Glory Season

“Nope.”

“It must be too short. Wait a minute.” With a sigh, she pulled in the cord. Judging from Brod’s ragged- sounding voice, he wouldn’t be a good bet to make the same climb she had, unassisted. There was no choice, then. Fumbling at the catches with her bruised fingers, she unbuttoned her trousers and slid them off, over her deck shoes. Tying one leg to the rope with two half-hitches, she also knotted a loop at the far end of the other leg, then dropped everything over the side again. There was a gratifying muffled sound of fabric striking someone’s head.

“Ow. Thanks,” Brod responded.

“You’re welcome. Can you slip one arm through the loop, up to your shoulder?”

He grunted. “Barely. Now what?”

“Make sure it’s snug. Here goes.” Carefully, step by step, Maia instructed Brod where to find the first foothold. She heard him hiss in pain, and recalled that his cord sandals had been in worse shape than her shoes, unfit for tackling knife-edge barnacles. He didn’t complain, though. Maia braced herself and hauled on the rope— not so much to lift the youth as steady him. To lend stability and confidence as he moved shakily from foothold to handhold, one at a time.

It seemed to last far longer than her own laborious ascent. Maia’s abused muscles quivered worse than ever by the time his huffing gasps came near. Somehow, drawing on reserves, she kept tension in the rope until Brod finally surged over the ledge in one gasping heave, landing halfway on top of her. In exhaustion they lay that way for some time, heartbeats pounding chest to chest, each breathing the other’s ragged exhalations, each tasting a salty patch of the other’s skin.

We must stop meeting like this, thought a distant, wry part of her. Still, it’s more than most women get out of a man, this time of year. To Maia’s surprise, his weight felt pleasant, in a strange, unanticipated way.

“Uh… sorry,” Brod said as he rolled off. “And thanks for saving my life.”

“It’s no more’n you did for us on the ketch, this morning,” she replied, covering embarrassment. “Though I guess by now that was yesterday.”

“Yesterday.” He paused to ponder, then abruptly shouted. “Hey, look at that!”

Maia sat up, puzzled. Since she couldn’t see Brod well enough to make out where he pointed, she began scanning on her own, and eventually found something amid the awful gloom. Opposite their ledge, about forty degrees higher toward the zenith, she made out a delicate glitter of—she counted—five beautiful stars.

I believe it’s part of the Hearth…

Abruptly reminded, Maia grasped along her left arm and sighed in relief when she found her forgotten sextant, still encased within the scratched but intact leather cover. It’s probably ruined. But it’s mine. The only thing that’s mine.

“So, Madam Navigator,” Brod asked. “Can you tell from those stars just where we are?”

Maia shook her head seriously. “Too little data. Besides, we know where we are. If there were more to see, I might be able to tell the time—”

She cut short, tensing as Brod laughed aloud. Then, noting only affection in his gentle teasing, Maia relaxed. She laughed, too, letting go as the fact sank in that they would live awhile longer, to struggle on. The reavers hadn’t won, not yet. And Renna was nearby.

Brod lay back alongside her, sharing warmth as they watched their sole, tiny window on the universe. Stratos turned slowly beneath them, and there passed a parade of brief, stellar performances. Together, they feasted on a show neither had expected ever to see again.

* * *

By day, the cave seemed less mysterious… and far more so.

Less, because dawn’s filtered light revealed outlines that had seemed at once both limitless and stifling in pitch darkness. A mountain of rubble blocked what had been a generous cave entrance. Sunlight and ocean tides streamed through narrow, jagged gaps in the avalanche, beyond which the two escapees made out a new, foamy reef, created by the recent barrage.

There would be no escape the way they’d arrived; that much was clear.

Increased mystery came associated with both hope and frustration. Soon after awakening to the new day, Maia got up and followed the ledge to its far end, where it joined a set of stairs chiseled deep into the cave wall. At the top there was another landing, cut even deeper, which terminated in a massive door, over three meters wide.

At least she thought it was a door. It seemed the place for one. A door was desperately called for at this point.

Only it looked more like a piece of sculpture. Several score hexagonal plates lay upon a broad, smooth, vertical surface made of some obdurate, blood-colored, impervious alloy.

Impervious because others had apparently tried to break through, in the past. Wherever a crack or chink hinted at separable parts, Maia noticed burnished edges where someone must have tried prying away, probably with wedges or crowbars, and succeeded only in rubbing off a layer of tarnish. Soot-stained areas told where fire had been used, presumably in efforts to weaken the metal, and striated patches showed signs of acid-etching—all to no avail.

“Here are your pants,” Brod said, coming up from behind, startling Maia from her intense inspection. “I thought you might want them,” he added nonchalantly.

“Oh, thanks,” she replied, taking the trousers and moving aside to slip them on. They were ripped in too many places to count, and hardly seemed worth the effort.

Still, she felt abashed without them, last night’s fatigued intimacy notwithstanding.

While struggling into the pants, gingerly avoiding her worst cuts and contusions, Maia noticed that her arms were pale once more, as well as what hair she could pull into view. Without a mirror, she couldn’t be sure, but recent multiple dunkings appeared to have washed out the effects of Leie’s makeshift dye job.

Meanwhile Brod perused the array of six-sided plates, some clustered and touching, some standing apart, many of them embellished with symbols of animals, objects, or geometric forms. The youth seemed oblivious to his physical condition, though under his torn shirt Maia saw too many scratches and abrasions to count. He moved with a limp, favoring the heels. Looking back the way he had come, she saw specks of blood on the floor, left by wounds on his feet. Maia deliberately avoided cataloging her own injuries, though no doubt she looked much the same.

It had been quite a night, spent listening to tides surge ever closer, wondering if the assumed “high-water mark” meant anything when three moons lay in the same part of the sky. Surges of air pressure had made them yawn repeatedly to relieve their abused ears. The shelf grew slippery from spray. For what felt like hours, the two summerlings held onto each other as waves had lapped near, hunting them with fingers of spume…

“I can’t even figure what the thing’s made of,” Brod said, peering closely at the mysterious barrier. “You have any idea what it’s for?”

“Yeah, I think. I’m afraid so.”

He looked at her as she returned. Maia spread her arms before the metal wall. “I’ve seen this kind of thing before,” she told her companion. “It’s a puzzle.”

“A puzzle?”

“Mm. One apparently so hard that lots of folks tried cheating, and failed.”

“A puzzle,” he repeated, mulling the concept.

“One with a big prize for solving it, I imagine.” “Oh yeah?” Brod’s eyes lit. “What prize do you think?”

Maia stepped back a couple of paces, tilting her head to look at the elaborate portal from another angle. “I couldn’t say what the others were after,” she said in a low voice. “But our goal’s simple. We must solve this … or die.”

* * *

There had been another riddle wall once, a long time ago. That one hadn’t been made of strange metal,