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A pale-leafed olive tree and a dwarf fig tree strained to grow diagonally around the boulders on the slope.
This must have been the green speck Luce had seen at a distance from below. Dee had said it was their destination, but Luce couldn’t believe they’d climbed all that way through the long expanse of writhing dust.
Everybody’s wings looked like they belonged to Outcasts, brown and battered, emitting the dullest glow. The actual Outcasts’ wings looked even more fragile than normal, like cobwebs. Dee used a wind-stretched sweater sleeve to wipe the dust from her face. She ran red-nail-polished fingers through wild red hair. Somehow the old lady still looked elegant. Luce didn’t want to consider what she looked like.
“Never a dull moment!” Dee’s voice trailed behind her as she disappeared into the cave.
They followed her inside, stopping a few feet in, where the dusky light withered into darkness. Luce leaned against a cold reddish-brown sandstone wall next to Daniel. His head nearly skimmed the low ceiling. All the angels had to tuck their wings down to accommo-date the tightness of the cave.
Luce heard a scraping sound, and then Dee’s shadow stretched into the lit portion at the entrance of the cave.
She pushed a large wooden chest toward them with the toe of her hiking boot.
Cam and Roland rushed to help her, the muted amber glow of their dusty wings altering the darkness of the space. Each lifted a corner of the chest and they carried it to a natural alcove in the cave that Dee’s gestures indicated. At her approving nod, they set it down against the cave wall.
“Thank you, gentlemen. ” Dee ran her fingers along the brass edge of the trunk. “It seems like only yesterday I had this carted up here. Though it must have been nearly two hundred years ago. ” Her face furrowed into a small frown of nostalgia. “Oh, well, a person’s life is but a day. Gabbe helped me, though because of the dust storms, she never recalled the exact location. That was an angel who knew the value of advance preparation.
She knew this day would come. ”
Dee slipped an elegant silver key from the pocket of her cardigan and twisted it into the chest’s lock. As the old thing creaked open, Luce edged forward, expecting something magical—or at least historic—to be revealed.
Instead, Dee tossed out six standard-issue army canteens, three small bronze lanterns, a heavy stack of blankets and towels, and an armful of crowbars, pickaxes, and shovels.
“Drink up if you need to. Lucinda first. ” She distributed the canteens, which were filled with cold, delicious water. Luce inhaled the contents of her canteen and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. When she licked her lips, they were prickly with dry sand.
“That’s better, isn’t it?” Dee smiled. She slid open a box of matches and lit a candle in each one of the lanterns. Light flickered off the walls, generating dramatic shadows as the angels bent over, pivoted, brushed each other off.
Arriane and Annabelle scrubbed at their wings with the dry towels. Daniel, Roland, and Cam preferred to shake the sand out of theirs, beating them against the rocks until the soft sssss sound of sand falling on the stone floor faded. The Outcasts seemed content to stay dirty. Soon the cave was brightly lit with an angelic glow, as if someone had started a bonfire.
“What now?” Roland asked, pouring the sand out of one of his leather boots.
Dee had moved to the mouth of the cave, her back to the others. She walked to the flat stone expanse outside, then waited for them to follow.
They gathered in a small half circle, facing the sloping pile of boulders and the struggling olive and fig trees.
“We need to go inside, ” Dee said.
“Inside where?” Luce turned around to look behind her. The cave they’d just walked out of was the only “inside” option Luce could see. Out here, there was only the flat floor of the mesa and the rockslide against the cliff wall.
“Sanctuaries are built on top of sanctuaries are built on top of sanctuaries,” Dee said. “The first one on Earth used to stand right here under this slope of fallen rock.
Inside it, the final piece of the fallens’ early history is encoded. This is the Qayom Malak. After the first sanctuary was destroyed, several others followed in its place, but the Qayom Malak always remained within them. ”
“You mean that mortals have used the Qayom Malak, too?” Luce asked.
“Without much thought or understanding. Over the years it grew more and more misunderstood by each new group to build their temple here. For many, this site has been considered unlucky”—she glanced at Arriane, who shifted her weight—“but that is no one’s fault. It was a long time ago. Tonight, we unearth what once was lost. ”
“You mean the knowledge of our Fall?” Roland paced the perimeter of the slope of rocks. “That’s what the Qayom Malak will tell us?”
Dee smiled cryptically. “The words are Aramaic.
They mean . . . well, it’s better if you just see for yourselves. ”
Beside them, Arriane was chewing noisily on a strand of her hair, her hands stuffed deep into the pockets of her overalls, her wings stiff and unmoving. She stared at the fig and olive trees, as if in a trance.
Luce noticed now what was strange about the trees.
The reason they seemed to grow diagonally out of the stone was that their trunks lay buried deep beneath the boulders.
“The trees,” she said.
“Yes, once they were fully exposed. ” Dee bent down to caress the withering green leaves of the little fig tree.
“As was the Qayom Malak. ” She rose and patted the heap of boulders. “This whole mesa was once much larger. A lovely, vibrant place at times, though that’s hard to imagine now. ”
“What happened to it?” Luce asked. “How was the sanctuary destroyed?”
“The most recent one was covered up by this rockslide. That was about seven hundred years ago, after a particularly severe earthquake. But even before that, the list of calamities to occur here was unprecedented—
flood, fire, murder, war, explosions. ” She paused, peering into the pile of boulders as if it were a mass of crystal balls. “Still, the only part that matters endures. At least I hope it does. And that’s why we need to go inside. ” Cam ambled over to one of the larger boulders, leaned against it with his arms crossed. “I excel at many things, Dee, not the least of which is rock. But passing through rock isn’t one of my gifts. ” Dee clapped her hands. “That is precisely why I packed the shovels all those years ago. We’ll have to clear the rocks aside,” Dee said. “We seek what lies within. ”
“You’re saying we’re going to excavate the Qayom Malak?” Annabelle asked, biting pink fingernails.
Dee touched a mossy patch at the center of the mound of boulders, spilled long before from the cliffs.
“I’d start here if I were you!”
When they realized that Dee was serious about dis-mantling the tower of boulders, Roland distributed the tools Dee had flung out of the wooden chest. They set to work.
“As you clear, make sure you leave this area free. ” Dee gestured to the open space between the rockslide and the head of the trail that had brought them there.
She marked off an area of about ten square feet. “We’re going to need it. ”
Luce took a pickax and tapped it uncertainly against the rock.
“Do you know what it looks like?” she said to Daniel, whose crowbar was wedged around a rock behind the fig tree. “How will we recognize the Qayom Malak when we find it?”
“There’s no illustration in my book for this. ” Daniel split the rock easily with a tilt of his hand. The muscles of his arms trembled as he lifted the boulder halves, each the size of a large suitcase. He tossed them behind him, careful not to let them land inside the area Dee had marked off. “We’ll just have to trust that Dee remembers. ”
Luce stepped into the open space where the boulder Daniel moved aside had been. The rest of the olive an
d fig trees were now exposed, down to their trunks. They had been nearly flattened by the tons of fallen rock. Her gaze flew around the gigantic pile of rocks they’d have to clear. It was easily twenty feet high. Could anything have withstood the might of this landslide?
“Don’t worry,” Dee called out, as if reading Luce’s mind. “It’s in there somewhere, tucked away as safely as your first memory of love. ”
The Outcasts had flown to the top of the slope. Phil showed the others where to cast the boulders they’d already chipped away, and they slammed them back into the face of the slope, causing the compounded rock to fracture and slide down the sides.
“Hey! I see some really old yellow brick. ” Annabelle’s wings fluttered above the rockslide’s highest point, where it edged up against the mountain’s sheer, vertical walls. She heaved away some debris with her shovel. “I think it might be a wall of the sanctuary. ”
“A wall, dear? Very good,” Dee said. “There should be three more of them, the way walls often go. Keep digging. ” She was distracted, pacing the flat square of rock she’d marked off near the trailhead, not noticing the progress of the dig. She seemed to be counting something. Her gaze was fixed on the mesa floor. Luce watched Dee for a few moments and saw that the old lady was counting her steps, as if blocking a play.
She looked up, caught Luce’s eye. “Come with me. ”
Luce glanced at Daniel, at his sweat-glistening skin.
He was busy with a large, unwieldy boulder. She turned and followed Dee into the mouth of the cave.
Dee’s lantern wobbled strobe-like into the dark recesses. The cave was infinitely darker and colder without the glow of angel wings. Dee rummaged for a few moments in her chest.
“Where is that bloody broom?” Dee asked.
Luce crouched over Dee, holding up another lantern to help light her search. She reached into the enormous trunk and her hands brushed the rough straw of a broom.
“Here. ”
“Wonderful. Always the last place you look, especially when you can’t see. ” Dee slung the broom over her shoulder. “I want to show you something while the others continue with the excavation. ”
They walked back out onto the mesa, into the echoing of metal striking stone. Dee stopped at the edge of the rockslide, facing the space she’d asked the angels to leave clear. She began to drag the broom in brisk straight lines. Luce had thought the mesa was all made of the same flat red rock, but as Dee brushed and swept and brushed and swept, Luce noticed there was a shallow marble platform underneath. And a pattern was emerg-ing: Pale yellow stone alternated with white rocks to form an intricate, inlaid design.
Eventually Luce recognized a symbol: one long line of yellow stone, edged by white descending diagonal lines of decreasing length.
Luce crouched down to run her fingers along the stone. It looked like an arrowhead, pointing away from the top of the mountain, back down in the direction from which the angels had arrived.
“This is the Arrowhead Slab,” Dee said. “Once everything is ready, we will use it as a kind of stage. Cam crafted the mosaic many years ago, though I doubt that he remembers. He’s been through so much since then.