The spirit did not make him wait long, but it did make him ask.
Almond stood on the pale water and looked at the featureless bronze face and waited, and when it became clear the thing would not begin without him, he shrugged and got it over with. "You brought me here. So talk."
"You entered of your own will." The voice arrived inside his chest rather than his ears, and it carried no malice at all, which was somehow worse. "The world beyond this one belongs to me. It has no interest in you. It will not test your courage, because courage is cheap and every one of you carries it through my door like it means something."
"Then what does it test?"
"Whether you can be taught by a thing that is trying to kill you." The spirit raised one hand, and the water under Almond's boots began to shiver. "Conquer the River. Move the Mountain."
