The Towers of the Sunset by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

mirror-they could only have been a dream.
    Is his whole life based upon dreams? Is everyone's? Dreams of a Legend? Dreams of a better time, and of a better place named Heaven? What really is he . . . besides a youth not yet a man who seems to fit nowhere?
    His stomach growls. He draws himself from the quilt and into his boots and parka.
    Outside the rough door barrier, in the gray darkness just before dawn, the wind moans. Creslin reaches into that grayness and touches the wind, samples the chill, and nods slowly. A dark day will dawn, leaden and windy but without snow, at least not until later.
    After refolding and packing his cloak, he eats the remaining honey grain bar and a small lump of rock-hard yellow cheese, washing down the cheese with water from his melt bottle.
    After sealing his pack, he brushes the ashes of the fire into a pile at the back of the hearth with an evergreen branch. He uses the same branch to obscure his steps through the snow from the road. With a few gusts of wind and a day or so, no one will know when the hut was last employed.
    A hint of pink tinges one corner of the heavens, then fades into the dull gray of a cloudy day. Creslin's legs stretch out toward the eastern barrier peaks of the West-horns, whose less-angled slopes rise not more than a handful of kays from where he walks.
    A twinge in his shoulders reminds him of how far he has already carried his pack, although it is lighter now. With a deep breath that billows white fog before his face, he continues, even step upon even step, toward the east, his boots following the wagon tracks that have melted and refrozen, melted and refrozen.
     
     
    XIX
     
    "There were in Heaven in those days rulers of the angels, and the rulers had rulers above them, and, in turn, those rulers had rulers over them.
    "More than half of the angels of Heaven were women, yet only some of the lowest of the rulers were women; fewer yet of those rulers of rulers were women; and none of the highest rulers were in fact women, nor even the Cherubim nor the Seraphim.
    "The angels of Heaven were each like unto gods, and each could throw thunderbolts from a hammer held in her hand; each could travel vast leagues in chariot drawn by fire, either over the ground or through the skies.
    "So when it came to pass that the angels of Heaven girded themselves for the battle with the demons of the light, those who were women asked this thing: For what reason do we fight the demons?
    "The rulers of the rulers of the angels replied: We fight the demons of the light because they opposeth us.
    "And the angels who were women asked again: For what reason do we fight the demons?
    "They revere the light of chaos and they opposeth us, responded the Cherubim; and the rulers were sore affronted at the question.
    "Still a lower ruler, an angel, yet a woman, bearing the name of Ryba, called for an answer from the Seraphim: The demons seeketh not our lands nor our lives, yet you would sacrifice our children, and our children's children, because the demons are not as we are.
    "There can be no peace between angels and demons, not in the firmament of Heaven, not in the white depths of Hell, answered the Seraphim, girding up their loins and clasping unto themselves the swords of the stars that are suns and the dark lances of winter that shatter lands with their chill.
    "You declare there can be no peace, when there has been peace, and you cannot yet answer why that peace mayest not continue. Thus persisted Ryba of the angels.
    "And the Seraphim and the Cherubim were most wroth, and they gathered unto them all the angels that were men, and the white mists that tell of the truths that are within men and within women, be they angels or mortals. And they encircled all of the angels within the white clouds.
    "Yet Ryba and lesser of the angels who were women broke from the circle and gathered themselves, their possessions, and their children unto themselves and unto their chariots, and they departed Heaven