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D AAL STOOD AT the mouth of the dark cave. He hated to leave Pyllar behind. Nyx looked equally concerned about Bashaliia.

Moments ago, they had watched the sailraft descend into the grotto, spinning slightly, waving flames from its stern. The fire reflected off the black glass walls until the small raft settled to the floor.

Out in the grotto, the stern forge still smoldered in threat, remaining a smoky torch in case the mankrae attacked again. As an additional protection, their two bats flanked the grounded ship, blocking the cave’s mouth. Vikas and Irquan had also agreed to stay behind to further guard their retreat.

Graylin lit a lantern and stepped deeper into the cave.

Kalder followed, the vargr’s nose held high, same as his hackles, which shivered with warning.

“It looks like a tunnel extends out from this entrance,” Graylin noted, then glanced back. “And you’re sure something’s there.”

“A font of bridle-song,” Nyx assured him. “Shining out of the depths.”

Daal nodded, checking the bandage around his gouged arm. His riding leathers had spared him any worse damage. “I can sense it, too, but only as a weak glow.”

One other also agreed. “They are correct,” Shiya said as she crossed from the sailraft. “What it is, I cannot discern. It remains strangely blocked.”

“I’m finding it the same,” Nyx said. “I’ve tried casting out strands. But as it nears the source, they die away.”

Arryn had ventured deeper than all of them. He used his spear’s tip to shift a large, pale skorpion out of his path. “Come see this,” he whispered with a measure of distaste. “Bring the light.”

They all followed, though Graylin kept Nyx behind him. As they neared, the spread of the lantern’s glow swept over something buried in the glass, melted and frozen into it long ago.

Daal cringed at the sight, taking a step back.

Out of the glass, the remains of a ta’wyn lay sprawled at a tortured angle. Its bronze had patinaed into a dark amber, streaked with green runnels. All that was in view was an upper torso, a head, and one arm. Its lower section had been scorched black, likely from the heat of the molten glass. Its features had slagged away, too, either from the same burning exposure or from the ability of some ta’wyn to change form.

“It appears to be a Root,” Shiya confirmed, making this assessment from a step away, clearly wanting to get no closer.

“A fallen of the Revn-kree. ” Graylin looked back at the black grotto. “Clearly a fearsome battle had been fought here.”

Nyx expressed what they were all thinking. “If this was some last stand, then maybe an ally to the Kraena —what the Chanr? call the horde-mind of this colony—did survive. The legendary Dr?shra. Maybe it got stranded here and has been calling across millennia, waiting for someone rich enough in bridle-song to hear it.”

Arryn continued deeper, drawing them all onward. “When I was lost in the wilderness, my shaman, Aeldryn Tann, said he sensed something whispering to him out of the deep desert. But I do not know if he had any talent in bridle-song, only that he was kindhearted and wiser than any man I knew.”

Daal heard the pain in the warrior’s voice—and from the hard thump of the man’s spear on the glass, some deep-seated anger.

As they headed on, more bronze remnants lay buried in the glass. Many looked shattered into pieces. Eventually, the wash of glass dwindled away, returning again to sandstone. Yet even still, bodies lay strewn and blackened by age or weaponry.

“How much farther?” Graylin whispered, as if fearful of waking the dead.

Kalder stuck close to the man’s hips, ears swiveling all around.

“Not sure,” Nyx answered, equally hushed. “Not far.”

After another tenth of a league, Daal noted a soft glow appear out of the gloom. Nyx spotted it, too. They both slowed, as did Shiya.

“Something’s coming,” Nyx warned. “And swiftly.”

They all stopped.

Ahead, a soft golden light wove toward them, shimmering with bridle-song, wavering and darting like a shining karp in dark waters.

Graylin held his sword ready. “What are you all seeing? What’s—”

Then he spotted it, too.

The source bounded into the edge of the lantern light and halted.

Though glowing with bridle-song, it appeared to be an ordinary desert creature. It stood as tall as Daal’s calf, covered in snowy-white fur so dense that it looked carved of pale stone. Its narrow snout came to a sharp point, while crowning its head were a pair of hooded ears that reached as high as Daal’s knee. Behind it rose a dark-striped tail, far longer than its sleek body. It wove that bushy length languidly, as if expressing little alarm at these trespassers.

“What is it?” Nyx whispered.

Arryn answered, struggling with his words. “A… A dhelpr?… it cannot be.” The man looked close to falling to his knees. “A spirit out of Chanaryn legend. None have been seen in centuries.”

The creature stared back at them, with its head slightly cocked. Then, as if suddenly realizing it was supposed to be a myth, the dhelpr? turned and bounded off with a sweep of that long tail. It quickly vanished into the shadows, trailing a golden glow.

“We must follow!” Arryn blurted out. He set off before anyone could argue otherwise. “According to legend, to spot one promises great fortune.”

They continued after him.

As they started, a ululating cry carried back, haunting and heartachingly lonesome. They followed that fading call through a maze of other passageways.

“Could this be the source of bridle-song you sensed?” Graylin challenged Nyx.

“I don’t think so. Something still shines deeper, a font richer and more ancient. This dhelpr? seems to be leading us toward it.”

“Maybe it’s a nest of these same creatures,” Graylin mumbled.

Nyx could not argue against this.

Ahead, the tinier glow of the dhelpr? vanished into the greater moonlight of whatever hid at the heart of this labyrinth.

“Almost there,” Nyx whispered.

Another few twists of the tunnel, and this proved to be true.

They all slowed and cautiously entered a chamber that glowed with strange energies and alchymies. The group paused at the threshold, too daunted to enter. Graylin kept his sword up, while Arryn pointed his spear.

Ahead, a maze of copper and bronze tubing formed a web that filled the back half of the room. Glowing tanks bubbled with golden elixirs. But what held them all off was the throne in the middle. It looked made of scraps of bronze scavenged from the dead behind them. Even some of the alchymy on display likely came from the same source.

Despite the strangeness, Daal kept his eye on the figure seated on the throne—no, not seated, but melded into it, as surely as those tarnished Roots in the black glass. Again, the naked figure looked scavenged out of parts. One leg had clearly been ripped from another body and fused to this one. Same with a hand, maybe a shoulder.

Daal could read this map from the shine given off by the figure. A bridling glow suffused out of most of its form, but it darkened where those trappings had been welded on, making it clear those parts were additions.

Despite the strangeness, they all knew who sat enthroned before them.

Nyx named it. “The Dr?shra. ”

The identity of this ancient ta’wyn was evident from another striking feature.

Daal glanced to Shiya, to the sweeping curls of her hair, the curve of her cheekbones, the generosity of her sculpted lips, even the rise of her breasts against the thin robe.

No wonder the village elder had mistaken Shiya for this legend.

Daal faced back to the throne. The figure seated there bore the same features, though worn by age and battle. A swath of curls had burned away. A plate of darkness had been welded to a cheek, flattening it out. Her chest had been caved in on one side.

From the throne, eyes slowly opened, shining with azure fire.

That gaze swept the group in silent scrutiny.

From around the back of the throne, a figure rubbed into view, brushing its length around the foot of the chair, across the bronze legs of the Dr?shra. The dhelpr? settled to one side, sitting on its haunches, its tail sweeping a sigil across the floor.

It glowed softly, bathed in the bridling of the seated queen.

A bronze hand lifted from the throne’s arm and reached to the dhelpr?’s tall ears, running fingers with clear affection across the crown of this creature. As this happened, the golden glow of the snowy fur brightened with the passage of that touch. At the same time, a spark of azure fire flared in the creature’s tiny dark eyes.

Daal suspected the ta’wyn now stared at them through those same eyes.

Like I sometimes do with Pyllar.

He wondered if the Dr?shra —melded into her throne—used the dhelpr? as her eyes and ears out into the world. He remembered the creature’s haunting call and Arryn’s story of hunters hearing a forlorn cry echoing sometimes out of the Heep. They had believed it was the misery of the Dr?shra crying out of the shadows, heartbroken and woeful.

And maybe it was… maybe it wasn’t just the eyes and ears of the dhelpr? that this fallen queen used to commune with the desert.

But its voice, too.

Finally, those azure eyes shifted from where they had lingered on Nyx to bring the full weight of that ancient gaze upon him. Daal felt stripped by that scrutiny. Just before he was ready to fall back a step, the attention turned to another.

A small nod of greeting followed, toward Shiya. “Welcome, sister.”

Rather than falling back from that intense gaze, Shiya stepped forward with clear challenge. “You are the Dr?shra. The ally who turned against the Revn-kree and sought to destroy the forces entrenched here?”

Another nod.

A wary note sharpened Shiya’s tone. “But I see you are not a lowly Root who defected.”

There was no acknowledgment.

Shiya pointed an accusatory arm. “Instead, you are the Axis who led them here.”