She found an arm sticking out of dark earth. The rest of him was buried.

Sliding and cursing, they struggled up along the unstable ground and with their hands dug him out and dragged him to firm ground. He was limp. He had already stopped breathing. The earth had choked him. Blessing howled in rage.

“No! No!” She flung herself down beside his body. “You aren’t dead! I don’t allow it!”

A numbness took hold of Anna. She no longer felt she was here, up to her knees in dirt and roots and crawling things and slimy, hot ash, but only watching herself and the others from a distance. Thiemo and Matto were gone. There was no possible way they could have survived the collapse within the tunnels, and even if they had somehow miraculously been spared, they had no way to climb free because the stone crown here was destroyed and thereby their path to the outside world.

As for the rest of them, they had traveled, all unknowing, a great distance. They could be anywhere. Any when, if what Hathui and the others predicted was true. If time ran both swiftly and slowly within the crowns.

They stood gasping and weeping in a desolation, no longer able to distinguish sky from mountain because of the shroud of ash. It was growing cold. A wind moaned down from veiled heights. A glimmer of light flashed around them. A breeze curled around Anna’s shoulders before kicking up dirt in a line that led straight to Blessing, who was still sobbing and shouting by Heribert’s body, slamming her fists into his chest over and over while the rest stood too stunned and overwhelmed to move.

For an instant Anna thought a pale shimmer of light illuminated the frater’s slack face, pouring over him as water pours over rocks in a stream. Blessing shrieked and scrambled backward. Heribert’s body jerked. His eyes snapped open. He sat up, folding forward and coughing dirt out of his mouth. He wiped dirt from his face and, wondering, shook it from his hands.

“Where?” he said hoarsely. “Where is he gone, the one I have been for? His husk is here, but he is lost.”

They all stared at him.

“You were dead,” said Jonas.

“Was I?” he asked. He got his feet under him, slipped once, and Blessing dashed forward and helped him stand.

“I said you couldn’t die! I did! I did! You’re not dead. Are you?”

He covered his eyes with a hand. Blessing clung to his other arm, wiping her filthy face on his tattered sleeve.

“The rest are dead,” said Berthold suddenly. “Ai, God.”

“There was nothing you could have done,” said Jonas desperately

Berthold shook his head. “I know!” he said bitterly, gesturing toward the fallen stones and sunken hill. “It was in God’s hands, not ours. We’ll die if we stay here. My lungs hurt. There’s nothing to drink. This ash covers everything. I can’t tell if it’s day or evening or morning. I don’t know where we are, but we must leave this valley and find a place of safety.”