Page 227 of The Cradle of Ice

Ahead, a shape rose out of the landscape, looking distinctly metallic in sheen, like a hot coppery boil bursting out of the cold flat terrain.

Darant got on the ship’s highhorn and roused his crew. Soon the wheelhouse grew crowded. Daal spotted Nyx and joined her by the window.

“What is it?” Daal asked.

Nyx shook her head.

With every passing league, the structure climbed higher and spread wider. At the same time, it looked as if it were floating away, warily keeping back. But the effect was just an illusion due to its massive size.

Finally, it gave up fleeing them and revealed itself fully. For a moment, Nyx flashed to the ancient Oshkapeer queen, with her giant tenacles draped across the sand around her bulbous head. The structure before them glowed with a familiar coppery gleam. They had all seen such metal, forged by the ancients.

The center of the complex was a dome that could have sheltered the nine massive tiers of her former school, the Cloistery of Brayk. Spreading outward in sweeps and turns were seven massive extensions, winding across the Brackenlands for tens of leagues in all directions. The entire complex looked seamless and free of rivets, as smooth as the skin of an orkso.

It looked uncannily natural, almost like something living had crawled out of the neighboring ocean. And that frozen sea behind the structure itself was a sight to behold. It had broken into huge shattered plates that rode up on one another, stacking easily half a league in height along the shoreline. The edges looked razor sharp, defying the scour of the winds. The ice captured every glint of starshine and glowed a phosphorescent blue in the dark.

“The Shattered Sea,” Daal said, staring past the copper structure.

“But what’s on its shore?” Rhaif pressed them all.

“It must be what we came to seek.” Nyx turned to Shiya for guidance.

The bronze woman gave a tiny shake of her head. “If I was supposed to have knowledge of such a place, I do not have it now.”

“We’ll have to explore,” Graylin said, and turned to Darant. “Can you do a slow pass over it? Look for an entrance?”

Nyx saw the challenge facing them. The macabre source of the structure’s glow came from a crevice that outlined the entire complex, cutting around its dome and along those sinuous legs. The moat looked a quarter-league wide and glowed with molten rock down deep. A pass over the complex failed to reveal any bridge over that fiery gap.

“Can you get us lower?” Nyx suggested. “Search the dome itself.”

Darant complied, dropping the Hawk close to the curved walls of the dome. This near, the sheer size of the structure was frightening.

They circled it twice before Nyx saw it. “Wait! Swing us back around.”

Darant fired those powerful forges and got them headed back. He returned to what had caught her eye.

Barely discernible along the top arc of the dome was an inscribed circle, large enough for the Hawk to lower through it, though it would be a tight fit. Even fainter within the circle were seven arched lines that met in the middle, forming a petal-like engraving.

She turned to the others. “We’ve seen such round copper doorways before. Only much smaller. Under the Oldenmast in Havensfayre and over at the Northern Henge. This must be a way in.”

“But if it’s a door,” Daal asked, “how do we open it?”

Nyx turned to Shiya. “Bridle-song. Like before. Only it took both of us—and a Kethra’kai elder named Xan to do it.”

“My great-grandmother,” Rhaif noted.

Nyx faced Daal. “Maybe if you took Xan’s place, we could open this door together.”

He nodded, willing to try.

She turned to Darant. “How close can you get us to that doorway?”

“Close enough to kiss it, if you think that’ll help us get inside.”

“It might.”

Darant spoke swiftly to Glace and Vikas, who had resumed their positions at the secondary stations. With great care, fighting the winds curving around the dome, he lowered the Hawk until the engraved circle filled the window.

The copper looked close enough to touch.