She hesitated, then turned toward the ancient city, allowing herself to be led.

From the outside, the cliff had appeared solid; the simple façade was chipped and worn, whatever once shuttered the windows long gone to dust, but the angles of the doorframe looked true, the crucial verticals more or less plumb. As they stepped beneath the engraved lintel, however, Valyn could see that here, too, time and decay had worked their quiet violence. Though the city’s bones were bedrock, the chiseling and carving of the builders had allowed in both the wind and the water. Small rivulets spilled over the rock, draining from some impossible height. The water ran cold and clear now, but in the winter it would freeze, and centuries of ice had shattered whole sections of stone, prizing them from the walls and ceiling. A rock the size of a horse blocked part of the passage, while smaller chunks made the footing treacherous.

Valyn pushed deeper into the cave, the smell of damp stone and lichen filling his nostrils. After twenty claustrophobic paces guarded by arrow loops and murder holes, the corridor opened out into a high, wide space—half natural cavern, half carved—evidently an entrance hall of sorts. Recessed sconces for torches grooved the walls, and a wide basin, cracked but graceful, sat in the center. It must have been welcoming once, if not exactly grand, but now it felt empty, cold, and too large to easily defend.

Doorways radiated outward, black rectangles in the lesser gloom, while wide stone stairs rose along the walls on each side. One route looked as likely as the other, and Valyn turned to Tan.

“Which way?”

No one replied.

“You all might enjoy sightseeing,” Valyn went on after a moment, glancing over at the others, “but there are a dozen doors off this hall, and we don’t have the people to guard them or the tools to seal them up. So, if you’re done admiring the architecture . . .”

“Valyn,” Kaden said finally. “Do you have some sort of light? I can barely see my hand in front of my face in here.”

Valyn almost snapped something impatient about getting up higher before they started worrying about lights, then realized that his brother wasn’t exaggerating. To Valyn’s eyes the room was dim, shadowy, but perfectly navigable. The others, however, were staring as though lost in utter darkness. The slarn, he realized, a chill passing through him as he thought back to the egg’s foul pitch thick in his throat.