Page 76 of City of Stone and Silence

Questions start to rise in my mind when, after passing through a maze of corridors, we leave the great ziggurat altogether. It’s just past noon, and the sun beats down brutally on the western face of the stone building, though none of the monks seem uncomfortable.

“The trial is outside?” I ask our escort.

She nods. “It is not far. An hour’s walk.”

“An hour?” I look at Meroe, who shrugs and mouths, Don’t ask me.

Wherever we’re going, then, it’s well away from the ziggurat. And apparently we won’t be going alone, either. A good thirty monks fall in behind us, loping across the forest floor in studied silence. I wonder if they’re an honor guard, or watchmen to make sure I don’t change my mind. Maybe both.

We walk almost due west, which surprises me as well. The Minders’ great ziggurat is the westernmost of the three, so we’re headed away from the center of the ancient city. The forest quickly gives way to more fields, then a rocky scrubland. The monks keep up a steady pace, though we’re all sweating in the sun.

Then the light starts to change. At first I’m sure I’m imagining it. Shadows blur, as if the sun were obscured by thick clouds, though it still hangs over us as bright as ever. Ahead, the color of the sky changes, shifting from deep blue to a washed-out gray. And the Eddica currents, ever-present in the Harbor, are closer to the surface here. I can feel them under strain, creaking like the timbers of a house in a windstorm.

In the distance, something gleams bright. I can’t quite wrap my mind around what I’m looking at, but Meroe gets it.

“It’s the ice,” she whispers, sounding awed.

I remember the Harbor, seen from the outside: a gray dome, carved out from a continent of ice and snow. Now we’re approaching the same barrier, from the inside. The monks have brought us to the edge of the world.

Gragant and Harak are waiting only a few yards from the barrier. It’s almost invisible up close, like fog, a translucent gray smear in the air. Just beyond it, the ground is covered in snow, only a few inches right at the border but deepening rapidly. Huge chunks of ice gleam in the sun, jutting out of the soft whiteness like bones poking up through soil. Farther off, great hills rise, then mountains, blued by distance.

For a moment, I find myself shocked into silence. It’s both the scale of the ice—enough ice to bury Kahnzoka a hundred times over—and the corresponding scale of what the ancients have built. I’d thought that Soliton was a wonder, a ship faster than anything afloat and bigger than a mountain, metal-hulled and unstoppable. The Harbor, by contrast, seemed like a city—ancient and strange, obviously, but still something on a mortal scale. Now, for the first time, I realize that of the two, the Harbor is an incomparably more spectacular demonstration of power. To take that blasted arctic wasteland and turn it into a tropical jungle—well, it’s no wonder that the Minders saw the hand of their god in it.

“Looks pretty rotting cold,” Zarun says, and shivers.

“Deepwalker,” Gragant says, coming over to us. “I’m sorry to leave your escort to others. As your opponent, there are certain rituals I needed to attend to.”

“I understand,” I say, though I’m not sure I do. “Is this always where you have your trials?”

He nods. “It is a reminder of what the Divine Being has given us. Where we would be, if not for divine favor.”

“It’s impressive.” I try for nonchalance. “But it’s a long way to walk for a fight. We could have done this in your training hall.”

Gragant looks at me, perplexed. Then, unexpectedly, he throws back his head and laughs.

I look at Zarun, wondering if I’m missing some cultural context. He shrugs.

“I apologize,” Gragant says, after a moment. “I hadn’t considered things from your perspective. Of course.”

“Of course what?” My eyes narrow. “Are we going to have our duel out on the ice?”

“We’re going out on the ice,” Gragant says. “But we’re not going to fight. Trial by combat? We’re not barbarians.”

Harak is giving me a superior stare, and I can hear mutters and chuckles among the rest of the monks. I fight down an instinctive rush of embarrassment.

“So how am I supposed to prove myself against you in a trial?” I ask.

“Victory in battle is no proof of righteousness,” Gragant says, serene. “The Divine Being demands the perfection of the self, the body and spirit. Demonstrating that will be our trial.” He nods at the border.

“What?” I stare at him. “We just go over there, and…”

“Meditate,” he says. “A perfected spirit can achieve calm, regardless of what storm rages around it.”

“You have got to be rotting kidding me,” I say.

“It is how we have resolved our differences since the beginning,” Gragant says. “In the old country, we used closed rooms heated to boiling, but here the Divine Being has provided the perfect testing ground.”

“So, what? Someone keeps watch to see which of us achieves inner peace first?” My spirits, perfected or not, were falling fast. A fight I could handle—if this was going to be some contest of idiot theology, Gragant could just declare himself the winner.