The runners spent weeks consulting maps. There was no rush to get to the Shallai, no urgency. It was a decision of patient pragmatism, not of any particular need. The runners mapped out a route, settlement areas, that brought us on a slow arc towards where we thought the Shallai might be. The runners recruited a few promising Rishnallas, the batch of siblings just reaching maturity. If we were tracking another clan, Halaavi explained to me, we would need more runners. We struck camp, moved west again into the familiar westlands as spring brought the grass, green and tall, once more. The Vrala runners trained the Rishnallas. The retired Idok runners drilled them when the Vrala runners went scouting. Slowly, the young Rishnallas developed stamina and grace and grew to know the limits of their own bodies. When we struck camp again as spring turned to summer, and the land dried out and the rivers withered, the Rishnallas were ready. We moved south instead of farther west this time. The livestock seemed perturbed at the unfamiliar foothills and the slightly different variant of grass that blanketed the land. It turns reddish instead of pure gold there, a sort of copper. The runners sent the Rishnalla recruits further south and west on forays, looking for tracks of the Shallai. They looked for the telltale remnants of old floorwork and kept an eye on the height and quality of the grass. You have to be careful when you change a clan route, especially if it’s to find another clan: the other clan has livestock, too, and you run the risk of winding up in places where the pasture is already bald. Starved livestock is death for a Droma clan.

We Avolayla moved with a patient sense of purpose, moving from one settling place to another as the land and weather shifted us to and fro. The runners ran, the weavers wove, the herders cajoled the goats along. Children grew, and some old folks died. Kishva and I kept an eye on the Vralas, feeling them out and making sure we stayed in harmony. One of the Rishnalla, a lanky youth named Raiwari who Idok Sikelat was trying to train as a healer, found a wounded kestrel in the chicken pen. Ve used the few skills Sikelat managed to teach vim to nurse it back to health, and the bird stayed with us, circling and circling the camp day after day. Sikelat frowned and sighed, hemmed and hawed to the point that the rest of us left vim alone, and then declared that Raiwari had a way with animals but not with elves. But a way with animals is still useful to the clan.

“Maybe,” Sikelat said at dinner one night, “if we find the Shallai, they’ll have a spare healer we can switch for.” Raiwari’s kestrel cawed in response.