To look at it, though, the Golden Shrine might have vanished from human ken day before yesterday. Or, for that matter, it might never have vanished at all. The tiles that decorated the outer walls were decorated with what looked like an elaborate, sinuous script. But if it was writing, it wasn’t writing of a kind Hamnet had ever seen before.
He glanced toward the widely traveled Ulric Skakki. When he caught the adventurer’s eyes, Ulric only shrugged. He couldn’t read those sparkling tiles, either. He and Hamnet both looked at Eyvind Torfinn. Eyvind wasn’t so widely traveled. But he was widely—and deeply—read. That might count for more.
Then again, it might not. “If you are wondering, gentlemen, I must confess that I have never seen the like,” he said.
“Oh.” Hamnet couldn’t hide his disappointment.
Ulric was looking around. “Most of the lake bottom’s just mud and gravel, the way you’d expect,” he said. “But not this road, and not the ground right in front of the Golden Shrine.”
“You’re right.” Hamnet wondered why he hadn’t noticed that himself. Maybe because the road leading toward the Golden Shrine seemed so ordinary. No mud or gravel fouled the flagstones. They weren’t even wet. They should have been, but they weren’t. Which meant they weren’t ordinary, either, even if they seemed to be.
Neither was the grass growing in front of the Golden Shrine. It was grass, not some underwater weed. It grew there as if the Shrine had been standing in the sun for all these years. Hamnet knew better, but the illusion remained convincing.
Trasamund chuckled nervously. “Next thing you know, that door will open and a priest or shaman or whatever you want to call him will come out and bid us good day.”
“Don’t be more ridiculous than you can help,” Gudrid snapped.
Eyvind Torfinn coughed. “My dear, in our present state of knowledge—or rather, of ignorance—calling anything ridiculous would be, well, ridiculous.
Hamnet reached out and tapped Trasamund on the arm. “Once upon a time, you said we’d fight it out in front of the Golden Shrine’s door. If you still want to try it, Your Ferocity, I’m ready.”
The jarl started to reach over his back for his great sword. Then he stopped and laughed and shook his head. “Let it go, Thyssen—let it go. With this in front of me, I can do without the sport. Unless you think your honor’s touched, of course. If you do, I’ll gladly oblige you.”
“Right now, letting go is better,” Hamnet said, glad Trasamund didn’t want to hold him to their promise. He nodded to Marcovefa. “You must have expected all this.”
“Not me,” she said. “I always thought beating the Rulers would have to happen up here on the Bizogot plain. I didn’t understand why that was so till just before the end. And the Golden Shrine . . . Who could expect the Golden Shrine? You hope. You imagine. You never expect.”
A goose alighted in a puddle on what had been the bottom of Sudertorp Lake. The bird seemed bewildered at the changes that had turned its world all topsy-turvy. Hamnet Thyssen understood how it felt.
The road ran straight to the Golden Shrine. Had it really lain there under the waters of the lake? Had it really lain under the Glacier even longer? Like the Shrine, the road showed no signs of any such mishap. Had they been somewhere else—perhaps not even on or in or of this world at all—and suddenly appeared here when the Rulers were swept away?
However tempting that was, Count Hamnet couldn’t believe it. Both the roadway and the Golden Shrine gave the impression of belonging where they were. He couldn’t have said why or how they did, but it was so.
He slid off his horse and walked toward the doorway. A polished brass knocker was fixed to the door just below eye level. Why isn’t it green with patina? he wondered. When the Golden Shrine wasn’t dripping—when it wasn’t ground to dust—he had no idea why that detail puzzled him, but it did.
Gudrid laughed harshly when he reached for the knocker instead of the latch. “Do you truly think someone will open it?” she jeered.
“I don’t know what to think right now,” Hamnet answered. “And if you think you do know, you’re wrong.”
The knocker swung smoothly in his hand. He rapped with it once, twice, three times. The clear, sharp sound echoed out over what had been Sudertorp Lake. The goose in the puddle took off. Hamnet paused, then knocked three more times.
“Oh, well. So much for that,” Ulric Skakki said. “Now try the latch.”
Hamnet was reaching for it when the door into the Golden Shrine swung open on silent hinges. Magic, he thought, or maybe the power of God. Is there any difference?
A woman in a golden robe looked out at him and his companions. “Good day,” she said. That was what he heard, anyhow, although it didn’t match the motion of her lips.
Trasamund laughed raucously. “Ha!” he told Gudrid. “D’you see? Do you?” She pointed her nose to the sky, pretending not to hear.
“Welcome,” the woman went on. “We haven’t had visitors in . . . oh, quite a long time.” She wasn’t very large. Her hair was light brown, her eyes somewhere between green and hazel. By that and by her cast of features, she might have been either Raumsdalian or Bizogot—or both, or neither.
“She speaks my dialect,” Marcovefa said, and then, “Oh. It must be a translation spell. If the Rulers sometimes use them, why should we be surprised the folk of the Golden Shrine do, too?”
“It is a translation spell,” the woman in the golden robe agreed.
In a way, Marcovefa’s words made good sense to Hamnet. In another . . . “How are there folk of the Golden Shrine?” he asked. “This place has, mm, been through a lot, hasn’t it?”
“Yes—and no. That is the only answer I can give.” Smiling, the woman stood aside. “Come in. You will see for yourselves.”
There was only one problem with that: no one wanted to stay behind and hold the horses. After some argument, Hamnet said, “We’ll just tether them, then. I don’t think anyone will steal them, not on the grounds of the Golden Shrine.” He glanced toward the priestess in some embarrassment.
Her smile didn’t falter. All she said was, “I think you are right. They are also unlikely to stray.” One by one, the Raumsdalians and Bizogots dismounted. They queued up behind Count Hamnet. The horses hardly needed tethering. They seemed content to crop the grass growing outside the wall.
“You’ll be the first one in,” Ulric told Hamnet. “Someday, somebody’ll write your name in a history book.”
“Now tell me something that matters,” Hamnet said. Ulric chuckled. Hamnet walked through the door and into the Golden Shrine.
It was warm in there, not warm as if summer were here, but warm as if the Glacier had never rolled south, warm as if the Breath of God never blew. Some of the plants that grew in the courtyard lived far, far to the south, in lands where the Breath of God didn’t reach. Others Hamnet Thyssen had never seen before, on this side of the Glacier or the other.
He pointed to one of them. “Have those grown here since before the ice began to swell?” he asked.
“You might say so,” the priestess answered. “Or you might not.”
“Why do you talk in riddles?” Marcovefa demanded. “This is the Golden Shrine. This is the place where there should be answers, not more questions.”
“The answers are here,” the priestess assured her. “Whether you can understand them all . . . That, I fear, is one more question.” She smiled to show she wasn’t mocking Marcovefa.
More priestesses and priests came out to greet the awestruck newcomers. Like the first one, they might have been Raumsdalians or Bizogots . . . or they might not have. The one thing Hamnet was sure of was that they weren’t close kin to the Rulers.
As Hamnet had, Eyvind Torfinn pointed to some unfamiliar flowers. “Where do these come from?” he asked.