Chapter 38: I Read a Book Once

I looked at Four's excited face and then over at One, who had broken into a smile. Six, though, was looking at the gate.

"Another one?" She asked.

"Yeah. It was on our path, and I thought I'd come to see it," I said.

"I didn't know they were this common." She said as she walked forward and examined it. When she touched it, she jerked her hand back in surprise and shook it. "Huh? I've never known a stone like that to carry an electric charge."

I suppressed my wince. That wasn't good. I hadn't meant to actually mess with it. I was just curious.

"Say, Six, you seem to know some things about these stones," I said. "What do you know about their interaction with magic?"

Six shook her head, and the two of us turned to follow One and Four's retreating form as they headed back to the fire. "Uh, no interaction at all, from what I can tell. Just like... none at all," she emphasized, "Nothing interacts with them."

"Huh? That's interesting. I was kind of expecting there'd be some interaction, even if it was just like a regular stone," I said.

"No, apparently, whoever made them didn't want them to break," Six said. "Things just slide off of them like they are not even there. Even when it should be impossible."

"How do you know so much about these?" I asked.

"Oh, I read a book once," Six responded.

"Which one?" I asked, thinking of the few books that had mentioned them.

"Well, 'The Many Mirrors of the World.'" Six answered as we trudged through the knee-deep snow.

"I didn't realize that was related," I said, not having found the books at all in my search.

"It's just some philosophy," Six said. "I doubt it's actually anything practical about them, but the legends say that these gates or portals, depending on what term you want to use, once were active and could connect us to other worlds. The odd runes are some language that would determine where we wanted to go. But something happened, and one day, they stopped working, and no one could learn to read the runes again."

"Have they any proposed a timeline when that happened?" I asked.

Six shook her head. "No, it's probably prehistory. Maybe some other race knows. But we humans have long forgotten, and none of our allies know either."

I frowned. "Well. Right. Let's see if I can find a copy of that book."

"I might be able to help with that." Six said with a smile.

We were approaching the campfire, where a tantalizingly delicious smell was wafting up from the fire. Sure enough, Five had shooed away all the servants, set up a tripod of sticks tied together with some rough cordage, and had a pot suspended amongst the flames. Her shorter red hair poked out of her hood, and she tossed things in.

In fact, I could see her smiling in a way that I was not familiar with. She had obviously smiled deviously and sexily and mischievously at me and many other times, but this was one of contentment, of simple bliss. She looked up at me, and her face turned to one more familiar as she nodded a greeting before going back to cooking.

One came to stand next to Six and me as we watched.

"I love it when she makes some of her authentic meals. She only ever does it when we go up north, though," One said, stating the obvious for my benefit, but Six just nodded along.

"Yeah, Five," Six said. "Why can't I get you to cook it down in the castle?"

"Just not right," Five said. "You can't cook this without snow."

I raised my eyebrows. "How does that work? Snow is just crystallized water."

They all looked at me strangely. "What?" I said.

"Snow is what?" Six asked.

"What?" I repeated. "None of you have heard of that before?" I said. "Yeah. Snow is obviously just ice. So Water. Right. You know, it melts into water?"

"Yeah, but it's not like a crystal. It's not a precious gem or anything like that."

I picked up a handful of snow and looked very closely at one of the flakes at the top that hadn't been so compacted. "No, look," I said, holding out and pointing with my gloved finger. "If you look really closely, it's just small particles of ice, you know, frozen water in a repeating pattern, which is, you know, it's just ice. Melting shouldn't change anything about the water you use as a base for cooking."

Six and One looked at my hand, and they shrugged. "I suppose it is, but... yeah. Tell it to a snow mage," One said.

I shrugged. Perhaps I was wrong. Was this some misinformation I hadn't learned? Maybe there was a magical difference between snow and water that was not the same as ice.

Five just shrugged. "It just feels wrong to make it without snow. I imagine water would work, but I won't do it unless Master asks me, of course."

She looked at me with a strange note in her voice. I had no doubt that she would do it in an instant if I asked, but I felt she would prefer that I didn't. I nodded to her, deciding that I would not ask it of her if she didn't offer. It seemed like such a small thing that if she didn't want to cook her culture's food except for up north in the snow, I wouldn't make her do it at all. Besides, I wasn't even sure if I liked it. It did smell quite good, though.

***

Five's food was amazing. I had several mugs of it. The morning broth was meant to be drunk like coffee but tasted more like soup. Even the servants had at least one cup. It sat in my stomach, warming me up from the inside, radiating heat long after when I should have forgotten about it.

Sitting in the carriage ride, though, making small talk with Four, I couldn't help but appreciate it. Finally, something in the scenery changed. A small shadow up ahead of us that had been growing suddenly resolved into what was clearly a large citadel of black metal with tall spires and rough-hewn rock. It was cut into the mountain in the distance, such that it was only half a city ringing out, but no less imposing because of it.

"It's always a sight, isn't it?'" One noted, "I don't think I'll ever get used to it."

I leaned back as I continued to watch the thing grow.

"Anyone up for a game of cards?" Five asked as she wedged herself back down between Six and me.

"Yeah, oh boy," Six said with a yawn. "And we still have so long to go."

"Relax. It's only a few hours," One said as she dug out a deck of cards, and Four was already getting up to lower the table.

I shrugged. "Sure, I guess we don't have anything better to do."

We all looked at each other, but I was the first to speak. "So... What are the stakes?"