Basysus, 28, 1278: Outside Arth Prayogar, Mandami Hills. Didn’t know where we were going, but trouble gets cranky if you’re late…

Planus prairie winds had teeth. Sometimes it was hot, even in winter. Then it slapped you around with a cold chill like you deserved it.

This morning was more like the second, despite being the start of spring. A chilly wind that spat dust everywhere from the crusty hills. But this wasn’t a big surprise. The Mandami hills outside Arth Prayogar were just mean.

They looked like a giant had hacked them out of the earth mid-tantrum. Blotches of wildflowers and fescue clung at odd angles to the rust-red slopes, their honey-sweet and vanilla scents fought the bitter dust. Sunlight bleached it all with a relentless glare that made me want to swear at it to feel better.

“Here? Really?” My eyes swept over the grass and rocks overlooking a small, washed-out, alkali-dust lake. “I sort of get it, if the lake had any water back then. But let’s check the map again anyway.”

Skarri nodded, slithering over the hard-packed ground toward a table-like slab of sandstone. She unrolled the Fateweaver’s map with extreme care as if it might bite, then pressed it flat with a hand against the wind.

Mikasi joined her, placing the medallions on the map. Then, with a glance at the sun, aligned them by the engravings and Skarri’s notes on the faith.

“The Storm-shed sister medallion goes on the west, facing east. Sunbound goes on the south, facing northwest. Then the Hungered Sister is in the east, facing west,” Mikasi recited while he adjusted them.

The halfling inventor crossed his arms, giving the whole thing a calculated glare. Nicodemus trotted over, then glanced at the map before wandering off to sniff nearby fescue.

“There,” Mikasi grinned as the first sundial shadows reached for the edges of the metal.

Engraved letters burst to life in an ominous amber glow, like from an overheated boiler. Dim lines, barely a thread, traced up the metal to the dial’s center. It outlined the engravings on the raised triangle of smoky dragon-glass.

The amber glow pulsed inside the glass in deliberate patterns. A code that translated to numbers in Tashkiran. I leaned over the map with Skarri and Mikasi, the three of us measuring once more the distance and direction the light indicated.

“I can’t believe they used signal code,” Skarri hissed in amazement.

“It’s just amazing they knew it a thousand years ago,” Mikasi giggled with delight.

I shook my head with a wry smile, counting out light pulses.

“We’ve lost so much because of the Great Collapse,” I sighed. “So damn much. I could write an entire paper on just this.”

My finger stopped on the circle I’d marked for the Mandami hills when we did this earlier.

I tapped that circle, then reached into a pouch to pull out the last of the awari root Kiyosi made me swear to finish. The bitter, metallic taste rolled over my tongue like a frontal assault.

“We’re in the right general place. So, whatever this is pointing at, it’s hidden.”

Skarri put her hands on the belt of her war-kilt, where her human-half met her lower snake-half.

“Where? This is all just… rock,” she hissed.

We were trying to glare the rocks into submission when Kiyosi and Atha climbed back up to us. I’d sent them searching on the far side of the hills, ankle-deep in the dust lake. They were a startling shade of yellow-orange dust from the knees down as they pulled off the bandanas covering their mouths.

I kicked a pebble toward Kiyosi’s boot.

“You find me an ancient door to bust open yet?”

“No,” he scoffed, tail swatting the air. “But we found something else. Come look.”

They led me over a narrow game trail along the rocky hillside. It wound up and around, but not over the top. Still, we crouched down among the tall fescue, hidden, with a good view of the eastern side.

“That dirt road looks like an old wheeled wagon trail,” I said thoughtfully.

Kiyosi nodded. “It is. Runs north to south. We saw a couple of small Trade-Warden patrols using it.”

“Who’s that over there?” I gestured to a wide set of tents and wagons a good stone’s throw beyond the wagon road.

Atha waved a hand as if swatting a fly.

“Is Herd Tolvana digging around in their Deepland tunnel. They can’t getz through the Toshirom Ifoon’s big stone door, so they dig under it.”

“Really?” I scowled. Worry crawled up my spine as I stared at the distant camp. “How’s their progress?”

A faint roar split the air as a snarl of purple-pink tentacles burst from the ground in the distance. The armored shell of a bat-winged, spike-squid the size of two wagons sent the camp into chaos.

The broad-shouldered minotaur gestured at the distant mess with a smug grin.

“Oh, that good, eh?” I grimaced as the spike-squid did violent things to the centaur soldiers, and something obscene to a supply tent.

“Well, that’ll live in my nightmares,” I sighed. “So, we have a little time. This is what I think…”

My words trailed off when, back the way we’d come, I saw Mikasi run frantically back and forth between a pair of tall rocks. I wondered if Skarri had set him on fire.

Kiyosi and Atha followed my confused stare and mirrored it.

“What is he doing?” Kiyosi asked slowly with that concerned healer look of his.

I gave them both a suspicious glance, then scurried back downslope in a scrabble of rocks and dust. Kiyosi and Atha hurried behind me. Kiyosi looked like he was mentally diagnosing Mikasi’s affliction.

Skarri was still by the map, arms folded over her armored chest. Silently, she watched the halfling in his frantic dash around the tiny clearing. She shook her head at me.

“I have no idea. Suddenly, he looked at the sundials on the map, then started running around looking at rocks. All he says is, ‘it has to be the shadows’.”

“Tela, you have to see this!” The inventor tapped the map excitedly. “Yes, the sundials led us here, but they’re also the key to getting inside the temple, or whatever it is. It’s right here, I just know it!”

I studied the map and medallions, then narrowed my eyes at Mikasi. He waved his hands at the looming rock spikes on either side of us. The others looked mildly confused, but I thought I knew what he meant.

Frowning, I paced, thoughts racing. Needing something for my hands, I pulled a smoky quartz from my shoulder bag. A broken piece of an Automatic Crystal. The very one I had stolen from Baron Marius Apollinare, who tried to murder me last year.

The finger-length crystal glowed golden yellow even as the smoke-smudge in the center danced like a dust devil.

Mikasi’s expression turned sour, while Kiyosi pinched the bridge of his nose.

“I can’t believe you brought that with you,” he sighed wearily.

“What? It makes everyone else sick if I leave it in the Windtracer Records Hall.” I replied while rolling the crystal between my fingers. “Besides, fiddling with it helps me think.”

“What is it?” Skarri asked, looking at the others.

Kiyosi wiggled a hand at me.

“Part of a crystal golem. It belonged to a lich that tried to murder us. Really, mostly her. A lot. His corrupted spirit is in there, trapped in a kind of soul jar.”

The temple guard stared at me, wide-eyed, while I paced.

Atha folded his arms over his massive chest.

“This is not a surprise. Windtracers like to play with dead things. Often ones that can kill them, but somehow they live.”

I nodded in his direction, feeling a little vindicated in a backhanded way.

“Thank you,” I replied tartly. “Now, we know those ancient shamans wanted to seal away the Iraxi because they couldn’t smash it.”

“Right,” Mikasi said, shooting a wary look at my glowing crystal.

I stopped in the middle of pacing to gesture at the map.

“But someone still had those sundials made. That’s way beyond ‘religious fervor’ given what happened. Either they expected the Iraxi to be needed again, or they knew that one day they’d have to move it.”

“It never needs to be used again,” Skarri murmured, gripping the hilt of her saber until her knuckles turned white.

“Agreed,” Kiyosi replied, then gestured around us. “So there’s a back door here? There’s been ruin runners crawling all over this region for decades. Wouldn’t they have found it by now?”

I rolled the glowing crystal between my fingers, staring at the spires of rock around us. Mikasi had said shadows, and that strummed a chord in my head.

“Maybe,” I said slowly. “But that depends on what they were looking for. Skarri’s viprin ancestors didn’t want this easily found.”

I glanced up, around, and then raised my eyebrows at the others.

“Ruins are a lot more than just an old building or damp tunnels.”

Quickly, I walked over to the map, glanced at the sundials, then scooped up the one for the Storm-shed sister. I glanced at the hilltop’s rocky spires.

“So how would you hide a door, or even a ruin, that protects the way to a really nasty artifact?” I asked the group while I walked to the western rock spires.

They followed along behind me, fanning out to see where I was going with this. All except for Mikasi. The little inventor was practically jumping up and down, ready to cheer.

Kiyosi suddenly narrowed his eyes at the outcropping. Even Atha raised his eyebrows in surprise.

“By the Mending Brother,” Kiyosi breathed, eyes studying the rocks in understanding.

“Exactly,” I grinned.

Skarri slithered closer, astonishment painted over her face.

“These aren’t just piles of rocks,” she whispered.

I stepped back, squinting at an upthrust spire. Nodding, I grinned as I brushed centuries of dust from its side. A small, round depression ringed with fang-like letters and a tiny sun had been carved into the rock.

“You hide it in a ‘shadow building’. An outdoor temple. One where standing stones sit at the locations those sundials mark on the map.”

I glanced between the depression in the rock and the sundial. As dumb ideas went, this wasn’t my worst.

Before anyone could say a word, I placed the sundial into the ancient standing stone’s circular gap.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then I swore I felt the hill breathe. With a soft click, a hidden mechanism ground to life for a second. Behind me, I heard Kiyosi’s breath hitch in alarm.

Sunlight kissed the brass and dragon-glass sundial with a tender caress. All at once, the shadow on the dial crept over the edge. An engraved letter flared to life with a deep burning flicker, followed by a thin orange line racing back to the middle of the dial.

Then the glowing line, no thicker than a single thread, shot out across our tiny clearing to the other side.

I smiled. The others lunged for the remaining two sundials.

Moments later, we found the other two standing stones and locked the other sundials into place. Amber threads spilled out to meet the first one. The three glowing threads connected at an ordinary slope of hill, overgrown with fescue.

When they touched, a glowing orange spiderweb of light unfurled between the standing stones. It rippled, as if carried by an unseen wind. Each transparent wall was shifting patterns of symbols depicting sunrise, sunset, and all the heavens in between.

“Magic threads,” Kiyosi murmured in awe. “A lot of magic threads.”

“It is all about the shadows, and a little light,” I grinned at the others, then waved my hands around us. “Welcome to the hidden Vip'Lerdat viprin temple of the Sunfate Sisters.”

Atha narrowed his eyes at the web-thin symbols in the surrounding air.

“They glow. Won’t the merchant herd camp see this?” he asked skeptically.

Skarri shook her head.

“I don’t think so. This… place is shaped like a bowl. We’re at the bottom. Also, look at the grass and rocks outside the walls. There aren’t shadows or light hitting them. Just nothing. I think you have to be inside to see this.”

Mikasi climbed a precarious pile of rock next to where the magical threads met. Using a small claw hammer, he whacked at the dirt until it came free. The threads splashed against a small round piece of crystal Mikasi had uncovered.

“More dragon-glass,” he said, tapping the crystal with a finger.

In that instant, the crystal flickered to life, glowing a warm amber-orange like the threads. A hidden mechanism grumbled underneath the dirt before we heard metal slide against itself. In seconds, dirt and grass broke away to reveal a modest gray stone door. Carved on its face were the three snake-like viprin faces of the Sunfate sisters.

The ground shuddered once. Then the door pulled back into the hill, sliding open with a soft grind of sand. A dark doorway yawned wide like a hungry mouth, the hill exhaling shadows and dust.

“Oh, that look friendly,” Atha murmured dryly.

I gave everyone a smirk, putting my hands on my hips.

“So, who’s ready to go play with dead things?”