He looked furious. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Galen glared at him hard. “Because I’m the master, boy. I keep the secrets. And besides, you’d have given it away a hundred times. You can’t lie well enough.”
Astounded, Raffi collapsed into silence. Galen leaned forward. “But I’m surprised, Carys, that you’ve already told these two. When I saw you in that cell I presumed you’d have pretended to be caught. So whose side are you really on?”
She was silent. They all watched her. Then she said quietly, “I’d only ever known the Watch, Galen, until I met you. I’d never spoken to keepers before. You did some things . . .”
He nodded, his long hair falling. “They told you it was all illusion.”
“But why?” She looked up at him, face flushed. “I’m beginning to see some of the things they told us aren’t true. I’m not sure anymore what I should believe. And then, when you were caught . . .” She shrugged. “I just wanted to get you out.”
Galen looked at her, and something in his eyes softened.
The Sekoi squirmed uneasily. “Very touching,” it muttered. “Forgive me for saying this, but, keeper, you realize this may all be lies. She may still want us to take her to the Crow. That’s why she got you out.”
“I do,” Carys said.
“Yes, but only to solve your doubts? Or might you not turn on us all when you find him? To capture the Crow would bring you a great deal of gold, no doubt.” Its eyes gleamed yellow.
“For myself,” she snapped.
“Prove it,” Galen said quietly.
“How?”
“Leave your weapon here.”
She stared at him, astonished. “That’s madness! The city is full of dangers; we’d have no protection.”
“Do it as an act of faith.” His dark eyes watched her carefully. “Keepers carry no weapons.”
“They do,” she retorted. “Invisible ones.”
“I have none, Carys.”
She glanced away. “Yes, but just to leave it here! It’s so stupid!”
“It will show us that you mean what you say.”
She turned; for a long moment she stared at him, then at Raffi, who said nothing. Finally she pulled the bow off her back and threw it down. “I must be totally insane!”
Disgusted, she flung the spare bolts after it. “No wonder the Order’s been wiped out!”
“It hasn’t. Not yet.” Galen took the globe from Raffi and fingered it. “And it never will. Not while we have faith.”
As he said it an enormous crack burst in the sky outside, making them all jump. The Sekoi slithered to the window; as it looked out, they saw its face was rippled with red light.
“You’d better see this,” it hissed.
Raffi pushed in. Another whooshing sound shot up; he saw a burst of red flame high in the dark; it fell in flakes behind the high walls.
“What was it?”
“Watch-flares.” The Sekoi pulled its head in. “They’ve found the men under the arch. We need to move.”
“Carefully though.” Carys followed. “They’ll double the patrols.”
She slid out behind the Sekoi, but halfway through the window Raffi saw her look back at the crossbow; a hopeless, bitter look. Then he climbed after her.
Galen hurried them. They moved through broken palaces like shadows. But soon the buildings were left behind; they came to a desolation of smoke, rising and hissing from cracks; shattered walls broke up the way. There were no streets here; the destruction had left only tumbled masses of stone. They hurried by the smashed pieces of an enormous statue; Raffi saw a hand as big as a room, lying pointing to the sky and, still in its original place, a huge bare foot, so vast that the toes were like small hills they had to scramble over.
The stench grew. Shadows of draxi swooped overhead, their screams keen. Raffi slipped and slithered behind the others, glad that Galen had the globe; he had fallen so often he would have broken it.
Now they ran over a wide square, their feet scuffling on the stones, and in the middle came to a pillar so tall its top was lost in the black sky. Galen stopped to look at it; every side was covered with cryptic letters.
Raffi caught his arm. “We can’t stop.”
“Look at it. Centuries old. The secrets it has.”
“Hurry!” the Sekoi hissed from the dark. “I can smell them. They’re close!”
They raced across the square. On the far side was an inky stillness; plunging into it, Raffi heard Carys shout, then he felt the steaming water soak his knees. He scrambled back.
“Flooded,” the Sekoi spat.
They gazed at an eerie landscape. An archway and some broken pillars rose from the water. Vapor hung above the surface and some leathery vegetation had managed to sprout here; it grew over the broken walls like a creeping rash. Steam gathered around them; where they stood, the ground was reverting to marsh, stinking of sulfur and the invisible heat.
Raffi tugged his feet out.
“We’ll have to go around.” Galen glanced back. “Take care. The ground may not be safe.”
They had reached the heart of Tasceron, and it was a morass of ruined halls. Here and there carvings rose, half a body, a broken face; strange obelisks and doorways that led nowhere, standing on their own in the dim lake. Carefully they made their way around the edge of the swamp, climbing over walls and through gaps and holes.
Finally Galen stopped. He bent over the chart. “We’re close. We need to find a tree.”
“Here!” The Sekoi looked around, wondering.
“Yes. A calarna tree.”
Raffi stared at him. The calarna was the first tree, the tree of Flain. It had given its branches for the House of Trees. Were they that close?
“Spread out.” Galen crumpled the paper. “Quickly.”
Turning, Raffi ducked under the wall into a blackened garden. Brambles were waist-high; he forced his way into them, arms up, dodging the swinging, slashing thorns. Then a stifled yell stopped him.
“Galen! Over here!”
Tearing his coat in his hurry, he backed out and found Carys at the stump of something warped and ill-shapen. Galen shoved her aside and bent down to it. He gave a hiss of satisfaction.
“This was it.”
“Keeper.” The Sekoi’s voice was quiet and cold. They looked up at it; its yellow eyes were narrowed.
“We’re being watched.”
“Sense-lines, Raffi!” Galen growled. “Now!”
Silent, he sent them out, and touched the flickers of men, many of them, running silent as ghosts through the ruined arcades. Galen was on hands and knees, groping on the ground. “Hurry! It’s got to be here! An opening of some kind!”
A slither of stones behind them. The Sekoi’s fur prickled.
“No time to look, keeper.”
“We have to find it!”
Carys crouched beside him. “Should have kept my bow,” she whispered.
Desperate, they groped hurriedly in the dark among the smashed wreckage of rooms; broken pots, cups, tiles, brick and mosaic, shards of glass that glinted in the steamy haze.
Digging a splinter from his skin, Raffi felt the sense-lines snap, one by one. “They’re here!” he gasped.
“I don’t care!” Galen roared. “Find it!”
Sweating with worry, dizzy with the effort of keeping the lines out, Raffi swept a clutter of rubble aside and saw with a leap of his heart a face in the mossed floor. It was a mask of beaten copper, a huge thing, riveted down, and on its forehead, almost trodden out, a ring of six small circles, and in the middle, the seventh.
“The moons!”
“What?” Galen was there; his firm hands on the mask, fingers stretched flat, feeling for marks and symbols Raffi couldn’t see, pushing and prodding.