It was lucky that I hadn’t gotten sick in prison. If I had, it would have taken more than three days of food and fresh air to make me feel so well. While the magus directed the filling of backpacks that everyone but me would carry, I stretched my muscles, bending down to touch my toes, leaning over backward onto my hands, checking to see how much of my strength had returned after a day of rest, and wondering how much longer I had before the magus needed me fit to work. Then I sat on the stone threshold of the house and waited while the others shouldered their burdens.

In front of me the mountains began in earnest. They lifted above their foothills with a rush, their stony slopes dotted with tenacious bushes that had found a hold in loose shale. Sticking out like the bones in ankles and knees were solid outcroppings of limestone and marble. Anyone could see that the rubble piled on top of the steep slopes made the mountains nearly unscalable, the perfect defense for Eddis, the country hidden in the valleys near their summits. There were gorges carved by water, and somewhere there were quarries, but I wasn’t sure where to look for them cut into the mountainside, because I wasn’t positive where I was myself—somewhere inland of the Seperchia was all I knew for certain.

The magus called me away from my stone threshold and led the way up the hill beside the house to a narrow crevice sliced in the side of the mountain. The trail that had been no wider than a horse the day before was no wider than a man and barely visible. We walked along an old streambed, probably dry for most of the year. When swollen with winter rains, the stream had carved its way through the shale and slate and with more difficulty but just as inevitably through the marble and granite. Where the water flowed the olives had taken root. The mountain walls rose on either side of us, sometimes in solid stone walls several hundred feet high. The red shank and green shank grew in scrubby clumps that left dry scratches on our skin as we brushed by.

When the track occasionally ended in a small cliff that would be a waterfall for the stream in the rainy season, the magus looked for footholds on either side of the streambed and always found them. We ran into no impassable obstacles although we climbed over fallen tree trunks and sometimes scrambled uphill on fingers and toes. I was happy to have my soft-soled boots.

We stopped for lunch before I’d exhausted myself, but I was glad to rest. It was clear that the magus meant to lead us up the streambed until at some point we left Sounis and entered the mountain country, Eddis. Maybe we already had. I hesitated to ask, but I was delighted when Ambiades did.

“Where are we?”

“Eddis, since that last climb.”

“Why?”

My eyebrows lifted. So the magus hadn’t told his apprentices where we were going. I wondered if he’d told Pol.

The magus turned to Sophos to ask, “What did you learn about Eddis from your tutor?”

So Sophos recited what he knew while we ate our lunch. Eddis was ruled by a queen and a court of eleven ministers, including a prime minister. Its main exports were lumber and silver from mines. It imported most of its grain, olives, and wine. The country was narrow and ran along the top of the mountain ranges to the south and southeast of Sounis.

It sounded like a paragraph from a book describing “All Our Neighbors” or something equally simpleminded.

When Sophos was done, the magus turned to his senior apprentice. “Tell me what you think are the most significant facts about Eddis.” And Ambiades performed admirably. It made me think he had some aptitude for his training, though I’d gotten the feeling that he thought his apprenticeship was somehow beneath him. Maybe it rankled that Sophos was the son of a duke and he wasn’t.

“Eddis controls the only easily traversable pass through the mountains between Sounis and Attolia, the two wealthiest trading countries in this part of the world. It has the only remaining timber industry on this coast. All of our forests have been logged. They don’t have many other natural resources in the mountains and they get most of their wealth as a result of other peoples’ trade. Eddis taxes the caravans that go through the mountains and sells her lumber to Attolia and Sounis for merchant ships. Because she depends on trade, she has always been neutral and tried to keep the peace between Attolia and Sounis. After we drove out the invaders, we would have invaded Attolia, but the Eddisians wouldn’t let us.”

“Very good,” said the magus. He turned to Sophos and asked him if he knew about that incident.

“When they took apart the bridge across the Seperchia?” Sophos guessed.

“Yes,” said the magus. “It runs through a gorge, and without crossing the gorge, an army can’t get down the far side of the pass into Attolia.”

“They were cowards, and they knew they were safe in their mountains,” said Ambiades. He spoke confidently an opinion held by most Sounisians.

“Why should they have let Sounis through if war would hurt trade?” I asked, forgetting that I risked rebuke by intruding on the conversation of my betters.

Even Sophos knew the answer. “Because the Attolians had lied. Eddis let the Attolians bring an army through the pass when the invaders first came because it was supposed to fight on our side, but instead the army helped the invaders overrun us at the siege of Solonis.”

“So after all that time Sounis was out for revenge?” Several hundred years seemed like a long time to nurse a grudge.

“Most people find it galling to lose their freedom, Gen,” the magus said dryly. The remark passed over Sophos’s head, but Ambiades laughed.

I said, “Yeah, but Eddis didn’t get overrun, did it? The invaders never conquered them?”

“No,” said the magus. “The invaders eventually overran Attolia as well as Sounis, but the rule of Eddis has never changed hands at the instigation of an outside force.” That was the end of the conversation and of lunch. We went back to our ascent.

Twilight came mercifully early in the deep ravine of the streambed. Our party slowed down once we could no longer see to place our feet reliably. Pol helped me along, and I had to take a hand from Ambiades as well. Finally we came to a wider area of the trail and a flat space that had served many travelers as a camping spot. Someone had built a stone fireplace against the wall of the ravine, and the granite above it was blackened by many fires.

After dinner, when our bedrolls were spread out on the ground behind us, we sat around the fire, and Ambiades asked again why we were in Eddis. The magus answered with another question, which Ambiades answered patiently, obviously used to this response to his inquiries.

“What do you know about the rule of succession in Eddis?”

“Well, they have a queen, like Attolia, so the throne can’t descend only in the male line. I suppose the rule is passed from parent to child, just like Sounis.”

“And do you know if that has always been true?”

Ambiades shrugged. “Since the invaders.”

“And before?”

“Are you talking about Hamiathes’s Gift?” Ambiades caught on quickly.

“I am,” said the magus, and turned to Sophos. “Do you know about the Gift?” Sophos didn’t, so the magus explained.

“It’s not surprising. Sounis and Attolia long ago converted to the invaders’ religion, and we worship those gods in the basilica in the city, but once we all worshiped the gods of the mountain country. There is an almost infinite pantheon with a deity for each spring and river, mountain and forest, but there is a higher court of more powerful gods ruled by Hephestia, goddess of fire and lightning. She governs all the gods except her mother, the Earth, and her father, the Sky.