Solineus

by L. James Rice

The Ironwing’s hand rose. “This lady, who is the fire in my soul, speaks true, but if indeed your heart is empty and open, it may be proven so.” The queen fumed. “The Twelfth Foundation defies all unworthy hearts.”

  Twelve Hells and a Twelfth Foundation didn’t bring joy to his heart, but it was the queen’s sudden calm and easy smile as she sat back in her throne that brought a queasy unease. Her cocksure tone stirred the butterflies further. “This is so. My King is wise.”

  Morik shook his head as Solineus met his gaze. “You must find another road. I don’t wish to see you dead so soon after saving you.”

  Solineus breathed deep and stiffened his spine. “What is this Twelfth Foundation?”

  “It is the highest mountain to hold a Foundational Shrine, ancient texts say it is dedicated to Hîmr, known as the Eye’s Hammerfall, but no one since Pîlôstar the Skywind has reached its top. They say only a pilgrim favored by the gods can breathe the airs so high and pure without dying. It cannot be done.”

  The Ironwing spoke: “Pîlôstar rediscovered each of the Twenty-Two Foundations and their shrines and left a token atop each. The Helmveline hold five of these tokens as the first to reach them, more than any except the Kingdom of Barkûsh, who also hold five.”

  It seemed a truth of the world: Everybody, even the most wealthy and powerful, wanted something more. “And if I bring you this token?”

  “It proves the favor of the Foundations rests in your heart, and the priests will bless your holy journey to cross the Foundations.” He wiggled his fingers in a peculiar gesture that reminded Solineus of a humming bird. “This pilgrimage will bring you to every kingdom to see if you can keep your head while forging alliances. And of course… Announce my possession of the Twelfth’s Token.”

  Solineus cocked his head, shrugged. “Show me this mountain and I will climb it.”

  The queen laughed, but the Ironwing spoke without a smile. “Before any Kingdomer may plea with this mountain’s heights, they must cleanse their souls… a heretic and barbarian such as yourself more so, to prove your worth. But before I decide whether to give you this chance, I will see the blades you bear.”

  He gestured for Solineus to rise, but he hesitated; Morik had warned him that once he kneeled, to not stand again in the presence of the Ironwing. He glanced to the side, but Morik’s gaze was as uncertain as his own.

  “Rise,” said the king. “I am allowed to command my own laws broken.”

  The man’s left cheek twitched toward his eye, the first hint of a grin from this man, and Solineus stood, striding forward. He slipped the swords, gripping them still in their sheaths, from their harness and kneeled when he drew close, extending his hand with a Twin in each. “I don’t recommend touching them.”

  The Ironwing nodded without a hint of insult taken, and the queen squirmed in her throne, pressing as far from the Twins as her seat allowed.

  “Place one before me and show me the blade of the other.”

  Solineus did as he requested, and the murmur of the Sister entered his mind with a peculiar sense of calm as he slipped the blade a hand’s length from its home. She doesn’t fear this king ? Rare for a Twin to be so quiet.

  The Ironwing leaned close, tracing his finger near where the blade’s Latcu blended with the hilt’s Ikoruv, but not touching. “Spirit bound, no doubt.”

  “They contain some life-force, aye.”

  “You possess them, but you do not understand them.” The king grinned for the first time. “It is a common misconception amongst even the learned that a spirit resides in the blade… perhaps sometimes it is true, who is to know for certain? But it is more apt, the spirit is linked to the blade from the Celestial.”

  The Edan mentioned nothing of the sort, but why would they? They wouldn’t believe he needed to know, if it was even true. “So, the spirit itself is not here?”

  “Grandmaster Fezdal-Kîn teaches that the spirit-blade is much like an onved.”

  Solineus scrunched his face. “This word I do not know.”

  The Ironwing leaned back in his throne. “I suppose not. An onved is a powerful stone, a magnet of a sort. A Master Wayfinder may place one of these stones anywhere in the world… Above ground, in the deepest mines, and no matter where the master travels, they will find their way back. Do I make sense?”

  Maybe something like how he had a felt where Kineseee was whenever she rubbed the pearl? “I think it might. A bit like a compass-stone and a mark on a map.”

  “Indeed, only the way-stone points to this single place only .”

  “You’re saying the blade is an onved, so the spirit in the Celestial knows where to go?”

  The Ironwing’s head bobbed somewhere between a nod and shake. “It is more, it doesn’t provide a mere destination, it provides a path.”

  “You believe the spirits… they’re not here, but they’re here? A constant connection.”

  “Ask yourself, does it feel they are more in the blades, or more within your own head? I do not know the answer to your question… perhaps they are in the Celestial as well as here with you and these blades? Two places at once. Maybe they travel back and forth. Maybe only a fragment of them ever leaves the celestial. Maybe they are never drawn into blades, but drawn into you when the swords are drawn? Should I know the answer, my name would be carved in the Mountain of Knowledge for all time. Do they speak to you?”

  “Murmurs, whispers, shouts. Rare to recognize anything which might be a word…” The memory returned in a rush. “Gersvôresh’kûmjotu’kî. At the bridge, both swords repeated these sounds… these words. Do you know them?”

  The man’s brow knitted, and he sucked a breath through his nostrils. “No. But I will note it and inquire with our scholars.”

  Solineus nodded. “Gibberish, I’d wager, but I thank you for the effort.”

  “You may sheath the weapon.” The Ironwing stood, placed a hand on Solineus’ head, and spoke, his voice thundering to make certain everyone heard. “A man who bears such holy artifacts must be given a chance to prove his heart. This barbarian will purge his body and soul of all evil and ascend the Twelfth Foundation in the name of Helmveline, in the name of the Ironwing, in the name of all the gods we have lost. In one month’s time, if our holy deem him cleansed, his journey shall begin. The Will of the Foundations lead his heart.”

  Solineus bowed, nose to the step in front of him as the queen rose, and the royal couple turned and left the hall. There he remained, snuffling stone and his eyes pinned on the brother until a hand grabbed his shoulder. He leaned back with a deep breath, hooking the Twins back into their harness.

  “How’s it feel to know you’ve a month yet to live?”

  Solineus hopped to his feet with a grin. “Take more than a lit— a big ol’ mountain to kill me.”

  Morik led him outside and started down the stair before speaking again. “It is never the mountain that kills a man, my pain in the ass friend.”

  Solineus chortled. “You are ever the font of optimism.” He spoke in Silone: “Don’t reckon the Ironwing will share that Broldun whiskey? Seeing as I’m about to die.”

  Morik squinted. “Depends on when your fasting begins.”

  Solineus stopped at the bottom of the pyramid. “Fast? As in not eating? I don’t like not eating.”

  “I reckon, then, you won’t enjoy the last month of your life.”

  3

  Mountain Tongues

  Black Bell with the Hallowed Ring,

  echo the wagging tongue

  on fire.

  Desire. Destiny. Doom.

  The spinning wheel and the loom,

  the forge and the bludgeoning hammer,

  the spur to horse’s canter.

  Tongue dance to the last,

  Death’s gait a hop, skip, and prance.

  — Tomes of the Touched

  If three weeks of fasting achieved nothing else, it convinced Solineus that climbing and maybe dying on a mountain wouldn’t be so bad. Standing on a rocky, wi
nd-swept trail staring up at the damned thing brought pleasant reminiscences of gurgling pains in his gut.

  “You’re godsdamned shittin’ me, right?”

  They’d passed a hundred high peaks on the way here, though he got turned around so often he wondered if some weren’t the same mountains from different views. But this thing, this behemoth, this giant with its snow-capped head raked by streaking clouds, was something other.

  Morik scoffed. “Won’t hurt my feelings if you change your mind.”

  No doubt; the man had spent every day for the past month trying to talk him out of it, if for no other reason than the Ironwing had commanded the Mountain Lord to forsake his mountain home in order to assist his pain in the ass friend. This left Tîern returning to Shuntiskâ Mountain as overseer until Morik’s return, something the boy’s family had dreamed of for decades, from what Solineus gathered.

  “If I succeed, the king will extend your lordship through the lifetime of your eldest child.”

  “And if you die, I lose a thorn in my ass. I see how you might think I win on either account.”

  Solineus chuckled. “At least it isn’t so cold, not yet.” The base of the mountain was still green here, where soil perched between boulders and scree grew low grass and hardy trees. Only half way up the mountain’s side did snow and ice appear, and the ridge took a slower rise than many they’d seen. “Don’t look like I’ll have to climb straight up, neither.”

  “There are far worse ascents… My people are more inclined to climb those peaks from the inside with pick and shovel, but this climb is a deception. The air up high grows maddening; the tongue can blather a fool’s song or just tie in a knot like a drunkard. Then, you fall over and die.”

  “Everything ends in death for you, don’t it?”

  They shared a grin. “It does for all of us. No, if the climb was steep, I’d tie you to a post like a wayward ram, your lungs wouldn’t take it.”

  They continued on after the leaders of their train of porters, forty Kingdomers laden with gear, food, and water, rounded a corner to catch up. Included in the group, three priests to bless the climb, and his body on the odd occasion it came tumbling back; most folks just stayed up there dead, frozen chunks of history.

  The ridge which looked so damned straight from a distance turned out to be a twisting climb, but on the bright side, the trail was solid and clear of ankle-twisting rocks from all the pilgrims who’d come before them. Morik assured him that hundreds of Kingdomers made the climb every year, stopping at various points to pray, five camps in all, before deciding to turn back due to altitude or weather.

  “How high have you been?”

  Morik grinned. “Not so high as I’m going to take you. I was young on my pilgrimage to this mountain, and in love. I could’ve made Camp Zjindinfôk, the final before the summit, if I’d been willing to forsake a warm woman for another week or two, weather depending.”

  And there was the depressing truth of this journey: Weeks to climb a distance he could walk in a day without breaking a sweat. “Wouldn’t prayer make the journey easy? Some kind of magic?” He imagined Eliles could handle this task with disturbing ease, with the Sliver of Star.

  “It’s been tried, many times, and folks still die. Two troubles, as I hear: The first is the devout use prayer early, and when they reach near the top and prayer fails for a moment, they aren’t used to the peculiar air and die, but even if they prepare proper… Prayer takes focus? I don’t know exactly, but—”

  “They die.”

  “That’s the short of the story.”

  “You’re certain there’s no critter up there just eating folks?” The notion of a Mokotu-xe elemental living atop the mountain wasn’t encouraging.

  Morik’s head cocked and he shrugged. “It isn’t unthinkable. But, Pîlôstar the Skywind didn’t mention one in his journals.”

  They rounded a bend and smoke rose in the distance, sourced several hundred feet higher than they stood, and it looked like stone buildings rose from the mountain. “A village?”

  “The Temple of Arumbor, carved into the face of the cliffs by the ancients, and a few buildings we Kingdomers added.”

  “And we’ll be staying there a week?” When he’d heard of a camp at the base of the climb, he’d imagined pitching tents and fighting to get a fire started. “And we sleep inside?”

  The Kingdomer laughed. “Aye, we sleep inside.”

  Despite how near it seemed, the winding, rocky trail dashed his hopes of a hot meal for several more hours, but reaching the gated entry was a joy. Men and women raised their arms, singing to their arrival, and Morik and the porters returned the song, so he joined in despite not knowing what the hells he sang.

  Most of the smoke he’d first seen rose from buildings perched atop a cliff face some forty feet high, with a robed figure standing atop the tower, but a dozen thin trails of smoke drifted from the ground like a fog rising after a rain on a summer day, from fires within the cliff’s temple, he surmised. The face of the cliff was gray with streaks of dusky oranges, and the lower half stood carved with doors and windows, along with glyphs he assumed were holy text. The climb ahead might kill him, but its beginning was auspicious and comfortable.

  A robed woman stepped from a door gouged from the cliff and she raised her arms in greeting. “The party from Helmveline? We’ve been expecting you.”

  Morik waved the porters to a door to the south and led Solineus onward to the stairs leading to her. “Seblêsu, Lady of the Mountain, I am Morik, Mountain Lord of Shuntiskâ, and this is Solineus of the Emudar, from a land far to the north.”

  Seblêsu was both a title and a name, as priests forsook their birth name to serve the Foundation. Solineus interpreted the name as High Priestess, only with the specific meaning of her overseeing this Foundation. He bowed. “Seblêsu, Lady of the Mountain, it is with humility I stand before you and this mighty summit.”

  She stood straight, gazing down her nose. “It is most unusual for a barbarian to make the Foundational Pilgrimage. Not in my lifetime has such a thing occurred. The last was Lodupûl of the Histê peoples, praise his tenacious name. Not even he attempted to reach the coin of Hîmr.”

  It was the first he’d heard of another “barbarian” making the pilgrimage. “The Histê?”

  “A people who live far to the east and south of the Foundations. Heathens, heretics, and slavers who worship demons… But they say Lodupûl was not as his brethren, and he lived among the Kingdoms until his death.”

  Demon worshippers, I know an island they could visit. “The Foundations willing, I will retrieve the coin and return the treasure to the Kingdoms.”

  Her head bobbed. “I am a fool who believes every journey for the peak will be the one.”

  “What happened to the last climber who tried?”

  She smiled. “Four years ago… Has it been so long already? There were two, Lilquin of Kâmar and Reblôn of Barkush. I thought maybe they would work together and succeed; I shouldn’t have been optimistic for either. Competition is no way to survive the dead airs of the summit.”

  “So, they died?”

  “One must assume, as neither returned. Rumors from history speak of pilgrims who snuck back down the mountain to hide their shame, but these were men without fear.”

  “Everyone who tries dies or hides their faces?”

  “No, I once pursued the coin in my youth, and I never left the mountain. I will die here, but not up there.”

  Solineus shot Morik a smirk. “See? Not everyone dies.”

  Her smile broadened. “Only the stubborn, but only the stubborn have a chance. Come! Let us eat.”

  The steps were steep, narrow, uneven, and worn round by rain and thousands of feet over the centuries, but they stood stable despite the patchwork filling cracks and missing chunks. Solineus entered into darkness through the door atop the climb, his eyes adjusting with rapid blinks after days of mountain sun. A hall grew from a dim impression into a distinct place so different f
rom the outside world that It stood narrow with an arched ceiling, maybe a dozen strides across, but a single row of pillars stretched deep into the mountain, strange and disconcerting to the eye like the infinity of standing between two mirrors, but this was a mirror he could step into.

  The columns stood seamless with the floor and ceiling, parts of the mountain carved around rather than placed, then chiseled with figures and decorations. The pillar straight in front of him bore a hammer cut into its face, a popular symbol which might represent a fistful of gods in the Pantheon of the Foundations, but the tongs with a smoking ingot clutched in its bite suggested it honored Filinthrôk the Smith, brother and right hand of Rînkodûl, and he who forged the weapons the Foundational Gods wielded during the Age of God Wars.

  He glanced at every pillar as they passed, noting the hammers, the sickles, the goat-horns, swords, axes, and fires, but he lacked the expertise to identify to which gods most of these honored.

  Twenty-two pillars down the hall the Seblêsu turned, stepping through a passage Solineus would’ve strolled straight past without ever noticing, and he glanced back, wondering if, indeed, they hadn’t passed several hidden entries. Looking back brought his hand to his chin to rub his whiskers. He peered the way they’d been headed, then back to their entry again; infinity stretched in both directions, an illusion of form or of magic? But his guides were disappearing without giving him time for questions.

  He trotted after them, slipping in beside Morik. “That there hall messes with a man’s head.”

  The Kingdomer glanced at him, dead pan eyes. “What do you mean?”

  Solineus squinted and puzzled the man; it wasn’t a game, Morik didn’t know what he spoke of. “It looks normal to you?”

  It was Seblêsu who answered: “You’ve a barbarian’s eyes, not the senses of a Kingdomer. Only with direction from Ôls-hûin, the Great Finder, would you see the Hall of Eternity for what it is.”

  It was Ôls-hûin who lead the Foundational Gods from the Bellows of Creation to find these mountains, so they might establish the Great Kingdoms of mortal men. This according to the tales Morik told him of the creation of the universe. “What would I see if I were able?”