11.8

The road to the sky pass was surprisingly gentle. Hugging the side of the rising mountains which marked the western vault wall of the Ridgetails. Turning north and then south again as their party slowly ascended.

Thurzó had insisted that for today’s leg of the journey everyone was bundled in heavy winter coats.

And Jewel was thankful for that, Gem was dressed in the heavy coat the Weavers & Spinners guild had sourced for her. But even so she needed an extra scarf wrapped around her face to stave off the biting wind. Paul and Smithson too were bundled heavily.

At first the smell of their sweat wicking through the wyrmspun wool spoke of discomfort in the Grain Turn heat.

But as they ascended the wind’s chill bite and the closeness of the sky and clouds sapped away heat and soon what had made them sweat now shielded their bodies from harsh sleet. At each turn was a wide round space with carved out pits for fires.

“Old Cantor sky passes, the Solar Empire carved to a standard grade and made certain that there was always a place a cart could be pulled aside at each switch back so as to avoid blocking the march of the army even when traversing from one vault to another.”

Thurzó spoke like one of his many scholarly books. Which Jewel honestly found welcome. Paul was somewhat distant with her friend but he put in the effort.

“It would be a bit cramped for us to camp at only one of these. But they still have fire pits.”

The count of Arva waved it off.

Imre spoke up brightly, not even clutching at his talisman like he had during the welcoming supper last night. Jewel was still astounded at the height the boy had taken up in only a few short years.

“The north’n crossin has a wide stone plain just afore the pass! Wide enough, a hundred thousand men and horses could camp! Father said so!”

Count Thurzó chuckled and nodded to his heir.

“The northernmost sky pass in Arva is a long one, takes a full three days army march to cross under the worst of the sky bite. In the times of the Solar Empire they carved out fortresses to house and shelter the armies which took it. But now most caravans prefer to take longer routes to avoid the cold. And the shelters are mostly collapsed ruins”

Jewel nodded herself while she shook down with Gem in her multiple bundled layers. It was not just the simple small coat made for her spawn but also a heavy fur and another heavy woolen blanket.

Smithson asked in a worried tone.

“But we shouldn't be having to worry about that?”

Her knight spoke over the somewhat burdensome luggage that had been made of Jewel’s daughter. Glancing up at her larger face with questions at her well being.

Jewel smiled softly to assure him Gem was fine.

Thurzó laughed and shook his head.

“No, not at all. When we finally make the crossing the sky pass is hardly half a day’s leisurely walk and easily less than that at a gentle trot.”

Imre spoke up again, voice again practically singing with delight to contribute anything.

“It was cut well flat into the bones of the mountain!”

The boy’s father nodded along, smiling through his beard with pride that Jewel could not help but share. It was so nice to see the boy had kept his outgoing bearing despite his initial fright at Jewel.

“That’s right my boy!”

He turned back to Smithson with the warmth of his pride still curving his lips.

“We will be fine as long as we get a start on the pass with the sun still up.”

Jewel nodded and they continued the slow trudge up the mountain. Turning north again as they reached another place set aside for travelers or wagons or whatever other purpose one might have for a flat place along their road up the mountain.

The ascent was gentle but seemingly endless.

It reminded Jewel a lot of the Eyrie and the way the roads to it climbed ever higher. So high up the air changed. The winds always blew harder the further up she flew. And along the close in stones of the vault wall mountain? The skywinds howled fiercer and colder.

But what started as a constant breeze began to build by the eighth turn in their ascent.

The winds grew beyond what even Jewel had felt at the greatest height she had ever flown. Pummeling down and over them against the rocks. Forcing her to hold her wings tight and hunker down among the horses lest her eyes and ears be battered by the rising fury of the elements.

Conversations died down after three more turns. Despite the sun being blindingly bright at the peak of noon the air carried snow and frost which caught in Jewel’s scales.

She no longer even bothered leaving Gem’s eyes uncovered. Turning her face from even the relatively gentle winds which were blowing along the path. Burying her eyes away into the shelter of Smithson’s coat.

Beyond the carefully sheltered lee of the raised walls around the path itself the wind now felt like a full winter storm, complete with a freezing sleet halfway between snow and rain. Even hunkering down as close as she could to the ground Jewel caught scathing blasts and flurries of prickling ice.

The shelter of the road secured the rest of their party for the most part.

But the howling winds grew ever stronger as they ascended. In another three turns the clouds closed in around them and billowed milky white fog over everything. Jewel’s own snout was out of sight in front of her! The cold and wet was biting to Gem’s skin despite her bundles and clinging with her face pressed hard into Smithson’s coat.

Thurzó and Muriel took turns keeping their party on route. Calling out loud and shrill to be heard over the roar of the wind. Voices smothered in the thick white that had claimed all vision.

Moving up and down the party to make sure their ropes strung along the kit of every horse, mule and member on foot.

When they reached the next turn the party was called to stop and everyone was further accounted for. The wind shifted in character as the diffuse whiteness of the sun moved slowly barely seen beyond the enveloping cloud.

After confirming all were there Muriel had them set off again with more ropes and leads between the horses and mules. To better secure them as they marched near blind up the path. Here too the tall walls of the old cantor road sheltered them from disaster. Even if a rider did stray blind they would have to climb over a stone wall as tall as a man before getting over the edge.

And then at last they broke free of the silvery fog. The light of sun suddenly flaring on each of Jewel’s scales and baking down heavily on the cold bundle that had been made of Gem.

For the first time in her life Jewel saw up close the place where the mountain walls touched the sky. She was not sure what she had been expecting but from every tale Jewel read and heard about the vault and her own flight she thought it would have looked different from this.

Which was to say it did not look like anything in particular.

There, just perhaps a few hundred feet above them the snow covered rock face of the mountain bent away as if there was little more than a simple hillock. As they furthered their ascent to the next turn about the edge of the wall grew closer but Jewel still did not see anything that she had not spotted from a distance.

The walls of the vault of heaven did not look like anything but mere mountains. The pillars visible to the south, east and north were distant spires of rock still higher than they now stood. But for all that Jewel did not see any particular barrier despite being only a few hundred feet away.

The wind began to die down as they ascended, growing to a kind of almost anticipatory stillness as they moved in the stark and sudden silence of the high place, that quiet was something Jewel marveled at.

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The world was here but also solemn and still in a way Jewel had never heard before.

And then the wind had fallen off entirely.

Thurzó's captain broke the near silence with a sharp yell.

“Hah! Perfect timing! We will be crossing between the breaths! Alright we stop for an hour and shake out your coats, you want them as dry as you can get before the crossing. Still air and sun or not!”

As the rest of their caravan began to dismount and seek to remove the snow sodden outer layers of their coats Jewel turned to look over at the man, curious.

“Breaths?”

Thurzó spoke up for his captain.

“The winds of the world, you recall? The currents between each vault and their rhythm through the day and season?”

Jewel blinked a moment trying to recall the mention of such in the volumes of Historica naturalis Cantora.

“Oh! Yes the sky and deep winds! But why did he call it the breaths?”

Thurzó smiled and looked over to imre who was attempting to shake ice and dew off of his outermost coat.

“Huh? what?”

His father smiled warmly and prompted his son.

“Imre, can you tell the countess Jewel about the breath of the mountains?”

The boy beamed at the opportunity and soon launched into his ‘lecture’.

“Oh! Ya! the mountains breathe and sing they do! But really slow and big like! With the morning it's all whooo”

The boy demonstrated by blowing out a very long and prodigious breath along with much whooshing noises.

“An then with the evening they breathing in and in and in and”

He caught a bit of a choking cough there trying to inhale and speak at once much to Jewel and his father’s amusement but he soon mastered his throat with a laugh and bit of a shame faced red to his cheeks.

“And then the mountains hold their breath all tight at the high-noon and middle of night.”

The little heir held his breath tight to demonstrate that as well but soon had to return to breathing in a rush.

Thurzó beamed at his son and clapped him firmly on the shoulder.

“Well said boy... Arva has many passes from the ridgetail vault both east and west and the winds howl in some places all but two hours each day and night. The old local tales even claim that the mountain’s breath is that of some great and terrible mountain wyrm big as all the county of Arva.”

Jewel considered that.

“It’s not, is it? Some giant Wyrm?”

Thurzó’s smile for his son faded a bit as he considered Jewel.

“I’ve made these trips many times as consul for the High King. There have been times that a pass was blocked by a sleeping mountain wyrm. But no I don’t believe any such beast of such a size exists. Shepherd stories and mountain folk tales is all that is.”

He turned to look ahead to the cleft in the rock face ahead and above them.

Where they could see the same sky as always.

Seeming no closer by the look of it despite its apparent nearness.

“It is merely the winds of the world passing from one vault to another. With if anything the breath of the earth herself.”

Jewel considered the account of Pythra of Veracules.

Seeing how unobvious the supposed border where one could actually touch the sky was, she better understood how it could be done by mistake.

There was nothing to see, there was no indication at all.

She had thought maybe it might be like water or the pristinely clear glass chalices she had inherited from Bathory. Some distortion or heat haze or something! Anything to suggest the great burden of the sky itself being held up by the mountain walls here.

But where Sky and stone met there was simply the perfectly normal expanse of clear blue and the shining light of the sun.

It looked hardly any different than open air that Jewel could have flown right over.

The only thing that made this place seem any different then the elevations of the Eyrie and other highlands Jewel had been too was the abject stillness in the air.

And the softened, almost muffled quiet to the world and its stones.

The rocks here spoke of cold and ice and snow.

But even more softly ‘spoken’ then any other stone Jewel had ever listened to.

The ice was more familiar, its journeys mostly short and swift. But beneath the recent cover was old snow, venerable and settled.

Not as old as the rocks but still left for many years at least undisturbed.

But even that was almost muffled, lethargic.

Missing some of the fluid animation winter snow had.

Not inclined to ‘speak’.

A quiet which was shared by Jewel’s companions.

The rest and shake out for everyone who needed winter coats was soon finished with very few words. The stillness of the air seemed to sap conversation as much as the howling fury of before.

And then they were making their way to the cleft in the rock. Marching up a trail carved and then smoothed into the stone itself.

Worn away by cart wheels, hooves and many, many boots.

Years and years of travelers passing through these same places each leaving their mark and a hint of their passing even on these dulled stones.

They ascended one last rise, coming closer and closer to the top of the vault wall.

And finally here Jewel began to see it.

The sky was as deep as ever.

But the land? The stone? The expanse of the world far and below them and ahead and around them?

That receded.

Jewel would have stopped if such an arrest of momentum did not risk the health of the horses and the careful progress of the rest of the caravan.

But she craned and twisted her head around watching it happen.

The closer they got to the cliff face and that one carved passage into it the more the land of the Ridgetails and their valleys seemed to slowly bend and sink away.

The closer they drew to the hewn rock passage, widened and worked by chisels and many hands to make room for two carts to pass one another the more the sky above and around them seemed to expand and surround.

As they came closer Jewel marveled.

The sky didn't change.

The sun always remained in its place in the heavens, familiar to her from any flight.

But the land and stone sunk and shrank away. As if becoming incredibly distant. And as she got closer there was a tight smothering feeling. The air distinctly stopped in her senses at a sudden and sharp boundary.

A boundary that she could not see.

Jewel raised her head up to try and get a closer look. But it seemed to move with her.

She raised her neck higher and felt the air following her face. But running very close to her scales. Pressing as if she was diving hard out of a flight, feeling almost like water clinging to her scales.

Before she realized what she was doing Jewel had pressed her face into the sky.

She felt cold and a hissing sizzling boil along her eyes and mouth. The air fizzed and scattered along her scales. But more billowed up around her neck.

It made her vision cloud and go poorly focused.

But for a moment she saw-

Smithson, Paul and Thurzó’s hands on her shoulders and flanks drew her back. She pulled her neck low enough the air no longer felt like it was boiling off her face. Her eyes still took several blinks too moisten enough for her to see clearly. Her ears suddenly rang from what had been the most profound and thundering silence.

“Jewel! Are you alright?! Lower yourself! What were you thinking?! Sky bite in the head can slay a man!”

It took her a moment to realize who was talking.

It was Thurzó and his tone was a panic.

Well that would not do.

“Do not fret my friend, I’m fine. And I apologize I thought I had not touched the vault yet.”

The party stared at Jewel.

Well Paul, Smithson, Muriel and the rest of Jewel’s footmen spared a single glance then turned back to their duties.

But Thurzó and his entourage were gaping.

Jewel sighed and shook her head.

“Please do not fret so, I’m fine and I won’t do it again, now don’t we need to make haste through the passage?”

And with that prodding they continued making their way.

Jewel kept her head quite a few feet below the upper edges of the pass’s walls.

But she had seen what was beyond.

It had been like she had somehow been surrounded on all sides in an endless blue expanse of sky.

Closer than she had ever felt to the sun itself and that comforting welcome warmth.

But also somehow just as impossibly far as she had ever been.

Jewel had reached out and touched the sky.

And found it simply went on.