Sarya heard her name a second time.
Not louder than before, not more threatening. If anything, the voice carried something closer to intimacy, the particular tone of someone speaking to a person they had known for a very long time, addressing them across whatever distance the darkness beneath the Garden held. It didn't seem to come from any single direction. It seemed to rise directly out of the ground itself, from the stone of the descending Road forming stone by stone before her.
She took an instinctive step backward.
The Answer remained kneeling.
That, more than anything else, told her how serious this was. She had watched the Answer stand motionless before an entire planet's judgment for days without flinching. She had watched it face the mountain gate, the traveler, the ancient revelations that had unfolded across weeks of this journey without once showing anything that resembled fear.
It was afraid now.
"What is that?" she asked.
The Answer didn't answer.
