Chapter 18
CHAPTER 18
T he spectre of Cosmo’s brother loomed over them as they ascended the mountain, and for the first time Leofric truly imagined what must be going on in Cosmo’s head as they moved closer and closer to its apex. He had the air of one approaching a gallows, which Leofric supposed he could understand—he couldn’t pretend he’d be perfectly brave and stoic if he was marching into the lair of a literal god who’d tried to kill him once before. Even Leofric had to remind himself often that Kryos was safely asleep, imprisoned in a statue back in Papia, and he wasn’t going to leap out from behind a tree and freeze them both to death.
It had Leofric worried, fearful that Cosmo would turn from him again, from Auro, that Cosmo would run. But he did not. He was plainly made of sterner stuff than Leofric had thought, which left him feeling guilty at how harshly he’d judged Cosmo in the past. There were no more kisses, but there were also no more shouting matches, and Cosmo returned to his arms at night. That had to be a victory.
It took about two days before they reached a place that gave Cosmo pause. It seemed unremarkable to Leofric’s eyes, no different than half a dozen other outcroppings of rock they’d left behind. “Here,” said Cosmo, and his voice had gone hoarse and strange. “My brother has been here.”
There was a plateau of sorts, a flat swathe of earth of even, packed earth. In the center of that clearing, there sat a slab of stone, grey and worn smooth, a near perfect circle. It was as if someone had carved it, but judging by the edges it had been worn into this shape by centuries of wind and storms. Cosmo rested a trembling hand upon the stone, feeling for something. His eyes were far away, staring at something only he could see. For his part, Leofric took a moment to look out over the hills and valleys and forests, he could see well into the northern deserts of Sokol stretching out before him. From here, the distance seemed small, like he could take a few steps and be home.
“There is a cavern here,” Cosmo observed from behind him, and Leofric was relieved to hear his voice had returned to its normal register.
When he turned, he saw Cosmo standing a bit taller, a bit straighter in the spine. It made sense. The fear before a battle was the worst sort of fear: the paralysis invoked by the unknown. Once you faced the foe, it was easier. Not easy, perhaps, but easier. The way forward was clear, at the very least.
Overall, Leofric approved of the place for a camp. It was easily defensible, sheltered, with access to water. They hobbled the horses in a spot outside, sheltered enough from the wind, with enough room for them to graze. A spring-fed pool would see them well watered while they remained here. When he and Cosmo entered the cavern itself, it was apparent at once that someone had been living there. Not in the last few months, perhaps, but recently enough. By the mouth of the cavern, banked carefully against the wall, stood a circle of stones stacked carefully to make a hearth. The top layer of ashes within could not be more than a year old, if Leofric were any judge. To the side was a makeshift rack, where one could hang one’s cloak, or perhaps weapons.
And, near the fire, a hard stone bed, piled high with furs. Leofric set about building a fire in the existing hearth, wondering if he were angering the god of winter by depleting his store of firewood. He’d have to remember to replace it before they left. Then, he found himself wondering why such a man would even need firewood. But trying to find reason in the actions of gods was something he didn’t think mortals were meant to do.
Cosmo felt a bit more settled now that they’d actually arrived . It was time to do, and the anticipation of this quest was something that he could now confidently say felt way worse than actually facing the prospect of completing it.
Leofric seemed to sense something of what went on in Cosmo’s head. He was intuitive, to say the least. Now that Cosmo had some time to calm down and gather himself, he was embarrassed at how he’d behaved on their final leg of the journey. As they settled into the cave that so clearly belonged to Kryos, Leofric busied himself with making their camp, giving Cosmo some space, but remaining nearby, should he be needed. Cosmo was grateful for his presence now, even disregarding the heated kisses they’d shared and the nights they spent tangled around each other.
It was late afternoon. Cosmo returned to the little plateau outside the cave, and the peculiar slab of rock that was too perfect to be anything but intentional. He could feel Kryos’s presence in the stone. The edges had been worn away by the fury of his grace, he knew at a glance. Hundreds, if not thousands, of years of wind had been harnessed to shape it into something like… “a stage,” Cosmo thought, curiously. He smiled. That was just like Kryos. He would never do his work under the scrutiny of others, but he would afford it all the grandeur as if he performed for an audience. Cosmo couldn’t say what possessed him to climb atop the stone, to sit cross-legged at its center and tilt his face toward the sky.
Some would guess that summer was an easy season to manage. No storms, no cold, hardly any rain. But summer felt easy because Cosmo made it easy. The world and the beings that walked it needed a period of ease, to enjoy the sun shining on their faces, to let their crops ripen and bear fruit. To watch their children playing, to find a lover, to begin a family. To be fat and healthy and warm. Summer was for them, and it was for Cosmo to ensure the earth churned on as it should while its inhabitants fed and bred and played. While he sat upon the stage that had so plainly been his brother’s, Cosmo wondered how Kryos felt when sitting here to perform his works.
Kryos had always been drawn to places like this. Remote, wild. Untamed, like he was. Cosmo could understand that. He felt close to Kryos, sitting here. Close in a way that was safe. Close in a way that made him believe, even for a moment, that Auro might have been right. That the four of them could heal everything that had happened between them, that they could find a way to grieve for Ozias together, and move past his loss after four hundred years of mourning.
When he’d made certain everything hummed along as it should, Cosmo stood and stretched his limbs, shaking some feeling into them. He hadn’t realized how long he’d been sitting there. The sunset before him was staggering. Kryos looked at this every day, when he was awake. Just as Cosmo looked at it now.
Inside the cave, he found Leofric plucking the feathers from a goose. “Where did that come from?” He asked.
Leofric smiled. “I walked right past you, to go hunt. And again, to return.”
“Apologies,” said Cosmo. “I was…”
“Very focused,” said Leofric. He hesitated. “It was nice to see.”
A peculiar sort of comment, but it made Cosmo tingle head to toe, pleased. “Were you planning on cooking that?”
“Well, I was going to hold off a bit longer,” he said. “I’ve grown sick of watching the faces you make when you try to force down something I’ve made.”
“You’re sick of my face?” Cosmo teased, with an exaggerated pout.
Leofric didn’t look up, but he froze. His cheeks burned and he said, “Never.”
Cosmo prepared the bird once Leofric had cleaned it. He crisped it on the fire, basted with honey and dried peppers. A spicy dish to make one’s eyes water, but Leofric ate every bite with gusto. It was based on a Sokolian dish, and Cosmo wondered if it made him think of home, of his brother, of his family.
When Cosmo finished his own portion, he said, “Is there anything you can tell me of Auro’s own…trial?”
Leofric tossed a wing bone into the fire and considered this. “Not really, I’m afraid,” he said. “His Highness and Auro kept most of that between themselves. I was far more occupied with the immediate aftermath.”
Cosmo twisted his fingers in his lap, nervous to ask the question that had been weighing so heavily on his mind.
“What is it?” Leofric asked him.
He was far too perceptive, damn the man. Cosmo looked at him, hoping Leofric would understand how afraid he felt, how raw. He didn’t want Leofric to think him a coward. But all the same, he had to ask. “Do you think…was it…dangerous?”
Leofric’s face softened. He reached across the distance between them and squeezed Cosmo’s shoulder, his hand heavy and warm. “I believe it could have been,” he said honestly. “But I think it was more like a test of endurance, and fortitude, than it was something that would actually have harmed him.”
“I do not do so well with tests,” said Cosmo.
“You will with this one,” said Leofric.
Cosmo startled. “You think?”
“I know. ”
“How?”
Leofric gave his shoulder another squeeze. “I have faith.”
Cosmo could have made a joke, could have made a thousand, but instead he seized the hand upon his shoulder, brought it to its lips, and kissed it. No more was said. Once they had cleared away the remnants of their dinner, Cosmo stood. “I will begin my search tonight.”
Leofric balked a bit at that. “So soon?”
“It is the reason we are here, is it not? Why wait?” Cosmo said. “I can feel the weight of this task upon my shoulders, and I would see it lifted.”
Leofric stood as well. “I can accompany you,” he said.
Cosmo smiled, stepped in close to offer him a soft kiss. “Unfortunately, I believe this is a path I must tread alone.”
Leofric clenched his jaw, and Cosmo could see uncertainty in his eyes, but he nodded. “I will await you,” he said. “Right here.”
Cosmo turned his back and approached the rear of the cave. He could not say precisely what filled him with urgency, except now that he was actually upon the mountain, it was as if he could feel the presence of his brothers. Kryos, yes, of course—but the others too, as if they all lingered with bated breath to watch Cosmo complete his trial. As Cosmo left the light of his and Leofric’s fire behind, he felt as though his brothers walked with him.
He let his instinct guide him, or perhaps it was his grace, calling out to theirs. Or theirs to his maybe, he did not know. It grew dark toward the rear of the cavern in which he and Leofric made their camp, but Cosmo’s night eyes adjusted swiftly, as they always had. Strangely enough, he was not afraid. He felt around the rear wall of the cavern, and found a cleft of rock that concealed a narrow passage.
Cosmo slipped around it, and through the crevice, revealing another chamber. Behind that, another. On and on and on he went. Had he stood mortal, he might have held concern that he would become lost endlessly within the bowels of the mountain, but he was not. This challenge was meant for him to succeed, that was what Auro had said. Kyros’s grace was hidden from mortal eyes, powerfully concealed, but with every step along the path, his certainty that he was meant to walk it solidified.
He passed through so many caverns and chambers that he soon began to wonder if perhaps the journey would lead him entirely through the mountain, only for him to emerge on the other side. The change in temperature came upon him so slowly it took Cosmo a great long wile to realize that he was cold. For the first time in four hundred years, he was cold .
The thought shook his confidence, and he stumbled, his sandal coming loose upon the rock. He toed them off and left them behind, to feel the stone with his toes, and move with more care. The cold seeped in through the soles of his feet, but it made no matter. All at once, Cosmo turned a corner, and gasped.
In the next chamber, a vein of sparkling ice blocked the way forward. It was no ordinary frozen stream, Cosmo knew. That would be plain even if it was winter on the mountain. There was no light in this chamber, but the ice gave its own sort of light. A soft, white glow moved within the frozen vein, beckoning him forward.
Cosmo steadied himself and approached. The presence of Kryos was so strong then that Cosmo half expected to turn and find the man himself standing at his back. Yet…it did not frighten him. He regarded the ice, knowing that if Kryos were here, he would say that such a challenge would only serve to make Cosmo stronger. Cosmo twisted the ring on his finger with his thumb, silently asking for the strength he needed.
He placed his hands upon the ice, and could feel his palms sticking to its frozen surface. It took longer than he was accustomed to feel his grace answer when he made attempt to summon it, and that did frighten him. But it answered at last, a spark in his chest that he could draw from. The heat inside traveled up his shoulders and down through his arms, which trembled from the cold, and into his palms upon crystalline structure.
Soon the ice beneath his hands grew slick, and as Cosmo strained, the entire vein melted away to wash around his bare feet in chilly waves. His panting breaths misted the air before him, and the sweat upon his skin soon seemed as cold as the puddle under his toes. He shivered, and stepped through the now open path into the next chamber.
Though the ice had gone, its silvery soft glow remained. Cosmo could not determine its source, but it served to lead him step by careful step into the darkness. Soon, he saw a stair, hewn roughly into the stone, leading down, twisting and turning into the very heart of the mountain.
Every step saw the temperature drop. Cosmo wrapped his arms around himself, and summoned his grace to warm him against the chill, but it seemed harder and harder to hold it close to the surface of his skin. The cold rendered his steps sluggish, and his wits dull, as if his very thoughts had begun to freeze inside his head. When the ground evened out beneath him, he was startled to find a carpet of frost upon the stony floor.
The warmth in his feet melted the frost, leaving behind wet footprints, steaming in his wake. The staircase deposited him into an antechamber so vast, Cosmo imagined it was the entire inside of the mountain, hollowed out like a gourd for the harvest festival. Frost gave way to a dusting of snow, and the heat from his skin no longer stood proof against it.
Cosmo. He stopped, turned. “Who’s there?”
It sounded like many voices that answered. All of us. It was his brothers. Kryos, Cedras, and Auro…and…it sounded as if he could even hear the faint echo of Ozias with them. This cold had sapped his sanity, he realized. Looking down, Cosmo saw that he’d stopped moving. The snow now reached the middle of his shin. “How does snow fall inside a mountain?” He wondered aloud.
It did not fall, said the voices. And neither will you.
Cosmo realized he’d stumbled to his knees upon the ground. He staggered to his feet. Looking up, he saw with dismay that he’d barely moved into the chamber at all. He felt as though he’d been walking through the cold for days. Perhaps he had.
Keep going, the voices said, and one seemed louder than the rest. The snow flurries swirled around him, and it that they floated from the floor of the cavern to its ceiling, flying up instead of down. Cosmo looked to the cavern’s roof and saw clouds above his head. Fat grey clouds, soft and thick as steam. Do not stop. Cosmo new the voice belonged to Auro. It was impossible, for Auro to be here with him, but he took comfort in it all the same. He could feel Auro’s presence at his back, as certain as if he were truly there—but he also knew if he turned the illusion would fail and he would be alone in the dark and the cold again, so he kept his eyes trained forward, and walked on.
“I am doing my best,” Cosmo said out loud, the words a cloud of mist.
We know, said the voices, and this time it was Cedras’s timbre most prominent among them. Keep going.
Cedras and Auro walked with him, at least. He could keep going, as long as he had them. He took another step, and the other side of the chamber came into view, the darkness and the snow playing tricks upon Cosmo’s eyes. The opposite wall could have been close enough to touch, or a hundred leagues away. Regardless, his response must be the same: to take another step.
“Did you all come and cheer Auro, on his quest?” His mind was slow. Auro’s shade could not have come to cheer on Auro, surely. “Did I?”
My own test was different, said Auro behind him.
He needed to walk alone. That voice was Kryos’s, Cosmo knew. He stumbled and fell again, and he could have sworn that the hands of his brothers were what got him back to his feet. But you need to know that we are with you.
“Are you?” He asked, ashamed of how scared and weak and childlike he sounded.
Yes, they said. Keep going.
So, Cosmo did. He wondered if anyone else would be able to see the three shades walking at his back, or what he himself would see if he turned to face them.
The other side of the chamber was dominated by a massive tree, its bark bone white and its branches barren. Snow collected in the crooks of the branches, and fell around it in graceful flurries. It had been a very long time since Cosmo had seen snow.
There is beauty in it, said Kryos. If you know how to look.
He was right. Winter had a beauty to it, as fierce and as wild as the beauty of summer. The crystalline frost, the fluffy clouds, the snow. Everything was tense, as if the entire world held its breath.
“You can do this,” the fourth voice said, out loud. It didn’t seem to have the strange, echoing quality as the others.
“Ozias?” Cosmo said, and his voice came out as a croak. He took a few more steps, and the urge to turn around threatened to overwhelm him. This time, when his knee connected with the hard ground beneath the snow, he bit his tongue.
In the cold, pain felt magnified, everything about Cosmo felt fragile and brittle. He had to look. He had to. He had to know his brothers were with him, to keep his courage. He spat a mouthful of blood on the floor, and the snow drank it up. Before Cosmo could turn, he felt hands upon his arm, beneath his elbow. A whisper in his ear. “I will help you.”
“I should have helped you,” Cosmo told Ozias’s shade, as it helped him to his feet. “I should have protected you.”
“We protect each other,” Ozias said, his voice close to Cosmo’s ear. “Now, carry on.”
Cosmo could not help it, he whirled around toward the voice, toward the warmth of the hands bracing beneath his elbow. He twisted his head every which way, but there was no trace of Ozias but the lingering warmth of his hands upon Cosmo’s arm. The others were likewise gone. He was alone again.
It was alright though. He knew they were out there, somewhere. Looking forward, determined, Cosmo saw that the tree seemed closer now. His traversal of the cavern moved in fits and starts, and now the goal seemed reachable. He took another step toward it.
At last, Cosmo stumbled up to the base of the wintery tree. Its roots plunged deep into the stone, and he wondered if it truly lived, and how it could milk nutrients from the rock below. Nestled in the cradle of its thick roots was a frozen pool. Cosmo knelt beside it, brushed away the falling snow that covered the surface of the ice.
Something down within the pool glowed with a friendly white light, calling him on. Cosmo raised a hand, curling his numb and frozen fingers into a fist. He focused all of his remaining strength there, summoning heat to the center of his palm, grasping it tight and lending it strength. His arm trembled, but he raised it above his head, and sent it crashing down onto the ice. The pain was like to choke him, a cold stabbing sensation that went from the heel of his hand directly to his heart. But he felt the ice yield.
Cosmo did it again, striking the ice with his fist again and again, and each blow was agony, but with each hit the ice cracked further. He could feel it preparing to give. His arm burned from wrist to elbow, but still he repeated the action.
The final blow struck sparks like a blacksmith’s hammer upon raw steel, and the ice cracked loud enough to rival a thunder clap. Cosmo did not hesitate. He plunged his hand into the frigid water, gritting his teeth against the cold and the pain, and his fingers closed around something smooth and hard.
When he pulled it out, he saw it was a bottle, much like the one Auro had shown him, containing Cedras’s grace. Cosmo laughed, a wild, unhinged, triumphant laugh, and cradled the bottle to his own chest. It was cold, so cold, cold enough to burn.