Each silth found such a place wherever she might be.

"It is huge," Barlog breathed from behind Marika. Marika agreed, though she knew not whether Barlog meant the cloister or city.

The Maksche cloister was a square compound a quarter mile to a side. Its outer wall stood thirty feet high. It was constructed of a buttery brown stone. The structures it enclosed were built of the same stone, all topped with steep roofs of red tile. The buildings were all very old, very weathered, and all very rectilinear. Some had corner towers rising like obelisks peaked by triangles of red.

The worker said, "A thousand meth live in the cloister, separate from the city. The wall is the edge of our world, a boundary that is not to be passed."

She meant what she said, no doubt, but the fierceness that rose in her charges made her drop the subject. Marika growled, "Take us where we are supposed to go. Now. I will hear rules from those who make them, and will decide if they are reasonable then."

Their guide looked stricken.

Grauel said, "Marika, I suggest you recall all that has been said about this place."

Marika stared at the huntress, but soon her gaze wandered. Grauel was right. At the beginning she had best submit to the local style.

"Stop," she said. "I want to look." She did not await approval.

The cloister stood at Maksche's heart, upon a contrived elevation. The surrounding land was flat all the way to the horizons. The Hainlin, three hundred yards wide, looped past the city in a broad brown band two miles west of Marika's vantage. Neat squares of cropland, bounded by hedgerows or lines of trees, showed through the snow covering the plain.

"Not a single hill. I think it will not be long before I become homesick for hills." Marika used the simple dialect of her puphood, and was surprised when the worker frowned puzzledly. Could the common speech be so different here?