The road forked.

  The wider main road continued on in more or less the same direction; the next day’s walk would take us up, on average, and presumably back to the grassier rolling hills. A narrower road split off it, still within the terrain that made me think of gcial rock. A pair of square white stone pilrs fnked the narrower road; I estimated that they were maybe three to four meters tall and about as wide around at my chest height as I could reach with both arms, although they narrowed at the top. Each bore a simple design of five dots, four in a tilted square and one in the centre. Four of the dots were bck, but the left one was red.

  “Let me guess,” I said, trying to sound like I was joking, though I could feel butterflies flutter in my stomach.

  Serru gave me a brief smile, acknowledgement of the attempt at least. “Yes. It would be best if I didn’t go any further. I doubt that it will immediately offer you a way home, so I’ll wait here for you. There’s a shelter there,” she gestured farther down the road and to one side, where I could see a single-story structure some way down, “and I have plenty of food. Since I have no idea what to expect, only that it’s believed to be the most powerful magic in the world, I’ll give you as much time as I can. I will be there or in the immediate area and will return to it if you wait. I would not have brought you here if the Quincunx meant harm, but treat it with respect.”

  “Right. It’s already te afternoon, should I wait until morning?” I hadn’t really slept very well, with those zombie dreams.

  “Could you sleep tonight knowing that it’s right there?”

  “That... is a really good point, actually. I... if for any reason anything happens and I don’t...”

  The smile came back. “I know, Nathan. You’ve told me several times, and I can see. I’m gd I stumbled across you. Off you go. Answers, or perhaps at least the beginning of them or of a path home or both, aren’t far away.”

  I took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right. And probably I’m going to see you again very soon.” Anything else I could say would sound stupid, so I just started along the Quincunx road.

  The ring road had been ft, even across gaps; if there were bridges underpinning that, they were invisible. This road dwindled until it was more just a track for foot traffic, not able to support anything with wheels. The initial gaps would allow something squirrel-sized to run around freely on a lower level, and those often had ft sbs of rock id over them. As the gaps grew wider, allowing for a bck b or border collie to fit comfortably, railless but proper bridges began to appear, with sturdy arches supporting them across gaps that, eventually, a human could fit down; those were probably a major reason for the road’s frequent curves and bends. Scattered trees, mostly on the small side, still grew in cracks in the sides of the gaps, more or less at surface level, but it was a little startling to see an occasional rger tree that had taken root deep in one of the gaps and survived it somehow, leaving its upper foliage at eye level from the road.

  Alone in the quiet, nervous and uncertain about what I was walking into, I added my own background music for distraction, whistling the first song that came to mind. For reasons known only to my subconscious, that was Blondie’s ‘One Way or Another.’

  Sudden motion caught my eye. I barely had time to identify the source as a running youngish man with dandelion-yellow hair before he raced across the bridge I was on with complete disregard for my presence. I managed, somehow, to avoid being knocked off, but for a couple of seconds there, I teetered precariously on the edge. The dead leaves and whatever pnt life had established itself in the gradual buildup was far enough down that while it would probably not be fatal, a fall would almost certainly lead to injury even without banging the walls on the way down. He disappeared somewhere along my backtrail.

  On solid ground, I repyed the encounter. I hadn’t seen anything suggesting fear, just single-minded focus to the exclusion of anything else. I could probably rule out panicked flight from zombies, mosslings, or whatever the Quincunx might offer, and put it down to pin old-fashioned rudeness. While it was pusible to assume there would be no one else on this road—his presence had certainly startled me—I didn’t think I was particurly difficult to see under these conditions even without my hi-vis EMS jacket. And seriously, if he couldn’t see me, maybe he could have heard me?

  Some people...

  With a sigh, I tried to concentrate on gratitude that I hadn’t actually fallen off, but I couldn’t help muttering a few profane observations about my opinion of that sort of behaviour.

  It probably wasn’t five minutes of completely-uneventful walking before I heard a scream.

  It was behind me, and deep enough that it was probably male. All things considered, it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to put those pieces together.

  I really wanted to reach the Quincunx. The sun was getting lower and I really didn’t want to be on this road in the dark. I was tired. This wasn’t my territory, and I didn’t know local social rules or ws. It was almost certainly his own fault.

  None of that mattered.

  I hadn’t just fallen into my job for the sake of paying the rent. It was who I was, so much so that it had destroyed retionships. I’d had high hopes for my future with Lee, but he’d finally left; he’d told me he couldn’t compete and couldn’t bear to watch me hiding from myself in my job, whatever that meant.

  I heaved a deep sigh and turned around, retracing my steps at a much faster walk.

  “Hello?” I shouted. “Did you have an accident?” I listened intently for a moment, and thought I heard a groan. “I hear you! I need to find you. Can you keep talking to me?”

  I kept talking, pausing to listen. Since he’d been moving away from me at a fair speed, it took longer than I’d have liked to track him down.

  I found him, as I’d expected, at the bottom of a wide crevice. He wasn’t moving much, just intermittent small twitches of his limbs, but I could hear the occasional moan. That was, in fact, the only response I got.

  I scouted the immediate area, and found a spot where sturdy-looking vines had rooted themselves right into tiny cracks in the rock near the edge of the crevice and spilled down into it. I tested them with increasing vigour, and decided that they would hold at least long enough for me to get safely down. Getting back up, especially with a casualty, would have to wait.

  I scrambled down the vines, and after a couple of heart-stopping moments when individual rootlets pulled loose but the greater mass held, I reached the bottom safely.

  He was breathing. He was bleeding, too, from a head wound and from several shallow cerations that didn’t look likely to be significant. His left arm was at an angle that it could not have achieved if the bones were all intact.

  I dropped to one knee beside him, pulled out my lumina stone to counteract the shadows down here, and started a more thorough investigation. Could the stone work for checking his pupils? I really wanted at least my watch so I could check his heart rate; I had to settle for estimates based on experience, and for all I knew, normal range was different here. The ck of basic diagnostic gear and the ability to get vitals was maddening, but I’d have to do what I could.

  He eventually woke up, while I was wrapping a Bandage around his head, and grumbled something incoherent at me that sounded like it was probably not very appreciative.

  “I could have left you here,” I pointed out calmly. “If you want to die, I’m sure there are better alternatives.” The end of the Bandage merged neatly into the rest of it, which was rather convenient, I had to admit. I hoped they worked on scalp injuries. “I’m a paramedic. You probably have a concussion, but probably a mild one. Do you understand? Your brain got rattled around in your skull like jelly in a jar. That’s not good for it. I’m going to Splint your arm, because it is definitely broken. Do you live near here? You need someone to check that bone and make sure the ends are lined up properly, and you need to talk to someone about the concussion.”

  “I can find help,” he said tersely.

  He growled at me repeatedly while I used one of the smallest pairs of Splints and a second Bandage to stabilize his arm as securely as I could. I’d heard worse. I looked at my scarf, sighed to myself, and used it to make a sling that would offer some support and minimize motion. It turned out to be exactly the right size for the purpose. I hadn’t had that for very long. With any luck Serru would understand.

  “Here, drink this.” I gave him one of the little bottles of bright red Quickheal. He tossed it back in one gulp and threw the bottle aside; I retrieved it and tucked it in my bag. “Now, we just need to get out of here.” I picked up my lumina stone, stood up, and looked around. I could maybe get back up the vines alone, although I wasn’t entirely sure they’d hold me a second time. That would be impossible with a broken arm, though.

  “Do you have food?”

  I rolled my eyes and fished around in my bag for a handful of red berries. “Here. Now let me think.” Now and then I’d seen more gradual inclines. Were there any shallow enough that it would be viable, maybe if I was pulling from the top on a vine, to get up with one arm?

  He took the berries, ate them three at a time, and got carefully to his feet.

  Without a word, he started walking along the bottom of the crevice, as near as I could tell in the opposite direction of the Quincunx.

  “Hey! You’re not in any condition to be wandering around by yourself!”

  He shrugged with his good shoulder. “Thanks for the help, I guess. I’m going home. I don’t need anything more from you.”

  Good thing he didn’t hurt himself with that gracious expression of gratitude.

  Everyone had the right to decline care. I could hardly get him to sign something to that effect at the moment. Was he lucid enough to make that decision?

  Okay, reality check. What else was I going to do? Chase after him and try to force him to listen to me? Under the circumstances, I couldn’t really do much other than accept that I’d provided essential emergency care and that he’d refused anything further. I had no solid grounds for believing him to be impaired, although I couldn’t have done much even if that weren’t the case.

  I followed the bottom of the crevice in the other direction, until I saw another patch of those vines. I used them to climb back up to the level of the road, got oriented, and started walking again.

  I paused at the next bridge for a swallow or two of water from my gourd. I hoped this didn’t take too much longer, given that the shadows were gathering up here, too, and the cracks between the rocks were turning into rivers of gloom that could hold anything. I’d put my lumina stone away because it actually made it harder to make out shapes in the twilight, but before much longer, I’d need it just to see my footing.

  I kept on, following the road across the bridge and around one of those rge crevice-rooted trees that had foliage at my eye level, this one rge enough to block my view until I had passed it.

  A pair of rough stones, high as my head, fnked the road a short way ahead.

  They were odd, because each was unique. They weren’t clones, or even rotated clones.

  To either side, spaced apart, were more. They formed a rge circle, in fact, around an area of ft ground. In the centre of it was... well, a stone structure. More rough stones, these ones ftter, supported a broader ft rock like a roof, and beneath that I could see deeper darkness.

  A stairway down, in fact.

  I took a deep breath, fished out my lumina stone, and started down them.

  The steps seemed to have been cut out of solid rock, seamless and unbroken. So were the walls to either side of me, and once I got far enough, the ceiling above me.

  The walls had a faint luminescence of their own, enough that I could have avoided actually running into them or falling on the stairs, but I doubted it would be enough for me to see anything approaching me, so I kept my lumina stone out.

  My path was blocked by a massive wall-to-wall sb of coarse-textured stone.

  Words had been engraved into it, and as with the medical kit booklets, I could read them despite the nguage weirdness: Speak your goal and enter. Just below them was an indentation shaped like a hand, and below that was a warning: Pass this door and be forever changed.

  Just being here had already changed me.

  I id a hand in the space clearly meant for it, took a deep breath, and said, “I’m trying to find a way home.”

  The sb of rock tilted slowly away from me; the sound was so low that I could feel the grinding vibration coming up through the floor, but it was barely audible. It finally stabilized at an angle, forming a ramp upwards.

  I might have worried more, had it not opened at the top into an area illuminated by warm golden light, behind an archway across which long strands of glittering beads dangled. It could presumably still be a trap, but that seemed excessively paranoid, and I was going to have to take some risks in order to get home.

  I walked up the slope and stepped off it just outside the beaded curtain. I halfway expected it, so wasn’t really surprised when the sb of rock began to rise behind me. Whatever the route out was, it was going to mean going forward, not back.

  The circur room beyond the curtain was spectacur.

  The walls and floor were white marble generously ced with threads of glittering gold. Rugs on the floor and tapestries on the wall were woven in brilliant warm colours, every shade of yellow and orange from pale barely-there pastels up through near-bck, and metallic threads sparkled among the intricate radial geometric patterns. Near the walls were great bronze chests bound with yellow gold, and padded backless benches with legs and ends in complicated shapes, either made from or gilded with what I thought might be yellow and white and rose gold. I couldn’t see a source for the light, or any shadows.

  In the centre was a round marble table with a single pedestal leg. Several thick rugs surrounded it.

  I walked up to the table, heart pounding, and stepped onto the nearest rug.

  In the centre, in a recess with bars across it, a sphere the size of a golf ball burned like a tiny sun.

  Around it were hexagonal tiles with markings on them.

  I examined the tiles, which each seemed to have a small section of some kind of image, but they were disconnected and made no sense.

  That reminded me of something...

  Tentatively, I tried to pry one of the tiles up, but it wouldn’t move; however, when I touched it, the rim of it began to glow faintly.

  Oh, seriously?

  I touched a second tile. Both briefly went bnk, then the sections of images on them reappeared with their positions exchanged.

  It wanted me to do a puzzle?

  Well, all right.

  There were thirty-six tiles, which looked like chaos at first, but once I started seeing a pattern, it got much easier. Stylized lines and sweeps of colour showed what turned out to be a sunrise over the Grassnds, with the sky still dark at the apex and the ground still shadowy, but there was a brightening swathe across the horizon, all with the glowing sphere in its barred recess as the sun in the exact centre.

  As the st tiles winked out and back into sight in the correct pces, the bars across the tiny sun drew back and it floated gently into the air, hovering at about my eye level.

  I reached out to it, and it drifted over to my open palm. I braced myself for it to be hot, though even at close proximity it felt only mildly warm.

  At the instant of contact, it grounded itself through me.

  There was no other way I could describe it. It was outside me, and then it was under my skin and my hand was glowing with golden-white light, and the glow spread with every rapid beat of my heart. It was warm, and it grew warmer, hot enough to burn but there was no pain, and the glow grew brighter and more golden.

  I vaguely felt the floor under my knees, and concluded that they’d buckled under me, but it was all I could do to hold onto consciousness among the sheer intensity of the light and the heat.

  Then I lost to it.