“Illusion?” said Seraph, dismounting. “It doesn’t have that feel, though there is some magic here, right enough.”

She touched the gates, then jumped back as they began to open. Not swinging inward or outward as the city gates of most places did; nor did they rise up like the smaller gates of a keep or hold. These slid back on oiled tracks set below the road surface and into the walls themselves until the only remnant of the gate was a handspan-wide bar of brass up the middle of the wall edge.

A wagon length in front of them was another wall wider than the gate, that blocked them from the city so people entering would have to go to the left or the right of it. On either side of it, set between the city walls and the inner wall were two wooden gates of the sort a farmer might use to keep livestock in or out. One was open, the other shut.

Tier dismounted and crouched beside the brass door’s track, bending down to sniff. “If this is an illusion, it’s on par with the mermora,” Tier said. “This oil smells fresh.”

“There are people here,” said Kissel. He loosened his sword and tipped his head from side to side, loosening his neck muscles in preparation for battle. “This can’t be a deserted place. Not looking like this.” He pointed at the dirt just the far side of the gate and Hennea saw what he had—there were lines on the ground as if someone had just finished raking the ground clear of debris.

“It’s too quiet,” protested Toarsen. “A city is never this silent, Kissel. Not even a city the size of Leheigh. You can hear the sounds of Taela miles away.”

“It’s magic,” said Jes quietly. “The city was left this way. That’s what the Guardian says.”

“He’s been here?” Tier gave his son a surprised look.

Hennea was startled as well. She knew the Guardian had been remembering things he should not have known, not if the Order had been cleansed after the death of the previous Guardian who bore it. She’d started to believe that might be most of the trouble with the Guardian Order.

If so, then when she and Seraph solved the mystery of what to do with the Ordered gems, they might also stumble upon a way to help make the Guardian Order less dangerous to its bearer. Not that she wanted to change Jes or the Guardian, just keep him safe. But if the Guardian knew about Colossae, then it wasn’t just bits of the previous bearer that the Order contained—it was the first one, one of the survivors of the death of Colossae.

Jes stared determinedly down at the ground for long enough that she thought he’d not answer Tier’s question. Finally, he said, “He doesn’t know. He just remembers that the wizards left the city as it was.”

“Let’s go in,” said Phoran, with all the impatience of a young man, reminding Hennea that, for all his cleverness, he was only a few years older than Jes. “Let’s see what this wizards’ city looks like.”

Tier got to his feet and stared at the rake marks before he nodded. “All right. Loosen your swords, boys, those of you who have them. Be alert. Remember that according to Traveler stories there is something evil here. It may be bound, but the Travelers didn’t trust those bindings.”

Jes didn’t wait for the others but went to the closed gate and jumped over it; his dog followed him. Seraph led her horse through the open gate.

Hennea hung back. Let Jes and Seraph see to the front guard, she would take the rear. There were other people thinking about safety, too. She noticed Toarsen rode in front of Phoran and Kissel behind. Since Rinnie was riding next to Phoran as usual, that left the most vulnerable of their group well guarded from physical harm. Rufort and Ielian looked at her, and she waved them through ahead of her.

Lehr waited.

“Go ahead,” she told him.

He smiled. “I’m not telling Jes I let his lady take rear guard.”

She stiffened. “I can protect myself.”

“Doubtless,” he agreed, and held his chestnut mare where she was.

She smiled and shook her head, but urged her gelding through the gate ahead of him anyway.

The narrow passage dumped them in a large plaza cobbled in the same reddish stone as the walls. Water puddled in the spaces between the cobbles and splashed under the horses’ hooves.

In the small houses that crowded together around the plaza and continued to line narrow streets were some of the signs of age Hennea had expected when they’d approached the city. The wood of the doors and windows was cracked, and weeds poked up here and there around the houses. Roofs looked as though they were decades beyond where they had first needed rethatching. Decades, though, not ten centuries.

By the time Hennea and Lehr arrived, everyone else had dismounted and was looking around.

“It still doesn’t look deserted enough,” said Phoran, rubbing his stallion’s neck absently. “There are places in Taela that look worse than this.”

“And it doesn’t smell,” agreed Toarsen.

Lehr hopped off his horse as well and wandered over to one of the houses. “I can’t get the door open,” he said in surprise.

“Is it locked?” asked Tier, going to see.

Hennea dismounted slowly, still waiting for some danger or attack. The vast emptiness of the city gave her chills.

“I tried that. I can feel locks, and there are none here, Papa,” Lehr said. “It just won’t open.”

Hennea bent down to look at weeds growing along the edge of the wall between them and the gate. A raindrop fell on a leaf, joining a puddle that had formed there. The weed was knee high and fragile-looking, but it didn’t bend at all under the weight of the rain. It didn’t move.

She reached out to touch it, and it didn’t give under the weight of her finger either, even when she pressed down on it.

“Try the window up there,” she heard Phoran say to Lehr. “It’s got an open-air window.”

She glanced behind her and saw Lehr jump to catch the lintel of a window and chin himself up. He dropped back down after a moment. “There’s a curtain across, but it feels more like a wall.”

“I know what’s wrong with your door and the window,” she said, standing up and looking around the streets again. When she knew what she was looking for it was obvious. The thatch on the houses was dark and grey with age, but not with rain. The wood of the walls of the houses was not wet either—and none of the horses were nibbling at the weeds.

Seraph frowned at her.

“The Elder Wizards somehow froze the city in time,” said Hennea certain that she was right, though she could barely feel a trace of magic. “Everything is exactly as it was the day the Elder Wizards sacrificed it. You’ll have to find an open entrance if you want inside these buildings because there isn’t a door that will open or a curtain that you can move.”

They spent a while exploring the little square. None of them seemed to feel the way Hennea did about the city—except for Gura, who whined and settled in the middle of the square with his muzzle on his paws. It made him sad, too. She left Jes and Lehr trying to figure out how to get across a small yard full of grass time-stiffened to sharp spikes so they could take a closer look at a shed with an open door.

Seraph had taken the map satchel under the overhang of a building for protection from the rain. When she saw Hennea wander back toward the square, she called her over.

“You’re the only one who can read this,” she said, handing Hennea the city map. “Can you figure out where we are and how to get somewhere that might do us some good?”

Hennea took the map and looked at it. “The gate said ‘Low Gate,’ so we must be here.” She pointed. “It calls this area Old Town.”

“I’d have thought they’d build first on top of the ridge,” said Seraph, distracted from her original question.

Hennea looked around again and saw, not the dilapidated buildings, but how they once had been built against the solid wall of cliff face that curved around them protectively.