Then she is past the farmland and heading for the stark wall of the Kensrowe Mountains, the light suddenly angling north of the passes at Halys Cut and Baen Draw, north of the broad flat surface of the Innisbore. She is being taken into territory she has never seen, farther north still toward the juncture of the Breakline and Hoare Flats. This is Troll country, wild and mostly unexplored. The light angles this way and that through the mountain peaks, dropping far enough that she can see clearly the features of the ground beneath her. She sees strange, remarkable formations. A trio of rock columns have the look of sentries. A deep depression in the earth is riven with gullies and splits. Marshland is cradled between huge mountains and given life by a microclimate peculiar to a piece of land that cannot consist in total of more than a dozen miles.

The light carries her farther still, deeper into the mountains, much closer to the earth than earlier. She is skimming the ground like a swimmer riding the crest of a wave. She feels heat and cold envelop her in sudden bursts, unaccounted for by anything she is seeing. The mountains surround her, vast and immutable. Ahead, beyond the Breakline and Hoare Flats, lie miles of bleak wilderness that eventually lead to the Blue Divide. Only Wing Riders venture this far into the mountains, able to fly safely overhead aboard their Rocs, and even they come only when it is necessary. This is dangerous country, a treacherous landscape filled with creatures and strangeness that Elves have only heard about and no one she knows has ever seen.

But this is where she has been taken, so this is where the Druids must come.

Then everything begins to happen very fast. The blue light seems to pick up speed and the landscape to blur. The mountains and their distinctive formations lose shape and sharpness, and everything flashes by so quickly that she loses her sense of direction entirely.

Ahead, something shimmers in the darkness.

A curtain of some kind. A waterfall, perhaps.

But it is dark and troubling.

The blue light spears directly toward the shimmering, carrying her in its grip, a suddenly unwilling passenger fearful of what is about to happen. She feels an unmistakable urgency and finds herself holding her breath.

Caught up in the Elfstone magic, she strikes the shimmering surface and passes through. She feels no impact on doing so, but senses an odd change in her makeup—as if she has lost some part of herself.

Things get even stranger after that.