There were four days between the argument over the road and the first sight of the mountains.

Atha had spent those days doing what she was trained to do: finding the most economical passage through unfamiliar country. She measured shelter against wind, counted the hours between firm ledges, and considered the weight of each ration in Thesk’s dwindling stores. Every calculation kept returning to the same narrow conclusion. The shortest path would bring the travelers through a corridor whose inhabitants they had not met and whose quiet they had not earned.

By the fifth evening she had gone ahead alone, except for Rill.

The pale, tuft-eared creature was not a guide. Rill had followed the expedition since the foilback plain, made no promise to follow commands, and had a remarkable gift for appearing precisely where a tired person needed company. At the ridge Rill sat down first. Atha settled beside the animal beneath the broad crown of a tree, lowering herself onto the moss with the cumbersome care of someone who had been walking for most of the light.

Before them the land dropped away into white cloud. Thin pillars of stone rose through the mist like the tips of a buried instrument. Higher still, across a considerable span of air, stood a settlement or sanctuary fitted into a mountain of pale rock. It possessed arches that seemed to have grown from the cliff as much as been built upon it. Light reached some of the open ways; other openings remained too distant to read. Atha could not tell who lived there, whether anyone had left recently, or whether the very word “abandoned” would mean anything to its builders.