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alone keeps the bloodberry ink from freezing long enough for me to put words to paper.
    Plus, I am bone weary. Every muscle in my body aches, my feet are bruised and blistered. But I made a pact with myself and with Edmund to keep this account and I will now record the cycle's events before—
    I started to say before I forget them.
    Alas, I do not think that I will ever forget.
    The first cycle's journeying was not physically difficult for us. The route lies overland, through what were once fields of grain and vegetables, orchards, plains where the herd animals were fed. The paths were easily traversed— physically. Emotionally, the first cycle's journey was devastating.
    Once, not so many years ago, the warm, soft light of the colossus beamed upon this land. Now, in the darkness, by the light of torches carried by the soldiers, we saw the fields lyingempty, barren, desolate. The brown stubble of the last crop of kairn grass stood in clumps, rattling like bones in the blasts of chill wind that whistled mournfully through cracks in the cavern walls.
    The almost joyful, adventurous mood that sent our people marching in hope drained from them and was left behind in the desolate landscape. We trudged in silence over the frozen ground, cold-numbed feet slipping and stumbling on patches of ice and frost. We halted once, for a midday meal, and then pushed on. Children, missing their naps, whimpered fretfully, often falling asleep in their father's arms as they walked.
    No one spoke a single word of complaint, but Edmund heard the children's cries. He saw the people's weariness, and knew it was not caused by fatigue but by bitter sorrow. I could see that his heart ached for them, yet we had to keep going. Our food supplies are meager and, with rationing, will last barely the length of time I have estimated will be needed to reach the realm of Kairn Necros.
    I considered suggesting to Edmund that he break the unhappy silence. He could talk cheerfully to the people of their future in a new land. But I decided it was best to keep quiet. The silence was almost sacred. Our people were saying good-bye.
    Near cycle's end, we came to a colossus. No one said a word but, one by one, the people of Kairn Telest left the path, came to stand beneath the gigantic column of stone. Once, it would have been impossible to have approached the bright and shining source of our life. Now, it stood dead and cold as the land it had forsaken.
    The king, accompanied by myself and Edmund and torch-bearing soldiers, moved forward out of the crowd and walked up to the colossus's base. Edmund stared at the huge stone pillar curiously. He had never been close to one before. His expression was awed. He marveled at the girth and mass of the pillar of rock.
    I looked at the king. He appeared pained and bewildered and angry, as if the colossus had betrayed him personally.
    I, myself, was familiar with the colossus and what itlooked like. I had investigated it long ago, seeking to unravel its secrets to save my people. But the mystery of the colossus is forever locked in the past.
    Impulsively, Edmund pulled off his fur gloves, reached out his hand to touch the rock, to run his fingers along the sigla-inscribed stone. He paused, however, suddenly fearful of the magic, afraid of being burned or shocked. He looked questioningly at me.
    “It won't hurt you,” I said, with a shrug. “It lost, long ago, the power to hurt.”
    “Just as it lost the power to help,” Edmund added, but he said the words to himself.
    Gingerly, he ran his fingertips over the chill stone. Hesitantly, almost reverently, he traced the pattern of the runes whose meaning and magic are now long forgotten. He lifted his head, looked up and up as far as the torchlight shone on the glistening rock. The sigla extend upward into the darkness and beyond.
    “The column rises to the ceiling of the cavern,” I commented, thinking it best to speak in the crisp, concise voice of the teacher, as I used to