They travelled for three days before anyone asked the question that had been sitting in the space between all of them since the first night.
It was Osalan who asked it, which surprised no one who knew monks.
"What happens," he said, from his horse, with the meditative equanimity of someone raising a question in a seminar rather than on a road through occupied territory, "if the crown cannot be reassembled?"
The others were quiet for a moment. The road here was pressed flat between ancient pines, the November light coming down grey and indirect. Somewhere in the middle distance, the sounds of what might have been a woodpecker but was, they had all decided not to mention, more probably artillery.
"It can be reassembled," Asha said. "The accounts are consistent. Karath split the crown into five shards and distributed them across the five kingdoms to prevent any single faction from reassembling it and controlling his remaining divine essence. The curse on the shards activates when the right bearers are chosen — five people who have been exposed to the fragments and who fit the old criteria."
"Which are?" Tev asked.
"The accounts differ on specifics." She shifted her pack on her shoulders. "One claims the bearers must represent five different aspects of humanity — the seeker, the penitent, the soldier, the wanderer, and the keeper of paths." She paused. "That's a reasonable description of the five of us, if you're being interpretive about it."
"I'm the keeper of paths," Sera said, from the front of the group, without turning around. "Obviously."
"Obviously," Osalan agreed. "I would presume myself to be the penitent, though I have some theological objections to the framework."
"You can file them with the dead god when we find the shards," Tev said.
"I intend to," Osalan said, pleasantly.
Davan had said nothing. He was riding at the rear, which he had done since they left Ashenmere — not reluctantly, Tev noted, but with the instinctive positioning of someone trained to guard a column's back. His marked hand rested on his thigh. He caught Tev looking and raised an eyebrow.
"The soldier," Tev said.
"I wasn't a soldier," Davan said. "I was a mercenary. There's a difference."
"What's the difference?"
"A soldier follows orders because he believes in the cause. A mercenary follows orders because he's being paid." He was quiet for a moment. "I stopped being paid six months ago. The man who hired us decided it was cheaper to have us imprisoned than discharged properly."
"And the cause?"
Another pause. Longer this time.
"I believed in it," Davan said. "Once. That was the problem."
Tev considered this and decided it was not his information to pursue. He had his own versions of the same story. Most people did, if they'd been alive long enough.
---
They crossed into the Hollow Reach on the morning of the fourth day, where the road began to show the signatures of a contested region: abandoned farmsteads, unmaintained hedgerows, the specific emptiness of land that people had left in a hurry and not come back to.
Sera had the map open across her saddlebow, marking their position with the small, precise movements of someone who did this automatically, without requiring conscious thought.
"The shard is in the Greyvault," she said. "Old House Karath watchtower — abandoned for a hundred and sixty years. The Hollow Reach's current occupiers consider it bad luck and avoid it. Which is either extremely convenient or a warning."
"Both," Asha said. "Old places with reputations are usually old places where something went wrong. Doesn't mean we can't go in. Means we should know what went wrong."
"What went wrong in the Greyvault," Osalan said, "is documented in the Temple's restricted archive. I have read it. The short version: the original warden of the tower attempted a partial reassembly of the crown fragments he had access to. The attempt failed catastrophically. The tower has been uninhabitable since due to residual divine resonance, which in practice means it causes hallucinations, disorientation, and in some cases —" he paused "— a compulsion to complete what was started."
Everyone was quiet.
"That last part concerns me," Tev said.
"That last part concerns me also," Osalan agreed. "However, the accounts suggest the resonance doesn't affect cursed bearers the same way it affects uncursed individuals. The curse appears to act as a kind of insulation. We should be safer than most."
"Should be," Davan said.
"Yes," Osalan said. "Should be."
---
The Greyvault appeared through the pine trees at dusk — a squat, heavy tower of dark stone, unremarkable except for its solitude. Everything around it was silent in a way that had quality to it, like the silence in a room after someone has shouted.
They dismounted and secured the horses at the treeline.
"Standard approach?" Davan asked, looking at the tower with the professional attention of someone assessing a structure he might have to fight in.
"Is there a standard approach for entering a divine resonance zone to retrieve a piece of a dead god's soul?" Tev asked.
"Perimeter check, entry point assessment, one person forward while others provide cover," Davan said. "Standard is standard."
"He's right," Asha said. "Davan and I will take the perimeter. Tev, you're on the door — you're the best at closed systems. Osalan and Sera stay back until we know what we're dealing with."
Tev looked at her. "You've done this before."
"No," she said. "But I've read about people who have." She checked the knife at her belt and moved off into the dimming light.
Tev watched her go, then turned to look at the tower.
His marked hand was warm. It had been warm since they left the road, getting warmer with each step toward the Greyvault, and now it was the steady specific warmth of something alive and paying attention.
He pressed his marked palm flat against the door of the Greyvault, and felt — unmistakably, undeniably — something press back.
*Yes,* it seemed to say. *You're the right ones. Come in.*
Tev was not, historically, a person who trusted invitations from dead gods.
But the door opened easily under his hand, and the darkness inside was lit faintly by the same silver-white as their marks, and behind him he could hear the others converging on the entrance, and ahead of him a shard of something ancient was waiting to be found.
