The landing was dark and silent, but the girl lifted the lamp
and gliding past him slipped down the polished stairs to the hallway.
Then unchaining the bolts, she drew open the iron wicket.

Through this he passed with his rose.

– Rue Barrée, Robert W. Chambers

The First Day

Broderic Roam forgot the time. The circling stars marked the passing from middle watch to morning watch as he stood unmoving in the chill air of an unseasonably late frost. Through the faint glow of moonlight in the cloud of his breath, he watched a different faint glow flickering in the sea off the port side of the ship. Not quite blue, not quite green, and not quite there, like an alien star in an alien sky.

The watchbell clanged behind him and Roam, startled, glanced left. In that instant the light was gone. He leaned forward, staring into the darkness. The old galleon gently rocked like a pendulum in the waves, then, just barely, a shudder out of time?

"Wake up, Roam! Time to change!"

Not trusting himself to look back again, he remained at the edge of the deck. "I want to stay. I think its important."

"Ain't up to you Roam, its the powers that be what sets our comings and goings. And they don't take surprises lightly. Enjoy that one last dream, cause its landfall tomorrow and that means no rest for the weary."

Roam let loose the rail, and unfixed his gaze on the dark waters. Walking toward his hammock, he felt his tension unwinding into exhaustion and his thoughts into memories.

But then the deck rocked as the ship struck- was struck? and the world went the wrong way and his footing failed and he began to slide right into -

- a frozen morning that had burst late over the ice encrusted ridge. Shafts of golden sunlight streamed through cracks in the rime, illuminating the dark pine forest in the valley below. Not a moment later, in a puff of snow, the metal shield decorated with a red, red rose overtopped the crest. Face-down, and already accelerated to breakneck speed, the shining disc soared into the air as though it were riding the rails of the sunbeams.

Three huge black furred wolves followed after, dark shadows leaping and snarling. The wolves landed, sure-footed on the ice, and gave chase. The shield hit the snowpack with a bone-jarring crunch, then skidded and spun jerkily downhill. And clinging to the back of the makeshift toboggan, not even trying to steer, was the huddled form of Broderic Roam.

He was tucked into a ball, curled over his knees as his folded legs bounced erratically on the backside of the shield. One arm was looped through the leather handholds, and he held the other wrapped around his ducked head, trying to ward off the inevitable crash. He was wearing thick woolen trousers and a woolen jacket with sturdy leather pads, but his teeth still chattered from both the vibration of the unwieldy vehicle, and the shivering of his body in the onrushing night-chilled air.

He tried to look up, his blue eyes squinting through the round cloud of snow dust the shield snubbed up, which showered over and onto him and trailed behind like a comets tail. But the random spinning back and forth of the rudderless craft unfocused his eyes and the horizon appeared little more then a dark blur between the mountain-shadowed winterscape and the golden sunlight in the deep, clear sky.

Broderic pulled his blue woolen hood down over his short blonde hair, then tucked his free hand between his stomach and his knees. He flattened himself as much as possible, vainly seeking some kind of stability. Beneath his jacket, he could feel the sealed messenger's pouch strapped tight to his torso. He had been hired to carry it from the mountain sanctuary back to the town in the foothills below. The shield he was riding was also part of the parcel to deliver, and it came in handy when the pack of wolves, thin and hungry after the harsh winter, had come rushing at him. The attack had happened just as he passed the trailhead that marked the winding path to the valley below. With the howling black beasts bearing down him, it was an easy choice to drop his backpack and take a leap of faith.

Careening downward, toward the forest, he began to approach the snowline. The ice thinned, and the screeching hum of shield against frost was punctuated by irregular percussive and scratchy shrieks, as red rocks poking through the disintegrating white snow bounced the metal sled back and forth.

And then, silence and stillness, as again he was airborne. A weightless and momentary break from the intolerable shaking and jerking. An instant feeling of relief washed away by the horrible realization he was falling – how far? and bracing himself against the inevitable -CRASHSPLASH! A double shock from a sudden landing, followed by the freezing meltwater in the river at the cliff base swallowing him whole. He had gone right off a ledge into the racing downflow. Utter cold wetly engulfed him and shocked his mind into blackness as -

- the dark water closed around him entirely. He was lost in the backwash of a great wave, helpless and alone and sinking in a sea gone mad. One final breath and the stars above were lost. But then he saw the stars below.

Beneath his own ship, crawling with scrambling sailors, was another, larger form, crawling with lights that changed precisely and hypnotically and intelligently. Every color appeared in a thousand different shapes, and the hues and boundaries collided in a confusing discord. The lights moved with terrifying, impossible speed. And at the center was a dark void, shimmering shapelessly in the glare of it's chromatic corona, rising slowly, out of the deep, toward the ship.

An involuntary cry of terror opened Broderic's mouth, and the sea rushed in, filling his lungs. The wet blackness inside and out closed over his mind. Then his shoulder was twisted as the rope-tied deckhand diving into the water grabbed it and began to pull him -

- under, sunk by the weight of the heavy shield lashed to his arm. It caught at the rocky bottom of the mountain stream, and his elbow twisted violently. A cry of pain was cut short and changed to bubbling gurgle by the fast moving current submerging his whole body.

He struggled to draw his hunting knife from his belt, in order to cut the shield straps, but the sheath was bound to the leg opposite his free hand. Reaching out, he grabbed onto the rim of the trapped shield, and pulled himself back against the current. The muscles of his unentangled arm strained and his legs uselessly kicked against the water, but he moved just enough to loosen his trapped limb. At last his hand jerked free and he was instantly pulled downstream, into the rocky rapids flooded with the spring melt. Gasping and floundering, he could barely keep his head above water.

Then he was caught up by the branches of a huge tree, felled by the muddy surge, whose roots still held fast in the ground. Bracing himself against the trunk, he managed to pull and roll and drag his body out of the current and onto the shore.

On hand and knees Broderic tried to examine his aching arm. Twisted, but not broken, he concluded. He was below the snowline now, in the pine forest. The ground was covered with dead brown needles sealed in icy patches, and scattered down the hillside were occasional drifts of snow, a doomed rearguard still fighting against the dawn of spring.

Dread howls rose up, not far away, and the desperation of his pursuit returned. He fled into the trees, cradling his injured arm. The cry of the wolves was drawing close and he knew he would not be able to outrun them. There was nowhere to go, but up.

Climbing a tree one-armed is as hard it sounds. He tried to use his hunting knife as a climbing spike, but it made little headway into the icy pine wood. The chosen tree was tall, and the first branch was well over 20 feet up. He slowly moved his feet from knot to knot, his hands hugging the enormous trunk with what strength his injured arm could muster. The howling drew closer, and he tried not to panic. The toes inside his slick, dripping boots were as soaked and numb as the rest of his body. He started to shake uncontrollably.

Broderic drew level with the branch just as the wolves burst into sight. One of them leaped at the trunk of the tree, its jaws snapping shut inches from his boot. He flinched involuntarily, and could feel himself start to slip. Desperately he pushed off with what strength he had left, and managed to catch the branch with his one good arm. He hung there helplessly trying and failing to pull himself up. The wolves sprung wildly, trying to latch on to his dangling feet. With a final burst of adrenaline, and a great cry of pain, he forced his wounded arm out to grab the branch. It's strength held but for a moment, but it was enough to haul himself high enough up to throw a leg over. His arm throbbed in agony, and he clung to the branch panting and shaking. Below, the thwarted wolves circled and gazed hatefully upward.

Now that the rising sun had topped the eastern mountain ridge, its yellow warmth quickly lowered into the valley, saving Broderic from immediate hypothermia. Still, he was unable to stop shivering. His blue and grey woolen clothes were heavy with newly unfrozen water, and the heat was leeching from his body like sand through a sieve.

He lay face down on the branch and clung to it with his legs and arm, looking down at the hounds that had treed him. Two of them stared fixedly upward as a third circled the tree trunk furiously, sniffing and snorting. Broderic tried to meet the merciless gaze, but he felt he was looking at more than ruthless animal instinct. The black eyes seemed to be focus on his with an almost human intelligence. He looked away.

The three wolves paused and shared glances, as though communicating. One of them turned and raced back the way they had come. The other two, including the biggest, sat their haunches into the snow, lowered their giant jaws onto their front paws, and settled in to wait.

Broderic's shivering got worse. The sun would dry him out eventually, but he might not live to see it. He needed to get into dry clothes. He needed a fire. His arm jolted pain as his body shuddered, trying to warm itself, and he was so tired and his eyes closed for a moment and he -

- held fast to the rope as the boat rocked in the enraged ocean. The ship righted, but was not right, its rhythm lost and its familiar vibration altered. The young sailor, like all the hands, could sense the hull had been breached. The men around him shouted orders and scrambled frantically, but instead of helping, he walked trance-like into the hold, to the Windcaller's cabin.

The Caller was new, and Broderic had watched her work her magic with youthful fascination, but she never acknowledged him. Being the youngest and newest member of the deck crew meant there was always someone giving him an order, but he would steal time to watch her work when he could. He listened as she stood in the center of the deck, and spoke with strange words. Alternating between plaintive and begging, then harsh and commanding, she called the wind into the sails which billowed and strained and pulled the ship on its way. Broderic had tried to remember those words, and practiced them at night, while he struggled to stay awake in the crows nest, watching the horizon for trouble.

Somehow he knew that now was the time he ought to come to her. It was simply and obviously the thing that must be done. His mind was filled with the blissful certainty of right action entirely at odds with his frantic surroundings.

Her cabin was huge, larger then the ship, and made of smooth unworked stone. Like an underground cavern. But this impossible geometry did not disturb Broderic. The Caller was seated on a stone throne shaped like a hand. She appeared as she had on the deck. Wrapped in a great white cloak, the over-large hood veiling her eyes, only hands and mouth visible. Her lips smiled cruelly, and she raised a hand, beckoning him. The hand was transparent, and looked as though it were made of glass.

The cruel lips spoke strange words with a dull, hypnotic sameness:

"There is an inside allaround. There is an outside faraway. Between this self and this cosmos are words and numbers, timeless and placeless, both everywhere and nowhere at once."

Broderic stood before her now, hypnotized by the complicated words which uncritically wrote themselves on the blank slate of his mind. He seemed very small, and she stood up and looked down on him, seeming very large.

In the darkness beside her a shadow rose up. Not a shadow, but a man, in a huge cloak as black as night. More then just black as night, it was the night. In the cloak were stars, and nebulae appearing as real as if they were being seen through a window. He saw the constellations used by sailors to steer at sea, familiar and now close enough to touch. Like the Caller, the man's hood was pulled low over his face, only his mouth visible. But while the woman's mouth smiled with condescension and mocking, the man's mouth frowned with worry.

He spoke: "Son of earth and starry sky, remember when you are!" His words were stilted and voiced in awkward singsong tones which jumped about in pitch, trying to counter the caller's uninflected monotone.

But she did not acknowledge the stranger's presence and she spoke a second time:

"Nameless, whenless boy, why so afraid of death? Don't you know you are but words and numbers? Neither inside nor outside? You have no beginning and no end. Why fear a moment when infinity is your nature and your inheritance?"

Behind them, through the cabin door, came a strange shriek above the terrified shouts of the men. Broderic turned and saw a great arcing violet blaze burst the hull and bore into the ship's heart. As he looked at the destruction impassively, the stranger spoke in his jarring polytonic way: "Hold fast to when you are, child. You have a beginning and an end, you are still inside what is outside. You still have a name!"

The Caller caught his chin with her glass hand and turned his face again toward her cruel lips. She spoke a third time:

"There is a power in nature that cloaks the culmination of being. A power that masks the endlessness that offers eternal rest from the burden and terror of beginnings and endings and identity. A power that claws from you the control you deserve, the control that shaped you. The control that is you."

"Yes," shouted the stranger, "It is a power that has been there from the beginning and beyond the beginning. It is true to its nature, and in its radiance the illusion of eternity cannot deceive!"

Broderic did not understand the words the two cloaked figures were proclaiming. But he could sense the man's desperation, his need to communicate, and again he turned towards the figure in the cloak of stars.

The man was no longer there. Instead, beside the Caller, now stood a tree. A strange, blue, limpid, leafless tree, glowing gently. Broderic looked up at the tree and took a step toward it.

It's many branches hung limply like a willow. And then he saw shapes of light and dark in the spaces and shadows of the tree limbs. They moved along the hanging stalks like falling leaves of varied kinds, colored shadow puppets projected through stained glass. The shapes danced and changed. A violet flame appeared and then icicles grew around it and then bright wolves moved toward the scintillating purple void. The wolf shapes were wrapped in the blue light of the tree and their blue breath roared forth and overwhelmed the violet fire. He saw winged lions made of light, also glowing blue, turning away the dark purple flames. He saw a great sea beast, bigger then a giant squid or a whale, bigger even than the thing outside in the water, wrecking the ship. The sea beast was blue against the violet void. A void mad and intangible and splintering with shards and shapes, shapes and colors like those in the water below.

The violet flame was here.

The cracks made in Broderic's awareness by the stranger's distracting words widened and split, and the blue fire of the tree rushed through the jagged gaps and poured inside him. Suddenly aware and wide awake, he turned and looked at the windcaller. The white cloak was now nothing but air and shadow. Only the mouth remained, twisted in a mocking smirk.

He was overwhelmed with the shameful, self conscious realization that he had been manipulated. A great hatred for this thing before him filled his heart. He felt his rage turn outward and blue light from the tree fill the space the rage left behind. He became like the sea beast, joined in essence and in purpose. He struck forth and the shadow vanished before him, along with the cruel mouth and the glass hand. But a single glass finger remained, and fell clattering onto the throne.

Broderic picked it up and looked at it thoughtfully. The pupils of his eyes had widened beyond the iris and into the whites so they were almost entirely black, like the sea monster's single eye. Around him the stone room was no longer there and he was in a small, empty wooden cabin. He was alone, no man or tree or lights or windcaller remained. He stood there, quaking with the ship, holding the strange finger between his own fingers, his back turned to the doorway.

Outside the cabin, the ship finally broke to pieces, and water rushed into the room. But Broderic recovered effortlessly, swimming against an impossible current and breathing the brine as easily as air. Just like the sea creature could. He swam out of the debris into what was now open ocean, still holding the glass finger.

Towering before him, above him, below him, on all sides were the tentacles of violet flame spawned by the aberrant thing, weaving through the broken wreckage of his ship. And he could hear them, a metallic grating sawing sound, and a rhythmic chant of a hundred voices repeating a single syllable over and over. The sounds were full of need and hunger and hate. It rang in his ears. It echoed in his mind. It shuddered in the water around him, thrumming deep into his bones.

He held the finger forth, and a giant tentacle of purple and shadow spiraled around and below him, its tip reaching up, up toward the glass finger, and the sounds coming from it broke into hysteric screams of pain and ecstasy.

But Broderic let the finger go, and it plunged into the ocean depths, accelerating faster then any natural thing could fall, even in air. Too fast for the dark and fiery tentacle that tried to catch it. In a storm of current, the monstrous chaos accelerated downward into the deep, bringing with it the terrible lights and the terrible sounds. It hurtled after the glass bone, falling like a meteor, and vanished into the abyss. At the moment he dropped the finger, Broderic felt a great wrenching loss, as though part of himself was being torn out as well. The pain washed through him leaving him numb.

He remained there in the dark water, floating gently, feeling nothing. Nothing but cold. Very cold in fact. Alarmed, he saw ice blocks grow around his hands and feet, and then slowly start to encase his entire body. The power of the sea beast was no use against this. He remembered the wolves he had seen in the play of leaves made of color and shadow between the branches of the tree. The wolves that had fought in the ice as effortlessly as the sea beast moved in water. The numbness swallowed his body and closed in on his mind, and he struggled to call forth those wolves with their blue breath, snarling, biting -

- howling with fury, Broderic's head jerked up. The hypothermic trance was broken, and the freezing wet clothes no longer weakened him. A blue light had formed around his head like a mask, wolf shaped and wide-eyed with a new, feral rage. He looked down from the tree at the two startled black canines, and to their shock, leaped straight at them.

He landed on the back of the smaller wolf, headfirst, arms outstretched. The mask flared into complete substantiality, its icy teeth rending the hounds flank. With strength far greater then his own, Broderic threw the creature to the side, where it crashed to the ground, howling with pain and surprise.

The larger wolf just had time to stand up when a blast of absolute cold burst forth out of Broderic's lungs and through the mask's now bloody mouth. The black giant shuddered and dropped dead. Its blood was frozen in its veins.

The first wolf righted itself, flinching from the pain of the wound torn in it's side. It hesitated only a moment, and then ran towards the woods yelping.

But Broderic was already above it, leaping again from the hillside, and he brought the remaining wolf crashing down with him. The mask's jaws closed over the furry throat, and beneath the blue light his own lips were pulled back and his teeth were clenched. He pressed his nose and mouth into the wolf's neck, smelling the matted fur, feeling the crunch against his face as the blue jaws crushed the windpipe. He held the wolf down, his enhanced strength too much for the helpless animal which kicked and pawed pathetically.

The forceful pulse of blood from its torn arteries spurting against his face weakened, and then stopped, The life of his prey was spent. He spit out blood and fur and threw back his head in a triumphant roar.

With no enemies in sight, Broderic felt his rage subside, and the blue wolf mask faded back to translucent immateriality. The light remained in this faded form, no longer granting the feral savagery and icy breath of the winter wolf, but maintaining it's lesser power of resistance to cold. As reason flowed back into his mind, replacing bestial instinct, the messenger remembered his purpose on the mountain and the shield he had lost.

He started back toward the stream, where he had left the heavy metal disc wedged in the rocks. It was a weird and sorry sight. His blue woolen clothes were now muddy and bloody, and spotted with wolf hair. The blue, ghostly wolf mask around his head was punctured by blonde tufts of wet, matted hair, His injured arm was cradled against his side. Passing the fallen tree that had caught him out of the current, he slogged uphill through the muddy melt until he reached the rocky rapids where he had cut the shield from his arm.

But it was gone.

He groaned. The shield was important. He had to try and find it. The need to think and plan widened his awareness to let in the pain and exhaustion his focused searching had pushed out. He squatted near the rocks, still wet and dripping. The sunlight had yet to reach the ground in the shadow beneath the ledge from which he had fallen.

Broderic brought his hand up to his face, and felt a faint thickness in the air as he wiggled his gloved fingers through the sides of the phantasmal wolf mask. It wasn't the first time this strange power inside him had come to his rescue. It had started just after he washed ashore. After the shipwreck.

The castaway's arrival was an ominously mysterious event in the fishing village. No debris followed him, and he was found clinging to none. He had no memory of what had happened on the ship, just dark and disturbing dreams that flashed with weird colors, and cruel smiles, and the taste of salt and fear. And when the villagers tracked the name of the ship, they realized he must have been in the ocean for days, and drifted hundreds of miles. He must be the luckiest boy ever, the temple adept had smiled at him. Or accursed, whispered the sailors who glared when he passed, because -

- lucky is in the eye of the beholder. Broderic Roam, lone survivor of the wreck of the Mnemosene, should have counted himself lucky. But sailing towns are superstitious, and infamous wrecks leave infamous survivors. Young, broke, and unemployable in his profession, the sailor wandered inland. Passing through the dark forests of the lowlands, following the rivers up into the hills, he made his way to the town of Threshold.

In the high country at the furthest edge of civilization, where most people had never seen the sea, he finally settled down to start over. Taking work as porter and guard for the hunters and trappers who always live on the boundaries of human lands, Broderic traded the ways of waves and stars for those of trees and tracks and shadows. In less then a year he could hire out as a guide and tracker in his own right, and lived off the land. His fortnightly visits to town for supplies and work never lasted long, and he spent his private time reading and fishing and wistfully watching the boats on the lake of the town.

He never went out on the lake, but fished and watched from the shore. The shipwreck had not left him with a fear of water, but with the belief that he was cursed with bad luck, and to sail again was risking catastrophe for himself and the boat. He dropped his catch off in the fishing village just north of town, and traded stories about sightings of the lake monster, and the one that got away. Several fishing crews offered him a spot on their craft, but he declined.

His books were borrowed for the day from the Baron's library at Tarnskeep on the lakeshore. The fat scribe who looked after them was more then happy to lend the sun bleached or worm eaten tomes slated for recopying in exchange for fresh fish. The books kept Broderic near the town. He was offered work as a scribe, but declined.

In the winter he trudged to the hunting cabins in the hills, carrying messages and supplies back and forth between trappers and traders. He got to know the hunters and their stories and stayed for a few all night revelries after a lucky days hunt. He was invited to join them, but declined.

He remained at the edge of things, content in the security of living with people who didn't question things and lived each day like the one before. But Threshold never quite became home, and he still introduced himself as a traveler passing through, "I'm Broderic Roam, a sailor from far away." And when he closed his eyes, he could feel the ground rocking like the deck of a ship -

- as he rested with his eyes shut, catching his breath, perched on the rocks at the stream shore. His reverie was interrupted by a piercing glare as the sun topped the ledge and moved toward midday. He squinted and stared at the rocks for a moment, then rose and began to stretch.

He was dripping wet, and he could feel the added weight of the clothes pulling him down, as though gravity had somehow gotten stronger. But the almost frozen water did not chill him as long as the blue mask flickered faintly about his head. Taking advantage, he stepped into the shallows and washed as much of the remains of the dead wolf off his body and clothes as best he could.

Then he saw the tracks in the dirt, and stopped moving.

How long had he sat there? What had been watching him? The tracks were misshapen, and deformed in the mud. There was no telling what made them. But the spacing, right-left-right-left, was clearly made by something large. Something that had taken the shield.

Broderic heard nothing, smelled nothing. He stood and looked around, staring, listening, and slowly moving out of the water. He remembered the third wolf, the one that had raced back after he climbed the tree, and the strange intelligence in the eyes of the second. The attack had not been an unfortunate, chance encounter with hungry animals. Something had sent them. Something that might be out there, watching him, right now.

As if summoned by his silent recognition, a strange wind began to twist around Broderic. The brown, dead pine needles were picked up by the swirling vortex and he had to close his eyes against the prickling debris. Squinting, he looked around wildly, into shadowy crevices under the ledge, between the branches shrouded in evergreen, below the blue deeps of the stream. But he saw nothing but air and water and darkness.

And then he heard a distant wail, both near and far, both real and imaginary. It was such a quiet sound, barely audible, but like a clap of thunder it disrupted his thinking, and drew his whole awareness into it's eerie tone. The sound quickly became terrible to hear, almost silent and entirely intolerable.

His heart began to beat faster and faster. He started breathing in ragged gulps, as if he were out of breath, and dizziness rocked his perception. A strange tingling was in his fingertips. He tried to control his breathing, but whenever he slowed his gasping heaves he began to black out. The faint blue light of the wolf mask vanished.

And then he saw the eyes staring right him. Angry killer eyes preparing to – wait, no it was a tree. It was just wooden knots on the wooden trunk. But it was hard to see. Brown and green colors that looked like a tree, were arranged like a tree. Yet somehow, his eyes couldn't put the shapes together and hold them in place.

Then everything began to dissociate, and every shadow was a wolf, and the sound of the water was howling, and the smell of blood and death was in his nose, and he was running, running, running down and away as fast as he could.

Green bursts of foliage appeared here and there, but the forest mostly remained wintry and open. In a month, the ground Broderic covered would be impassible with every kind of shrub and flower, but now the only thing slowing him was the steepness of the hills, and the slickness of the mud. He skittered down the slopes heedlessly, sliding and leaping great strides, and his legs jolted with the continuous impacts until his joints hummed a continuous dull ache. He ran from the monstrous wolves that were lurking just to the side, and behind him, and wherever he could not see. They sneakily stayed just out of sight of Broderic's wild, widened eyes, but were as real to him as the sun at night and the stars during the day.

He ran and ran, crazed and desperate, like a harried stag, heading eastbound and downward as the sun moved low behind him. At last the hills began to level, and ahead of the runner was almost to the end of the path he had left that morning. When he had been riding the snow, atop the rose marked shield so many hours earlier. And beyond, on the horizon, the smoke and lights of the town of Threshold blurred and glittered.

He sprinted for the leveled path like an athlete charging for the finish line. But just before he crossed over, before he could step onto the bright cobblestone path beaming out of civilization, he stopped. Standing on the road was a great white horse, and atop it was a beautiful woman, with long blonde hair and heavy silver armor. She looked unflinchingly at him, alert and wary.

In Broderic's warped mind, her worried stare was an aggressive leer, and snarling he drew his knife from the sheath on his leg. Instantly the woman, staring down at the blood and dirt covered madman, drew her own mace and raised her griffin-emblazoned shield.

But the sight of the symbol on the shield had a strange effect on the messenger, and activated memories that drew parts of his mind out of panic. He stared at the shield in confusion, head tilted and brow furrowed.

And then, echoing from the horizon, he heard the great bell of the cathedral of Threshold begin to ring the sunset hour and the gentle, resonant tone opened his awareness into -

- sudden wakefulness. There were four more clangs, and everyone at the sanctuary, including Broderic, got knocked completely out of slumber. He glanced at the sealed window in the tiny, cold room above the stables. Not yet dawn.

The stables where he had slept were for the horses, but the greater, fortified temple of which the stables were a part, was where the Order of the Griffin trained the flying steeds that were their namesake. The temple was high up, in the mountains under a great ridge where the powerful beasts built nests for their eggs. The carnivorous and eagle-headed griffins favored horse meat, and the so the stables were heavily built, which made for a warmer place to sleep then might otherwise be expected. The smell was still bad.

Broderic yawned, and replaced the few things he'd taken out of his pack. Then he strapped it on, hopped up and down, and walked a circle to check the load balance for the long hike ahead. Carefully, he climbed down the rickety ladder to the ground and went out into the courtyard.

He'd made deliveries for the adepts and griffin trainers before, during the winter months when the trails were too icy for horses. They had always given him a small sealed package of letters and documents. They never made him swear any vows of secrecy, but he knew better then to tempt the magic they commanded, which they might have used to seal the contents. He wasn't really tempted anyway. He liked being a messenger, and the adepts were old and boring and didn't seem like people with interesting secrets.

Today was different however. Instead of being greeted good morning, there was a breakfast of bread and cheese already set out for him on a table by the door. Next to it was the sealed messenger's pouch and a filled waterskin. Also, leaning against the table, was a large round shield with a red rose on the front.

A note was left beside the items:

My shield marked with red, red rose,
Borne in snowmelt, before the sunrise,
Down with the dawn, as time's sand flows,
Ten thousand miles, as the crow flies.

Broderic frowned, and looked round, listening. But there was only the quiet breathing of horses. Was this a joke? A game? The note made no sense.

He picked up the shield and studied it. It was beautifully made. Circular, with the great rose on front, and the edges made into a ring of silvered brambles with engraved thorns. He tried it on and it wasn't terribly heavy. He ran his arm through the carrying strap, pulling it up to his shoulder, and reached round to tie down the other side of the round disc to his pack.

Broderic disliked tricks and tests. He was curious, and enjoyed solving problems, but artificial complications bored him. His first impulse was always to open the door, to speak the secret, to cut the knot. If this was a game or a prank, then taking the shield would force the conspirator to make a move. If it was just an elaborate request to carry the shield along with the pouch by a frustrated poet, then no harm done.

He ran the strap attached to the messenger's pouch under his jacket, over his shoulder, and around his body. After binding it tightly, he tucked the waterskin in his backpack, and carried his bread and cheese in one hand. Then he went back into the stables and out through the side door in the outer wall, into the wilds outside the mountain retreat.

Immediately after closing the door, there was a bang as the bar locked behind him. Now he was certain something was up. Turning he looked back at the stone wall and up at the battlements. But everything was still. He looked up toward the cliff over the temple. At sunrise the griffins took flight, and on other occasions he had stayed to watch the flock soaring into the morning sky, but today it was still too early.

Annoyed at being toyed with, he set off down the steep switchback toward civilization. He paused three times and looked back, listening and waiting for whoever left the note and barred the door to appear, but no one was there. In the distance he could hear wolves howling, but they had always stayed clear of the main trail.

The shield was actually pretty awkward, now that he was moving. He stretched and twisted a little, trying to settle the backpack more comfortably. Then he sighed and tried not to think of how long it would take to complete the delivery of -

- the messenger's pouch in one hand, he cut the cord. Lowering the knife, he silently held up the leather bundle to the startled woman.

The silver armored, griffin-emblazoned knight watched Broderic warily for a few moments. Then, cautiously, she took the package from him and unsealed it. Inside were several scrolls. Keeping one eye on the messenger, she scanned the contents. Words on one particular scroll made her start with alarm. "Oh, no. It's happening again!"

She looked up the road toward the mountain, glowing ominously red in the sunset. Then she looked down at the disheveled and disturbed young man below her. Thinking a moment she produced a metal canteen, and tossed it to him. He caught it reflexively. "There's no time. I'm sorry." The woman said. She raised her mace and it flashed a golden radiance that caught and echoed on her horse's hooves with a shimmering afterglow. Then she turned her steed and galloped off toward the trail winding up toward the icy slopes, while Broderic stared dumbly after her.

He opened the canteen automatically, suddenly aware of how hungry and thirsty he was. It was full of sweetened goat's milk, warm and creamy, and he drank almost half of it in one continuous drought. Something in the milk, some kind of medicine, calmed his crazed imagination. The world started to fall back into a rational order, and there were no more dangerous, staring shadows. The sun's orange afterglow faded into a peaceful starry sky.

Focused at last, he stood there awkwardly. His expression was as confused as the face of a stranger who has opened the door and walked into the wrong house. He tilted his head back and his saw the constellations gently appearing. The familiar stars to steer by winked on one by one, the same over land as over sea. He turned slowly, as their names and stories automatically surfaced in his thoughts, and in this the way it was the sky that grounded him.

Unexpectedly, the cathedral bell clanged a single time and much too early. Startled, he glanced right. A mistake? Broderic paused and wondered for a moment about the aberration in time, but only for a moment. His arm ached. His body was exhausted. And in the deepening darkness he began to shiver again from the cold. But the light of the blue wolf mask did not appear this time.

He stepped onto the road to Threshold.