Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
design, part of the 'Wind in the Branches' set of patterns and the same basic
shape as the keying crystals for the Altasimic warding. Buried here where we are
now, where it is now, and without the flitter Net, we wouldn't have thought
anything of it other than it was a copy, perhaps a gift to Camerat as the Temple
here was involved with the original setting of the wards.”
Speaking plain tongue but she changed for one more word: “Ce'ltahm.” The
Net opened to allow translations but neither of the two Zimmer touched the lead.
She did, but a different link, and the flute music stopped abruptly.
And Poss a'ltic ended up speaking first again, finding the sudden quiet too
pregnant. “Mouth of Winter,” she added, still staring at the thing. The glass
shapes took color from the tea-dampened sand. “Mouth of Winter” was the most
common translation, but only one of many possible depending on the context.
Wind in the Branches. The words moved in a like dance of meanings. Lithm'celta,
the fire-ice dance and a relative again of the Opening dance Ulanda had done on
Alisim. The same word and the dance she had first seen as a child at the Turning
Festival on Ri. Did Kascin know the tune, she wondered. She thought the music
had begun to sound like a minor version of that just before she told him to stop.
“One of six springs that make up the outer margin of the world-altar on
Lillisim,” she said and looked up. “Have you seen it?”
“Lady, the Lord Gennady walked with the High Priest Sarkalt into the spiral
from that spring,” Oimit said. “There was a girdle of sunstones in the grass, green
fire in the grass and in the Priest's eyes.”
A narrow dark line had grown around the woman's own eyes. Poetry in plaintongue?
Yuin sight? Poss a'ltic threw her head back and smiled widely at her.
Another challenge, and except for the growing black, was as ignored. “The Lady
Ulanda danced the Opening in a robe woven in that pattern,” Oimit said. “Woven
from Simic green silk.”
A'in spoke into the silence that followed. “Silk?” he said. His voice cut like a
razor. There was more to what he was going to say but Poss a'ltic motioned him
to silence.
The Zimmer sighed and shaped her narrow hands into a shape that offered
peace. Crippling scars showed across one palm. “Silk and lives both, and both
burned. What does the Empress want of us?” She used the hand with the feather
mark to pick the girdle up. The long ties with the sea-foam flowers on the ends
drew twin paths in the sand.
Held in the hand, Poss a'ltic knew, the glass showed a little more of the age of
the thing. Filmed from absolute clarity, frosted when inspected even closer.
Minute scratches on the surface, they would have left some of the girdle where
they found it, part of the sand it had been buried in. If she was surprised, it was
that the sand around it hadn't become glass first.
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca