“Not an asset,” she said, remembering the dragon’s voice.

“What, then?”

“A friend,” she said. “If you like.”

He chuffed, and she thought she saw him smile. “What are they, if not guards?”

“A goddess, maybe. Or god.”

“A goddess is doing all this?”

“She might be all this. Remember the myths about this place: the lady and the fire.”

“Myths,” Shale said. “Fingers pointing at the moon.”

“That’s an interesting point for you to make, knowing someone who is the moon.”

“Our Lady is not ‘someone,’” he said. “And the goddess in the guidebook story lacks even a name. Who believes in her? What life could she possess?”

“Human minds are a good divine substrate,” she said. “But they’re not the only one. Goddesses can be trapped with bone thorns and blood-cooled silver and other tools. The traps keep the goddess from fading when her faith is broken. Maybe something similar’s at work.”

“Sometimes I forget how evil you can sound.”

“The Craft,” she said, “is not inherently good or bad.”

“Its best efforts notwithstanding.”

“The point is, to trap a goddess, you might build a system much like this: a conductive lattice webbed through a rich deposit of necromantic earths.”

“You’re suggesting the mountain is artificial, and alive. And nobody discovered this during the mining operation.”

“Miners bind local spirits before major excavation, but this place is too big, too rooted, for it to even notice normal bindings. All this”—she tapped a crystal vein—“anchors the goddess, puts her on a clock so slow mortals don’t register. Excavation must have woken her, made her mad.”

“Hence the zombies.”

“It’s a theory.”

They walked for some time in silence.

She folded the map, refolded it, frowned. “We should have found Altemoc’s team already. The chart shows a huge chamber that isn’t here. And we’re running out of time.”

Shale hummed. “You say we’re inside a goddess.”

“Maybe. Or something like one.”

“And it is hurt.”

“Wouldn’t you be pissed if someone bored holes into you?”

“Not angry,” he said. “Hurt. A person who’s hurt guards her wound. The mountain curls around the place where the blade went in. It would explain why we can’t find Altemoc—he sought the injury, made it worse, and she’s enclosed him.”

Tara stuffed the map into her jacket pocket and turned to Shale in the gloom. “I can’t fight something this big.”

“You don’t have to fight,” Shale said.

“How else do we make her let us in?”

“Ask,” he said.

“I just did.”

“No. Ask her.”

“You are making no sense.”

He laid his palm against the wall. “You Craftsmen have odd ways of being. You force the world to your will, and you force your wills on one another. Your power’s built from bonds and obligations. There are other ways.”

“The world doesn’t just … do things because you ask.”