hue, the tone strengthening into a radiant shaft falling past the altar and illuminating the stone wall where the old men had disappeared. The light revealed the remnants of a mural. Grey stone showed where the paint had chipped away, but in other parts the mural was lustrous. At the center, the twin Sisters were still bright with paint; they stood on either side of a gate, towering over me, wearing silks of white, their gowns trimmed with silver ropes around the waist.

  The light from the window became blinding. I raised my arm to shield my face, but the light fell through my arm. Just as suddenly, it began to wane, its golden tones diluting into whiteness. Darkness crept around the edges and shaded the mural. The air turned to grey. Then all was black.

  I stood in the hollow of the temple, feeling my heart beating in the dark. My breath echoed, rasping in my mouth. Into the silence came the sound of the leaves outside, the creaking of boughs. The light appeared again, watery, falling from the high opening. But soon it strengthened to gold, illuminating the temple. The mural lighted in all its splendor before the shadows fell in; the light faded and I found myself plunged into blackness.

  Before long, the light came again, followed immediately by darkness and then light. In the flickering glow, I saw the mural deteriorating. The paint peeled as I watched, the colors fading into pallor. The silks of the Sisters decayed into the stone beneath and the bright wash of the mural crumbled to powder.

  I pressed my hand to the painting. I could feel the wall disintegrating, the stones shriveling, the paints paling to dust. Soon, the Sisters were all that were left, but they were fast disappearing. I touched their painted fabrics as if to save them, but they withered into nothing beneath my hand.

  When I stepped back, the wall was entirely bare with only the light flickering over it. There was a crash behind me; a whole side of the temple wall had collapsed. Past the fallen stones, the forest outside opened and the scene I saw amazed me.

  The leaves were fading in and out of colors. The gold of autumn changed into the white of winter, and snows came to adorn the branches before melting into rivers. Buds blossomed into leaves of green-yellow. Grasses grew and died, flowers bloomed and wilted. And then the gold of autumn would come again. The seasons passed before my eyes. The skies turned from day to night in rapid succession. The stars flashed across the dark curve of the hemisphere. The sun moved over the sky, dawn and dusk but seconds apart. Before the nights came, the sunsets lit the temple, basking the stones in a brilliant array before the nights swallowed the land.

  Around me, the temple eroded away; the muralled wall fell into rubble. I found myself exposed to the changing atmosphere. Winds blew across me. Storms raged for instants, sweeping through me in a fury of rain and lightning before I even realized what had come. And they were gone just as quickly.

  The forest was growing in. The stones on which I stood dissolved into dirt. All that remained was the altar, the copper bowl split in two. Then it too collapsed into the ground.

  And the temple was gone.

  I was surrounded by only the changing forest passing through its seasons, the frost of winter and the heat of summer breaking against each other.

  I felt myself rise like the wind. I was blown into the changing leaves, the white boughs striking against me. Snow surged in violent gusts, driving through the trees, before the boughs blossomed into a yellow-green, rain falling in showers.

  I rose above the forest into the skies, wrapped within the stars. The sun bloomed across the eastern horizon then died into a bloody pool beyond the mountains. I blew like a leaf across the lands, the scenes swirling past me. In the distance, I saw the village after the rise of the hill. Behind the village, the carve of the mountains was the same, but the village itself had completely transformed with time.

  At first, I thought it was a single immense palace, for it was striking in its uniformity. But as I swept towards it, I realized the village had grown into an expansive city emerging from the valley in a solitary piece of architecture. The entire edifice was made of a glass crystal, as though it’d been carved from ice. Rising into the rocks of the mountain, the city was layered in circular tiers like a temple spire. Enormous pillars twisted throughout this white metropolis. Crowning the city, amongst mists of cloud, was the castle. The castle was no longer built of stone, but was hewn from the same crystal as the city. A waterfall fell from the castle walls, running silver through the streets.

  I rushed towards the city above a grassy plain. Streams flowed into the valley from the crystal streets. From above, the city looked like a carved ice sculpture melting into the fields. The white-horned deer could still be seen, grazing within the shadows of the plain.

  Soon I was upon the city. I could see its inhabitants, tiny along the streets. I flew low over a square; it had a high pillar at its center that rose above the buildings. At its zenith was a statue of a fierce creature, impressively winged, wrapped around the column. It dangled a frightened girl from its claws, gripping the chains around her wrists.

  As I rose higher, the details of the streets dissolved into the intricacies of the city outline. For a moment, I thought the streets were flowing like rivers, and then I saw it was the castle waterfall, descending over the buildings below. Boats glided on the waters in a way that reminded me of Venice.

  I was pulled toward the waterfall until it crashed into me, the weight of it crushing me. I felt my chest collapsing as I thought I would drown. Just when I could bear it no more, I exploded from the waters, the castle directly before me.

  The castle was a diminutive version of the spiraling city below. Its crystal walls were set with tall glass windows, oval and stained with pale hues, the colors swirling together. A river flowed from the castle gates, tumbling over the edge into the brilliant waterfall of the city. Just past the gates was a white column; it supported a statue of an angel adorned with magnificent wings and holding an orb on its palm.

  The cold solidity of glass passed through me, and I was inside the castle. Light slanted into the circular hall through immense glass panes that ringed the room. Through the windows, I saw the castle spires rising into the skies, cloaked by mist. Flocks of birds flew through the forest of towers. Beyond, the city unraveled into the green valley below. Grasses stretched over the earth, ending in a horizon embedded behind mountain and forest.

  At the center of the hall was a large table, heavy as though carved from marble. A young woman stood at the table, so fair she nearly blended into the walls, wintry and beautiful like the castle she stood in. Her skin was of a pallor unlike anything I’d ever seen, her face scarcely a shade darker than the silver-white lengths of her hair. She wore an elaborately hewn dress, intricate against the blank pillars, like a snowflake in a forest of white. In her hair, she wore a tiny silver crown, and beneath it her eyes were a sea-green, ringed by white lashes.

  At her side, a man was speaking, his face hidden behind an extensive moustache. On his head was the crown that I’d seen the king wear, back when the village was young and the castle made of stone; it resembled a piece of carved ivory, as new as the first time I’d seen it.

  “And your brother?” the man asked.

  “Father, you know Hallain. He hates this war.” Her voice struck me, smooth and airy. I recognized the language. It was exactly as I had heard Audrey speak it, but this wintry lady made the language sound even more beautiful. “You both have the Gift of compassion,” she said.

&
nbsp; “Then why has he no compassion for his own people?”

  “Your compassions lie in different places, Father.”

  The lady walked to me, her beauty almost unnatural. She stopped, looking out of the window at the land. Light fell across her face and lit the earrings that hung like icicles along the curve of her neck. Tentatively, I brushed a fold of her dress; it was silken, with a subtle chill like the space right above a sheet of ice. Her skin was nearly the shade of her dress, and I could hardly discern where one ended and the other began. Her flesh seemed cold, as smooth as porcelain; if I wasn’t close enough to see her blue veins, I would have sworn she were not living.

  “The Sallahri are dying by the hundreds from the Everlasting Famine and his sympathies still lie with the Moreinans. My own son – against me.” The king’s words died in echoes around the hall. He leaned heavily on the table, his aged reflection almost perfect on the table surface, as if he bent over a pool of water.

  She went to the king, placing a slender hand on his shoulder, “Father, you mustn’t worry. Ryloha and I support you fully.”

  The king patted her pale fingers on his shoulder. “Satinah, you are my best child. What man needs a son when he has a loving daughter?”

  A smile crossed her face, like moonlight. She withdrew her hand. “Father, you know that Hallain has a love for that other country.”

  “We cannot trade Alhallren lives for the sake of Moreina.”

  “Hallain is young, Father. In time, he will understand.”

  A sound filled the hall. I noticed that what I had mistaken for windows was in fact a set of elliptical glass doors. A woman opened the doors and walked in, wearing a hooded silver cloak. Following her was another woman in an identical cloak. Then another woman and yet another appeared in a single line behind them, all wearing the same silver robes, weaving through the pillared chamber. They encircled the table in a line, military in their uniformity. They faced the king.

  A metallic flutter came from their robes as they slipped back their hoods, revealing a simple crown around each of their heads. The crown circled the head in a silver line, dipping at the center of the brow and tapering to a white jewel that rested between their eyes like a star. “Majesty Cerhared, thank you for receiving us,” they said in perfect unison.

  “Yes, councilors, please be seated.” The king stretched out his arms, the sleeves of his robe descending to the floor in a gleam of dark fabric.

  The women reached beneath the table and drew out cushions that they placed on the air and sat on, their feet floating just above the floor.

  “How is your second daughter, Sire?” spoke a councilor.

  “She is well,” he replied. “I asked her to join us tonight, but the journey is long between here and the Dabian border.” He swept his arm over the table and lines appeared, twisting until they settled into a definitive shape. I realized it was a map of countries I’d never seen. Words curved across the map, curling to form a foreign language. Looking hard at the words, I was surprised to find I could read them. Over one of the lands was written ‘Land of Sky’. The king placed his hand there and it grew in size until it was the only thing on the table surface. A ‘Dabi River’ richly veined the lower half of the land, slicing through the continent from shore to shore. The lines indicating the river flowed like real water, trickling through the table.

  The metallic rustle of the councilors’ cloaks brought me back from my study of the map. “Our forces have secured the eastern Dabi.” A councilor tapped the map. The lines shifted. The eastern border curved below the Dabi River into what used to be Moreina. “The fleets we’ve positioned on the East Isles have done much to help us claim one of the most bountiful regions of the Dabi.”

  There was silence as the councilors pondered the map, their heads bowed with the crystal star of their crowns bright on their foreheads. Behind them, a flock of birds flew past the windows. I watched the birds fly around a castle spire and disappear into a thread of cloud.

  Around the table, the councilors were talking again. “It will not fail, not with the power of the Gift Stones.”

  “We cannot rely on myth to win a war.”

  “Alhallra has been victorious in countless battles, and yet some still do not believe that the Last Mage –”

  “We have been victorious because we have trained our knights. Because we have planned, strategized. Not because of a piece of good fortune charm.”

  “But the line of Serafin has never been broken.”

  “Silence!” Cerhared raised his arm, and the commotion died to nothing. “We did not come to discuss our personal beliefs. Believe what you will and debate on your own time. But I will not rely on pure faith and plunge recklessly into battle. We will strategize to the best of our ability and if we have the power of the White Stone, then so be it. Now, what propositions do we have regarding this front?” He pointed at the map and a series of suggestions followed.

  The councilors’ discussion continued well into the evening. Overhead, a sunset was ripening across the sky. Between the ceiling arches, spheres began to glow, filling the hall with a gentle illumination. The councilors sitting near the window were cast into silhouette, the silver of their cloaks blending into the dark of the coming night. Outside, birds alighted on the castle steeples. The fading sun splashed the white towers with hues of pink. I watched as a bird emerged from the red of sunset. It flew towards the castle, growing larger in the waning light. But it was strange.

  I walked around the table and stood at the window. The bird was approaching at a great speed, its silhouette growing larger by the second. As it came closer, I could tell that it was a massive creature. Briefly, it was obscured by a stretch of cloud before it burst from the mist, its wings a vast expanse against the sky. No longer a silhouette, I saw it was a pure white, the sunset lighting its wingtips to a glow. It resembled a dragon but bare of scales, its neck long and tapered. It flew directly towards the window where I was standing, its speed increasing.

  “Open the window!”

  There was a flurry as the councilors rushed to obey Satinah’s order. After a press of silver cloaks around me, the window was pushed open. The creature flew in and I was swept to the side, falling to the floor and sliding across the marble.

  When I looked up, the creature was peering down at me. For an instant, I thought it saw me, but it shifted its gaze. Its slender countenance was benign, its eyes filled with giant irises of silver, as though they were diamonds the size of my open hand. The back of its head curved into an arching ridge. Its wings flanked its sides, large even though they were folded. A glow seemed to emanate from it, for there was a shimmer to its skin, like light on snow. If it had stepped from mythology, then it would have been a unicorn and a dragon all at once.

  I ran my hand along the length of its nose and between its eyes; it felt cool. It raised its head and surveyed the hall, exposing its long pale throat as it sat back on its legs. The councilors were gathered behind the animal. I walked around to join them, turning to where they were looking. And there on the back of the creature, seated between its wings, was Audrey.

  Chapter 11