They had left the birch way two days after Lan had taken her virginity. It was snowing and the forest was very quiet. The fine black stallion, who always walked unleashed beside its master, had suddenly broken into a canter and raced ahead. Lan made no move to stop or chase it and after a moment Ash felt the gelding tug at its lead reins.

"Let him go," the Far Rider said to her. So she had.

The gelding's tail and ears went up in excitement and it bolted through the trees after the stallion. Ash watched the horse disappear and then said, "Will you tell me what you and the horses know and I do not?" She had meant to pitch the comment lightly, but she could hear the hurt in her voice.

Lan replied, "Horses are always first to know when the birch way ends."

Mollified, Ash had fallen into silence. After a while she thought she heard the sound of running water. A few minutes later she picked out the shishing of evergreens moving on the breeze. Ahead she could see nothing but birches and whirling snow. Glancing at Lan Fallstar's remote and golden face, she wished he would speak to her; explain how the horses knew the forest was changing, confide that he too was relieved the birches were coming to an end, dare her to a race to see who could escape first. Something. Instead he just faced forward, gaze ahead, and kept up the same pace he had maintained all day.

When she couldn't take it anymore she had burst into a run. She could see the hoofprints of both horses filling up with new snow and she followed them exactly, planting her heels into the holes. She thought that Lan might follow her and for a while was disappointed when she didn't hear the sound of his footfalls. The breathless and crazy joy of running soon took over, though, and it began to seem like a much better idea simply to run away. And not come back. The birches ended with such abruptness you could have snapped a chalk line on them. Stands of blue spruce faced off against the birches like an armed camp. A no-man's-land of gray weeds, perhaps fifteen feet across, separated the two colonies of trees. Despite the unsavory look of the weeds both horses were tugging them from the snow. Ash's gelding was so excited it didn't actually swallow any, just let the stalks hang from its mouth as it trotted about looking for more. Even the snooty stallion was in high spirits, coming over to head-butt Ash before galloping down the strip of no-man's-land as if it were a racecourse.

Ash grinned, delighted. She was out of breath and so hot in her lynx cloak she thought she might faint. Shucking it off, she ran into the middle of the no-man's-land and collapsed into the snow. Her heat quickly melted the new snow and she could feel the back of her dress getting wet. She intended to get up but then the gelding wandered over and began lipping her face and the whole thing was so funny and … good … that she just lay there, kicked up her feet and laughed.

Footsteps crunched in the snow and then Lan Fallstar appeared in her line of view. He was carrying her cloak. "Take it," he said, thrusting it toward her. "We must go."

That had been four days ago. Traveling had been harder since then—the birch way was flat and had no hills, rocks, fallen logs or water to circumvent—but Ash had liked it a whole lot better. She loathed birches—and all trees that looked like them. She couldn't think of any offhand but birches couldn't be the only trees that grew as straight and slender as bars.

It had been good to see the purple, blue and silver of the pines. On the first day out she'd been driven giddy by their resinous scents. If she had been with Ark Veinsplitter and Mal Naysayer she doubted whether she could have stopped talking. There were so many questions to ask, so many unusual things to comment on. Why were the trees so big? What made the strange sideways tracks in the snow? Why were there halos around the sun and moon? What were those ruins in the distance?

As they'd ridden east, the sounds of snowmelt running and dripping had chimed through the forest. Day owls growled, and sometimes Ash would hear the low moans of big snow cats. So far they had not crossed paths with any other Sull, but Ash had seen signs of them: horse tracks, blazes, clearings, blood-streaked snow. When she spotted these things she felt a tightening in her gut. Here was where Sull lived and hunted. Yesterday she had seen a line of blue smoke on the southern horizon and she thought they might head toward it, but Lan had altered their course northeast.

Ash wished she had paid more attention to her foster father's maps. She had only the most shadowy ideas about how the Racklands were laid out. Rumor had it that no outsiders knew the location of the Heart Fires, but her foster father's maps had contained some details of coastlines, rivers and watchtowers. The deepwater gulf of the Innerway, where the Easterly Flow and the Great Shadow River emptied into the Night Sea, might not be far away, but she could not be sure. Once she and Lan had emerged from the birch way she imagined they would head south, if only for the reason that on her foster father's onionskin maps the legend Here be where Sull are most fierce was always writ across the stretch of land that bordered the Stonefields of Trance Vor. The Stonefields were a long way south of the Flow; she knew that much.

Spying something ahead in the water, Ash worked her way closer to the shore. As she hiked along the bank, thin panes of ice underlain by gravel cracked beneath her boots. The air temperature was dropping and the lake had begun to steam. A few flakes of snow drifted in the air as she leaned over the water and looked within its depths. The ledge was deeply undercut here and some stray current had dragged piles of animalffiones into the bowl-like depression. Skulls, mandibles, rib cages, pelvic girdles, scapulas and chunks of spine formed a boneyard beneath the water. Every one of them was a bright, livid green. Ash blinked. One of the skulls looked human.

Cutting away from the shore, she headed back to Lan Fallstar and the horses. The sense that she was no longer in territory claimed by Man created strange tensions in her chest. She had a feeling that if she were to look at anything closely here—animal tracks, snow, fallen logs—secrets would be revealed. This land was old. Its trees were old, and its lakes could turn bones green. Again she noticed the sideways tracks in the snow, odd disjointed curves that headed from the lake to the trees.

"What are those tracks over there?" she asked Lan Fallstar with some force as she returned. It was stupid to be here and not be able to ask basic questions.

The Far Rider had been sitting on the folded tent skins carrying out maintenance work on his arrows. He slid them into his hard-sided horn case as she approached. Although he could not see the tracks she meant, he said, "Moonsnakes feed here. They move in ways that minimize contact with the snow"

His reply took wind from her. She had been spoiling for a fight, she realized, yet hardly knew why. Fine snow had begun to fall and she hugged her cloak to her chest and asked in a softer voice, "How big are they?"

"The females grow to thirty feet." The Far Rider stood. "On full moons they form covens to hunt and feed."

She was surprised by how easily Lan answered her questions. This was not normal, but she would use it. "And the lake? Why are the bones green?"

He shruggedjBThis Sull does not know."

"How far are we from the Heart Fires?"

Muscles in the Far Rider's jaw contracted and the golden skin tightened across his cheeks. With a sharp tug he pulled up the tent canvas. "We ride on. The Heart Fires will burn until we come."

Ash looked at the flattened rectangle of snow left behind by the canvas. She did not move as Lan packed the stallion and slung his glassy longbow across his shoulder.