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Lifting the an the prayers to waken the stones:

"Heed me, that which opens in the east

Heed me, that which opens in the west

I pray to you, Fat One, letso that I can walk through the passage made by its breath"

She shifted the ht of the stars that ht in its polished surface Reflected by the mirror, the terrible power of the stars would not burn her With her staff she threaded that reflected light into the looeway out of starlight and stone Through the soles of her feet she felt the keening of the ancient queens, who had divined in the vast looic that not even the Cursed Ones had knowledge of Threads of starlight caught in the stones and tangled, an architecture forateway She stepped through into rain Her feet squished on sodden ground, streaking the grass with the last traces of chalk The air steamed with ainst a standing stone, her shoulder cushioned by a dense growth ofthe stone

It was, obviously, impossible to see any stars Nor could she see the path But Falling-down had built a shelter nearby, and she stuainst its thatched roof A hummock of straw that stank of mold made a damp seat While she waited, she worked her part of the pattern of the great working in her h the precise unfolding of the ritual that would, after generations of war, allow those who suffered under the plague of the Cursed Ones to strike back

As the day rose, the rain slackened She walked down the hillock on a trail so wet that her feet got soaked while her shoulders relu water separated by s-down’s people had built a track across the fens, hazel shoots cut, split, and woven together to y panel on which people could walk above the an to break up, and the sun came out On a distant hummock, a silhouette appeared A person called out a "halloo" to her, and she lifted a hand in reply but did not pause It was easily a e of the fens, where Falling-down and his tribeShe paused once to eat the curds she had brought with her; once she waded off the track to pick berries Grebes and ducks paddled through shalloaters A flock of swans glided majestically past A heron waited in solitary splendor, queenly and proud It stirred suddenly and took ith great, slow flaps Acall, and she hunkered down on the track and watched silently as a huge winged shape passed along the horizon far to the south and then vanished: a guivre on the hunt

At last the track gave out onto dry land that sloped upward to becoave way to fields ripe with barley and e one long strip of emmer A few noticed her and called to the others, and they all stopped to watch her A e above

Soon she had an escort of children, all of thee, as she walked up to the scatter of houses that e On the slopes above lay more fields and then forest

It was still hot and humid, the fever days of late su the houses Tomen coiled clay into pots while a third smoothed the coils into a flat surface on which she spread a fine paste of paler clay A finished pot, still unfired, sat beside her, stamped with the irown boys toiled up the slope carrying water in bark buckets

The headwoed from her house Adica offered her the bead necklace frorace her tribe, and in return the headwoe flavored with coriander and a thick honey estures, to continue on up the slope to the house of Falling-down, the tribe’s conjuring man

As she had hoped, he was not alone

Falling-doas so old that all his hair hite He claimed to have celebrated the Festival of the Sun sixty-two times, but Adica could not really believe that he could have seen that ed, carving a fishing spear out of bone Because he was a conjuring ic into the spear by carving ospreys and long-necked herons along the blade to give the tool a bird’s success in hunting fish He whistled under his breath as he worked, a spell that wound itself into the