Rock climbing was not something that Simon had spent a lot of time doing in any life, but as he got closer to the peak, he spent more and more time doing that instead of hiking. He cked ropes and pitons, along with the skill to use them, though, so even climbing often required several attempts to find a way that was easy enough that he could do it without feeling like he was taking his life in his hands.

  This high up, the nights were frigid, but at least there were no more attacks. It would seem even the rugged goatmen had no i in fighting over the barren, craggy slopes.

  The day before Simon finally found the temple carved high into the peak of Mt. Elian, he had vinced himself that he was on a wild goose chase. He’d almost succeeded in ving himself to turn around, but he’d been on this mountain for a week noure stubbornness won out.

  “There’s no way that I’m leaving without seeing the top of this thing,” he told himself often enough that it became a mantra of sorts. In time, the only thing he was grateful for was that even in the endless cloud cover that kept him from viewing the top of the mountain, there was little in the way of snow or ice. The nights were cold, but the days were still warm enough that such things didn’t st long.

  Still, it felt like a fruitless quest, and then, finally, after six full days, he saw it. The temple was a small thing, but it was rger and more ostentatious than it had any right to be this high up. He had no idea how the stone masons would have worked at such altitudes or how they would have been fed.

  “I don’t even know how someone living there could be fed now,” he grumbled as he admired the sheer, smooth walls, along with the decorative elements like the pilrs and the dome. It was an impressive work of art. He just hoped this would beore than a sightseeing trip.

  Even though Simon had been able to see it for a moment, the clouds soon obscured it again, leaving him a difficult hike along a scree-choked ridgelio get there. Still, by evening, he was sg the st of the cliffs, and he finally arrived in the mosaic-decorated courtyard.

  A woman in fine white robes was there to greet him, and even as he gasped for breath, she smiled and said, “Wele, Simon, the Oracle is expeg you. It is rare to have any guest that does not take the hidden way. You are the first in an age.”

  For a moment, Simon almost asked how she knew his name, but the sed statement answered the first. If an Oracle really lives here, then knowing your name is practically a cheap party trick, he decided. So, instead, he just breathed heavily while he took it all in. Then he asked, “hidden way?”

  She smiled aured to the far side of the courtyard, where there was a gate and a narrow path. Wordlessly in disbelief, Simon rose and staggered across the courtyard to look at it, and when he saw it winding its way down the mountain, he despaired a little. That would have been a hell of a lot easier than the way I took, he thought with a sigh.

  “How could I have missed that?” he wondered aloud.

  “You could not have seen it,” she answered. “Such ways are invisible to the uninitiated, which is why it is so rare for us to have any visitors at all. Now please, e with me. You must have a meal and a rest. The Oracle will see you tomorrow.”

  Simon thought about protesting but instead let himself be led away. He was, truthfully, pletely exhausted. I probably smell like one of those goat men, too, he thought, smirking to himself. I’ll bet a bucket of water and some soap would do wonders.

  As if the woman esc him could read his mind, she said, “After you have eaten, I will show you to the baths so you might refresh yourself.”

  Simon boggled at that but said nothing. He didn’t have a ce. He was still trying to decide hoce this high up into the middle of nowhere could have baths, when they walked into the temple, and he saw the view from the far side. It took his breath away.

  The temple, as he’d imagi from a distance, was a rge, two or three-story building carved into the mountainside and ed by a dome. It had enough room for an altar and perhaps some rooms for the priests and acolytes to stay. He’d been pletely wrong.

  What he had seen was merely a gatehouse to a much rger plex. No, plex didn’t do it justice. What he’d found here, far from anywhere, was a town and, in a way, its own little world. It was far from crowded, but here and there, people moved among the narrow streets, and he could see ray-robed women in the halls of the temple plex as well.

  The temple was built into a volic caldera. At the bottom of it was a small steaming ke, which expihe stant cloud cover he’d been dealing with as he got higher. More iing, though, were the structures and fields that rihat ke. Around the temple entrance he’d just walked through was a tiny city clustered together. Most of the rest of the ring, though, was reserved for eerraced fields. It was only the people w in the fields that gave the whole pce a proper sense of scale.

  Every one of those barely visible dots is a person, which meant they’re at least half a mile away, he thought as he leaned oone rail, awestruck by the view.

  The priestess said nothing. Instead, she waited patiently for him to take it in before she cleared her throat and said, “Right this way. uest quarters are through here.”

  Simohe rest of their short walk turning those images over in his mind. How is this not a myth they tell in Iona? Why wasn’t this in the Broken Tower’s Forbidden Library? Simon was quite sure he would have read about a tiny little paradise high up in the mountains if he’d read about it anywhere.

  Eventually, even after his guide left him in an undecorated cell and told him that dinner would be brought to him shortly, one question overrode all of the others. If I didn’t know about this, then what other secrets are still hiding out there, waiting to be found?

  This time, he didn’t evehings he knew about, even if he didn’t know anything about them, like vampires ons. What mysteries y beyond all of those pces. Even after they brought him a simple meal of couscous and chi skewers along with a jug of strong white wine, he spent a lot of time p that. The spiced meat was better than any of the tough roasted meat that he’d had in days, but even that was not enough to make him think about the wider world.

  He knew of five tries and only two or three of them iail, but there was a whole world out there that he didn’t know anything about, and if something like this could exist smack-dab in one of the pces he thought he knew best, then he really knew nothing about this world. It was a humbling thought but aing ooo, and he was drunk on both when the woman came bad took his tray before esc him to take a bath.

  Simon tried a few questions on the way, but most of them were rebuffed. “What’s this pce called exactly?” and “How e no one knows about this pce?” were met with crypties like “The best secrets are always the most well-kept.” Likewise, when he asked about Ionia or the curse, she answered more directly. “I’m afraid that those are questions for the oracle, not for me.”

  Simon was satisfied with her, but it was clear that she wasn’t going to tell him much of anything, and he felt o force the issue yet. So far, he’d been here for only a couple of hours, and he’d been well-fed areated. He hadn’t even seen a guard, but he was sure that a pce like this had a way to deal with unwele guests, and he had no desire to find out what that was. The st thing he wao do was find himself bcklisted from Shangri- or whatever this pce was.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d been expeg from a bath in a pce that was a strange mixture of spartan and luxury, but it certainly wasn’t this. The baths were an open-air set of steaming pools that hugged the edges of the cliff they were on in a way that made them look both elegant and precarious. The priestess made no move to leave and instead stripped aered the water before he’d even gotten his armor off.

  “You dress very strangely,” she told him when he finally submerged up to his chest in the warm bathwater of the pbsp;

  “I like the togas, but they aren’t so good for mountain climbing,” he quipped, trying not to pay attention to the other knots of people scattered throughout the expansive pools. Ign her beauty was hard when so much of her bronze skin was on dispy, but he did his best. She wouldn’t answer questions about the pce they were, but in time, Simon figured out that she would answer questions about herself, which seemed like a roundabout loophole to find out more about the pbsp;

  The priestess’s name was Diara, and she had never left her mountain peak. “I dream of doing so sometimes, but I know that my pce is here.” He learned about what she ate and a bit about how she lived her life. She wasirely incurious either, so when she asked him questions, Simon happily told her about his life, though she mostly stuck to questions about boats and beaches.

  “I have seen the sea many times,” she expined, “but it is a pce I will ouch, and I find it strahat people live on it for most of their lives.”

  Simon learhat they had little in the way of fish here because the volic ke was too hot for such things. Instead, they made do with chi, goat, and several grain crops. Holy, it seemed like a nice life to him. It was certainly han the Broken Tower, even if it had a simirly culty vibe about it. He was sure there was a library here somewhere that he would have loved to devour, but he knew asking about it would get him nowhere, so he didn’t try. Instead, he ehe nighttime view of the stars above the caldera while he tried not to enjoy the httime view sitting ier so near him.

  Eventually, when he went to get redressed, he found that his clothes had been taken and repced with a robe not so dissimir from hers, though it was brown instead of gray. Does brown mean male or outsider, he wondered.

  “Your clothes have been taken to be washed,” Diara expined. “They will be returo you tomorrow.”

  He nodded, not even g that they’d taken his on and armor with them. If this was a trap, this was exactly how they’d lull him into a false sense of security, but if it wasn’t, well, he knew as well as they did that his clothes were rancid, and he would certainly appreciate a undry service. He’d only really expected a lo or something at the top of the peak, so as far as he was ed, all of this was above and beyond.

  When they reached his cell, the priestess lingered a moment and then asked, “Do you wish for me to stay?” she asked, nodding to the bed. “The mountain be a very cold pce at night.”

  “I’ll be fihank you,” he said, trying not to be rude as he rebuffed her offer. Temple prostitution wasn’t his thing, no matter how good the dark-haired beauty looked he only woman he had an i in sharing his bed with right now was Elthena, and that moment was still years away, if it ever came at all.

  She smiled at that, then nodded a, leaving him to wonder if whatever just happened was a test or not. “If it was, did I pass or fail,” he wondered aloud as he y there and stared up at his dark ceiling.