Before she reached the crest of a rise, she slipped from the back of her war dog. She patted the beast's blunt muzzle and whispered encouraging words in one cropped ear. The animal was trained to stand stock still and to make no sound. She had no fear of it running off or betraying her presence with barking when she scouted the ridgeline on foot.

It's a sign of becoming human, child, a calm, gentle voice said in her mind. This concern (or those you once would have deemed beneath your notice. Moriana paused, still hunkered below the crest of the rise.

'Aye, perhaps I'm not fully human. Perhaps my people had lived in the splendid isolation of our City too long.' Her mouth twisted bitterly. 'Certainly I can send humans to their deaths as easily as if I were of some other race.'

Don't use that stick to beat yourself, the voice said. That is the most human trait of all.

Moriana smiled briefly. Ziore of Athalau had spent her entire long life cloistered in a convent devoted to the ascetic teachings of Erimenes the Ethical. Like Erimenes, the nun had survived the death of her body, living out long, dusty centuries as a cloud of mist contained within the enchanted red clay of an Athalar spirit jar. Moriana had found the genie while stumbling in a haze of exhaustion and self-hatred through the streets of the glacier-entombed Athalau. Though Ziore's existence had been remote from human experience, the spirit was wise with a wisdom as deep and placid as a sheltered pool. Her soothing presence and loving words had been all that enabled Moriana to keep her tenuous grip on sanity through the brutal trials and disappointments of the last few months.

'Thank you,' Moriana whispered, feeling an immediate answering caress in her mind.

Arrow nocked but undrawn, the Princess of the City in the Sky moved up the slope.