Chapter 34

Din, Tauri, and Ana ride north through shaken Lacanthim. Ana asks to be dropped at the shrine of Master Gaddar, hinting the forest hides a tomb that must be seen. Din and Tauri enter the altered wood, return to the dry fountain, and find a fresh excavation north-northeast—aligned between the fountain and the Touched Site.

They descend a cramped tunnel Tauri believes once fed the fountain and now leads beneath the sealed well. It opens into a vast underground lake ringed by half-buried statues of cup-bearers. Testing the water turns a reagent orange, confirming the web.

Following intensifying ripples, they discover a dozen corpse-bodies, crowned with towering fungus, rhythmically churning the lake with poles under the guidance of a hidden musician producing unearthly tones. A cup-bearing dead approaches them as they notice a bed of human bones beneath the water.

Panicked, they retreat through the tunnel and escape the forest. Reeling, Din names the place Meris’s “cup of heaven,” bitterly recognizing it as a site of atrocity: the web using the dead as tireless labor. They condemn it as a crime worse than slavery.

Tauri realizes the Daljen and Khanum must be immune to their own creation and confronts Din about Ana’s nature, concluding she is beyond the web’s command. In anguish, Tauri breaks with Din and leaves him on the plains.