“Thank you, Hakkon,” she said with relief. That had been a worry. She hadn’t wanted Grim to think she was shirking.
By the time they reached the cellar, the Foothold Gate was open, Ivar and Alberdina were gone, and the mages were filing through as Jonaton waited impatiently. She formed up behind the last of the mages, without really thinking about it, stepped through and—
—it was darker than a cave. Darker than anything she had ever experienced before. An enormous darkness that stretched to infinity on all sides of her, and she felt as if she was falling, but she knew she wasn’t. And she felt as if she was being stretched in every possible direction. It didn’t hurt, but it didn’t feel good either!
There were things out there. Things she couldn’t see. They couldn’t see her, either, but she got the idea that they knew she was there, somewhere. And they wanted very badly to find her.
She tried to make herself small, but all she succeeded in doing was stretching herself in different directions, some of them impossible. And at the same time she couldn’t actually feel anything of her body, as if she was just some—thing, with no body at all, just a little cloud of Delia, a mist in the darkness, and if she wasn’t careful she’d blow apart, as a breeze blew apart a cloud of fog, and she’d never find herself and those things would breathe her in, or drink her up and—
—and she stepped down hard on moss-covered ground, stumbled over a stick, felt her elbow caught by someone, and was pulled out of the way just as Jonaton stepped through the Gate and it closed behind him. All there was now was a single cube of inscribed sandstone to mark where it had been.
One of the other mages caught Jonaton as he stumbled as she had done. He shook his head hard and made an inarticulate noise.
“That’s a rough one,” the mage said in sympathy.
“Well,” he replied, thickly. “Once we get the real Gates up, it won’t be so bad.”
“Oh, it could be much worse,” Ponu said cheerfully, materializing out of the group and taking him by the shoulder. “Come along, there’s work to be done. Delia, you come too. Ivar and Alberdina need your help making camp.”
But I’ve never camped before, she thought. It didn’t seem to matter, though. She was carried along by the press of bodies, through underbrush and waist-high grass already being trampled flat, over the top of a low hill.
And there it was, stretching out in a bowl of a valley.
Ivar hadn’t lied. The lake was the biggest she had ever seen, practically filling the valley, steel-blue under an extremely early-morning sky, the sun just barely peeking up over the horizon. And at the far distant shore, three narrow rivers. Did they lead into the lake or out of it?
Probably into it. All this water has to come from somewhere.
Back in Valdemar the sun was well above the horizon. It was, in fact, the usual time for breakfast if you weren’t too quick about waking. They must be at least as far from Valdemar as Valdemar was from the Capital.
“At least it isn’t going to rain,” someone said cheerfully, and gave her a little shove to send her down the slope.
The mages trailed in single file down to the center of the cup of the crescent, and she followed them through more waist-high grass. Belatedly she wondered if there were any ticks or other obnoxious biting insects.
Too late, she thought with resignation. She hadn’t prepared with repellent, and she’d just have to hope that if there were such things, her trews tucked into her boots would keep them out. Ponu propelled Jonaton just ahead of her by his shoulder, although Jonaton didn’t seem in the least reluctant to go. The closer they got to that circle of land protruding into the water at the center of the crescent, the more she was able to make out some of what Ivar had talked about. Ruins, stone ruins—what looked like the wall of a round tower, and several buildings. Most of those weren’t even head-high, but it occurred to her that those ruined walls could make a great basis for shelters. And when she saw Alberdina and Ivar hard at work inside them, she was pleased to think that her untutored guess was correct.
She detoured and joined them, ignoring the mages who had clustered at the water’s edge, where there seemed to be those other remains that Ivar had spoken of—docks, a jetty, the sketchy remains of boats.
And she gaped at the number of packs clustered on the flattened grass in the center of the ruined tower. “But—”
“I’ve been back and forth a few times,” Ivar said cheerfully. “I’m used to playing pack-mule. Cousin, what do you want Delia to do?”
Alberdina rummaged in an open pack beside her and came up with a hand-scythe. Delia took it uncertainly. “Ever used one of those?” Alberdina asked.
“Gathering herbs?” she replied with hesitation.
“Go gather reeds along the shore and bring them back here. Reeds, not sedges. Sedges have edges; reeds are round.” Alberdina went back to her task, which was threading pieces of rope through grommets on the edge of what appeared to be a house-sized piece of canvas. Maybe larger. Ivar picked up a hand-axe with a hammer-like side balancing the axe-blade and headed out through the remains of the tower door, which was completely without a header, just two jambs and a sill.
She followed her orders and went down to the shore, avoiding the gathering of mages down by the jetty. Now that the sun was up, the lake water was more blue than steel, but with edges going to green, except where the jetty was. Bay came with her, wagging his tail solemnly when she looked at him. “Good boy,” she told him. He snorted and picked up his ears, tail wagging harder.
She took off her boots and waded in. The water was cold, but shallow enough here that she could see the sandy bottom, and little minnows darting through the plants—which were, as specified, round. She bent down and began cutting, stacking the cut reeds up along the dry shore as she worked. The water smelled clean, the cut reeds added a pleasant green scent, the sun was comfortable for now—but she decided that when she’d finished cutting as much reed as she could carry, she’d go back and get her hat from her pack. It didn’t make any sense to come all this way to help, only to be felled by sunstroke.
Bay kept watch while she worked, and she was quite comforted by his presence. After all . . . she already knew there were bears.
When she returned, Alberdina and Ivar were creating a sort of tent-shelter using the stone walls and the enormous piece of canvas. They’d spread the canvas over the top of the walls and were working their way around the base, pounding wooden pegs cut from branches into the ground with the hammer-ends of their hand-axes and tying off the pieces of rope fastened to the grommets in the canvas. “Spread the reeds about two knuckles deep around the edge of the tower inside,” said Alberdina. “Keep cutting and spreading until you’ve gone all the way around the edge.” Delia spread her reeds, got her hat, and went back to the lake edge to gather more.