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They were almost at the sanctuary door when another quake came, this one hard enough to send Pietro to his knees. The wail of the crowd was followed by a string of loud crashes as architectural accents ripped from buildings and shattered on the ground. Pietro stayed low while the tremor roiled beneath him, choppier and longer than any tremor he could remember from the past.
They were almost out of time.
The earth had steadied, though it hadn’t quite stilled, when Stollo reached out and hauled him to his feet. “Well, there’s one good thing,” Stollo said. “That last quake sent everyone out of the temple. I don’t think there’s going to be anyone in there but us. No one will stop us.”
“Then let’s go.”
They hurried up the steps and through the massive doors, and Pietro took a hasty look around. Some of the oval wall sconces were still glowing a ghostly white, but a few flickered oddly and at least half seemed to have failed completely. In the uncertain light, the usual gaudy assault of color was muted; overhead, the stained glass skylights looked flat and black. Pietro didn’t feel his usual joyous uprush of emotion at walking into the sacred space. Maybe he didn’t have time to be dazzled by divinity, or maybe he was more preoccupied with gauging their degree of danger. Half of the statues lay smashed on the floor, which crunched with broken mosaic tiles and other debris. The great pillars were still intact, though Pietro thought a few of them had developed vertical cracks. Not a reassuring sign.
“Do you have one of those chemlights with you?” he asked Stollo.
“Unfortunately, I used the last one on the island.”
He glanced at Rovyn and the captain, but they both shook their heads. He turned to Tezzel. “Your daughter has the ability to take a clump of dirt and turn it into a source of light,” he said. “I very much fear that as we descend to the lower levels of this building, the illumination may fail us completely. Is there a chance—”
She was already glancing around. “Yes.”
Stollo led her to a waist-high ornamental vase holding a flowering red bush. Miraculously, the vase had not overturned in all the chaos. “This was potted not a month ago. The high divine is very fond of the plant, which I believe came from Chibain.”
“She can make a light out ofdirt?” Rovyn demanded, watching as Tezzel scooped up a couple of handfuls of soil and did just that.
“A useful skill. Unless the high divine sees you do it, and then a suicidal one,” Pietro answered. Rovyn flicked him a look that made it clear she thought he was insane.
The floor shifted beneath them, and he felt his panic rise again. “We have no time—no time!” he called, and spun around, looking for the hidden door. Yes—there—tucked behind the pillar with the thin fracture—
He headed that way and the others fell in line behind him, the strangest parade he could ever have imagined leading. Stollo edged past him to unlock the hidden door, and the four of them filed after him into the long hallway with the insufficient lighting. Pietro pushed ahead again to take the lead. He remembered this journey from the trip he had made two months ago with Cody—and ten years ago with Harlo. The first task was to find the door that led to the next level down. It was this one—no, this one—
His second guess was correct. They cautiously descended the steep, ill-lit stairwell and exited onto the level that held a series of meditation spaces for the priests. All the doors were wide open and every room was empty, as anyone who had come down here for a reflective retreat had clearly run for the exits when the walls started shaking. The five of them quickly traversed the corridor, navigated the second stairwell, and hurried through the open storeroom with its piles of discarded furnishings and linens.
The next door resisted opening, and Stollo had to jiggle the key in the lock to convince it to turn. They all held their breath until they heard a faint, welcome click.
But no one was eager to step into the shadows of the narrow ramp that led down to the bottom level. It was all too easy to imagine one powerful quake bringing these stone walls crashing down, crushing everything beneath them. Pietro’s mind replayed images of the ruined temple on the eastern islands, which must have been destroyed by an event very similar to this one. He found it hard to draw a breath.
“I’m not going down there,” Rovyn declared.
“You don’t have to,” Pietro said. “Only Tezzel does. And me.”
“And me,” the captain said quietly.
“I’ll go,” Stollo said, but his voice was shaky.
Pietro glanced at Tezzel, to find her eyes wide with fear and her face pale in the dusky light. But she nodded and stepped forward, one clenched hand held above her head to light the way, the other running along the rough wall to steady her as she descended. The others followed, moving so gingerly Pietro could hardly hear their feet against the uneven stone.
At last—the thick wooden door that marked the end of their journey. “It’s not locked,” Pietro said, and Tezzel pushed her way through.
Pietro, close on her heels, froze with shock as he entered the final chamber. Stollo and the guard bumped into him, apologizing and backing off, but Pietro could not stop staring. The last time he had been here, the walls had closely ringed the stone altar with the curved metal basin. But the room had still been the size of a small bedroom, and even a tall man could stand upright.
But now the place was a cramped, tiny closet, its ceiling so low Pietro and the guard had to stoop to enter. Two of the walls were so close to each other he could spread his arms and touch them both. Only one of the opalescent disks still functioned, throwing an illumination so faint it could have been mist.
The metal pitcher lay on its side, resting against one of the encroaching walls. The great spoked wheel that covered the basin was canted up on one side, as if a shift in its stone support had shoved its alignment out of true.
Stollo, Tezzel, and the guard glanced around, curious and uneasy. “It’s so small in here,” the guard said.
“Too small,” said Pietro, his heart hammering with fear. “The walls are moving in. They’ll crush the instrument. And then—and then—”
Tezzel’s voice was steadier than his own. “What is it you want me to do?”
It was so dark Pietro couldn’t see the marks and incisions on the walls. He began running his hands nervously over the jagged surfaces, hoping to find what he needed by feel. What if it had already been covered up by the inexorable advance of stone? “There should be a casting of a hand print—maybe shoulder height—set within a smooth block. We need to find that.”
