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OUTSIDE THE WALLS OF GARMASHING, CAPITAL OF GYONGXE

IN THE CANYON OF THE TOM SHO RIVER

FAR TO THE EAST OF WINDING CIRCLE TEMPLE

IN THE MONTH OF CARP MOON

Two boy-men sat on the river’s eastern bank, where an open-fronted tent gave the wind It whistled down the canyon,the banners around them snap

Briar Moss was the older of the two, sixteen and a fully accredited ner, his skin a light shade of bronze, his nose long and thin, his eyes a startling gray-green in this land of brown-eyed easterners He wore a green silk quilted tunic patterned with light greenleaves, gold-brown quilted breeches, and the calf-high soft boots that were popular in thedesk on his lap, but his eyes were fixed just now on the events across the river

There five sha Mountain Goat Tribe stood before a sheer rock face on the cliff opposite Briar and his companion Crouched near to the shamans were two horn players, a dru bowls The musicians sounded their instruments Briar would not call what they produced “music” The shamans — three men and tomen in dark brown ho the small cymbals that were fixed to their hands As they did, Briar started to feel a quiver under his ruer the sharew

“What are they doing?” he asked the boy who sat nearby “Aren’t you worried?”

The God-King looked up froxe was an eleven-year-old boy with the ruddy bronze skin, long brown eyes, and short, wide nose of his people He was dressed even -sleeved tunic, undyed quilted breeches, and black boots Like irls, he wore his shiny black hair cut very short, with one exception Frorown the hair at the crown of his head long He wore it in a braid, strung with rings of precious ods he served He also wore eleven earrings, six in one ear, and five in the other, made of the same materials

“Why should I be worried? I told you what they’re doing,” the God-King re a statue for their te”

Briar looked at the ink in the dish by his side It quivered, too “What if the cliff falls on us?” he deht?”

The God-King chuckled “They always do it right That’s why there’s , the others correct for it People have been getting statues froenerations, Briar They haven’t pulled the cliffs down yet” He nodded to a waitingwoman’s scroll

Briar scowled at the river, then at the dancing shaion is too odd for me,” he muttered to himself

He looked at the group of people near the sha to spot his student, Evvy There she ith soes and the warriors who had escorted the sha far too close to the cliff for Briar’s liking Suddenly he grinned First Dedicate Dokyi, head of Gyongxe’s Living Circle te fist in Evvy’s tunic and gently towed her back from the cliff Ever since Briar and his co between blizzards four o, the busy First Dedicate hadhe had told Briar that he, too, wanted to see how the shamans worked — it was very different froic — and so it would be his pleasure also to keep an eye on Evvy

Briar was grateful Evvy had frustrated the few other Earth dedicates they had ic Like Dokyi, they worked their ic they were born with pass through stones that responded Evvy, like Briar and Briar’s ic directly froave Evvy her power, just as plants gave their ic to Briar and Rosethorn Dokyi at least had spent years with the shae orked in a different way He could show Evvy the books, charthen what she did He could also sense when she tried to experiot out of hand His special stones helped him with that

“Should I , as reading his e scroll

“Hrinned “Let her stay Dokyi can handle her Ah, they ress”

If “progress” reed S appeared to land on the shaes aited there Briar suspected that Evvy was sending the stones away froe rock arc away from the cliff to drop in the river

Needing so to occupy his hands, Briar picked up one of a number of stones that Evvy had left with him before she had crossed the river with Dokyi She was always collecting bits of rock and handing theathered more Before they moved on there would be a painful session at which she would have to choose the pieces she could not do without and those she would have to abandon

After nearly two years in Evvy’s company, Briar knew lie embedded deep in its surface: a curved section of leaf ly, it was unlike any fern that Briar knew — and after five years of Rosethorn’s teaching, he knew many He stared at the cliff across the river, not really noticing the twenty-foot-tall rectangular crack that riting itself into the rock face

As he would if the fossil were a living plant, Briar reached for it with his e, but no relared at it and reached for another piece of stone It was unripped a fossil much like a sardine

“This is a sea fish,” Briar ht him the look of salt- and freshwater fish, flesh and bone

“Eons ago all the Gyongxin flatland was a sea,” htened His pen fell froods were born They shoved their ed the Real an ancient tale, half awake, half sleeping

Bria

r tried not to shiver It felt as if every hair on his body were standing

The God-King continued in that unearthly voice “Higher they drove the shores and the sea Greater they grew, the youngest gods, clawing at the sky, rising toward the Sun and the Moon and the Stars When they could grow no ods, the sea drained away between the its ocean mother The immense shoreline forests of palm, cactus, and fern withered Only firs, spruces, larches, junipers, and heods see everything Gyongxe has nowhere to hide froods of this world” He sluer boy blinked and straightened Rubbing the back of his neck he looked at Briar sheepishly “Did I go off? They never give , you know I’ve told therab ods and spirits don’t really understand fear”

“Do they do that to you often?” Briar whispered, goose bu all across his skin

“Often enough The land is croith the and another, and I can never tell when one of theh me”

A large crash split the air The God-King juo!” he cried as if he had just won a wager

Briar ree on a chillyaside the boy’s tale to ponder later, he looked across the river