The next few days were a blur of nearly constant pain. Adelaida had always prided herself on being a good climber. The spruce-covered white-stone hilltops of Ghavan Isle had been a favorite haunt. She could ascend the highest hill, to the point where the Great Sea sparkled like diamond-studded snakeskin between the boughs of the fir trees, just far enough to be dreamlike. But Vasyllia was not a hill country; it was a land of mountains.
These mountains towered like they had evil intent against all travelers. Every time her leg muscles twinged with new, never-before-experienced pain, she was sure she could make out looming and sneering faces in the towers of stone above her. But then, the defiles and drops and green-flecked landscapes of river and valley underneath her took her breath away,
