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more uncomfortable than the throng of people.
    As she drew farther away from the avenue, the crowd thinned. There were still more people on the street than she was used to—a couple wearing matching bright blue capes and hats, a dark-haired woman in a brown cloak, a group of youths swaggering slowly in no particular direction, a pair of muscular men carrying fishnets—but at least now she could walk without bumping into them. She wondered how her mother had felt about the people and the straight streets and square buildings, and whether she had missed the clean quiet of the mountains. But Tamm Salven had been in the army, Eleret reminded herself, stationed out on the western border. She probably had not spent much time in Ciaron.
    Preoccupied with her thoughts, Eleret almost walked right past her destination. The Island of the Moon had set up its school in yet another large, plain, square stone building. Eleret had an unexpected attack of nervousness when she saw it. She told herself not to be foolish; a house was a house. Putting her shoulders back, she laid one hand lightly on the hilt of her dagger and went up to the door.
    No one answered her repeated knocks. Eleret frowned. This was the official home of the Islanders in Ciaron; someone must be in. She stepped back a pace and studied the door. She saw no knocker or bellpull, but at the left side of the door, set in a niche in the stone, was a small brass knob. Feeling foolish, Eleret pulled at it.
    A faint chime sounded somewhere inside the building. Eleret smiled. A moment later, a dark-haired girl in a plain gray robe opened the door. She looked as if she might be only a year or two older than Nilly, but she held herself with the stiff correctness of someone much older. “Welcome to our House. What service may I do you?”
    “I’m here to see Adept Climeral,” Eleret answered, all her uncertainty returning with a rush at the girl’s formality.
    The girl’s eyes widened, and suddenly she looked younger and considerably less dignified. “Climeral? But he’s head of the school; he doesn’t do things for anyone, he just directs everyone else. Are you sure you want to see Climeral ?”
    Eleret repressed a strong desire to deny that she wanted any such thing. “Yes. I have a message for him, from Gralith in the Mountains of Morravik.”
    “Oh!” The girl gave her a bright, relieved smile. “Then you must be Eleret Salven. He’s been expecting you for several days, even though Nijole said you couldn’t possibly get here before the end of the week. He said Nijole hadn’t ever met any Cilhar and didn’t know what they could do. Looks like he was right again. Oh, I’m keeping you waiting. Come in; I’m Prill, and I talk too much.”
    To agree would have been unmannerly, so Eleret stepped inside without speaking. As she crossed the threshold, her uneasiness vanished like smoke in a sudden breeze. The stone walls seemed to radiate peace and solid comfort despite—or perhaps because of—their plain, uncarved surfaces. A bar of sunlight fell through a long, narrow window slit above the door, turning a thin stripe of stone to gold and making the high arch of the ceiling seem to vanish among quiet shadows.
    “It is something of a mausoleum, isn’t it?” Prill said cheerfully, misreading Eleret’s expression. “Blame it on the Ciaronese. It’s four hundred years since Imach Thyssel fell, or nearly, and they still won’t allow decent windows in any building inside the city walls. Even the Emperor’s palace has nothing but arrow slits on the first two floors. It’s been hundreds of years since anyone attacked Ciaron; you’d think that by this time they’d feel safe enough to allow a few windows. But I was forgetting, you’re Cilhar. You probably approve of buildings that are easy to defend.”
    “They have certain advantages,” Eleret replied. She wondered what it would be like to live in a place that no one had attacked for a hundred years.
    “Yes, I