With a few murmured directions from Finndo, you make your way to a spiraling staircase and down... down... down...
A long hallway, a few more of Finndo's dog-men... and finally a huge archway opening on what appears to be a natural cavern, the floor leveled, with a crimson-glowing pathway set into it. It shimmers like the banked fire of a smithy, wavering, pulsing, making the whole room seem somehow insubstantial.
Bells like anvil strikes ring in you head, and your temples begin to throb.
Near you, but somehow distant to your ears, Finndo speaks in a rough murmur. "Don't allow yourself to be distracted. Heat will rise at each step, and eventually flames, but they will not harm you a great deal. Don't stop walking... I guarantee you'll never start again if you do, and if you leave the path or fall, you're dead -- no requiem, no reprieve."
You have been walking as though in a dream all this time, close to the right-hand wall and around, heading toward the far end.
He glances over at you as the two of you walk. "I smithed this, Nephew: hammering it, as I went, into the rock of this cavern. If you so choose when you have reached the center, command the Forge to carry you to the main hall: servants will show you to chambers where you may rest. I hazard a guess that you may need to. I will not be offended if you decide otherwise."
You rub your temples with both your hands, trying to lessen the throbbing -- like the continued hammering of an anvil, like some sort of resonance to the proximity of this Power Finndo says he forged. Glancing at your Uncle, you clench your jaw against the internal pounding, and begin this new path.
First one step, and then anot--
Just as your foot comes down on the beginning of Finndo's burning Path, your leg seizes, stiffening, locking into immobility, like the carapace of a beetle, preventing you from taking the next step… to continue the walk. You hear a voice murmur something behind you, but ignore it, faced with a much more immediate predicament. Concern, consternation, confusion… these emotions wage war across your features. A voice growls softly "I'm walking this damned thing, and I will not be stopped…"
Only after your leg finally rises, trembling, to heed your will, do you recognize the voice as your own.
You grip the haft of your spear for support as you force your leg against this constraint. Slowly, ever so slowly, the pressure of your will forces your body to relent. Your muscles ache already, far too soon into the trial for comfort, as your back foot comes forward onto the path that glows like embers.
The first hurdle breached, you slowly begin to move forward, your body providing a low, aching backdrop that slowly fades away as you walk, each step ringing on the Pattern with the sound of a hammer striking an anvil.
You struggle onward, each step a burning agony, a minor hell to be endured and overcome. Lashes of fire rake across your back, keeping time to the symphony of fire around you, and your jaws clench to keep in pain that so enwraps your mind that you even imagine your spear howling its commiseration with you as you struggle forward, singing its anguish into the forge’s music as though it were some dark being now suffering for the wretched sin it committed by staying with you on Finndo's Pattern. Tears stream from your eyes and almost instantly vanish as you trudge onward, teeth clenched like an animal, determination gleaming in your eyes with a bright, burning flame.
And suddenly, it stops. Mezzo-piano... softly now.
You are through the first major wall of resistance, it seems, and can move with a decent distance-eating speed. You negotiate a long curve, then an easy switch-back. The flames reach up to your boot tops now. You mind fills with images: your life in the Amber -- the seemingly constant arguments with Oberon and Mother, the memories painful to bear yet impossible to stop or even slow... the fighting, the long hours alone in dusty, rarely-used halls, suffering under the gaze of those who thought you a mistake, the result of your mother’s foolish rebellion... slipping away from Amber on a moonbeam; working on your music long into the Shadow nights… The hope, the shame of your departure… and gnawing suspicions and worries in the back of your mind...
Katherine.
Minor keys of regret and self-doubt.
You grit your teeth. It's hard to keep your mind focused on the task at hand -- probably part of the trial... Tingling sensations all the way up your legs... the crackling fire sound like a forest ablaze all around you... One foot in front of the other... Pick them up, put them down... turn, push...
Killing a man by accident in a duel in Germany; what was his name?… why had you been fighting?... the wind like dragon's breath at your back... three more steps and resistance rises.
Suddenly, you're trying to push a cadillac out of a muddy ditch... all you're strength goes forward, and the advance is infinitesimal. The fire is around your waist.. you're a great bright flame.
Distraction falls way, even Time fades. There is only you and the nameless things you are become, striving with its entire being against the inertia of a past spent wandering, spent tortured, spent imprisoned, spent taunted... only your will carries you through when your body is stopped. Only your will survives the crucible.
Another step, and another, and you are through, and ages older, years of your life have gone by in a haze of lost remembrance... and you know that you are going to make it despite the fact that you are approaching a path that looks long and tricky and hard. The universe seems to wheel about you. Each step here makes you feel as if you're fading and coming back into focus, being burnt to ashes and reassembled, scattered and re-gathered, dying and reviving...
You know you have come up to the Final resistance now as flames rise to become a cage of fire and your feet begin to drag again. The stillness and the inferno and the terrible pushing...
You move, shaking, and only a single short arc remains... but this is somehow the worst, almost as if this creation now knows you and refuses to let you leave it. You fight forward on ankles that feel as though they've carried you through a thousand wind-sprints, each step a final strike on the anvil.
You very nearly no longer exist as a person; as a rational thinking creature separate from the flames of Finndo's forge. Your entire sense of self has been dwarfed by the enormity of this task, near-consumed in the writhing, twisting flames of the turns, charred irreparably and re-born; left as only a husk in the face of sheer power. One foot after the other, plodding forward like some mindless automaton, existing only as a housing for will, struggling against the walls and labyrinthine turns of the path.
And here, at the end, you realize the path understands every frailty you possess, and is quite willing to shatter you like fractured crystal should you attempt to continue forward. But if you stop, death is certain as well. You are burnt and blistered beyond recognition, a horrid and wretched thing undeserving of whatever power may be yours should you finish. You don't care anymore: Finndo and his promises can go hang for all you care... In your mind, a final refrain:
"I just want to live...
(the fire)
"One...
(the song)
"more...
(her face)
"step..."
Standing still. Panting and shuddering. Peace and pain. Gone are the sparks, the heat, the fire. Your pulse throbs through your whole being.
Your entire body feels like someone's hammer-mashed thumb.
You lean heavily on your spear, not burnt, not charred, but drenched in sweat, your entire body shaking from the exertion. You stand at the heart of the forge.
You can see Finndo on the outside: watching, waiting, judging.
You half-imagine he might be impressed.
You half-fear he may be chuckling.