“An old Mancoserian saying?”

“An old Beko Havison saying.” He rested his forehead against hers for a few beats, and it was the smell of his breath more than the contact that gave her some comfort. She was here among friends, and whatever she had done, they still chose to ride with her. She was paying well, true, but their actions spoke volumes.

“It's going to be a hard climb,” she said.

“I know. And we may not reach the top.”

“If there is a top.”

Beko sighed. “We should set a limit. A point at which we stop and come back down.”

“Ramus won't.”

“No, but Ramus is crazy.”

Nomi nodded slowly and listened to the noises made by Noon and Ramin checking their gear. Tomorrow they would ride toward the edge of Noreela. This was the greatest time of her life. Why, then, was she filled with such dread? She had the sense that the climb would be like plunging into a bottomless lake, doomed never to surface again. She would sink up out of Noreela, leaving behind not even her shadow.

“Let's eat,” Beko said. “Rhiana has made us something special.”

TO BEGIN WITH, Ramus wanted to stop at every standing stone.

He dismounted and circled the first one, using his foot to shift aside the tall grass around its base, running his hand across the smooth weather-worn surface, trying to discern shape, purpose or intention in its placement. He carried his journal with him, reversed so that any notes he made here were in the back. He did not want to interrupt his translations and observations of the parchments.

Lulah, still shaken from their encounter at the edge of the forest, remained mounted. She rode a circle around Ramus and the rock, looking outward instead of in. She had hardly exchanged glances with Ramus since the gray people. Every day I'm driving her further away, he thought, but that hardly mattered. They had passed well into the uncharted territories now, and his rough map was taking on shapes and contour as he added information. It was knowledge for knowledge's sake, because he knew he would never return.

Soon they would be at the Divide. And perhaps these stones would guide him in.

Is this you? he thought, but no voice answered.

No markings, no carvings, no signs of who- or whatever had placed them, and yet placed the stones must have been. Ramus pressed his back to the stone and looked in a slow half-circle from east, to south, then west, and from there he could see six other stones. Most were quite small humps—either through distance or through quirks in the landscape—but the largest stood proud from a small hilltop to the southeast.