They stepped back from her, conferred briefly. One scowled and seemed to indicate her fine dress, but the other shrugged, and he was the one who unlatched the gate and swung it open. We had to step back to allow its motion and that crowded us into the waiting petitioners. And when the gate was clear, and Dwalia stepped forward with Vindeliar and me following, the crowd moved with us, trying to cross with us. The guards with the pikes moved forward, crossing their weapons and pushing them back. We stepped forward alone.
The causeway was of smooth, cut stone, flat as a table. Dwalia didn’t pause when she reached the water’s edge. She did not lift her skirts or take off her shoes to carry them. She walked forward as if the sea did not still own that space. We followed. The water was shallow at first, not warm but not numbingly cold. As we went forward, it got quickly deeper, soaking my shoes and moving past my ankles to my shins. I began to feel the tug of the ebbing tide. Beside me, Vindeliar was scowling. ‘I don’t like this,’ he said bitterly. Neither Dwalia nor I paid him any mind but I soon began to share his uneasiness. The water got deeper and the pull of the receding waves became stronger. I had waded in creeks and streams, but this was seawater. It had a smell and a stickiness that surprised me. The opposite gate on the far end of the sunken causeway had not looked very far away when we had begun. Now as the water rose past my knees and up my thighs, the safety of the far shore seemed to retreat. Even Dwalia had slowed as she sloshed forward. I fixed my eyes on her back and fought the weight of the water. The tide might be ebbing as they had said, but waves still came and went, and sometimes they wet me to my waist. Vindeliar had begun to make an anxious noise between a hum and a whine. He was falling behind. When I glanced back and realized that, I tried to move faster. The water was colder now and I panted as I pushed my way through it. Leave him behind, I thought fiercely. I think he felt my wish, for his wail grew louder and I heard a splash as he stumbled, and then his hoarse cry as he surged to his feet again. Drown! I arrowed that thought at him, and then shut myself behind my walls.
The sun beat down on my head, scorching my scalp through my short hair, while the water pressed against me and drew warmth out of my feet and legs. I folded my arms high on my chest and hugged my bundled clothing to myself. I pushed my thirst to one side along with my aching muscles. Shipboard life had not prepared me for today’s hike. The sunlight bounced off the water and into my eyes. I lifted my head and tried to see Dwalia but glittering light dazzled my eyes. I began to feel shaky and ill.
Was the water shallower? Perhaps. I took heart and surged on, head and shoulders bent as I fought the waves. When next I lifted my head and looked for Dwalia, she stood at the far gate, remonstrating and cursing the guards who would not open it to her. Beyond that gate, a huddle of people awaited its opening to leave the castle. Their weary stances and aprons of leather or fabric proclaimed them to be servants of the Servants, probably on their way to their homes.
I sloshed up behind Dwalia. She astonished me by swivelling about, seizing me by my collar and near lifting me off my feet to shake me at the guards. ‘The Unexpected Son!’ she snarled at them. ‘Do you want to be the ones who delayed his arrival before the Four?’
The guards exchanged glances. The taller man looked back at her. ‘That old myth?’
Vindeliar came shuddering up beside us. One guard nudged the other. ‘That’s Vindeliar. No mistaking that treacherous little gelding. So she is Dwalia. Let them in.’
Dwalia did not release her grip on my collar as the gate opened and we passed through. I tried not to resist her pulling but it meant walking on my tiptoes. I could not look back to see Vindeliar following but I heard the thud of the barred gate as it shut behind us.
A road of dun sand stretched before us. The sun woke sparkles in it. It was straight and featureless. To either side of it, a barren and rocky landscape spread. It was so flat and empty that I knew that the hands of men had shaped it. Nothing could cross this expanse of ground and not be seen. Never had I seen an area so devoid of small life. The only relief to the eye were occasional stones, and none of them was larger than a bushel basket. Dwalia suddenly released me. ‘Don’t dawdle. And don’t speak,’ she ordered me, and then set off at her distance-eating stride again. Her once-fine skirts were wet and slapped against her legs as she walked. I followed, trying to match her pace. When I lifted my eyes to stare at our destination, it dazzled me more than the sunlight on the water. The white walls of the castle glittered. We walked and walked and seemed to come no closer. Gradually I began to realize that I had greatly underestimated how large a fortress it was. Or castle. Or palace. From the ship, I had seen eight towers. This close to it, when I looked up, I saw only two, and the misshapen heads that topped them looked like skulls. I slogged along, head lowered as the sun pounded down on us and eyes half-closed against the brightness. Every time I lifted my head, the aspect of the immense structure at the end of the long road seemed to have changed.
When we were close enough that I had to crane my neck back to see the tops of the walls, the ornate bas-reliefs on the outside of the walls became evident. They were the only marks I could see on the smooth white walls. From this vantage, I saw no windows, not even arrow slits, and no doors. On this side of the castle, there was no access at all. Yet the road led directly to it. White on white, the etched carvings were many times taller than a man, and glittering even brighter than the walls they graced. I stared for a moment and then had to look away and close my eyes. But when I shut my eyes, there the carvings were again, inside my eyelids, like a climbing white vine.
I recognized it.
Impossibly, I knew what it was. I remembered it, from a life I had never lived or perhaps from a future I had yet to see. That vine had crawled through my dreams. I’d drawn it on the front page of my journal to frame my name. I’d given it leaves and trumpet flowers. I’d been wrong. It was an abstract representation. And there was a thought I’d never had before, that an artist could create a picture of an idea, and I would know what it was. I recognized it as the river of all possible times, cascading down from the present and splitting into a thousand, no a million, no an infinite number of possible futures and every one of those splintered into another infinity of possible futures. And among them all, a single gleaming thread, incredibly narrow, that represented the future as it could, should and ought to be. If events were guided correctly. If the White Prophet dreamed and believed and ventured forth to put that world on the path, time would follow it.