The Place
Mosaic Crags is a crag of three-parted beasts, a cliff whose face is a mosaic of lion, goat, and serpent, and the mosaic is the crag, and the crag is the litter. The crag rises three hundred meters above the red valley, a wall of bare stone two kilometers wide, and the whole wall is the face, and the face is the day. The stone is red and grey, red where the sun has worked and grey where it has not, and the two colors meet in a line that is the crag's only honest border. The lion's face is on the left, the goat's on the right, and the serpent's in the middle, and the three faces are the crag, and the crag is the day. The air is thick with the smell of the crag and the promise, a smell of hot stone and old blood, and the smell is the warning. The sky above is a hard blue, the color of the valley when it is not red, and the light on the stone is mean and flat, the kind of light that does not flatter a face or a seam. It smells of hot iron and old stone, a smell that gets into the coat and stays, and the one sound is the litter, a soft sound in the crags that is the crag's only word, and the word is the day. There is no landmark the way a crag has a landmark, but there is one: the Three Gate, a low arch in the middle of the face where the three faces meet, and the gate is the door, and the door is the litter. What makes Mosaic Crags itself is the part: the parts are the face, and the face is the day, and the day is the part, and the part is the crag.
How They Live
The Chimeras keep this place in the part, building their crags in the stone, chambers of carved rock and packed earth, lined with fur and moss, their entrances low, and a chamber is cut one part at a time, because a part is the season and a part is the calendar. Light comes from the crag, the amber shimmer of the stone, which glows faintly in the dark, and the amber is the color of the day. Food is the crag: the lion's prey, the goat's herb, the serpent's venom, and the litter that keeps the promise honest, and the honest is the meal, and the meal is the kept. Water is drawn from the crag's springs, two black threads on the north face, which the mothers tend the way you tend a secret, because the springs are the store and the store is the law. Heat comes from the stone, which holds the day's heat and gives it back slow, and the slow is the color of the day. The defense is the crag itself: a visitor who stands on the crag is already in the brood's path, and the brood is the alarm, and the alarm is the welcome, and the welcome is the sentence. The day is measured by the litter, because the litter is the only clock the promise has, and the clock does not lie about the count. Every chimera that is born must stand on the Three Gate alone before the crag will call it one of its own, and the standing is the naming, and the naming is the only thing the stone ever gives back.
People
Home of the Chimeras, whose crags are counted by part. Three parts are kept at last count, and the count is kept in the stone, which is to say the count is as fixed as the crag, which is to say it does not lie. The mothers lead, and rank is decided by the standing, because a mother who can stand on the Three Gate in a silence the crag has never heard is the mother the stone trusts. Nothing that cannot keep a part is welcome, and the part is not needed, because the crag has a face, and the face has a litter, and the litter has a ledger. A surface traveler who once stood on the face, the last one to be let past the Three Gate, called it the only cliff where the stone makes you stand before you take a breath, which is the truest thing he said and the thing the crag paid the least attention to.
In Stories
The place where the litter is the only honest promise, and the promise is the brood, and the brood is the part, and the part is the end. The Forgotten have not been to the crags, but Uaellaen has read the litter once, at a distance, and the litter read him back, and the reading was the first thing he has ever paid for that he could not buy back.