Was it? I scanned the area in front of me. I didn’t know why, but I had the feeling the basin below promised death, not wealth.
I stood on the ridge, looked at it, and felt the pull in my chest resolve from direction to destination.
Whatever Iskaeld was, my magic knew it. Had always known it, I suspected. Had been leaning toward it since we left Eirhollow, since before that maybe, since longer ago than I was comfortable thinking about.
“Well,” Baxley said quietly, from somewhere behind me. “Do we go down?”
I heard the soldiers behind him react the way soldiers always reacted to unexpected wealth, with the distinct energy of men calculating how much they could carry and whether anyone was watching.
“Those seams—” someone started.
“Are not yours,” Nicco said flatly, without turning around. Final. The voice he used when he had already decided something and was merely informing the room of the outcome.
The voices behind us stopped.
I glanced at him. He remained focused on the basin, his expression now different from before. It wasn't the usual assessment, blank watchfulness, or the almost smile he used to irritate me. Instead, he looked more cautious, more deliberate. Like someone observing something he'd been warned about, seeing it exactly as described but still nothing like he had imagined.
Larana appeared on my other side. She looked down at the basin for a long moment without speaking. Then she said, quietly enough that only I could hear, “It looks like it’s breathing.”
I looked at her.
“The rings,” she said. “In the snow. Watch them.”
I looked back at the basin. The pattern of rings in the white wasn't static. The movement was so slow it was almost imperceptible — barely a tremor, barely a shift — but it was there. An outward pulse, slow and rhythmic, coming from the center of the basin and spreading through the rings like a heartbeat through water.
Like something breathing.
“What’s making it do that?” Edran asked from somewhere behind me. His voice sounded like someone who had already decided he didn't want to know the answer.
Nobody answered him.
Suddenly, as if summoned by our watching, water pushed upward, high into the sky, and then fell again. I watched the way the water fell, and even from here I could feelheat.
“What in the shades?” I asked no one and everyone.
“Waterspouts,” Larana answered. “We have them in Cinderia. Mostly in the desert lands, not under snow and ice.” She looked around. “Makes sense now. It was probably full of water at one point.”
“Why is the water warm?” I asked her curiously.
“The water is deeper, toward the core. It’s hot down there.”
“It is?”
She nodded, gave me a small smile, and turned back to the others, the mystery of the land breathing answered for her.
Nicco turned to the group. “We camp on the ridge tonight. We go down in the morning.”
Nobody argued. I wasn't sure whether that was wisdom, exhaustion, or the simple human instinct that understood, without being told, that some places deserved daylight.
I looked back at the basin one more time before I turned away to help make camp. The rings pulsed outward, slow and patient, and the pull in my chest pulsed with them, and I stood for a moment in the stillness of someone who has just understood something they weren't ready to understand.
My magic wasn'tpullingme toward Iskaeld. It was answering it, and I couldn’t move away.
“Trailfinder?” Nicco came and stood beside me, looking down at the basin with an expression I couldn't read.
I turned to look at him properly. He felt me looking and turned his head to meet my gaze.
“You've seen this before,” I said, my eyes narrowing.
