'lay to the' isn't a complete phrase in written English.
Instead of 'lay to the', you might use the phrase 'lie to the' or 'lead to the'. For example: The path they took seemed to lead to the mysterious castle.
Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Finland, and Norway lay to the west.
The stadium lay to the east of the Altis.
For Kara Mustafa, the ultimate prize lay to the West.
The raiders left Grenada and headed east, away from Holly Springs, which lay to the north.
Outside that narrow line, ambitious contenders often found that the easiest opportunities to gain status lay to the south.
Such centres generally lay to the southwest, in strategic, relatively inaccessible areas that were defensible from attack.
The 2010 record of the most liberal Senate Republican lay to the right of the most conservative Senate Democrat.
He seemed like someone who had worked at the same factory for years and years without ever wondering what lay to the left or right of the gates.
In a 12th-century chronicle it was recorded as a village, with church and priest, in the great forest that lay to the west of London.
The estuary of these two ancient rivers lay to the north of a broad land corridor that then joined southeast England to continental Europe.
Sayf al-Dawlah realized that greater potential lay to the west, in Syria, then under the dominion of the Ikhshīdid dynasty, which ruled Egypt.
