“How are you managing without the lamp, if you don’t mind my asking? Or did you find another in the shelter?”

“I did not.” She grinned. “Us reeves taking a break from training at Naya Hall to spend a night in the cave aren’t doing so because we need light, eh?” She laughed.

Joss ran a hand over his head. “What do you mean?”

“Surely you of all people would—” Then she laughed again. “As nervous as you are, Marshal, you’d think you were the father, eh?”

“Or responsible for Captain Anji’s wife. This is scarcely the time for jokes.”

“Aui! No more jokes, then!” Miyara shook her head, lifted up the bowl’s cover, and inhaled. “Eihi! That’s ready, eh? It’s out of your hands, Marshal. The gods will favor her, or curse her, but if you ask me, she’s a tough one. Never a word of complaint. She’s managing as well as any can who must suffer through her first birth. Here, now, let’s take this back. I’ve something I’d like you to see.”

“Is that allowed—? I wouldn’t want to—”

“Not all the way into the cave. If you will, Marshal, come and see. It’s a puzzle. I thought you might have an answer.”

She carried the lamp and he the bowl, warm against his hands. The path led through a tangle of growth unexpected after the dry tableland of the Barrens: candle-flowers, plum, falls of sweet-scented heaven-kiss, moist ripe sunfruit, lush stands of uncultivated jabi. This burgeoning orchard of wild fruit was tended solely by the gods’ blessing. He bumped his head on a ripe sunfruit dangling over the path.

Miyara balanced the lamp in one hand and plucked it with the other. “This way.”

No insects chattered, nor did night-waking animals rustle within the growth. The lack of animal noises was unnerving, but at least a stream babbled in the distance and wind caught among the surrounding crags. They reached the pool, deep and round, rimmed by the remains of an ancient building. A waterfall thundered into the pool from the height. They walked alongside walls no more than knee height, worn down by time and wind and rain. Who had built here? Lived here in such isolation? How had they found their way in, when truly it must be impossible to reach the valley by climbing?

Halfway around, as they neared the curtain of water, Miyara halted. The pool rippled with a constant churning. The waterfall glinted with filaments of light, and at first he thought the lamplight was reflecting within the falls and then he realized she had snuffed the wick. A glow emanated from tendrils of writhing light spilling out of the falling water and drifting, as if pushed by the action of wind and water, into a cave carved out of the rock that extended behind the falls.