Seeing what mattered took a moment because it was a graceful and slender thing in a world of slabs and chasms, silver and sharp in snow-reflected moonlight.

“The Broken Bridge!” she exclaimed. “I never thought I would actually see it!”

The place where it was anchored to the opposite wall of the canyon was plain to see. A heavy buttress gripped the rim of the precipice. One foot of an arch was jammed against the canyon wall below. That and the bridge’s deck reached only part of the way across the Chasm before they were terminated by a little tower, arching over a gate to nowhere. Reaching toward it on this side would be its twin. Prim could complete the bridge in her imagination and get an idea of where it must have connected on this side. But the folds and convolutions of the Knot got in the way, so they couldn’t see their end of it. It would be a couple of miles from here.

They began to walk in that direction. Or so it seemed at the beginning. But Corvus wanted them to go in ways that did not make obvious sense to ground-pounders. Everyone in this party understood that the usual rules of getting from one place to another would be worse than useless in the Knot. The fact that they were, on the whole, getting deeper in, where the wind left them alone and the air was less frigid, helped.

So they arrived at the Cube.

It stood in a little side fold of the mountain, sheltered from weather. You’d have to have known it was there in order to find it. Which raised the question of how Corvus had known that the Cube was here.

There was no question whatsoever as to what the Cube ought to be called. You could not conceivably call it anything else. In height, breadth, and depth it was about twice Burr’s arm span. It was made of adamant, a substance of which most of them had seen more than a lifetime’s worth in the fault. But it was something of a novelty to Burr, who ran a hand across one face of it and down one of its vertical edges. Then he drew back with a curse and showed them a bloody fingertip. The Cube’s edge was so crisp it had cut him.

So the Cube it was, without a doubt. But Prim had never heard of the Cube. She looked at Querc, but Querc could do nothing but shake her head and turn up her palms.

Edda must have known about the Cube! They looked to the giantess.

“Corvus,” she said, “you have me at a disadvantage. What is this thing? Other than a cube of adamant sitting in the Knot for no apparent reason.”

“Proof,” Corvus said (he was perched, naturally, on top of the Cube), “of the reality of the other plane of existence of which I have spoken repeatedly in the past.” Then, because he couldn’t resist rubbing it in, “Oh, I have seen you roll your eyes when I speak of the other plane of existence. I know you think—”