bumped his head. They’d come through a few narrower spots, but none that made Pavek feel as if the ground had swallowed him whole. He didn’t suggest that Mahtra stay behind or that Ruari stay behind with her. He didn’t sense danger ahead, not in that almost-magical way a man could sometimes sense a trap or ambush before it was too late, but if things did go bad, he wanted Ruari and his staff where they could be of some use—not to mention the ‘protection’ Mahtra claimed to possess but hadn’t ever described or demonstrated.
He thumbed the guard that held his steel sword—scavenged from the battlefield after the battle with Escrissar’s mercenaries for Quraite—in its scabbard. “Stay close. Stay quiet,” he ordered his troops. “Keep balanced. If I stop short, I don’t want to hear you grunting and stumbling.”
They whispered obedience, and he led them forward. The light grew bright enough that he could see it: a dimly glowing blue-white splotch in the distance, not any kind of firelight Pavek knew. It grew larger, but remained dim, even when they approached the end of the passage. Pavek left his companions behind, then, even though they’d be trapped without him to brandish his medallion at the upper warding. He saw the decision as a question of risk against responsibility: he’d be responsible for them, no matter what, but at that moment the greatest risk lay in the light he could see, not in the warding.
The enclosed passage ended at the top of a curving ramp. Overhead, there was open air filled with the dim light, solid rock on his left, and a slowly diminishing wall on his right. Pavek edged along the wall, keeping his head down, until the wall was low enough for him to see over while still providing him with something to hide behind. After taking a deep breath for courage, he peeked over the top—
And was so amazed by what he saw that he forgot to hunker down again.
Urik’s reservoir was larger than any druid’s pool, larger than anything Pavek could have imagined on his own. It was a dark mirror reflecting the glow from its far shore, flawless, except for circular ripples that appeared and faded as he gazed across it. The glow came from five huge bowls that seemed at first to hover in the still air, though when he squinted, Pavek could make out a faint, silvery scaffolding beneath them.
Other than the bowls, there was nothing: no corpses, no burnt-out huts, none of the debris a veteran templar expected to find in the aftermath of carnage.
But the bowls themselves…
Pavek didn’t have the words to describe their delicate, subtly shifting color or the aura that shone steadily around them. They were beautiful, identical, perfect in every imaginable way, and now that he’d seen them, the foreboding he hadn’t felt when Ruari first saw light ahead fell on him like burning oil.
Mahtra wasn’t a liar. Lord Hamanu was trustworthy. And someone—Kakzim—had contrived the deaths of countless innocents and misfits so these bowls could be set in their places above the water.
Set there and left alone.
By everything Pavek could see or hear, there wasn’t another living creature in the cavern. He gave the agreed-upon signal, and Ruari brought the other two down the ramp.
Mahtra gasped.
Zvain began a curse: “Hamanu’s great, greasy—” which he didn’t finish because Pavek clouted him hard on the floating ribs. Notwithstanding an eleganta’s trade or the things Mahtra must have seen in House Escrissar, there were some things honest men did not say in the presence of women. The boy folded himself around the ache. Tears ran from his eyes, but he kept his lips sealed and soundless.
“What do you think?” Pavek gave his attention to Ruari, who was his superior where magic was concerned.
The half-elf rolled his lower lip out. “I don’t like it. Doesn’t feel…” He closed his eyes and opened them again. “Doesn’t feel healthy.”
Pavek sighed. He’d had the same sensation. He’d hoped Ruari could be more specific.
They stayed where they were, waiting for a sound, a flicker of movement to tell them they weren’t alone. There was nothing—unless the most disciplined ambushers on the Tablelands were waiting for them. When Pavek’s instincts said walk or scream, he started down the ramp, slow and quiet, but convinced that they were in no immediate danger. The cavern was too vast for the sort of one-sided warding they’d encountered earlier; it was too vast for any warding at all. Ruari prodded the