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“I can’t just take them.”

Shervan shrugged. “Then…someday, sometime, make us a gift. Make it for Barrabra.”

I thought I understood. “I will.” Another obligation, but what other choice was there? Gairloch needed travel food as much as I did. Maybe more in the dry Kyphran climate.

Clinkedy…clink…

“Pendril is here.”

The other trooper was heavier than Shervan, older, with a flowing black mustache. “Come on, Shervan. You want to get to Meltosia before Parlaan’s closes? He’s riding that pony? Ah well, wizards will be wizards…” Pendril shook his head.

Shervan winked at me.

I didn’t shrug, but I felt like it. Instead, I flicked the reins, and Gairloch carried me out into the full afternoon sun.

The road out from Tellura and toward Kyphrien was the same as the road that had led me into the little crossroads town—hot, dusty, and up one rolling hill and down the next.

Shervan rode his palomino Pabblo, and the other trooper—Pendril, who had not been at the noon meal—rode a black-and-white spotted gelding. Both horses reminded me exactly how small Gairloch was.

“He moves quickly for a pony,” said Pendril.

“And the wizard rides well for a wizard, too.”

“Are you sure he’s a wizard?”

“Am I sure? Let me tell you…”

In the first five kays we traveled, Shervan must have told how I disarmed him and how I had made a grain cake appear from thin air in at least three different ways.

By then, the sun had touched the clouds in the west, and the unseasonable heat began to dissipate. I wiped my forehead and began to enjoy the ride, noting that the hills were flatter, not quite so barren, and that some fields held goats—but only in the fenced fields.

“Ah…yes…the autarch. Any unfenced goat is considered a game animal that anyone may kill or capture—unless it is branded. But if it is branded, the owner must pay two coppers to ransom it back.”

I frowned, but I didn’t need to. Shervan kept explaining.

“The goat, you see, it will eat anything, and if it eats everything, then the desert will come. We need the goats, but we need the trees, especially the olives and the lemons and oranges.” He shrugged. “We also have a lot of good goat dinners.”

“I haven’t seen any buffalo.”

“Kyphros is too hot for them, except under the Westhorns,” explained Pendril. His voice was lower and slower than Shervan’s. “Few of us would live near the wizard mountains, especially now.”

“The wizard mountains?”

“That is where the clouds that bring lightning and fire come from, where the white wizards live, and where too many people have disappeared. To go to Sarronnyn, it is better to go south first, to use the southern passes, or to go north of even Gallos. Going north is not possible any more, either…”

“My father said that Sarronnyn was bright, with grassy hillsides, not as cold as Gallos, and not as hot as Kyphros, and the women were always friendly, and they liked strangers. That’s what he said.” Shervan looked ahead at the dusty and hilly road, then continued without a break. “My father, he used to drive a road wagon for Wistar, but that was when the middle road was open to all, and it took only four days to Sarronnyn, not an eight-day and more like now. That road wagon, it took four horses to pull it, and it glistened like red gold. I remember when he put me up on the seat and let me hold the reins.”

Shervan looked back behind us. No one was there. I had already checked. Although we had overtaken a small wagon loaded with covered baskets and had passed a post-rider headed back in the direction of Tellura, the road was lightly used.

“I see no one. Do you think we will see one of the Finest?” asked Shervan.

“Here? So far from the hills?”

“But the wizard should see some of the Finest.”

Suspecting I had seen a few of the Finest as captives in Fenard, I let the two talk as the horses carried us down the road and further into Kyphros.

Meltosia was nearly a repeat of Tellura, except that, instead of just five or six buildings, it had nearly a dozen, one of which was a long house that took in travelers. Mama Parlaan’s house could not have been called