The Margrave by Catherine Fisher Page B

waving the proceedings on.
    Galen turned back. He faced the relics, his face a mask of shadows. “Soren, Lady of the Leaves. On this, your day, this scholar takes the road that leads down into the dark, through the veins and hollows, through the mindthreads of your world. Come to meet him, lady. Lead him over the Plain of Hunger, through the Barrier of Pain. In the Crucible give him your courage, that he may return safely as one of your sons. Speak your word to him, that he might be transformed.”
    He spread his hands. From each palm a blue thread of energy flickered briefly; it moved among the relics, sparking and cracking with a loudness that made the watchers uneasy, causing the small dials in the octagonal slab to whirl their needles wildly, and the buttons on the cubes to flicker on and off.
    Out of the power, Galen made the seven moons. They hung in the air, huge, over the table, each seeming solid and real, glowing with their individual brilliant lights. Then he turned. “Raffi.”
    There was a wooden couch before the relic table.
    A small cushion lay at its head. For a moment Raffi knew that his limbs were too frozen to move; his bare feet frosted to the floor. But somehow he walked and kneeled down.
    Galen laid both hands on his head. “Take the awen-power,” he said, his voice too quiet for anyone but Raffi to hear. “Make the Journey. Be free. Enter the world.”
    The pain came suddenly. It surged into him, into his head so that he gasped and cried out. It was an agony of power, it burned his veins like inner fire, and as he plummeted into it, it was a darkness that swallowed him, hands that caught him as he fell.
    Gently Galen laid him down on the wooden couch, crossed his arms, placed the cushion under his head. Raffi’s face was white, his eyes closed.
    “How long will it be?” the Sekoi whispered anxiously.
    Galen stood. “A day. Maybe two. He must wake before the third.”
    “And if he doesn’t?”
    The keeper turned and began snuffing out the candles, his hand shaking slightly. “Then we’ll have lost him.”

12
    “I have lost all direction,” Halen murmured. “I am in darkness. I do not know who I am.”
    His hair was long, his nails overgrown.
    Tamar held up the lantern. “I’ve come to find you, brother.”
     
    Book of the Seven Moons
    T HIS WAS WRONG. Something was wrong. He had controlled the Ride, the first mad, headlong flight of his tumbling soul. He had seen, in the misty distance, the Great Tree, rising over the barren plain. For hours, it seemed, he had been stumbling toward it, over this endless scorching desert, where nothing grew, where tiny red lizards ran into holes and the unbearable sands blistered his bare feet. But the Tree was no nearer. If anything, it seemed farther than when he had started, and the sting of flies was tormenting him, and the pain in his chest hurt so much he had had to stop, crouching, reckless with thirst.
    And now, someone was behind him. Standing. A shadow on the sand, long and dark, a cool shade. He wanted to crawl into its darkness. But he kept still, and didn’t look around.
    “Are you hot?” a voice asked gently.
    He nodded.
    “Thirsty?” It was a voice of hisses and crackles; sounds that were dry and scratchy, as if the desert spoke. A croak was all he could make in reply.
    “You could go back. Going back would be the wise thing to do.”
    “No.” His tongue was swollen. It was hard to swallow. “I have to go on.”
    “Then you need this.” A hand reached over his shoulder, a gloved hand, holding a small gilt cup like the one he had drunk from once on Sarres. He grasped after it desperately, but as he took the cup, the glove came too, and he saw the hand. It had seven fingers. Each was long and clawed, with tiny iridescent scales. He turned instantly. No one was there.
    All around him the desert burned, an emptiness of rock, shimmering. It took him a long time, a bitter struggle, before he poured the cup of clear water away into