people going off on unimaginable errands.
The greatest wonder of all came when they emerged into an open courtyard beneath a bright blue sky. He had never seen the whole sky before, just pieces of it through small windows. He planted his feet firmly and refused to move until he had gazed more fully at this spectacle, but the woman slapped him on the ear, grabbed him under the arms, and carried him.
He was left in a new place, so distant from where he had been that he never saw anyone he had known before. He was among keepers of animals and workers of iron, and fascinated to watch both. The furnaces crackled merrily and were splendid if one kept a safe distance from them, and the animals were more so. Horses were mountains of flesh on legs, but huger still were creatures called katas, which stood on their hind legs twice as tall as any horse. They were hairless, greyskinned, with tiny forelimbs and even tinier seven-fingered hands, and small, narrow heads. He was never allowed near a kata, because they were rare and expensive and because one could smash him to mush with a flick of its tail, or so the keepers claimed. Where it joined the body, the tail was as thick as the man who warned him, and he was broad-shouldered. At the tip grew three spikes of white bone.
Ginna did not really know how to be a part of the society of stable hands and smiths. He didn’t know what to say. Their children played incomprehensible games. So he stayed out of the way and watched most of the time, learning, peeking out of corners until someone called him “The Mouse”. The name stuck.
He was better fed and clothed than before. Like everyone else he wore a simple tunic, and like the other children, he went barefoot.
He saw no one else making balls of light with their hands, so he thought it best to do this only in private. He did not like to draw attention to himself.
Eventually he made a friend. She was half a year older than he. Her name was Amaedig, which means Cast Aside. She did not seem to have any parents, but wandered from place to place as he did, sleeping wherever there was room. She was not good looking, and her back was slightly crooked, but he found her pleasant to be with. They played together among the metal scraps, and sometimes climbed atop something to watch the men feeding slices of meat to the Katas, or even trying to ride them in a small, fenced-off yard.
After a while he swore her into secrecy with as terrible an oath as he could think of (“If I tell this secret, I hope terror and doom will come upon me, and my arms and head fall off, and extra toes grow out of my empty neck!”), then took her into a closet and showed her how he made light balls.
“Can’t you do it?” he asked, as she gazed in amazement.
“No, but I wish I could.”
“Then try.”
She did. Nothing.
“How did you learn to do it?”
“I didn’t. I always could. I used to think everyone could, and then I thought maybe only grownups couldn’t, but now you can’t either. I don’t understand. Maybe I’m special.”
More spheres floated up, to the top of the closet. “They’re pretty,” she said.
* * * *
Ginna was seven when The Guardian first sent for him, and suddenly he was someone important. All faces were turned toward him. All hands helped as he was scrubbed and shorn and brought fresh clothing. All eyes looked after him as he was taken away and Amaedig ran up to him as he was leaving and said, “Will you come back? Will you?”
“I hope so,” was all he could say.
He came back. It was the first of many visits. Tharanodeth was in his declining years by then, and he sent for Ginna often. When the boy was still small he sat him on his knee and sang songs to him, or bade him sing other songs back. They traded riddles. The old Guardian even read to him from an ancient book, which from the date marked on its clasp had not been opened for fifty years. It told of the deeds of the remote forebears of the people of Ai Hanlo, how they had come out of the mountains and out of the desert to found the Holy City, which stood in the middle of a fertile plain in those days.
“It was a golden age,” said The Guardian of The Bones. “Men were content then, and the Earth was calm. It was before the death of The Goddess.”
“How did she die?”
“I don’t know, my boy. I don’t know. Does that surprise you? It has been prophesied that someone will find out, but all I can tell you is how it was discovered that she was dead. The age of peace ended. Suddenly all the world was in turmoil, even more than it is today. There were two suns in the sky and the land burned. Then winter lasted all the months of the year and it froze. The oceans froze too, but then they melted and rushed over the land. Invading hordes tore down cities mightier than our own. But this was not enough to let them know that The Goddess was dead. Pestilence, earthquake, and war had come before. No, it was discovered in this wise: a certain holy man, the holiest of all men living, who was sort of a guardian back before there were any bones to guard over, took a bone, an ordinary bone, the leg bone of one of his order who had died, and he wrote a message to The Goddess on it, begging for her help in the time of trouble. Then he cast the bone into a fire. The Bright Aspect of The Goddess could be made manifest through fire. But when he drew the bone out again, there were no cracks on it and the message was erased. No answers because there was no one to answer. By that he knew that The Goddess was dead.”
“But where did The Bones come from?”
“That, young man, is a holy mystery, which only I may know. I can’t tell even you. Now you are dismissed.”
Another year passed. The manner of the visits began to change. Ginna was brought in secret to The Guardian, and told not to speak of what went on. So he confided only in Amaedig.
It was during his eighth year that he was ushered into the private chambers of Tharanodeth and he found The Guardian dressed in heavy shoes and a travel cloak, with a staff in his hand.
“We are going somewhere,” the old man said. “We are going now, while I can still make the journey.”
Ginna’s heart leapt. So far in his life he had never been beyond the walls of the palace, and there was much within those walls he had never seen. Beyond the palace there was the lower city, beyond that—
He could not imagine what was beyond that. He had seen a little, but only from windows. It was very far away. So were the stars.
It was after midnight then, well into the stillest hours of the night Ginna no longer dressed in fine clothes to visit The Guardian, and he was in his usual plain tunic, and without shoes. He was not ready for any journey, but he went. Tharanodeth took him down a long, winding staircase, through a secret passage, until they had descended for so long he was sure they were at the center of the Earth.
The stone floor was intensely cold beneath his feet. Damp slime squished between his toes. Then the floor ended and there was only rough stone. He trod gingerly.
“Get up on my back,” said The Guardian. “I’ll carry you.”
He did, and the old man staggered and let out an “oompf!” but he carried him for miles. Once Tharanodeth looked up at the dripping stalactites and said, “We are no longer in the palace, but underneath the city itself.” Then the way sloped down sharply. “We are at the heart of the mountain,” he said. A long while afterwards, as they began to move up again, he said, “Now we are just barely in sight of Ai Hanlo. We are well beyond the walls.”
It was still dark when they emerged into the open air beneath the stars. The moon was bright and nearly full, and the old man pointed to the west, where it was nearing the horizon.
There stood a mountain revealed in the moonlight, surrounded by barren foothills and topped with crags and sheer cliffs. But all over the mountain, like ivy growing on it, were towers and walls, terrace after terrace of tiny houses, more walls ringed with towers from which pennons flew, and at the foot of the mountain still more levels of houses with a thicker wall encompassing the whole. Two huge gates were visible. Atop each tower, spread all the way up the mountain, watch-lights