Page 86 (1/2)

Prologue

Kai stood before the old-stone, a single rough block set upright in the days whenOr perhaps they knew more than that, for they had set the old-stone in a place of seeing A point where veils thinned and lifted and secrets ht be learned or told A place where the heavens stood a little lower, such that the sky-sworn ht touch them more easily

The local er’, which Kai supposed was apt if dull And if it were a finger then the old-stone stood on the knuckle Here the finger lay sixty yards across and at the edges fell a similar distance to meet the marsh in a series of steep and rocky steps

Kai took a deep breath and let the cold air fill his lungs, let the dah, sad voice of the old-stone, less of a sound than a memory of sound His vision lifted from him with just a whisper of pain The point of Kai’s perception vaulted skyward, leaving his flesh beside the ht valley between two tuer, and the pro out into the vastness of the Reed Sea At this distance the River Rill beca to the Lake of Glass

Kai flew higher The ground fell away, growing s The ain in their cool embrace

Is this what death is like? A cold whiteness, for ever and ever amen?

Kai resisted the cloud’s pull and found the sun again The sky-sworn could so easily lose the flesh to die and haunting the empty spaces above A core of selfishness bound Kai to his existence He knew hireed, an inability to let go Failings of a kind perhaps, but here an asset that would keep him whole

He flew above the soft brilliance of the clouds, weaving his path ast their turrets and towers A seris broke the pillowed alabaster, ghost-faint even to the eye of Kai’s ht, a hundred feet long and thicker than a man Kai called to it The cloud-snake coiled on itself; describing lazy circles as it drew ever closer

‘Old friend’ Kai hailed it As many as a hundred seris swarmed amid the thunderheads when the land-breaker storms came, but each seris knehat every seris knew, so to Kai’s mind there was only one Perhaps the seris were reotten all that they were to dance a no birth and knowing no death

The seris fixed Kai with the cold blue glow of its eye-pits He felt the chill of its mind-touch, slow and curious ‘Still the woman?’

‘Always the woht on the clouds Architectural clouds, just ready for God’s hand to shape, ready to be cathedrals, towers, ht he always brought the saer

Maybe seris think there’s just one man, one woman, and lots of bodies

The seris moved around Kai in a corkscrew, as if he were there in person, cocooning him in its coils ‘You would have one shadow?’

Kai sether, so to a stor one shadow

‘Yes, to have one shadow’ Kai surprised himself with the heat in his voice He wanted what the seris had Not just a roll in the heather Not this time

‘Make it’ The voice of the seris spoke beneath his skin, though he had left that far below

‘Make it happen? It isn’t that easy’

‘You do not want?’ The seris rippled Kai knew it for laughter

‘Oh, I want’ She just has to walk in the room and I’m on fire The scent of her! I close my eyes and I’m in the Gardens of Bethda

‘A stored the seris’s voice

Kai puzzled He’d seen no sign of a stor

‘They rise,’ the seris said