Chapters (7)
“It’s also called the Unfinished Pilgrimage,” said the brother, “because the man who was carving the stairs died before he reached the top of Mount Kezrinin, and no one has been called to finish it. So it’s a staircase that winds about halfway up a small mountain and stops. Someone was called to widen out a landing there, and to carve a hollow for tokens in the side of the mountain, but it is not a pilgrimage to take if heights make you at all dizzy.”
“I’m out, then,” the elven woman next to him said cheerfully. “But is it a pilgrimage to Osreian?”
“No. To Cstheio. The quartz is to symbolize clear seeing.”
And it seemed suitable in its own way that an unfinished staircase would be sacred to Cstheio, who was a goddess of the lost and the broken. Like Tedoro. Like me.
They passed the token back along the table to me, and I put it away carefully. Secondhand pilgrimage tokens might be nothing more than pretty bits and bobs, but they could also be useful as reminders, and this one would serve to remind me of the truth I’d found in the corn maze. I could not lay down the grief I carried, but I could name it for what it was, and by naming it ease the burden; clear sight was the gift of the Lady of the Stars.
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If I’ve missed somebody—and I feel morbidly sure that I have—please know that it is not intentional.
By Katherine Addison
BY KATHERINE ADDISON
The Goblin Emperor
The Angel of the Crows
The Witness for the Dead
The Grief of Stones