At some length Pick approached the sample case and opened a drawer labeled PURE CHAOS, which had been noticed and remarked on by the others but which perhaps understandably they had been reluctant to open. They crowded around to look. It was full of a nothing that made the upper face of the Overstrike, featureless as that was, seem like something. The drawer itself was not dovetailed wooden planks but hewn from black stone—the primordial rock that Pick referred to as adamant. Its outer surface was barely visible; when he pulled it open, its inner surfaces could not be seen at all. With very close attention they could see fluctuations of light and dark, and hear a dull hiss. It reminded Prim somewhat of aura she had seen around Delegate Elshield and in the cells of the Hive. But that had been radiant and had moved in ways that, though unpredictable, bespoke a kind of sense. This stuff was to that as a rotting corpse was to a living animal.

Aura reached out from Pick’s head like a beetle’s pincers, converged on the drawer, and pinched off a bit of the chaos about the size of a nut. He closed the adamant drawer. The sample of chaos moved with him, suspended in front of his face at arm’s length, enveloped in a swirling pattern of aura. He moved now with the gliding, cautious gait of a servant who is carrying a brimful glass of rare wine on a slippery tray. He made his way to the brink, where Querc passed the rope around his body in a very particular manner, enclosing him in a kind of sliding hitch that would enable him to control his descent with a single hand. In his other, no surprise, he held his pick. He backed slowly away from them over the brink of the fault, moving with care as he planted each foot—he had taken his boots off—on the surface below and behind him. In this manner he gradually receded from their view, his form growing smaller and less distinct, until all they could see was the glow of his aura. That too became small and faint. The only way they could be sure he was still in and of the Land was the rope, ever tense, but twitching, and occasionally traversing from side to side.

He was down there for a long time, which might have made the day tedious had Corvus not come flying in with dire tidings: “Beedles! A whole galley-load. I must warn Fern.”

“Should we extract Pick?” Mard asked.

Corvus was already beating his wings hard, building speed out into the open sky. “No point!” he squawked.