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trying to find my way around. A chill draft blew up from below, turning my flesh to goose bumps. Sage drew her cloak more tightly around her.
    “Down we go, then,” she said.
    I held the lantern; Sage walked ahead. Shadows danced on the stone walls as we descended; the air grew colder.
    “Sage,” I whispered. “I don’t really know how to do this. Call them, I mean.” Twice I had summoned stanie men, great, slow beings of stone. I had relied on instinct when I called them, and chanted verses from a childhood rhyme. Stanie mon, stanie mon, doon ye fa#x2019; . But the Good Folk were of many kinds: brollachans, trows, urisks, selkies, smaller beings like Sage and Red Cap. Perhaps each must be called in its own particular way.
    “No need to whisper, lassie. Northies only hear when they choose to. As for how to do it, you’ll know. You’re a Caller.”
    We reached the foot of the stair. Before us the stone of the mountain rose up in an unbroken wall. This was the spot where I had waited, day after day, in hope that someone, something , would come out to talk to me as Sage and her kind had done in the forest, knowing I was in need.Plainly, in the case of the Folk Below, needing was not sufficient. I set the lantern on the bottom step.
    “Think about what they are,” Sage suggested when we had stood quiet for a while. “An old, old folk, stubborn and strong. Strong as stone, and as hard to open up. Set in their ways. Not bad folk, but …” Her shrug was eloquent.
    To win Hollow the brollachan over, I had played a game and sung a song. The same song had awakened a ghostly army on the shores of Hiddenwater. And once, I recalled, all I had done was think Help! and a strange mist had come up to hide me from Flint. That morning I had watched him search for me, his face white with anxiety and hurt; I had heard him call my name until his voice was a hoarse whisper. I had so misjudged him.
    If these were an old, old, folk, perhaps they still observed rituals, as the human folk of Alban had before Keldec had come to the throne and banned such gatherings for their taint of magic. This had been at the back of my mind when I suggested midwinter for the council. I tried to remember the words Grandmother had used at the turning of the season and at the high festivals. That seemed so long ago. And who was I to give voice to such solemn prayers? My losses had wiped out the last remnant of my faith. Still, I must try, and if the Northies saw through it, then I must try something else.
    I moved to stand by the wall, spread my arms wide, and leaned into the stone. I pressed my cheek against its cold, hard surface; my fingers encountered bump and crack and small scuttering thing. I breathed slowly. Behind me, Sage made no sound.
    Endure as earth endures , those were the words of wisdom given me on that strangest of days, when the Master of Shadows had tested me. The Northies were not so much like earth as like stone, hard and strong and slow to change. That could seem an obstacle when what was needed was quick decisions and immediate action. But stone was the backbone of Alban, and the strength of all its people—it said so in the song of truth. Her crags and islands built me strong . Stone was shelter; it was anchor; it was home.
    As I stood there in silence, I felt the strength of stone pass into me; I opened myself to its deep magic. The call woke inside me, rising from my heartbeat and coursing blood, forming words I spoke almost despite myself. “Folk of the North! Folk of deepest earth!” The call was bone and breath, memory and hope, the past and the future. In my mind I held the many faces of stone: the roots of great trees deep in the earth; the cliffs where stanie men stood in their long, silent vigil; pebbles in the riverbed, each different, each a small, lovely miracle. Crags raising their proud heads to the sunrise; mountains under blankets of winter snow. “In the name of stone I call you! Come forth! Show yourselves! I