After placing his pack into the cave next to Yerin’s, Lindon went into the other three caves and gathered the extra mats and blankets, bringing them back to his cave. Might as well have spares. Then, together, he and Yerin explored their basin.

It didn’t take them long. They were restricted to an alcove against the side of the mountain containing the five caves, a waterfall and pond, and twenty-four dark, thorny bushes with black-veined red berries that burned to the touch.

The pond and waterfall were warm and tasted of sulfur, but after a short examination, Yerin said the falling water should be safe to drink.

While Lindon took his own turn inspecting the water, Yerin nudged him. “Looks like we won’t be alone after all,” she said, pointing to the cliff wall.

Mud-brown crabs the size of dogs clung to the rock, so dark that they almost blended into the black rock. At first he only saw the one she’d pointed out, but his Jade sense weighed on him until he could feel more sets of eyes on him. He looked more closely, and realized that dozens of the crabs were clustered all over the wall.

As if it had sensed the attention of humans, one of the crabs peeled its legs away and scuttled down the wall, sliding into the pool beneath the waterfall and vanishing.

Lindon scooted away from the water.

“He said we’d find food and water inside,” Yerin said. “Guess we have. I’ll leave it to you to roast one of them up, when we get hungry.”

“Then I’ll leave it to you to bring it down, when the time comes,” Lindon responded. He thought he could capture one, but he couldn’t rid himself of a vision of all those dozens of crabs swarming down the cliff at once, crashing into him like a many-legged wave.

Which made him realize there was no stone to block the cave entrance. He’d have to find a way to keep the giant crabs out while he slept.

Once they had inspected the camp to their satisfaction, they moved back to the red archway.

Yerin and Lindon stood side-by-side, looking through. Beyond was a dense forest of smooth pillars, packed close enough together that Lindon could see nothing else between them but shadows. They stretched up to the height of the rocky cliffs above, where they merged with the black stone.

Just on the other side of the archway, between them and the pillars, there were two other objects.

One, a rectangular slab standing roughly Yerin’s height, was etched with writing and pictures too distant to read. The second was a waist-high pedestal holding a gray crystal ball.

Lindon had left his pack back in the cave, and now he slid off his parasite ring and put it into his pocket next to Suriel’s glass marble. His madra immediately moved more easily with the parasite ring gone, the Blackflame power burning merrily within him.

“This is the first Trial, I’d guess,” Yerin said.

Lindon nodded to the two characters painted on the archway pillar, above the dragon design: ‘Trial One.’

“That, or they’re playing a sadistic trick on us.”

They traded a look and then, together, stepped through the archway. Sure enough, there was a script embedded between the pillars: he could feel it ignite as they stepped forward. Icy power washed over his skin, and then he was through.

He stood before the stone tablet, which was crammed with diagrams and ancient characters. Lindon examined it for a few long breaths, committing segments to memory and wishing he’d brought paper and ink.

Yerin cleared her throat. “What’s it saying to you?”

Lindon scooted over, making room for her at the tablet. He gestured to the outline of a man, filled entirely with intricate loops. “This looks like the madra pattern for their Enforcer technique.” He brushed dust from the four characters comprising the name. “Black…fire…fierce…outer robe?”

“That has a nice sound to it, doesn’t it? The legendary Black Fire Fierce Outer Robe technique.”

“Well, what would you call it?”

With a thumb, she rubbed a scar on her chin. “Couldn’t tell you. Can’t read a word of it.”

She sounded defiant, as though daring him to make a comment about it, but he was immediately ashamed. “Forgiveness. I was fortunate enough to learn the basic characters of the old language as a child. It’s not so different from our language, though it looks much more complicated. You see—”

He was about to point out some of those similarities when she interrupted him. “Doesn’t make a lick of difference. Can’t read my own name.”

Lindon stared at her for too long before realizing how awkward that must be for her, then he shifted his gaze and pretended he’d been examining the stone all along. “That’s…ah, I’m sorry. Did the Sword Sage not…”

“Not much writing to be done with a sword,” she said, in a deliberately casual tone.

In the Wei clan, everyone learned to read before they learned their first Foundation technique. But it fell to the individual families to teach their children; he’d never considered what it might be like for someone raised outside a family.

“Well, ah…this section at the top is a simple sequence. It explains the history of the Blackflames.”

His fingers brushed the vertical lines of writing, each column separated by pictograms: a dragon flying over a human, then a human standing over a dragon, then a human with a dragon on a leash.

“When the humans came to this land, the dragons ruled. They burned through all opposition, ignoring all defenses. No one could stand against them. Finally, a...I think this means 'great disaster'...came to this land from the west, bringing the dragons down from the sky.”

That was interesting; Sacred Valley and the Desolate Wilds lay to the west. There were no pictures illustrating the great disaster, to his disappointment.

“Once they fell, the humans began to learn the sacred arts of the dragons. It helped to even the score, but their understanding was incomplete. While they were still studying the arts, the dragons discovered a way to...”

Lindon hesitated. “It says here they leashed the humans, but it seems to imply that the humans were the ones to benefit. Maybe a deal? A contract.”

Understanding sparked. The first Blackflames, at least, had bound themselves to the dragons just as he had done with Orthos.

“Some Paths bind their kids to sacred beasts,” Yerin said. “It’s like gluing a sword to your hand so you don’t drop it, if you ask me.”

Lindon spent a moment wondering if she was trying to insult him before he realized she didn’t know. He hadn’t seen her since making his contract with Orthos…who was drifting around the mountain as the mood took him. If Lindon wasn’t mistaken, Orthos would probably check on him before he finished the Trials.

“Not to ask too much of you, but if you happen to see a giant, flaming turtle wandering around out here…please don’t attack it.”

Yerin stared at him like he’d started babbling nonsense.

“Well,” Lindon continued, “it seems that the remaining dragons linked themselves to the Blackflame ancestors for some reason. With the power of the dragons...”

He tapped a picture of a man with a dragon standing over a large crowd of humans, and Yerin nodded. “Yeah, I can figure that one.”

There was a line of text just beneath the story, separated from everything else. These words were engraved more deeply, so the passage of time had hardly touched them.