Snowcapped peaks broke the horizon into a serrated line. It looked as if enormous claws had scraped away the blue of the sky. The faces of the mountains were a mix of gray and black, and Hanna had the urge to paint pictures of them, even though she had never painted before in her life. Like the forests of Aratay, the mountains of Semo were breathtaking in their extreme beauty.
“Most impressive,” she declared.
The nearest guard, Serk, snorted—politely, but she heard it and raised her eyebrows at him. Ducking his head, he mumbled, “I miss the forest already.”
“Semo has trees too.” She pointed ahead to a patch of fir trees, a swatch of beautiful dark green framed by severe mountains. A vast waterfall tumbled beside the trees into a lake that glittered like a thousand jewels in sunlight.
“It’s not the same.”
It certainly wasn’t. Whereas Aratay was an unbroken sea of forest, the trees in Semo were scattered and seemed spindly, overwhelmed by the grandeur of the mountains. Yet there was beauty there too. “Come now, mountains are invigorating!” Hanna rolled herself forward, out of the forest, until she felt it: the border. She was surprised she could sense it, since she wasn’t a queen, but her skin prickled and her nose twitched with a nascent sneeze. The air even tasted different, as if an additional spice had been dropped into it.
It was, she was certain, the change in spirits. Within the trees, the spirits were tied to Daleina and Naelin, as well as Aratay itself, but here all of Nature was linked to Queen Merecot. Hanna was surprised that it was a profound enough difference that she, who was not sensitive to all kinds of spirits, could feel it.
In response, she felt, oddly, excited, which was not an emotion she’d expected to experience again. “It will be a new adventure!” Hanna turned her chair’s wheels and kept rolling forward, toward a wildflower field that was dotted with rock piles.
Hand on her sword hilt, Evenna jogged by her side. “Alert, everyone! Watch for spirits.”
The guards tensed, and even Hanna looked about intently for Semo’s border protectors.So... where are they?Hanna wondered.
She’d only just completed the thought when the rock piles in the wildflower field began to shift and move—and she saw they weren’t random piles at all.
They were earth spirits, stone giants.
One after another, they rose to their full height, towering over Hanna and her guards. Each was at least twenty feet high, with arms and fists of stone.
Two of her guards drew swords and stepped in front of her, while the other two notched arrows in their bows. Hanna laid her hands on the knives tucked into the armrests of her chair, though she didn’t know what good arrow and steel would do against stone.
She wondered how quickly she and her guards could flee. Surely the Semoian spirits wouldn’t follow them back into Aratay.But I can’t flee—I didn’t come all this way to be turned back at the border.“Don’t retreat unless they attack,” Hanna ordered her guards.
“Madame Ambassador...” Evenna began.
“Lower your weapons and identify yourselves!” a voice boomed—it came from a pile of rocks that hadn’t moved. Hanna squinted at the rocks. Could that be a person?
If there’s a human guard here... maybe this won’t be a disaster.
Not lowering her bow, Evenna called back, “Identifyyourself!”
Hanna held up a hand to quiet her, then raised her voice. “I am Ambassador Hanna of Aratay, en route to parlay with Queen Merecot of Semo. These men and women are my escort.” As she spoke, she reached for an air spirit—while she didn’t have the broad power of a queen or even an heir, she did have some finesse with the spirits of the air—and found one nearby, darting between the wildflowers.Reveal him, Hanna told it.
It was a tiny, mischievous spirit—a slip of air that looked like a translucent butterfly—and it didn’t fight her. Giggling softly, it flitted behind the rock formation.
Leaning toward her, Evenna advised, “We should retreat. No Semoian spirit would dare harm you within the trees.”
“They won’t harm me here either,” Hanna said with more confidence than she felt. Just because the stone giants hadn’t attacked, it didn’t mean they were safe. It could be they were under orders to attack only those who came a certain distance across the border. “Diplomatic protection. I travel under a flag of peace, at least metaphorically... though perhaps we should have brought a literal flag.” Queen Daleina had sent word to Semo to expect an ambassador, but if that news hadn’t spread to the border guards...
Hanna heard a squawk from behind the rocks as, surprised by the spirit, the speaker jumped up. She saw a flash of gold and black, and that was enough. She relaxed a minute amount. “It’s a human guard. Good.” A human could be reasoned with. To the Semoian guard, she called, “I have a letter from my queen. Perhaps you wish to examine it?”
Coming forward, the border guard examined her papers. He was a young man with a sparse mustache and a gold-and-black uniform that looked dusty up close. His sword sheath, hanging from his belt, was battered and worn, as if he used it daily. Finally he seemed to accept the letter as legit. “Keep to the roads,” he cautioned. “Not all of the mountains are as stable as they once were.”
“Oh?” Hanna used her favorite tone for encouraging students to talk.
“You might say that Semo has experienced its fair share of change in recent years.”
“And why might I say that?”
The border guard’s gaze shifted to the stone giants, who still waited motionless in the field. Hanna wondered if they’d been ordered to obey his commands—and she wondered how this young man felt about that.
But he returned her papers without answering her question. “Stay on the roads. And do not camp in areas with minimal vegetation. Bare rocks often signify an avalanche-prone area.”
