He sent word to the Archbishop the next morning that he accepted, and for the next three weeks his life belonged to the Church.Dawn prayers in a cold side chapel, on his knees on stone. Then scripture, hours of it, read aloud to him by a patient deacon with a voice like a slow drip—the lives of the Seraphs, the Rule of the Consecrated, which was every bit as long as Seraphina had said. Then rehearsals: where to walk, where to stop, when to kneel, when to rise, which hand to hold the candle in and for how long, over and over, until his legs ached from the standing and his mind ached from the rest. In his right hand the candle sat crooked, the thumb standing off the wax where it would not fold in."I miss the road," he said, most evenings, lying face-down on the settee in the suite.Celestia didn't tell him that it was an honor, or that he'd earned it. She showed him how to kneel on stone with his weight back on his heels so his knees wouldn't bruise, and how to hold a candle for an hou

They found the shop on the fourth day of looking.It stood on a corner in Westbridge ward, where the streets were broad and the houses were tall and the washing hung between the upper windows only on the back lanes. It had been a potion emporium once; the name was still ghosting through the whitewash over the door. Inside there was nothing but dust and empty shelves to the ceiling and a long counter with a crack down it, and light—a great deal of light, from two tall windows that looked onto both streets.Seraphina walked into the middle of the floor and turned around slowly with her hands clasped under her chin."It has good light," she said. "Plants like good light." She thought about it. "So do people who are sick."Ethan was running his hand along the cracked counter, seeing it scrubbed, seeing bottles on the shelves behind it in rows. "A bit of work, and it could be something."Celestia was standing in the doorway looking out, not in. Down the broad street, two streets away, she c

When Regnas sent for them, he didn't send to the counter. He sent a boy to the Silver Griffon with a note sealed in blue wax that said only My rooms. Tonight. Use the back stair.The Guild Master's private chamber was at the top of the building, under the roof, and it was small and plain and entirely covered in maps. They were pinned to the walls, spread across the table, rolled in racks along the floor. Regnas sat at the head of the table with his fingers steepled under his beard and did not get up."There's a ruin," he said, "under the hills west of the city. Sealed. Has been since before I was born, by order of the Council and the Guild together. We call it the Labyrinth of Echoes." He laid one thick finger on a map. "Inside it there's a thing called mana-crystalite. It grows in the rock down there like quartz. Weight for weight it's worth more than mithril-steel, more than Flameheart ore, more than anything you can pull out of the ground in this half of the world."Ethan raised an

The stair gave out into rough tunnels hacked through the rock. The air was warm and thick and smelled of unwashed bodies and old smoke. From somewhere ahead came a high, constant chittering, like a great many small voices all talking at once.Celestia wrinkled her nose. "We've walked into a hive," she murmured, and her hand went to her sword.They crept along a winding tunnel with bones and rubbish crunching underfoot until it opened onto a cavern lit by greasy fires. Between tents of stretched hide and heaps of refuse moved goblins, dozens of them, perhaps a hundred, small and green and wiry, arguing, cooking, sharpening things. A whole tribe had made its home on the second floor of the Labyrinth.A hundred goblins was a way to die slowly.Celestia leaned close, showing her teeth. "Goblins are afraid of dragons. Let me.""Wait..."She had already stepped out into the firelight.She drew in a breath that seemed to go on for a long time, and let it out as a roar. Her wings came open beh

The change came all at once. One step on the stair the air was warm and sour with sulfur; the next it was cold and still and dead, the cold of a cellar that has never been opened, and the stair set them down at the edge of a graveyard.It went on further than the torchlight could reach. A whole buried valley of the dead: tombstones in crooked rows, leaning into one another, and among them mausoleums of pale stone with their doors shut and their roofs cracked. Mushrooms grew among the graves in clusters, and they gave off a cold blue glow, and by that glow every stone had a long shadow that moved when the three of them moved.Celestia drew in closer to Ethan without seeming to notice she'd done it. "This place feels..." She looked for the word. "Sorry. Sorrowful."Her voice had gone quiet. It was not a voice he'd heard her use before.It was Neo who heard it this time. He stopped with one foot still raised. Under them, under the graves, under the floor of the whole buried valley, someth