Chapter Five

5 – Spires

She hadn’t known exactly what she’d expected when the spindly towers in the distance became less distant, but she knew that she hadn’t quite believed Len’s description of the heart of the city practically being carved from the bedrock. At first, it seemed she had been right: the first few layers of the city seemed like a cross between an idyllic Victorian suburb (or what she imagined one might look like) and some sort of bland architectural style that wouldn’t have seemed too out of place back home. As near as Yuri could tell, the streets were all cobblestone or brick, extremely well taken care of, and apparently laid out in a sort of spiraling pattern like a nautilus shell.

The closer the towers in the distance came, the less normal things seemed. By the time they loomed tall overhead sometime in the afternoon, the cityscape began to be populated by irregular buildings that simply protruded from the ground. Eventually, entire blocks grew up like quartz crystals, and then the roads merely became the slender byways between clusters of rock formations that looked perfectly natural but which were obviously inhabited.

This, of course, was entirely separate from the people.

When they had set out from the Cafe, the streets were sparsely populated, mostly by people who seemed perfectly average except for their slightly odd clothing. The closer to the city’s heart they drew, however, the denser the population became. The people came in nearly all shapes, sizes, and colors, most walking, some pushing carts, some drawing rickshaws, many riding bicycles. Most of them were humanoid, or at least bipedal, and they were packed so tightly in the streets at points that Yuri could barely see them pressed between the gentle line of Ro’s back and the irritated solidness of Kiih’s chest.

By the time Yuri was too hot and miserable and exhausted to continue being awed by her surroundings, everything opened up and they stood before the structure that could only assume was the Cathedral from behind Ro’s shoulders. The crowd thinned out, with the exception of a small procession of people clad in flowing emerald and turquoise garments carrying a stately palanquin. The occupant was shaded from the sun by layers of gauzy fabric, but Yuri still caught a glimpse of a woman in robes that seemed almost like a kimono.

As they began to cross the open area, the woman in the palanquin gracefully parted the fabric with one slender, pale hand. Her porters had carried her close enough that Yuri could make out details about her such as her waist-length, fiery orange hair, her sharp chin, the beauty mark just to the right of her upper lip, and her eyes.

There was a moment in which Yuri’s green eyes locked with the woman’s, in which the world seemed to stand completely still as the stranger studied her with the air of a languid predator. Then the fabric fell back into place and the moment spun off into the air, gone.

Yuri shivered despite the heat. The woman’s eyes had been red like the first drops of blood that well up from a puncture.

“Ya all right?” Ro inquired, turning back with a worried expression on his face. “I know we’ve dragged ya through half tha city, but I swear we’re nearly done.”

“I’m fine,” Yuri said. “Just felt kind of like someone goose-stepped over my grave.” At Ro’s puzzled look, she sook her head. “Don’t worry, just a saying. I’m fine. Who was that woman who just passed us? She was gorgeous.”

From behind her, Kiih replied tersely, “That was Olivia Delegarde. Last surviving member of the House Delegarde, and the next in line to be High Consulate, when the time comes. And the time looks as though it’s coming quickly.”

“Hey, High Consulate! That’s the secular ruler you guys have, right?” Somehow, remembering that small fact from Len’s conversation with her cheered her up a little. “So, we’re almost there?”

“Tha’ we are. An’ iffin all goes well, we’ll have ya home soon.” Ro smiled, and Yuri felt her spirits rise a little more. She stepped away from her two escorts, took a deep breath, and looked at more than just the open square (though it was really more of an oval, she thought).

The structure was impressive once it wasn’t blocked by a person half a head taller. Where most of the city previously had put her in mind of quartz clusters, the Cathedral itself put her in mind of the images she’d seen of snowflakes. It was a massive collection of graceful white towers that sometimes branched and sometimes did not. Around the spires swirled slowly moving lights, like multi-colored wisps, accenting further the graceful beauty of them.

Ro gently took her elbow. “Come on, Miss Yuri, let’s get ya a look at tha inside.” Yuri nodded somewhat dumbly and followed where he led her. Her eyes never left the beautiful towers, and the chill that had run down her spine when she’d glimpsed Olivia Delegarde was completely forgotten.

At the opposite end of the square, there stood a tall arch which was flanked on either side by massive stone dragons. They appeared to be strange sort of cross between western dragons and the drawings of dragons Yuri had seen in Chinese restaurants. They had four legs and huge wings like those of a bat, and they stood upon their hind legs with their front ones clawing ferociously at the arch. Their necks were long, curving over the top of the arch, upon which rested their heads, which were shaped like a western dragon’s, but which had a mane and feathers. Both of them were obviously meant to be in the middle of a terrible roar. Vaguely, Yuri recalled the term “segreant,” though for the life of her she couldn’t recall where she’d heard it.

At this point, Kiih began to walk briskly in front of them, leading them through the arch and onto a wide thoroughfare that led to a circular courtyard. They were surrounded by the white towers, some of them reaching at least twenty stories into the air, some of them only one or two stories tall. They obviously seemed to be arranged in clusters, which were divided out like pie slices by thoroughfares just like the one they’d just taken. When Kiih turned to take one of the other paths out of the courtyard, Ro reached out and snatched the other man’s braid with the hand not guiding Yuri.

Kiih stopped mid-step, turned on his heel, and quirked an eyebrow.

“Ya know,” Ro began, thoughtfully toying with the tuft of hair left loose at the end, “I really think tha’ mebbe tha Library isn’t tha place for us to be going.”

The corners of Kiih’s mouth twitch slightly before he finally said, “All right. If we are here for information, yet we are not going to the very large repository of it, where shall we go?”

“Hmm, I think tha’ mebbe we ought to pay Silaelin a visit,” Ro stated judiciously.

“Silaelin is a busy woman,” Kiih said, a thread of steel in his voice which confused Yuri by its presence. “We aren’t scheduled to meet with her, it’s very likely she won’t even be in.”

“She’ll be in,” Ro said with certainty.

Kiih stared at him through narrowed eyes for a moment before gently tugging his hair out of Ro’s grasp and leading them down a small foot-path on the far side of the courtyard. After a few yards, the path terminated at a small wooden door framed on either side by hanging ferns that practically glowed with miniature versions of the large floating wisps that played through the very tops of the Cathedral’s spires. The door itself was plain, set with a metallic plate engraved with a writing that Yuri thought might be the beautiful bastard child of cuneiform and Edwardian script.

Kiih brusquely rapped on the door four times and stood at attention with his spine perfectly straight and his hands held stiffly at his sides. A few moments passed, then the door swung inward revealing a tall, buxom woman clad in a simple white shift under a long white robe trimmed in blue and gold. She had skin that made Yuri finally understand what it meant for someone to have an alabaster complexion, and hair that looked like finely spun gold threads piled on her head and held with various pins and clips. Her face was slender and pointed in a very Fae way, and her eyes were a wide, clear blue.

Her face lit up when she saw the three of them, and she stepped aside and motioned them in. “Welcome! I hadn’t been expecting you just yet, but it’s so good to see you two! And you brought a friend, how lovely.” She caught Yuri’s hands as she crossed the threshold and favored her with a wide smile. “I am Silaelin san’Illustra. It’s a pleasure to meet you. What’s your name?”

Yuri blinked, somehow taken aback by Silaelin’s cheer. “Um, I’m Yuri Kitazawa. It’s nice to meet you.”

“What a peculiar name,” Silaelin said, leading Yuri into the dwelling. It appeared to be two round rooms connected by a wide arch. The first room, into which the door led, was obviously a sitting room combined with a study (at least that was Yuri’s impression from the many tall shelves full to bursting with books). The other room was partially obscured by a curtain, but Yuri could still see a bed and some pillows.

Their host gestured to a round table to one side of the room, around which Ro and Kiih had already arranged themselves. Yuri dumbly took the seat next to Kiih, and Silaelin arranged her robes so that she might take the seat between Yuri and Ro. She smiled at Yuri again, then glanced between Kiih and Ro.

“So, what brings you gentlemen to me on this lovely afternoon?” she asked. Kiih gave Ro a pointed glare which obviously said, It was his idea, but Silaelin ignored it. “And why would you drag poor Yuri through the midday sun to do it? She’s obviously on the verge of heat sickness. Kiih, please, would you fetch some glasses and some water?”

Kiih nodded and rose stiffly, heading through the curtain and out of sight. Ro watched him go, then turned back to Silaelin with a contrite expression on his face. “I’m sorry, Silaelin, but I went somewhere closer first, and had no luck. We were headed to tha Library when I had tha thought tha’ it might be ya could pr’vide tha ’sistance Miss Yuri here needs.”

Silaelin turned to Yuri, fixing her with a sharply critical gaze. After a moment, her eyes softened, and she said soothingly, “I’m sorry to hear that you’re in trouble. Please, tell me what’s going on. I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to help you, but I can guarantee that I will do everything in my power.”

Yuri nodded slowly and laid out everything that had happened up until this point, giving more detail than she had to Len, but she still balked at describing her experience with the stranger in the dark. She merely mentioned that she’d woken in a dark place and then drifted in a random direction before waking up in the garden. If Silaelin could tell that Yuri had omitted something, she gave no sign of it.

Partway through Yuri’s retelling, Kiih slid silently back into his chair and pressed a glass into her hands. When she finished, he said, “I apologize if we’re wasting your time with this.”

“Oh, you’re hardly wasting my time,” Silaelin said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “It’s always nice to see your pretty faces, and I think that I have a pretty good idea of what Yuri’s problem is. Or, at least her perceived problem. I hardly believe that one’s ancestry is something one must be ashamed of.” She said this with a pointed look in Kiih’s direction, but he seemed impervious.

“So… what’s my ‘perceived problem,’ then?” Yuri asked hesitantly.

“I’ll need you to answer a few questions for me before I can say with certainty,” Silaelin said. “Tell me, where you come from, is it at all strange that your hair looks the way it does?”

“Yes,” Yuri replied. “It’s pretty weird that my hair’s this color. It’s not a natural color for someone’s hair where I come from, anyway. I was a little surprised when I saw Je– Kiih’s hair, and then there were a lot of people on the way who had kind of oddball coloring.”

“Hmm. All right,” said Silaelin. “I’m going to guess that wherever you come from, it’s just your kind there, and no other sentient races?”

“That’s right,” Yuri said. “Where are you going with this?”

Silaelin smiled. “Well, when two sentient races interbreed, their children usually have physical appearances that are in some way, large or small, not normal for either of the parents’ races. Most often, it’s purely cosmetic, like hair, eye, and sometimes skin color, but it’s not unheard of for horns to sprout or for someone to be born with scales.

“Granted, there are a few exceptions,” she continued. “Some races mix remarkably well, and that’s one of the reasons they survive, such as Harpy’s Children in the forested regions of our southern provinces. Does that make sense?”

“I… I guess,” Yuri conceded, frowning a little. “So are you saying that some member of my family was a fairy or something?”

“You’re certainly enough of a headache to be some sort of imp,” Kiih quipped. Ro jabbed him in the ribs sharply with his elbow, and Silaelin shot him a withering glare. He crossed his arms over his chest and straightened in his chair. “Apologies.”

“Anyway, as I was saying.” Silaelin clapped her hands brusquely and pushed a stray lock of golden hair behind one of her ears. “No, I’m not saying that a member of your family was a fairy or something, not exactly. What I am saying is that someone in your family was not entirely human. I don’t believe that there’s any fae ancestry involved, or at least it’s extremely unlikely. What I think is that you, and maybe other people in your family, are planes-touched.”

At this pronouncement, Ro’s eyes widened and Kiih sputtered indignantly, “That’s impossible! Worldwalkers are the stuff of legend. They’re a bedtime story mothers tell their children to warn them what happens when you play with things you don’t understand.”

“That’s true,” Silaelin said with a nod, “they are a cautionary tale to anyone who wants to manipulate the fabric of existence, but they aren’t just a story. It’s so rare to see Worldwalkers that they can comfortably be relegated to just legends, but they exist as surely as the Merciful Mother does. And their children are planes-touched.”

Yuri’s frown deepened as she remembered what Corwyn had told her. “What does ‘planes-touched’ mean? What exactly are ‘Worldwalkers?’”

“It’s actually easier if I start with your second question,” Silaelin said cheerfully. “According to legend, and mostly according to fact, too, there was a great and shining society of people who were so steeped in art and innovation that everything else just paled when compared to them. They were a people made up of dreamers and seekers, and for them, there was no limit to what they could do with technology and magick. When it occurred to them that the universe was vast and they should create a way to travel it, it was only a matter of time before they began to build.

“What they built was a network of gateways that, when activated, would use the naturally occurring magickal energy that runs through the universe to create doorways to different places. This included travel between gateways, but mostly it was aimed at creating stable, sustainable doorways to other planes of existence.” She paused, apparently to gauge Yuri’s reaction. When she noticed the glass that Yuri had been holding on to but not drinking from, she scowled. “Drink some water. Seriously.”

Startled, Yuri nodded and took a few gulps of the cool liquid, then set the half-empty glass on the table in front of her. “That’s better. It would be a really bad idea to do what we need to do with you on the verge of falling over. Anyway, like I was saying, these people attempted to create permanent doorways to other planes of existence, other worlds. Before, only limited travel between planes was possible, and then only for individuals with small burdens, and usually at a great cost. For the most part, when they brought the first few gates up, they were very successful. However, in their eagerness to push forward, they forgot caution, and failed to see a fatal flaw in their works.

“It ended in a tragic explosion that obliterated more than half the face of their world, and those who survived were drastically changed. The exposure to the wild magicks unleashed bleached everyone’s skin and hair, and it changed the very make-up of their beings. When all the dust settled, those who remained found that they could move freely between planes, among other things, but it was a hollow achievement when they knew that all they had built was now dust.

“With nothing left on their world, they wandered. Some of them started families, but most of them find it very difficult to settle down. Their children, when they have them, are known as being planes-touched. They, too, can walk between worlds, like their parents. And all who can traverse the planes as they can are known as Worldwalkers.” She leaned back and fixed Yuri with another appraising look.

For her part, Yuri tried her best not to look skeptical. “That’s… well, that’s a lot of information to think about,” she said finally. “But… as interesting as it is, how does this get me home?”

“Well, in and of itself, I suppose it doesn’t,” said Silaelin. “But it means that you probably got here under your own power, and not through some freak accident, which means that you’ll be able to leave under your own power. However, since you were only using your ability as a reaction to being in danger, it will probably take a little work before you can move between planes at will.” Before either Yuri or Kiih could say anything in response, Silaelin held up her hands. “Don’t worry, don’t worry, if I’m right, most of that work you can do when you get home.”

Yuri brightened. “So you can help me get home?”

“Yup,” Silaelin said brightly. “Ro was right to bring you to me. I’m sure there are books about the planes-touched around here somewhere, but I’m pretty sure I’m in a unique position to help you.” She reached around the table and took one of Yuri’s hands into hers. For the first time, Yuri noticed that her skin was cool and smooth, and the bones of her hands were fine but strong. “Now, I need you to do me a couple of favors here.”

Yuri blinked and looked up, realizing belatedly that she’d been staring at Silaelin’s fingers. “Um, sure. What’s up?”

Silaelin hummed thoughtfully. “Well, first I’m going to need your word that you’ll do what I say, even if it seems silly.” When Yuri nodded, she continued, “Now, I want you to look me in the eyes.”

With a little reluctance, Yuri complied. Silaelin’s eyes were large, though not so large that they looked out of place, and her irises were a blue caught between cerulean and corn flower, with striations of indigo and something that might have been gold. No, that was not precisely right. One was flecked with a little more gold; in fact, her left eye seemed to be more of a swirling green than blue, as she’d originally thought. Yuri blinked again, and Silaelin’s eyes were blue once more.

“… you to think of where your home is in the universe,” she heard Silaelin saying, though she couldn’t for the life of her remember anything she’d been saying before. She hadn’t even been aware of her lips moving, though now she thought she could see a slight upward tug at one corner of them. “You can close your eyes now, if you think that will help.”

Again, Yuri complied, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. As she felt the air fill her lungs, her world narrowed to the cool weight of Silaelin’s hands on hers and the darkness behind her eyelids. She concentrated stubbornly on the concept of home, thinking first broadly of the Milky Way galaxy, then zipping through it until her focus was on the Sun and the bodies around it. Then, she shifted to Earth, sheepishly recalling montages in movies that start with satellite photographs of the entire country which eventually zoom in on a particular house.

Eventually, she noticed that Silaelin’s hand had slipped away, and she could no longer hear even the vaguest hint of the other men in the room. When she let out her breath slowly and hazarded to open her eyes again, she was floating, alone, in the darkness. Her heart fluttered for a moment, on the verge of panic.

“Mister Corwyn?” she called out desperately. The darkness around her swallowed the cry eagerly, and it sound distant and tinny even to her own ears. She tried again, but the result was the same.

Before she could work herself into a truly good fervor, she felt the slightest of tugs on her right index finger. Glancing down, she saw the glimmer of a thin opalescent ribbon wrapped three times around her finger, one loop for each knuckle. It stretched behind her as far as she could see, though it seemed to disappear sooner when she looked forward. She felt the tug again, more insistent this time; it was definitely pulling her forward.

Casting one last look toward the darkness, Yuri sighed and began kicking her legs, trying to propel herself in the direction of the ribbon’s persistent tug.

When Yuri opened her eyes again, she found herself lying stretched out on a sinfully comfortable couch. Above her leaned a woman with what must have been a painfully ample bosom and a face much like Silaelin’s, though somehow subdued. When the woman saw Yuri’s eyes flutter open, she smiled broadly. “Welcome back! How are you feeling?”

Yuri sat up and immediately rubbed her eyes with the hand she was not using to prop herself upright. “Ooh, fuzzy. Where am I? Who are you?”

She heard the woman who looked like Silaelin hum quietly. “Well, my name’s Silvia, but it’s really better for everyone involved if you just stick to calling me Sil. As for where we are, we’re in my apartment in Waldorf, Maryland. I kind of wanted to settle down in a place named Statler, but unfortunately that choice wasn’t available.” Yuri peered at Sil between her fingers and found her still grinning. “At least now I know why it wasn’t an option. I have a car, do you want a ride home?”

“Um, sure,” Yuri said, still feeling a little blurry around the edges. Out of habit, she reached beside her on the couch, and her hand met nothing but air (and delightfully soft cushion). “Crap!” she said feelingly.

“Hmm?” Silvia cocked her head to one side curiously.

Yuri squeezed her eyes shut, as though that might help her feeling of sheer stupidity. “I think I left my bag and helmet at Jerkface’s house.”

Sil burst out laughing.