"I grew up around the corner from a tanner's yard," Skiver quipped. "I'm immune to foul vapors."

  Jaya was presented with a clutch of arrows made in the Uomoto style, though Alaeron couldn't tell the difference between them and other arrows, except that the feathers on the ends were more brightly colored. They gave Skiver a knife with a bone handle and a wavy blade. Hunters and warriors were easy, apparently, but no one seemed to know quite what to give an alchemist. The shaman pressed a few small clay pots on him. Fair enough. He certainly had pockets full of bottles anyway. "Healing salves," Jaya said, and Alaeron thanked them, though he had potions of healing of his own. Unlike his concoctions, the ones given by the Uomoto would actually work for Skiver and Jaya, so he'd keep them handy.

  They did not take their full traveling packs, just weapons and some basic supplies in smaller bags, though Skiver also had a bundle of sacks rolled up tight to carry off any loot he might find—something he didn't mention to the villagers. The Uomoto mostly seemed to believe Jaya's party had come to deliver them from whatever evil stalked them in the night, with Jaya a long-lost daughter of the village returned in their hour of need with her brave companions to set things right. Probably guided by prophetic dreams, Alaeron didn't doubt. No reason to let them know they were here for plunder first, and rescue only coincidentally.

  The warriors led them up a steep and winding path, and then off the path entirely, stepping carefully between the trunks of great trees, moving slowly and watchfully while the others followed. Jaya had said her village was a half-day's journey from the ruins, but the cloud-hidden sun was not yet at its zenith when the silent Uomoto warriors led them out of the trees. Alaeron's sense of direction was not fantastic, but he could tell they'd maneuvered to approach the mountains from the west, and were now facing east. Mountains rose up on either side, but there was a high cleft valley before them, sheltered by the spires of the barrier mountains. "Follow us carefully now," one of the guides said. "For we enter the Fields of Glass, and the safe paths are few and known only to us."

  "Glass?" Alaeron said. He saw nothing before them but a valley of trees and meadows, its far reaches shrouded by mist. "I don't see any—"

  The clouds moved, revealing the sun, and Alaeron gasped and averted his eyes as a thousand thousand fires bloomed in the valley. No, not fires, but flashes of reflected light, twinkling from countless—what? Crystalline formations? Pools of water? Or actual shards of literal glass? Jaya had mentioned this place, but the tale hadn't compared to the reality.

  "The city fell screaming," one of the guides said. "And stars fell with it, and shattered, and when the sun shines down, the broken stars throw their brightness back into the sky. Join hands now, and tread carefully, for the way is sharp, and those who look too closely will be dazzled. Mark the way we go closely, for if you return this way, you will make the crossing alone."

  They all linked hands, eyes squeezed almost shut, as they entered the valley. Sparkles glittered on all sides, filling the width of the valley entirely, but when the sun went behind a cloud again, making the sparkles fade, Alaeron asked them to pause. He knelt by a shard of blue-tinted crystal and prodded it. The shard didn't move, embedded firmly in the ground. Glass from some ancient tower shattered by the city's fall, or a natural formation? He couldn't be sure. Perhaps this was all a folly, and these weren't the ruins of Kho at all. Perhaps there were monsters here that had nothing to do with the legendary flying city of the Shory.

  "Alaeron, time is burning," Jaya said sharply.

  "Of course, I'm sorry." He rejoined the human chain as the guides led them on a winding path among the shards. Some chunks of crystal were as large as wagon wheels, others no bigger than a fingernail, but he could see how walking through this place could be deadly. Many of the shards poked up from the ground like spikes, and to stumble through here in full sunlight, dazzled by brightness, would be an invitation to stumble and fall and be cut to ribbons.

  Beyond the fields of glass waited a forest shrouded in mist. The fragrance of sweet flowers was heady, intoxicating, almost overwhelming. Alaeron knew flowers—many extracts depended on them—and he smelled orchid and plumeria, but there were countless other scents, most far more alien. Perhaps there were flowers here that grew nowhere else on earth. What powers might they possess?

  "This is as far as we can go," one guide said apologetically. "There is the Stone of Sacrifice. The ruins wait beyond these trees, but we may not look upon them. Go. Come back safe. Return our lost ones."

  The guides made their way back through the Fields of Glass, leaving the adventurers to contemplate the stone. It was the size of a house, squarish, black and oddly shiny, stained with blood, and a profusion of iron manacles dangled from its face, enough to bind half a dozen people. "This is no natural stone," Alaeron said, squinting. "It is a made thing. Did the villagers attach the irons, or ..."

  "No, they have always been there," she said.

  Alaeron ran his finger over the stone, frowning. "There are marks here, very old ones, in the stone ..." He closed his eyes, feeling the shape of the markings until a picture of them formed in his head. He whistled, opening his eyes. "These ...these marks are in the Shory language. I can't read that language, I don't think anyone can, but examples of it survive, and the shapes of the letters are very distinctive. Whoever scratched these marks into the rock long ago was Shory. I think this rock might have been part of a dungeon in Kho, a chunk of wall flung to this spot when the city fell, or was smashed from the sky by the Tarrasque, depending on which story you believe. The Soaring City is here. Six thousand years ago it fell, and this is where it fell. I ...I don't think I really believed it, before now."

  "We'd best go on in, then," Skiver said, "before you're paralyzed by believing." He set off around the Stone of Sacrifice, moving silently, followed by Jaya. Alaeron came after them, every clank and clink of his many bottles and vials making him wince. He wasn't made for stealth. Perhaps there was an extract for that—surely there was a spell in Ernst's book that allowed one to move silently ...

  A great flap of wings came from above, and a derhii landed in a clearing before them. He was bigger even than the derhii who'd carried Jaya and Skiver down, armored, and armed with a javelin.

  "Humans," he growled, crouching before them. "You look like an Uomoto, woman. Why do you venture into taboo lands?"

  "My family comes from the village, but I am from the wider world," Jaya said.

  "Hmm." The derhii looked them over impassively. "You would do well to turn back. This valley is death for those who cannot fly above the dangers as my people do."

  "Flying does us no good," Skiver said. "How are we meant to snatch up treasures if we fly?"

  The derhii laughed. "You seek treasure, then. Of course. Men always do. But where there are treasures, there are those who hoard them, and protect them. Any treasures you might find already belong to someone else, and they will not willingly part with them. You may enter as treasure hunters, but you can succeed only as thieves."

  "Thieving works," Skiver said. "Care to tell us what we can expect?"

  The derhii shrugged. "I have many tasks before me this day. I cannot afford to spend time pouring words into the ears of men who will be dead soon."

  "I hear you lot like arms and armor," Skiver said. He drew a pair of glittering knives. "These were forged in Andoran. Blades weighted for throwing. They fit sweet in the hand and slip into flesh neat as you please. I'll trade you blades for words."

  "I could just wait," the derhii said. "Fly above you, and swoop down to strip your corpses when you are killed." He shrugged. "But I will trade. Words cost me nothing. The valley runs north and south. You approach near the middle of its length. Beyond these trees you will find the river, which follows the line of the valley, running from the source in the north to trickle out in the south. When you enter the valley, look south to see the Sunset Towers, once called the Towers of the Sun, before they fell. Creatures of the deep earth dwell within them, beasts made of living glass. Sometimes they wander the surface, and their touch is slow death to all things that live, causing live flesh to transform into living crystal. Beware them. To the north, the river is spanned by the Obelisk Bridge, but the crossing is treacherous for those who have no wings to save them when the ground collapses. There are other crossings, even more dangerous. Beyond the river, Shadow Hill is home to deadly shades, and there is no treasure there, only darkness and death. The broken Domes of the Polymatum lie on the far side of the river as well, in the center of the valley, and you will find the rat-people called Hadi nearby. They may trade with you—if you want treasure without bloodshed, they may accommodate you, if you survive to reach them. But they are vicious bargainers, and you may leave poorer than you entered." The derhii glanced skyward. "I would not enter the Domes themselves. They are home to daemons, the ones who take the sacrifices your kinsmen leave bound to the Stone."

  "Are these daemons the ones raiding my family's village?" Jaya demanded.

  The derhii frowned. "They do not venture out. They send their minions to the Stone, but the daemons seldom stir from the Domes, let alone from the valley itself."

  "Do you know who or what is preying on my people?"

  The derhii looked up again, clearly eager to be flying. "I ...cannot say. But there is a place. The Pit of Endless Night, it is called. Look for a broken dome, and at the center, a great hole, a tower thrust into the earth like a knife into a heart. That place is full of pale monstrous creatures, things that might have been humans like you once, long ago. They are degenerate creatures now, ravening and mad. And there are other things that still resemble men, dressed in rags and ancient jewels, but scrabbling hard lives in the caves. There are rumors the dwellers in the dark have a new leader—some say a new god. I do not know what manner of creature he may be, but some say he hungers for sacrifice even more than the daemons in the Domes. This new god may take you, too, if you venture too close to the Pit." The derhii snatched the knives from Skiver's hands and lumbered into the sky, soaring above the mist and out of sight.

  "The names he had for things," Alaeron said thoughtfully. "Pit of Endless Night, all right, that's merely descriptive, and Obelisk Bridge likewise, but the Domes of the Polymatum? The Sunset Towers, which were once the Towers of the Sun? That's not something savages and monsters would name a place. I've heard the Shory had servants, a race of winged creatures who did their bidding ...could they have been derhii? Could their descendants remember things about the city, stories passed down, all these thousands of years later?"

  "You were listening to the names?" Skiver said. "I was only listening when he said ‘treasure.' I say we find these ratfolk and see what we can get off them. Even lesser relics could satisfy Vadim if they've got some of that Shory writing you were talking about scratched on them."

  "Barter for your treasures if you must," Jaya said. "I am bound for the Pit of Endless Night. If the stealer of my kin lives there, then I will face him, and bring out any of my family who live."

  Skiver sighed. "All right. The Pit of Endless Night, too, then. I could wish it had a more cheerful name, though."

  Chapter Twenty

  Rats

  Keen to heed the derhii's warnings, they moved through the trees carefully. There was no mistaking the Sunset Towers, off in the distance to the south, though they no longer actually towered—they looked like a massive tangle of driftwood, once-mighty spires that had been sheared off their bases when the city crashed, and were now tumbled together. Some were entirely horizontal, others merely painfully diagonal, and it was a wonder they'd maintained their tubular shapes: the Shory built their towers strong. Beneath the greenery, the towers glittered, as if they had been carved from gems instead of ordinary stone—and perhaps they had. Who knew what wonders the great empire of the sky had created? Alaeron counted five structures in the heap, but it was hard to tell, as they were so heavily overgrown with leaves and vines it was difficult to be sure where one tower left off and another began.

  "Reckon we could get in there?" Skiver said. "Find a window, climb inside? They look like they were mighty fine towers, once, and people keep precious things in towers."

  "Creatures made of glass, who carry a petrifying plague," Alaeron said. "Remember?"

  "There's dangers everywhere," Skiver muttered. "For all we know, the derhii just made that stuff up to scare us away from the really prime treasure, did you ever think about—"

  Something glittered near the base of the tower, tall as a man but shining like crystal—and it moved, not toward them, but off to the north, away from the tower, disappearing behind a heap of rubble.

  "Look at that thing," Skiver murmured. "Guess the ape wasn't lying entirely. You reckon that thing is made of diamonds? We could creep up and kill it, break it into jewels we could carry ..."

  "If the derhii was telling the truth, it could poison us with a touch, and I suspect knives and arrows would bounce right off it," Jaya said. "I'd just as soon avoid starting fights for no particular reason."

  Skiver cast a last glance at the tower, sighed, and began walking on east toward the mist. The ground sloped upward, and they threaded their way through trees before cresting a low rise and emerging from the mists to see the ruins of Kho spread out before them.

  Alaeron was staggered. He'd seen ruins before. Collapsed temples, ancient fortresses, even the remains of the mountain-sized ship in Numeria. But he'd never seen anything like this.

  "It's like someone picked up Absalom in his hands and threw it down on the ground," Skiver said, voice as close to reverent as Alaeron had ever heard it. "Dropping a whole city like a plate, so it shatters into pieces."

  "This is what happens when a city falls from the sky," Jaya murmured. "Truly, it was madness to lift their cities so high."

  Alaeron bit back a reply. He thought it was wondrous. The fact that the city had crashed was a tragedy, but not necessarily an argument against the whole notion of cities in the sky. The power and art necessary to achieve such a feat ...truly, the world had fallen as far as the city of Kho itself when such wonders were lost to deep history.

  The ruined city was too much to take in with a single glance. The most striking elements were the sections that seemed almost intact: a cluster of square buildings there on a low hill, wreathed in unnatural shadows. Crystal towers that leaned against the steep sides of the cliff walls penning in the valley, standing almost upright, their thousand windows reduced to empty holes, some with fires flickering within. Great tilted obelisks that might have been civic art or part of a magical propulsion system or monuments to heroes fallen seven thousand years before. A river that started as a waterfall at one end of the valley snaked a winding course through the ruins, spanned here and there by fallen towers: once homes to high adepts or Shory royals, their spires were now reduced to mere bridges for the convenience of whatever creatures made these ruins home. Everything in this lower city was alive with vegetation, and hundreds of flowers bobbed in the breeze, sending their mingled scents of sweetness, sharpness, and strange poisons aloft.

  A cluster of domes dominated the center of the valley, gleaming structures of silver metal and black glass, cracked but still fundamentally intact, each one larger than the Golden Cathedral in Almas. "The Domes of the Polymatum?" Alaeron said, pointing. "I wonder what it was meant for. That name ...it could have been an arcane college, I suppose. A polymath is someone counted an expert in multiple fields of study."

  "Ernst would have wanted to explore it," Jaya said.

  "Maybe we'll do it for him, then," Skiver said. "Derhii warnings be damned. I still say the winged apes might just be trying to keep us away from the choicest pickings."

  The far northern end of the valley was misty, making details difficult to discern, but there seemed to be another intact portion of the city there, whole blocks of buildings standing more or less upright, though canted enough that one trying to walk the cracked and buckled streets would stumble like a drunkard. A dozen streams cascaded down the white stone and crystal shimmers to join the river on the valley floor, and black towers stood tilted and leaning around the upper city like poisonous mushrooms sprouting up among stones.

  "I don't even know where to begin," Alaeron said.

  "Well, think quick," Skiver said. "Just a reminder that we're not here to map the place or do a complete inventory, all right? We're here to fill our sacks with Shory relics, enough to make even a grasping old man like Vadim happy, and then bugger off home." He glanced at Jaya. "And to rescue her family and kill off whatever's taking 'em, of course, but let's not forget the original point of this exercise. So, Alaeron, you're our expert on ruins and such: what's the likeliest bit?"

  "The domes," Alaeron said. "Even if the derhii hadn't said we might find traders there, I'd say the domes. They're the nearest intact structure we can reach, apart from those buildings wreathed in shadow, and I don't like the look of those. So let's make our way over the river."

  "I must find my family," Jaya said.

  "True enough," Skiver said, "but I'd say we all stand a better chance of surviving here if we keep ourselves together. How about we snatch up some relics first, and then we can move on to the rescue mission? Who knows, we might even find something that can help us get your people back."