by Rachel Aaron
Miranda caught her breath. Locked in the mountain, she hadn’t even realized it was night. She also hadn’t realized that the moving platform had taken them so high. They must be close to the mountain’s peak.
The Guildmaster stepped off the platform and into the hall, walking briskly across the carved, glowing stone. Miranda pulled her coat tight around her shoulders and followed. The hall was nearly empty, but those few Shapers who were milling between the great stone pillars stopped to stare as the Guildmaster led his prisoners past them and through the middle of the great, white hall.
Miranda stole glances at Slorn as they walked, but the bear-headed Shaper’s face was carefully neutral. Still, the Guildmaster was far ahead, and she decided to risk it.
“What is this place?” she whispered, careful not to look at him.
“The Hall of the Shapers,” Slorn answered, just as quietly. His muffled voice sounded almost wistful.
Before Miranda could ask what that was, the Guildmaster stopped. They were standing directly in the center of the hall, between the moving platform that had brought them up here and the balcony door. The hall’s center was marked with a circle of raised stone carved in looping patterns that made Miranda’s head swim. The Guildmaster stepped into the circle and motioned for them to do the same. When they were all inside, the Guildmaster stepped out again.
“I don’t know why the Teacher bothers,” he said. “I only hope you do not disappoint him, Heinricht.”
Though he hid it well, Miranda could hear the lingering resentment in the Guildmaster’s voice, and she got the feeling he wasn’t used to being excluded from whatever was about to happen. Slorn, however, looked almost relieved.
“I am already outcast and imprisoned,” he said. “What more can he do?”
The Guildmaster’s face darkened. “Do not take these things lightly. The Teacher’s decision is final, but even he is not without mercy.” The old man leaned in, dropping his voice. “For once in your life, Heinricht, bow your stubborn head and ask the Teacher’s forgiveness. Let me welcome my son home once again.”
Slorn met the Guildmaster’s gaze. “I will do what I have to, father. Just as I always have.”
Miranda’s eyebrows shot up, but before she could comment, the Guildmaster made a sharp gesture and the floor below their feet began to move. She scrambled for balance as the entire circle of stone began to rise upward, taking them with it. She caught one last glimpse of the Guildmaster as the old man’s face fell, collapsing from anger to a look of deep sadness. Then he was gone, hidden by the rim of the rising stone pillar.
She turned to Slorn. “Father?”
“Yes,” Slorn said.
She gave him a look of disbelief. “Your own father locked you up?”
“He is Guildmaster first,” Slorn said. “There will be those among the Shapers who will say he is being too lenient with me, letting me see the Teacher. I am an oath breaker, after all. Shapers are sworn to the Mountain for life, but we ran when Nivel became a demonseed. It doesn’t matter that they would have killed her if we stayed; we both broke our oath as Shapers.”
Miranda folded her arms across her chest. “You could have told me.”
“I could have,” Slorn said. “I could have told you a lot of things, but anything I told you in the cell I would also have told the Teacher.”
“What do you mean?” Miranda said. “There was no one there but us.”
“This is the Shaper Mountain,” Slorn said. “It is always listening.”
Miranda frowned. “Who is the Teacher, then?”
“You’ll know when you see him,” Slorn said.
Miranda bit her lip. She was getting pretty sick of these half answers, but Slorn would say nothing more. In the end, all she could do was watch in silence as the stone above them lifted away, and the rising pillar vanished into the hall’s ceiling with a soft scrape.
They were in another vertical tunnel. Glowing stone surrounded them on all sides, filling the air with cold, white light. The pillar of stone under their feet seemed to have no end. It rose slowly, pushing them farther and farther up into the mountain. Miranda arched her neck, trying to see where they were going, but she saw nothing except the endless white. Still, things were changing. The air was growing colder and thinner, the light brighter.
Just as Miranda was starting to feel light-headed, the platform began to slow. Stone scraped overhead and the white walls of the tunnel fell away, leaving them standing in a brilliant white glare. Miranda covered her face, blinking furiously. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the brilliance, and she saw that they were standing in another enormous, white chamber.
It was smaller than the Hall of the Shapers below, but there were no pillars here, no supports of any kind. Just a perfect circle of stone, white and brilliant as the morning sun on fresh snow, and nothing else.
“There’s no one here,” Miranda whispered. “I thought you said we were going to see the Teacher.”
“Just wait,” Slorn said. “He likes to make an entrance.”
Miranda didn’t see how. The white chamber had no doors save for the stone platform they were standing on. But as she opened her mouth to ask Slorn what he meant, the light went out.
She gasped and nearly fell into Gin. For a heartbeat, the chamber was pitch black. And then, as suddenly as it had vanished, light returned, and everything changed.
Color flooded the walls, a wave of brilliant green, brown, and blue that washed over the stone, leaving mountains, forests, and sky in its wake. The floor underfoot came alive with pinks and yellows, blues, whites, and soft greens, all flowing together in a wash before separating out into thousands of flowers. Suddenly, they were standing in a high mountain field. A stream sprung to life a few feet from Gin’s tail, bouncing merrily down a bed of smooth white stones. Mountains loomed in the distance, their peaks taller than any Miranda had ever seen. Clouds drifted across the perfectly blue sky overhead, and the bright sunlight turned her hair fiery red, but when she held her hands up to the light, there was no warmth in it. The rushing stream threw off no spray and, despite the waving flowers under her feet, she could still feel the cold stone through the soles of her boots.
She looked at Slorn for some explanation, but he was staring across the valley at the mountains beyond. Or, rather, at the one mountain that rose above all others. Almost half again as tall as the next tallest peak, the Shaper Mountain stood before them in all its majesty. Its summit scraped the clear blue sky like a white knife. Its snowy slope was the same as Miranda had seen from Knife’s Pass, but there was no sign of the windows and balconies of the Shapers, nor was there any sign of Knife’s Pass itself. The road should have been directly below them, but it wasn’t. The ravine and the bridge were also missing, leaving the smaller mountains whole and uncut all the way to the Shaper Mountain’s feet. The little mountains were dotted with high mountain meadows just like the one they stood in, little verdant patches, peaceful and blooming in the golden sunlight.
Miranda blinked and turned to Slorn, waiting for some sort of explanation, but Slorn said nothing. He just stood there, staring at the sky, his brown bear eyes open as wide as they could go. Frowning, she turned to Gin, but the ghosthound wasn’t any better. He was crouched at her feet as close to her as he could get, his orange eyes wide as dinner plates.
“Gin?” she whispered.
The dog didn’t even look at her. “Can’t you see it, Miranda?”
She frowned. “What?”
Next to her, Slorn took a shuddering breath. “I thought… I mean, I always suspected, but I never imagined it would be so large. So… endless.”
“What?” Miranda asked again, growing supremely annoyed.
“The world,” a deep voice rumbled. “Or what it was.”
Miranda jumped before she could stop herself. The voice came from under her feet, vibrating up through her legs from the stone below the fluttering illusion of flowers. Beside her, Gin lowered his head with a soft whine.
&nb
sp; “Tell me your names.” The words buzzed through Miranda’s body, more vibration than sound, but they carried an authority she could feel in her bones.
“Teacher,” Slorn said. “I am Heinricht Slorn.”
“I know who you are,” the mountain said, for Miranda knew it could be no other. “I remember all my children, even the ones who desert me. I am eager to hear what excuses you’ve thought up to convince me to take you back, but for now, tell me, who is this woman?”
Miranda stepped forward. “I am Miranda Lyonette, a Spiritualist of the Spirit Court. This is Gin, my—”
“I do not need the lesser spirits’ names,” the mountain rumbled dismissively. “They know their place. But I am curious as to how the core of a great water spirit came to live inside a human. Mellinor, can you still speak?”
“I can.”
Miranda steeled herself as Mellinor’s spirit surged forward, rising in a plume of deep blue water from her fingers, which she held out for him.
“I see you have escaped your prison,” the mountain said.
The water dipped in a bow. “With Miranda’s assistance, great mountain.”
“A strange arrangement, to be sure,” the mountain said. “But then, you water spirits always did flow down the easiest route.”
“I did what I had to,” Mellinor said.
The meadow flickered as the mountain laughed. “As do we all, inland sea, as do we all. I am satisfied. You may return to your human shore.”
The water retreated, and Mellinor flowed back into Miranda, who lowered her arm cautiously. Something odd was going on, besides the obvious. Mellinor was being surprisingly deferential. Her sea spirit wasn’t rude, but he was a Great Spirit and he didn’t tend to let others forget that. This meekness was very out of character. Perhaps it was because the mountain was so much bigger than Mellinor’s diminished form? But he’d shown no such deference to the West Wind.
“Now,” the mountain said. “To business. Why have you come home, Heinricht? Or do I call you Heinricht anymore? You are as much bear as man, now.”
“I am still myself,” Slorn said. “And I came home because I had no more reason to run. Nivel is dead. Her seed has been taken by the League.”
“I am sorry,” the mountain said.
As the stone spoke, the flowering grass began to dance in an unfelt wind. All over the valley, the sunlight faded, and Miranda looked up to see dark clouds rolling in from the south. Within moments, the meadow was covered in a thin, misty rain. But though she could see the rain falling, hear it hitting her shoulders, she was not wet.
“What’s happening?” she whispered.
“The Teacher is grieving,” Slorn answered.
“Of course I grieve,” the mountain said. “Nivel was my student before she was your wife.”
“Then you should know she continued to abide by your teachings,” Slorn said bitterly. “Even after you would have murdered her.”
The soft rain became a downpour as Slorn finished, and the ground shook with the mountain’s anger.
“It was the demon who murdered your wife,” the mountain said. “Not I. Nivel died the moment the spirit eater took her. All you achieved by running was to delay the inevitable, putting all of us at risk in the process.”
Slorn bared his sharp teeth. “The end might have been inevitable, but our work was not in vain. Nivel lived for ten years with that seed inside her, and even then it was not the demon who killed her. She was murdered by a rogue League member who took her seed for his own. Had he not appeared, she would still be alive, doing your work.”
“And what work of mine could a demonseed do?” the mountain said. “Demon-panicked spirits cannot be Shaped.”
“The first affirmation of all Shapers is the collection of knowledge,” Slorn answered. “That’s the pledge you have us make, and Nivel and I never forsook it. We spent those ten years researching demonseeds. Through our work, Nivel lived eight years longer than any seed on record.” He reached into his coat, taking out a small, leather-bound book. “I have here detailed observations,” he said, holding the book up in the phantom rain. “Mine and hers, from the day we left the mountain to the day I surrendered her seed to the League. I believe our research contains more information about the demon than any spirits have ever collected before, including the League, and I am prepared to give all of this knowledge to you. With the Shapers’ help, we could save countless lives, maybe even one day reverse the demon infestation.”
The rain began to slack as he spoke, and the clouds rolled away, leaving the mountain gleaming white in the freshly washed sunshine. Its stone slope had not changed, and yet, somehow, Miranda got the feeling the mountain was sneering at them.
“You would give me knowledge of how to prolong a demonseed’s life?” the Teacher said.
“Yes,” Slorn answered. “I can already make manacles that retard the seed’s growth and cloth that hides the demon’s presence, allowing it to walk among spirits without terrifying them. But these are only crutches, stopgaps. With your help, I hope to find a way to reverse the seed’s conquest of the host, perhaps even remove the seed without—”
“Enough.”
Slorn stiffened. “What do you—”
“You wasted your freedom studying the wrong thing,” the mountain said. “Extending the seed’s life? Hiding it? Why would we want to do that? If you’d found a way to pinpoint seeds before they wake, that I could perhaps condone, but demonseeds are a menace, Heinricht, not something to be coddled and hidden.”
“Menace?” Slorn growled. “A feral dog is a menace. Demonseeds are the greatest disaster we’ve ever known waiting to happen. Each seed has the potential to become a demon every bit as dangerous as the one imprisoned under the Dead Mountain. I don’t know if you were paying attention, but it nearly happened a few weeks ago not far from your own slopes. To ignore such a danger, to refuse to learn as much as we can about its nature, to remain willfully ignorant of the greatest threat to the spirits that form this world, that is the menace, Teacher. And that is why Nivel and my research is so important.
“Think what could happen if we could safely remove seeds from their hosts without killing them. Demonseeds would come forward willingly to be cured instead of running. The League would no longer have to hunt the seeds down or risk fighting them. Who knows? Each seed is an identical shard of the demon of the Dead Mountain itself. If we learn more about them, we might find a way to stop the Dead Mountain from sending them out, maybe even a way to get rid of the demon altogether. This knowledge, Nivel’s knowledge, could be the beginning of the research that saves us from the demon forever.”
The mountain rumbled as Slorn finished, a long, grinding slide of stone on stone that rattled Miranda’s teeth. She barely noticed. This was it. This was why they’d come all this way. If the mountain got behind Slorn’s plan, then this could well be the birth of an age of safety and freedom greater than anything the Spirit World had ever known. Not just freedom from the crippling fear she’d felt at Izo’s and in the throne room at Mellinor, but also freedom for the seeds themselves. Unbidden, her mind flicked to Nico. Despite the company she kept and the wound she’d given Gin, Nico didn’t deserve to be eaten by the demon. Neither had Slorn’s wife. No spirit deserved it, and today she would make sure that, if the first steps toward ending the demon’s infection of the world were not taken, it would not be because she did not try.
All around them, the scenery was changing. The flowering meadow withered and turned brown. Deep snow appeared on the mountain’s slopes, and the sky grew dark as raw iron. Though the air had not changed, Miranda felt colder than ever. Still, she did not move until, at last, the mountain spoke.
“I am very sorry, Heinricht,” it said, “but you have wasted your time. I don’t know why you even thought to start this line of questioning, other than sentimentality. You should know better than any that demons are the sole realm of the Shepherdess and her League.”
“But there’s no reason we can�
��t help.” The words burst out of Miranda before she could stop them. “I’ve seen the League in action, and they are marvelous, but they would have lost at Izo’s if not for Slorn and Mellinor’s help.”
“Who gave you leave to speak, human?” the mountain thundered, sending snow tumbling down its slopes. “Slorn is in disgrace, but he is still a Shaper. You are nothing to me. Why do you think you can raise your voice here?”
“Miranda!” Gin hissed, pressing his paw on her foot.
“No,” Miranda said hotly, shaking her leg free of Gin’s grip. “I’ve had enough of this. I may not be a Shaper, but I am a spirit. It’s my world too. Why shouldn’t I do whatever I can to help it?”
“It is not your place,” the mountain rumbled.
“It is my place!” Miranda shouted back. “I am a Spiritualist! I am sworn on my life and my soul to protect the spirits from harm, and that’s what I intend to do. You say this is League business, but I think it is reckless and ridiculous to leave the entirety of our well-being in the hands of a League we cannot call or control.”
“The League is the only reason our world still exists, wizard,” the mountain said.
“And I am grateful!” Miranda cried, shaking off Slorn’s warning hand. “But if they, if you truly wanted to save the world rather than just preserve the status quo, you’d accept our help. If Slorn’s knowledge truly can change the way we deal with demonseeds, if there’s even a chance that this could prevent what happened in the mountains outside Izo’s camp from happening again, then how can anyone say it is not worth trying?”