Chapter 185: Ashen Stair

The black-and-white echo line traveled across the map.

Toward the first buried source seat.

The desert began in the east, past the last marker of safety. Austin Veyron’s party had been making their way through mountains and flatlands to reach it, with nothing to guide them but the line of source running beneath their feet. Once they left the shelter of the mountains, they were met with a flat, endless stretch of gray land that shimmered in the heat beneath a dull sky.

Austin Veyron’s party crossed the desert carrying three maps of the Deep Table, each one held by a different member of the party. Ceryn had one map. Veyra had another, and Calder kept the last one tucked under his coat in an oilskin case. Tessa kept the rubbing of the original stone hidden beneath her clothing. None of the maps held all the information they needed to reach the source unless they worked together.

"That will be a problem," Rin said as a gust of hot wind blew across the dunes.

"It will keep anyone from breaking away with all the information," Tessa said.

By the middle of the day, the sun was beating down on them from above, and heat was rising from the ground below. There was no way to cool down from any direction. The roads were buried in ash-colored sand. Dead stone pillars poked out of the sand like dark teeth, casting short, useless shadows in the midday sun. The lines on the map led to a small basin of dead glass that had once been dunes.

They made their way across the basin on limited water rations, drinking by the mouthful. Nobody complained, but Austin Veyron could tell everyone was suffering in the heat. Rin’s tails hung limp, and Orena had covered her head with a cloth to keep the sun off the back of her neck. Even Veyra moved more slowly than normal, her armor heating up around her.

Nyra held the heart shard close to the ground, pointing it toward the east.

"The echo is under us," she said. "It’s already reached the Ashen Stair."

The wrist mark on Austin Veyron’s arm reacted to the shard.

It didn’t feel like a path to follow. It felt like the whole world was trying to convince everyone that there should be only one hunger. Austin Veyron could feel it in his body, a grinding hum in his teeth from the route running beneath him.

Veyra walked next to him as they continued across the basin of glass sand.

"Tell me."

"I want to find out where the path leads before anyone else does."

"What would that create?"

"A path that I own."

"Then we keep comparing copies," Sable said, holding up the crown shard so that it caught the sun reflecting off the glass sand.

The group came across a dry well near the edge of the basin.

A woman lay beside the well, covered with a sand cloak and clutching a flask of water in her arms. She had brown skin and a desert mark that ran along her jawline. Four ash-water guardians stood over her. Each guardian had a cracked jar built into its body.

The mouth of each jar spouted no water, only dust. The dust fell onto the woman like sand, slowly burying her beside the well.

WATER BELONGS TO THE SOURCE.

The woman opened her eyes as Austin Veyron’s party approached the well.

"The well won’t give you water," she said in a dry, raspy voice. "It will show you what you want until you bow to it."

Orena knelt down beside the woman. "What’s your name?"

"My name is Samira. I lead caravans to the wells in the desert. I was following a black route line when they stole my count from me."

"Do you need help?" Orena asked.

The woman looked at the guardians, then at Austin Veyron’s party. "Yes."

One of the guardians threw a jar at the group. It landed near Rin and exploded in a cloud of dust. Rin ducked and shot an arrow at the guardian. The arrow struck the jar symbol on its chest and cracked it, but the symbol repaired itself with sand. Veyra deflected another jar with her sword, cutting it in half and spraying hot shards of clay across her face and arms. Orena pulled the woman behind a glass dune. The guardians surrounded the group, closing in slowly, their clay bodies grinding as they moved.

Glass sand sprayed as the guardians drew closer, and dust from their jars filled the air. Austin Veyron could see what was binding the guardians to the well.

WATER BELONGS TO THE SOURCE.

The rule was older than the Ice Crown’s hunger for heat, and colder than the rule Kharvek had put in place to ration food. This rule had turned people against each other over a well long before any crown came to be.

"Target," Austin Veyron said. "The water-belongs-to-the-source rule. Not the well. Not the guardians. Not Samira’s water count."

"Witnessed," Veyra responded.

"Witnessed," Sable said.

Austin Veyron placed the white root chain on the stones of the well.

DEVOUR opened. The clause tasted like holding a flask over the heads of thirsty people.

WATER BELONGS TO THE SOURCE.

He consumed belongs.

The jars shattered, and the guardians crumbled into sand and pieces of clay around the well. The basin of glass was still dry, but the mirage of water above the well was no longer visible to anyone.

The woman slowly got up and dusted the sand off her body. "There was never water in this well. It was the source, trying to make us fight over something that wasn’t there." She had a bitter look on her face, and Austin Veyron imagined she had watched many caravans fight over this well.

Tessa handed her a flask with a water count marked on it. "We keep a count on every flask we have. You can drink from it or not."

The woman drank from the flask cautiously, like someone who had learned never to waste water. After drinking, she looked at their map. "You’re on your way to the Ashen Stair."

"You know of it?" Ceryn asked, holding up their map.

"My people call it the Dry Descent. Caravans didn’t travel it often. You have to agree on a water count before you enter the basin."

"One person making the decision?" Calder asked.

Samira gave him a tired look. "Trust me, you don’t want one person deciding that."

She didn’t explain any further, and no one questioned her about it. Austin Veyron looked toward the pillars in the distance and wondered what had become of the people who once lived there.

The party gathered around the flasks of water they had left, and Samira told them that each person had to state how much water they carried, how much they were willing to share, and what they would do if the Ashen Stair took longer than expected. No one was required to share, but no one could keep their water count a secret from the group.

Austin Veyron stated his water count. Veyra stated hers, and the rest of the party did the same. It felt awkward to say out loud how much water they had, but it felt better with each member who stated their count.

The basin of glass began to change.

Steps appeared in the ground with a dull rumble from somewhere below. The steps were covered in sand and led down into the earth, releasing a cold breeze that carried a strangely pleasant smell.

THE ASHEN STAIR.

Before any of them took the first step down, Samira placed her count tablet on the first step. "There’s another rule we have to follow. If someone below offers us more water or food, or a faster path to where we need to go, in exchange for becoming our leader, we have to say no."

Calder looked at Austin Veyron, then at the stone at the bottom of the Ashen Stair. "It’s going to try something like that."

"It’s what’s been tried before," Samira said.

Tessa took out her pencil and wrote the water count on all of their maps. Ceryn added a note beneath it: route choices can be revisited. It didn’t make them safe from the path below, but it let everyone know that they would all decide together which route they took.

A black line appeared on the third step of the Ashen Stair. The echo was traveling down the stair, not waiting for them. Nyra placed the heart shard on the stone and could feel the route moving beneath her feet.

"It knows we won’t accept the first thing it offers," she said. "It wants to reach the source before we can understand it."

The air below them was much cooler than the desert above. Markings covered the walls of the stair: wells and bowls, some with fists closed around them and others with open hands. The black-and-white line led them down the middle of the stair.

"Stay close," Veyra told the group.

"It’s not an order. It’s a count," Samira told her.

Veyra looked at her and gave a slight nod, and Austin Veyron caught the corner of her mouth lifting.

They all started down the Ashen Stair.

It took a long time to make their way down. The sound of the wind faded away, and only the sound of their feet and the sand falling on the steps could be heard. The deeper they went, the more worn the carvings on the walls became, until the symbols could barely be seen at all.

At the bottom of the stair was a stone room with a stone seat at its center. The seat was shaped like a throne, but Austin Veyron couldn’t remember ever seeing a crown older than the stone in front of him. It was worn smooth by the hands that had rested on it, and small symbols were carved into the floor all around it: wells, bowls, and fists closed around them. Dark route lines ran out from the stone and disappeared into the walls of the room.

The sovereign echo had reached the bottom of the stair before them.

Its black-and-white light was hiding behind the stone. It didn’t attack them or speak to them. It simply waited for them to act.

A message appeared above the stone.

NAME THE ROUTES. END THE HUNGER.

Austin Veyron’s wrist mark lit up and burned hotter than ever before.

The source was offering him a path through every water route, food route, debt route, winter route, and buried source connected to the Deep Table. All he had to do was name them, and the paths would obey him. No one would ever go without water again, or starve to death because they were lost on a route.

DEVOUR wanted to open and consume what the stone was offering him. His wrist mark split open, and a thin line of red and black light ran across it. Austin Veyron could see nothing but the stone in front of him.

Veyra stepped in front of him.

"Name it."

"I want to take the seat."

"What would that create?"

"A person who chooses all the routes."

Sable placed the crown shard in front of Austin Veyron, blocking the stone. The shard’s light reflected across the words above it.

"The echo has already chosen for you."

The black-and-white light behind the stone began to move toward them as the dark route lines in the walls of the room started to glow.

The echo had reached its first buried seat.