“I thought this was the Mitth family’s old land.”
“It is,” Thurfian said. “But that land covers over six thousand square kilometers and includes many other caverns like this one, all of which have tube car access. Trust me: No one arrives at the Mitth homestead without Mitth family permission. This is your last chance to change your mind about the Trials.”
Thalias braced herself. “I’m ready.”
“Maybe. We’ll find out, won’t we?”
The car came to a stop a hundred meters from the front of the house, beside a large mosaic design set into the ground. “Your first Trial,” Thurfian said as the canopy slid back. “Find your path. If you succeed, you’ll be invited inside. If you fail, get back in the car and you’ll be taken back to the spaceport.” He climbed out, walking along the edge of the mosaic, and headed toward the mansion.
Gingerly, Thalias stepped out of the car, frowning at the mosaic. It seemed familiar…
And then she got it. The whole thing was a stylized map of the Ascendancy.
Find your path, Thurfian had said. Did that mean she was supposed to trace out her hopes for the future?
No, of course not, she realized suddenly. The whole existence of this homestead was a grand gesture to Mitth family history. She wasn’t supposed to trace out her future; she was supposed to trace out the path that had brought her here.
She took a deep breath. She barely remembered her life before the sky-walker corps, but she knew she’d been born on Colonial Station Camco. That was…there. Walking gingerly across the map, making sure she didn’t touch any other planets along the way, she stepped onto the Camco mark.
For a moment nothing happened. She was wondering if she needed to lean over and touch it with her hand when the area around the planet lit up briefly with a green glow.
She huffed out a relieved breath as the glow faded away. Okay. From there she’d traveled to the Expansionary Fleet complex on Naporar, where she’d received her sky-walker training. Again being careful not to touch any of the other planets, she walked over to Naporar and stood on it. Again, she was rewarded by a green glow. Next…
She froze. Next had been a series of voyages outside the Ascendancy in her role as a sky-walker, guiding military and diplomatic ships to alien worlds and nations.
Only none of those worlds were on the map. Should she go to whichever Chiss system had been closest to those?
No, that couldn’t be right. The mosaic was a flat projection of a three-dimensional region of space, and there was no way to know from here which Chiss planet was closest to a given alien nation. But then what was she supposed to do?
She looked up at the house. History…but the history of the Ascendancy.
She looked back at the map. The last trip she’d taken as a sky-walker, the one where she’d met Thrawn, had been from Rentor to Naporar. She crossed to Rentor and gingerly stepped on it.
To her relief, the mosaic again glowed green around her feet. She crossed to Naporar, and was again rewarded.
All right. Next had been a trip to Avidich to meet with the Mitth Aristocra who’d brought her into the family. Then off to Jamiron for her formal schooling…
There were three more worlds after that, and each green glow brought back memories of sights and sounds and aromas she’d almost forgotten. By the time she stepped on Csilla, it was almost as if she’d actually revisited those places.
The ground again glowed green. “Welcome, Mitth’ali’astov,” a disembodied voice rose from the mosaic. “Proceed to the ancient home to begin your next Trial.”
Thalias took a deep breath. “I obey,” she said. Walking across the mosaic, her mind still swirling with memories, she stepped onto the soft swish grass and headed toward the house.
There were a lot of Trials.
The first four or five were relatively easy: written tests involving general knowledge, logic, problem solving, and Ascendancy history. It was like being in school again, and while Thalias had only been a fair student she’d always loved learning. She breezed through them with relative ease, wondering if the rest of the Trials would be as straightforward.
They weren’t.
Next came a test to see if she could cross a three-meter-wide water channel without getting wet, using only boards that were two and a half meters long each. After that she had to climb a smooth-barked tree to reach a sight line that would reveal the answer to an ancient Mitth riddle. Another family riddle required her to find a subtle pattern in the flower arcs surrounding the mansion.
More than once, as she worked through the puzzles, she wondered if these Trials had been devised since the homestead was moved under the Csilla surface or if they predated that time. If it was the latter, it meant everything that had once been up there had been duplicated in meticulous detail.
Somehow, that degree of commitment didn’t surprise her.
She’d assumed the Trials would end with the setting of the cavern’s artificial sun. Again, she was wrong. A short six-hour sleep interval, and it was back to another battery of written tests and a couple more outdoor logic problems.
During the entire time, from the moment Thurfian left her at the mosaic map, she hadn’t seen another living being. All her instructions had come via the same disembodied voice she’d heard when she’d first arrived, while her meals and room were waiting when she arrived at the designated places.
Finally, two hours past her small noontime meal, she was sent on the final Triaclass="underline" to climb to the top of the mountain she’d seen rising up behind the mansion.
At first it didn’t look too challenging. There was a clearly marked trail, the initial slope was only a few degrees, and the frequent clumps and lines of trees promised lots of shade against the blazing sunlight. Making a private bet with herself that she would be back down in time for an early dinner, she started up.
The nice shallow slope didn’t last much past the first line of trees. Fortunately, as the mountain steepened, the path switched to an almost horizontal switchback-type arrangement that would angle her along the side of the mountain instead of straight up it.
A less rigorous climb, but now also considerably longer. Mentally revising her estimate as to how long this would take, she kept going.
She’d been on the path for perhaps an hour, and had made the third switchback turn, when she began seeing tall spikes sticking out of the ground beside the path. There were six in the first group, one of them about a meter tall and five centimeters in diameter, the other five half or a third that height and proportionally thinner. Thalias studied them as she walked past, wondering if this was the lead-in to another puzzle. The taller spike seemed to have a textured or carved surface, and for a moment she considered leaving the path for a closer look.
But while her orders hadn’t said she couldn’t look at the spikes, they hadn’t specifically said she could, either. At this late stage in the Trials, she decided, it would be best to err on the side of caution.
Unless this was supposed to be a test of initiative?
Thalias scowled. Mind games inside mind games.
Still, she could see through the trees that there were more groups of spikes upslope of her current position. She’d keep going and watch for some pattern that would hopefully indicate how exactly she was supposed to jump on this one.
She’d assumed the cluster she’d seen through the tree would be the next one. To her mild surprise, she found a trail of much shorter spikes laid out along the path immediately after the first group. Some of the spikes seemed to be alone, while others formed small groups. Usually there was a slightly taller spike at the center, though none of these had the height or elaborate texturing of the first one she’d encountered. Frowning at each spike as she passed, looking for the still-elusive pattern she knew had to be there, she continued.