Chapter 521: The Creed of Nothing (3).
They found the first gap in the ridge system on the fourth day.
It was not dramatic — a narrowing in the channel that opened sideways, a natural break in the left ridge wall wide enough for two people to pass through comfortably, leading into a space beyond that was lower and more open, a broad shelf of ground between two ridge formations that created something almost like a valley. The floor was flat and the bonedust here was undisturbed in long stretches, which meant nothing had been through it recently — or nothing that left tracks in the way living things leave tracks.
They made camp on the shelf that night.
Six hundred and twelve candidates, with Veoltor’s group of forty-one now folded into the outer edge of the formation — not integrated exactly, not trusted exactly, but present and following the general direction of travel, which was the most anyone had asked. Veoltor himself had said approximately four words since the channel and all four of them had been practical. He was not a stupid man. He had done the arithmetic.
Nero sat apart, as had become his habit, and called up the Oracle.
He had been thinking about the dark depression since the high point that morning, where it had been visible for almost thirty seconds before the fog shifted and swallowed the sightline. It was closer than it had been. Not dramatically closer, not close enough to make out any detail — but measurably closer, in the way you measure things by how much more of them you can see than the day before.
*Tell me about this place,* he said. *Golgotha. The real history of it.*
The Oracle’s runes pulsed once, slowly, in the way they pulsed when what followed was long.
{This will require some patience, Heretic. The history of Golgotha is not a short one.}
*I have a full night.*