“It is not Antheran.” This time, however, it was not Pyrre who spoke.

Kaden turned to find Tan in front of the kenta, a robed shadow against the darker shadows beyond, the naczal glinting in his right hand. For all his size, the monk moved silently, and none of them had heard him as he reentered the room. He stepped forward. “It is Csestriim.”

For what seemed like a long time a tight, cold silence filled the room.

“I guess you didn’t die on the other side of the gate,” Gwenna observed finally.

“No,” Tan replied. “I did not.”

“Want to tell us what you found?”

“No. I do not. Where did you find the blade?”

Valyn gestured down the hall as Kaden tried to put the pieces together in his mind.

Tan had said earlier that the script above the door was human, but ancient. This was a human building, a human city, but the Csestriim had created the kenta, created one here, in the center of a city filled with bones. The sword looked new, but then, so did Tan’s naczal. It could be thousands of years old, one of the weapons used when . . .

“The Csestriim killed them,” Kaden said slowly. “They opened a gate right here in the middle of the city, bypassing the walls, bypassing all the defenses.” His thought leapt outside of itself, into the emotionless minds of the attackers. Through the beshra’an it was all so clear, so rational.

“They came through, probably at night, killing the children first because the children were humanity’s best weapon against them. They started here, at the top. . . .” The memory of the small skeletons on the stairs flared up in his mind. “Or some of them did,” he amended. “The Csestriim set the trap first, then drove the children down, stabbing them as they fled, cutting them down on the stairs or in the hallways, then doubling back to kill those who had hidden behind doors or under beds.” He slipped from the mind of the hunters into the fear of the hunted. “Most of the children would have been too terrified to do anything, but even those who tried to escape . . .” He gestured helplessly. “Where would they go? We’re halfway up the cliff.” He glanced to the window, living the screaming, the slaughter. “Some would have jumped,” he said, his heart hammering at the thought. “It was hopeless, but some would have jumped anyway.”

Trembling with the borrowed terror of children millennia dead, he slipped out of the beshra’an to find half a dozen pairs of eyes fixed upon him.

“What is this place?” Talal asked finally, gazing about the room.

“I told you earlier,” Tan replied. “It is Assare.”

Valyn shook his head. “Why haven’t we heard of it?”

“Rivers have changed their course since people last drew breath here.”