The valley floor rose almost imperceptibly, mile after mile. The hills on either side leveled out as they left the valley of the gods, until there was only an endless expanse of white flatland tufted with spiny grasses.

At first Carred thought the whiteness was due to chalk, but then Orix, who’d said nothing for hours, bent down to touch the ground and brought his finger to his lips.

“Salt,” he said in Nan-Rhouric.

“Ulluar,” Carred translated for him.

“Ulluar,” he said, then continued to repeat the word under his breath.

“This was once a sea?” Taloc asked, the helm that contained the necromancer Tain’s head tucked under his arm.

“It was not,” Noni said.

Carred glanced at her, but already the young woman was staring vacantly ahead. She looked incapable of speaking.

“We go on?” Taloc asked. He seemed hopeful they would not.

“Missing Vilintia?” Carred asked.

“Who?” Then Taloc laughed. “I guess I am. A little.”

“Just a little?”

“A lot, then.”

“Just think about how pleased she’ll be to see you when we get back to the hideout.”

“I’ve been thinking about nothing else!”

Carred smiled as she swigged the last of the water from her canteen.

“I have some left,” Orix said. “I’ve been saving it for you.”

“Then keep saving it.” She was about to chastise him for once again speaking Nan-Rhouric, then told herself to stop being so harsh. Answering in kind, she said, “It may not be enough. But thank you. How about you?” she asked Taloc. “You still got water?”

“A little.”

“Noni? No, forget I asked. We go on.”

She led them toward a smudge on the horizon. The farther they trekked across the salt plain, the more the plant life thinned out, until all that remained was white as far as the eye could see, save for the steadily growing smudge.

Little by little, a gigantic structure came into focus: interconnected cairns made from massive stones that glimmered blue where the sunlight touched them.

“Be wary, my love,” Noni said, and this time the inflection of her voice was definitely Talia’s.

“Wary of what?”

“Something. I feel it, but I’ve not been here before. Just… be wary.”

“Open the helm,” Carred said.

Taloc grumbled about it but did as she asked.

“Is she still here?” Tain said, blinking against the sunlight outside his helm.

Carred glanced at Noni. “She’s still here, but I’m sure you’re quite safe.”

“I long ago told Queen Talia I wanted nothing to do with her schemes,” Tain said.

“What did she do to upset you? Reject your advances?”

“Hah! I’d like to see the woman who could resist me.”

“You’re looking at her.”

“Tain is jealous of what I might achieve,” Noni—Talia—said.

“Jealous? Me? I rose among the gods!”

“A headless god. You failed, Tain, and you wish me to fail too.”

“I couldn’t care less whether you succeed or fail,” Tain said, “so long as I get back to my body. Where are we?”

Taloc turned so that the necromancer’s head faced the cairns.

“There you go,” Tain said. “We’ve arrived.”

“You’ve been here before?” Taloc asked.

“In search of relics of Armor of Divinity. I found a complete suit to learn from.”

“And what did you learn?” Carred asked.

“That there were flaws in their design—presumably why the owner remained in the world. Dead.”

“So what’s the point of coming here?” Taloc asked.

“Because he knows how to modify the armor,” Noni said. “He wrote a book about it, didn’t you, Tain?”

“Private notes,” Tain said. “Not for the prying eyes of power-mad sorcerers.”

“He melted the armor down,” Noni said, “and added a key component that the original maker had been ignorant of.”

“Astrumium,” Tain said.

“Did he say astrumium?” Orix asked Carred in his own tongue. “Like I said, we used that at Branil’s Burg during the trial of sword crafting.”

“What did the savage say?” Tain asked.

“Perhaps you should learn Nan-Rhouric,” Carred said. “Maybe you two could teach each other.”

“Why would I want to speak Nan-Rhouric?”

“So,” Carred said, “all we need to do is find a full suit of ancient armor, melt down the pieces, and add astrumium before reshaping them?”

“There’s more to it than that,” Noni said.

“There is not,” Tain said. “I thought you’d read my notebook.”

“I’ve also seen the result of your experiments,” Noni said. “A head without a body. Believe me, there is an additional component, which even you didn’t think of.”

“There is no missing ingredient,” Tain insisted.

“You’re sure about that?” Carred asked. “I mean, only your head came back.”

“I was not supposed to come back at all. If I had wanted to, I’d have designed the armor differently.”

“With the missing ingredient,” Noni said.

Carred flashed her a glare and then wished she hadn’t. Talia hadn’t been the most forgiving woman in life, and there was nothing to suggest that death had mellowed her. “I assume you want me to find the missing ingredient, then. Do you mind telling me what it is?”

“At the appropriate time,” Noni said, then she shuddered and grew vacant again.

“If you weren’t supposed to come back,” Taloc asked Tain, “then why did your head?”

“Good question,” Carred said. “What did happen, Tain? You said you glimpsed the realm of the gods, so I assume your head made it through with your body.”

“It did. I opened my face plate to see—and what a sight I saw!—but it slammed shut of its own accord, or something I didn’t see closed it for me, and I was alone in the dark. The gods are capricious and full of unabashed lust; I dare say they wanted my body and not my brain. I could feel nothing—couldn’t even wiggle my fingers and toes. It was only when that bitch Talia found me that I realized I had returned to Wiraya, and that I was a head without a body.”

With a glance at Noni, Carred said, “And Talia came to learn from you?”

“What she learned, she stole. Her sorcery is depraved. You have no idea how depraved.”

“Yet you’ve agreed to help her?”

“I’ve agreed to help you find a suit of armor so that you can use it to carry me back to the realm of the gods and reunite me with my body.”

“Yes,” Carred said. “But how will I return?”

“Ask her,” Tain said, eyes flicking toward Noni. “Because that was not part of our arrangement. Besides, what if you don’t want to return? I tell you, the gods live for pleasure, and you have the look of a ripe and lusty woman.”

“I must return. It’s my duty.”

“Oh, yes, to give the armor to this Anskar DeVantte so he can bring his mother back from the dead. Then let’s hope her so-called secret ingredient is all she claims it is.”

“Right,” Carred said. “How do we get in?”

“Around the far side,” Tain said. “It took us weeks of digging, but we excavated an entrance tunnel when I first came here.”

“We?” Taloc asked.

“They, technically,” Tain said. “I directed, they dug. Hirelings from the villages. Not that I paid them. None of them returned.”

“The danger you spoke of?” Carred asked, but Noni was back to vacantly staring ahead, an empty vessel. What had Talia done to her? Was there anything of Noni left?

“What danger?” Tain asked.

“Before we opened your face plate, Queen Talia sensed something and said to be wary.”

“Wary of what? It was quite safe when I came before.”

“How long ago was that?”

“I see your point.”

“So, what happened to your hirelings?” Taloc asked.

“You killed them, didn’t you?” Carred said.

“King Lowanu’s orders, and who am I to disobey a king? They didn’t go quietly, let me tell you, but what good are picks and shovels against necromancy? I’m no Queen Talia, but I know a thing or two.”

Taloc held the necromancer’s head out in front of him as he led the group around the gigantic structure. Beneath the shade thrown by the cairns, the heaped stones lost their bluish tinge and grew cold and gray.

The scale of the construction was staggering: eight burial halls, as Tain called them, that extended like the spokes of a wheel from a central hub, also made from stacked stones. Each of the halls was over thirty feet high and ten times as long.

“If there was no sea here,” Orix said, “why all the salt?”

“Sorcery?” Carred said with a shrug. “Have you seen anything living here? Save for us, of course.”

“No, nothing.”

He gave her a look so intense it made her feel there was something wrong with her. It was the kind of look her mother used to give her. “What?” she said.

“You didn’t yell at me for not speaking Niyandrian.”

“I don’t yell.”

“Sometimes you do.”

Carred sighed. “What is this about, Orix? It was fun for a while. It’s no longer fun.”

“I know that. I’m not completely stupid. I’m just hoping we’re doing the right thing… now… being here… The right thing for Anskar.”

“You miss him?”

Orix made a scoffing noise and looked away.

“Yes, you miss him.”

“I don’t understand why he wouldn’t join us,” Orix said. “He and I both saw what the Order’s really like, yet when he had the chance—”

“That is not how I left it!” Tain cried out in a shrill voice. “I concealed it with the earth-tide, and warded it with the dusk.”

Taloc had stopped in front of a square-shaped pit. The jagged remains of a wooden cover were still attached to the edges. The wood must have been ancient, but it showed no signs of rot or wear. Something had smashed through the cover at some point in time. Steps of the same stone as the cairns, dusted with grains of salt, led down into the dark.

“The earth-tide?” Carred said.

“It’s not just for necromancy, you know,” Tain said. “If you have the aptitude, you can use it for shaping things. All kinds of stuff: animals, people, wood, stone. I made the cover resemble the salt of the plains. Even if it was located, anything that tried to enter would have been incinerated.”

“But they weren’t,” Taloc pointed out. “There aren’t even any scorch marks.”

“I don’t understand how that’s possible,” Tain said.

“Perhaps your sorcery wasn’t as good as you thought it was,” Carred said. “I mean, just look at what happened to your body.”

“An oversight, nothing more. You’ll see, and then you’ll eat your—”

Noni walked between them as if she were asleep, and descended the steps into the pit.