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wide-awake and angry at the unfamiliar reflection that returned her gaze. She looked nothing like a guardian Taelach should. Her white shock of hair had been allowed to grow out to her shoulders and was the dark shade of an Autlach. How depressing . Cance tugged a fading lock. For effect, she blinked hard, allowing her eye lenses to settle back into place. Was this what her birth parents looked like? “Not that it matters,” she told the sharp-chinned image that talked back. “They were only Auts.”
    Cance applied the dye pack’s contents then removed the combing stick from the package and pushed the color deep, the excess dripping into the basin and expanding as discolored rings on the water. Her hair completely saturated with color, she quickly rinsed it, then, towel wrapping her head, cast another long look into the reflective backing, eyes drawn to her neck until the ever-present anger spun into fury. “Damn you, Belsas Exzal!” Cance smashed her fist into the backing, denting the metal so it warped her image. “Damn you for the Aut-loving bitch you are! If we’d won the Taelach War, I’d be ruling over the Kinship, you’d be dead, and Chandrey would still be with me. Auts would serve Taelachs and everything would be as it should: MINE!”

Chapter Seven
     
    The Hiding Caves are the essence of survival in troubled times.
     
    —Taelach saying
     
    The journey to Langus served as a sharp cultural awakening for LaRenna. She had never been outside Taelach lands except for necessary travel and that had taken place strictly at night. Taelach children were closely protected by their raisers in fear they would be taken in an ill-fated reunion with their Autlach birth parents. This rarely if ever happened, but the old warnings were still repeated, just as stories of alleged Taelach treacheries were passed down in Autlach families.
    The launch stop proved an uneventful place, nothing more than a tiny burrow of a port set in the narrow northern mountain ranges of the Reisfall continent. LaRenna gave the pilot the travel card Master Yeoman Qualls had provided her and stepped aboard the launch. It was far from crowded, but she chose a seat in the rear anyway, pulling her head deep into her cloak. This probably wasn’t necessary, for the launch’s other occupants were ignoring her presence, but it made her feel a little more at ease.
    With a short jolt, the passenger aerolaunch rose and the trip began. LaRenna leaned back in her seat, enjoying the vibrant scenery that had escaped notice on her nocturnal journeys. The launch followed the slow roll of the mountains until it reached the southernmost peaks, then it lurched upward, engines straining to meet the incline of the high passes. When they reached the summit, the pilot paused, allowing his passengers to take in their surroundings as the full wonder of Reisfall’s Glory Land made its awe-inspiring appearance on the horizon.
    LaRenna had heard dozens of stories about the Glory Land as a child, but not one did it justice. It was an extreme combination of plains and canyon lands, buckling and breathing for thousands of kilometers. At its highest points it bounded with blowing flower grasses and countless wandering Sarian herd beasts. The lowest points hid among the deep canyons, some of which had never been mapped, at least not to the knowledge of the Autlach. There, buried deep within the Hiding Caves, lay the secrets of Taelach self-preservation. Chandrey had taught her how to read the ancient marker signs to locate them. They were the last strongholds the Taelach could flee to in times of peril.
    It all passed by too quickly for LaRenna, for she was still lost in thought when Polmel’s dark skyline pierced the afternoon haze. At the sight of it, she felt a shot of nauseating anxiety. It was a spiraling, walled shell of civilization that buzzed with the traffic of Sarian commerce. Pollution reeked, the streets were crowded, and the din was deafening. She hated it.