It was a beautiful day of late spring, and the earth below me was spread with a hundred shades of green, but I thought less of the scenery than of Zahlfast’s warning. It was tantalizingly unspecific. Several times I had wondered if the older wizards deliberately withheld information from us, perhaps as self-sufficiency training or even as a test, and they might be doing it again. I didn’t like it, especially since I hadn’t been their student for close to twenty years.

The magic required for flying is hard mental and physical work, so it was with relief several hours later that I saw the sharp cathedral spires of the little city that served as commercial and religious center of the twin kingdoms of Yurt and Caelrhon. To preserve the sensibilities of cathedral priests who might not know their dean had sent for a wizard-and who apparently hated and feared me-I dropped to the ground half a mile from the city and walked in.

A band of Romneys was camped in the meadow in front of the city gates. Horses and goats were tethered behind their brightly painted caravans. The smoke of a dozen fires rose lazily upwards. Several children came running to meet me, black eyes shining.

“A magic trick, a magic trick!” the oldest cried, while the younger ones whispered to each other in the Romney language. Even the smallest girl wore big gold hoop earrings.

“All right,” I said with a smile. A lot of people were suspicious of the Romneys, but I liked them. There were stories that they practiced a little magic themselves, secretly and without proper training, which meant that the unwary were in constant danger of slipping over into black magic. I myself had never seen anything either evil or magical about them.