“Why did we stop?” he asked Taran.
“Iona was concerned that we might be under attack, and she decided to protect us.”
“Attacked? Who would attack us?”
I gestured at the rockfall. “Someone could have triggered that.”
The sea god fixed me with a chiding expression. He was more present by the day, as though Taran and I were rubbing some sanity off on him.
“You didn’t have to do anything,” he said, tone grave. “The Allmother forbids us to harm each other, but even if someone tried, you shouldn’t interfere. You’re mortal, and we’re not. We’ll protect you.”
I nodded slowly, because that made sense, but I’d yet to see these laws stop any of the Stoneborn from doing anything they really wanted to do.
Taran rested his elbow on my shoulder. “Speak for yourself, Marit. I was terrified. I think Iona should come straddle me in the dirt for a little longer, until I’m positive I’ve survived.”
I rolled my eyes at him, reassured despite myself to hear him sound exactly as insincere as he used to.
“Are you alright?” Taran asked in a lower voice. “We can stop for a while. I’ll clear the stones if you need a moment.”
I rubbed my palms over my face, urging my heart to slow down.
“But whatdidcause the rockfall?” There was no wind, and our horses were at the base of the canyon, not the top, where the rock had sheered away. I still felt uneasy, and I didn’t want to believe I was so damaged by three years of war that I fell to pieces at a loud noise.
Taran squinted at the canyon wall and put one hand out to press against it.
“You know that the Allmother lifted the Summerlands out of the sea and formed it from mortal prayers? If I had to guess, it’s falling apart in the absence of those mortal prayers. We’re less than what we were. It used to take a month to cross the Summerlands. Now it takes a week. It’s all dwindling.”
That was an unexpectedly sad thought, for as little as the gods had ever done for me, and all of us meditatively lingered on it.
“Or it just happened to fall,” Taran added. “Come on, let’s get inside by sunset.”
I thought it would take days to clear a path, but Marit lifted a hand, and the rocks began to slide up the walls and slot themselves into place like pieces of a child’s puzzle. For his part, Taran squatted at the edge of the rubble, squinted hard at it, and pushed a boulder to dissolve into the stone of the road.
At my startled noise, he looked back and gave a casual shrug, pleased at my reaction. “We inherit some of our ancestors’ power, and we’re all descended from the Allmother. A step removed, in my case.”
It took me a moment to realize why Taran’s hand on the stone had thrown me so much—it was the first time I’d seen him do something that a mortal, or even one of the Fallen, could not. No song, no other god’s blessings. Just one small, shifting rock, moving at his will. The first proof I’d seen that he was really one of the Stoneborn.
He and Marit cleared the path, moving large boulders like they were sacks of grain, and soon we were mounted again and movingtoward the citadel of Smenos Shipwright, though my sense of uneasiness didn’t lift. Awi went back to hiding in my hood as we crossed a final switchback and the citadel came into sight.
“Something is wrong,” she declared in her tiny piping voice as we surveyed the collection of buildings. “Where is everyone?”
From my position on the horse, I couldn’t turn around to look at Taran for an answer, but I wondered that myself.
Smenos’s palace was vast, a red stone structure carved directly into the Mountain behind it, but his workshops were bigger. They were a small city of three-storied white stucco and timber buildings that filled the valley and crowded around a stream obstructed by several water mills. I saw dozens of open forges, kilns, and worktables—but they were all empty. There were no lamps lit in the windows, and the chimneys were cold and still. Not a single soul was visible.
Smenos was famous for calling back all his master artisans at the sunset of their years to cross the sea and preserve their knowledge for future generations. There should have been hundreds of priests here, not to mention the lesser immortals who supported the Shipwright in his work—gods of metal, patrons of the professions, spirits of old bridges and great monuments.
“Hello?” Marit called as we approached the central courtyard. “Is anyone home?”
No one immediately answered, but we dismounted and gazed at the forbidding stone face of the palace. It had been carved in stages, with some of the earliest pillars showing marks of mortal chisels, while the highest and newest decorations, far above our heads, were ornate scenes of battle from the Great War.
Some of it had crumbled. There was rubble in the courtyard and the smell of stone dust. The potted olive trees by the front stairs were withering from neglect, and their leaves had not been swept away.
“How long has it been like this?” I asked Taran, whose face was drawn as he surveyed the dark windows around us.
“It wasn’t like this a few months ago,” he said curtly.
“Should we knock on the front door?” Marit wondered out loud, but as he said it, the polished bronze gates of the palace spread open, and one immortal exited, while another, a smaller shadow, waited in the darkness inside.
