wrong with the map,” he said. “I appeared in the middle of the Great Hall of Instruere, exactly as I intended. Gave a few fellows putting out chairs quite a fright.” He laughed shortly, then frowned. “Things aren’t going so well there, it seems. The Koinobia have taken over the city, according to one fellow I spoke to. Guardsmen replaced by priests, citizens forced into Hal worship, public houses closed or converted into places of worship. Violence in the streets, so the lad said.”
“Didn’t he wonder about the beam of coloured light?” Torve asked.
“Didn’t see it,” the plainsman said. “Said he didn’t anyway, and he had no reason to lie. Queen Stella needs to go back there and straighten that Koinobia out. Put this Halite thing down.”
Moralye and Seren returned within moments of each other. The scholar echoed Sauxa’s comments about the accuracy of the map, explaining how she had appeared within ten paces of the door to the scriptorium. “I walked in and that blind oaf Palanget greeted me as if I hadn’t been away. Didn’t anyone notice I’d gone?”
“But you returned,” Lenares prompted.
“I couldn’t get out of there quickly enough,” Moralye said, her face sour. “I’d rather be a part of making history than stuck in the darkness reading about it.”
Seren shook his head at Lenares’ enquiry. “I walked for a thousand paces or more,” he said, “before I came across the Altima Road. Even then I was perhaps another hour’s journey on foot from the pit, not a journey I’d undertake at night on my own.”
“In what direction would you have had to travel from the beam of light to go directly to the pit?” Bearing and distance, she wanted to demand of them. Give me bearing and distance! But these were ordinary people and didn’t calculate such things as a matter of course.
“Seven thousand paces, give or take, in a sou’souwest direction.”
Hopefully not much give or take. Sou’souwest? She converted it into proper directions—just to the daughterwards of fatherback—and considered the result. A greater distortion than that Noetos had experienced and in a different direction. Maximum distortion, then, to be expected between the two.
Confirmed by Consina when she returned from Makyra Bay—or, at least, from as close to it as she could come. Out of breath, she explained how she’d run hard along the North Road and finally found the top of the cliff, and had spent no more than a regretful moment staring down at the darkness where her town used to be.
Bregor’s return added further confirmation. “Raceme is on fire,” he said, puffing out the words. “All is confusion. I could hear the shouting and the crackling of the flames from atop the hills beyond the Shambles. Wanted to go closer but I would probably just have met my death.”
When the last of the travellers had returned, Lenares smiled at them as confidently as she could. “The map is dented, not badly distorted. I have calculated the error for the region of Andratan and have chosen a feature from the map to travel to. If you please, I want to make one final test: I do not want to end up swimming for my life in Malayu Bay.”
“What test?” Noetos asked, impatience in his voice.
“Send someone to Malayu itself,” she said. “It’s near enough to Andratan that the amount of error is almost exactly the same. If I select a feature the error-distance away, the traveller should be transported into the heart of Malayu.”
“Lenares,” Noetos said, his arms wide, “we would have been literally lost without you. None of us could have worked this out for ourselves. You are a marvel. But there just isn’t the time to check everything. We must trust you. Let us leave.”
“Really?” she asked, her eyes shining.
A dozen nods.
“If we all go,” she added, “the thread will most likely disappear and we will not be able to return.”
“The alternative is that we leave you, Torve and Cylene behind. You are coming with us.” The fisherman was adamant.
“How do we reach the thread?” Cylene asked.
“The others should grasp it,” Lenares said. “You, Torve and I only have to visualise it. Everyone ready?”
Cries of assent. Unlike her, they had spent long enough in this weird place.
“Travel,” she said.
CHAPTER 19
ANDRATAN
“MY FRONT DOOR,” SAID THE DESTROYER, nodding to his right. “From the inside.” Beyond a broad hallway stood wide wooden doors, barred and reinforced with iron. They looked every day of their nearly two thousand years of age. “Using these doors would have