Its effect on her was not diminished by the fact that it had been flawed by time or theurgy.

The floor itself, like the four gaps in the walls, betrayed no sign of damage or alteration. The opening through which she and her companions had arrived was mirrored by one directly opposite her. Two others stood equidistant around the walls. Fashioned with the accustomed exactitude of the Viles, these corridors may have indicated the points of an arcane compass.

But in the center of the ceiling hung a raw lump or knob of rock that resembled travertine, crude and unreflective; porous; dark as a stain against the lit stone. And from that misshapen clot, eight arms or ridges of the same stigma ran down the walls as though they had been deposited by eons of dripping water.

The air was warmer than it had been elsewhere in the Deep. It suggested hot springs thick with minerals.

Yet time and water could not have caused those formations. Four of them reached straight toward the openings in the walls, where they branched like arches to delineate or emphasize the corridors. The other four clung to the walls at exact intervals between the openings. And when the darkness of each ridge or branch touched the floor, it merged into the smooth surface and stopped as if it had been cut off. As if it were no longer needed.

Natural forces would have left residue splayed across the floor. And the increased warmth: that, too, was not natural.

Linden recognized the source of the heat. She knew it well.

The increasing accuracy of her health-sense assured her that the knob and arms of calcareous rock were more recent than the chamber which they marred: far more recent. They must have been deposited within the past year, probably within the past season.

They looked fragile—so porous that she might have crumbled them with her fingers—but she already knew that they were strong enough for their purpose. She had expected to find something like them here, although she could not have imagined what form they would take.

Then free my son, she had demanded of Infelice. Give him back to me.

They will not, the Harrow had answered her. They can not.

The travertine was the construct that masked Jeremiah’s presence from the Elohim : from Infelice and Kastenessen as well as from Esmer. The use that Roger and the croyel had made of Jeremiah’s talents protected her son from every eldritch perception except the Harrow’s more oblique and mortal knowledge—and perhaps from the strange lore of the ur-viles and Waynhim.

The Demondim-spawn could not have brought her here. They traveled in ways that she could not emulate. Perhaps they had tried to tell her where to look; but Esmer had refused to translate their speech.