The following days Fenelon stayed away from Ozna. He couldn't quite say why, but he was annoyed at the women for having been so unforthcoming, if she knew who he was and why he was traveling to the Lakes region then she could have spoken earlier. She could have explained to him in a kinder fashion what they expected him to do and warned him what to expect when he would sense the Rod for the first time. He also could tell that the pass they were following was taking them closer to the peak where the singing rod was. He surmised that soon Ozna would come to him and ask him to go get the artifact from its rocky summit so that he could present it to the priestesses when he reached the Lakes. He knew he was being childish, and he knew he would try to do what Ozna wanted in the end but he wanted to see if his reluctance to act had the capacity to crack the annoying serenity and poise of the warrior woman,also maybe he was sulking a little.

  It did not. She came to him one morning and simply said: "Tomorrow I will show you the way to the summit. And I will explain where to climb down to so that you can meet with the caravan as it progresses in the gorge."

  Fenelon knew that they were right under the rod-baring peak. He knew this from his mental map that the pass snaked its way in and out of ice tunnels around the foot of the mountain and that once he'd reach the summit he could simply come down the other side and if he was fast enough he would only have to wait for them for a few hours. "How will I breathe if no man can?"

  She smiled, and her smile was soft and kind again,

  " You are not just a man are you?"

  No, maybe he was not just a man.

  The worst part had been the snow and the wind. His brown leather riding pants were soaked wet, as were his feet; sweat had drenched his back while the freezing cold was making his movements sluggish. He had cut one of his hands on some rocks at some point but the bleeding had subsided rapidly, probably because of the cold. He needed to get off this mountain fast or he might lose fingers. But he was now above the clouds, so there was no more snow, there was no more moisture at all and the air felt like it was gone. The air was definitely thinner; his head spun when he looked up or to the sides. He started taking big panicked breaths until he realized that there was no point. He closed his eyes and decided to trust the Helehalian completely.

  'I am not just a man.'

  And little by little the light-headedness faded and he found that his breathing had slowed to almost nothing. He stopped on a small platform, he was almost there, he could sense it, vibrating, yes, a pulsation it was almost like a song.

  The Rod was singing.

  In spite of the extreme cold the sun burned his skin, he was feeling too hot, encumbered by his moisture heavy clothes. He kept going; there was nothing else to do. He groped for a handhold and a few loose rocks fell off and plunged down to the world below ricochetting on the bare rock of the peak itself. He heaved his body upward thinking of how long it would take these rocks to actually reach their destination whatever it may be.

  Suddenly he was there. The summit of the peak was like a platform, perfectly flat. At the center there was the rod, black and coarse. Fenelon could feel that there was nothing left to breathe and above him, the midday sky was black as night and the sun was a star among thousands. He stripped off his clothes and laid them flat on the warm rock to dry. No wind, no air, no sky, no cold. The unfiltered light of the sun on his skin was strong and he felt good, very good in fact. Fenelon walked a few paces to the rod, it was taller than he was and thicker than his wrist. It looked firmly planted in the rock but as he placed his hands on it, the rock cracked and allowed him to take it. It sung and the song it sung penetrated the body of the young man and went down to his very essence and bonded with it. Fenelon saw Uithil shining in full daylight, he was above it and many rays of light emanating from the rod itself went through his body and away. He turned on himself looking at Uithil and the world: he saw the Lakes and the good sisters waiting for him, he saw Gerrek impossibly far to the Setting side and the demon lord sailing with his fleet past the Alvarve.

  Fenelon looked down at the pass below and he saw the little light of Ozna with the caravan coming out of an ice tunnel. He jumped. Naked, barefooted equipped only with the rod; he jumped impossibly long jumps from rocky outcrop to minuscule platforms, he was leaping down the face of the peak at an exhilarating speed, it almost was a dance from rock to rock down and down again easy and playful.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  ***

  She had watched him climb as long as her eyes could see him. If it had not been for the night falling, she guessed, she could have watched him go a couple more hours. The first night she glimpsed the light of his fire against the snow. Now she only had the song to keep her mind at peace. She remembered the debates about the different possible meanings of it. How often they had sung it, how often they had tried to look at it from different angles. They remembered some height hundred years ago when the rod was born and started singing in the mountains. They knew then that they only had to wait until the son of the two people would be born with the red hands of the Bogatzko? and the grey eyes of the men-folk. When they saw him arrive in the world their anticipation grew some more, but the cautious ones in the order kept transcribing the GodWord of the original song in order to seek out flaws in their interpretation. There was so much at stake. It had taken Gerrek: the annoying, scruffy, seemingly all-knowing-and-not-telling, rude and obnoxious Gerrek the wanderer, to tip the balance. He had almost threatened them to take Fenelon himself to the Rod and hide it from them. The outrage had been unprecedented; no man had ever dared disrespect the order since the Helehalians had reached the last step and sworn protection to the priestesses.

  Ozna sang to herself as her surefooted horse led the way on the crushed ice path the Gatlins had cut across the back of the mighty Goldrac. It wove its course through ancient glaciers and across rocky boulders, some of the tunnels filled with snow and ice each winter and had to be cleared or dug out anew at the end of spring. The Lugalbanda pass was dangerous but it was the only way to avoid paying the high fee the Erii citadel ships charged for rounding the Alvarve. With the demon lord back and the citadel ships turned war fleet for his army, Ozna thought that the pass was about to become very popular with the merchants trading both sides of Goldrac. She looked up as they were finally exiting the longest tunnel of the day and he was standing there, naked, in the middle of the path holding the Rod as a spearman would his spear.

  ***

  Was it the Rod itself? It was clearly powerfully linked to Uithil, but Fenelon had the feeling that it was also the distance, but from what? Ever since he had left home, he had had the feeling that his long-dormant powers had been awakening one at a time. It could have been Gerrek, the map he showed to him, they can't have been just maps, could they? Ozna did seem to think they were important. Well, if he was really honest with himself it did not actually start in ?ama? with the maps. That had been one thing, it could have been Gerrek's powers working him up or just the maps themselves but he felt no link to them or to the old man. It had really peaked after Lugalbanda as they went deep into Goldrac and closer to the Rod, it felt like fitting together the tiny rings of a chain-mail vest. Unlinked, they were merely a heap of useless copper rings, but as soon as you hooked a couple together the purpose and potential of the rings emerged. To him it did not feel as anything specific it was more like his whole being was filling up with power, his fibers were slowly charging with a build-up of sheer Uithil juice. He just did not know what to do with it so he relished in it and waited to meet the sisters of the Order.

  The sight was spectacular, the gorge at the bottom of which they had been traveling suddenly opened to the Setting side, the rock face plunged vertically down to a series of vast plateau stretching in front of them covered with a steaming ocean of trees. On the opposite side of the plateau, rose another mountain chain, much smaller than the mighty Goldrac, the Curvix Cordillera was rumored to go all the way to the setting ocean, but Fenelon's eyes were not striving to see the impossibly far ocean, they had been caught in the scintillating light upon water in the middle of the trees. The lakes were clearly visible. They were there. Waiting for him, waiting for the Rod; could he trust them? Was what they had planned for it the right thing to do, was it the only thing that could be done with this powerful item, the questions were always with him, night and day. For the first time in his short life, he was at the center of things, the destiny of the people of the world hanged in the scale of his decision to offer or not the Rod to the priestesses of the Lakes. Fenelon wasn't used to that and he did not appreciate the way it made him feel. There was arrogance being born out of nothing, puffed up self importance that felt childish and satisfaction out of place. Since the mountain had been kind of easy for him, was it really an exploit worthy of celebrating or he'd just been the right guy for the job and that was it. At least a carpenter could build several houses unless every mountain in the world was equipped with rods like that one his set of skills was now useless.

  The road went down the mountain towards the boreal side of the plateau in a gentle slope that wound back upon itself time and time again. As they were going down, closer to the lands of the Helehalians Fenelon was struggling to furnish himself with poise and composure that would lend some weight to his attempt at not just being the guy who took the Rod down from the mountain. He felt a responsibility, a duty to ascertain whether the Sisters of the Order were the best possible choice so far as recipiency was concerned. To achieve that, he had to ask questions and these questions had to be clever and precise but he also had to be able to understand the answers and from them make up his mind to either surrender or withhold the Rod. It was the withholding part that gave him most trouble for he had absolutely no certainty the Sisters did not have the power to overcome him and wrestle the Rod from his very hands, leaving him covered in dust and humiliation, ridiculed by having poorly attempted to keep them from the object they had been lusting after for so long ending up merely having displayed his own clumsy weakness.