Go forward, commanded logic reinforced by all her training from birth.  Still Elossa lingered, unable to break that tenuous contact with the other's fear.  Go forward!  This is none of your concern.  This you did not bring upon him.  If he chose to come skulking behind, then he must face the result of his folly.

She forced herself to take one step, two, resolutely closing her mind to any more emanation, even though a buried part of her fought that decision.  The last tatters of the mist drifted away; now she could see the country below.

And...

Against all logic Elossa had expected to see what her dream had shown her - a city - the thing from the sky which had brought ruin to it.  There was indeed the plateau which stretched near as wide as part of the plains she had crossed.  At a far distance she could distinguish shadow shapes of other mountains.  This range must encircle as a wall on three sides, like arms curved out in protection.

There was no city as such.  But when she sighted certain hollows and rises in the plateau (all now cloaked in withering grass) the girl knew that there lay long lost and forgotten ruins.  There even arose piles of stones which might be the last vestiges of walls.

She turned her head a little to the north, to follow the winding of such a wall.  What lay there was not in the city, rather farther away then her dream had shown it.  Only a portion of it now arched above the surface, but a dome of top showed still.  That was the thing which had descnded from the heavens to wreck destruction here.

It was toward that that the Pilgrimage compulsion clearly drew her.  The force of that was stronger, urging her to complete her journey as swiftly as she might.

Here the road angled along the wall of the mountain, taking a turn to the left.  It was much broken, large portions of it shorn away by sideslips or avalanches.  This path was not one for the unwary; one foot misplaced could send her sliding to destruction.

Elossa concentrated all her attention on that descent, taking care, her staff often an anchor over a treacherous bit of path.  The journey was longer than she had thought when she had viewed her goal from the heights.

So the sun was well up and it was midday before she reached the level of the plateau.  There she paused to eat and drink before she turned from those grass-matted stones toward the dome.

Just as the trail had been longer than she had expected, so now did the ruins loom larger.  In many places the mounds topped her head.  While from their mass below a chill wind which made her wrap her cloak more tightly about her.

As the ruins had grown taller so did the curve of the buried globe rise higher.  In her dream the whole globe had been great enough to blot out a goodly portion of the city; now she could understand how.  Judging by the dream, all which remained above the soil now was perhaps a quarter of its entire bulk.  Still that stood as high as perhaps three of the Raski dwellings set one atop another to form a tower.

It was uniformly gray in color, not the gray of a natural rock, but lighter, resembling the hue of the sky before the approach of a summer rainfall.  As Elossa moved toward it a sighing of wind, blowing through the ruins, produced an odd wailing note.  Dared she loose her fancy she could believe that filled with the far-off keening of voices lamenting the dead.