Why does she seem so little bothered by the evil here?
She noted his attention, reading the question on his face, but misinterpreting it. “I’m not about to let you do this without someone at your back. Especially with you missing an arm.”
He offered her a grateful smile.
She scowled at him. “Watch your step, Rhun, or you and that stone will go rolling away.”
He turned around as the monk led them down a thin path to a tall marker that stuck upward from the shoreline. It was a plinth of gray granite, frosted with ice, rising as high as his chest.
The monk brushed the snow off the pillar’s crown with reverent fingers, revealing the sculpture of a small cup, identical to the chalices depicted in the mosaic back in Venice. Like the structures in the Buddhist temple, the base of the stone chalice merged with the stone, making cup and pillar one piece.
Rhun imagined if he cleared the snow from around the foot of plinth that it, too, would be a part of this mountain.
The monk stepped to Rhun’s side, collected the box from his one hand, then turned it so the latch faced Rhun.
“The Sky Stone is for you,” the monk intoned, bowing slightly. “You must place the sacred gem in its place. At the same time as the others.”
The monk nodded toward the chalice.
Rhun understood.
I must set the Aqua stone into this receptacle.
Rhun reached his hand to the box, undid the latch with his thumb, and tilted the lid open. For a breath, he expected to find nothing, some final act of betrayal by these monks. But instead, resting in a bed of silk, lay a perfect gem. It shone with the brilliance of a bright blue sky, as if the most perfect day had been captured in that stone, preserved for eternity.
A small sigh of reverence slipped his lips.
The lion stepped closer, placing his paw on Rhun’s knee to lift his nose higher so that he could peer at the stone. Elizabeth merely crossed her arms.
Rhun pushed the lion off his leg and closed his fingers over the gem, feeling a sinking sense of unworthiness.
How could such beauty be meant for me?
Still, he knew his duty and took the stone in hand, feeling the holiness warm his fingers, his wrist, and up his arm. As it suffused his chest, he almost expected it to start his heart beating again. When it did not, he turned and faced the pillar and that carved chalice.
Across the lake, he saw the others were already at their positions. Xao was bent near Erin’s ear, whispering, likely passing on the same instructions to her.
Erin looked up toward him. Though she was fifty yards away, he could see the fear in her face. He knew the source of her anxiety and turned toward it now, too. The trio needed to act in unison, but there remained one final task.
Rhun stared over at Jordan.
Would the man’s blood purify and heal the broken gem?
Jordan touched the cold point of the dagger against the skin of his wrist.
This had better work.
A glance up revealed what was left of the sun: a fiery crimson blaze shooting from the edge of the moon’s dark shadow. The brilliance stung his eyes, leaving his vision dazzled when he glanced back to the blade poised at his wrist. By now, the valley was smothered in the moon’s umbra, turning the snow a soft crimson and the ice of the lake an even darker shade of black, reminding him of those drops of Lucifer’s blood.
The lake looks like a hole in this world.
His blood ran cold at the sight of it, sensing its wrongness.
Knowing what he must do, he pressed the point of the dagger into his flesh and drew its edge along his wrist. A thick line of blood welled up. He sheathed the knife and withdrew the pieces of the green stone, handing one to the monk at his side. Jordan took the remaining piece and held it under his wrist, catching the first falling drop into the gem’s hollow center.
He steeled himself against some dramatic reaction, but when nothing happened, he continued filling that stone’s cavity. Once his blood was spilling over the gem’s lip, he exchanged that half for the still-empty one and repeated the same.
Still, there was no blinding flash of light, no crescendo of song.
Jordan looked at the monk for help, but the guy appeared equally lost — and scared.
Only one thing left to do…
Pushing aside his worries, Jordan took the two halves in hand. With his blood sloshing over the facets, he fitted the two pieces back together.
C’mon…
For a moment, there was no better outcome — then the stone began to warm between his palms, growing quickly hotter, not unlike the feverish heat when his body healed. Jordan prayed this was a good sign. Soon the inner fire grew to a burn, as if he had plucked a coal from a campfire. Still, he held tight, grimacing from the pain.
He watched new crimson lines appear across the back of his hands, burning whorls across his skin, twining up his fingers. He almost expected his hands to fuse together over the stone, to become a husk for the burning seed he held.
When he thought he could withstand that heat no longer, the fire subsided, replaced instead by a singing that passed through him, drawing him closer, rooting him in a new way to the gem in his hands. That faint echo he had heard from the stone before grew into a great chorus.
It sang of warm summer days, the smell of hay in the barn, the sound of wind blowing through cornfields. It rang with the buzzing of bees on a late afternoon, the soft honking of geese migrating with the changing tide of seasons, the low bass notes of a whale seeking a mate.
Jordan cocked his head, hearing a new song merge with the gem’s melody. A warm red ribbon of hope and life flowed and danced into his song, the new notes sounded of heartbeats and laughter and the soft whicker of a horse greeting a loved one.
Then a third voice joined the chorus, as blue as the bright plumage of a jay in sunlight. This refrain ran deeper through the chorus: flowing with the thunder of falling water, the soft patter of rain on dry earth, and the sighing of a tide as it waxed and waned, a motion as eternal as the earth.
The three songs wove together into a great canticle of life, one that revealed in each note and chorus the beauty and wonder of this world, of its endless harmony and variety, how each piece fit together into a whole
Jordan felt himself a part of that song, yet still an observer.
Then through that majesty, a command rang forth, reaching his ears.
“Now,” Erin called. “On three.”
Jordan tore his gaze away from the emerald depths of his stone to see Erin standing before her pillar, her arms upraised, bearing aloft a shining red gem that defied the darkness of the eclipse.
Jordan’s heart ached at the sight of her, allowing the song to fade enough to listen and obey. She looked like some ancient tribal goddess, her figure lit by that crimson shine, turning her golden hair to fire.
To the west, Rhun also held his stone aloft.
“One.” Erin’s clear voice ran across the lake.
“Two,” Rhun answered her, as if they had rehearsed it.
Jordan added finality to this moment. “Three.”
Erin lowered the Sanguis stone into the chalice before her.
As soon as its facets touched the granite, the ruby gem burst forth with a blazing light, echoing the crimson fire of the eclipsing sun. Flames ignited from the gem’s surface and danced around the stone chalice. Heat and holiness washed across Erin’s face. She feared if she got too close it would burn her to ash.