“I am already outcast and imprisoned,” he said. “What more can he do?”
The Guildmaster’s face darkened. “Do not take these things lightly. The Teacher’s decision is final, but even he is not without mercy.” The old man leaned in, dropping his voice. “For once in your life, Heinricht, bow your stubborn head and ask the Teacher’s forgiveness. Let me welcome my son home once again.”
Slorn met the Guildmaster’s gaze. “I will do what I have to, father. Just as I always have.”
Miranda’s eyebrows shot up, but before she could comment, the Guildmaster made a sharp gesture and the floor below their feet began to move. She scrambled for balance as the entire circle of stone began to rise upward, taking them with it. She caught one last glimpse of the Guildmaster as the old man’s face fell, collapsing from anger to a look of deep sadness. Then he was gone, hidden by the rim of the rising stone pillar.
She turned to Slorn. “Father?”
“Yes,” Slorn said.
She gave him a look of disbelief. “Your own father locked you up?”
“He is Guildmaster first,” Slorn said. “There will be those among the Shapers who will say he is being too lenient with me, letting me see the Teacher. I am an oath breaker, after all. Shapers are sworn to the Mountain for life, but we ran when Nivel became a demonseed. It doesn’t matter that they would have killed her if we stayed; we both broke our oath as Shapers.”
Miranda folded her arms across her chest. “You could have told me.”
“I could have,” Slorn said. “I could have told you a lot of things, but anything I told you in the cell I would also have told the Teacher.”
“What do you mean?” Miranda said. “There was no one there but us.”
“This is the Shaper Mountain,” Slorn said. “It is always listening.”
Miranda frowned. “Who is the Teacher, then?”
“You’ll know when you see him,” Slorn said.
Miranda bit her lip. She was getting pretty sick of these half answers, but Slorn would say nothing more. In the end, all she could do was watch in silence as the stone above them lifted away, and the rising pillar vanished into the hall’s ceiling with a soft scrape.
They were in another vertical tunnel. Glowing stone surrounded them on all sides, filling the air with cold, white light. The pillar of stone under their feet seemed to have no end. It rose slowly, pushing them farther and farther up into the mountain. Miranda arched her neck, trying to see where they were going, but she saw nothing except the endless white. Still, things were changing. The air was growing colder and thinner, the light brighter.
Just as Miranda was starting to feel light-headed, the platform began to slow. Stone scraped overhead and the white walls of the tunnel fell away, leaving them standing in a brilliant white glare. Miranda covered her face, blinking furiously. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the brilliance, and she saw that they were standing in another enormous, white chamber.
It was smaller than the Hall of the Shapers below, but there were no pillars here, no supports of any kind. Just a perfect circle of stone, white and brilliant as the morning sun on fresh snow, and nothing else.
“There’s no one here,” Miranda whispered. “I thought you said we were going to see the Teacher.”
“Just wait,” Slorn said. “He likes to make an entrance.”
Miranda didn’t see how. The white chamber had no doors save for the stone platform they were standing on. But as she opened her mouth to ask Slorn what he meant, the light went out.
She gasped and nearly fell into Gin. For a heartbeat, the chamber was pitch black. And then, as suddenly as it had vanished, light returned, and everything changed.
Color flooded the walls, a wave of brilliant green, brown, and blue that washed over the stone, leaving mountains, forests, and sky in its wake. The floor underfoot came alive with pinks and yellows, blues, whites, and soft greens, all flowing together in a wash before separating out into thousands of flowers. Suddenly, they were standing in a high mountain field. A stream sprung to life a few feet from Gin’s tail, bouncing merrily down a bed of smooth white stones. Mountains loomed in the distance, their peaks taller than any Miranda had ever seen. Clouds drifted across the perfectly blue sky overhead, and the bright sunlight turned her hair fiery red, but when she held her hands up to the light, there was no warmth in it. The rushing stream threw off no spray and, despite the waving flowers under her feet, she could still feel the cold stone through the soles of her boots.
She looked at Slorn for some explanation, but he was staring across the valley at the mountains beyond. Or, rather, at the one mountain that rose above all others. Almost half again as tall as the next tallest peak, the Shaper Mountain stood before them in all its majesty. Its summit scraped the clear blue sky like a white knife. Its snowy slope was the same as Miranda had seen from Knife’s Pass, but there was no sign of the windows and balconies of the Shapers, nor was there any sign of Knife’s Pass itself. The road should have been directly below them, but it wasn’t. The ravine and the bridge were also missing, leaving the smaller mountains whole and uncut all the way to the Shaper Mountain’s feet. The little mountains were dotted with high mountain meadows just like the one they stood in, little verdant patches, peaceful and blooming in the golden sunlight.
Miranda blinked and turned to Slorn, waiting for some sort of explanation, but Slorn said nothing. He just stood there, staring at the sky, his brown bear eyes open as wide as they could go. Frowning, she turned to Gin, but the ghosthound wasn’t any better. He was crouched at her feet as close to her as he could get, his orange eyes wide as dinner plates.
“Gin?” she whispered.
The dog didn’t even look at her. “Can’t you see it, Miranda?”
She frowned. “What?”
Next to her, Slorn took a shuddering breath. “I thought… I mean, I always suspected, but I never imagined it would be so large. So… endless.”
“What?” Miranda asked again, growing supremely annoyed.
“The world,” a deep voice rumbled. “Or what it was.”
Miranda jumped before she could stop herself. The voice came from under her feet, vibrating up through her legs from the stone below the fluttering illusion of flowers. Beside her, Gin lowered his head with a soft whine.
“Tell me your names.” The words buzzed through Miranda’s body, more vibration than sound, but they carried an authority she could feel in her bones.
“Teacher,” Slorn said. “I am Heinricht Slorn.”
“I know who you are,” the mountain said, for Miranda knew it could be no other. “I remember all my children, even the ones who desert me. I am eager to hear what excuses you’ve thought up to convince me to take you back, but for now, tell me, who is this woman?”
Miranda stepped forward. “I am Miranda Lyonette, a Spiritualist of the Spirit Court. This is Gin, my—”
“I do not need the lesser spirits’ names,” the mountain rumbled dismissively. “They know their place. But I am curious as to how the core of a great water spirit came to live inside a human. Mellinor, can you still speak?”
“I can.”
Miranda steeled herself as Mellinor’s spirit surged forward, rising in a plume of deep blue water from her fingers, which she held out for him.
“I see you have escaped your prison,” the mountain said.
The water dipped in a bow. “With Miranda’s assistance, great mountain.”
“A strange arrangement, to be sure,” the mountain said. “But then, you water spirits always did flow down the easiest route.”
“I did what I had to,” Mellinor said.
The meadow flickered as the mountain laughed. “As do we all, inland sea, as do we all. I am satisfied. You may return to your human shore.”
The water retreated, and Mellinor flowed back into Miranda, who lowered her arm cautiously. Something odd was going on, besides the obvious. Mellinor was being surprisingly deferential. Her sea spirit wasn’t rude, but he was a Great Spirit and he didn’t tend to let others forget that. This meekness was very out of character. Perhaps it was because the mountain was so much bigger than Mellinor’s diminished form? But he’d shown no such deference to the West Wind.
“Now,” the mountain said. “To business. Why have you come home, Heinricht? Or do I call you Heinricht
