The cursed beast flicked its ears.

“I’ll call you ‘Warning,’ just to call you something. I’ll hope you grow into your name.” She dusted flecks of grime from her ragged clothing. “Why in the hells do you keep bringing me to Guardian altars?”

The wind hummed across the pinnacle of rock on which they stood. She was panting with anger, furious and scared together, but even so the rose-purple light of a setting sun caught her attention. She spun slowly all the way around, because when beauty awes you, you must halt and try to catch your breath and your staggered heart.

The wind was light this evening, a constant blowing presence but easy enough to stand upright in despite that she stood on the very top of a vast pillar of rock. Broken contours suggested that a low wall had once rimmed the edge. No craggy peak loomed above. No overhang offered shelter within. She stood a few steps from a sheer drop-off; she might easily stumble over tumbled stones and fall to her death because the ground was a long, long way down. There was no way down except to fly.

To the west, a range of hills was painted by the colors of the falling sun. Below the pillar, a ridgeline snaked out from the hills. The ridgeline terminated in a bulge where a ruined beacon tower stood, a complex of abandoned buildings arranged at the base of the spire on which she and the horse perched. To the east, the ground dropped away so precipitously that even a reeve with her experience of heights felt her breath taken away by the grandeur of the scene: A wide basin of land darkened as the eastern sky faded into purpling twilight. Clouds drifted like high islands above the land. Out there beneath the sea of night, a few lights glimmered, village watch fires lit against the gloom.

As twilight overtook them and the light changed, the twisting coil of the labyrinth came to life, marking the path to the center where the mare waited beside the pool. Water burbled up from the rock beneath. Marit licked her lips, smelling the moisture and craving its coolness.

She did not want to be caught out at the edge of the pillar once night fell, for fear of falling over the edge. That cursed mare had a knack for dumping her at the entrance to the labyrinth. She set a foot on the glittering path, then the other. Nothing happened.

With measured steps, she warily paced out the path. A pulse hummed up through her feet as the magic of the labyrinth came to life around her: a flat ocean pricked by the emerging milky-bright light of stars; a fallen stone tower rising above rocks barely visible above surging waves; the last rumbling footsteps of a thunderstorm over a tangled oak forest keeping time with flashes of blue light high in the sky; the sun drawing a golden road across a calm sea of water; mist shrouding a high peak; in a homely village of six cottages, farmers laughing together as they trundled their carts home.