Peril’s Gate: Third Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts

power to address her by her true Name.

      Swept by a rippling shiver, Elaira fought down her wave of blind panic. ‘Fatemaster guard me.’

      Naught remained in reassurance, except to abide in trust. For time beyond memory, the adepts had adhered to their gentle creed of compassion.

      Elaira stepped through, startled to find the strange pressure melted before her. She felt lifted, light, all at once more aware of the sun-carved shadows cast across crusted snow than of the pillars themselves as she passed them. Whatever strange field of spellcraft they wove, the effects absolved her of worry. Unbidden, her spirits unfolded into a rush of bubbling joy.

      Once inside, as though conjured by some fey, wild trick, the promised adept hastened forward. Her host proved a tiny, wizened old man with a sparkle in his jet eyes. His smile scored his dark-skinned, bearded face into merriment and laugh lines. He enfolded her numbed hands into seamed palms with the same exuberant welcome.

      ‘Elaira, affi’enia, come this way.’ His peppery, fast dialect marked his descent from the insular southshore desertmen. The diminutive term he chose for address was derived from the ancient root word that meant dancer, although his precise turn of phrase was not known to her. ‘Walk in Ath’s blessing, and find ease for the heart within this hostel’s sanctuary.’

      He drew her forward, amused by her evident relief that his pigeon-toed step impressed footprints. ‘The others you saw earlier were not flesh at all, but projections, a thought that was formed by intense concentration and focus.’

      Elaira jerked to a stop. ‘But they were so real!’ She fingered her wrist, unable to contain sharp surprise, that the strong arm that had assisted her after collapse had been no more than an apparition. ‘The one who helped me, his touch felt as solid as yours.’

      The adept chuckled outright. ‘I never claimed their substance was less than my own. Ath’s creation is myriad.’

      As she flushed, embarrassed for such an impetuous inquiry into his Brotherhood’s grasp of the mysteries, he gave her hand a congenial squeeze. The spark that enlivened his eyes acquired the glint of thrown diamond. ‘It is thought that spins form, not the other way around. Were you not fooled by your bodily senses, you would see the true way of the world. Thoughts and feelings combine to make dreams, and, in fact, they are the more real part of you. Did you come here to encounter the truth? Change will follow. If you wish to remain as you were, I suggest you step back through that portal.’

      ‘I came to learn,’ Elaira insisted. Consumed with dread for Prince Arithon’s fate, she lacked the spare resource to argue the nature of ephemeral philosophy. Her shaken nerve was scarcely enough to hold her to steadfast courage. This place offered no shelter behind falsehood or platitude. The incomprehensible power of the gate ciphers struck home the irrefutable risk: her quest for forbidden knowledge had already cast all that she was into jeopardy.

      Far more than cold air left her trembling. Chased from the shadow of self-recrimination, she acknowledged her fear. The choice to go forward might destroy all her sensible constraints, even lead her to defy her oath of obedience to her order.

      Yet her love for Arithon ran deeper than cowardice. No course remained but to drown her misgiving under the tatters of courtesy. ‘Please, if you will, brother, show me the way a seeker enters your sanctuary.’

      The adept smiled again, his walnut-toned skin crinkled with unutterable delight. ‘Dear lady, with all my heart, join our company and be welcome.’

      Bone weary, and emotionally numb, Elaira trailed his light footstep over the wind-sculptured snow. Arched entry and pillared anteroom passed by as a fitful blur. She registered the impression of profound quiet, then a young man’s kind hands removing the weather-stained wool of her mantles. She stared down, startled to find the reflection of a windburned face with waif’s eyes gazing upward from underfoot. Then the flyaway hair snapped to snake ends and elf locks made her realize the image was her own. The tessellated marble under her step had been honed to a glossy, high polish. The surface was eerie, far too refined to have been smoothed by tools in the hand of an artisan.

      Unwitting, she must have questioned aloud, for the desertman offered his cheerful explanation. ‘A speaker to stone would have sung the right lines to lay the marble into alignment.’ He steered her arm, gentle. ‘Please follow?’

      She was led down a pillared loggia. Walls and groined ceiling had been intricately carved with parallel lines of strange characters. To one who had mage talent, their presence spoke in hushed tones of sound and light. Elaira found their shapes eluded analysis by direct sight. She marveled as the effects of their presence stroked her skin and eased weary flesh like a tonic. The spiked edge to her worry softened and smoothed, gifting a detached awareness.

      ‘You won’t be separated from your feelings,’ the adept reassured. He directed her toward an arched portal to one side. ‘The sanctuary is a gateway to unmasked power. To enter, one must pass through the stream of the prime life chord. It is therefore necessary to calm the tumult from the supplicant’s heart and mind.’

      Doused in dizziness, then lifted by upending vertigo that flushed her to shivering goose bumps, Elaira caught and grasped the adept’s offered arm. ‘What’s happening?’ She felt as though the bones of her skull had dissolved, leaving her unmoored and drifting.

      ‘You are a born talent, and a vibrantly clear one at that.’ The adept steadied her wavering step. If aged features and small size lent him the semblance of frailty, his touch owned a tensile-strength confidence.

      Elaira clung to him in shameless gratitude, reminded of the resilience laid by quenching and fire into a tempered-steel blade.

      ‘The part of you that remembers harmonic balance is rising to match a higher range of vibration,’ the adept explained. ‘Few have the inner sensitivity to notice much more than a passing moment of faintness. If you find the sensation beyond bearing, you can choose not to enter the sanctuary.’