Page 113 of Destroyer

Ru tried not to drown in such thoughts, in a miasma of her own making, and blocked them off as best she could. Pushed them aggressively aside, locked away at the darkest corner of her mind, behind the wall she’d built around her heart.

After nearly a day of hard riding, darkness fell once again over Navenie. Ru barely remembered yesterday’s sunrise, had hardly noted as the sun made its crawl across the sky. The night was loud with bats and insects, and the panting of their horses. A few hours after sundown, they rode past Dig Site 33. Ru gazed out over the uneven dirt, shadowed now, a desolate landscape. She thought of the vases she’d uncovered there, each different and perfect in its own way, simple and unassuming. An easier life, perhaps, but… she wouldn’t let herself finish the thought. Questions ofwhat ifwould only torture her.

“We’ll stop to water the horses,” Ru said, calling a halt. “There’s a stream just over that hill.”

The three friends dismounted, wordlessly wiping down their sweating horses before leading them around the dig site to where a small creek flowed through a bed of ferns. The water was cold and clear, probably runoff from a mountain glacier. Ru cupped some in her hands, splashing it over her face.

When they had all drunk their fill, they returned to the road. Ru found it hard to move away from the dig site, the place that represented an old life, an old Ru. There were still holes in the ground where tents had been pitched, where Ru had stored her vases for safekeeping. Night breezes carried dirt in eddies and swirls over the site, and the moon blanketed everything in a soft haze of white-blue.

“Let’s go,” Ru said, nearly choking on the knot that rose in her throat.

They rode in silence until the sun began to rise, cresting over woodland. A flock of birds took to the sky in the west.

“I think we should start considering the implications if Taryel really did use the artifact to destroy Ordellun-by-the-Sea,” said Gwyneth, her words startling in the soft light of sunrise. Her horse made a soft sound of disapproval, shaking its head with a jangle of metal and leather.

Ru knew this had been coming, that it was a concern they had doubtlessly all been mulling in her heads, never uttering it aloud. Ru had almost hated to let the likelihood of it sink in. Festra, Taryel, the artifact… When it came down to it, were they one and the same?

“I bloody well hope you’re wrong,” said Archie, turning in the saddle. Sunrise shone pink-orange against his face and gleamed in his hair. “To think of that stone sitting in the Tower, in the same room as us, this whole time…”

“But what could Fen possibly want with it?” mused Gwyneth. “Is he in league with Lord D’Luc?”

“No,” said Ru, a cool wind buffeting her face. In the distance, she thought she saw a fox darting between the trees, where the woods thickened. “He wouldn’t have taken it from the Tower if that were the case. He has his own purpose.”

“And what could that purposebe?” persisted Gwyneth, twisted in the saddle to frown at Ru, who rode between and slightly behind her friends. “What could he want with his own magical stone? How many other young women do you suppose he’s terrorized on his way to finding it?”

Ru almost smiled at that. “None, I hope. I suspect he doesn’t know what it is. Or he didn’t, when he found it. Found me. And I believe our goals were aligned for a while. But something changed when I told him where we were taking it. He didn’t want to be parted from it. He begged to come with us, and only when I refused did he steal it.”

“Well if he’s looking to destroy another city,” Archie said, “follow in Taryel’s footsteps or something equally pointless, then I don’t see what he’ll accomplish at the Shattered City.”

“He’s looking for answers,” Ru said.

“To what?” Gwyneth asked, indignant. She had been bristling with visible anger since they’d left the Tower, and Ru knew it was aimed at Fen. “I’ll never forgive him for what he’s done. The hurt he’s caused.”

“Not to mention the magic,” Archie added. “Aren’t you astounded, Ru? What will this do for your paper? Your academic career?”

The magic. Archie had been asking as they rode, and Ru always deflected. She had asked herself the same question:Aren’t you astounded? And she had to own that she wasn’t. Perhaps it was the fact that she’d always believed, despite the lack of evidence. Perhaps it was the artifact’s pull on her, that invisible thread that saidmagic, every time she reached out to it. But more than that, a cloud hung heavy over her feelings, over the wonder of it. How could she feel wonder, excitement, or curiosity, when all that Fen had left to her was a broken heart?

Ignoring Archie’s question, Ru squinted as the sun crested the horizon, bright and eager. “Time to go,” Ru said, nudging her gelding gradually into a canter, then a full-on gallop. She heard the others responding in kind, their horses kicking up dust in the morning light, nearer and nearer to the Shattered City.

* * *

They arrivedat the crater just after nightfall. Their horses were exhausted, and Ru’s legs shook from the exertion of pushing her horse so near to his limit. But there would be no more pell-mell gallop to the Shattered City. They were here.

The sea was so mutinous that night, so loud in its endless crash against the rocky shore, that its roar could be heard far inland, where Ru and her friends rode slowly down into the crater. Stars pricked a velvet black sky. As they rode, a dark shape formed, rising up from the center of the crater. Ru thought at first it was a cluster of the stone fingers that dotted the landscape, but as they approached she saw with confusion that it appeared to be… a city.

Like giant crystals or stalagmites, still distant and difficult to see in the darkness, rose the towers and spires and steeples of a great city. Ordellun-by-the-Sea, the city of legend, somehow in the here and now.

“Whatisthat?” Archie said, standing up in his stirrups to peer into the gloom. “Buildings?”

But there was something wrong. The light of the moon cut through the city like glass, and for a second the entire city wavered, like a reflection in a still pool when something disturbs the water.

“It’s Ordellun-by-the-Sea,” breathed Gwyneth, voicing Ru’s thoughts.

“It’s a projection of some kind,” murmured Ru. “A facsimile of the real thing. A ghost.”

“It’s cursed, is what it is,” added Archie.

“Come on,” said Ru, dismounting and starting forward toward the ghostly city on foot. They were near enough that she could see it all clearly, the spectral windows, wavering stone walls. “Leave the horses, they’ll get spooked.”

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