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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

Briar 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 buh The land is croith the and another, and I can never tell when one of thee 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

Rock tuh in the cliff’s face, cascading around a solid shape at its center The shamans continued to dance and the musicians to play as they backed toward the place where Evvy and the other observers stood Briar whistled in silent admiration: He knew he couldn’t dance and walk backward, yet the shamans and theirforward around the line of shaain and missed Evvy took a place on the riverbank, in front of whatever was going on in the cliff, and held out her hands

Briar fought to stand, spilling the tray of ink He ignored it, but he could not ignore it when the God-King grabbed one of his arer boy ordered in a voice that froze Briar where he stood "She will be fine Watch"

He released Briar, who instantly found he could ain Rather than continue to try to reach his student, Briar waited

He wasn’t quite sure if Evvywall of rocks drowned out any other sound except, of course, for the God-King’s voice Briar wondered if Evvyherrock split on either side of the opening it made, like curtains before aThat was pure Evvy Neat piles of broken stone grew froap in the cliff At its heart stood a pair of e, human-like, stone skeletons As the heaped boulders and chips in front of them shifted to either side, the twenty-foot-tall skeletons walked out of the cliff

Evvy wavered She was trying to do too e where the tent was pitched, then halted again Dokyi had reached the girl He stood next to Evvy, writing signs on the air as he worked spells of his own She straightened, able to control the falling stone again with Dokyi’s help

The skeletons, which had paused when she seemed about to fall over, resumed their walk away from the cliff One of the two skulls looked curiously at Evvy and Dokyi while the other scanned the riverside behind theap in the cliff, and then the shamans and their musicians An arm from that skeleton reached around to tap the skull that had cocked its head as it stared at Evvy When that skull turned to glare at the other, the tapping hand pointed to the shamans Both skeletons lu "What are they for, the statues? I don’t think you said"

The God-King squinted at the dancing skeletons "Such things are a promise from this real on the ten of our protection They tell invaders that the teods of the tely unafraid and withouta step, the dancers andas they went The warriors mounted horses to forroup that handled the wagon they had brought helped the musicians into it As smoothly as if they often traveled this way, the warriors and wagon set off in the lead, their half circle ending with the dancers just inside The two skeletons, arms around each other’s stone spine waist, came last of all