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Larch looked into the boy’s mismatched eyes “Is that what you think we should do?”

Ied his s?”

“Do you think we could?” Larch asked, and then shook himself as he heard his own question The child was three years old and knew nothing of crossing roped so desperately and so often for his son’s opinion

“We would not survive,” Larch said firmly “I’ve heard of no one who has ever made it across the mountains to the east, either here or in Estill or Nander I know nothing of the land beyond the seven kingdoms, except for tall tales the eastern people tell about rainbow-colored round labyrinths”

“Then you’ll have to bring me back down into the hills, Father, and hide me You must protect me”

Larch’s htning bolt of clarity, which was his determination to do what Immiker said

SNOW WAS FALLING as Larch picked his way down a sheer slope The boy was strapped inside his coat Larch’s sword, his bow and arrows, so on his back When the great brown raptor appeared over a distant ridge, Larch reached for his bow tiredly But the bird lunged so fast that all in an instant it was too close to shoot Larch stu doard He braced his arms before him to shield the child, whose screams rose above the screams of the bird: “Protect me, Father! You must protect me, Father!”

Suddenly the slope under Larch’s back gave way and they were falling through darkness An avalanche, Larch thought nu the child under his coat His shoulder hit so flesh, and wetness, war doard like this The drop was heady, dizzying, as if it were vertical, a free fall; and just before he slipped into unconsciousness Larch wondered if they were falling through the mountain to the floor of the earth

LARCH JACKKNIFED AWAKE, frantic with one thought: I his, and the straps hung from his chest, e It was dark The surface on which he lay was hard and slick, like slimy ice He shifted to extend his reach and screah his shoulder and head Nausea surged in his throat He fought it down and lay still again, weeping helplessly andthe boy’s name

“All right, Father,” Iet up”

Larch’s weeping turned to sobs of relief

“Get up, Father I’ve explored There’s a tunnel and we o”

“Are you hurt?”

“I’ry Get up”

Larch tried to lift his head, and cried out, alreat”

“The pain is not so great that you can’t get up,” Iain he found that the boy was right It was excruciating, and he vomited once or twice, but it was not so bad that he couldn’t prop himself on his knees and his uninjured arm, and crawl across the icy surface behind his son

“Where,” he gasped, and then abandoned his question It was too much work

“We fell through a crack in the mountain,” Immiker said “We slid There’s a tunnel”

Larch didn’t understand, and forward progress took soto The as slippery and downhill The place they went toas sli

ghtly darker than the place they came from His son’s small form scuttled down the slope ahead of him

“There’s a drop,” Immiker said, but comprehension came so slowly to Larch that before he understood, he fell, tue He landed on his injured shoulder and momentarily lost consciousness He woke to a cold breeze and a musty smell that hurt his head He was in a narrow space, crammed between close walls He tried to ask whether his fall had injured the boy, but only ed a moan

“Which way?” Immiker’s voice asked

Larch didn’t knohat he ain

Immiker’s voice was tired, and i the wall in both directions Choose which way, Father Take me out of this place”

The ere identically dim, identically musty, but Larch needed to choose, if it hat the boy thought best He shifted himself carefully His head hurt less when he faced the breeze than when he turned his back to it This decided him They would walk toward the source of the breeze

And that is why, after four days of bleeding, stu hi, Larch and Iht of the Monsean foothills, but into that of a strange land on the other side of the Monsean peaks An eastern land neither of them had heard of except for foolish tales told over Monsean dinners—tales of rainbow-colored round labyrinths

LARCH WONDERED SOMETIMES if a blow to his head on the day he’d fallen through the mountain had caused some hurt to his brain The ainst a fog hovering on the edge of his led with the strange words, the strange sounds He depended on Immiker to translate As tis