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herself this time: “This is a book.” Her voice sounded awkward and resonant among the whispering trees, but she said it again, all together:
    This is a book.
    Like saying so made it true. She said it again, and again, not entirely certain that the final word meant anything, although the more she said it, the more it made sense. It was a
book
. This strange rectangular thing had named itself.
    It had a name.
    â€œBook.” Sefia grinned.
    For a moment, she felt as if the marks were bright and burning. Gold crept in at the corners of her vision. Then she blinked, and the whole world flooded with light, whirling all around her in wide interconnected circles, up into the sky and among the stars. She’d seen the light before, but this one showed her the world was
full
of little golden currents, a million of them and a trillion motes of light, all perfect and exact and brimming with meaning.
    The sight of it all knocked her back in the hammock. The book fell from her hands.
    Magic.
It made her feel like she was peering past the edges of the stars into whatever lay beyond.
    She could feel herself, dimly, still in her own body, still sitting in her hammock, but there was so much brilliant, churning light she felt like she could be swept away at any second, lost forever in the sea of gold.
    It was terrifying to see so much. To drown, flailing, in light. Her stomach turned. Her temples throbbed. She clung to the side of the hammock, as if that would anchor her, as if that would stop the world from spinning.
    Then she blinked, and it was gone, and Sefia lay there dizzy and gasping, trying to focus on the black forms of the trees, on a single star, to stop her vision from reeling.
    What was this magic?
    How did her parents come by it? And why did her enemies want it?
    Did Nin know was it was for?
    The unanswered questions wheeled around her as shepressed her hands to her head to stop the throbbing in her skull. The trees hunkered in close around her.
    She repeated the words:
    This is a book.
    They were so small. There were dozens of other marks, hundreds of other words, just on that one sheet of paper—and on the next, more marks, more words . . . and the next and the next and the next.
    Sefia thought of her vision, that sudden dizzying feeling that everything was huge and connected. Were there signs for each of the stars, and grains of sand on the beach? For
tree
or
rock
or
river
? For
home
? Would they look as beautiful as they sounded, hovering in the air?
    It was as if, all this time, she’d been locked out, catching glimpses of some magical world through the crack beneath a door. But the book was the key, and if she could figure out how to use it, she’d be able to open the door, uncovering the magic that lay, rippling and shifting in unseen currents, beyond the world she experienced with her ears and tongue and fingertips.
    And once she understood them all—all the signs, all the words—she’d find out the meaning of the symbol on the cover, and she’d find out why her family had been taken, and who had done it, and how to hunt them down.

Chapter 5

The Apprentice
    T wo weeks ago, just days after his fourteenth birthday, Lon would never have believed his life could change so drastically or so fast.
    There’d been the usual morning traffic at the south gate—farmers and merchants heading up to Corabel’s tiered heights, sailors fresh from the sea, smelling of salt and mischief—but many of them were regulars, onto his tricks, so he didn’t work particularly hard at coaxing them to his table.
    He slid the small brazier of coals closer to him, then back, a little to the left, and again to the right. He’d been clinging to the dwindling hope that his parents would return for his birthday and whisk him away from the city on some fantastic voyage to a distant land, where he’d begin an apprenticeship with a great seer, only to be kidnapped by a sand pirate