[TRC] The Heralds of the White God (NC17, AU, Kuro/Fai Syao/Saku) 11/20

[mikkeneko]

Title: The Heralds of the White God chapter 11 - The Space Between The Stars
Rating: M
Warnings: A severe lack of Fai in this chapter. Sorry about that.
Summary: In which Kurogane climbs a mountain, Amaterasu is given a warning, and Sakura touches the stars for the first time.

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The road, Kurogane decided, had been nothing more than a sadistic tease.

It was commonly accepted by cartographers - even Ceresian ones - that the eastern wall of the Ruval Valley was impassable. Kurogane had not been initially too concerned; much of the wooded hills and brush that he regularly beat through on his oni patrols had also been declared 'impassable' by the city folk at Edo. It simply meant that there was no building towns on it or driving trade routes through it, but one man on a horse could often go where a caravan could not. The fact that there had been a road leading up to the eastern ridge at all had been a hopeful sign, as far as Kurogane was concerned.

But the track had petered out to nothing on a last, broad meadow only a hundred feet above their starting point; they were barely above the level of the tallest castle spires. Already well above the timber line, in these summer months the bony mountain slopes were decorated only by low woody bushes and abundant, sweet smelling mountain herbs. A small herd of goats grazing on the short alpine grasses had moved to the other side of the meadow to avoid them, but were otherwise undisturbed by their arrival. Past that point, there was no more road.

Undaunted, the two travelers had consulted their maps - given to them along with the strange deer-goat mounts and the rest of their supplies - and set off for the place in the towering ridge that seemed the lowest. But the going was hard. What had appeared to be smooth ground from the distance was anything but even up close, and the grade ramped up drastically until what they were doing felt more like rock-climbing than hiking.

Kurogane quickly came to appreciate, however grudgingly, their mounts. A horse would never have made it up this far; it would have balked at the wide gaps between solid rocks, or panicked on the sliding gravel scree when attempting to scramble sideways along a slope. The kozelorug seemed perfectly at ease in this barren, broken landscape; their flexible, split-toed hooves easily found footing amongst even the most treacherous jumble of rocks. Without them, they would never have been able to bring mounts up this high; nor even made the climb themselves, laden with all the gear they would need to survive the journey ahead.

The ascent became more and more precarious the closer they came to the ridge's peak. The first time his mount made the startling leap from one rocky ledge to another, rather than scrambling down and then up from the stony ditch below, Kurogane's heart leapt into his mouth. He was glad that his momentary panic had frozen his voice in his throat and that he had not embarrassed himself with an inadvertent yelp, especially when he heard Syaoran's yell of dismay behind him as the second animal came sailing gracefully after its brother.

From that point on Kurogane gave up even trying to guide his mount, and just settled for grimly clinging to the saddle as he attempted to keep his balance. The kozelorug seemed to have picked up on their intentions, and picked their way steadily onwards towards the peak even without any guidance from Syaoran or Kurogane. The uncanny sense of surety was just another thing about these strange animals that made Kurogane uneasy. By all rights the sailing leap ought to have snapped the animal's legs like twigs when it landed, but it didn't so much as stagger under the impact of landing. Whatever the wizards had done to these animals, it had been worth it.

Still, even with the magically enhanced mounts carrying most of the load, it was still tricky, nerve-wracking going, trying to keep his balance and his seat as the goat-like creatures made steps and leaps that were almost vertical. Kurogane's jaw was clamped so tight it hurt, and his fingers were almost numb from clenching around the leather reins; sweat streamed down the nape of his neck and back, and trickled down his arms.

What made it all worse was the nagging feeling that they weren't making any progress. Although it took them hours to climb the ridge, their progress was slow and mostly vertical. The white-tiered palace and the mountain town below it were still in sight, sharp and clear in the thin, cold air and seeming almost close enough to reach out and touch. With every lurching step that Kurogane traveled away from there he hated it; hated being forced on a journey that seemed ultimately pointless. Fai was in that castle; even though he'd insisted on sending Kurogane away, Fai still needed him. Kurogane couldn't stand the thought of being sent away with his duties still unfulfilled.

At last the kozelorug surged over the top of a sharply defined ridge, and Kurogane growled in frustration; there was another, higher ridge a few miles off, hidden from view as it had been by the sharp edge behind them. The pocket of land folded between the peaks was rocky and bare as the rest, with only a few tufts of grass peeking out from cracks in the stone, where soil could gather sheltered by harsh winds or even harsher gravity. Even with the summer solstice coming on, swathes of white ice shone brightly against the dark gray rock where winter snow still lingered.

For a time, their two mounts fell in pace side by side instead of single file, and brought Syaoran within talking range again. Syaoran kept stealing sideways glances at his mentor, which Kurogane ignored. At last, Syaoran took a deep breath, and began to speak.

"Um," he said. "Do you mind if I ask you a question...?"

Kurogane did mind; he had little doubt what topic the boy was madly curious to ask about. "What," he said flatly.

Syaoran swallowed, daunted by Kurogane's unfriendly tone, but finally took the plunge. "So, are you a-and that wizard - that wizard - are you really -?"

"Yes," Kurogane said firmly, cutting over his stuttering attempts at speech.

"Oh." Syaoran blushed furiously, ducking his head a little bit. His mount lagged behind Kurogane's for a pace, as the kozelorug navigated over a thin trickling stream of icemelt. When they came abreast again, he must have regained his courage; he asked in a slightly aggrieved voice, "How long has this been going on? Since we first arrived in Ceres, or...?"

"Since well before that, actually," Kurogane admitted. When he thought back on it, it had probably started as soon as he'd seen a shock of pale-white hair in the mud and char following a demon attack, although he hadn't realized it right away. It had taken another night battle to realize that - the night Fai had turned on him, tried to kill him, and in spite of everything Kurogane still hadn't been able to look at him as an enemy. "Last fall. We met while I was on patrol, and he helped me hunt some demons." That was the extremely abridged version, anyway.

"That long? Even before the war?" Syaoran's embarrassment turned to shock. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"Because it was none of your business," Kurogane snarled, his hackles raised by Syaoran's accusatory tone.

It had never exactly been a secret; he'd told Tomoyo everything, and from there the stories had circulated outwards at court. Kurogane had no idea in what form the rumors might have made their way to the boy's ears, but he'd never tried to hide the truth. If Syaoran had ever asked, he would have told him outright, but he was not particularly inclined to volunteer information about his love life to his student.

"It was so my business," Syaoran protested vehemently. "I mean - Sensei - those wizards are our enemies! Our enemies, I mean, Nihon's enemies. Wizards like him killed thousands of our people, and you were having an - an - an affair with one of those perverts? I would definitely say that was my business!"

"Don't talk about things you don't understand, kid," Kurogane growled. He ground his teeth, trying to step down on his seething rage. This was theother reason he hadn't cared to bring up the subject with Syaoran - even now, he was still full of inflammatory antagonism. He had no right to insult Fai, not after what Fai had gone through at the hands of Nihon's true enemies. While the other wizards were fighting a war, Fai had been a hundred riaway being tortured by the master of demons - and why the hell should he have to justify all this to Syaoran anyway? The kid had never so much as faced an enemy in battle. He turned his back on Syaoran, and encouraged his leggy mount a few steps away.

"How am I supposed to understand if you won't tell me anything?" Syaoran shouted at his back. "What am I supposed to understand? That after all the talk you gave me about keeping it in my pants, you've been fooling around with one of those unnatural - from what the palace servants say about him, he isn't even completely human! What does that make you? They say that he drinks human blood! How could you even consider -"

Kurogane abruptly pulled up to a stop, his kozelorug snorting and baying in distinctly un-horse-like indignation as it danced for footing on the unsteady ground. Kurogane turned in his saddle to glare at his student. From the way Syaoran's angry red flush paled to a sickly green, and he sank down in his own saddle as though melting, his face must have been a picture.

"I told you it was none of your godsdamned business what happened between him and me," he growled, menace dripping off his words. "It never had anything to do with the godsdamned war, and all through that stinking disaster of a campaign he stayed faithful to his loyalty oaths, as I did to mine. You can't possibly know what he sacrificed, for our sake as well as his own, and I don't want to hear another filthy word out of your mouth about him. In fact, you can damn well keep your mouth shut for the rest of the ride."

Syaoran opened his mouth to protest, but then some semblance of discipline must have kicked in, because he closed it again and gave a tiny nod, lowering his gaze once more to watch his mount's footing.

They crested the final ridge, and the land opened up below them alarmingly. Kurogane grabbed for a solid foothold, feeling his stomach plummet into the seemingly endless spaces below them; they seemed to teeter on a rocky peak no wider than a knife blade. The mountains unfolded below them for miles and miles, steep bare rock diving into milder, rolling meadows and then disappearing below marching ranks of coniferous forest. From there the mountains heaved up a time or two, buckled ridges of rock showing bald glimpses of hill-top before plunging back into the unbroken sea of shadowed green. Far away, almost beyond their sight in the failing afternoon light, the foothills finally smoothed into a faded dun tundra; at the very edge of the landscape, white sand glimmered like a pale ornament. Nowhere, in all the uncounted spaces that met their eyes, was there any sign of road or city; it was all trackless, unpeopled wilderness.

Getting down the other side of the ridge was even more nerve-wracking than getting up it had been, now that Kurogane had a clear view of exactly how far down they could fall if their footing slipped. The descent was made even more treacherous by the failing light; the sun sloped away west behind the ridge, throwing the rocks below their feet into early shadow and touching on only the highest peaks and ridges of stone.

During one heart-stopping leap from one rock to another, a piece of luggage - one of the cooking pans - jarred itself loose from Kurogane's saddlebags and became the first piece of cookware to achieve a dream of flight. Kurogane watched it glint briefly in the arcing sun, then quickly lost sight of its descent among the shadowed crevices of the slope below them. When he finally heard thebang of its landing drift faintly up from far below, Kurogane decided that enough was enough.

The first relatively wide, flat shelf of solid ground they came to, Kurogane called a halt. There was a tiny trickle of snowmelt making its way down the center, and even some scrubby wooded herbs in the sheltered lee of the cliffside. Not the best campsite Kurogane had ever stayed in, but the best they were likely to find at this altitude.

Syaoran protested the halt, shaking out of the grim silence they'd spent the descent in. "But we've only been going a few hours!" he pleaded. "It's not even dark yet. At this rate we'll never get there in time. We can't stop now!"

"We can and we will," Kurogane said in a tone of voice that prevented argument. "The sky may still be light, but even these beasts will stumble and break their necks if they try to navigate this slope in the dark. If you want to make it to the foothills in one piece - and not under an avalanche - we're stopping here."

Kurogane was firm, and Syaoran subsided reluctantly. Truthfully, the boy was almost stumbling from weariness as he dismounted; the climb over the ridge had been grueling. The kid had grit, Kurogane couldn't deny that; he was on fire with the idea of riding to Sakura's rescue, and was willing to push his body far beyond its limits to accomplish that. But he was still just a kid; youthful vigor could go a long way, but it was no substitute for knowing how to pace yourself, and the long endurance of experience.

They made camp; with Syaoran released from Kurogane's stern order of silence, they exchanged a few curt words around the stone ring Kurogane built for their campfire, before striding off along the shelf into underbrush to look for suitable firewood.

Now that he had his feet on the ground again, Kurogane had more time to think, and reflect on his actions earlier. He'd overdone it, he admitted. Syaoran had been way out of line, but Kurogane should have been able to handle their argument better. He'd been taking out his own frustration and foul temper on the boy, and that wasn't fair, not when Syaoran hadn't even been the one to ask him to come along.

He came back to the campsite with an armful of wood, and saw Syaoran sitting next to the saddlebags, staring out into the eastern sky as though his sight could pierce the growing dark to find what he so desperately sought. His knees were drawn up to his chest, arms folded across them, and there was such a painful look of longing on his face that Kurogane couldn't help but be moved. Poor kid, he really had it bad.

"I fell in love," he said, breaking the silence; Syaoran jumped and turned to him as he dropped the armload of wood with a clatter on the floor. "I didn't expect to, I sure as hell never planned on it."

He sat down next to Syaoran; even sitting he loomed almost twice the boy's height. "But that's how it is," he said. "You don't get to decide who it's going to be. Maybe your best friend. Maybe your worst enemy. Maybe even your worst enemy's daughter. It just happens."

For a moment Syaoran looked completely flummoxed; but then understanding lit in his eyes and washed over his features like dawn. "And when you're in love," he whispered, "you'd do anything for that person. Anything at all."

Kurogane looked down. "Yeah," he said. Even find yourself out on a journey in the middle of nowhere, not knowing where you're going or why, just because he begged you to trust him. Even that.

"I understand now," Syaoran said in a small voice, and he stared at the ground. "I'm sorry - for what I said before. About you, and about him. I - I didn't have the right."

Kurogane nodded, though he wasn't sure Syaoran saw the gesture of acceptance, in the swiftly falling dusk. Instead, he reached out, and tousled Syaoran's hair so hard the boy almost fell over.

They built up the fire; not too high, since there wasn't too much fuel to be found, but enough to swiftly eclipse the fading daylight. The mountain brush smelled pungent, sharp and sweet, not like any evergreen wood that Kurogane had burned before. They ate dinner out of the leftover fresh food that the kitchen staff had pushed on them, which wouldn't keep for much longer on their journey. Already the civilized, orderly life of the palace seemed a long way away. The night was cold despite the lateness of the season and the stars, when they swung into view above, were dazzlingly bright.

"I sure hope you know where you're going, kid," Kurogane remarked as the hour grew later, and they arranged to trade watches. "This is all new territory to me."

"I know," Syaoran said in a voice of unshakeable confidence. "I've never been this way before either, but I know where we're going in the end. The desert is due east of the mountains; the rain that blows from the ocean can't get over the mountains, so it's dry most of the year there."

"Don't know why you're so sure the desert is where she is, anyway," Kurogane said bluntly, taking another bite of his food and chewing. He might be out here on the strength of his promise to Fai, but he saw no reason to dissemble or hide his doubts about the whole expedition.

Strangely enough, Syaoran smiled. It was a sweet, happy smile in the smoky firelight. "It was the smell," he said.

"What?" Kurogane asked.

Syaoran closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply through his nose. "I didn't realize it at first," he said. "It wasn't something I consciously recognized at the time; I couldn't figure out why I kept remembering images of the years I spent in Clow. It took me all today to figure out what was triggering those memories. It was the smell. When the portal opened into Sakura's room, a gust of air came through it… and the air had that same smell, of the high desert at noon. There's no way to describe it - you'd just know it if you'd been there, you could never mistake it for anywhere else."

"Huh." Kurogane's brows drew down, and he took another bite, staring into the darkness to the east. He sniffed deeply, as though he could catch that elusive fragrance, but he could smell nothing except the pungent scent of their campfire. This was news. As evidence went, it wasn't much better than "I had a feeling," and yet…

"Besides," Syaoran added, "It's the same direction as my feeling is pointing. It can't be a coincidence."

Kurogane snorted and rolled his eyes. "So you've got a feeling and another feeling. Great."

"I'm not making things up!" Syaoran protested, looking wounded. "I'm not imagining it. It's real!"

"Yeah, I'm sure you're not," Kurogane said, waving his hand. "Look, get some sleep, okay, kid? We'll want to start out early as we can tomorrow morning."

The stars shone brilliantly overhead, shedding their clear and remote light over every country just the same.

---

The scream that rent the night air jerked all of Shirasagi castle awake. Guards and soldiers scrambled for their emergency posts, while servants and officials rushed in sleep-clouded circles, trying to make out the source of the disturbance. Empress Amaterasu, however, lost no time in identifying the source of the scream; already she jerked a heavy robe on over her sleeping gown as she strode out of her inner rooms surrounded by a cloud of attendants. Although no one in the court had ever heard it before, that rough, unpracticed voice, Amaterasu knew the sound of her sister's scream.

She burst into Tomoyo's sleeping chamber to find the place in chaos: a few hastily lit lamps threw wild shadows on the walls. Tomoyo's scream had died down to a furious sobbing, and the high priestess sat bolt upright on her bedding, rocking back and forth as she shuddered with uncontrollable weeping. Almost drowning out was the bewildered cacophony of the servants, some of them hovering uncertainly, others shaking Tomoyo's sleeve and pestering her with questions.

Kendappa shoved them all impatiently aside; she knew of only one thing that could afflict her sister so in the dead of night, and it was no ordinary nightmares that could do this. "Are we under attack?" she demanded, getting to the most salient point immediately. "Is there danger to the Empire?"

Tomoyo shook her head no, but she couldn't seem to stop the weeping; she brought both hands up to cover her face, and long shudders wracked her slender body even thought the air in the room was quite warm.

Kendappa was at a loss; she'd never seen her sister so close to hysterics. Tomoyo was usually the cool one, the composed and deliberate balance to her own occasional fiery bursts of impulse. Despite her supposed status as the living avatar of Amaterasu, Kendappa had never had much aptitude for the supernatural; she was grateful enough to leave that province to her sister and focus on the mundane world. But while she knew the world of spirits and visions had its own dangers and terrors, she had never seen Tomoyo so profoundly distressed by a dream vision as now.

"Tomoyo," she called, placing a calming hand on the young woman's trembling shoulder. He soft calls did not seem to register, and Kendappa's alarm grew; she shifted around and gripped both her sister's shoulders, shaking her fiercely and calling out in a strong voice. "Tsukuyomi! What visions do you see?"

"A doorway," Tomoyo answered, her mental 'voice' unbroken by her continued sobbing, yet reverberating with shock and distress all the same. "A doorway in the sky! No, no, it is terrible! Such a thing should not be, it should not be!"

"A doorway in the sky?" Kendappa repeated aloud, mystified. She was no expert in interpreting symbology, but Tomoyo's visions were not normally so... abstract.

"Something terrible has happened," Tomoyo said, her sobs finally beginning to slow, although she continued crying silently."Something terrible is happening even now. This vision, I have never seen it before, but now it crowds out my sight, overwhelms all other futures. Oh, oh... something is horribly wrong, to let this future ever be!"

Kendappa's frown deepened. "Something terrible has happened already? Or is it still in the future?" she tried to parse out, but Tomoyo only shook her head, tears rolling down her face. "What in the seven hells is a doorway in the sky, anyway?" she demanded, exasperation and anxiety getting the better of her patience.

"I do not know," Tomoyo said, slowly regaining her composure. "It does not belong here, it is nothing of this world. There is a terrible light from behind the door, brighter than a thousand suns, but like the light of no heavenly body. I can barely see it, from a crack around the door. But when it opens... oh, my sister, when it opens, then all futures end. There is nothing beyond it - worse than nothing, the end of all things!"

Kendappa stared at Tomoyo, temporarily shocked into silence. The end - of all things?

Before Kendappa could collect her wits, there was a flurry of commotion at the doorway, and then the attendants backed away as her half-brother strode through the curtained entrance. "Touya!" Kendappa said in shock, then her temper flared as she rose to her feet. "How dare you show such presumption! You are not even permitted to set foot in the inner palace, let alone the priestess' private chambers -"

"This is not a time to worry about such inconsequential proprieties," Touya said in a flat, unyielding tone of voice. "Let alone rehash old grudges." Behind him, the woman attendants fluttered and voiced their outrage at his intrusion, but none of them dares to push him away; Souma ghosted into view behind him, raising an eyebrow at her mistress for instructions, but Kendappa hesitated, then motioned her back. This was not a normal night, by any stretch of the imagination.

Ignoring her, Touya knelt on the raised platform by Tomoyo's bed and looked her in the eye. "You felt it, didn't you? Felt the future change?"

Tomoyo nodded tearfully, and her purple eyes clouded as her lips set in a grim line. Touya voiced a grim chuckle. "No, because it was never a true future until today," he said. "But after today, unless we can pull off a miracle, it will be the only future."

Tomoyo blinked, then her eyes widened as Touya stood up and stepped away. It took Amaterasu several moments to catch on to what had shocked her sister so; Touya had heard and answered her voice, but she had not been touching his skin.

"There's someone you need to talk to," he said, and he held out an arm, almost as though inviting an unseen guest to step out of the air. And judging by Tomoyo's startled gasp, and the strange heavy shimmer that appeared between them, she wasn't sure that wasn't exactly what it was.

"What's going on?" Amaterasu demanded, her temper flaring when neither of her siblings acknowledged her. "Touya! Answer me! What sorcery is this? What new treason are you planning now?"

Touya glanced over his shoulder at her, his eyes narrowed, then gave a little shrug of his shoulder. "I came to see Tomoyo," he said, "but you need to hear this, too. The time for petty partisanship is over, Kendappa."

He reached out before she could recoil away, and gripped her hand, only grinning at her outrage. "Don't look so shocked," he said. "You can see, if you will look. Whether or not you ever wanted to acknowledge the power within yourself, you have always been Tomoyo's sister... and mine."

Protests rose to her lips, but before she could voice them, his grip shifted until their bare fingers brushed, and she felt a cold shock as his power washed through her - through both of them. All three of them saw the gray figure flicker to life in front of them, clear and distinct in detail yet somehow insubstantial.

The figure blinked pale yellow eyes at her in seeming astonishment, and Kendappa gasped in recognition. "It's you!" she said. The foreign wizard - the one who had led his uncanny troop to the defense of Kishuu shrine when the demons had threatened to overrun the walls. The strange, white, beautiful young man who had spent far too much time in her brother's company before he departed, last and reluctantly, through the now-destroyed portal. In spite of her misgivings, a surge of hope sprang up in Kendappa's breast; did he come again to bring aid in a similarly dark hour?

"Greetings, my lady. My ladies." The ethereal figure bobbed a short bow towards each of them, evidently thrown off-balance by Kendappa's inclusion in the conversation. "I must apologize for this rude intrusion. If time were not so short, I would never wish to forego the honor of a state visit."

"Mage of Ceres," Tomoyo addressed him in a shaking voice from Touya's other side. "I have seen a vision of the future that I have never dreamed before, that I do not fully understand, and yet it terrifies me. My brother tells me that you are a dreamseer, too. Have you seen it too? Have you, too, dreamed of this terrible doorway in the sky?"

"Yes, I have seen it." Yukito closed his eyes and shook his head before he continued; and Kendappa noticed for the first time his haggard appearance, clothes in disarray, pale eyes reddened with fatigue. "It was always a possibility, but one so remote and unlikely that it never featured heavily in my visions. Now... now the circumstances have changed, and what was once thought impossible becomes imminent."

"What happened?" Kendappa demanded. "What 'circumstances' do you speak of?"

Yukito was silent for a moment, then took a deep breath and continued. "Something precious was stolen from us in Ceres two nights ago," he said. "Something so valuable that we devoted all our lives to guarding it and keeping it unseen, yet his eyes slipped past our notice all the same. Now he has it, the one thing he was lacking to open the final doorway. We must find this precious thing, recover it quickly, before the future your sister sees comes to pass."

"Stop speaking in riddles," Kendappa said impatiently. "What is this 'precious thing?' We can hardly search for it if we don't even know what we're looking for!"

Yukito glared at her, but Kendappa returned the glare immovably. Yukito bit his lip, seeming to steel himself up for something, then said, "Princess Sakura. King Ashura's daughter, his only child." He stretched out his hands, and the faint picture of a young girl seemed to swirl up between them; like himself, the image was faded and transparent, but her features were distinct. A wide face, open with the innocence of youth, above a slender, gawky teenage body. Faded light brown hair, pale skin, and green eyes. A northerner, without a doubt, but one they had never seen or heard of before.

A ripple of surprise passed through the royal siblings. "Princess?" Kendappa said. "Since when did Ashura have a daughter? We had always heard that his wife passed away without bearing him any children, and he always refused to remarry thereafter." They'd been counting on it, in fact, when planning their conquest of Ceres. After all, Ashura was over seventy years of age; the fewer royal heirs to challenge their overlordship, the better.

"Her existence was a closely kept secret, even in Ceres itself," Yukito admitted; it seemed to be difficult for him to discuss the subject even now. "Precisely because we knew, from the auguries surrounding her birth, that a powerful enemy would be seeking her. As he was. We can't be sure how he learned of her location at last… but it's too late now. Secrecy is of no use to us any longer."

"Who is this he?" Kendappa demanded in exasperation. "What, you mean the Master of Demons? He's dead!"

"The maker of demons was but a servant," Tomoyo said in a near-whisper. She and Yukito shared a glance, and the vision seemed to appear between them - seen but not seen - of a sinister emblem, wings of black shadow rippling across a field of light. "It is his master that we now must fear. He has never interfered directly before, but... I think... our time of respite is now over."

Yukito nodded gravely to her. "I fear so."

"If this just happened the night before, then they can't have gone far!" Kendappa interjected. "Do you have no trackers? The trail should be barely hours cold!"

"Because our enemy is a warlock," Yukito said patiently. "There was no trail to follow, believe me. We tried our best to trace the origin of the portal, but he is a master at hiding his tracks."

Warlock? Portal? The unfamiliar terms filled Kendappa with bewilderment, and for the first time Touya spoke.

"A warlock is one who practices the art of conjuration," he said, turning to meet Kendappa's gaze. "Which is to say, he can create portals - doorways in space that can move great distances in the blink of an eye. He can snatch a person - or an object - and leave no trail, or send a deadly weapon through the other side. That was how he stole away the Princess from her very own chamber, where she should have been safest."

"What? That's impossible," Kendappa scoffed.

"It is not, dear sister," Tomoyo interceded, leaning out from Touya's other side. "He has done it once before... on another night when I awoke weeping from a vision."

Kendappa met her sister's violet eyes, and the memory rang between them - the night that Suwa had been destroyed. The only survivor had spoken - somewhat incoherently - about a sword and a hand that appeared from nowhere and murdered his mother, leading to the collapse of the wards. Kendappa had always assumed that trauma and grief had warped his memory and he simply did not want to remember the traitor who had struck the Suwa miko down. But now, she realized, Tomoyo had never thought so.

"And it is for the same reason that we cannot find them now," Yukito resumed his explanation, startling Kendappa out of her memories. "A warlock with such disregard for space and distance could be anywhere - do you understand me? Literally anywhere. He could be on a high mountaintop with no approachable passes, or an island thousands of miles out to sea. We don't even know where to begin to search for him."

"What do you want us to do about it?" Kendappa asked. "If you - with all your wizards and magic - cannot find him, then what hope do we have?"

"I don't know what you can do," Yukito said with some aggravation. "I'm not - this isn't some great plan of mine. You have far more manpower to spare than we do, your territory is much greater. Search for him if you can, with whatever means you can. He must be found, his plans must be stopped, whatever it takes."

"I will search as best I can, Seer of Ceres," Tomoyo said steadily, although her voice faltered a moment later. "I will bring to bear every weapon I have, however weak. Although I think - I think perhaps all unknowing - my blackest arrow has already been loosed from my bow."

Yukito looked at her, and then a small smile appeared on his face. "I do believe you are right," he said. "He left the castle yesterday afternoon, with all our best wishes, and has since passed out of my sight."

A feeling of agitation was building in Kendappa's chest. From the way this conversation was shaping up, it sounded like some dire thing - something bad enough to send her sister screaming out of nightmares - could happen at any moment. Worse, it was beginning to sound like they weren't planning to do a damn thing to stop it.

"Why did you even come here tonight if there's nothing you can do, and nothing we can do either?" she demanded.

A flash of anger sparked in those faded yellow eyes. "Because something of this importance should not be kept a secret," he snapped in return. "Whether there is something you can do or not, you deserve to know all that we know... so that you can prepare yourselves for what is coming."

With some difficulty, he managed to control his irritation, and gave them both a short, jerky bow. "My apologies, great ladies, but my time here must be short," he said. "There are too many teetering disasters demanding my attention right now to linger, and things will only worsen over the next few weeks. I do not think we shall be able to speak again. I wish all of you the very best of luck, but be aware that the wizards of Ceres will not be able to help you."

With that, he vanished, leaving the three royal siblings clutching at each other's hands and staring at the empty space.

"Help us?" Kendappa said aloud. "Help us with what?"

---

After breakfast Fei Wong Reed returned, and escorted her personally back into the chapel, the huge stone chamber that she'd been brought to first. This time, she was able to look around her with avid interest; the arching bubble of the stone ceiling above was huge, making her feel almost dizzy just looking up. However, it was not merely the size of the stonework that made her stop in her tracks, but the familiar-looking patterns that glowed in a dull orange lattice in response to Fei Wong Reed's upraised hand.

"Those are wards!" Sakura said with surprise. It excited her, to be able to recognize even the basic form of a magical spell. She'd studied some very basic wards before her magical lessons were brought to an end, and she'd watched the wizards in her home create them from time to time, but she'd never seen anything of this scale. The orange-glowing lines arced overhead like comet trails, looping gracefully from one end of the stone shell to the other. "This whole room is warded! That's amazing!"

"Yes, it is," Fei Wong Reed said. Something about his tone of voice made her look closely, and then gasp in astonishment; the stoic man was actually smiling faintly, as if amused by her open-mouthed wonder.

"But why?" Sakura asked, walking to the center of the room and turning in a circle, her head cranked back to see the designs. "Why go to so much trouble to protect this whole space? It must have taken so much time, and - and power!"

"It is necessary," Fei Wong Reed said in a grave voice, the faint smile evaporating as though it had never been. "You must not underestimate how dangerous it is to work with the being of the world-shell itself. It is not something to be undertaken lightly. The natural patterns of the world should not be taken for granted, and they do not like to be disturbed. Seemingly small movements of air, or of the deep currents of the earth, could result in a vast tempest. Any space where conjuration will be performed must be surrounded with the very strongest of protections, so that the working will not spill over to harm others."

"Oh," Sakura said, quelled. Then another thought occurred to her. "I didn't - I didn't know it was so dangerous. If the wards keep the power inside from getting out, then will we really be safe in here?"

"There is no need to apologize," Fei Wong Reed said. "And it is important to know what you face. There is great danger to be found in world-working, but unimagined power as well. There is always some danger involved in a great adventure, but the rewards will be more than worth it. If you wish to make an impression upon the world, you cannot hide timidly in a corner, letting hesitation and timidity paralyze you."

Sakura lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. "I'm not afraid," she said firmly. "Let's - let's get started."

With Fei Wong Reed's hand on her upper back, between her shoulders, he guided her to the stone edifice that loomed above her. It was a multi-layer construction of different kinds of stone and, she realized as her foot rang with vibrations on a step, metal too. At the top of the steps perched a boulder of obsidian, carved into the form of a throne, but its shape was little more than an afterthought, simply the suggestion of a seat hollowed out of the rock and rough walls where the arms would be.

Fei Wong Reed's hand gave her a little push, and she took a deep breath and climbed up into the seat. The polished stone was smooth as water, not in the least bit scratchy, but it was also cold, and seemed to drink up the heat of her skin without warming in the slightest. Sakura found herself shivering again. "Can - can I bring a sweater next time?" she asked, barely changing her question from asking if she could go get one now. She didn't want him to think she was backing out.

"I'm afraid not," he said imperturbably. "I apologize for the discomfort, but is necessary for the throne to have some contact with your skin. Do not worry. The cold will not bother you for long."

Sakura didn't find this comment very heartening, but she decided she could stand a little cold. Taking a deep breath, she straightened her back until she was leaning against the hard slab of stone, and raised her arms to place her hands upon the armrests. "What should I do now?" she asked nervously. Despite Fei Wong Reed's constant assurances, she couldn't shake the persistent feeling that he was wrong about her; that she was nothing special, and that he would be disappointed in her when he found out she couldn't do anything.

"Close your eyes and breathe deeply," the magician's deep, measured voice came from behind her. "Concentrate on the meditation exercises that you had already learned in your magical studies, and repeat the mantra that I taught you."

Sakura nodded and shut her eyes tight, squeezing her lids until she saw stars in the darkness behind them. It was hard to clear her mind of thoughts and distractions like her mentor had taught her when she was so excited and nervous and whirling with new thoughts and sights and experiences, but she tried.

She tried so hard to think of nothing, that for a long moment she couldn't remember the words that he'd given her to say. "I will r- I will raise my eyes to pierce the veil," she said in a shaky voice, that strengthened as she went on. "I will raise my arms to touch the sta - the spaces between the stars. I will not be bound to this earthly body. I will raise my eyes to piece the veil. I will raise my arms to touch the spaces between the stars. I will not be bound to this earthly body..."

As she gained confidence in the mantra, she felt herself relaxing, and she almost didn't notice when the cold, sucking drain of the stone on her skin ceased to bother her. She felt a warm, bright tingling in her fingertips, and even more surprisingly, it seemed to be matched by an answering spark from deep inside herself, under her breastbone and above her belly button.

Sakura's eyes flew open, and she gasped. The dark stone of the obsidian throne was shining with a hundred tiny specs, like dancing fireflies. Not only that, but ahead of her, the vast blank disk of dark grey stone was beginning to coruscate with a strange, otherworldly aurora of colors. Blue-orange and red-purple seemed to dance across it in waves, and the solid stone itself seemed to cloud with uncertainty.

"Close your eyes, Sakura!" Fei Wong Reed's voice thundered from behind her, and she gasped as she quickly squeezed them shut again. "Concentrate on your mantra. What you seek is not here, in this room. You must raise your eyes beyond the veil of this world and pierce the space behind the stars!"

Sakura bit her lip, then hurriedly resumed her whispering mantra. She realized she was shivering again, not from cold - the stone under her back and arms felt curiously warm now - but from excitement and fear. She wasn't going to be able to do it - she didn't even know what she was trying to do.Fei Wong Reed was going to be so disappointed when he realized she was just an ordinary girl after all, so disappointed when it turned out that she couldn't do anything, help anyone after all. He was going to be so scornful, so freezingly cold…

No! She couldn't be afraid. Fear would paralyze her, he'd been right about that, she'd spent all her life cowering in fear. I will do it. I will! She shoved her fear to the corner of her mind, and bent all her concentration to the elusive fluttering lights that she felt against her skin. The tingling spread up her arms and legs until it met in a nauseating swirl in her middle, then in a bubbling rush spread up through the top of her head to her eyes.

The world seemed to tilt around her, as though gravity had shifted on its axis. Sakura couldn't help herself; but when she opened her eyes again, she saw not the grim dark stone of the inside of the chapel, but a field of glittering stars.

"Ohhh… How lovely!" Sakura couldn't help the exclamation of wonder, although even as it slipped past her lips, she could still hear her own voice in endless, droning repetition. I will not be bound to any earthly body. I will raise my eyes to pierce the veil. I will lift my arms to touch the spaces between the stars…

Instinctively she tried to lift her hand to catch one of the floating lights, but she couldn't move. Instead, as she strained to focus on one of the bright points, it seemed to rush towards her as though she were zooming towards it, although she did not seem to move from her vantage point. The point of light grew to a tiny ball, then a sphere the size of her hand, and as she stared into it she caught flickering glimpses of a strange, unknown landscape below. White-tipped waves blowing on a strangely yellow-green sea, and craggy mountains topped with red.

She blinked; that seemed to destroy the tenuous connection, and the point of light slipped away. When she moved her gaze to a new one, it pulsed and drew closer in turn. This time she caught a glimpse of a bright, blue-white sunrise over the tossing treetops of an endless, silver-leaved forest.

"Are these all - other worlds?" she whispered in amazement, still hearing the ceaseless soundless chant in the background. I will lift my arms to touch the spaces between the stars. I will not be bound to any earthly body… "All of them? Whole worlds full of life and people, just like ours?"

But they weren't like hers. Once again she lost her tenuous attention on the point of light, and it flitted away from her. She began to move her attention from one remote, tiny pinpoint to the next, straining to bridge the gap between them. They were not like her world at all. Many of them showed only bare, flat rock instead of waves of water or trees. One or two showed tiny, crawling figures of moving animals, but even from this distance she knew that they were like no animals she had ever seen or read about before. Some of the tiny, floating lights did not even seem to have a ground and a sky at all. And all of them, strange or familiar or too bizarre for her stunned mind to comprehend, had nothing that felt like other people.

The field of stars swirled around her, and she was beginning to feel dizzy and sick with the vertiginous motion. There, on the very horizon of her sight - those tiny, shining, remote pinpricks. There were people there, humans like her, like them, faces and voices and bodies like she was used to. But they were so far away that neither her voice nor her vision could reach them, though she strained until the endless space around her was tinted red.

"Sakura." The voice made her jump; it took her a disorienting moment to even identify where it had come from. It was Fei Wong Reed's voice, sounding strangely flat and tinny and completely lacking the sonorous rumble she was used to. "Turn your face away from them, Sakura. They do not concern you. You must return now, and break the connection. Ignore them, Sakura, and return to me!"

"But -" Sakura was startled into speaking aloud, and as soon as she did, the monotonous mantra of her own voice suddenly ceased. The vision of the field of stars around her shattered, falling into a thousand dark and bright pieces to a space beyond her reach. Her vision crowded instead with the musty dark stone walls of the chapel, where she had started. She saw once again the stone disk before her, writhing in roiling waves of cloudy colors that faded into dull stone even as she watched.

As she blinked to clear her eyes, she became aware of a number of things. The first was that she was no longer cold in the slightest; in fact, the black glassy rock of the throne had become almost uncomfortably warm to the touch, and she was sweating in rivulets. Her voice was hoarse from chanting, and when she tried to speak, she coughed.

"What - what happened?" she whispered. She tried to pull away from the hot stone, but she felt almost too weak to move. "I saw… All those beautiful lights…"

"You have seen beyond the boundaries of this world," Fei Wong Reed said from behind her, and his voice had regained its accustomed deep resonance. "There are few enough humans who have the power to go beyond the veil and return; you are beyond honored, Sakura. But you must cease for now."

"But why?" she wanted to know. "There was so much to see - I was only there for a few minutes..."

He pulled her to her feet with an effortless movement, and Sakura gasped; steam rose from where she had been sitting. "The throne draws power from the crucible, far underground," he explained to her. "It provides the necessary power to pierce beyond the boundaries of the world, but at the same time it is volatile, dangerous. Even filtered by the throne, the human body can only channel so much of it at a time."

"But I didn't find what you were looking for," Sakura protested, feeling anxious and ashamed. "The - the White God you were talking about. I didn't sense anything like that from the worlds I looked at…"

"You will find her," Fei Wong Reed assured her confidently. "You have made a good start, to uplift yourself beyond the boundaries of the world at all. Today it is time to rest. Tomorrow, you can try again."

Dazed, she let him help her down from the throne. She could barely walk; she felt sick to her stomach, and her head hurt unbearably. Despite that, she wanted nothing more than to go back, to find that field of stars again. "I heard them," she said. "I could see other lights, so far away, they had people in them - I wanted to call out to them -"

They stopped moving. She blinked water from her eyes and looked up at Fei Wong Reed, who was frowning. "Do not concern yourself with those worlds," he said in a severe tone. "They are too distant for communication or travel, and at any rate, we have no interest in other humans. You must concentrate your thoughts only upon finding the White God. It is for that reason and no other that we are here. Remember that."

Aching and exhausted, Sakura let him lead her out of the chapel, and handed her over to the care of some of the women servants in black. She stumbled back to her sleeping chamber barely able to place one foot in front of the other, hearing and seeing nothing until she fell into the soft covers of her bed.

As she lay waiting for sleep, however, her thoughts returned unbidden to those other worlds - the ones with the human voices, the ones too far for her to ever reach. Unexpectedly she felt the pain of loss, of something precious that she would never have the chance to know; and the tears followed her into sleep.

---

~to be continued...

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