“The upper body of the mountain is given over to the Shapers for their work,” Slorn said. “In return for its protection, leadership, and instruction, the Shapers serve the mountain and work in its name.”
Miranda shivered. “And what kind of work does a mountain need done?”
“All kinds,” Slorn said with a toothy smile. “Though only the Great Teacher understands how it all fits together.”
“Great Teacher?”
“You’ll see soon enough,” Slorn said, standing up. “Let’s get moving. We have far to go.”
Miranda looked back at the mountain. It didn’t seem that far away. But she obeyed and walked back across the camp to wake up Gin. The hound was already up and waiting when she reached him, his orange eyes narrow and guarded as he watched Slorn’s wagon pack itself. He answered her “good morning” with a gruff snort, and though Miranda tried several times as they packed their camp, that was all the comment the hound would make.
Though the mountain looked like it was only a few miles away, the distance was deceptive. Knife’s Pass was an endless corridor between the lesser peaks, a straight, flat slab of rock large enough to march a legion down walled in by two featureless stone walls. Ahead, the Shaper Mountain rose over everything else, filling the end of the pass, but no matter how fast they ran along the smooth road, it never seemed to come any closer.
The sun was high overhead when the end of the road finally came into sight. Gin was panting hard, his feet swollen after running full out for miles on the hard stone. Slorn slowed the pace, and Miranda started to thank him on Gin’s behalf when she realized that Slorn had not slowed for them.
Just before the towering spire of the Shaper Mountain took over everything, the mountains fell away. The ground simply stopped, leaving an enormous gap of empty air between them and the Shaper Mountain. As they got closer, Miranda saw that it was a canyon. The divide cut between the rest of the mountains and the Shaper’s peak like a sword stroke. At the very bottom, a deep blue, freezing cold river glittered in the noon sun, but it was so far away that Miranda couldn’t even hear the sound of the water, only the endless wind howling between the cliffs.
The road, however, did not stop. A bridge of arching stone just wide enough for two carts running side by side spanned the enormous divide, linking Knife’s Pass to the mountain on the other side. The bridge was all one piece, a great length of curved rock that sprouted like a branch at one end from the stone under their feet and on the other from the roots of the Shaper Mountain itself. There were no railings, nothing to save a careless traveler from plummeting into the ravine, but the bridge itself was free of ice, and Slorn’s wagon stepped onto it without hesitation.
With a nervous swallow, Miranda followed, leaning with Gin into the wind that threatened to toss them both into the canyon below. She was so focused on not falling that she didn’t notice Slorn had stopped until she was past him. She turned around, nudging Gin back until they were pressed against the wagon.
“What’s wrong?” she shouted over the wind.
Slorn looked down at her from his seated position on the wagon’s roof, his small bear ears blown flat by the wind. “Things might get a little tense in the mountain,” he said. “No matter what happens, I need you to stay calm and follow my lead.”
Gin began to growl. “What do you mean ‘tense’?”
“You’ll see soon enough,” Slorn said, starting his wagon forward again. “Just stay with me and everything will be fine.”
Gin snorted, sending a poof of white vapor into the air that was instantly snatched by the wind. “If he thinks we’re just going to roll over—”
“Gin!” Miranda said sharply.
The hound shut his mouth, and Miranda pushed him forward. She didn’t like this any more than he did, but they’d come too far to stop now. All she could do was press herself flat against the ghosthound’s back and follow Slorn’s wagon across the final half of the ravine.
The bridge ended at a sheer wall in the mountain’s side, the smooth stone road butting up against an unnaturally straight, unnaturally square cliff. The wind here was stronger than ever, buffeting them against the cliff face. Miranda kept low on Gin’s back, her eyes darting up the mountain for another path, but there was nothing, just the bridge and cliff. She was about to ask Slorn where to go next when a loud crack sounded over the wind. More cracks followed until the ravine sounded like a breaking glacier, and then, all at once, the cliff opened.
An enormous slab of stone twice as wide as Gin was long swung into the mountain with a long scrape, revealing a cavern larger than anything Miranda had seen before, including the Relay chamber below the Council. For a moment, she just stood, gawking at the sheer size of it, the perfect smoothness of stone so white it seemed to glow as it arched up to the domed ceiling. It was only when Gin began to growl that she realized they were not alone.