the bottom of abyss. The murk was thick and frozen, as dense as resin and as cold as death. Atreus started to shiver and felt, absurdly, a ring of goose bumps surrounding his burns. A fiery nettling sank deep into his bones. His broken leg began to throb, and he sensed himself slipping away, aware of his pain yet apart from it.
Yago said something about losing him, and Rishi began to worry about Tarch catching them in the trench. Seema spoke to them both in calm assurance and took their hands, leading the way to the dark band of granite. Atreus's perceptions must have grown hazy and unreliable, for it seemed to him that she simply pressed herself against the face of the cliff and melted inside.
Yago and Rishi followed and gasped, and Atreus's stomach floated up toward his chest, as though he were falling. Seema walked ahead and became the only thing visible in the darkness. Yago and Rishi followed, and the falling sensation continued.
After a time, a golden wheel appeared far below their feet, its scarlet spokes slowing revolving around the glimmering six-pointed star of a snow-flake. As they traveled deeper into the murk, the wheel stayed beneath them, growing larger with each step. The snow-flake began to pulse. As it grew larger, it became apparent that the different triangles inside its star were pulsing randomly, flashing first sapphire, then emerald, ruby, diamond… all the colors of the gems.
Seema continued to walk, and the falling sensation persisted. The wheel grew ever larger, its golden rim spreading outward until it became large enough to encircle them all. The scarlet spokes ceased their spinning, and Atreus grew dizzy, as though he were twirling around. The snow-flake seemed to dissolve, to become nothing but pulsing arrows, each pointing down a different spoke of the wheel.
The wheel became as the basin beneath the Sisters of Serenity. The scarlet spokes grew as long and wide as roads, each pointing off toward a different corner of the compass, and the pulsing triangles became the size of ship decks.
At last Seema stopped walking, and the triangles rejoined, becoming a snow-flake as large as the glacier basin. The wheel's golden rim disappeared somewhere over the horizon, and the scarlet spokes vanished. The dizziness and the falling sensation faded. The air grew tepid and moist, and Atreus stopped shivering. Seema turned toward one of the snow-flake's distant points and spoke a few words in the archaic tongue of her people.
A blue light appeared above the point. Yago and Rishi cried out as their knees buckled. A warm wind began to whip past, and though there was no sensation of movement, the light slowly began to expand, becoming a tiny blue square. What little sense of time Atreus still had vanished completely. They seemed to stand there forever watching the square grow larger, the breeze whipping through their hair, and the musty smell of a cave growing ever stronger in their nostrils. When the square had expanded to the size of a man and they found themselves standing before a shining blue portal, it seemed that only an instant had passed.
Again Seema took the hands of Yago and Rishi. 'You will see many strange things,' she told them. 'Do not release my hand, or you will be lost.'
Seema stepped through the portal. The blue light began to swirl and eddy around her, and her movements grew smooth and slow. Rishi gulped down a deep breath and followed, but Yago stopped at the door and stared wide into the whirling radiance.
Seema said something that did not pass the portal, then opened her mouth wide and drew in a deep breath. A moment later, she exhaled, sending little eddies of current swirling away from her face. She smiled and pulled the ogre's hand. Yago took a deep breath and allowed himself to be drawn forward. As they passed through the door, Atreus felt liquid pressure all around him. The watery warmth made his burns itch, and he watched from somewhere outside himself as his mouth opened to groan. His heart began to pound in fear, but the strange fluid that rushed down into his lungs could not have been water. Instead of coughing or choking, he merely moaned. It was a strange, gurgling sound that reminded him of the chortling call of flying cranes.
They seemed to be in some sort of strange underwater labyrinth made of undulating weeds and rocky ledges, with no surface that Atreus could see. Seema started forward, leading the way across the sandy bottom as though she had walked the maze a thousand times. Atreus did not even try to keep track of their route. The agony caused by the warm water more than bridged the gap between his body and spirit. He could think of nothing but his anguish, so it was enough for him that they seemed to be heading uphill.
After a time, they climbed high enough that they began to see the crests of the maze walls looming above their heads. There were fish up there, swimming back and forth and gobbling each other up as only fish can do, but none of them ever seemed to drift down into the corridors of the watery labyrinth. Atreus thought this strange, until Yago finally broke the surface and emerged into the scorching hot air.
Atreus's body erupted into such anguish that he could no longer tell whether he was above it or in it. He simply opened his mouth and let out a bellow that sent the air-swimming fish wiggling off into the distant corners of the atmosphere. After that, he lost all track of his surroundings. He barely noticed the pools of burning water in which Seema cooled his wounds, or the billowing thunderclouds that rolled along the floor and stabbed up into the darkness with bolts of lightning, or the constant tolling of the wind chimes in the still hot air. All these, Atreus dismissed as fever delirium, so when they stepped through a dark portal and found themselves standing on a rocky ledge two miles above the floor of a broad, verdant basin, his first thought was that he was still hallucinating.
A gentle drizzle was wafting down from a mottled blue sky that might have been ice as easily as clouds. The first shadows of purple twilight were stealing down the sheer faces of the basin's granite walls. Here and there, a tongue of blue ice hung high on a cliff, creeping out from beneath the edges of the blotchy sky to send a long horsetail waterfall cascading toward the valley floor. The silvery ribbons turned to mist after a thousand feet or so, vanishing into the empty air long before they reached the slopes at the base of the cliffs.
The slopes themselves were mottled in deep woods and emerald meadows, flecked with thatch-roofed hamlets and crude stock sheds. A glistening web of narrow streams spilled down into the center of the valley, where a broad clear river meandered through several miles of neat green barley fields, disappearing over the edge of the basin into a deep, vast valley beyond.
'Welcome to my home,' Seema said, at last releasing the hands of her companions. 'Welcome to Langdarma.'
This was too much for Atreus. Too weary and pained to rejoice, he simply allowed himself to believe what he saw, to accept the truth of Seema's words and not consider their implications, to embrace the lushness and the warmth of the place and not question whether it was real or hallucination.
He experienced a strange calm then, a peace that flowed up and through him, connecting him to the beauty below in some enigmatic way he could never understand. He felt himself return to his anguished body. His pain washed over him like running water, sank into his flesh like the bright warmth of the sun and filled his chest like salty sea air. This time he did not fight it. He embraced his agony as a part of himself, welcomed it as the scream of life still raging strong inside him, and then he felt the fear leave. His body released its hold on his spirit, now confident that he would not allow the pain to chase him away, and he saw the clouds of oblivion rise up to carry him into the world of numbness and rest.
Later, Atreus's slumber was invaded by a male voice much too dulcet to belong to his companions. For a time, he dreamed that he was back in the Church of Beauty, listening to a perfectly pitched tenor sing the goddess's praises. Never had he heard such a pure sound, untainted by the slightest tinge of coarseness or the faintest hint of hollowness. It was as lyrical as silk and smooth as a poem, and Atreus felt blessed just to hear it in a dream.
As Atreus grew aware of the bitter reek of a butter lamp, he began to realize he was not dreaming. The voice was real, coming from someplace down beyond his feet. Seema was answering, apprehensive and apologetic, her own sweet voice sounding twittery and flutey by comparison. As Atreus struggled to wakefulness, his pain began to return, though not as terrible as before. He could feel a piece of chiffon covering the burns on his upper body, and Seema's warm hand was smearing a watery ointment over his raw and naked legs.
An embarrassing thought flashed through Atreus's mind, snapping him instantly to full consciousness. His eyes popped open, and he found himself staring at the ceiling planks of a small stone hut. He was lying on a straw-covered pallet, with a flickering butter lamp resting on a rough-hewn table beside him. The room was remarkably warm, at least compared to the snow caves in which they had been sleeping the last few nights, and he could hear a fire crackling in a hearth somewhere nearby.
Atreus raised his head and glanced down the length of his body, discovering that his worst fears were true. He lay hideously naked from the waist down, with his scorched flesh and broken leg, crooked hips and ugly ogre-
