“How far is it to Izel?” Sophia turned towards Irrik.

  “Now that it’s started to snow, days will be shorter,” Irrik answered obliquely. “Izel’s built into the mountain you see ahead of us, but that still means several days’ travel with less daylight. We won’t stop to hunt; since this is the first snowfall, it will probably be no more than a few inches and it won’t stick to the road, but that won’t be true of the next one. We need to reach Izel quickly now.”

  The answer, as it turned out, was that it was five days. Those five days were chilly enough that Sophia appreciated both the warm winter clothing they’d bought back in Casterville and the Keep Warm Ability Amy had suggested that they all pick up. Dav and Taika both complained about the chill, especially once they reached the mountain and started to climb. The snow didn’t grow much deeper, but it was a constant annoyance, as was the cold, as they climbed higher into the mountains.

  The old railroad didn’t lead all the way to Izel. It ran along the base of the mountain, but Irrik led them up a clearly well-used cobblestone road into the mountains. Unlike the mountain near the Olhan ruins, the mountain that held Izel showed no signs of major landslides. Sophia was still a little nervous, but Irrik reassured her that the route they took didn’t even have avalanches; that was why it was chosen for the road, after all.

  The first sight of Izel was not the large city Sophia expected. Instead, she saw a surprisingly ordinary wooden fence outside an open area containing several buildings that looked an awful lot like houses with a colorful upper floor, thatched roof, and stone-built lower floor. A stone wall ran between some of the houses but not others.

  The houses came in clusters of four or five with long stretches of wall in between. The wall stretched in both directions as far as Sophia could see. She doubted it covered the entire mountain; it seemed far more likely that it was around something important. Since they were on their way to Izel, Sophia assumed that was what it protected. Strangely, she couldn’t see a city anywhere on the mountain slopes; she’d have thought this was Izel if it had more buildings.

  The arrangement of walls with clusters of guard houses looked like a deliberate defensive setup with large kill zones that were less protected and strong points that could hold the guards when they weren’t fighting, or maybe even when they were if they had the kind of “siege magic” Arryn had assumed Sophia had. Sophia wasn’t sure if that was right, but it seemed plausible, at least. It clearly wasn’t designed to hold off intelligent enemies, but it would probably work against crazed animals.

  The cobblestone road turned after they passed the second cluster of guard houses and led through a wooden gate. Irrik raised a hand towards the nearest house and waved, then turned and closed the gate behind them. Sophia was pretty sure she saw someone inside the building wave back; that made it obvious that someone was watching.

  Once they were past the first gate, it was only about twenty feet to another wooden gate that led through a stone wall. Like the first wall, it wasn’t particularly tall; it was clearly not meant to stop anything that could simply jump over it. At the same time, Sophia suspected that the momentary pause most creatures would make before a jump was all the defenders were looking for.

  The third gate was probably within view of the second gate if you knew what to look for, but Sophia didn’t see it until they’d walked for several minutes after leaving the defensive ring behind. It stood open as they approached it, a black hole that led into an unlit tunnel instead of simply to the other side of a wall. The gates were filigreed metal while the uprights were stone, very unlike the previous walls. Strangely, the tunnel looked like it was built up and extended away from the original cave entrance; perhaps it started life as more of a slot that led to a hole?

  It wasn’t until they were almost on top of the gate that Sophia felt the presence of a ward. It was the first one she’d felt in the Broken Lands, so she looked around in shock. She couldn’t see anything obvious that was projecting it; there was no runework on the gate at all. There were other ways to do wards; unfortunately, Sophia was not a warding expert, so she could only guess at how it was created and what it would keep out.

  She could, however, ask. “What does the ward keep out?”

  “Ward?” Irrik sounded confused.

  “The spell on the gate. Or maybe the wall, or the tunnel; I’m not sure. I just know it starts at the entrance to the tunnel.” Sophia frowned and waved in its general direction. “I don’t think it’s meant to keep me out. Maybe it’s to let someone know we’ve entered?”

  “You can feel it?” Amy sounded startled. “There’s a spell on the tunnel to slow down anything running into the mountain; it also sends an alert to the Guard. Guardsmen have tokens that let them move at full speed, but it still sends the alert.”

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  Sophia nodded slowly. That was a better warning than she’d expected when she saw the open gate but not as good a protective spell as she’d expected when she realized there was a ward. Admittedly, she’d never seen a ward spell placed on the entrance to a city; they were usually used on individual buildings back home and simply served as another layer of security.

  “You’ve made some interesting choices, then,” Irrik commented. “Most Called concentrate on combat Abilities, not sensory ones, before the first upgrade.”

  Sophia frowned. That seemed shortsighted. “If I can’t see it, I can’t do something about it.”

  Irrik grinned and chuckled. “A woman after my own heart. But then, I was a scout and a hunter. We want to get to the Registry.” He started forward, then added, “Plus, I want to see the look on your faces when you see Izel. It’s not what anyone expects.”

  Sophia shook her head. What could be so strange about a city? She’d seen a lot of cities. Some of them were definitely impressive, like the domes of Berinath and the vertical cities of Suratiz, built for people to fly in at any level, but she couldn’t imagine that either of those applied to a city on a mountain.

  Perhaps Irrik’s words earlier weren’t a mistake? He’d said the city was in the mountain. That would explain why it wasn’t visible from outside and why they had to go through a tunnel, but it still didn’t mean it would be strange to see. She was certain it would be odd to see houses under a roof, but surely it wasn’t that strange?

  Sophia lit her magelight then followed Irrik farther into the tunnel. It was a dozen steps before she started seeing other light and another dozen before it was clear the light came from outside the tunnel. Unlike her magelight, the light from the other end of the tunnel was almost blue.

  The tunnel came out onto a platform with a short stone wall, tall enough to prevent easily falling off the edge but also easy to see over. This was a truly giant cavern; Sophia didn’t think she’d ever seen one as large as this one. It had to take up a significant portion of the interior of the mountain.

  Sophia followed the light up towards the roof of the cave; it was filled with a strange bluish-white glowing crystal. It almost looked clear in places, but all Sophia could see was more crystal. Spots glowed with the yellow light of the Sun, but overall the crystal had a bluish-white radiance that meant it was definitely the source of the light she’d seen in the tunnel. It almost seemed to drip down towards the floor of the cavern.

  Sophia moved forward and looked over the wall. That was what it was there for, obviously.

  Directly below the ceiling light crystal, a pool of water surrounded another crystal that reached for the sky. It glowed with the same light as the ceiling crystal. A number of other bits of crystal floated in the air between the two. Sophia reflexively reached out with her aura to see what was going on, but it was much too far, well outside her aura’s reach.

  She blinked a few times, then turned her attention to the rest of the cavern. There were clear structures built into a series of ledges all over the place. Some seemed to have crystalline stalactites dripping from them, but most of that seemed to be the rock kind she was more familiar with.

  Most of the built-up area was covered in greenery, though Sophia couldn’t make out if it was wild or carefully cultivated from that far away. Some of them looked like ordinary homes or workshops while others seemed more like palaces or temples. There was no way there could be that many palaces, however, so she was probably mistaken.

  “Is Izel really that surprising?” Amy’s question pulled Sophia’s attention off the view in front of her.

  Irrik chuckled. “Now I know you’re Aurora clan. Only someone raised in Izel would even ask that. It’s like nothing else I’ve seen, and I’ve traveled to dozens of shards. Even entered the Maze once, though once was enough for me.”

  “What was it like?” Amy seemed to perk up at the mention of the Maze.

  Irrik shook his head. “Nothing for you to worry about for a long time. It was not something I’d like to repeat; we got out before it killed us, but it was all too close. I think the Maze is a place for people past the third Upgrade, if that’s even possible. It’s certainly no place for someone new to the second.”

  “Is it always this bright here?” Dav asked as he turned away from the view.

  Amy shook her head. “The sky crystal dims as the light outside does. That’s where it comes from. It’s especially pretty when there’s an aurora, the sky crystal shimmers with all of the colors in the sky.”

  Dav asked dozens of questions as they walked to the Registry building. Amy was able to answer most of them, but she gave up when he started asking about alchemy using the floating crystals and the water from the pool in the center of the cave. She knew it was done, but that was all she knew.

  Sophia’s attention was on the people around them as they moved through the city. There was something about them that put her nerves on edge, but she wasn’t sure what it was. They were nearly at the building Irrik had indicated held the Izel Vocational Registry when she saw one group of people cross the street dodging between the carts and carriages that filled it, walk a dozen feet, then cross back.

  There was a group of clearly armed people that they’d ostentatiously avoided coming close to. They were each armed with an ax and a short spear that looked both ceremonial and functional, along with a buckler strapped to the left arm. Oddly, they didn’t have any armor and their clothing was not consistent; only the weapons were.

  That was when it clicked for Sophia: everyone was a little on edge. This wasn’t the only clot of armed people she’d seen, either, and they all seemed to have the same weaponry. That was definitely weird. “Who are those people?”

  “Followers of the Broken Temple,” Amy said with a frown. “They’re not usually so obvious. I wonder what’s going on?”

  Yes, there are warding spells on Earth used for areas much larger than a single building. Sophia isn’t familiar with them. With that said, putting them over a city entrance on Earth is simply pointless if you’re already letting a lot of people in.