Free Final Solstice by David Sakmyster Page A

first, he would tread straight through an army of giant sequoia warriors, flanked by red and white fir, sugar, ponderosa and other high alpine wonders. Readying his staff, Solomon followed a path that became increasingly overgrown as he neared the meadow. At one point, barely visible footprints veered into a thicket, and he followed without pause, moving aside the blocking foliage with his staff. Branches converged overhead, blocking the sun in all but stray shafts of light illuminating the way. A mist crept across the trail, further obscuring the path, but Solomon wasn’t deterred. And he wasn’t meant to be. He and the other eleven members of the High Council alone had the ability to navigate these woods, to peer through the shade and the fog and the labyrinth of poisonous shrubs and vines, to arrive at another clearing, not on any maps and far from the ability of even the most intrepid hikers to locate. A clearing where a circle of weathered stones awaited.
    Centuries old, dating back long before naturalist John Muir made his explorations, these rocks were here. Solomon knew who placed them here and how, where they were quarried and how they were transported. And he chuckled, recalling an anthropologist’s theory on such things. Not that any scholars or explorers had ever found this clearing. No, where he was headed had been shrouded from common eyes long before the first colonists ever made their way across the country. And even the natives spoke of this place only in legend.
    Still, for all its allure and mystical secrecy, when Solomon finally arrived in the circle and the mists scattered after confirming his identity, and when the A-frame building that to all purposes seemed like a quaint ski chalet, appeared, Solomon was again struck by the feeling that this modernism was an affront to the old ways.
    He touched the nearest rock, partially moss-covered, and caressed its surface, feeling its indentations and cracks. He felt its power and he sucked in a cool breath, smelling the pine sap and the distant oak branches; he heard an acorn fall a hundred yards away and was aware of a multitude of forest denizens eyeing him carefully, reverently.
    They all knew their places.
    Unlike some.
    Steeling his nerve, Solomon patted the standing stone. He hefted his staff in his right hand, glanced around the circle one more time, then advanced into its center, toward the structure—and the meeting, already in progress inside.
    O O O
    “Am I too late?” The door with the shamrock handle slammed hard behind him and eleven heads turned in his direction. The rectangular table was long and thick, full of knots and weathered in places. The people seated around it in chairs, each one uniquely carven from a different tree trunk, could not have seemed more out of place to Solomon. He longed for the old days, and imagined how it could have been if only a different hand had grasped the arch-staff . Everyone was dressed as if coming from a power business meeting. Silk suits and ties for the seven men, power skirts, high heels and blazers for the women.
    Solomon shook the snow and moss from his khakis and the sleeves of his sweater, and wiped his boots on a mat of elderberry leaves. “Again I feel underdressed. I know it’s winter, but my motion to require the old dress code of white robes, belts of living vines and sandals has been ignored, I take it?”
    A grizzled face lifted and old, wizened eyes peered at him through a gray nest of bushy eyebrows. At least the Arch-Druid Louis Palavar had a face that looked the part: half Merlin, half Gandalf, but unfortunately with the powerful grace of neither.
    Palavar pursed his lips. “Avery Solomon. Not only are you late, an occurrence we’ve grown accustomed to, but your blatant disregard as to the proper order of things, such as making motions, has become more than tiring.”
    Solomon shrugged and approached the free chair, his assigned post opposite Palavar at the far head of the table.