The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth, #3) - N. K. Jemisin Page 0,65

a canopy and solidifying over it to form this cavern. Leaving the city within the crater more or less intact.

“Impossible,” Schaffa says, frowning. “Not even the most viscous lava would behave that way. But …” His expression clouds. Again he is trying to sift through memories truncated and trimmed, or perhaps simply dimmed by age. On impulse Nassun grabs his hand, to encourage him. He glances at her, smiles absently, and resumes frowning. “But I think … an orogene could do such a thing. It would take one of rare power, however, and probably the aid of an obelisk. A ten-ringer. At least.”

Nassun frowns in confusion at this. The gist of what he’s said fits, though: Someone did this. Nassun looks up at the ceiling of the cavern and realizes belatedly that what she thought were odd stalactites are actually—she gasps—the leftover impressions of buildings that are no longer there! Yes, there is a narrowing point that must have been a spire; here a curving arch; there a geometric strangeness of spokes and curves that looks oddly organic, like the under-ribs of a mushroom cap. But while these imprints fossil all over the ceiling of the cavern, the solidified lava itself stops a few hundred feet above the ground. Belatedly, Nassun realizes that the “tunnel” from which they emerged is also the remains of a building. Looking back, she sees that the outside of the tunnel looks like one of the cuttlebones that her father once used for fine knapping work—more solid, and made from the same strange white material as the slab up on the surface. That must have been the top of the building. But a few feet below where the canopy ends, the building does, too, to be replaced by this strange white stair. That must have been done sometime after the disaster—but how? And by whom? And why?

Trying to understand what she’s seeing, Nassun looks more closely at the cavern’s floor. The sand is mostly pale, though there are mottling patches of darker gray and brown laced throughout. In a few places, twisted lengths of metal or immense broken fragments of something larger—other buildings, maybe—poke through the sand like bones from a half-unearthed grave.

But this is wrong, too, Nassun realizes. There isn’t enough material here to be the remnants of a city. She hasn’t seen many deadciv ruins, or cities for that matter, but she’s read about them and heard stories. She’s pretty sure that cities are supposed to be full of stone buildings and wooden storecaches and maybe metal gates and cobbled streets. This city is nothing, relatively speaking. Just metal and sand.

Nassun puts down her hands, which she’s raised without thinking while her fleshless senses flicker and search. Inadvertently she glances down, which makes the distance between the stair she stands on and that sandy cavern floor yawn and seem to stretch. This makes her step back closer to Schaffa, who puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“This city,” Schaffa says. She glances at him in surprise; he looks thoughtful. “There is a word in my mind, but I don’t know what it is. A name? Something that holds meaning in another language?” He shakes his head. “But if this is the city I think it is, I have heard tales of its grandeur. Once, they say, this city held billions of people.”

That seems impossible. “In one city? How big was Yumenes?”

“A few million.” He smiles at her openmouthed gape, then sobers somewhat. “And now there can’t be many more people than that, altogether, across the whole of the Stillness. When we lost the Equatorials, we lost the bulk of humanity. Still. Once, the world was even bigger.”

It can’t be. The volcanic crater is only so vast. And yet … Delicately, Nassun sesses below the sand and debris, searching for evidence of the impossible. The sand is much deeper than she thought. Far beneath its surface, though, she finds pressed pathways in long, straight lines. Roads? Foundations, too, though they are in oblong and round and other odd shapes: hourglass loops and fat S-curves and bowl-shaped dips. Not a single square. She puzzles over the odd composition of these foundations, and then abruptly realizes that it all has the sess of something mineralized, alkaline. Oh, it’s petrifying! Which means that originally—Nassun gasps.

“It’s wood,” she blurts aloud. A building foundation of wood? No, it’s something like wood, but also a bit like the polymer stuff that her father used to make, and a little like