Almost exactly a week into the journey, we came across what we thought was a dry creek bed that ran between two steep rock walls. We’d been following it nearly ten minutes when Mal knelt and ran his hand through the grass.

“Harshaw,” he said, “can you burn some of this scrub away?”

Harshaw struck his flint and sent a low blanket of blue flame rolling over the creek bed, revealing a pattern of stones too regular to be anything but manmade. “It’s a road,” he said in surprise.

“Here?” I asked. We’d passed nothing but empty mountains for miles.

We stayed alert, searching for signs of what might have come before, hoping to see etched symbols, maybe the little altars we’d seen carved into the rock closer to Dva Stolba, eager for some kind of proof that we were on the right path. But the only lesson in the stones seemed to be that cities rose and fell and were forgotten. You live in a single moment. I live in a thousand. I might live long enough to see Os Alta turn to dust. Or maybe I’d turn my power back on myself and end it all before then. What would life be like when the people I loved were gone? When there were no mysteries left?

We followed the road to where it just seemed to end, buried in a slump of fallen rock covered in grass and yellow wildflowers. We scrambled over it, and when we reached the top, a sliver of ice crept into my bones.

It was as if the color had been leached out of the landscape. The field before us was gray grass. A black ridge stretched along the horizon, covered in trees, their bark smooth and glossy as polished slate, their angular branches free of leaves. But the eerie thing was the way they grew, in perfect, regular lines, equidistant, as if they had each been planted with infinite care.

“That looks wrong,” said Harshaw.

“They’re soldier trees,” said Mal. “It’s just the way they grow, like they’re keeping ranks.”

“That’s not the only reason,” said Tolya. “This is the ashwood. The gateway to the Cera Huo.”

Mal took out his map. “I don’t see it.”

“It’s a story. There was a massacre here.”

“A battle?” I asked.

“No. A Shu battalion was brought here by their enemies. They were prisoners of war.”

“Which enemies?” asked Harshaw.

Tolya shrugged. “Ravkan, Fjerdan, maybe other Shu. This was old days.”

“What happened to them?”

“They starved, and when the hunger became too great, they turned on each other. It’s said the last man standing planted a tree for each of his fallen brethren. And now they wait for travelers to pass too close to their branches, so they can claim a final meal.”

“Lovely,” grumbled Zoya. “Remind me to never ask you for a bedtime story.”

“It’s just a legend,” Mal said. “I’ve seen those trees near Balakirev.”

“Growing like that?” Harshaw asked.

“Not … exactly.”