each wore boots and heavy coats like everyone else, except they were not like everyone else and never had been. They were in the middle of a rapid and fierce conversation, which allowed me to notice them before they noticed me. One of them, a girl, an ancient girl with beautiful black eyes, turned and stared at me with a look of total surprise. “Zianno!” she shouted, then smiled and whispered, “my love.”
It was Opari. Ray Ytuarte sat next to her. Trumoi-Meq, in his tattered navy jacket, sat next to Ray. Sailor sat on the second bench. Zeru-Meq, whom I had not seen since China, sat next to him. They all looked up at once.
“Can this be true?” Sailor asked. His “ghost eye” swirled like the snow outside the station.
I walked the few feet between us and stared down at him, then looked at Opari. Her eyes flashed up at me. “Oh, it’s true, all right,” I said.
Ray said, “Damn, Z!” He moved over next to Sailor and I sat down next to Opari. I took her hand and she laced her fingers in mine. I glanced back at Sailor. “But why are all of you here, Sailor?”
He nodded toward Zeru-Meq and Mowsel. “The three of us were closing in on Susheela the Ninth. We tracked her from New Delhi to Berlin, then to Oslo. We lost her trail here in Voss. She vanished again. Yesterday, Opari and Ray appeared without warning. They were following Zuriaa’s trail and a single clue—an old Meq word —‘Askenfada.’”
“We followed the trail from Reykjavik to Trondheim to Voss,” Opari said.
“We lost it, Z,” Ray added, “right here in this station.”
“Now, why are you here, Zianno?” Sailor asked.
I was just as confused as they were. I looked around the station. “The Fleur-du-Mal lives near here,” I answered. “A hidden cove called ‘Askenfada.’ Geaxi and Nova are there now, waiting for his return.”
“The Fleur-du-Mal has a
“It’s a little more than that.”
Trumoi-Meq leaned forward and grinned, exposing his missing tooth. He looked everyone in the eye, one by one, until he stopped at Zeru-Meq. He said, “It would seem we have a coincidence beyond proportion.”
Sailor interrupted, as if something had just occurred to him. “All five Stones have been together only once since the time of Those-Who-Fled!”
Zeru-Meq turned to Sailor. His bright green eyes sparkled. He was the uncle of the Fleur-du-Mal and the only one among us who knew his true history. “Yes, old one,” he said, then glanced at Mowsel, “and the occasion is no coincidence.”
“What are you saying?” Opari asked.
“Today is the seventh day of December, no?”
“Yes.”
“We have been tricked, Opari, tricked and manipulated into being here for a celebration—a very wicked one, I imagine.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Xanti Otso, my only nephew, bless him, was born on December 7. There is something he wants all of us to see together and he was clever enough to arrange the event on his own birthday. His arrogance is boundless.”
“And his madness,” Sailor said. He was turning the star sapphire around his forefinger in frustration. “What are the intentions and involvement of Susheela the Ninth and Zuriaa in this ridiculous scheme?”
No one said a word. Behind us, the crowd was thinning. I turned and glanced through the windows of the train station. It was still snowing.
Ray broke the silence with the truth. “There’s only one way to find out,” he said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Let’s go to the party!”
Rune was standing near the exit doors, staring out through the windows and peacefully smoking a pipe. His wild, tangled hair seemed to fly out in every direction. I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned and the pipe fell from his mouth. Rune had gotten used to seeing three of us together, but to see me with five others was almost too much for him. Staring each of them in the face, Rune said, “
“We must hurry, Rune,” I told him. “I’ll try to explain later.”
He looked at me and laughed. “There is an explanation?”
“It’s complicated,” I said, then we turned to leave for the docks. The cabin of the fishing boat was cramped, but we managed to fit inside, protected from the wind and cold and snow, which fell all the way to Askenfada.
Rune cut the engines to a low drone as we entered the hidden inlet behind the headlands. Once we passed into the channel between the cliffs, the silence around us became total. Slowly, we cleared the channel and drifted into the secret cove and harbor. Fog and snow made it impossible to see the ring of surrounding mountain peaks, but both valleys were visible.
“Damn,” Ray said. “You’d never know this was here.”
“Precisely,” Zeru-Meq said.
“Is the channel the only entry?” Sailor asked.
“The only entry and the only exit,” I answered.
“I now know why this place carries the name Askenfada,” Mowsel said, amazed by the silent beauty and extreme isolation of the ancient cove. “The Meq have been here long before Xanti Otso.”
“Yes,” Opari said quietly. “I can hear them.”
“No,” Sailor whispered, “not
I glanced at Sailor. It was strange. For a split second, his “ghost eye” had stopped swirling and cleared completely.
Barely audible, Ray said, “Susheela the Ninth.”
Rune stared straight ahead, toward Svein waiting for us on the tiny dock below his farmstead. All of us, all the Meq inside the cabin, stared across the cove to the other side. We looked up the valley toward the shadowy maze of stone and timber structures dotting the hillsides. The complex was almost invisible through the falling snow, but in the greenhouse and in the private residence of the Fleur-du-Mal, the lights were on.
Rune turned and caught us staring. He sensed our concern and unease.
I realized at that moment how completely we had been deceived. The element of surprise was exposed and lost. The irony is that we never had it. The Fleur-du-Mal had it all along. Now he was waiting for us.
Sailor must have been thinking the same thing. “An obvious trap,” he said. “He will be expecting us by water. Is there no other way across?”
“Yes,” I answered, “one—but in the snow and this late in the day, the trip would be impossible.”
Sailor turned the star sapphire on his forefinger round and round and glared at the lights across the cove. “He knew it would be this way. There is no longer any reason for stealth. As Ray said, ‘Let’s go to the party’ and see what this mad child has in mind.”
After docking, we stepped from the fishing boat one by one. Oddly, Svein showed no surprise whatsoever at the number of us. “This way,” he said, “there is warmth inside.” Svein’s voice was the only thing I heard and it cut through the profound stillness surrounding us. Snow fell in large, soft flakes, and our footsteps landed in silence.
Geaxi opened the wide front door, expecting to see me, but not what trailed behind. Once she saw the others, she let out the high, trilling sound she and Opari make when something extraordinary occurs. Even in the frigid cold, the sound gave me chills.
Sailor paused as he passed by Geaxi. The two of them stared at each other without expression. Sailor smiled first. “You seem well, Geaxi.”
“And you, Sailor,” Geaxi said flatly. She turned to go inside before he could see her smile. Opari gave me a wink.
Sailor also stopped when he saw Nova. He noticed the change in her instantly. “Aha!” he said. “It has happened! You once proclaimed or predicted ‘the shift is soon.’ I see clearly, Nova, there has been a shift.” Sailor gave his niece a long and warm embrace, the first time I had seen him do so. Briefly, he introduced her to Zeru- Meq, then said to all of us, “We must talk now.”
Rune and Svein disappeared into the kitchen while we gathered in the living room. In minutes, we were out of our heavy coats, gloves, and caps, standing in a semicircle in front of a crackling fire, warming our hands and
