She led him to the center. Here, the silvery wire was laced tightly together to create a raised plinth. She tugged him up with her, took his shoulders in her hands, and turned him to face toward the promontory’s point. From up here, well above the compound’s walls, they could easily see past the leading spire and out over the valley, its sides bounded by the Moonrise Hills to the east and Lancer’s Ridge to the west. The valley ran in what the locals called the heartward direction because southeast led toward the heartland of the empire.

She had seen the valley in daylight many times. So had Kem, most recently when he’d been part of a rock-clearing corvee sent by the intendant to clear more of the rugged valley floor in an attempt to create more fields for the locals. Although the valley had a decent stream running through it, the land remained stubbornly infertile, and its crop yields were consistently poor from year to year. Beyond the straggling fields stretched miles and miles of thorny scrub and copses of prickly poison-sap trees.

Seen through the moon-glamoured lattice, it was like looking onto a different land. She and Kem did not see the rocky fields and sparse pastureland and ragged terraces farmed and herded by the likes of Tiller Urnesso and Elder Marsilion. Instead, they saw a ghostly apparition in place of the valley they knew, a forest city whose mighty trees were spanned by lacework bridges like the one they had just crossed. Spires glowing under moonlight, and terraced gardens decorated by fountains held fabric pavilions whose banners rippled in an unfelt wind. Streets brimmed so full with carriages and carts and people moving about that they seemed like rivers in flood, all of it shadow, not real.

Kem’s body shook as he recoiled a step, slamming backward into her. He would have knocked her off the plinth, but she’d braced herself, knowing the sight of this otherworldly landscape would come as a shock to him. So it had the first time for her, when her predecessor had brought her up at moon-bright, years ago, while training her in the route and her responsibilities.

This is our couriers’ secret, Firiol had told her. Most folk fear this place, but we couriers know the Spires can offer shelter if treated with caution and respect.

He believed the Spires were the remains of benign Old Ones, a peaceful folk now lost to the world, their last fastnesses abandoned. He’d never mentioned haunts to her, or wicked sorcerer-kings, but he had said there were sometimes whispers in the night, and she’d heard them too. What the magic of the ghostly landscape meant, he had not known, nor did he guess.

“What is that place? What does it mean?” Kem whispered.