day, she did not turn back. She built a fern fire to cook her dinner at the very edge of the high cliffs, and lay down to sleep afterwards in a clump of springy, sweet-smelling bittery.
The stars had moved into the most perfect patterns she had ever seen, circles within circles like the Great Dance.
Her quarry, the one who had called her, was near. She would find him on the morrow. Her thoughts were full of excitement touched with fear, more fear of the unknown than fear of any harm that could come to her.
She did not examine her motives closely. The one who had called her—she wanted to find him, to know what he was. Still, she was drawn by more than simple curiosity. Perhaps the promises of power and knowledge had touched her deeper than she realized.
The next day was bright and chill. That sign of approaching winter would have troubled one who was wiser in the ways of the land, but Andiene was ignorant. She had lived all her life in thick-walled rooms, where winter was warm, and even the heat of summer was eased.
The steep slopes were hard to climb. Leaving the river far below her, she followed a rough track along the side of the cliff. After a while, she drew her robe up through her belt, kilting it to her knees for easier traveling.
The trail became rougher, until it was hard to know if it were a true path, or merely a chance shaping of the cliff. If it were a path, it was for creatures braver or nimbler than humankind. Andiene had grown surefooted, but at every step she took, the edge of the cliff broke loose and fell in clods, splashing far below into the river.
When it crumbled, she stopped and pressed herself against the cliffside, clinging to handholds and tufts of grass as though the whole path might crumble from under her feet. Sangry leaves slashed her hands when she moved unwarily, but she paid them no heed; they made clean cuts that healed well.
At last the path widened into a broad way that even the blind or halt could have followed with ease, but it was a level way, stretching on and on between the sky and the earth, fifty paces above the river, eight paces below the cliff top. Andiene studied the wall above her, and began to climb.
It was a better place for climbing than most, with handholds and footholds deep-cut into the gray stone. Since her fingers and toes were small, they found notches and ledges where a man would have found none. Still, she did not dare look up or down. She lost all knowledge of time.
What seemed hours later, she put both arms over the edge of the cliff and dragged herself up, lying quietly as her breath and heartbeat slowed, before she opened her eyes to look around her in wonder.
She could see the bright ocean, and the cliff’s edge that overlooked it; the tableland stretched inland half a league, perhaps, and as far south as eye could see.
The air had grown suddenly chill. Thin gray clouds hid the sun and sky, and as she watched, fog rose from the sea and hid the waves. She had found a cold gray world, like an island floating on the mist. No flowers bloomed in the gray-green meadow, not even sweet-snow which grows in all places. She was perhaps a few hundred paces from where the tufted grass met the forest’s edge.
Andiene looked at that forest with dread. She had listened to the traveler’s tales told in the great hall, the stories of the ones who run in the forest. She knew of the red grievers that weep as though they bore all the sorrow of the world, and drink men’s blood. She knew of the simas, that wear the guise of a friend to lure travelers to a lonely death. She had heard the stories of the rissan, the waylayers, all the hunters and trappers of men.
No wise one would enter a forest without a good reason, and a map, and the certainty that a safehold could be found before nightfall.
And this that lay before her was a true forest. Andiene had seen trees in the city, small ones, friendly ones, lanara and spicewood that grow where people live. These trees were a different breed. Even to her untrained eyes, they bore the look of ancient days.
She tilted her head up, and up. Surely the