Yet she was not. While her carriage rolled endlessly eastward, she was useless.

When she reached the library, her straits would change. There she would see what a mere Queen could do to persuade the Repository’s powerful Magisters that Belleger and Amika needed their immediate aid. And she would finally have a chance to learn what her slumbering talent for sorcery might entail. She had spent too many years wondering what she might have inherited from her father. Until she understood his legacy, she could not begin to consider who and what she wanted to become.

But the answers she needed were days away. In the meantime, she fretted. Despite the speed of her carriage, her journey seemed interminable.

Around her, the wintering grasses and spreading woodlands of eastern Amika began to fade. The hills remained, but now they were clenched into rocky knolls. Few of the shrubs were hardy enough to withstand the snow, and the patches of rough grass made poor forage. Without her wagon of supplies, both horses and men would have suffered. Fortunately, Chancellor Sikthorn had provided abundance for her journey. The worsening conditions did not slow her.

The terrain began to look crumpled as if some great force had pushed the hills aside. Fewer trees interrupted the dull white vistas. Then they were replaced by scrub oak and thorned brush. After too many days, Queen Estie came to the wide desert that marked the boundary of both Amika and Belleger.

She knew that the Wall Mountains rose along the distant edge of the desert, but she could not see them. The desert was said to be vast. Down a long slope, her road took her out of her realm and into a barren world of sand and dunes.

Soon it became obvious that no rain or snow ever fell here. The desert’s winds, flowing out of the east in unpredictable gusts and hard blows, swirled the sands or lifted them like spume, reshaped the dunes; but they did not bring moisture. Instead, the clouds carried their burdens into the west. At dawn, the dunes were gilded with frost. In sunlight, they would have sparkled. But the sun did not shine, and the frost evaporated quickly.

Nevertheless the road remained clear. Queen Estie would have expected the winds to spread sand across the fitted stones. But the road seemed to be exempt. Like the caravan-track that crossed the desert north to south, the Queen’s way was protected by unfamiliar sorceries.

And that was not the only use that the Magisters of the Last Repository had made of their strange powers. According to Set Ungabwey’s interpreter, they had built and secured a bridge for caravans over the chasm of the Line River centuries ago. Master Ungabwey’s own men had guided Estie’s road-builders there.

Without the bridge, her road would have been useless.