They set up camp among the ruins and ate in silence. Thoughts of the fallen ranger and the unknown fate of his companion cut Emory’s appetite, but there was nothing she could do for them now except trudge on and hope all of this had not been in vain. And so she told the others about her plan, and everyone set out to search for the syrinx. Scavenging every inch of the ruins was fruitless, but at least it kept their minds off the bleak turn the day had taken or the fact that Romie and the keys might be killed any second without their being able to stop it.
“I don’t think this would have been the right temple anyway,” Vera said when they gave up to sit by the fire.
She pointed to the faded carvings on the walls; they depicted peaceful scenes and clear skies. She was right. This temple must have worshipped the Celestials, not the Soulless One. If the syrinx was linked to him, then surely it would be in a temple dedicated to storms and chaos.
Emory felt defeated. The mountains were too vast; there was no way to scour every inch of them for the syrinx. But if she knew where to look, if she could learn more about it…
In hindsight, she really shouldn’t have told Sidraeus she intended to use the syrinx. Should have let him believe she would gladly break it. Because now she needed his help—and she would likely have to grovel to get it.
When Emory fell asleep that night, it wasn’t the crowned umbra she found in dreams, but a face that was achingly familiar.
“Ro?”
Romie spun to her with round eyes full of surprise. “It worked,” she murmured. “It finally worked.”
Emory hesitated. If this was a ghost, if this was a sick, twisted form of nightmare showing her that her best friend had died, that Emory had been too late to save her…
But Romie drew her in a tight hug, and there was no denying she was real.
“We’re coming to find you,” Emory whispered as she clung to her friend. “We’re so close to the sea of ash, a few days at most—”
Romie pulled back, a startled, panicked edge to her voice. “No, Em, you can’t come here.”
“Why not?
Darkness started to press in. Romie swore, and Emory knew the dream was slipping, though she wasn’t sure on whose end it was.
Romie gripped her arms tight. “You can’t come here because Cloverwantsyou here.”
“That can’t be true. He’s been throwing wrenches in our path since we got here, driving us farther and farther away from the sea of ash.”
Romie shook her head. “No. We all heard him, after he burnt his hand, saying that only you could—” She was about to say something else but the darkness pressed in faster, making her dig her fingers into Emory’s arms with painful desperation. “I’m serious, Em. Whatever he has planned involves you, so don’t come after us. We can handle this on our own.”
“Romie—”
But her friend disappeared, pulled back to a place where Emory could not reach her.
Emory didn’t tell the others about the dream.
She’d mulled over Romie’s words all night, trying to make sense of why Clover would want Emory if he was sending his ash-umbrae and Songless to hinder her and her friends at every step. Puzzling over what Romie said about his burnt hand, and how Emory mightfactor in. Clover had been a Healer once; why would he need her to tend to a burn?
In the end, whatever Clover wanted her for didn’t matter. She couldn’t stop now, when they were halfway up the mountain. She couldn’t turn her back on Romie and Aspen and Tol and Orfeyi when she was so close to seeing them again. For them, she would risk everything.
So they kept going.
It was slow work, making their way back to where they were meant to go. The terrain here was harsh and brutal, and with no carved path to follow, they had to rely on the compass and their own wits to guide them. Whenever they found a clear enough path, something always hindered their progress: fallen trees, boulders, patches of snow too deep to tread through. It forced them to find ways around, getting farther and farther from the peak atop which sat the gate.
And at every one of these detours, they came across more temples. As if the very forces of nature were leading them there.
Some sites were ruined beyond recognition, with a single pillar remaining or nothing but the semblance of a foundation in the stone. Other sites were preserved better than the first one they’d seen, and it was a marvel they still stood at all with the force of the winds this high up.
None of them had any relics or instruments. And though no ash-umbrae appeared out of the shadows, and no Songless swooped down from the skies, Emory couldn’t shake the sense that they were being watched.
She was beginning to lose hope when they set up camp for the night, this time in a cave they found high in the mountains. It was cramped and cold, but offered relief from the snow that had started to fall heavily, and when they managed to get a fire going, it heated up nicely.
As Emory looked up to the illuminated ceiling, her eye caught on the striations in the dark rock, shimmering faintly in the firelight. They looked like forked veins of lightning running through the rock, in a pattern that seemed too deliberate to be anything but. Emory followed them to the back of the cave, where the veins disappeared into the floor.
There was a gap there, between floor and wall. Emory crouched to peer through it. She could faintly see some kind of chamber beyond. The gap wasn’t big enough for her to fit through. But if she used a bit of Wordsmith magic, willed the rock to chip away a bit…
