A word.
Tomb.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
LORE
Be with us in the desolate places.
—The Book of Prayer, Tract 91
We’re here.”
Her voice was scratchy. Lore didn’t know how long it had been since she’d spoken, though it had to be hours, maybe even a full day. It wasn’t easy to tell, here in the thick of the ash.
Lore stayed mostly at the prow through their near-silent voyage, occasionally going belowdeck to keep up the appearance of watching the silver instrument. Though she was pretty sure at this point her ruse was found out—if not that she had a piece of the Fount, at least that she didn’t need Raihan’s silver weight. Dani didn’t mention it, though. Neither of them said anything to the other as they watched the horizon and ate dried meat, waiting in limbo for what would come next.
Dani narrowed her eyes at the sky. “Are you sure? I can’t see shit.”
Lore couldn’t, either, at least not out of channeling-space. Sunk in magic, though, it was obvious. The path of Spiritum wideneduntil it encompassed almost the entire ocean, a molten sea of gold guiding them on, growing stronger as the Fount piece got closer to the Mount.
The song in her head should have been reaching a fever pitch. But instead it stayed low and muffled, the Fount apparently confident she could find It without guidance.
A thump. They’d run aground. All around them, ash, as inscrutable as it’d been on the open water.
“Well,” Dani said, releasing her death grip on the wheel. “I guess you were right.” She waved a hand in front of her face and choked back a cough. “This place looks like the Godsfall happened five minutes ago.”
Nyxara’s memories were close at hand, the life She’d lived on this island, everything leading up to the fight that had changed the face of the world. Hope was a thin and ragged thing, but Lore still reached out in her mind, just to see.Nyxara?
Nothing.
Dani lowered the gangplank, the wood clattering onto sand they could barely see. The swirl of ash and fog revealed the island in flashes. A scrubby forest at the edge of the beach. The ground in the distance canting toward a peak. The top of it stayed covered, veiled in ruin. The few trees scraggling up the Mount were thin and blackened.
It’d been so vibrant, in Nyxara’s memories. A paradise, burnt out but not allowed to die.
“Not muchgoldenabout it anymore.” But there was an eagerness in Dani’s voice, an anxious thread that belied her cool words. “Come on, then.”
They walked down the gangplank onto the sand. The fog shifted as they headed in the vague direction of the forest, the ground littered with driftwood and shale. Here and there, a glimmer of gold, not Spiritum but the actual mineral, marking places where Apollius had been struck to the ground. It said somethingabout the gravity of what they were doing that neither she nor Dani stopped to pick any of it up.
“We’re going to break a leg if we don’t take it slow,” Lore said. She cleared her throat, but the persistent itch she’d gotten used to on the Second Isle was near-unbearable here. “No need to rush. It’s not like the Fount is going anywhere.”
Dani rolled her eyes. “I thought you’d be more eager, but sure. We’ll go slow.” She gestured upward, where the ash had peeled away momentarily. “Looks like the ash is cleared around the Fount. It’ll be nice to finally take a deep breath. It’s been months.”
It was strange, the mundanity of it. Trudging through the fog, eyes aching and feet tired, and knowing she was headed to the birthplace of the pantheon. The home of the soul of the world. She’d had more exciting walks to the trash heaps in Dellaire.
Time seemed frozen here. Other than the few times the ash cleared, Lore’s limited vision made it feel as if she were trapped in one place, endlessly walking and getting nowhere. Occasionally, the fog would shift, showing bare tree branches and the rubble of stone huts. Once, she saw a building she recognized—a tall spire, listing sideways, its foundation slowly eroding. Six names were written on the spire in faded gilt.
She wondered if they’d stumble into Nyxara’s burnt grove.
After a while, they reached what looked like the remains of a village. The fog wasn’t as thick here, dying off as they reached higher elevations, though the air was still gray and sooty on her tongue. The huts were in fairly good condition, slightly finer versions of the ones in the Harbor.
Lore stopped and sat down on a bench in front of one hut, leaning her head back against the wall.
“No.” Dani shook her head. “We aren’t stopping.”
“I’m the one with the god-power,” Lore said wearily, “and I say we stop.”
Dani looked like she might dare Lore to use said god-power, her mouth pursed into a sour bud, but after a moment she rolled her eyes and sat down next to her. “You seem less than awed.”
