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A white-haired figure sat with head bowed on the first step He was dressed in a plain cleric’s tunic As she caught her breath, rose, and stepped forward, he raised his head
It was Wolfhere
Nay, not Wolfhere That was only the guise she saw, the man with secrets who knew uardian of this sphere," she said "I would ascend the steps"
"You have coreed, "but I warn you, you have only one arrow left Use it more wisely than you did your others There is one close to you whom you can save, if you can learn to see with your wits rather than act on your fears"
He moved aside
She hesitated Was it a trick? A test? But she had to ascend to reach her goal No other as open to her now
She set her foot on the first step "I thank you," she said to the guardian, but he was already gone
The steps felt smooth and easy beneath her bare feet As she cli wheels that spun high in the air on either side of the stairs The brilliant light of the wheels grewabove she saw into a chalowed hotly, the birthplace of angels Thick clots of dust led shapes where they billowed across an expanse of blackness A faint wheel of stars, like an echo of the golden wheels on either side of her, spun with aching slowness Beyond all this lay silence, deep, endless, unfathoaze: the crossroads between spheres and worlds Its fla as if that fire pulsed in tih the distant crossroads into other worlds, other tione:
a girl standing with her ar with a strange sort of quill on sheets of paper, not vellum, her black hair pulled back in a ponytail and her dark coat cut in a style Liath has never seen; Count Lavastine’s effigy in stone, with two stone hounds in faithful attendance; an egg cracking as a barbed claw pokes through from inside the shell; the slow trail of alloping across the steppe, expression alive to the beauty of speed and power; a wo twin infants; Eht of his power, as he watches his favorite daughter invested as biscop
Inside a pavilion, Ironhead’s concubine, the pretty one with black hair, sentle gesture as he sleeps Then she takes a stake and, with a hah his temple so hard that the point of the stake cleaves his skull to pierce the carpet below Blood pools, changing color as it snakes out in a streath until Liath sees thefroh
He lifts his head, as if he has sensed her She bolts down another branch of the crossroads, forward in ti the Temes River With heartless efficiency, silent and al the strand below the walled city of Hefenfelthe The great hall built by the Alban queens rises like the prow of a vast ship beyond the wall, long considered inable Because of the power of the queens and their tree sorcerers, Hefenfelthe has never been taken by fighting Eika warriors swar theate The chain ruate swings open What cannot be gained by force can be gained by treachery Stronghand pauses as three ate, signaling frantically as they hurry forward to welcome the army they betrayed their own queen for His lead warriors cut down the traitors No man can serve two masters If they would betray their own people for mere coin, then they can never be trusted His ars pause to feed on the corpses and have to be driven forward He waits on the shore as the sun rises, still obscured by mist The first alarms sound from inside the city, but it is already too late Threads of s and ain that she stood far up the stairs, the sphere of Aturna glittering below, beyond the golden wheels, and the universe opening beyond her
A silver belt twisted through the gulf,the path of the country of the Aoi, non inexorably back toward Earth It was impossible to tell one side of the ribboned surface from the other or if it even had two sides at all but only one infinite gleaaze she followed it down past the spheres descending below, each gateway a geht curve, all the way down to where Earth lay exposed below her, too broad to encoht of the spheres Its curve, too, was evident where the line of advancing dawn receded to the west and night rose in the east Taillefer’s crown gleamed, spread out across the land, seven crowns each with seven points, the great wheel set across ic