They rode on, sticking to the shade of one of the mesas, given that the center of the valley exposed to the sun was sweltering. At one point they were forced to find a ford of accumulated detritus across a narrow canal that split the valley in two. The canal presumably flowed through the roots of the mesas, which begged a number of questions Anskar tried not to dwell on. Likely, only Niklaus knew the answers, but how reliable was he, a man who could scarcely remember the things he’d written in his own journals?

An hour beyond the crossing, Ryala, riding at the front now, held up a hand for the company to halt. There had been rockfalls on either side of the valley, the walls of both mesas here sloping banks of rubble that converged in the center, making the route impassable.

“We dismount here,” the Grand Master said, “and proceed on foot. We must be near now.”

Blaice nodded her agreement and climbed down from her saddle. “Damage caused by the earthquake. The fissure containing the ruin is on the far side of the landslide.”

“Hendel, stay with the ponies,” the Grand Master said. “Lead them back to the canal we crossed and wait for us there.”

Hendel glanced at Ryala, the merest of frowns crossing his face, but he quickly buried it beneath an expressionless mask. “Grand Master,” he said with a salute.

“On second thoughts …” the Grand Master said—he had noticed Hendel’s hesitation, followed by the iron-clad act of obedience. Hyle Pausus looked over the other companions, his gaze eventually settling on Orix. “You stay behind instead. Ruins are dangerous places, and we may have need of Hendel’s strength and experience.”

“But—” Orix said, glancing at Anskar for support.

“Vihtor sent Orix to watch over Anskar,” Lanuc said.

“Yes, I know.” A tight smile crossed the Grand Master’s face. “And he asked you, his old friend, to look out for Anskar, too. Because, of course, the rest of us are incompetent. Or is it that Vihtor Ulnar does not trust me with his special charge?”

Lanuc swallowed thickly before replying. “I’m sure that is not the case, Grand Master. Vihtor is your loyal servant, as am I.”

“Good, then you won’t mind staying behind with Orix to take care of the ponies.”

Lanuc’s mouth hung open before he eventually mustered a reply. “I … Grand Master, I …”

“Conflicted loyalties?”

“No, Grand Master.”

Hyle Pausus rolled his eyes at Anskar. “See what I have to put up with? Now, Anskar, we will soon arrive at the ruin. Let us hope you are better able to perform this time.”

“I’ll do my best, Grand Master.”

“Indeed you will. Of course, it may be that we will simply stroll into this ruin and walk out with that which we seek.”

“The relic?”

“You want to know what it is? Blaice can explain.”

She whipped off her hat and used it to fan her face. “According to my contacts—and this is just a theory based upon the historical records and the proto-Skanuric writing I discovered on the outside of the ruin—we may be looking at a portal stone.”

The Grand Master gave Anskar a knowing look, while behind him, Niklaus shook his head and took a swig from his flask. “You see why this is so important now?”

“No …?” Anskar had no idea what they were talking about. Though presumably a portal stone opened a portal. But to where?

“Historians believe that the ancient people,” Blaice said, “those who still haunt the old places, may have devised a way to travel between the worlds. A portal stone is thought to create a doorway from Wiraya to another plane.”

Ryala and Hendel pressed in closer to listen. Gadius tucked his hands inside the sleeves of his robe and affected a bored expression. It gave Anskar the impression the acolyte was still smarting from the failure of his wards back at the cave, and he was now trying to look superior, as if portal stones were nothing special to him. Orix and Lanuc had already moved away to tether the ponies together in preparation for leading them back to the canal that crossed the valley.

“What plane?” Anskar asked.

“The only one, other than our own, we have any knowledge of,” Gadius said, as if an idiot should have worked it out by now. “The abyssal realms.”

“It is believed,” the Grand Master said, “that the ancients devised portal stones in an attempt to colonize other planes of existence, but instead the other planes—or rather, the abyssal realms—decided to attempt to colonize our own.”

The demon wars, thought Anskar. Tion had regaled him with the stories when he was a child; tales that were intended to make the listener draw back from wrongdoing.

To Anskar’s surprise, it was Niklaus who replied. “Demons came. Sorcery repulsed them, but not without cost. In my travels, I’ve seen the evidence of countless civilizations that rose from barbarism to make the same mistakes as their predecessors, either in how they fought the demons or in how they emulated them.”

“You’ve explored the ruins before?” Anskar asked.

“Many times.” Niklaus shrugged and took a sip from his flask. “Wiraya is riddled with them. Most from after the struggle with Nysrog, but the really interesting ones are those from long before.”

“Like this one,” the Grand Master said, eyes flashing with irritation, as if he thought it supremely impertinent that Niklaus had spoken.

“So the portal stones were responsible for the horrors of the past?” Anskar asked. “Without them, there would have been no demons invading Wiraya? No wars or the cataclysms that followed?”

Wiraya, as far as he could gather from his lessons, had endured many such cataclysms, during which entire civilizations had been reduced to pockets of survivors scrabbling out an existence amid the barbarous wastelands. Each time, people had rebuilt, uncovering the secrets of the past and progressing in the same direction as their ancestors, only to one day make the same devastating mistakes.

“There have always been demons,” Niklaus said with a scowl before tilting his head and taking a long pull from his flask.

“The portal stones just made it that much easier for them to cross the veil between worlds,” Blaice said. “Usually there’s need for a summoning.”

Gadius snorted. “Do you have any idea of the power a sorcerer would need to wield to effect the summoning of a demon from the abyssal realms?”

“More than you’ll ever have,” Niklaus said.

“A single portal stone can open the floodgates to the abyssal realms,” Blaice said. “Hundreds, if not thousands, of demons could come pouring through. Thankfully, at the end of the demon wars, the ancient people destroyed the portal stones.”

“Save for one,” the Grand Master said. “If Blaice’s contacts are to be believed, and this ruin does indeed contain the sole surviving portal stone, then just think of the repercussions if it should fall into the wrong hands.”

“Depends how you define the wrong hands,” Niklaus said.

The Grand Master shot him a black look. “Any that are not ours. Only Menselas can ward us from the evils a portal stone might unleash. Which is why such relics must be delivered to the Church. You said you agreed with me when you so conveniently turned up. Are you telling me you’ve changed your mind?”

Niklaus took a swig from his flask. Cursed. Upended the flask. Empty.

“So the Church will destroy this portal stone?” Anskar asked.

The Grand Master hesitated before answering, “Of course.”

“The really troubling question,” Niklaus said, “is why the ancient people left one of the portal stones. Why didn’t they destroy it with the others?”

The Grand Master shrugged. “That is not relevant.”

“Let’s hope not,” Niklaus said.

“We can stand here and speculate all day,” the Grand Master said, “or we can get on with the task at hand.” To Lanuc he said, “Wait for us until this time tomorrow. I will send you word before then should we need longer in the ruin. If you hear nothing from us, do not come looking for us. Return to Atya, and send word to Bishop Rowasoth in Sansor via the Ethereal Sorceress. He will decide what to do.”

“Don’t look so worried,” Ryala said to Anskar, a fake smile plastered over her face. “I’ll look after you. We both will, won’t we, Hen?”

Hendel clapped Anskar on the arm. “You’ll be fine, son. I’ve got your back.”

Anskar watched Lanuc and Orix lead the ponies back down the valley. He felt exposed, alone without them. And with the Grand Master’s expectations weighing heavily upon him, he felt a fraud.

The vast piles of rubble sloped down from the mesas on either side of the valley, at their highest points a good fifty feet above the valley floor, at their lowest, where they met in the middle, just the height of two grown men. It made sense that the group should climb over the landfall where it dipped, and that was just what the Grand Master commanded them to do. It meant stepping away from the shade of the mesas, but thankfully the piled rubble provided a little shade of its own.

Blaice went first, scrambling over the rock bank with effortless grace, and Anskar thought how much easier it would be for him without the armor the Grand Master insisted all his people wear. Niklaus went next, as sure-footed as a mountain goat, then the Grand Master and Gadius. Anskar followed them, with Hendel and Ryala bringing up the rear.

As Anskar climbed, he frequently had to stop to wipe stinging sweat from his eyes. His fingers and palms were abraded by the rocks, and once or twice his sword became tangled between his legs and he had to pause to resituate it.

Some of the rocks had split open to reveal the fossilized forms of strange birds and lizards and shells within. As he reached the summit and began to crab-crawl down the far side, he caught sight of what appeared to be a fragment of the fossilized jaw of some monstrous beast, the fangs as long as swords.

When he reached the bottom, he took a swig from his canteen as they waited for Hendel and Ryala to catch up, then the group followed Blaice’s lead across the rubble-strewn floor of the valley.

A spiderweb of fissures had fractured the ground between the mesas and for as far as Anskar could see in front. On one side, the cracks terminated at a sizable rupture in the rock face. Below this, the ground had fallen away into a deep cleft that must have opened up during the earthquake.

Blaice led them to the edge of the ravine and stood peering down into the depths, where dust motes glittered in the failing light of day. At the bottom, some thirty feet below, an alcove had formed beneath an overhang that protruded from the mesa’s exposed roots, and in the gloom within, a metallic surface glinted.

“That’s it?” the Grand Master said uncertainly. “That’s a door?”

He was right to be perplexed. To Anskar’s eyes, all the earthquake had revealed was a large metal panel—door-sized, he had to admit—fused with the rock face.

“Peculiar, isn’t it?” Blaice said. “You’d have thought the ruin would be high above ground, given that a mesa is formed by the erosion of the ground around it.”

“Unless it was there before the mesa was formed,” Niklaus suggested, “and the erosion brought it to light. Either that, or the mesa’s not natural. Perhaps it was deliberately built on top of the ruin—if, indeed, ‘ruin’ is the appropriate word for whatever lies beyond that door. And yes, to answer your question,” he said to the Grand Master, “it is a door, albeit a particularly tricky one, most likely difficult to open.”

“To those without the know-how,” Blaice said, then started off down the scree bank.

At the bottom of the fissure, the group reassembled in front of the metal panel. It was orange-tinted—probably orichalcum—and it was square, the bottom edge still hidden behind the limestone of the mesa that cladded it. It must have been ten feet by ten feet, and it struck Anskar as an odd shape for a door. Either it was that shape and size so that wagons or whatever transport the ancients had used could pass through, or the people themselves had been giants, as wide as they were tall.

There were symbols and sigils engraved all over the panel—some letters that were recognizable as Skanuric, but twisted together to form new and composite forms. Other symbols he didn’t recognize: they were more linear—cuneiform—than the typical swirling Skanuric script. He could make no sense of the arrangement of letters and symbols, nor how they had been made. For though he’d at first thought they had been engraved, he now saw that they stood out in relief from the surface of the orichalcum, yet some cunningly employed use of light and shadow made them appear cut into the metal. When he peered closer, he saw that the letters were transparent, and that within each a viscous fluid speckled with what looked like crystal dust oozed in perpetual motion. Where the crystal dust caught the sun’s light, it sparkled as if on fire.

“Would you care to open it?” Blaice said in a voice of saccharine sweetness to Gadius.

“Just get on with it,” the Grand Master said. “It’ll soon be dusk, and I for one don’t want to risk a night in the open.”

“What about Orix and Lanuc?” Anskar asked, suddenly afraid for his friend.

“I’m sure they’ll cope,” the Grand Master said. “Now, get this so-called door open, if indeed you can.”

“Oh, I can open it all right,” Blaice said. “Only, it might take some time.”

The Grand Master rolled his eyes—a mannerism that struck Anskar as all too frequent for the pious head of a holy order.

“Don’t worry about the others,” Hendel whispered in Anskar’s ear. “Lanuc is highly skilled in such matters.”

“What matters?” Anskar asked, and though he kept his voice low, Gadius turned a glare on him.

“Surviving the things that stalk the dark,” Hendel said. “The Plains of Khisig-Ugtall have their unique challenges, but nothing Lanuc hasn’t faced before.”

“Save the manticarr,” Ryala said, having been listening in.

“That was unforeseen,” Hendel said, and for a moment his eyes looked haunted by the loss of Gaith. “But didn’t they say it was summoned by the wards of this ruin, which were activated during the earthquake?”

Ryala glanced at Niklaus and then Blaice, who was running her hands over the script on the orichalcum panel while muttering under her breath—Anskar assumed it was a cant, but he could sense no repository within her.

“Those two say a lot, but not much of it’s true,” Ryala said.

“How do you know?” Anskar asked.

“I don’t know. I just feel it. Call it a talent, if you like, but watch your backs, both of you.”

Long shadows fell over the fissure as the sun dipped lower in the sky, and Anskar began to worry that, if Blaice didn’t get them inside the ruin soon, he would be exposed to the dusk-tide in front of his comrades. Not that it should matter, he told himself, given that the Grand Master already knew about his forbidden talents. But even so, the prospect of absorbing the dusk-tide in company made him feel sullied, ashamed. Years of being told that all but the dawn-tide was evil in the eyes of Menselas had left its mark.

He became aware of Niklaus conferring with Blaice, translating one or two symbols for her as the Grand Master stood by impatiently and Gadius shook his head and tsked. Niklaus stepped back, crossing his arms and watching as Blaice resumed her muttering, this time touching her fingers to a sequence of letters. When nothing happened, she threw a look over her shoulder at Niklaus.

“Trochaic substitution?” he suggested, and Blaice thought about that for a moment—whatever it meant—then commenced her chant and the touching of the letters again.

And once more nothing happened, though this time Anskar heard Niklaus humming to himself and tapping out a rhythm on the pommel of his sword. “There was some interruption of the meter,” he told Blaice, “at the other ruins of this kind I entered. A wise man got them to open up for me, but I can’t for the life of me recall his name.”

“You’ve been inside ruins of this period before?” Gadius said disbelievingly.

“Several times,” Niklaus said, then resumed his humming.

“When?” Gadius pressed. “Surely the Church would have heard of it.”

“Ah, but back then the Church of Menselas was but a twinkling in the eye of the charlatan who invented her,” Niklaus said, and before anyone could react, he exclaimed, “Pleiham Ponsair!”

Blaice frowned, then squinted at the symbols on the door. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Which letter?”

“Not the letters,” Niklaus said, “the wise man who got me into the ruins. His name was Pleiham Ponsair. Poor bastard’s probably nothing but dust by now.”

“He’s dead, then?” Blaice said.

“I killed him. Several times, actually.”

“So what was the point in mentioning him?”

“No point. Just old memories rising to the surface like bog gas. Ah!” he said, stepping to Blaice’s side and jabbing a finger at three of the letters. “Omit those ones and substitute a pause of equivalent length.”

“Why?” Blaice asked, confused.

“Indir, Yanuk, Nadyroth,” Niklaus said as he touched the letters. “All negative consonants—proto-Skanuric is a weird language, to put it mildly. It’s a kind of code, a recipe, if you like, for which there are customs to let you know what to keep in and what to leave out.”

“And this Pleiham Ponsair told you that, did he?” Gadius said.

“I think so,” Niklaus said as Blaice began her muttered chant again, once more touching the symbols with her fingertips. “Probably. I can’t remember.”

Gadius shook his head and turned to the Grand Master. “Perhaps I should have a go after all. This pair are clearly quite—”

“Got it!” Blaice said, stepping back from the door as it juddered and shook, then started to sink into the ground.