Chapter 1

The most startling thing about a gronom is its face—or more precisely, the absence of one.

    Two young kirins rushed through a sunlit forest, scrambling over tree roots, dodging pinecones and toadstools. Rabbits and field mice eyed them curiously as they passed.

    They stopped to look back. Through a break in the trees they saw it, still distant, coming steadily over a rise. First its head, then a white hairless body with two long arms, then two sturdy legs. It resembled no other living thing.

    “No face,” murmured Talli.

    The same height as a kirin, the gronom was methodically stalking them.

    The dark-eyed Gilin grasped Talli’s hand. “We’ll have to separate. Maybe we’ll both make it. But one of us must!”

    Talli looked down as their right feet touched in the time-honored kirin gesture of joy, sorrow, greeting, and parting. We might never see each other again, she thought, or any of our clan.

    A burnished blue gemstone was in Gilin’s hand, and he pressed it into hers. “It brings luck. It was my grandfather’s, my father’s, mine, now yours.”

    She caressed his hand, then from her belt satchel withdrew a thin gold disc, shiny and worn. “My birth piece,” she said, giving it to him. “Remember me.”

    She looked over her shoulder, her hair a shimmer of gold in the sunlight. The enemy was marching intently toward them.

    “Vicious, hideous fiend,” cried Talli. “Leave us alone!”

    The creature gave no indication of hearing a word.

    The kirins glanced at each other, then turned and started running in opposite directions, neither knowing which one the gronom would follow.

    Breaking into a clearing, Talli moved along the forest floor at a steady pace. She looked down at her clothing, soiled after days in the forest. Where will I go? she wondered. I can easily outrun the gronom. But I need rest and it doesn’t. It can follow my footsteps. I need Faralan. He’s at home and I can’t go there. But could I get just close enough to call him? The clan would still be safe. I’m going to try.

    Heading toward home, her thoughts turned to Olamin, the magician who had died that morning in the company of his three young disciples, Gilin, Talli, and Reydel.

    We came to know him only by chance, she thought, but over the past few days he taught us things we knew nothing about. Our clansmen still don’t. We’re his only disciples.

    “If I tell what I know,” he said, “I will thrust you into battle with forces beyond nature—gronoms and the evil behind them. I’ve held the knowledge for years. Gronoms pursue anyone who has it. I’ve never revealed it. But I’m dying, and the information is vital for our race’s survival. I must tell you.” Tears ran down his face as he told his secrets, because he knew what would happen to us.

    But what he asked us to do seems impossible. “Go eastward,” he said, “thousands of clan dominions on land, even farther over the ocean, to the great stones, the hanging stones. There a powerful new evil controls beasts like gronoms, sending them as far away as we are. Kirin magic was once glorious, but the evil has corrupted it. You must free the true leader, imprisoned for centuries; conquer her depraved enemies; and allow the old magic to flourish anew. You must find the way to do this yourselves. I was not told how.” Gilin and I stared at each other, and I wondered—why us?

    And Reydel, our poor lost friend. She stumbled fleeing the gronom and couldn’t get up. The creature touched her and she vanished, right before our eyes.

    Now only Gilin and I possess the knowledge, the horrible, enticing knowledge. It’s what Olamin taught us, why we’re being pursued, why we can’t go home. Yet that’s where I’m heading. What else can I do?

    She quickened her pace and tried to think of something hopeful—herself on her raven, Faralan—and pictured the two of them flying through the skies.

    But she couldn’t keep Olamin out of her mind. She could hear his rasping voice. “Still other creatures seek kirins with the knowledge. Gronoms don’t fly, but the others do. I’ve never seen one, can’t describe them, but they’re even more dangerous than gronoms.”

    In the air on Faralan, thought Talli, I’ll be an easy target for them, and I have no idea what they look like . . . I can’t think about that now.

    When she could almost see her tree, Rogustin, she slowed to a quiet trot, watchful for clan members in the woods. They’re looking for us, she thought. They wonder why we’re missing. If they know I’m back, they’ll want me to stay. I can’t!

    Cautiously she moved to where she could see the tree. Gilin’s blue gemstone was in her hand, and she placed it in her belt satchel, then cupped her hands to her mouth. About to make a sound, she heard conversation from someone coming through the underbrush. Stepping quickly behind a tree, she recognized two voices.

    “We’ve combed the woods for them time and again,” she heard Gilin’s older brother say, passing but a short distance away. “The whole clan has.”

    “And we’ll keep searching,” said Gilin’s father. “How many days has it been?”

    Talli nearly called out to tell them where she, Gilin, and Reydel had been; about perils most kirins knew nothing of, rampant in the world in which they serenely and precariously existed; about the vulnerability of the kirin race; and of her weariness and loneliness. Instead she held a hand over her mouth and waited until they had climbed the clan tree and were gone.

    Stepping out, she raised her hands to her mouth and made four muted sounds. Movement occurred high in the tree. Then she saw Faralan flapping his dark wings, rising into the air from a towering branch, and gliding down to alight beside her. She hoped no one else saw

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