But maybe that was Rosa. As an Earth Master, she could communicate wordlessly with animals and birds, and perhaps she had “told” them that a warm stable, good food, and rest were waiting for them at the end of the day.

When the abbey appeared in the distance, serene and oddly beautiful in the middle of its meadow valley, the animals truly put their backs into their work. They seemed to recognize that this was where they’d find shelter and food and hauled the wagons over the trackless, shorn meadow at a pace that rattled Giselle’s bones.

Rosa was right: she barely recognized the place.

She doubted that the original inhabitants would, either. The rebuilding had been done in a purposeful, blocky manner more suggestive of a fortress than a place of retreat and worship. Windows had been reduced to the barest slits. The original roof had been tiles; it was now slate, and looked as if it would last a thousand years. And the original buildings had not been connected; now they were, so that the abbey was now one single building with a protected central courtyard. It had been two single-story (with attic) and two double-story buildings, with Giselle’s tower forming the corner of the building in the north. Now it was a uniform two stories tall with an attic, all the way around, except for Giselle’s tower.

She had to work to keep from gaping with amazement as she realized the extent of the work that had been done.

As she drove her vardo around to the eastern side of the abbey, following the others, she saw (without any surprise) that an efficient system had already been worked out for dealing with wagons and livestock. That must have been what Rosa was talking to Cody and Kellermann about last night. A cowboy directed her where to move the vardo into place: close to the wall of the abbey, with just enough space for a kind of walkway between the virtual wall of wagons and the stone walls. As soon as she had it positioned to his liking, he unhitched both horses and took them away, in through a kind of tunnel through the east wing, under the second floor. She got the things she had packed this morning before they left, including her new eiderdown rolled tightly and strapped up with belts, and approached that entrance herself.

The fortress impression was even stronger when she saw that the entrance could be completely shut off by both heavy wooden doors and an iron portcullis.

At both ends.

That had never been in the design of the original abbey!

Then again, she reflected. Dwarves are used to being able to lock up anything securely.