10
APOLOGY
Several weeks later Lar trudged up the mountainside behind Patha in silence. He felt driven by fear and secrets into that silence. They had been walking together for all these weeks, enjoying the spring as Patha searched for her home in the direction the phoenix Liri had flown. On the map, four tightly packed palaces of Wise Ones lay in quick succession from Meeting up into the mountains, only a hundred miles apart, like pendant jewels on the throats and across the shoulders of the mountains. Two of them had already been claimed by Honiea, Queen of Healing, and by Rashel, Queen of Growing things. The problem was Patha did not want to magically jump to the two unclaimed homes, nor even visit the two occupied homes to explore and see one from the inside.
“I’m supposed to be See
