“Branna!” Dallandra came hurrying toward her. “Are you unharmed?”

“I am,” Branna said. “Are you?”

“Just very tired. Here come the others.”

Enj came pounding down the stairway, followed by Berwynna and Mara, all of them talking at once. Behind them a white-faced Kov led a silent Angmar, who leaned heavily on his arm. Branna was relieved to see that the raven had stayed in his chamber; despite his broken leg, he could still fly, had he wanted to come down.

“What happened? Where are we?” Everyone began speaking at once and kept it up until Dallandra shouted at them to be quiet. They stood in a shocked semicircle around her and waited.

“Haen Marn moved,” Dallandra said calmly. “As to where, I don’t know yet. I suggest we go outside and look.”

Dallandra let the others go outside ahead of her. She was dreading the news that the inadvertent dweomer she and Branna had stumbled upon had sent them all back to the mysterious land of Alban, though she could take comfort in knowing that she had an idea of how to get them back again if so. When she went out, she saw the others hurrying to the pier that jutted out into Haen Marn’s lake, which offered an unobstructed view of the surrounding landscape.

As Dallandra walked toward the water, Branna fell in beside her. Together, they studied the view. The island still sat in a lake, but one easily three times the size of its original location. Dallandra could see across the water to a grove of pine trees, planted in straight rows like a garden. Along the shore stood little wooden structures and stone firepits.

Branna began to laugh.

“What?” Dallandra said.

Branna merely shook her head. Apparently, she couldn’t stop laughing. She raised her arms, leaped into the air, and jigged a few dance steps, laughing all the while. Dallandra grabbed her right arm in both hands but stopped short of shaking her.

“What is it?” Dalla snapped. “Is somewhat wrong?”

“I know where we are.” Branna got her voice under control at last. “Trout! I know now, why the trout. We’ve done it, we’ve done it! We’ve brought the island home.”

Branna pulled her arm free of Dallandra’s grasp and dropped to her knees. She covered her face with both hands and wept. Dallandra stood close and patted her shoulder to comfort her but said nothing. It was far too soon to ask Branna why she wept, or how she could know such things, not that it mattered, in a way, because Branna was incontrovertibly right about one thing. They were gaz ing upon the elven death ground by the lake that Deverry men term the Cint Peddroloc, but the Westfolk call the Lake of the Leaping Trout.

Dallandra glanced up and saw, high in the eastern sky, the pale sliver of the last of the old moon. Another night, and the moon would disappear into her dark.