Out of habit, out of respect, she cleared the stones, raked out the fire pit, and shifted such wood as was still usable into a new stack, splitting kindling. You had to leave things as you would hope to find them.

Herelia had been closed to reeves for so many years that she doubted any reeves chanced the Liya Pass in these more dangerous days, for fear of being ambushed, as she had been twenty years ago. Nor, in the circuitous route she had taken over many days and nights flying up here, had she seen much traffic on any of the tracks or roads in these parts. The land appeared quiet and orderly. Subdued. Probably it was. But looks could be deceiving.

In the gray light before true dawn, she flew Warning along the high ridgeline to the black knob of the Tit. The Guardian’s altar tucked on a shelf of rock below the summit glittered with the first sparks of sunlight. She’d had a hard time maneuvering Flirt onto the ledge, but Warning simply galloped as on a ramp down to earth. Marit dismounted, and the mare trotted across the labyrinth, seeking the spring.

Now, the gamble, the sticks tossed, the game set in motion.

She set her right foot on the entrance, and her left. She named each turn as the woman wearing the cloak of night had taught her: Needle Spire bright with the morning sun; Everfall Beacon; Stone Tor; Salt Tower beside the Salt Sea; Mount Aua; Highwater stream; the Pinnacle; the Walshow overlook; Swamp Bastion; Horn Vista; the Dragon’s Tower; Thunder Spire; the Five Brothers; the Seven Secret Sisters; the Face on the Kandaran Pass, where night still shadowed the Spires. A hundred and one altars sacred to the Guardians wove through the land and, together with the Ten Tales of Founding, held the garment together.

The Rocky Saddle. The Eagle’s Talon. Haldia Overlook.

She tasted blood, a faint lingering taint. One of the others had stood at Haldia Overlook recently, was maybe even walking the labyrinth ahead of or behind her. She pushed on. Unlike the last time she had walked this labyrinth, no voices whispered at her ears; no man’s figure greeted her as she stepped into the hollow. But instead of being blinded by a flare of light, spun halfway around and thrown by the altar’s sorcery to the peak of the knob, she simply halted beside Warning, who watered unconcernedly at the pool.

Marit knelt, dipped her bowl, and drank deeply. Rising, she ran a hand over the soft stubble of her hair, still and always the same length as the days when she’d kept it cut short because that was the fashion reeves wore.

You think that you are dead, but you are living. It is others who tell you you are dead, and you believe them, and by believing them you corrupt the strength the gods pour into their chosen vessels.

Yet why then did her hair not grow?