The obelisk runs dry after four days this time; it lasts longer than most. Our hollow is attacked twice by creatures similar to those we drove out and we lose one person, Kir, to a disemboweling claw. I can’t bear to watch as his life drips away into the architect’s soil.

  I am watching the horizon, hunkered on the edge of the hollow with my eyes fixed on the black, undulating plain for the return of the creatures. I’m losing focus, kept sharp only by my perpetual fear, when the sky changes. We are in the middle of a bright cycle when half the sky flashes red to orange and back and forth.

  Murmurs run through the tribe behind me and I break my vigil to look back. They’re all stood, looking at one another for assurance, and then all eyes drift to Oran or Lucil as the Marked give most.

  The voice of the architects booms; it comes from every corner of every segment and speaks to us with a voice born from the fires of the sun.

  SECTOR ASCENSION. TRIAL IMMINENT. ALL ATTEND.

  I wait with my breath caught in my chest for more; the architects don’t speak often but when they do it is to bring us together, to force us apart, or to conduct us into some great trial. This is simple, a trial of ascension and all of the tribes are to converge. The sky melds once more and in place of pure brightness, there is a line, pulsing and red, that leads across the plains to a place beyond this segment.

  “Pack up, tribe.” Oran calls out. He’s stood on the edge further down from me, his sword in his hand and his body wreathed in dramatic flame. He’s smiling. Even his teeth are straighter than mine, whiter, as though the architects themselves carved him. They had, I suppose, carved us all.

  We work quickly to break down the shelters that I’ve not been allowed to enter and to pack all we can. There will be no more food at this place, not with a trial coming. The trials come rarely, sometimes all of the tribes are brought together, sometimes there are clusters in far off segments. But no matter how the trials come about, the architects always feed and water us on the trail and there will be more than anyone could want when we arrive. Different flavours, perhaps even something that would still the pain in my stomach and allow me to enjoy it like the others.

  I carry what I can, which is little, and trail behind the Heightened. I’ve somehow fallen further in their eyes since we reached the hollow. I don’t even walk with the children any longer, and not one person will meet my eyes. I should apologise to Homly. He was kindest to me.

  The architects lead us across the plains and through a narrow canyon of metal and stone. The next segment swelters. We descend into a swamp of cliffs and crevices fills with plants that burst into spores at the gentlest touch and hide creatures large and small. I am bitten by something skittering and slimy and turn delirious for a day. I wonder, in my stupor, whether I will be left behind. I am thankful that the laws of the tribes and the architects has my tribe carry me until I recover enough to walk on my own.

  While I lie on my back staring at the flashing demands of the architects patterning the lights above, my fevered dreams are interrupted by clarion calls and deep voices. I hear my tribe speak of me. They speak of me and many things as though I cannot hear or they care not whether I can hear at all. I’m a burden to them. I’m a child in body and simple of mind. I will never advance and I’ll never be more than I am. I should be left for the beasts to find and feast; this would take pressure from the tribe.

  These are all words I’ve heard before whispered in the dark beneath furrowed brows and furtive glances. I try and be of use. I try to shrug the words off and hope and I send prayers to the sun that I wake one day and I’m Heightened. I find the obelisks for our tribe, though others can too. I pick sticks for fires and tie bandages. I do anything that requires little strength and a shred of cunning. I cannot carry their burdens, I cannot keep pace with the tribe, and I cannot fight our battles. By the blazing sun, I have tried.

  My ailment is short lived and I turn from nearly comatose to walking unsteadily in two days. My mood doesn’t improve; I am sullen and snappish and I know it. Each night I find the food that the architects leave us. The others whisper their discontent but I can’t join them or they would layer their scorn on me. Why is it that the architects can provide us with sustenance when they demand we travel, but not at other times? Why must we be hungry; why are we driven from place to place at the cost of our blood just to find food if they can grant it at will?

  It is the way of the Undercroft.

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  In the lands that lie above through the labour of ascension, there is food enough for all and much more. There is static land from where no one will be driven. It is a place of joy and paradise. The machinery of the architects speaks this to us when it embraces us in its comforting cocoons. Perhaps there will be cocoons when we reach the trial. There was last time and my mind was sent racing with new words and concepts. My body did not advance with it. Each of the unenlightened who had been taken into a cocoon had come out Heightened, except for me.

  Fourteen days of unabated travel and my body is at its limit when we squeeze through a crack in the segment wall as narrow as my shoulders. The tribe groans as we unpack our loads and carry it through, piece by piece.

  It is worth our labour.

  The land beyond is no grotesque swamp, it is no desert of biting flies and scorching heat, it is plain of water filled with scaled beasts with more teeth than the edges of my imagination. It is bright. It is green and rolling and gentle in the best ways. The air is sweet, and when I dip my hand into the sparkling water of a stream and bring it to my lips it is icy cold and honeyed as a daydream.

  I allow myself a smile and drink more. The others glare at me and stay huddled by the crevice and I don’t blame them. There are dangers in every place and the architects provide water from their obelisks; most people of the tribes will only drink segment water if their life is about to fade, preferring the safety and certainty of architect provided fluid.

  Out across the green fields of gently waving grass no higher than our ankles and lonely trees that cast soft shadows with willowy branches, there is a circle. It is perfect in its geometry, a flattened circle of dirt and grass wide enough to allow each of the forty tribes, thirty seven now I suppose, space to live beside one another while the trial rages. It is our destination and I don’t need the convergence of thirty seven red lines above it in the lights of the ceiling to lead me there.

  “Move.” Oran barks at me but his orders are for everyone. Lucil rolls her eyes but uses the haft of her spear as a walking stick, marching at the head of our column. I wait until everyone has passed; I watch too, hoping to catch someone’s eye, but not one head turns to me. I’m too tired and too dejected by the long silence to feel more than the same sadness that has consumed me. I walk behind with the soft grass between my toes and my thin leather shoes hanging from my hands and it relieves some of my pain. I follow my tribe from where they place me, at the rear.

  It takes half a day to cross the distance to the circle but with each step over cushioned ground with the warm breeze tousling my hair. We grow hot as we approach; a pleasant warmth of exercise and gentle heat, but we still strip our shirts for comfort.

  There are others here before us; they see us coming over the fields and we are met with smiling faces and raised hands. I don’t think that all thirty seven tribes have arrived but the many that have are gathered in a huddle to exchange stories and greetings.

  “Lo, Lacrin.” Lucil greets a tall woman holding a halberd that is half again as tall as she. Lacrin too has shed her layers for the heat and her mark is clear against her arm. Lucil’s too. A single dot the size of a thumb print pressed into her shoulder in the same spot on every Marked. Should they advance to Banded there would appear a line below it that wraps around their bicep in the dip between shoulder and arm. It is a proud thing to have a mark; I have nothing. The Heightened have no full mark either but they have the shadow of one. Light skin darkens and dark skin lightens to make the patch visible and I am the only one above the age of a child among all the tribes who bears nothing but bare skin. It makes me want to put my shirt back on but I resists and swallow my bitter jealousy.

  “Lo, Lucil.” The woman frowns at us, her eyes linger on me for a moment before skittering off with a curled lip of disgust. “The fifth is diminished.”

  “We are fewer by three.”

  “We are fewer by one.”

  Lucil nods. “Have any been Enlightened? Marked?”

  Lacrin smiles. “Asca has taken the seed and advanced to Marked. Haeri too becomes Marked. All our tribe beyond maturity is Heightened. It is as the sun guides.”

  “As the sun guides.” Lucil intones the response and is joined by a droning chorus from all within earshot. They don’t look at me. Lacrin’s words are all around; I don’t know if I deserve their scorn but it is true that the way of the sun is for all to become Heightened and some to be Marked and fewer still to advance further. I am an aberration for which they are ill prepared.

  I slink away from my tribe and slide down the trunk of a willowy tree. It is better to be separate from my tribe as they greet the others. One speck of disease can ruin a tribe, after all.

  My tribe meets with so many others. They mingle, mix, and speak as though we are family. By the time the low cycle has come the red lights that have lead us all to this place have stopped flashing and we are in the twilight proper. The architects provide us nourishment and the feeding is better than normal. There are flavours and textures to the food and the tribes revel in the novelty.

  I suffer. My stomach aches and I am taken with shaking sweats as the food struggles to nourish me. I know that I will die if I do not eat, but I wish fervently that it did not affect me so.

  I am thankful when, as the full null cycle falls, that the final people find us. Five wanderers enter separately. They hail from no tribe and walk with no others; each is Marked for who else could survive in the wilds of the sector alone? They are greeted more warmly than I but still with a reserved kindness for those who live beyond the bounds of normality. I find sleep, in the end, in the shelter of the tree near to my tribe but all too far apart.