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stepped, and place her foot in the footprint
left by Atan’s. She was glad she’d worn sturdy shoes with cork
soles, rather than thin green-weave slippers.
    o0o
    Lilah was glad to talk, because she was still a little
scared of a Norsundrian lightning strike bringing down the mountainside on
them, or at the very least their finding themselves transformed into mushrooms
as a result of breaking the mysterious century-old spell. Even if it was only
one spell in a pile of them. It was still Norsunder! But as the cloud-obscured
sun passed slowly westward, and the girls worked their way steadily downhill,
nothing happened.
    When Atan stopped at a stream tumbling down from the
mountain, Lilah said, “Are we resting? My toes ache from all that
downhill walking.”
    “We can stop for a little.” Atan dropped her
knapsack, knelt and cupped her hands to drink from the stream.
    “For the people. When the enchantment lifts. Will they
know a century passed, or will they think it’s a day later, and they are
in for a big surprise?”
    “Tsauderei thinks it’s going to be the big
surprise.” Atan picked up a pair of brightly colored pebbles, turning
them over on her palms. “Sartor,” she murmured, almost too softly
for Lilah to hear. “At last I have come home.”
    Lilah hid a sigh. To her eyes, the view was about as ugly as
anything she’d ever seen—much uglier than Sarendan’s dry,
cracked fields during the famine. She gazed into the gray haze that obscured
the land to the west until Atan stirred and said, “I want to get below
Point Adan by nightfall. I think it’ll be less cold if we get off the
heights.”
    Lilah hopped to her feet. “Sure!” Her stomach
growled, and she gulped in a breath to hide it. She’d gone hungry a lot
during the summer, so she was used to waiting. “I’ll take a turn
carrying the stuff,” she offered. “I may be short but I’m
strong, and I carried my own knapsack for most of the summer.”
    “All right,” Atan said, and handed it over. She
was already glad that Lilah had come. As long as they stayed safe, she thought
as she watched the smaller girl hoist the knapsack onto her back. They started
off.
    They wound down next to the stream, as Point Adan—the
westernmost height—rose above them, an outthrust of ancient rock, colored
with angled layers, evidence of the violent and desperate wrenching of the land
into protective barriers made by long-dead mages in a vain effort to safeguard
Sartor against invasion.
    Atan had begun to review past lessons on ancient magic when something
moved. Something pale, beyond the hedgerow bordering the trail. She stilled, a
hand out to halt Lilah.
    The girls poised to run, as the pale something obscured by
the tangle of leaves resolved into—another girl!
    She stepped carefully around the tangle of dusty-green
shrubbery, and stopped.
    Lilah stared at this wraith of a girl who looked Lilah’s
age, or younger, her wide blue-gray eyes regarding them with a mixture of
apprehension and curiosity that (Atan reflected) was probably a twin to their
own faces.
    “I’m Merewen,” the girl said. “Ah,
eh. Merewen Dei.”
    Atan was too surprised to speak. Another girl? Not just a
girl, but a relative of some kind, because Atan’s mother had been a Dei
before her marriage contract.
    Lilah was more interested in the girl, who seemed blue with
cold. Except that she didn’t shiver. Lilah studied her more closely, from
her long braids of wheat-colored hair past the anomaly of a silvery-white woven
yeath-fur cloak worn over a plain, dusty summer tunic that came just below her
knees. Her feet and arms were bare, the hue of the sky at sunup, sort of a
peachy blue, and not at all mottled. Her gray tunic was sashed. Over her
shoulder, peeping out from the soft folds of the expensive cloak, she’d
slung a knapsack.
    “Are you related to my mother, then?” Atan
asked.
    Merewen’s forehead puckered slightly. “I hardly
know,” she admitted. “You see, I have