The sheer island prominence had once been settled. That much had been clear as soon as the last load of internees arrived atop the plateau, hearing the black winch box shut down with an electronic buzz and booby-trapped clank. Early exploration uncovered tumbled, vine-encrusted ruins, remnants of ancient walls. The fringes of extensive edifices could be seen before the summit of the ridgetop was obscured by dense forest.
Brod had taken it upon himself to continue surveying the interior, especially since Maia and Naroin lost the raft dispute. He had tried to cast his vote along with them, only to learn that a boy's opinion wasn't solicited or welcome. The women crewfolk figured they knew enough about sailing to dispense with the advice of a raw, city-bred midshipman. At the time, Maia had thought it a needless slight.
"It's some distance up this way, into the thicket," Brod told her, pushing and occasionally hacking a path with a stick. "I wanted to find the center of all this devastation. Did it happen all at once, or was this settlement abandoned slowly, to let nature do the work?"
Walking just behind him, Maia felt free to smile. When they had first met, he had introduced himself as "Brod Starkland," carelessly still appending the name of his motherclan. Naroin knew of the house, prominent in the city of Enheduanna, near Ursulaborg. Still, it was a kid's mistake to let it slip.. The boy was going to have to shuck his posh, Mediant Coast accent and learn man-dialect, real quick.
On further thought, perhaps Brod had been left here with the full agreement and approval of his crewmates, to take some starch out of him, or simply to get him out of their hair. Somehow, Maia doubted he was prime pirate material. Maybe he and I are alike in that way. Nobody particularly wants or needs us around.
The trail continued past tall, gnarly trees and tangled roots, mixed with broken stonework. Brod spoke over his shoulder. "We're almost there, Maia. Get ready for an eye-opener."
Still smiling indulgently, Maia noted that a clearing was about to open a short distance ahead. Probably a very big ruin, filled with stones so large that trees could not grow. She had seen some like that, during the horseback flight across Long Valley. Perhaps Lamatia Hold would look that way, centuries from now. It was something to contemplate.
Just as the trees ended, Brod stepped to the right, making room for Maia. At the same time, he thrust out a protective arm. "You don't want to get too close …"
At that moment, Maia stopped listening. Stopped hearing much of anything. A soundless roar of vertigo swelled as she halted, staring over a sudden, sheer precipice.
Steepness, all by itself, wouldn't have stunned her. The cliffs surrounding this island-prison were as abrupt, and higher still. But they lacked the texture of this deep bowl in front of her, which had been gouged with violence out of the peak's very center. The surface of the cavity was glassy smooth, as if rock had flowed until abruptly freezing in place, like cooling molasses.
What happened? Was it a volcano? Might it still be active? The material was darkly translucent, reminding her of northern Glacier's ancient ice, back in the remote northlands.
There and there, Maia thought she could perceive blocky fautlines, as if the rock just behind the fused layer was rendered by levels or strata, subdivided into partitions, catacombs, parallel geologic features from the planet's ancient crust.
Such surfacial contemplations were just how her foremind kept busy while the rest jibbered. "Ah . . . ah . . ." she commented succinctly.
"Exactly what I said at first sight," Brod nodded, agreeing solemnly. "That sums it in a kedger's egg."
Maia wasn't sure why neither she nor Brod mentioned his discovery to the others. Perhaps the unspoken consensus came from their being the two youngest, least-influential castaways, both recently jettisoned by those they were supposed to think of as "family." Anyway, it seemed doubtful any of the castaways would be able to shed light on the origins of the startling crater. The women seemed intimidated by the thicket, and avoided going any deeper than necessary to cut wood.
Naroin delved some distance during hunting forays, but the older woman gave no sign of having seen anything unusual. Either the former bosun had lousy eyesight, which seemed unlikely, or she, too, knew how to keep a good poker face.
Since last talking with Naroin, Maia had begun dwelling on dark, suspicious thoughts. Even her refuge in the chaste, ornate world of game abstractions grew unsettled. It was hard paying attention to mental patterns of shifting dots, when she kept remembering that Renna languished somewhere among those scattered isles, perhaps one visible from the southern bluffs. And then there was a long-delayed talk to be had with Leie.
