“Have to go,” she gasped, eyes closed against the confusing pain, the compulsion. “Faster.”
Ru heard hoofbeats and muffled voices. Sybeth’s voice, close by, asked a question, and Rosylla replied. She couldn’t parse their words over the roaring in her ears.
Come to me,said the voice. Was it her own, or something external?
I have to keep going,she thought.I’m needed.
These thoughts were meaningless, overbearing in their insistence. Yet something kept pulling at the core of her, pleading with her, beckoning.
And more than anything, deep down, she wanted to obey.
“Faster,” she mumbled. She was conscious enough, cognizant enough to follow the pull, the heat of it like wildfire, rushing forward.
With all her strength, she kicked at Sky with her heels. Instantly, as if waiting for the command, he shot forward at a gallop.
There was a flurry of voices and hoofbeats as the riders set off after her, but Ru didn’t care. All she knew was that she was going in exactly the right direction. She was heeding the call.
As she sped toward the Shattered City, the wind in her dark hair, the voice in her mind, the compulsion… it gradually began to fade.
CHAPTER3
The Shattered City waited by the sea. The name was misleading — there was no city here, only a miles-wide crater lined with jutting fingers of ruin that seemed to erupt from the ground. The stories said the stones had been flung aloft with the force of the Destruction, the explosion that decimated Ordellun-by-the-Sea ages ago. And when they plunged back to earth, some were large enough to stay intact, to avoid vaporization, all flung outward from a central point.
These were the gravestones of thousands of lives cut short, of a city lost to memory.
The center of the crater itself was mostly flat, but as they galloped toward its edge, Ru could see a cluster of white shapes near its center.
The weight on her shoulders, the rising nausea, and the intense pull… it was nearly gone now. It had faded almost immediately as their pace sped. Now she slowed, concerned for Sky, the strange call in her mind nothing but a distant whisper.
The riders pulled up beside her in a rush, their horses' hooves kicking up clouds of black dust. As they did, she saw them shooting each other meaningful looks. Ru could guess their meaning:This girl is mad.
She would have explained everything to them as they rode, laid out a logical explanation if she had understood it herself. Was it magic, the pull she'd felt? And if so, could magic affect the nervous system, the mind, or the workings of the body? Ru wanted to delve deeper into the possibilities, but part of her didn’t want to think about it at all. Most of her, in fact, was afraid. Her reaction, this inner voice calling her toward the crater… she had never felt anything like it.
And if she told anyone, admitted to what she'd felt, what she’d heard in her mind, they’d call her mad. She would lose the last shreds of credibility tied to her name, and her academic career would be over.
She would keep this to herself, then, until absolutely necessary.
When they finally descended the crater's edge into the Shattered City, overwhelming in its devastation, she was overcome with relief. There remained an itch in her head, an echo of the feeling that had been telling her to keep going, keep moving. But now that she was here, riding through a forest of wall fragments and broken turrets, that itch had gradually lessened until it was gone.
No one spoke as they rode. As if this was a graveyard; out of respect for the dead. Ru reached out to touch one of the stones as they passed, worn by harsh winds, and shivered as her finger brushed against the rough, hot stone.
The sun was high in the sky now, and despite a steady breeze from the ocean, the day was already sweltering.
Eventually, it became clear that the cluster of shapes Ru had seen in the center of the crater was actually made up of tents. Similar to the ones at Dig Site 33.
“Is this dig sanctioned by the Cornelian Tower?” she asked, grateful to be distracted with solid things. Real things.
The riders all turned to her, eyebrows raised. This was the first Ru had spoken since nearly passing out, since leading their pell-mell gallop to the Shattered City.
“Is what?” said Lyr.
“Are you taking me to a Tower-enforced research site?” clarified Ru. As far as she was aware, the Tower oversaw every archaeological dig in Navenie, at least technically. The regent's scholars kept their research to the laboratories and libraries of the palace, where they could be easily overseen and directed.
“No,” said Sybeth. “This dig is sponsored wholly by the regency. Not many know it exists.”
Ru wasn’t shocked, but the truth of it made her uneasy. Why would the regency fund their own dig, forgoing the Tower’s resources? Only a need for secrecy explained something like this, and secrets put her teeth on edge. She twisted the reins more tightly around her fingers, involuntarily shivering as she gazed out over the expanse of ruined earth. Now that the strange prickling in her head, that inexplicable call, had faded to background noise, she allowed awe to take over.
She was quickly overtaken by the truth of the situation: she washere. At the Shattered City. The site of the lost Ordellun-by-the-Sea, the shining city. She’d never imagined she would see it, let alone ride through the legendary crater toward a secret dig site.
