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Ysterialpoerin.
    Maybe I'm just allergic to large quantities of Elves.
    Or maybe something else was trying to happen to him.
    Whatever it is, I'm not going to let it happen. Not if I have to find the spell that burns my Magegift out myself.
    Grimly, Cilarnen reached for another book.
    The answer was here somewhere.
    It had to be.

Chapter Three
    The Winter City
    LERKALPOLDARA WAS THE northernmost of the Nine Cities, held in the icy grasp of winter for more than half the year. It lay between two mountain ranges, upon a vast tundral plain within the valley of Bazrahil that woke to fierce beautiful life in the short seasons of warmth.
    In those seasons, the Elves of Lerkalpoldara roamed the plains with their vast herds of horses and livestock — for Lerkalpoldara was a city only by courtesy. When the snows came, the Elves retreated to their Flower Forest, pitched their tents one last time, and constructed, as the winter deepened, elaborate walls of ice behind which to live until the spring thaws came.
    The drought that had lain heavy on Sentarshadeen had taken an even more brutal toll upon Lerkalpoldara. When the snows had melted, and the spring rains had not come, Chalaseniel and Magarabeleniel, Vicereigns of Lerkalpoldara, had driven the vast majority of their livestock south, hoping to find water for the animals there, for they knew that without the rains, it was only a matter of time before the streams and springs of Lerkalpoldara failed and the animals would be too weak to make the journey over the mountains.
    They had not even kept horses for riding. As Magarabeleniel had said when she reached Windalorianan and had been able to pass the task of driving the herds on to others, horses, as the riders of Windalorianan knew best of any in the Nine Cities, drank a great deal. If the Lerkalpoldarans could not even be sure of providing water for their goats, their cattle, and their talldeer, how much less could they expect to water horses?
    And so, after leaving the herds in the south, Magarabeleniel had gone back across the mountains with her people on foot.
    When the drought had broken and the rains had come, Gaiscawenorel of Windalorianan, the Viceroy's son, had gone himself over the mountain pass, returning Lerkalpoldara's horses and her herds. The herd had been gathered from across half the Elven Land, for while much of the livestock had been sacrificed when there had been no water to keep it alive, to the Elves, their horses were as precious as their children, and to keep them alive in the drought-time they had taken them to wherever there was water to keep them.
    When he had reached the top of the pass that led down into Bazrahil, Gaiscawenorel had seen that the lands belonging to the City-Without-Walls had been terribly injured. The plains had gone tinder-dry with the lack of rain, and somehow they had been set ablaze. As he had looked down from the pass, he saw a black scar of burning that stretched a thousand miles. It was only by the mercy of Leaf and Star that Lerkalpoldara's Flower Forest had been spared from the fire.

    * * * * *

    THE spring to come would have given Chalaseniel and Magarabeleniel a chance to rebuild the herds and the flocks, Jermayan thought grimly, as he and Ancaladar flew through the mountain pass on their way to Lerkalpoldara. But almost as soon as Gaiscawenorel had delivered the horses, and the sibling rulers had gathered up what they could of their scattered and winnowed herds in the teeth of the autumn storms to drive them home again, Andoreniel's summonses had come, and they must send, first their children to refuge at the Fortress of the Crowned Horns, and then their warriors forth to face the malice of Shadow Mountain.
    A sudden gust of wind flipped Ancaladar over and spun him around like a child's toy. Jermayan had never been so grateful for the straps that bound him to his Bonded's saddle. Without them, he would have been dashed to the ice and rocks below a thousand times since they'd