During the more difficult parts of our journey toward the ruins of the isla, I rode in the front beside Herald Devrim. When the path was clear or my people’s markers were readily apparent, Hytham rode beside me.

  “I believe this is going well thus far,” the adjudicator said, surveying the company around us.

  Bansaerin’s warning flickered back across my mind. I hadn’t had a chance to formulate a plan for what to do if—Bansaerin had said when—the Order double-crossed me. “I am worried about what happens once we reach the ruins,” I confessed, careful to keep my voice low. “What if what the herald is searching for is not there and he blames me for its absence? Or if he no longer needs my expertise once we’ve found the ruins and they murder me as soon as we arrive?”

  Hytham raised an eyebrow as though he hadn’t been anticipating exactly such an eventuality, but it didn’t seem far-fetched to me. What need had they of me after I showed them the ruins? “I won’t allow that to happen,” he answered simply in that low, reassuring resonance of his. And though I didn’t know how he would prevent it, I believed him.

  The herald called me back to the front for the final journey into the highlands.

  I knew in a general sense where we were, but when I had traveled here before, I’d had a few days to crawl about the mountainside and didn’t need to lead a contingency of thirty soldiers, two adjudicators, two heralds, and the heralds’ aides along the paths. Think like an ibex, I began chanting to myself. It was difficult to concentrate with Devrim glaring down at me from his horse.

  Just on the cusp of truenight, I found the narrow passageway to the cauldron-shaped entrance of the isla.

  I breathed a sigh of relief and glanced back at Devrim, smiling. “This way,” I called.

  The soldiers marveled at the strangeness of the five trees who, I was relieved to find, were still there. Had they withered, I feared the change from my original description would give the Order some signal as to the former presence and now absence of the Seed. Hytham had said he trusted me even if there were things I couldn’t tell him. Like who my parents truly were and, even more pressing, how my people had survived in such a harsh northern clime without the assistance of the Order.

  Devrim commanded the soldiers to set up camp, and Herald Rikard drew out his lantern, chanting to himself as he walked in a slow circle around the edge of the cauldron bowl. Leaving his horse with his aide, Devrim came to stand beside me. “I was beginning to think thou had led us into the middle of the wilderness to dispatch us.”

  How I would dispatch an entire contingency of knights all by myself I couldn’t begin to fathom, but I wouldn’t say as much to the herald—he had already blamed Bansaerin for such a step when he knew well enough of its impossibility. “It has been a few years since I was here,” I answered simply. “I couldn’t remember which craggy passageway was the correct one.”

  I watched the soldiers set up the camp in some fascination. They were so certain in their movements, in the placement of the various tents and a few odd tables. I clutched at the edges of my shawl as the wind picked up—I remembered now why I had been so grateful to follow the ibex into the darkness below.

  But just as suddenly, the wind stopped. The chill of truenight faded. I stared about, searching for the cause of such reprieve. Devrim nodded toward Herald Rikard who had just finished his enchantment circle around the camp. Even the wind’s howl and the call of mountain owls seemed quieter. “Ilona sees no need for her faithful to suffer beneath the wind and the cold,” he explained.

  I had been longing for the additional shawls in my pack but now saw no need. “Generous indeed,” I answered. The things Ilona did and did not have rules for still puzzled me, but during our stay above the isla, I was sure to learn more.

  I could not help the yawn that stretched my lips as I gazed about the camp. It was far cozier out of the wind.

  “I hope you are not too tired,” Devrim said, eyebrow raised. He stepped toward the opening of the cauldron where four knights had been hammering at wooden planks since we’d arrived. The Herald lifted his lantern from his side, casting the entirety of the cauldron in radiant white light so that I and many others had to shield my eyes. “She would not have us walk in darkness either,” the herald added when I approached and stood beside him, looking down into the cauldron. “Not when we have so much still before us to explore.”

  Hytham found his way back to my side and explained that the soldiers were building a lift that would take us in and out of the courtyard below.

  “I’ve no desire to squirrel down a tree,” the herald said, his chin raised.

  I grinned at the picture of the herald trying to scale a tree in his long robes. “I had no other way of climbing down before, but I was dressed rather like this.” I indicated my breeches, shawls, and short overskirt. Let the herald conclude for himself that long robes aren’t appropriate for adventuring.

  The wooden platform dangling above empty space seemed far more suspicious to me than did the idea of trusting a sturdy, large tree to guide me down to a courtyard, but Hytham assured me it was safe.

  Devrim conferred with Rikard on the necessary steps for securing the camp, setting the watches. “Send word to Shakerton for the prisoner to be released,” he ordered the other herald. Rikard bowed and crossed to the caged hawks the soldiers had transported up into the mountains.

  I watched carefully until Rikard’s task was complete. Though I didn’t know the contents of the message, I would have to trust that Devrim had kept his word and the missing wasn’t some kind of elaborate trick. From my observations, Rikard was far too frightened of Devrim to disobey his command.

  I searched the camp as the soldiers completed the structure. Most of the pieces had been built already, they had only to assemble them. One of these tents, when we returned, would be mine.

  My jittering nerves caused my tiredness from the journey to abate. I had worried that the travel would exhaust us—many days’ distance compressed into a matter of hours—but the herald’s magic must have seen to that too.

  “They’re ready for us,” Hytham said, calling my attention back to the task at hand. My people were counting on me. Bansaerin was counting on me. I wouldn’t let them down.

  Hytham stepped onto the platform first. It did not waver beneath his steps. He held his hand out for me which I accepted. The herald followed behind me, and four soldiers joined us, all compressed together.

  The moment the soldiers began to lower us down, the whole platform gave a great lurch, and I caught onto Hytham’s arm with both hands, squeezing tightly.

  His eyes had widened—I supposed platforms do not normally drop of their own accord—and he chuckled at my death grip on his arm but did not shake me off. “It will be alright,” he murmured so that just I might hear.

  Herald Devrim stood on the edge of the platform, his composure unfazed by the platform’s sudden drop. He held a lantern out into the black of the isla. It cast light and shadow upon the ruins of my people’s once-great ruins.

  The herald murmured a spell under his breath, and the lantern’s light increased. I blinked, willing my eyes to adjust so I would not miss a moment within one of these spaces I had read so much about.

  With the lantern’s brightness, I could clearly perceive what had been only shadows to me on my first visit. The Lifkin of the Bright Age had carved giant animals from the stone of the courtyard. They stretched to impossible heights—a herd of deer-like creatures with spectacularly twisting antlers, the howling form of a wolf, a great eagle.

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  As we descended, a low purple glow shone out from the distant walls of the chamber, illuminating what even the herald’s lantern couldn’t and revealing the size of the room we were entering.

  I held my breath as the first of the archways upon the lower floor came into view. Their iridescent runes spoke of protection and strength—this was one of the central chambers, its ceiling several stories high, around which all life within the isla would have revolved.

  Confirming my suspicions, other glowing archways appeared midway along the walls, opposite from our position at the midpoint between opening and cavern floor. Some of the wall remained living rock. Other pieces had been smoothed—the ancients had allowed their magicked environments to retain their original enchantments while adding their own artistry to the natural stone.

  I gasped as the runes flickered from the walls and cast their glow upon the figures.

  The handful of knights with us on the platform reacted at the sight as well, murmuring to one another at the fearsome beasts. They jumped at the slightest squeak in the mechanisms of the rope or shifting shadow from the herald’s lantern. Though they would not say so in as many words before the herald, I had gathered the impression before we descended that their current role fell far outside the Lifkin removal they believed they had traveled to take part in.

  I tried to reason away such whispered comments as a matter of levels of danger rather than levels of cruelty.

  The ancients may have seen it differently for all that their beautiful, impossible statues frightened the baron’s knights. After all, during their reign, the positions of Hume and Lifkin had been reversed. Was it possible that some lingering memory of similar courtyards, similar creatures now vanished from our world, lingered on in the Hume’s minds? The glorious creatures would certainly dwell within mine from now on.

  “Magnificent, is it not?” Devrim asked, looking over his shoulder at me.

  “Their craftsmanship is . . . incredible.” I studied the softly glowing runes and the decorative lines carved into the statues, trying to imagine what it would have been like to dwell within this chamber, Lifkin swirling about all around me, just a few hundred years before.

  “I have spent a great deal of time picturing spaces like this,” Devrim said, echoing my thoughts. “Broccus’s earliest writings indicate that he lived in an isla much like this one. He was a scribe to his Lifkin overlords before the Fall.”

  As we completed our descent, the herald explained that not all of these records had remained in the Book of Broccus but that the Order kept careful account of his journals and letters. These extracted remnants were important objects of study but not as widely available as Broccus’s records of his missives from Ilona and the instructions he had gleaned from Her sharing of the Word.

  I knew from my conversations with Aveela that the Book of Broccus was both lengthy and convoluted and that different interpretations of its origins and its key tenants abounded throughout Hume cultures, nowhere more so than within the Order itself.

  He set the soldiers the task of setting up a base camp here upon the main floor of the central chamber. We would set out into the isla itself as soon as they were ready.

  Hytham remained with me and the herald while the soldiers hurried to obey.

  I spent the interlude chewing over the many questions that I’d gathered over the years in my conversations with Aveela, trying to understand how Broccus and the Bright Age had given birth to the world we now knew.

  I bit my lower lip, choosing my words cautiously. “I do not wish to offend you by asking this but I am curious—In your understanding of the Book, Broccus is a singular person? Not a compilation of several Hume from after the fall to whom Ilona appeared?” Of all the differing interpretations of the Book of Broccus, that one bore a special fascination to me—what would it mean for Broccus to be not one Hume but several?

  “Thy questions are welcome.” Devrim’s low voice echoed out across the space. He spoke as though the two of us were the only ones present rather than in the company of an adjudicator and the baron’s frightened soldiers. They startled at the slightest sound, their echoed huffs of dismay far louder than any sound the isla made itself. I decided against telling them about the mournling I had found my first trip here.

  “There are some fundamentalists in the Order who would be offended by thy suggestion,” Devrim told me, “but I think it best to receive queries in the spirit with which they are asked.”

  Hytham shifted his weight between his feet, his hand clenching and loosening again, but he did not interrupt his herald.

  “I rightly understand how many have questioned whether or not Broccus was one figure or several,” Devrim added. “Indeed, there are respected high heralds who have made precisely that argument. But from my own close study of the matter, I find the historical record to be clear. One Broccus, one Word.”

  Our conversation continued in this manner while we waited, with the herald soon thereafter proclaiming, “Imagine how dark the world would be were it not for the light of the word of Broccus?” His exultation echoed off the side walls, causing another round of fright from the soldiers. I began to wonder whether or not we might be better off without their accompanying us into the isla.

  With the enchanting purple glow of the isla deepening the lavender of my skin, I couldn’t help but note the falseness of the Herald’s words. I was sure he meant them—or wanted to mean them. There were moments when he seemed as devout as Hytham yet others where he seemed decidedly . . . not.

  Hytham’s growing discomfort with our conversation only served to confirm my suspicion, but he stoped himself short of questioning the herald before me and the soldiers.

  The soldiers were finally ready and, as we set out into the first passageway Devrim selected, the one whose runes spoke of protection, I tried to steer my questions in a direction that would make Hytham less uncomfortable. “In my readings from the Bright Age, primarily the spirits’ records and a few ancient histories that survived the Great Displacement, one of the things I’ve had the hardest time imagining is the way they describe the brilliance of the day.”

  I shook my head, still trying and failing to conjure the image in my mind. The herald’s lantern shone before us, its light and shadows blending with those of Hytham’s lantern a few paces behind me. The passageway itself had been carved from the same mixture of natural and hewn stone, with a thin, glowing lavender line about hip height, with the passage carving upward into a perfectly pointed arch about ten feet overhead.

  The narrowness of the tunnel caused our steps to echo, an uneven drumbeat beneath the reverberations of our voices.

  “It is one thing for us to call it the Bright Age,” I continued, “but for there to be so much light that they had to cover parts of their faces to shield their eyes, that burns could appear from light upon the skin—I wish I could better picture it.”

  The herald nodded, considering my comment and not angered by it. I wish the priests of Shakerton would take note of such confidence. “There are places in our world still, far to the south, along the sea where it is possible to experience what Broccus describes as ‘noon,’ that brightest time of day when the sun is so high in the sky that it cannot even be perceived apart from the light it casts.”

  I was so enraptured by the herald’s description I almost forgot I was inside one such place that would have witnessed this ‘noon’ the Bright Age Lifkin had described.

  The herald’s eyes glinted as he spoke, refracting the glow of his lantern, as if to say, ‘stick by me and thou shalt see it,’ but I suspected such an interpretation of being too optimistic.

  To his credit, Hytham was not offended by my questions about his faith either. But while the herald at times seemed to profess an expected answer, Hytham’s tone and the sense of recitation with which he spoke added to the simmering fervor he clearly had for the tenets of worshipping Ilona.

  The Order had in Hytham a true believer, however much I thought men like Devrim may be taking advantage of him. I found myself wishing him better discernment or, failing that, wishing for his sake and, truthfully, my own, that he was less ready to believe everything the Order said. He never reacted to the herald’s layers of meaning unless one of the herald’s responses contrasted with the teachings from his cloister but even then, he would not press the matter.

  At times the herald’s eyes flashed when they disagreed, but he never pushed back against Hytham’s interpretations.

  The soldiers continued on behind us, only occasionally murmuring in agreement or alerting one of their number to an unknown rune along the wall. Most of these runes I knew from my own study, but I was too engrossed in the herald and Hytham’s debate to explain our surroundings to soldiers who didn’t wish to speak to me.

  Happily for myself, the isla provided plenty of sights to divert my attention while they conversed—I could only keep my mind upon Broccus and his Word for so long.

  The long, winding pathway eventually helped the soldiers grow more at ease as well. Gradually their murmuring among themselves turned to personal matters and the concerns of their regiment.

  The runes themselves were fascinating, and I was trying to remember when I had read of such lengthy, enclosed passages.

  I turned to point out one such rune to Hytham—Strangers—it read, when a decisive click sounded behind us, like the striking of metal upon stone.

  One of the soldiers stood frozen in place, his foot having sunken into the walkway of the isla, a perfectly disguised pressure plate even with the rune I had noted.

  We all turned toward the soldier who was third from the end and stared at one another, unsure of what to do next.

  From off in the distance, near where we’d entered the enclosed passageway if not even further away, there was another low, gradual scraping sound, one I could not place.

  But Hytham did. “Run,” he shouted, wrapping an arm about my waist and pulling me in front of him. “Run!”