“You can’t talk to me that way,” she said.

“No?” He looked at her. “I just did.” He turned away. She went on complaining, but he ignored her after that.

The Bizogots and Raumsdalians who’d come this far had mounted for a last desperate battle against the Rulers. They greeted Marcovefa with thunderous cheers—much of their joy, no doubt, was transformed relief that they wouldn’t die in the next few hours. She blushed like a girl as she waved to them, which only made their cheers redouble.

And they took up a chant: “The Shrine! The Shrine! The Golden Shrine!” It could have sounded better, since some spoke Raumsdalian and others the Bizogots’ tongue. No one seemed inclined to criticize.

Before long, Marcovefa and the ragtag army’s other leaders were also on horse back. The rest of the warriors behind them, they rode east along what had been the southern shore of Sudertorp Lake. It was a shoreline no more, as Sudertorp Lake was a lake no more. Waterfowl flew in wild confusion. Hamnet hoped they would find new nesting grounds.

Even if the Golden Shrine was visible now, he wasn’t sure how anyone could reach it. Sudertorp Lake might be vanishing, but wouldn’t its bottom prove impenetrable ooze that glued men and horses in place and might suck them down never to be seen again?

Earl Eyvind had another thought: “After so very long, how much could have survived in there? I’m astonished the buildings themselves have.”

“Now that you mention it, so am I,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “We’ll see, that’s all. We’re here. It’s here, however it got here. We can’t do anything else but find out, can we?” Eyvind shook his head.

“It is the Golden Shrine,” Marcovefa said. “It is as it is meant to be. We will see what we are meant to see, learn what we are meant to learn.”

“What will that be?” Hamnet asked.

She gave him a dazzling smile. “If I already knew, I wouldn’t learn anything, would I?”

Even as they rode toward the Golden Shrine, more and more of it emerged from the lake. The outgoing flood should have wrecked it, but seemed to have left it unharmed. Of course, if it truly had lain under the Glacier for centuries uncounted, that should have ground it to powder. Obviously, no such thing had happened.

When Hamnet Thyssen wondered why not out loud, Earl Eyvind said, “It is the Golden Shrine. If the ordinary laws of nature applied to it, it would be something else altogether. It is the Golden Shrine because those laws do not apply. That is not the only reason, but it is a compelling one.”

“The old man is right,” Trasamund rumbled. That made Eyvind Torfinn look imperfectly delighted at the agreement. Marcovefa nodded without any opinions about his age. He seemed happier then.

“It’s the Golden Shrine,” Hamnet said. “Whatever’s wrong with us, whatever’s wrong with the world, now the Shrine can fix it.”

“An ancient verse says we take no more away from the Shrine than we bring to it,” Earl Eyvind remarked.

Marcovefa nodded again. This time, so did Ulric Skakki. Frowning, Trasamund asked, “What the demon does that mean?” Hamnet would have said more or less the same thing if the jarl hadn’t beaten him to it.

Eyvind Torfinn only shrugged. “The text may be corrupt, and it is certainly obscure. We shall be able to do what the author could not—we shall discover for ourselves what he meant.”

“Seems plain enough to me,” Ulric said. But then he waved his hand. “I may be wrong, God knows. The truth may be hiding under what looks plain, the same way the Golden Shrine hid under Sudertorp Lake. I wonder why nobody out in the lake ever looked down and saw it.”

“It did not wish to be seen,” Marcovefa replied. Talking about a building in that way should have been nonsense. Hamnet had the feeling it wasn’t.

“I suppose it didn’t want to get crushed when the Glacier rolled down from the north, either,” Ulric said, which had already occurred to Hamnet.

“It must not have. Had it wanted that, be sure that would have happened,” she said. Ulric started to answer, then seemed to think better of it. Count Hamnet didn’t blame him. He wouldn’t have known how to answer that, either.

A goose flew up from its nest, wings thundering. Audun Gilli pointed at what looked like a paving stone half covered by lakeside plants. “Isn’t that the start of a road out to the Shrine?” he said.

Hamnet was on the point of saying he thought that was ridiculous. Before he could, Marcovefa nodded briskly. “Yes, I do believe it is,” she replied. At that, Hamnet swung down from his horse and walked over to the nest the goose had abandoned. He picked up and hefted an egg. “What are you doing?” Marcovefa asked.

“What with everything else that’s gone on, I wondered if we’d found the nest of the goose that lays the golden eggs,” he answered. “Doesn’t seem that way, though. Too bad.” Replacing the egg he’d taken, he mounted again.

Marcovefa scratched her head. Maybe her folk didn’t tell that story. But she didn’t ask any questions. Audun was right. That road did lead out toward the Golden Shrine. And, next to the Shrine, even golden eggs weren’t important enough to worry about.

HOW LONG HAD it been since men last visited the Golden Shrine? How long had it been since the Glacier rolled down from the north and . . . covered it? Hamnet Thyssen asked Earl Eyvind. The scholar only shook his head and spread his hands. “Thousands of years—that’s all I can say. If you ask me how many thousands, well, for this your guess is as good as mine.”

“ ‘Thousands of years’ seems close enough,” Ulric Skakki said. Count Hamnet wasn’t inclined to argue with him.

To look at it, though, the Golden Shrine might have vanished from human ken day before yesterday. Or, for that matter, it might never have vanished at all. The tiles that decorated the outer walls were decorated with what looked like an elaborate, sinuous script. But if it was writing, it wasn’t writing of a kind Hamnet had ever seen before.

He glanced toward the widely traveled Ulric Skakki. When he caught the adventurer’s eyes, Ulric only shrugged. He couldn’t read those sparkling tiles, either. He and Hamnet both looked at Eyvind Torfinn. Eyvind wasn’t so widely traveled. But he was widely—and deeply—read. That might count for more.

Then again, it might not. “If you are wondering, gentlemen, I must confess that I have never seen the like,” he said.

“Oh.” Hamnet couldn’t hide his disappointment.

Ulric was looking around. “Most of the lake bottom’s just mud and gravel, the way you’d expect,” he said. “But not this road, and not the ground right in front of the Golden Shrine.”

“You’re right.” Hamnet wondered why he hadn’t noticed that himself. Maybe because the road leading toward the Golden Shrine seemed so ordinary. No mud or gravel fouled the flagstones. They weren’t even wet. They should have been, but they weren’t. Which meant they weren’t ordinary, either, even if they seemed to be.

Neither was the grass growing in front of the Golden Shrine. It was grass, not some underwater weed. It grew there as if the Shrine had been standing in the sun for all these years. Hamnet knew better, but the illusion remained convincing.

Trasamund chuckled nervously. “Next thing you know, that door will open and a priest or shaman or whatever you want to call him will come out and bid us good day.”

“Don’t be more ridiculous than you can help,” Gudrid snapped.

Eyvind Torfinn coughed. “My dear, in our present state of knowledge—or rather, of ignorance—calling anything ridiculous would be, well, ridiculous.

Hamnet reached out and tapped Trasamund on the arm. “Once upon a time, you said we’d fight it out in front of the Golden Shrine’s door. If you still want to try it, Your Ferocity, I’m ready.”

The jarl started to reach over his back for his great sword. Then he stopped and laughed and shook his head. “Let it go, Thyssen—let it go. With this in front of me, I can do without the sport. Unless you think your honor’s touched, of course. If you do, I’ll gladly oblige you.”