“That’s the town?” Alec exclaimed in dismay. Some house walls were still standing among the foundations of buildings long gone. Ravens had made the place their own. Dozens of them lined the broken walls and watched their approach with wary black eyes, muttering and croaking among themselves, but didn’t take flight. It was eerie. The breeze was stronger here, and sighed through the wreckage like a mourner. It reminded him a bit of the sighs they’d heard in the lower cave.

As soon as they started up the hill toward it, Agus turned his pony and galloped off like ghosts and demons were already chasing him.

“Looks like you wasted good silver, my lord,” Oris said, shaking his head. “No one’s lived here in two hundred years!”

“More than that,” murmured Seregil.

“No wonder the other boys didn’t want him to come here,” said Alec.

They rode slowly into the ruins and fanned out to make a thorough search of the place.

Alec and Seregil made their way through what had once been narrow streets. They were little more than debris-strewn paths, now overgrown with thistles and vetch. Here and there snakes lay basking in the late-afternoon sun. There were many poisonous ones on the island, Zella had warned, and so they gave the ones they saw a wide berth. Most of the houses were little more than foundations.

“What happened to this place?” Alec wondered.

“Abandoned, and the stones most likely carried off by other builders,” Seregil noted as he dismounted and stepped into one of the foundations. “I daresay you’ll find most of them in Menosi or Deep Harbor. Builders don’t let dressed stone go to waste.” He walked around the foundation, nudging things with the toe of his boot. “This was a simple dwelling. You can still see traces of a central hearth. There must have been a smoke hole in the roof.”

“How old do you think this place is?”

“Well, it’s clearly been abandoned for centuries. No way to know how old it was before that.”

They continued on, working their way toward what proved to be an enormous open space at the west end of town, closest to the ridge. The streets and buildings simply ended around the circumference of an enormous span of barren ground. There were no foundations, no walls or broken stone, not even any weeds. Walking across it, Alec saw that it was just hard-packed clay and gravel.

“It’s round,” Seregil called to him.

Turning, Alec saw him striding around the circumference of it with his hands clasped behind his back. “I think it’s a nearly perfect circle and most of the major streets end at its edges. It must have been some sort of ritual space, or a large market.”

“No sign of any temple or altar.”

“I wonder if they played some kind of game here?” Seregil touched the ground and licked his finger. “Salt. Odd.”