Anna was worried that navigating the canyons might be difficult. But it turned out to be rather easy. The whole area was divided into three aisles between the plateaus, and buildings were sparce. Most of the buildings were related to the trades, be there were also workshops, storehouses, or the homes of the tradesmen nearby. Only two of the cliffs had roads winding up the sides into the main city. At glance, Anna thought it would take an hour to walk up or down. This place was far more like a little town near the big city than a part of the city itself.

  It didn’t take long for Anna to compose her letter to Sol. Peter and Andrew stayed a little ways away from the hut while she wrote. After sealing it and paying the curriers, she rejoined them, and they looked around at the area.

  “Where exactly are the ruins supposed to be, anyway?” Peter asked. “It wasn’t just down here by the rivers?”

  Anna shook her head. “It’s inside one of the plateau’s,” Anna said. “The tallest one, I think.”

  “Did the High Elve’s build the plateau’s the way the Dwarves built those pillars in Highkrag?” Peter asked.

  Anna shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “If I remember correctly, they dug into the plateaus, but no one knew why.”

  “It wasn’t just mining?” Andrew asked.

  Anna shrugged. “It could have been. Maybe we’ll be able to tell better when we go inside. Though I doubt it, if no one else could figure it out.”

  “Hey, they didn’t have the High Elves with them like we do,” Peter said.

  Anna smiled at him. “Thanks for that.”

  “Where is the entrance, then?” Andrew asked.

  “I don’t know that either. Maybe we should have asked the guard?”

  Andrew shook his head. “That might have given us away,” he said. “We were lucky he was so talkative, but we should probably get directions from someone else.”

  As it turned out, getting directions was unnecessary. As they walked along the riverbank, searching for someone to ask, Anna looked at the roads leading up the cliffs to the main city. Along one of them, a little more than halfway to the top, she spotted an arch at the end of one of the double backs. It didn’t seem too large from this distance, just a dot of black shadow in the cliff. But it was much darker than the other shadows, like a tunnel going underground. She pointed it out to the others. “I think I found it.”

  The hike up to the cave left Anna’s legs wobbly and her lungs burning. She stumbled to the entrance, thinking she would sit and rest a few minutes before going inside. But as she looked into the cavern, all thought of rest was driven from her mind. The tunnel was short, just a hole in the side of the cliff, as tall and deep as a house. Beyond it, the cavern opened up. She’d expected darkness. Instead, she could make out the shadows of structures that almost looked intact.

  She started into the tunnel, Andrew and Peter following after her. As the ceiling fell away and the ground before them dropped off. Anna could see to the far end of the cavern. In the distance, all along the north eastern side of the city, holes like this pockmarked the cliffs, letting in just enough light to make out he shapes of tall buildings against the far wall. It looked like a sculpture of a town done in relief. The buildings jutted out of the stone itself.

  Without being blinded by sunlight, she could tell that very few of the structures were whole. Unlike the other ruins, though, where they seemed to have been toppled by weather, these looked as if they’d been dismantled. The damaged buildings were almost in neat piles, as if they’d just been left in the middle of construction. And there were some that hadn’t been touched. Most of these were near the back, which looked to have hardly been touched. Anna wondered if bricks had been taken from this site to build the city borne on the stones overhead.

  “This is smaller than I was expecting,” Peter said, looking around.

  “Did you think it would be like Highkrag?” Andrew asked.

  “Sort of,” Peter said.

  “It’s about as wide as one of the pillars,” Anna said.

  “It’s way shorter,” Peter pointed out.

  Anna nodded. “I doubt this place wasn’t a real city. The real city from this area is completely gone, if there ever was one.”

  “Those buildings look like small versions of the citadel from up north, don’t they?” Andrew asked.

  “It’s hard to say,” Anna said. She grinned at the others. “Let’s go check it out.” She continued into the cave, with the others following behind her. Steps led back down into the cave, which at first seemed easy. But by the time they’d reached the bottom of the steps, her legs remembered they were tired from the climb, and she was forced to sit down.

  “It looks like this place has been taken apart starting at the entrance,” Andrew said.

  Anna nodded. “I think that’s what happened. I didn’t see any records talking about it. It might have been between the Catastrophe and the founding of Grealand.” She looked around at the ruins. So much had been destroyed over the years, but it was still clear where the surrounding buildings had been, and what direction the roads had run.

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  She looked down at her bracelet. A faint blue glow emanated out of it. She looked to the others. “I’m going to start asking the Wisps to talk to me again,” she said. “We’ll see what they remember about this place.”

  “Right,” Andrew said, rising to his feet with her. “We’ll keep an eye out for Sol. You focus on the Wisps.”

  Anna nodded and started to walk deeper into the ruins. She stumbled a few times. For all the light overhead, illuminating the larger structures, the whole place was still dark, with every object consisting of patches of lighter shadows in the deep darkness. They made their way slowly into the center of the ruins.

  Even from the entrance, she’d been able to tell there was a sort of town square in the middle of the chamber. As she entered it, she could make out several more details that stood out. The whole thing sunk even lower into the ground with row after row of long steps sloping down to a platform in the middle. The steps formed a semi-circle, and it didn’t take Anna long to recognize an amphitheater.

  “Was this place used for announcements?” Anna wondered aloud. Behind the platform, she saw a structure she hadn’t been expecting. “They have a fountain here?”

  “Don’t they always?” Peter asked.

  “I thought it was only in their main cities. Maybe this was one.” They approached. The fountain was badly damaged, with burn marks all around it. The tree which grew out of its center stood taller and straighter than most of the others, but it was dead. It almost looked like a broken pillar of petrified wood.

  “That doesn’t look good,” Andrew muttered.

  “What do you think happened to that?” Peter asked.

  Anna shrugged. She doubted the High Elve’s were present for its destruction. She touched her bracelet as she thought about it. “What was this place for, though?” She whispered to the Wisps. “Remember. Please remember.” She stepped up onto the central platform and looked out at the rows. Suddenly, she felt her arm tingle as if a shock had run through it. She looked down and saw the bracelet in her arm was blazing blue.

  “Have they got something to show you?” Peter asked.

  “I think so,” Anna said as she tried to make out what the Wisps were doing through the tangle of their influence. Halcyon surprised Anna by pulling a few of them back. When there were only a three left, she remembered her first vision, the chaos of it, and she realized what he was doing. Several of the Wisps’ influences remained strong, but only one seemed to press into her like before.

  “We’ll keep an eye out for Sol, then,” Andrew said. “You keep focused on them.”

  Even as Anna nodded, Anna’s vision changed. She was still in the same spot, but she stood more than twice as tall as before. What were stacks of crumbled bricks and toppled walls before were now complete structures. Curling bars of metal extended between them, holding white lanterns. More white lanterns were strung on cords between the buildings, making it as bright inside the cavern as out.

  And the pews were suddenly full of people. Some were sitting, facing the amphitheater with expectation. Most others sat or stood in small groups talking to one another. None of them looked like Elves, though she supposed they were closer to that than to Humans or Dwarves. Their ears were much longer than those of the ordinary Elves. She thought they might also be taller on average. But what stood out even more was their hair and eyes.

  They glowed.

  Reds, blues, whites, and greens. All the colors of the rainbow scattered throughout the rows of benches. Hair that looked like fire, with eyes that twinkled even from far away. There were far more colors than she’d seen represented among the Wisps. And they didn’t change or fluctuate. Each individual seemed to simply be their color. It went right down to their veins, Anna realized, as she caught sight of those standing nearer to her, but also the wrists of the figure she was observing through.

  The influence—the memory—made all this seem perfectly natural. It muted her natural reaction. She was quite certain that she would have shouted or staggered at the realization that she was seeing the real High Elves. As it was, she drank in the vision, every detail of the beings around her, knowing that some of them must now be the creatures taking refuge in her bracelet.

  It was a while before she realized the figure she was seeing things through had been talking the whole time. The realization came with two others. She hadn’t understood a word of the talk. Yet, she somehow was certain of the subject at hand, and that it was a technical discussion on some element of magic far outside her grasp. Something to do with traveling great distances.

  Without warning her perspective changed. One of the other Wisps must have taken over. She was in the rows of benches now, looking down at a pair of High Elves who were debating. Once more, she didn’t understand the words themselves, but she could feel the remembered agreement with the glowing violet man on the right as he rebutted his opponent. The topic was more muddled, though, and she couldn’t tell why. An emotion was mixed into, though. One that pulled at her heart. A longing and nostalgia, more clear than anything she’d felt from the Wisps yet.

  Anna tried to speak, to tell the Wisps she understood their feeling, but the vision prevented it. It shifted again, and Anna could tell she was observing a third Wisps’ memory. This time the entire amphitheater was crowded. There were hundreds of High Elves gathered. The fountain and tree, which had not been there in the last vision, were prominent. The tree glowed with all the colors represented in the High Elves around it. At its base, the fountain was filled not with water, but with some liquid light, as if the leaves had been melted into the basin.

  The Wisp she was observing through, though, recognized it. The Wisp was filled with fear and confusion, even at the sight of it. Anna’s head pounded, and she knew the fear wasn’t a part of the memory. The feeling that came from the memory was eager anticipation. But surrounding that was the fear. Anna could feel it coming from the outside. Not just from the Wisp showing her this memory, but from many of the others as well.

  She only had a moment to wonder why that was. For as she watched, she saw the whole gathering rais their arms toward the tree. It’s light grew brighter as it seemed to fill with the glowing fluid. Tendrils of smoke light reached out from the branches to the waiting hands of the High Elves.

  Then something went wrong with the spell. Anna didn’t know what. The Wisps themselves didn’t seem to know what it was. Something seemed to snap, to recoil in the roots of the tree. A terrible noise filled the air, and the whole world began to shake. The tree burst into many colored flame, and the High Elves screamed, pulling their arms back to try and shield themselves.

  Only they weren’t arms any more. Her vision had gone strange. She could hardly describe what she saw as seeing, or what she felt as feeling. There was only light.

  Then Anna was yanked out of the vision.

  “Come on, wake up!” Andrew was shouting. “We need to go!”

  “What? Why, what’s going on?” Anna asked.

  “Someone seems to have figured out who we are,” Andrew said. “And they’ve sent the city guard after us.”