Padma Sar now inspected his acquaintance more closely--there was something regal in the bearing, a thing he'd seen before. A wall had gone up between this man and himself, but while many men had their walls , about their families they were usually open.
"Perhaps I was disrespectful," he began.
"My family is something I would rather not speak of," Kronos allowed, and fell silent as they continued the journey. And yet he thought of family--his family, as they continued in silence. His family was not the young old men who ruled now in his place, nor the wives who in all good taste, saw fit to precede him to the grave. His family was one dead woman, never to be more than a mere twenty years of age, his mother, teacher, counselor. And one man, a legend, who lay beyond the mother-mountains.
These were mountains, or never he saw them. The mother-mountains, the answer to the woman's claim that she knew mountains--she who climbed the mount called Shin as if it were a mere hill, and led men across Horemheb as if it were a plain. They loomed in the distance, and never seem closer with his approach, yet seem to slip further away, dizzying in their dance on the earth. They knew the ages, and they were of the ground. They challenged him. The sun beat down on the brown earth--the brown skin of Padma Sar and his own tan/pink flesh, and illuminated the crazy grass-strewn wasteland at the foot of the mother-mountains.
"Now, here we begin to climb," Padma Sar explained, just a step beyond their ascent.
"So." The ground swelled with the promise of the pregnant hills, and Kronos felt his steps stretch further apart, further along, further up--further. It seemed to look behind was to look below. He darted that look behind his shoulder, and saw the path from which they came.
"The ground is like rock, be careful of your feet. "
Kronos looked from whence he came into the distance, at the path they were on, and from this vantage, the lower road. "Is not the lower path the clearer and safer--it goes beteen these mountains, and seems to nest with less...height. Were that way not safer?"
Padma Sar laughed. "These mountains--I know them well! I know the safer way--the way you speak of is fraught with hidden difficulty, and is not better nor surer--but this way is sure. And, surely--it leads to Methos!"
The rocks crumbled to pebbles below Kronos' feet, and he thought at once of the climb at Shin--his name, her name, the god of the moon. I have seen slopes like these. I can manage."
"All you must do, is not look down, but keep your head to the path--mind the rock, and be aware, the air does get thnner. Harken to your heart...there's the story!"
There was a story in Kem't, told to him by the lion-faced mountain-goat of a teacher he had, about the heart--it was one's mother, always harken unto it. She knew these mountains--was this what she'd meant? he breathed, and wondered at the difference he sensed in the air, and the difference in the light of the sky, and the smell of the grasses.
"My heart?"
"When the heart stutters--cease. The air grows thin, and you must slow--you are from a different land, and not made for ready travel on this mount. You needs must adjust--and take care. Yo do not wish to fall below."
"Below?"
Padma Sar gestured to the valley. "Some patches are steep, and there are rocks, cliffs, sheer faces we will traverse. As my guest, I'd rather not see you dashed against those rocks!"
Kronos looked down from the partial height--he saw the hut of Padma Sar below.
"How do you stand it?" he began, breathing slightly exaggerated.
"Stand what?"
"To see your place in this world--so small below?"
Padma Sar looked as Kronos pointed, and what was worse--he saw. He squinted into he glaring sun, but already the sun of a mountain goat was makig his way up the pass, as if he himself knew of mountains, as if his feet were sure of the way, as if he had known the path before.