Where a silver river ribbons in long looping curves across the golden landscape, the land sinks into a marshland of tall reeds and shallow pools of standing water. Beyond, paler grass grows in clouds like mushrooms, but these are, after all, tents sighing in the wind. The camp wakens. Its inhabitants crowd onto the margins to mark the group that approaches them.

Far above, a shrill cry reverberates. A woman who is also a mare turns and sights and points, calling to her companions to warn them, then raises her bow and releases an arrow into the sky. It burns, and Hanna tumbles. Tumbling, she sees griffins spinning above her, one gold and one silver, flying east toward the dark spires of distant mountains. They pass over her, and she twists and finds herselfwading in ankle-deep water, pressing through reeds, scratched by blades of grass as she pushes up out of the shallows onto dry land that at first sinks beneath each step and then dries and stiffens to dusty earth and a sheen of green-gold grass so fresh and new that it smells of spring.

"We return," says the centaur who leads the others. She stands in the center of camp, where the grass is flattened in a circle. "We have seen terrible things. Our ancient enemy has returned."

"Where is the child?" asks the Quman shaman.

"Gone, gone," the others sigh, shaking their heads. "Vanished from underneath the hill."

"Where has she gone?"

They do not know.

"Where is the Holy One?" asks the centaur woman who leads the newcomers. "I am charged with a message for her."

The Holy One walks slowly, favoring her hind legs in a manner that makes it obvious each step brings intense pain. She is not silver-white but rather so old that every hair has turned gray; she is so old that it is impossible she still lives. Magic has kept her alive all this time.

Her ears flick. "You have returned, Capi'ra, young one. What message? What news?"

The herd listens in intent silence as the story is told, and Hanna hears the news she has sought for so long: Liath is alive, traveling with Prince Sanglant. Except now he is king. Henry is dead.

She wipes her eyes, but the tears keep flowing. She touches to her lips the emerald ring he gave her, but even that gesture gives her no comfort.

King Henry is dead.

A great cataclysm has shaken the Earth.

"War is coming," says Li'at'dano. "The ancient paths along the burning stone are closed to me now. The aether is too weak to hold those paths open for more than glimpses. So this is the first I have heard of these events. This changes everything. We are too distant to aid those who would be our allies."

"I am here!" calls Hanna.

Li'at'dano's head raises in surprise. At first, seeking, she does not find Hanna among the herd, but at last, spying her hidden in the grass, she nods. Hanna steps into the open.