A ways out from the shoreline, firefly lights drifted, manifold sparks winking energetically in and out of existence, so many more than in the faded exhaustion of Flat Pall. A soft, bell-like tone shivered through the air. He shut his eyes and dipped his chin as if the sound hurt him.

“Are you all right?”

“No,” he said harshly, and then hoarsely, again, “No.”

“Is this what you heard from the Spires? This Pall?”

“Yes.” A man in pain might speak so curtly, unable to voice more. “I believe this is what called to me.”

She didn’t know what to say because it hurt too much to realize. He had reached the end point of his journey.

He said, in an intimate whisper, “You told me you knew the exact moment it happened?”

“What happened?” she asked, but then remembered what she had been about to tell him when Xilsi had ridden up and obliviously interrupted them. A very Xilsi thing to do. “Oh.”

“You needn’t tell me, if you do not wish it,” he said, too quickly, but she heard a different message. He wanted to know. Or he wanted an excuse to keep her talking. Or he wanted a reason to stand here a while longer.

She glanced back at the tower. “They might see our figures from the windows. Let’s go down.”

Together, they descended the outer slope of the embankment and halted on the stones a body’s length from the misty Pall. Ripples stirred and faded in the fog, as if an unseen creature had come prowling close to shore.

“This is where Ao and I crossed. We came from the north. We were just children.”

“If children can cross, then why does everyone say there is no land north of here?”

“Because the road is broken. Both here, and on the other side of the Pall, it seems like a causeway that ends, as might a pier. The people who live in the nameless land believe they live on an island, with the ocean to the north, and the Pall a poisonous sea of mist to their south. But in both cases, the break is really a massive collapsed bridge across wide, and mostly dried-up, watercourses. One is probably a river, and I think the other could once have been a strait. The stones are so scattered it’s easy to not realize it was once a very long bridge. Quite a remarkable feat of engineering. I can’t imagine what could have done that much damage to such a solid stone structure.”

“There were once sorcerers who devised spells specifically to shatter the things other people had built. Or…” His mischievous smile flashed. “A dragon would have the power.”

She smiled, shaking her head. “There aren’t any dragons left in the world.”

“None but me,” he said in a teasing voice.

“Wings, shine, and all,” she murmured.