with the powder, and even he felt sapped from the climb. What good would they do against Julene and the other Privileged? How could they possibly win a fight?
Taniel fell in beside Ka-poel on the trail. She held a blank-faced wax figurine, pushing and shaping the wax with her fingers.
“What are you doing?” he asked her.
She tucked the doll under one arm. Expecting an explanation of hand signs, Taniel leaned closer. She punched him in the shoulder.
“Ow.”
She shooed him away with one hand and returned to her project. He fell back beside Bo.
Bo looked troubled.
“You seem cheery,” Taniel said. Bo’s expression didn’t change. The sarcasm seemed lost on him.
“We might be too late,” Bo said.
“We’re making better time than I expected.”
“We have to be there during the solstice.”
“Don’t worry,” Taniel said. “We will.” Taniel spotted smoke in the sky. He grabbed Bo’s shoulder and pointed.
“Is that the mountain?” Taniel said. He couldn’t remember being able to see the smoking crater from here on his last journey up.
Bo paled. “No,” he said. “Too close. That’s Novi’s Perch.”
Word spread and they redoubled their efforts. They reached the Perch within an hour.
The wall of the monastery that effectively ended this portion of the trail had been smashed in. It looked like a giant had stepped up to the side of the mountain and simply slapped it with the flat of his hand. Some of the old rock remained where it met the mountain. The rest had fallen away into the abyss and was invisible against the stone of the gulch far, far below. The monastery was exposed like the side of a dollhouse, hallways and stairs bare to the elements.
The ruins lay like a smoking animal carcass, splintered timbers jutting out from the rubble like broken ribs. In some places the rock itself had melted away. The invisible fist that had destroyed a great part of the monastery had also destroyed a chunk of the cliff, and the hallway that led from one end of the monastery to the other was now divided by a fissure twenty paces across.
“We can go back, and head down one of the halls,” Fesnik said. “There’s a warren inside the mountain—that’s where the rest of the monastery is. Shouldn’t take but a few minutes.” His voice was quiet, almost reverent. He gazed about with a look of sadness. Taniel realized that the Watchers must have known these monks.
They found the hallways just as Fesnik had said. Once they were inside the mountain, the smoke got worse. They could barely breathe as they made their way through the crisscross of hallways. Rina’s dogs whined despite her rebukes. Taniel paused by one wall, noting a splatter of blood. An odd chip had been made in the stone. He ran his fingers over it. From a bullet, for certain.
“There’s no bodies,” Taniel said quietly. He spoke mostly to himself, but was surprised to find Ka-poel very close to him. She examined the ruins clinically. Taniel said, “There have to be survivors. The smoke would drive them out. They must be on the other side.” He nodded to himself. “That’s it.” Taniel felt ill.
Ka-poel gave him a look that seemed to say she doubted this.
They came out of the hallway on the other side of the fissure. He could see where the monastery ended, and the broken stairways that led up to the opposite entrance. No one was to be seen.
“Please,” a voice said.
Taniel leapt into the air. He spun around, pistol out before he could process a thought. He lowered the pistol.
A monk shied away from him. It was a woman, much younger than he expected.
“I’m sorry,” he said. The sight of her made his hands shake. Her face was bruised, battered. Blood stained her robe. “Are there more survivors?”
The woman indicated one of the many hallways. Thirty paces in, as far out of the elements as they could manage, was a ragtag group. The smoke wasn’t too bad here. There were seven that Taniel could see still standing, and a large number of linen-wrapped bodies on the floor. His heart fell as he counted those bodies. He stopped at forty, and that couldn’t have been half.
Fesnik spoke to one of the monks, an old man, his gown torn and dirty, his eyebrows singed. Taniel approached.
“We gave them the best fight we could,” the old man said. He brandished his walking stick. “They came out of nowhere. We should have been better prepared. Had there not been so many…”