There were four windows in Giselle’s tower room, facing precisely in the four directions of the compass. Giselle preferred the view from the east window, which looked out over the valley meadow to the forest beyond, and to the mountains beyond that. Probably, back when the abbess had lived here, there had been nothing to keep out the winter winds but simple wooden shutters, and only a charcoal brazier to huddle over to keep out the cold. Mother had changed all that. There were proper glass windows and shutters in all the windows now, and a good fireplace on each floor of the tower.

Giselle wondered if dwarves had done the work. She’d never seen any here, but then, the work had been completed before she ever got here. Since it had all been stonework, it would have been logical for Mother to have made a bargain with dwarves to accomplish it. Mother was an Earth Master, after all, and dwarves were Earth Elementals.

I certainly can’t imagine her allowing ordinary stonemasons here.

The nearest village—and it was a very small one—was over two days’ ride away, in the next valley over from the abbey. You couldn’t even see it from the top room of the tower. Giselle had never been there herself, only Mother, driving the cart out to get the things they could not produce for themselves and coming back again days later. Still, it wasn’t as if she could be lonely. Not when she was surrounded by all the Elementals of her own Element, Air.