In the weeks since Liv had last visited the ring, Matthew and Triss - particularly Triss, Liv decided - had settled into the ancient structure like a new home. The control room, with its great window and view of the spinning world below, had become something like their sitting room or solar.

While they hadn’t removed anything - the glass panes which constantly scrolled Vædic sigils in a rainbow of colors remained unobstructed - Liv’s adoptive brother and her sister and law had clearly added what they needed to feel comfortable.

“Not long after you left for Varuna, your brother sent for a wagon,” Keri explained, as Liv looked around the control room, spinning in a slow circle to take everything in. “I know that a few pieces were loaded from their rooms at Castle Whitehill, but I believe they also purchased quite a few things from the shops on The Hill. I have to admit, I didn’t quite realize just how much they’d moved, until now.”

The floor had been covered in carpets of thickly piled wool, in a variety of colors. Liv saw patterns of blue mountain columbines, which made her smile; but also finely embroidered depictions of manor houses, shepherds, water mills, hunting scenes, knights and their ladies, and a drovers train. A bench large enough for two people, carved from aspen wood and set with plush cushions, faced the great window.

There was a set of a small, octagonal wooden table, as well, with matching chairs, on which were set neatly stacked dishes. There was a heating plate, engraved with Vær. It wouldn’t serve as a hearth for actual cooking, so Liv imagined that Matthew brought meals up from Bald Peak to be warmed here.

Finally, there was a writing desk and chair, on which rested a sheaf of papers and notebooks which had probably come from Gaunt’s, back in Whitehill. Liv drifted over in spite of herself, and recognized Triss’ handwriting at a glance. She was tempted to sit right down and begin reading through what her sister-in-law had found, but resisted the urge and headed for the corridor which would take them to the healing beds.

Here, too, things had been rearranged to make Triss’s stay more comfortable. As soon as she’d knocked, and then entered the room, Liv saw that pillows and blankets had been piled on the bed, which Triss was using to prop herself upright, with a book in her lap. A small wardrobe had been wedged against one wall, and a camping cot, of the sort Liv had gotten used to while on campaign in Varuna, had been placed to one side for Matthew, with its own blankets and pillows.

“Have you been alright here, by yourself for a few days?” Liv asked. “I’m sorry I had to steal Matthew away.” As he’d promised, her brother had followed her to Whitehill, to take over for Keri as her regent.

Triss set her book down and smiled. “I’d get out of bed and come hug you,” she said, “but I’m only wearing an evening gown, and I’m sorry, Inkeris, but I’m not that comfortable around you quite yet. That and I’m still feeling a bit queasy from being up in the control room this morning.”

“I’ll come to you, then,” Liv told her, with a grin, and did just that, sitting down on the edge of the bed and wrapping her arms around her sister-in-law. “The baby is well?”

“Mmm-hmm.” Triss nodded. “If I’m understanding the Vædic correctly. I’d let you feel, but we’re not quite at the point of moving yet.” She squeezed Liv back, and then they released each other. Keri, in the meanwhile, had found himself a piece of wall to hold up by leaning on it.

“Arjun’s the one to ask about it,” Liv said, with a shrug. “We’re leaving him in Whitehill, but I’m sure he’d be willing to come out here for an afternoon and check on you.”

“I’ll get Matthew to fetch him,” Triss promised. “But I feel better, so long as I sleep here, and take a nap whenever I’m a bit off. Blood and shadows, Liv, I couldn’t keep a meal down for half a bell, before you got me up here. Now I can actually eat.”

“You look better.” It was true: that hollow, gaunt look that Triss’s face had acquired was gone, now, and her eyes were no longer shadowed. “It’s safe for you to leave the bed? You can handle the mana?”

“I’ve had plenty of practice, and your grandmother left me a book of exercises to keep it away from the baby,” Triss assured her. “Which I suppose I should give to you, to give back to her. Or to keep for yourself - you’ll need it sooner or later, I’d imagine.”

If it hadn’t been for the fact Keri was present in the room, Liv thought she might not have turned red. Triss cackled at her.

“I can step out if you wish,” Keri offered. “But it is nothing to be ashamed of. While it’s the women who need to learn that particular technique, most daiverim end up becoming familiar, as well, so that we can help.”

“You learned it with Rika, then,” Liv said, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Even saying the other woman’s name felt like plunging a chunk of ice into a hot bath. “There’s no rush, Triss. I’m not even thinking about being married yet. But yes, I can take it back to my grandmother if you like.”

“I have notes for you, as well,” Beatrice said. “On the table in front of the window. I copied everything into a book for you. But I can give you the short of it now, if you can stay for a bell.”

Liv glanced over and met Keri’s eyes.

“As I said, we don’t wish to arrive so early that we appear desperate,” he told her, with a smile. “I don’t think it will cause us any problems if you take a little while here.”

“You’ve got my full attention, then,” Liv said, turning back to Triss.

☙

Beatrice had done more than simply jot down a few notes. She’d written a comprehensive study of the ancient ring, complete with sketches, translations, references to other books - which she must have had Matthew fetch from Master Grenfell - and even footnotes. It was the sort of research that, if submitted to Coral Bay, would undoubtedly see her named a Master Mage of the guild.

This was in spite of the fact that many translations were incomplete, best guesses, or simply incomprehensible. Triss’s map of the ring - which spread across two pages, and required the book to be opened and laid out flat - was labelled with both Vædic sigils, and, beneath that, Lucanian. The Lucanian often included question marks.

Liv had long since realized that the ancient word for ‘dock’ was applied to Antrian storage rooms, where dozens of the ancient war machines could be placed in the same sort of hibernation that her family could create using Dā and Cel. The section of the ring labelled ‘docks,’ however, seemed truly immense - and so far as the history she’d been taught, the Antrians were only created when Ractia and her allies needed soldiers to defend themselves. By that time, they’d already been barred from coming to the ring, and Liv had never heard of the Trinity using Antrians at all. So why would there be a set of docks the size of -

“I can’t be reading this right,” Liv said, looking up from the book. “These docks are over five miles long? You’re sure this isn’t a mistake? Perhaps five hundred years?”

Triss shook her head. “That isn’t even the largest section of the ring,” she pointed out. “Most of it’s taken up by machinery that collects sunlight and turns it into mana. That was easy enough to figure out, since I recognized Savel and Aluth. But there’s another section labelled ‘construction’, multiple waystones, mana shield generators bigger than Castle Whitehill, and I think even some kind of weapons. And then there’s words I can’t parse at all. This one here -” she stabbed her finger at the open book - “it’s got the root for water in it, but it’s got to be a compound word with something I don’t know.”

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“This is unbelievable,” Liv said. “With that much mana to power mana shields, you could cover...” she grappled with the sheer scale of the enchantments she was seeing.

“If the ring wasn’t torn to pieces, they would have been able to protect the entire thing at the same time,” Triss told her. “Of course, it is utterly wrecked, and more of it’s breaking off every year. Look.”

Liv’s sister-in-law leaned forward to flip the page, revealing a second sketch, laid out identically to the first - save that this one showed only what remained. Great, gaping sections of the ring were missing, or ripped open to expose places like the ‘dock’ to the vast darkness outside. Some sort of curved, spinal structure still kept everything together for now, but Liv wondered just how long that would last.

“This looks delicate,” she murmured, tracing a finger over one such section, nearly a tenth the circumference of the entire ring.

“That’s one of the problems,” Triss said. “Most of the pieces that come off are pretty small. Some of the light-collectors came off last week, and Matthew and I were able to watch them fall. Well, mostly that was me,” she admitted. “He’s still working on learning how to use Bheuv. But the glass helped us track them. They tumbled down until they hit the air, and then they started to burn. Ended up hitting the ocean on the far side of Varuna, what was left of them. But what if something bigger gave way? Something like those mana shield generators?”

“It would be like when the Trinity dropped the sky on Varuna,” Liv realized, as she thought out loud. “All over again.”

“Except that we’d have no control over where it all hit,” Triss said. “Might not be the ocean. Could be Lucania. Could be Whitehill, for all we know, which does not make me feel very comfortable, Liv.”

Liv bit her lip, and then turned to Keri. “Why haven’t the Vakansa come up here more?” she asked. “Aira knows what’s here. She used the healing beds. She even told us her mother had taken her to the ring, when she was little.”

Keri sighed. “Because for most of our people, Liv, we have spent over a thousand years defining ourselves as separate from our former masters. There is a great resistance to using anything left behind by the Vædim. Some of it - like these weapons, whatever they are - is dangerous. Almost all of it, we won’t understand. And some people worry that by trying, we will become just like they were.”

“That may have worked for a while,” Liv mused. “But I don’t know that it will any longer. I’m more convinced than ever that we need to start salvaging what we can from this place, and taking it back down. I’d rather use it, than have it fall on our heads.”

“There’s going to be a lot of resistance to that,” Keri warned her.

“Just one more thing I’m going to be fighting with the council about, then,” Liv grumbled. “One way or another, we’re going to have to study this place. You made a good start, Triss. But I’d rather not see what happens if we leave the ring be another few hundred years and trust to luck. Anyway, thank you. You’ll keep poking around, I imagine?”

“I don’t have much else to do, especially now you’ve got Matthew running things,” Triss complained. “So yes - yes, I will. But I could use some help.”

Liv stood up, and tucked the book under her arm. “We don’t have enough people in Whitehill,” she admitted. “I need the whole guild.”

“Another reason to go to Freeport, I suppose,” Keri said.

“One thing at a time. That can wait until I meet my niece,” Liv told them both.

“Matthew thinks it’ll be a boy,” Triss said.

“And you?” Liv asked her.

“I’ll just be happy to have any child.” The statement was raw and open, like a bleeding wound. Liv leaned down to embrace Triss one more time, and she and Keri set off for Al’Fenthia.

☙

At the trading city among the great trees, Liv’s contingent from Whitehill met up with Albert Crosbie’s escort from Valegard. Triss’s father had brought what healthy knights he had, serving in the same sort of role that Liv’s personal guard filled under Kaija. They had horses and wagons, as well, with their own tents and supplies for making camp.

Under the guidance of the Eld who’d made the journey to the Hall of Ancestors before, chiefly Kaija and Keri, they made their way north by northeast, into a vast, interior forest that Liv knew extended all the way to the ice-fields of Kelthelis. With the wagons, it was slow-going, though they did have the advantage of a road from Al’Fenthia. Whenever Liv found herself grumbling about the lack of a waystone at their destination, Keri reminded her of the reasons for that.

“At the time the Houses first met here, no one was entirely certain the Vædim were all gone,” he said, from the saddle of his gelding. “A waystone could have provided a means of attack. And then, later, once it was clear that the war was well and truly done, it meant that anyone who wanted to march forces in had to do that the long way. It was a kind of protection.”

“Not that it helped much when the Iravata turned traitor,” Kaija observed. “But by that point, it was tradition.”

“Just like the tradition that no one is supposed to bring weapons,” Liv said. “I don’t like that one.”

“We’ll leave a camp half a day’s march from the Hall itself,” Kaija explained. “They’ll hold onto all our arms and armor. And you’ve got the least reason to complain - no one’s taking that wand from you, after all, and you haven’t actually carried a sword in ages.”

When they did finally break off from their rear guard, so to speak, Liv quickly found herself distracted from such concerns - or, at least, they were pushed to the back of her mind.

“It’s beautiful,” she admitted. Her words were little more than a murmur: it felt something like stepping into a Temple of the Trinity, or a library. In the Hall of the Ancestors, as well, shouting or laughing seemed like it would be somehow disrespectful.

“The last time we came, I showed all of this to Rei,” Keri said, and his voice was hushed as well. “All the animals of the north, Liv - all the creatures of the wild that we depend on to live. They’re all here.”

The carved trunks of immense red cedars, like ornate pillars in a palace, had been shaped into stylized depictions of all manner of beasts: gyrfalcons and snowy owls, great bears and lumbering hastim, wolves and fish. It started perhaps half a mile out, and Liv found herself craning her neck to see the more distant sculptures, while she let Steria follow the other horses without much at all in the way of guidance.

“I want to ride all around it in a circle,” she told Keri, with a grin. “I can’t leave without seeing what’s on the other sides, as well. Houses come from more than one direction, don’t they?”

Keri nodded. “Sooner or later, any road in the north will lead here,” he told her. “Come. Let’s find ourselves a campsite. I know where House Syvä usually sets up.”

Liv shared a glance with Kaija, who would know even better. Still, Keri seemed to enjoy showing everything to Liv, so they simply shrugged and followed him.

“The unconquered houses cluster together in one arc,” Keri told her, “but the camp of the houses which sided with Mirriam is larger. Six houses, rather than five - and that’s if the Kaulris come at all. Often they don’t bother.”

They rode around the other edge of the encampments, where a sort of ring-road had long since been worn in the forest floor, a hard-packed stretch of bare earth where the wagon wheels rolled well-enough. Liv saw circles of tents, and smelled woodsmoke rising from dozens of cookfires. Horse-lines had been tied between trees, and wagons parked just at the edge of the ring-road, at the back of each camp.

“No banners at all,” Arnold Crosbie grumbled. He was right: in Lucania, such a gathering would have been marked by heraldry, so that each baron’s camp could have been identified at a glance. Among the Eld, however, one needed an eye for the way in which the Vædim had, long ago, shaped their most favorite servants to appeal to their immortal eyes.

“Asuris,” Liv told the older man, nodding to one camp as they passed. “You can tell by the blush to their cheeks - violet, rather than pink. And the hair, of course. They’re the only other house with white hair.”

“Lavender eyes, instead of blue,” Keri added. “They’re here early. Come, there’ll be an empty space left between the unconquered, and the rest.”

“I see them!” Liv said, standing up in her stirrups and waving her hand.

Rather than canvas, her family had raised tents made from stretched caribou hide. It looked to Liv as if they’d returned to the same campsite again and again, for there were old, weathered logs dragged up to surround the cookfire. Liv swung down out of her saddle and handed her reins off, waiting just long enough to be certain Keri got down onto the ground without any problems. Then, she scampered ahead to where her grandmother and her father waited - with a third figure, one she recognized immediately but hadn’t seen in years.

“Hello, Livara,” Ambassador Sakari said, with a soft smile on his face. “In the name of House Iravata, I have an offer for you.”