Just after midday, Birké, with his Wrathic hunter’s eyes, was the first to see something. His arm shot out, pointing. At first Dariel saw nothing but another bulge of rock that pushed through the trees and overhung the water. He moved the vessel closer, willing it to ride calm on the swells, angling so that he could see into the water more clearly. There were rocks there, rippling and near, under the glassy green tint of the water. It was not until he swung the boat all the way around and backed into the shelter of a natural quay that he realized he had navigated a route that brought him to rest at a pier, a carefully hidden structure just beneath the rock outcropping.

The others had the boat secured in a few moments, and Dariel leaped onto the dock even as Birké started to ascend a stone staircase cut into the buttress. The steps were invisible from the sea but obvious from this angle, a curving ascent that kept to the natural contours of the wall. Dariel followed.

It was a quick climb, and soon he stepped through a darkened opening, as if into the mouth of a cave, breathing heavily from the exertion. The others crowded the room and he had to slide between them. As his eyes adjusted, he realized the chamber was not truly cavelike. It was sculpted, oblong and sleek. The stone had a light within it, a faint illumination that seemed to grow the longer they stood there. No one talked, but they walked slowly around the chamber.

Tunnel said, “This is truly it?”

Skylene nodded, her sky-blue face grave and beautiful in the soft light. “It’s as Mór described. Exactly.” She pointed to the bedlike stone platforms. “Ravi—I mean, the child to be sacrificed lies on one of those. Whoever is to receive his soul takes the other. Covers come down from above.” She looked upward. Indeed, rectangular structures hung there. “And whatever happens is hidden from view. The Lothan Aklun do things. That’s all she could say.”

“Who were these people?” Dariel asked.

“Some believe that the Lothan Aklun came from your land. Sorcerers who fled persecution”—she ran her hand gently over one of the panels, not actually touching it but as close as she could come to doing so—”and became persecutors in this one.”

From my lands, Dariel thought. How could they have come from Acacia? “I’ve heard no tales of that.”

“Not all tales get told,” someone said.

“These sorcerers, they put their magic into things,” Skylene continued. “Like they put souls in the boat. Like this chamber. This is the place. It’s all as Mór described. It may be incomprehensible to us, but the league might not find it so. They are so near, they may find it any day. They may have texts to show them its use. I don’t know—”

“If the league has any idea what this can do, they’ll search for it,” Dariel said. “They’ll find it. They’ll use it. I know that much about them.”