That explains the tide line on Lan Zhan's robes, he thinks distantly.

"She was able to drag the entire Tomb to the inn?" Stunned. "Something that vengeful -- and that's what her people worship," he realizes. "What she has pledged her life to. She faced that every day and she still lives?"

Three months of exposure in the Burial Mounds nearly killed him. Would have killed him, had he not learned his crafty tricks. And the Ninth has stood before her Tomb for seventeen years.