The Fifth Season

Essun and the others reach what seems to be an abandoned comm. Hoa, however, insists this is where the orogenes gathered. Suddenly, three women emerge from a building. One of them introduces herself as Ykka Rogga Castrima, startling Essun:

You use this word all the time, but hearing it like this, as a use name, emphasizes its vulgarity. Naming yourself rogga is like naming yourself pile of shit. It’s a slap in the face. It’s a statement—of what, you can’t tell (268).

Tonkee asks about Castrima, which Ykka says has existed in its current form for roughly 50 years.

Essun notices that Hoa is angrily staring at one of the other women. When she looks more closely, Essun realizes the woman is actually a stone eater, and there’s a tense moment as both she and Hoa bare their gem-like teeth at one another. Ykka reins the woman in, and Essun asks whether they’ve seen Jija and Nassun. When Ykka says she hasn’t, feelings of guilt and grief overwhelm Essun. Ykka use her orogeny to send a “brush of something intangible but meaningful” Essun’s way (272), and Essun—startled by this unusual way of using orogeny—composes herself.

Ykka gives the group the option of staying, though she warns them the Sanzed authorities will crack down on the comm if the Season ends soon: There are 22 orogenes in Castrima, with more likely to arrive. There are also several stone eaters, and Ykka cautions Hoa that he’ll need to refrain from fighting with them if he stays; if he doesn’t respect her authority, Ykka says, she’ll reveal something she’s learned regarded the stone eaters’ plans. Essun, who wants to double-check that her daughter isn’t amongst the travelers Castrima took in, asks Ykka to show them inside.

Syen wakes up on a rocky island coast; Alabaster is lying next to her and a stone eater stands nearby. The stone eater tells Syen that she brought them to the island to protect Alabaster. Alabaster awakens and the stone eater points across the ocean towards Allia, where a red glow marks the site of a volcanic eruption.

The stone eater vanishes, and Syen and Alabaster set off walking. Alabaster reveals that the stone eater, whom he calls Antimony, visited him sporadically over the last five years for reasons he doesn’t understand. Syen presses Alabaster for answers about Edki, but he doesn’t know much more than she does; he surmises, however, that at least some Guardians knew about the obelisk even before Alabaster and Syen arrived in Allia, and poisoned Alabaster in order to prevent its discovery. When Syen raised the obelisk, the Guardians grew desperate enough to try to kill them in public.

Syen and Alabaster discuss theories about who (if anyone) oversees the Guardians. Alabaster isn’t sure, but he does know that an implant in the Guardians’ brainstems gives them the ability to negate orogeny and kill orogenes with skin-to-skin contact. A former lover of Alabaster’s died in this manner: “[The Guardian] just held Hess, and, and grinned while it happened […] It turns your orogeny inward. I guess. I don’t know a better way to explain it” (290).

Syen and Alabaster eventually discover and approach a comm built into a cliffside. The villagers speak a language Syen doesn’t recognize; Alabaster, however, is able to understand and tells her that the comm is Meov and that the people there are pirates.

The Meovites provide Syen and Alabaster with food, clothes, and lodgings. Once they’re alone, Alabaster explains that since the Meovites are unable to produce or trade much, they heavily rely on raiding coastal settlements. Syen can’t understand why anyone would choose to live on an island, but Alabaster says the villagers accept the dangers to live free of Sanze. In any case, he says, Meov has survived through at least 10 Seasons by relying on the ocean for food and by using orogeny to protect the island from tsunamis and volcanic eruptions: “They don’t kill their roggas, here. They put them in charge. And they’re really, really, glad to see us” (296).

Damaya spends much of her free time exploring the Fulcrum—in particular, a hexagonal building called Main. One day, she notices a grit she’s never seen before and approaches her. The girl introduces herself as Binof Leadership Yumenes, explaining that she snuck into the Fulcrum to search for a hidden room at the center of Main. Binof’s attempts to recruit Damaya to this scheme initially irritate her, but the girl’s fearless curiosity proves infectious: Damaya takes her to Main. Using orogeny to sense the building’s foundation, Damaya leads Binof to an office where they find a hidden door at the back of a closet.

Damaya asks Binof what she’s looking for, and Binof says she’s trying to find a relic that predates Yumenes:

[P]eople were afraid of this place and had been for ages, because there was something here. […] [Emperor Verishe] founded the Empire here, on land that everyone feared, and built a city around the thing they were all afraid of (317-18).

Damaya and Binof go through the door, and then follow a tunnel to an enormous room containing a large pit. When she looks more closely, Damaya sees that the edges of the pit are covered in needle-like objects. Damaya asks about the pit’s purpose, but the arrival of a Guardian named Timay interrupts the conversation.

Binof tells Timay she ordered Damaya to bring her here. Realizing Binof is of the Leadership caste, Timay’s threatening demeanor changes, and she ushers them to the Guardian’s wing of Main. Here, she leads Binof away, then takes Damaya to a private office.

Timay asks Damaya whether she touched the objects in the “socket,” and whether the socket had drawn her to it. Damaya grows more confused and frightened as Timay continues, sensing that someone else is speaking through her: “It did what it had to do, last time […] It seeped through the walls and tainted their pure creation, exploited them before they could exploit it” (325). Just as Timay seems poised to kill Damaya, Schaffa bursts into the room and touches something on the back of her head that makes her go slack. To Damaya’s horror, he then reaches inside Timay’s neck and pulls something out.

As the woman’s body is taken away, Schaffa checks to make sure Damaya isn’t hurt, explaining that Guardians’ implants sometimes malfunction and cause delusions. He embraces Damaya and tells her she’s about to face her first ring test. Realizing she’ll be killed for disobedience if she fails the test, Damaya promises Schaffa that she’ll pass and reveals the orogene name she’s chosen: Syenite. 

Ykka leads the group into the cellar of the house, which Essun realizes an orogene has carved from granite. Ykka confirms this, telling her “this world has passed through many hands down the Seasons. Not all of them were quite as stupid as ours about the usefulness of orogenes” (333). She shows them through an opening in the wall, leading them down a series of tunnels and stairways. When Tonkee wonders why the recent earthquake didn’t cave the tunnels in, Ykka explains that she deflected it, and that when she’s gone, another orogene will take over her role. Essun asks how Ykka is attracting orogenes to the comm, and Ykka says she can’t explain it; she simply discovered that her own orogeny was drawing orogenes and stone eaters to the area.

The tunnel opens onto a ledge overlooking a city carved from an enormous geode: “[Buildings] jut forth from the walls in an utterly haphazard jumble: different lengths, different circumferences, some white and translucent and a few smokey or tinged with purple” (338).

Ykka explains that most of the architecture, as well as the mechanisms that provide the city with water and air, predate Sanze; when settlers founded Castrima aboveground, they stumbled across the then uninhabited underground city. Nevertheless, Ykka says, it took a long time for people to risk living there, and when the residents of Castrima finally fled underground to escape attackers, many died due to limited food and problems with the air mechanisms. The survivors, however, kept the memory of the city alive until Ykka’s great-grandmother heard about it; as an orogene, she found she could get the water and air flowing just by entering the city. The same has been true for Ykka, although she can’t explain how any of it actually works.

Tonkee asks whether they’re free to leave when they want. Ykka doesn’t answer directly, simply saying there are people they need to meet.