5.

The crumbled foundation beneath their aching feet soon divaricated into an assortment of dirt passageways through thick forests. Finch paused at one such crossroad, and Zero was obliged to hang back. But when Finch hesitated, Zero's mood altered from pensive to anxious.

'This is the way home.'

'I'm not lost,' Finch replied. His eyes scanned a distant memory, a book of pictures whose pages he constantly flipped. 'I've been here before, remember? There's an ancient temple down this lane. It's half-buried now beneath rock and—and life. But it's still there. I should like to…' He cast a glare at Zero. 'You should go. It would benefit you.'

'Temples are for the ancient dwellers,' Zero reminded Finch.

With a conceding nod, Finch resumed the pace southward. He tucked a soft hand against Zero, at the base of the neck, in a bundle of flax-made fabric. 'Ancient dwellers gave us a lot. Including the foundations of our basic religion. When your parents are better, we'll come back here. It isn't so far, is it? From your house, I mean.'

'We're roughly four hours away.' Zero was more than relieved to see that a day's journey by foot fazed Finch very little. 'Will you really be around that long? To see that my parents get better, I mean.'

'As long as it takes. And it might take an hour. It might take months. Don't worry,' he snickered lightly, 'I don't have anything better to do.' The vague sensation nagged, however, and sent him into one of those searching looks that Zero was becoming familiar with. 'At least… I don't think I have. All the same—I should like to revisit the old temple. I believe it's for the gods of the southern element.'

'And that would be,' Zero paused, at first unable to remember, but Finch failed to fill in the blank. The answer arrived a moment later. 'Fire. Of course. I'd forgotten… What are the old temples like?'

'They choke on weeds and overgrowth,' began Finch, 'but they are otherwise substantially drowning in their own essence.'

'They're still sacred, you mean.'

'Indubitably. The most sacred places in the O.Z. You and your family, a long time ago, in the era that predates this one, would've brought gifts to the gods at the temple. What was the name of that temple? After one of the fire gods. Feachros? Wait, no, that's the god of—of—'

'Ravens and crows, watchers of the dead,' Zero supplied. He enjoyed Finch's impressed gleam. 'Don't you remember the old verse, mystic?

'"Feachros rode in a ship of stone,
Upon a sea of silver tears:
He kept a thousand crows,
He reigned a thousand ravens,
Black as night and sharp as stars;
His army of eyes and calls,
To keep abreast, always and true,
Those forever at his side,
Those forever at his heels:
The cries of the forgotten dead."'

Finch's face contorted. 'Bit dreary, isn't it? Leave it to you to remember a verse so poignantly morbid.'

Zero had to laugh. 'You sound like Mam. Whenever I recite the prayers on the Cardinal Days, Mam tells me not to go wandering into the dark verses. She says I like them too much.'

'And I'm guessing you do.'

'They are imaginative. And beautiful. They're stories. And they're real. It's hard not to be moved by that. And Cardinal Days are for the resetting of the spirit, evaluation of the self, that sort of thing.'

'You know, Mr Dertien, I confess that the more I know about you, the more I find you an absolute bewilderment. A web. A contradictory web.' Finch leered as he paused, and Zero allowed this gaze to continue on. To be searched into the soul by a mystic was an experience. Zero felt himself unwind, like the fag-end of rope, beneath brown eyes mottled in green and gold, the colours of spring and autumn. And his eyes, his own, the pearlescent hues, the sombre mood, of winter.

Suddenly, Finch angled back, conclusions reached. 'Why don't you?'

'What?'

'Go to the Academy of Realm Sciences and study for the Stellate?'

They resumed a leisure pace, but Zero forced bite into it. He had not wanted to be read so clearly. But the inclination to hide something from a mystic was no weapon against excessive intuition. And nothing, Zero chose to believe, could hide something so enormous from the eyes of a friend.

'What good would it do?' Zero asked the question expecting no answer. He went on, sure that Finch would have something to say about it. He could say it in a moment. 'Academy is a commitment. Annuals. And unless my parents suddenly become younger, or Nitten finds herself an illustrious career, taking care of my family is my responsibility.'

'Priests have ties to the state, to the government, and they are paid handsomely.'

'If they get through Academy,' added Zero. 'And I'm not like you: I don't have the ability to see into people.'

'But you have the desire.' Finch ran a hand over his hair, drudging sloppily down a bumpy hill into a rocky spring. He paused atop a flat stone. Rancour was profound in his voice; affection remained clandestine, not yet dominant. 'Now I know what it is about you that I find so—so—irksome and annoying and dubiously enthralling.'

A protest cracked in Zero's throat, and he lifted his hand, as if to object, but the desire to battle this grew faint. The mystic had been willing to journey this far, for one man, Zero's father, a mere stranger, to whom he owed a favour. This pledge, ingratiatingly philanthropic, permitted the mystic to say whatever he chose. Zero thought listening was a due that must be paid, a non-monetary recompense for services rendered.

He grabbed Finch's elbow as he passed, and both of them hopped the creek. 'What's that then? My charming arrogance? Winning smile? My ability to hike for hours on end without a break?'

'Well, no,' repined Finch. 'But yes, that too. Why won't you go? It would mean so much to you. And you'd be good at it. Gods know the O.Z. is going to need more Stellars in the coming annuals. You'd be willing to sacrifice your own happiness for your family?'

'If my family suffered in any way, how would that bring me happiness?'

They kept walking, up another tor, and soon, Zero recalled, the forest would give way to a low, flat plain between two sets of undulating hills. And in that plain wound a wide river, dotted at its banks by a series of sinuous, narrow roads and little houses. The town of Rookwood, and, south two more miles—home.

'And I suppose,' Finch went on, his voice both teasing and angry, 'that you never told your family of your desire for the priesthood? Of course you haven't! Because they would make you go, if that was your will.'

'It isn't my will! And could we stop talking about this?'

'We are going to talk about it, because I want to understand why someone with your talent and interest and-and—your hope in the world should throw all of it aside! And for what? What are you going to do that could save your family from poverty, while, identically, fulfils your unique qualities?'

Finch rolled back on his heels, expression astonished, chuckle of the flabbergasted sort. 'I don't believe it. You're going to join the army!'

'I'm what?' Zero gaped. 'I'd never… The army? But…'

But the army.

The army of the O.Z., the Royal Guards of the Realms. Why hadn't he thought of that before? A steady pay, a job that would keep him occupied, and there he might find a lurking talent, something that hadn't shown in the idyllic life he'd so far led. And Uncle, he was already in the army, a captain—and wouldn't that help? Wouldn't it make his father happy, please his mother, and keep their life content? He could live cheaply in the army itself; he had no wants, no needs but the necessities. Every q-plat that could be sent to his parents would be.

'Then maybe Vier can go to school,' he reasoned aloud with Finch. 'One of us should. It won't be me. I can guarantee that.'

'You're built for more than the army. Why are you fighting this?' questioned Finch.

Zero shot him a devastating look, a gage, a battle line. 'Why are you? Three days ago, you didn't have any idea who I was—and now you're trying to change my outlook on life. Is that what mystics do?'

'Excuse me, priest, but I did know of you three days ago. I met your uncle, remember? Told him to expect company, family sick. A trio, a trinity—four feet and a ghostly set behind—six passengers in total. One of them on the path to enlightenment. The light within, the darkness without.'

Finch pressured Zero's shoulders, tucked a hand against a cool cheek, and Zero was comforted by the affection. Anger fizzled. Resentment sputtered.

'Don't let it become the other way round, that's all I'm asking. That's all anyone who knows you would ever ask. Let it always be light within, darkness without. Never, ever turn it around: Darkness within, light without. The gods would fall to their knees and weep at the loss of you.'

Zero started away, but Finch held him back.

'If you won't listen to me now, just hear my words and listen to them later. Wait,' Finch commanded, holding fast to the lapels of Zero's coat, the knot of the hooded over-cloak. 'Just wait. Wait until you're older, until you're seventeen. Do not do anything before then. You cannot sign up for the army until you're seventeen, anyway. Though there are ways around it, of course. Lying about your age, for one thing, so easy to do—easy for those who can tell such lies. But your path is obscure, a trail covered beneath leaves and forest miscellany: you cannot see it very clearly. The wind will come, and the snows, bleak times, and it will clear the road before you. One way or another, priest. Light or dark. Just wait.'

The mystic's intensity tugged at Zero. He set his hand over Finch's, squeezing, nodding assurance and acceptance. And while Finch spoke often in incomprehensible riddles, at a rapid pace that nearly slurred, every word made an invaluable impact on Zero. He nodded again, more forcefully, and Finch finally relaxed.

'I promise,' Zero vowed solemnly, 'I promise I'll wait. While I may not be a mystic, I know there's something going on in our world. Something is happening. It's changing too quickly. Or did you not notice, Ansley, that we're this far below the Rip and yet it's started to snow?'

Finch lifted his chin and searched the sky. Zero mimicked. Fluffs of white touched the lids of his eyes, soft as kisses, and he batted lashes. At first, he couldn't believe it. These were feathers, only feathers, a hundred, a thousand, a heaven-full… But he held out his hand, as did Finch, and watched the white flakes melt against his heat.

'Snow,' he mumbled, 'snow, here… In the south.'

Zero sped ahead, to end this last tunnel of woods, and pounded his feet to a stop. Finch parked at his side. A peaceful zenith, the infamous Jiensail Valley, with its eponymous river circuitous through villages and piebald landscape, stretched from the tips of their toes, all the way to the horizon. But the magnificent view was studded with wisps of grey clouds, hanging low, as a filmy veil, threatening to swallow in a gulp and breath of freeze and snow. Zero stared, the madness of uncertainty, the hysteria of fear gripping him so terribly, so absolutely.

'Ansley,' the transition from mystic to friend came naturally, there at the pinnacle of the changing world, 'what does this mean?'

'I don't have an answer, priest. But I think,' he watched the snowflakes perch on Zero's shoulders, in his hair, and wondered how shock could look so peaceful in someone so grounded, 'I think it's the beginning.'

'Of what, I can only imagine.'

Finch brushed off his head and put up the hood. The snow fell at a thick rate. They would have to scrape through it on the way to Liddell. He swept flakes from Zero's soft hair, and this seemed to wake him. Finch pulled up the hood, patted it, and tried to assure his new friend with a twisted smile. It was watery, thin, a bit bleak, but it was reassuring.

'Priest,' the mystic told Zero. 'I knew it would be found.'

'Ansley,' Zero responded, glancing back and forth between the mystic's hypnotic, rather humorous eyes. 'Ansley of Stirbane.'

Two different people had crossed the Rip of the O.Z., and two different people had emerged from the woods to the Jiensail Valley. They were introduced all over again. Not as strangers but as friends.