The Burning Stone
She knelt to draw markings in the sand, then prayed in her language, making certain gestures first to the north, then to the east, then to the south, then to the west. From her pouch she drew pebbles, and she laid a green one to the north, a reddish-orange one to the east, a dull brown one to the south, and a white one to the west. Sand glistened under the full moon. Rivulets of water coursed toward the hidden sea, a hundred fingerlets probing west through the seabed.
Were they getting wider? Was the tide coming in?
“We stand halfway,” she said, rising. She unstoppered one of the leather bottles and allowed him three swallows. “We must walk quickly.”
The horse snorted nervously. A wind touched his cheek. Then it was still again. They walked on.
“Teach me how to pray to your gods,” he said suddenly.
A narrow channel of water lay before them. She waded in, and he followed. The water was only ankle-deep, but beyond it lay a second channel, then a third, each one deeper than the last. They slogged over yet another sandbank to a fourth channel, and here she had to hike up her skirt to her hips to keep it from getting wet.
Unseen fish nibbled at his legs. When he turned to look behind, he saw only a dark line marking the shore. The horse grew more skittish. Water stirred and coiled in eddies like a nest of snakes coming awake. Wind breathed on his neck. The great monster was exhaling: the tide was coming in.
“How soon?” he asked hoarsely.
“There,” she said.
His grandmother had named the moon “the Pale Hunter,” she who watches over the life and death of animals, and at full moon her strength was greatest.
“I pray you, Great Hunter,” he murmured, trying out the words, feeling awkward, “give me strength. Lend me some of your power.”
An island rose steep-sided before them, a stone fort with gleaming marble walls. They climbed until the ramp ended at the base of an ebony gate. A path paved with black stone curled away on either side, a wall rising sheer on one side and cliff dropping away sheer on the other.
She led them to the left, deocil, along the path as the waters rose along the base of the hill, slowly submerging the ramp.
They walked forever on the black path, but when they returned to the ebony gate, the waters lapped the stone ramp two man-lengths from them. It was still rising.
“Now we are outside,” she said. She drew her knife and drew the blade over her palm. She smeared her blood over the ebony surface of the gate, then cut Zacharias’ hand in the same manner, and nicked the horse on the shoulder; this blood, too, she smeared on the gate.
Her fingers probed the shadows beside the gate, caught a lever, and pulled. The door swung open outward on silent hinges. She stepped over the threshold, and he followed her only to find that he stood in a narrow lane that ran parallel to the black stone path outside. High stone walls rose on either side. The horse balked, but when seawater lapped the threshold to drown its hooves, it bolted inside.
She tugged the gate closed against the rising tide. He glanced up anxiously: were the stone walls high enough, and watertight enough, to keep them safe from the waters? But when he knelt to brush the ground, it was as dry as bleached bone racked by a summer of rainless heat. She began to walk to the right, widdershins, and he followed her. After about the time it would take to sing the service of Terce, a short hour, they returned back to where they had started, at the ebony gate.