The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3) - N. K. Jemisin Page 0,57

a few feet away and then clap hands over yourself, checking for injury. You’re fine—not burned to death, not crushed by the pressure as you should have been, not suffocated, not even shaken up. Much.

You straighten and rub your face. “Okay. I’m really going to have to remember that stone eaters don’t say anything without reason. Never wanted to actually see the Fire-Under-Earth.”

But you’re here now, standing atop a hill that is itself on some kind of plateau. The sky is your place-marker. It’s later in the morning here than it was where you were—a little after dawn, instead of predawn. The sun is actually visible, though thin through the scrim of ash clouds overhead. (You surprise yourself by feeling an ache of longing at the sight.) But the fact that you can see it means that you’re much farther from the Rifting than you were a few moments ago. You glance to the west, and the faint shimmer of a dark blue obelisk in the distance confirms your guess. This is where, a month or so ago when you opened the Obelisk Gate, you felt Nassun.

(That way. She’s gone that way. But that way lies thousands of square miles of the Stillness.)

You turn to find that you’re standing amid a small cluster of wooden buildings positioned at the top of the hill, including one storeshack on stilts, a few lean-tos, and what look like dormitories or classroom buildings. All of it is surrounded, however, by a neat, precisely level fence of columnar basalt. That an orogene has made this, harnessing the slow explosion of the great volcano beneath your feet, is as plain to you as the sun in the sky. But equally obvious is the fact that the compound is empty. There’s no one in sight, and the reverberations of footprints on the ground are farther away, beyond the fence.

Curious, you walk to a break in the basalt fence, where a pathway that is half dirt and half cobbles wends down. At the foot of the hill is a village, occupying the rest of the plateau. The village could be any comm anywhere. You make out houses in varying shapes, most with still-growing housegreens, several standing storecaches, what looks like a bathhouse, a kiln shed. The people moving among the buildings don’t glance up to notice you, and why would they? It’s a lovely day, here where the sun still mostly shines. They’ve got fields to tend and—are those little rowboats tied to one of the watchtowers?—trips to the nearby sea to organize. This compound, whatever it is, is unimportant to them.

You turn away from the village, and that’s when you spot the crucible.

It’s near the edge of the compound, elevated a little above the rest of it, though visible from where you are. When you climb the path to look into the crucible bowl, which is marked out in cobbles and brick, it’s old habit to thrust your senses into the ground to find the nearest marked stone. Not far, only maybe five or six feet down. You search its surface and find the faint pressure indentations of a chisel, maybe a hammer. FOUR. It’s too easy; in your day the stones were marked with paint and numbers, which made them less distinctive. Still, the stone is small enough that, yes, anyone below a four-ringer would have trouble finding and identifying it. They’ve got the details of the training wrong, but the basics are spot-on.

“This can’t be the Antarctic Fulcrum,” you say, crouching to finger one of the stones of the ring. Just pebbles instead of the beautiful tile mosaic you remember, but again, they’ve got the idea.

Hoa’s still standing where you emerged from the ground, hands still positioned to press down on yours, perhaps for the return trip. He doesn’t answer, but then you’re mostly talking to yourself.

“I always heard that Antarctic was small,” you continue, “but this is nothing. This is a camp.” There’s no Ring Garden. No Main building. Also, you’ve heard that the Arctic and Antarctic Fulcrums were lovely, despite their size and remote location. That makes sense; the Fulcrum’s beauty was all that official, state-sanctioned orogene-kind ever had to show for itself. This sorry collection of shacks doesn’t fit the ideology. Also—“It’s on a volcano. And too close to those stills down the hill.” That village isn’t Yumenes, surrounded on all sides by node maintainers and with the added protection of the most powerful senior orogenes. One overwrought grit’s tantrum could turn