“If you can spare me, I’d like to see just how badly off the wounded are,” Arjun told Liv, as they followed one of the manor guards to where the expedition was assembling. The warrior led them from the base of the staircase, which curved back up around the great tree, a short distance down the street to the nearest intersection of two roads. There, dozens of riders were waiting, along with saddled northern horses clearly intended for Liv and her friends.

Liv frowned. “That leaves us without a skilled healer,” she pointed out. “I know you want to help everyone you can, Arjun, but the best way for you to do that is for us to get Elder Aira into the depths. If she can truly stop the eruption, then you can come back and help the wounded.”

“I can’t just leave people to die,” her friend argued.

“They’ll die anyway if the warriors at the gap break before we can stop this,” Liv insisted. “I’ll do my best to protect her, but what if Aira is wounded on the way in? Without you, the entire thing could fall apart.”

An armored soldier led one of the horses with an empty saddle over, and cupped his hands for Liv to put her boot in. Before Liv could mount, the mare pushed her head forward into Liv’s chest. “Steria!” Liv exclaimed, with a grin. Master Grenfell had told her that he’d had her horse delivered to Al’Fenthia, but Liv hadn’t recognized her shape in the predawn darkness.

Steria snuffled around Liv’s face, chomping at her hair as if it was hay. Despite how urgent their mission was, Liv took just a moment to stroke the mare’s soft nose before putting her boot in the soldier’s hands. She swung her leg up over the back of the horse and settled into the saddle, accepting the reins. “It’s good to see you again,” she whispered into her horse’s ears, leaning forward so that no one else would hear.

“Where’s Wren?” Rose asked, nudging her loaned horse over to Liv. Sidonie followed, so that they were all close enough to speak easily.

“I’ve sent her to go help my father hunt spies,” Liv explained.

“It’s just the four of us, then?” Sidonie asked.

“If Keri was well enough, I would have brought him,” Liv said. “But the fever hadn’t broken when I stopped by his room. As far as I understand it, the rest of these soldiers are reinforcements to keep the line from collapsing.”

Vari walked his horse over to join them: Liv had never seen Airis’ son in armor before, but he wore it now. “You have the right of it,” he confirmed. “I’m bringing forty warriors to hold the line while you all get the Elder into the depths. It’s all we can spare from the trading quarter; any more, and the Lucanian troops will notice, for certain. My mother doesn’t want to risk them getting any ideas, since they know you’re in the city.”

Finally, Aira Tär Keria guided her horse to join the knot of riders in conversation. “I haven’t ridden a horse in decades,” the old woman admitted. “It’ll be all I can do not to fall off, children.”

“We’ll keep you safe,” Liv promised. “Sidonie, Rose, I want one of you to either side of her. Use mana-shields to block anything that comes. Arjun, you’re right behind – close enough to ride forward and heal if it's needed. I’ll be in front, to clear anything that gets in our way. When you’re ready,” she said, turning to Vari.

The young man nodded, shouted commands to the other riders, and set off down the east road toward the city walls, gates, and the road beyond. Liv didn’t know the terrain, and only the light of lanterns gave her glimpses of the city as they passed. Orders must have gone out in advance of their departure, for the gates swung open as the riders came on, and they rode through without slowing or stopping.

Once the entire group was out on the road, Liv looked back to see the gates swinging shut again, great dim shapes in the predawn darkness. The moon had set, but the stars sparkled in the sky, and the ring shone down on them, giving just enough light to make the ride possible.

Vari led them east at a trot. This was no mad dash, but instead a deliberate pace that would preserve the horses over a long distance. Liv tried to imagine the patience, the self control it must have taken the young Eld not to simply charge off as soon as they were on the road: if it had been her father fighting a losing battle, she wasn’t certain that she’d have been able to stay so calm.

The occasional snowflakes that had been falling since Liv brought Keri up to the manor became less scattered as they rode. By the time the first light of dawn broke the sky over the mountains, the group was riding through a true snowfall, and the wind whipping about them was frigid. Liv was thankful for the enchantments worked into her armor to keep her warm: she didn’t want to waste any mana that she might have need of later.

They reached the tents where Elden healers treated the wounded first, and next to that the horse-lines where mounts had been tied. Rather than stop, Vari kicked his horse into a gallop and charged them across the last stretch of land before the fighting.

To either side, the walls of the gap loomed. Here, the mountains had closed in to form a pass no more than a mile in width, bordered by a mixture of steep slopes and granite escarpments that were coated in ice. As the gray sky grew more and more light, Liv was able to make out a palisade that stretched across the entire gap. Thorny vines grew upon it, and the fortification must have been formidable when first raised, but days of fighting had left it broken and battered all down the line.

The riders, with Vari at the head, charged into a pack of enormous wolves, first using long spears to pierce the mana beasts, and then laying about themselves with swords. Liv shouted to her friends, and peeled their small group of five off. They weren’t here to fight mana beasts - they were here to get to the depths.

“Is everyone handling the eruption?” Liv asked, looking between Sidonie, Arjun, and especially Rose. “The mana will only get worse the deeper we go.”

“I’m fine for now,” Rose assured her, and the other two nodded.

Liv turned to Aira. “You know where we’re going, I assume.”

The old woman nodded, huddled atop her horse under a thick cloak. Liv resolved that the first time she had to use Cel, she’d channel the waste heat into the elder. The last thing they needed was for Aira to freeze to death before they got where they were going.

“Once we’re through the gap, we’ll find ourselves in a valley,” Aira explained. “The slopes are terraced to grow crops, and there will be orchards to either side. The road is still maintained, because we farm the shoals - but it splits at the edge of the depths. It makes a ring around where the mana density is greatest. When we reach the ring, we’ll need to leave the road. There’s a wall of thorns there, to mark the border and to protect our farmers from the sorts of mana beasts that grow at the heart of the rift.”

“Elder!” Liv recognized the voice, and turned to see Airis ka Reimis approaching. The merchant looked nothing like the man she remembered from Whitehill, so long ago. Her picture of him had always been that of an elegant man, wearing expensive clothing designed to impress his business partners.

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Now, like Keri had been, Airis was coated in blood and grime from days of fighting without respite. He wore peculiar armor, which Liv would never have been able to picture if she had not seen it now: it was of lacquered wood, like that of most of the Al’Fenthia warriors. His hair had slipped from his braids in many places, giving the man a wild look.

“Grandson.” Aira nudged her horse over to him with her knees, and Liv followed so that she would be close in case some threat approached.

“Inkeris made it back to the city, then,” Airis said, and Liv could hear the clear relief in his voice. He turned to face her with a furrowed brow, as if trying to place her, and she could see the moment that recognition came, like a light behind his eyes. “Livara? I can hardly believe you’re the same girl.”

“It’s been twenty five years,” Liv reminded him, with a smile. “Enough time even for me to grow up. These are my friends – Arjun, Sidonie and Rose.”

“Thank you for coming,” the Elden merchant said. “I hope you've brought infantry, as well, because just those riders with my son won’t be enough.”

Liv glanced over to see that the wolf pack had been put down, and Vari was leading his warriors in dismounting from their horses to fill in the gaps at the palisade.

“Livara and her friends will be escorting me into the rift,” Aira explained. “If they can get me to my mother’s home, I should be able to wrest control of this rift from Ractia, and end the eruption.”

Airis frowned. “I will go with you,” he said. “My son can command the defense here.”

“You’re clearly exhausted,” Liv broke in. “Take a moment and get a drink. Catch your breath for the next wave. But right now, you’d only slow us down.”

The elder chuckled. “She’s right, you know. Stay here and keep the mana beasts from reaching our city.”

“Same formation as before,” Liv told her friends, and looked to the palisade. There were plenty of gaps to pick from. “Focus on defending the elder. I’ll clear the way.” She flicked her reins, guiding Steria forward, and drew her wand.

“Celent’he Svec Manim,” Liv incanted, using a deep breath to vibrate the Vædic syllables up from the depths of her belly. Cel woke at the back of her mind, stretching like a cat, and Liv had the distinct impression that the word of power gloried in the falling snow around them. Six rings of mana focused around the sigils carved into her wand, wasting hardly a scrap of Liv’s magical power, and six armored soldiers of ice solidified around the small group of riders.

Liv created her warriors with a mix of spears, swords, and warhammers. She took her time, making their weapons of adamant ice, and the plates of their sculpted armor as well. Guided by her intent, they marched forward, angled three to each side, like the point of an arrowhead.

“Have they trained you to do anything but fight, child?” Aira asked, from where the old woman rode just behind Liv.

“I’m a fair hand at enchanting, now,” Liv said, thinking back to all the rough wands she’d made for her students. “When I first found out I had magic, I did other things. I took one of my friends sliding down the ice, from the top of Deer Peak to the bottom, on old shields.” It brought a smile to her face to remember – Emma giggling with laughter in the garden at Whitehill, then even Master Grenfell climbing onto a shield at the top of the mountain. She tried to recall the last time she’d used magic for something that was simply fun.

“I blame the times you children were born in,” the old woman grumbled.

The six soldiers of ice led the way through a gap in the palisade, and the group was immediately surrounded by a wave of mana beasts. One of Liv’s soldiers speared an overgrown weasel through the back, pinning it to the earth, while two others hacked a wildcat with thorns growing out of its shoulders into pieces. Liv kept the horses to a walk, for the moment: she wanted to use her conjured warriors as a screen for as long as they could.

Once they were through the fighting at the palisade, things actually eased up for a little while. The mana beasts that pressed into the gap were concentrated by the close quarters, and they were driven forward by the boiling, reaching edge of the eruption. In the valley itself, there were still threats - but they came in ones and twos, with time in between to catch one’s breath.

Still, all of them were forced to fight their way forward, even with the frozen soldiers to take the brunt of the action. Sidonie used her family’s word of power to throw boulders that crushed anything they hit, or when there was nothing convenient for ammunition, knives or coherent mana. Rosamund sucked anything that got near her down into the ground, where Liv imagined the poor animals would suffocate, buried in the soil. Arjun held himself back, for the most part, saving his power for the time that healing would be needed, but Liv saw him use Cost once on a fox that came up from behind the party, shredding its flesh between shards of bone that thrust out from within.

The only one who did not cast was the elder, Aira. Instead, the old woman huddled under her cloak miserably, despite Liv warming her as best she could. Liv wasn’t certain whether she was saving herself for whatever would happen at the heart of the rift, or whether she’d simply grown too weak to fight.

In the moments between brutal violence, Liv couldn’t help but wonder at the world within the rift. Aira had spoken of crops and orchards, but her words hadn’t conveyed the extent of what the Eld had done here - or perhaps, Liv admitted to herself, what the old gods had done, and her own people merely maintained.

For one thing, the valley seemed to somehow be shielded from the snowstorm, as if they’d passed a ward or enchantment the moment their party rode down out of the gap. It still wasn’t warm, precisely - but the snow was reduced to only scattered flakes that melted the moment they hit the ground. Liv thought it felt like the last snow of the year perhaps, or the very first after harvest season, when the ground hadn’t frozen and the branches were not yet bare.

There were orchards, indeed: extensive rows of apple, pear, plum, and cherry trees. There were berry patches, gardens of herbs, and fields of bare, dark earth where Liv imagined root vegetables would have been growing during the warm part of the year.

The terraces that Aira Tär Keria had described were evident on every slope that rose from the valley, and they were like nothing Liv had ever seen before. It was as if someone had reached down with a great blade and cut the mountains into level slices, like great stairways, that curved gracefully to surround the valley. This resulted in vast expanses of level land that all appeared to be filled with winter wheat, for harvest during flood season. At the sight, Liv could well believe that this rift fed her people all across the north.

At the center of the valley rose a spire of white stone, a tower without a castle. Encircling the tower was a ring, a wall of thorns, a sort of hedge made up of all sharp edges and piercing things that warded anyone from reaching the tower.

Liv, years before, had been granted the right, by Baron Henry, to read the preserved journal of Semhis Thorn-Killer, the ancestor of the Summerset family. At the time, she’d been focused on what she could learn from the spells the author had recorded; in fact, Liv had looted the diary for nouns and other parts of speech like a highwayman looting a captured carriage. But she’d also taken the time to copy over the entire volume, by hand, into a blank book she’d purchased from Gaunt’s Books, and over the years since come back to it repeatedly.

“That’s the tower where the Thorn-Killer fought your mother, isn’t it?” Liv asked Aira.

“The heart of the rift,” the old woman said. “And the home in which I spent my childhood. I think Semhis would have thrown it down if he could, reduced it to rubble - but no matter how long his siege engines pounded it with boulders, he could find no sign of damage. Finally, they gave up and left it to stand.”

“What can we expect?” Rosamund asked. “More mana beasts?”

“I haven’t gone beyond the thorns in a very long time,” Aira admitted. “It isn’t easy for me.”

Liv tried to imagine how it would feel to walk through the empty ruins of Castle Whitehill, and see only dust and cobwebs where the kitchen hearth had once been warm. To find her old bedroom, the furniture all crumbled away. She could well believe it would not be a pleasant experience.

“Can you make us a path through the thorns?” she asked.

“That much I can do, at the least,” the old woman assured them. “Semhis and his army destroyed most of my mother’s defenses on the way in, but she never relied on static, dead things like most of the other Vædim did.”

“What did she use instead?” Sidonie asked. Liv, riding at the head of the group, couldn’t see her friend’s eyes, but she could picture the familiar expression well enough – sparkling with curiosity. She’d be lucky if the girl hadn’t pulled a notebook and quill pen out.

“Plants, of course,” Aira said. “Thorns that pierce, coated in poison. Blossoms that foul the air so that it cannot be breathed. And gardens that can consume flesh just as easily as a pack of wolves.”