“Well,” said Ayla.

“Yes,” said Crier. “I agree.”

They waited for what felt like an excruciating amount of time but was probably less than an hour, judging by the sun. Then, silent with fear and adrenaline, they passed through the stone sentinels one last time. They skirted around the edge of the clearing, Crier listening for signs of anyone—Watcher, monster—approaching, until they reached the boulder.

“You remember where?” Ayla said. The first either of them had spoken for a long time.

“I remember.”

Crier reached out and pressed her hand to the stone. As with the Watcher, for a moment nothing happened, and then: The shift. The ripples. Up close, it was even stranger; it felt like it should be a hallucination, a trick of the light, because stone did not move like this. Stone did not breathe like this, one moment seamless and the next cracking open. Ayla took a step back, not trusting any of it—especially when she saw tiny symbols fluttering across the surface of the stone, as if they were trapped inside and had been drawn out by sunlight, by magick. The language of the Makers. She recognized some of the symbols. Most of them, even. Two in particular were repeated over and over again: earth and transcendent, mutable quicksilver.

The door opened. They were standing at the mouth of the tunnel. Nothing but darkness stretched out before them, the sunlight illuminating only the first few paces, as if the shadows were somehow thicker here and would not let it any farther.

“Ready?” Ayla asked Crier, even though she herself was not. She hated darkness like this, hated how narrow the tunnel looked, how the door would close behind them and they wouldn’t know how to open it from the inside and they’d have no choice but to go forward and there could very well be a squadron of Watchers waiting for them at the first bend. She hated everything about this, and she was going to do it anyway, and if she died in there it would be nobody’s fault but her own.

The wound on her temple was still throbbing, though the blood at least had dried.

“No,” Crier answered. “Not particularly.”

“Glad we’re in agreement,” said Ayla, taking a deep breath. “I’d have been a bit concerned if you did feel ready. Probably would have checked you for a head wound.”

“You have a head wound,” Crier pointed out.

“And I’m doing a very good job of ignoring it. All right. We can’t stay out in the open like this.” She hopped up and down a little, but it made her head swim, so she stopped. “Hey, Just Crier. Wanna sneak into the Iron Heart with me?”

“Since we’re here,” said Crier, very solemn.

Shoulder to shoulder, side by side, they stepped into the darkness and were swallowed.

Ayla was blind, and even Crier could barely make out which way the needle of Dinara’s compass was pointing. They moved through the tunnel as quickly as possible, Ayla clutching the back of Crier’s shirt, pausing every so often so Crier could listen for footsteps. The ground was uneven and often muddy beneath their feet, the walls rough-hewn stone. It felt like they were trespassing in a rabbit’s burrow, a hollowed-out, earthly realm they should never have entered.