“True. I have been used, but have always hoped—in my defense—that someday, individuals at least would return, and tell me of what lies beyond the border of the real. None has. How many have I condemned?” She wiped a tear, then straightened and assumed her sama mien. “Here is our secret—what the sisterhood discovered. Lassidin and I listed the most promising Tiers and levels in the syllabary. The false shelves in all the inhabited levels are locked and useless. Only in the deserted levels do they sometimes free a book. Look to those shelves. They are not always the same. Understand why, and how, and you will learn what we learned.

“Now…there’s very little time, young breeds,” Grayne said. “I believe the Bleak Warden will soon pay me a visit. But before that happens, I must arrange this final march.”

Jebrassy looked down, excited, confused—and frightened.

“Your first challenge is to learn what you can—so very little, but it might save your lives. Then—you will be taken into the flood channels, to begin your training.”

CHAPTER 30

All the water of the Tiers flowed through this conduit, which vanished in low mists beyond where Jebrassy stood, at the edge of the outer meadow. The water made a dismal, sleepy sound as it dropped along its sluice. It was clear and smelled wet and a little sad. He measured with his arms and fingers the distance between the top edge of the sluice and the dirt that surrounded it—that same pebbled, granular, brown-gray soil found everywhere in the Tiers. He was still trying to understand everything at once—and it made his head hurt.

Farther back, closer to the bridge, the conduit had been higher. Perhaps the water didn’t reach the far wall, but vanished into the ground, absorbed as if by a rag. Somehow, the ground, granular and rough, sucked it down, spread it out, purified it.

Whatever pulls the water, pulls me. And does the ground tug the water in and out the same way it tugs me? I don’t know anything about where I live.

Confused, frustrated, he felt like striking out—always his first impulse when he confronted his abysmal ignorance.

He stood and turned at the sound of footsteps. At first he couldn’t see who it was over a rise in the meadow—but then he made out Khren’s round, shock-furred head. Beside Khren paced three young breeds, all wide-eyed with anticipation.

Tiadba had said he needed to find four helpers, and that she would meet them all at the spiral stair core that rose through the inward end of the first isle Tiers. They were going to visit an abandoned level high in the Tiers. They might spend all day searching just a few of the halls that radiated from the stair core—a very small part of the abandoned levels—and with the lights dimmed, a few extra pairs of hands and bright, young eyes would certainly be useful. Still, Jebrassy felt uneasy that they would be sharing their rare time together with others—even uneasy about Khren, who had been with him on so many adventures.

The young males ran down to the straight road and clustered around him, touching fingers and giving sharp whistles of greeting.

“Shewel, Nico, Mash—this is Jebrassy,” Khren said. “A very unwise and devious breed.” They were impressed; Khren had obviously been filling their heads with nonsense.

“You’re a warrior,” said Shewel, the tallest, a gangly young male with wide-spaced eyes and reddish scalp fur.

“Not much time for fighting now,” Jebrassy said.

“He has a glow to fill his empty hours,” Khren said, and Jebrassy shot him a look. Khren danced aside, as if he had thrown a rock.

The young breeds were breathless. “What are we looking for?” Nico asked. He was pale, his hair and fur silver, his eyes light blue—handsome enough, but with a high, piping voice. “Is there food buried out here? Strange things the wardens hide?”

“Nothing like that,” Jebrassy said. “We’re going to search an empty level in the Tiers.”

“Looking for dream-ghosts?” Mash asked. He was a strong, square-headed youngster—the youngest, Jebrassy guessed, but also the largest. Breeds sometimes told their young a tweenlight tale that the most beautiful dreams broke free when one awoke and flew off to hide in the deserted levels, where they might be gathered in baskets and brought back to sweeten future nights. Bad dreams—obviously, those should be avoided. “Bright or dark?” Mash persisted, defensive, as the others scoffed. He circled the group as if embarrassed to join them.

“No dreams. We’re going to explore the shelves and look for books. Try to pull them out. Real books we might be able to read.”

“No!” the group chorused, disappointed. They knew all the books were false. “That’s stupid—a waste.”

“A large bag of sweet chafe and tropps to anyone who finds a real book,” Jebrassy said. “And whether we find any or not, we share three bags when we get back, so everybody goes home full. But none to slackers.”

That motivated them up to a point, and they fell in line behind Khren and Jebrassy as they crossed the mid-line bridge to the first isle.

The lower tier levels were still populated, so they entered off the inward esplanade, keeping clear of the small groups of occupants around the lifts, and ascended the winding stairs through one of many ventilation cores—the steps gritty with disuse.

The group waited at the tenth level, where Tiadba had instructed them to gather. All the levels above the tenth on this end of the bloc had been abandoned in living memory, after three intrusions in a single wake—a fluke, perhaps, but enough to scare off all families and even young singles. None of the niches showed signs of having been lived in recently—all were filled with broken furniture, debris, and frass deposited by rogue letterbugs and pedes.

As Jebrassy paced, he glanced down the halls radiating off the stair core. Two lost letterbugs flitted about in the draft that rose here—too few, too widely scattered and disorganized to form interesting words, forlorn remnants of more cheerful wakes, when umber-borns had laid them out on shake cloths and played their learning games.

The young breeds, bored, played a few rounds of arm-off, then shook out their wrists and ran down a hall to practice tugging, so they said, though none of the halls on this level had shelves, much less spinebacks. “Don’t go far,” Khren called out, well aware how short the attention span of a young breed could be. “She’s late,” he observed to Jebrassy, his voice low and nervous. “They say intrusions never strike twice in the same place…but I’m not so sure.”

The two friends split a wad of bitter chafe and thoughtfully chewed the fibers, until the silence seemed to overwhelm them. They could no longer hear even the scrabbling and whickering of the three youngsters. The letterbugs had vanished as well.

“They’re wandering too far,” Khren said. He squatted, refusing to accompany Jebrassy in his back-and-forth around the stair core. “I should go find them.” But he did not get up. Khren much preferred contemplation to actual movement, even when he was anxious.

“They’re fine,” Jebrassy said. “A shout will fetch them. Patience.”

“How reliable is your glow?” Khren asked.

Jebrassy was about to answer, but they heard soft steps echo and Tiadba appeared, stepping quickly through the balustrade. She wore the same pants and shift tied at the waist that she had worn at the Diurns, and she looked tired. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. “Gray wardens. I had to go out and around on the first level so they wouldn’t follow. Why would anyone come here, after all?” She peered accusingly at Khren.

“I didn’t say anything,” he responded, spinning two fingers resentfully.

“Of course not,” Tiadba said. “Did you find helpers?”

“Khren recruited three,” Jebrassy said. “They’re green sticks but lively. They’re already out hunting.”