Because of this, I believe it most likely the roads were not deliberately constructed with protection against the Pall. How could the imperial engineers have done so if they did not know what was coming and what it would do? Why only some of the roads and not all of them?

So, how did the witch roads come about?

Perhaps there is an accidental quality to the witch roads that the other main military and secondary roads lack. Maybe they truly do contain mortar ground from the bones of the holy venerables who rebelled against the Lotus Clan.

Or perhaps the witch roads were constructed long before the empire to guard against a threat that our wise ancestors feared might come to pass, in a future that would have seemed distant to them but is the world we live in now.

From The Official’s Handbook of the Empire as compiled by Luviara, theurgist, working at the behest of the Inner Chamber of the Heart Temple

47 THE AFTERMATH

It was dusk by the time Elen reached the rim of the north face. She had lagged behind the haunt and Fulmo, trying to settle the churn of emotions that battered like the wings of a bird trapped inside a cage.

Their exchange by the river had the elusive quality of a flower’s lovely scent: attractive, and yet nothing one could hold. Petals could be distilled by a perfumer into an oil, leaves gathered by an herbalist to make a tisane, but, unlike these, the haunt was a temporary passenger who would ultimately vanish and leave nothing of himself behind. She had to be pragmatic. Regardless, if any in their party came to believe the prince had an “interest” in her, she couldn’t imagine what would happen. Princes didn’t consort with deputy couriers, didn’t even speak to them. It was an unfathomable gulf. She had to keep reminding herself that she was speaking to another person entirely. She had to protect herself and Kem, and the haunt, too. He might not be innocent; he might be anything; but he had a mission and she intended to help him keep to it.

Yet flirtation was only one fragment of what surged and whirlpooled in her tumultuous thoughts. The fight at the bridge kept crashing back in.

As an atoner in the nameless land, she’d seen death. But not like this.