Achamian sat next to Mimara with his back against one of the columns. For the longest time she seemed transfixed by the light, staring endlessly at its silver flare.

“The script,” she said, her voice thick from disuse. “Can you read it?”

“No.”

An inaudible snort. “The all-knowing Wizard …”

“No one can read it.”

“Ah … I was worried I had misjudged you.”

He looked at her prepared to scowl, but the mischief in her eyes demanded he chuckle. A great weight seemed to fall through him.

“Remember this, Mimara.”

“Remember what?”

“This place.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s old. Older than old.”

“Older than him?” she asked, nodding toward the figure of Cleric sitting in the pillared gloom.

His momentary sense of generosity drained away. “Far older.”

A moment passed, suffused by the low tingle of repose in perilous circumstances—a dripping sense of doom. Mimara continued her furtive examination of Cleric.

“What’s wrong with him?” she eventually whispered.

He did not want to think of the Nonman, Achamian realized, let alone speak of him. Travelling with an Erratic was every bit as perilous as traveling these halls, if not more so. A fact that begged the forbidden question: How much would Achamian risk to see his obsession through? How many souls would he doom?

His mood blackened.

“Hush,” he said, frowning in habitual irritation. What was she doing here? Why did she plague him? Everything! Twenty years of toil! Perhaps even the world! She risked it all for a hunger she could never sate. “They can hear far better than we can.”

“Tell me in a tongue he can’t understand then,” she replied, speaking flawless Ainoni.

A long look, too sour to be surprised. “Ainon,” he said. “Is that where they took you?”

The curiosity faded from her eyes. She slouched onto her mat and turned without a word—as he knew she would. Silence spread deep and mountainous through the graven hollows. He sat rigid.

When he glanced up he was certain he saw Cleric’s face turn away from them …

Back to the impenetrable black of Cil-Aujas.

The Library of Sauglish burned beneath him in his Dream, its towers squat and monumental within garlands of flame. Dragons banked about mighty plumes of smoke. The glitter of sorcery sparked across the heights—the blinding calligraphy of the Gnosis.

Its wings threshing the air, Skafra bared corroded teeth, shrieked out to the horizon, to the whirlwind roping black across the distant plains. A rumble deeper than a final heartbeat.

And Achamian hung unseen, an insubstantial witness … Alone.

Where? Where was Seswatha?