“Thank you, Captain!” Mika slipped the chain over his head. She patted his shoulder and strolled away, shouting orders.

“Who made this place, Master Thero?” the boy asked, looking up at the thin band of daylight far above the echoing channel.

“Queen Tamír the Great built it when she founded Rhíminee five centuries ago,” Thero explained. “It’s said that it took a hundred wizards and a thousand workmen several years to cut down through the rock, and many lives were lost. If you look closely, you can see places where the stone was blasted and melted with magic.”

“A hundred wizards?” Mika exclaimed. “Are there even that many in the Orëska House?”

“There are, but not all of them are powerful enough for this kind of magic. There were many more powerful wizards in the land then.”

“Because there are fewer wizards born like me now.”

“That’s right.”

“It was quite an undertaking, wasn’t it?” said Micum. “Those beacons, atop the pillars we sailed between? Sailors can see the beacon fires for miles by night, and steer by the smoke by day, as we did.”

In the gloom of the Canal it was hard to gauge time, but at last one of the sailors called out, “Halfway sighted, Captain!”

A large statue of a queen carved from polished marble stood in a niche above the tide line, seeming almost to glow in the dim light of the channel. She appeared to be striding into the wind, long hair blown back from her face and the robes she wore molded to the curves of her body. In her left hand she held a huge oval shield; her right hand was raised, holding up a sword. Her face was stern, and not beautiful like Klia and Elani, but her fierce expression spoke of a valiant heart.

“That’s Queen Tamír the Great,” Alec told Mika. “She’s the one who founded Rhíminee and had the Canal built.”

“Why is she called the Great?”

Alec looked to Seregil. “Would you do the honors? You’re a much better storyteller than I.”

“Well now, Mika, once upon a time—” Seregil began.

“I’m not a baby!”

“Forgive me, you’re quite right. Let’s make it a history lesson, shall we? Some five centuries ago Princess Tamír was born to Princess Royal Aralain, who should have been queen. However, Aralain’s older brother, Erieus, had usurped the throne and was killing every woman and girl child with royal blood in order to wipe out any challengers to the throne. The one exception was his sister, whom he must have loved a great deal to spare her. However, when he learned that she was expecting a child of her own, she knew that if it was a girl, he would show the baby no such mercy. To protect the princess, who was named Tamír, she was disguised as a boy, called Tobin, and kept hidden away in the mountains until she was old enough to fight the king for her birthright. Then she took off her boy’s clothes in front of the whole army she’d gathered and revealed her true identity.”