Selene inhaled and exhaled deeply. The air of Fenwinter was breathable, but the oxygen levels were a little lower than she'd have preferred, especially so high up in the mountains. If she exerted herself, it made stars dance in front of her right eye. Her left eye's emulation, she noted wryly, didn't bother. Still, at least the air was sweet, devoid of pollutant particulates: one effect of the elimination of the planet's technologically-advanced culture.
The cliff face they were staring at lay on the far side of a deep cleft in the local geography through which, far below, a silver river snaked. The line of the cliff face opposite ended in another remarkable feature: a lone spike of rock, pushing high into the atmosphere. They'd seen it as they descended on the Dragon; the very top of the spike was transatmospheric, puncturing the upper layers of the thin stratosphere to touch the lower reaches of space. It was, so far as she knew, entirely natural, left over from a period of extreme vulcanism and geological activity.
The most incredible feature of the peak, however, wasn't its height, but the flight of steps carved into its side – and the platform on top of the mountain that the steps led to. According to the datastores, the high stairway had been carved in antiquity. It had to have been a monumental effort, given the increasingly tenuous atmosphere and the hardness of the igneous rock. The stairway zig-zagged upwards for a distance of twelve kilometres. By zooming in, she could pick out that the lower steps were worn down by the passage of many feet. Erosion was reduced on the steps at higher altitudes, but then it picked up again because of the increasing amount of solar radiation hitting the rock there.
It was called Amorang, the name translating to something like sun shard. Traditionally, people on Fenwinter made a pilgrimage to it at various turning-points in their lives: becoming an adult, marrying, having children, reaching the end of their working life, or just when they felt they needed to put themselves back in touch with the infinite. The aim was to climb as many steps as possible; there were numerous stations set up the side of the peak, each with its own spiritual significance. To make the journey to the peak at all was considered auspicious, but the higher you went, the more propitious it became.
Most religions on Fenwinter were multitheistic, but they orbited around a central deity known only as the Xi, the Faceless God. Xi gazed blindly over her creation, treating hardship and joy, sorrow and celebration with equal acceptance. It was a stoical, peaceable tradition that emphasised humility. High, high up at the peak of Amorang was a place where the face of Xi was said to be visible – except that the carving was blank. Either it had never been there, or it had eroded away. Whether that was the origin of the faceless god tradition, or whether the uncarved face was deliberate, the archives didn't tell.
Selene shielded her gaze with her hand as she peered up at the peak. “It's incredible anyone would attempt the journey up those steps. The effort of it, the devotion required: I don't get it. Reaching the pinnacle is basically impossible. They had to know that. I can only assume the atmosphere extended farther up when the steps were carved.”
“Sometimes the journey is the point, not the destination,” Ondo said.
“You're talking about your path through the stars again, aren't you?”
He smiled to himself but didn't reply.
Surtr marched over to meet them, weaving between the piles of debris and rusting components that were strewn around the abandoned site. An explosion had ripped through the spaceport at some point, destroying much of it. Fortunately, many of the facilities that they needed had survived in underground bunkers and blast-shielded lander docks.
The Aetheral said, “The scans are proceeding well. Eb and I have isolated all of the core systems and we are now exposing them to full diagnostic assay.”
“How many filaments of the incursion bug did you find?”
“There were three in total: two trying to burrow into the core and then the one in cartography. We have eliminated all of them.”
“There could be more.”
“If there are, Eb will find them. The ship will be offline for six hours. In that time, I would like to explore this world more widely.”
“You would?” She wondered why it wanted to do that. But then, she recalled her visit to Migdala, the first other world that she'd stood upon. She didn't need to be Hessia to see that a sense of wonder was flowing through Surtr. The Aetheral had been utterly isolated over its lonely millennia, and now everything was available to it. She got it. The entity deserved to know more about what was going on.
“Are you needed for anything here?” she asked.
“We have everything in place; we can only wait for the deep scans to complete.”
She'd watched the Aetheral operating; it could move at a dazzling speed when it needed to, flitting between rooms and manipulating objects so rapidly that she could only just keep up with her augmented vision. In the end, she and Ondo had stopped trying to help, and had left it and Eb to strip down the Dragon and prepare the ship for its analysis.
“How quickly can we get everything working again if we need to?” she asked.
“Two hours. So far there is no sign of any Concordance activity in the system. If they do show up, we may have to abandon the Radiant Dragon and flee on my ship. It can get here within an hour, ahead of any Concordance vessels, and we've kept the Dragon's lander primed and ready to fly if we need it.”
“We need to strip the lander down, too.”
“That has already been completed.”
“How are you coping with being separated from your ship?”
Surtr had explained that it was tied closely to its vessel in ways that were fundamental to its nature and impossible
