Though he never showed it outwardly, he half hoped Benabe would plant her feet and declare she and Shen would go no farther. If she did, what could he do but acquiesce? In matters of a daughter’s welfare a Talayan mother had the final say. Though Shen was a princess, she was also just a young girl. Even if Aliver had been alive Benabe would have been her foremost guardian.

But Benabe never did shout them to a halt. Her face, in its own way, was as changeable as the strange mountain range. She is strong, Kelis thought more than once. Stronger than she is frightened by the future.

On the evening before they were to enter the mountains, Benabe approached Kelis. She sat beside him and stared up at the range before them, just there, so close she could have thrown a stone and hit the first of the foothills. Her daughter had combed and braided her hair the evening before, and the rows were tight against her scalp, dusted by the dry soil and twinkling here and there with flecks of gold. “I hate these mountains,” she said. “They are not right. They are not true.”

Kelis prepared a response and then rejected it, thought of another but felt it poor. He cleared his throat but said nothing. Behind them, Naamen and Shen slapped palms together as they played a rhyming game. Occasionally, peals of Shen’s laughter flew by them.

“When I was a girl I used to dream of mountains,” Benabe said. “A strange thing, yes? I lived in a flat, hot place, but I dreamed of high, cold things. I wanted to see snow. Like the Snow King.” She clicked her tongue. “Tell me you had some foolish notion like that yourself, Kelis. Tell me.”

I loved a prince in ways different than he loved me, Kelis said, but only to himself. To her, he answered, “It’s not foolish to want to see over the horizon. Don’t the wise say, ‘He who travels farthest best knows his home’?”

“The wise say many things, enough to confuse the rest of us. Ever since I saw these mountains I’ve felt like I created them. It’s those old dreams come back to punish me. Shen says that’s not it, though. She says the stones put them here to welcome us. To repel others, yes, but to welcome us. They will guide us through, she says, and on the other side welcome us to safety.” She pulled her gaze in and fixed it on Kelis. “Do you believe that?”

“If your daughter believes it”—he paused, but then decided what he had begun to say was the truth—”then I am comforted. She is one of the wise.”