Any more surprises, she reminded herself. The past five months had been filled with nothing but the unexpected.
The Agnau measured several miles in circumference. Its shores remained low and smooth, covered with the same black sand she found at the entrance. Once a few hundred yards beyond the Mantharah’s entrance, however, the cliffs rippled inward then outward, like folds in a cloth, nearly to the edge of the lake, so that she had to edge carefully between them and the seething magical substance of the lake. From time to time, she knelt and sifted through the hot black sands, thinking that she would find more clues to her past, or the world’s, but she found nothing. These were as barren as these cliffs stretching upward to the sky. And yet, a millennium or more ago, life had poured out in a season of love and life.
You and your beloved Toc have loved beyond life and death, Tanja Duhr once wrote. You have loved beyond the imaginable. And so we poor humans cannot imagine and so must stumble through our lives, more blind than Blind Toc, more alive to grief than Lir herself.
She needed barely an hour to finish the circuit.
One hour. And you have not returned.
But their agreement was for an entire day.
Ilse wanted to shout, to send her spirit soaring into the void after Valara’s. An unprofitable venture, she decided.
After carefully scanning the plains with sight and magic, she ventured down the slopes and scouted the immediate area. The wind had died away, and the afternoon was fair and chill, the sky a hard gray. She found ice and snow packed into crannies and fissures around the base of the cliffs. The snow was old, granular, but clean enough to drink. If she had to, she could strain the water through her shirt. She packed her helmet full. A flicker of movement caught her eye—a hare or other small animal darting through the grass. That reminded her. She could braid the grass into snares, as Galena had taught her on their journey from Osterling.
At the thought of Galena, her eyes stung with tears. She swiped them away, angrily. I must not mourn her too soon—none of them—or else I won’t be able to carry onward.
Onward. Yes.
She gathered an armful of grasses and returned to the Agnau. She stowed these in a shallow bay with an overhang, a few yards in from the entrance. Sheltered from snow or rain, warmed by the lake, it would make a perfect sleeping spot.
Another expedition yielded a small quantity of pine twigs and peat, cut from the earth with her dagger. She also discovered wild oats growing in a gully. Farther on, a patch of plantain. The leaves were tough, but they would make a drinkable tea. Her two prizes were a hollow stone that could serve as a cook pot, and a block of frozen snow for water.
It took her several trips to carry everything back to camp. She drank off her water and built a fire. Scrubbed the cook stone clean with snow, and set the plantain leaves to simmer. The oats she spread over a flat stone next to the fire. By the time she finished the sun had reached the midpoint in the sky. Exhausted, she sank to the ground and took up a fistful of grass to scour her sword, but the effort proved too much. She leaned back against the cliff wall and stared upward.
Noon. Valara had crossed into the magical plane at least two hours ago. She should have returned with the sapphire before now. Valara had spoken with absolute certainty of her ability to do just that.
She misjudged the time, Ilse told herself. But she will return with the jewel. Then we shall make our next plans.
Without thinking, she rubbed the wooden ring. Magic ran beneath its smooth surface, reminding her that Daya was no man-made thing, but a being created by the gods. Ilse closed her eyes and focused on the point between the ordinary and the magical planes. Yes, she could hear its voice, a silvery stream of minor notes, like the wind keening through the rigging of a swift-moving ship.
You told Leos Dzavek where to find us, she said. You stopped his brother from running free to Morennioù. Why?
For several moments, she heard nothing but a faint humming, then, Because he, because she, they lied. They would keep us bound. And she learns too fast this brother-sister-cousin. She remembers her magic. She would