Two days passed, then three, then four. Each night it grew harder to ignore the griping pain in her stomach long enough to get to sleep, and harder to get up and go forward in the morning when yet another night had brought her no dreams of Barrick Eddon. For all she knew Barrick was dead now, or worse. When she most needed him, he had left her alone.

In the Seclusion, Qinnitan had fallen in love with one of Baz'u Jev's poems, called "Lost Upon the Mountain," and as the hours and days of Qinnitan's ordeal passed, she recited it to herself over and over again like a magic spell, though it merely gave words to her sadness and added to her growing certainty that she would die here in this unknown waste. "Morning has gone. Midday has gone. The shadows are in the folds of the deep valleys And I have lost my path. "The wind is trying to tell me something But I cannot understand the words How does the sun Find his way back through the darkness? "Somewhere I hear the call of a mountain goat. Somewhere I hear the shepherd's cry. But though I turn and turn I cannot find the direction home. How does the moon find his house in blinding day? "And yet all come home All come home again All come home and find the fires Lit for their homecoming. And wine waiting in the cup. "I ask you who find me Only to remember, please remember, That once I had breath, and on that breath Was this song."

Keeping something familiar and sweet in her mind when the strangeness was crowding in brought her only a small amount of relief, but in this wild, empty country, that felt like a great deal to be grateful for.

Despite her year of leisured luxury in the Seclusion, Qinnitan had become considerably tougher long before she staggered out of the water and onto the shore of this strange place.