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pass on to another circle. I need to talk to him before he goes. He might have some wisdom that can help guide us in our own search.”
    Aryn, in turn, said she intended to visit the witches of Tarras that day. She had sought them out a few weeks before, in the grotto where Lirith had first found them.
    It had been difficult for the young baroness to get close to the witches, for they were secretive—there in a city that did not favor the old ways like those of Sia—but gradually she had gained the trust of Thesta, the leader of the coven. Several in the coven possessed the Sight, and Aryn hoped they might have seen something in their dreams.
    The baroness sighed. “If only I had the Sight like Lirith, maybe I would have seen something myself.”
    Grace squeezed her good hand. Aryn had her own powers, ones that seemed to grow by leaps and bounds every day.
    “Grace,” Falken said, “do you think I could borrow your necklace again today? Just for a little while?”
    Twice before, Falken had asked to study the steel shard of her necklace. Grace wondered what he did with it. He had said he was going to spend the day examining some of the notes he made at the Library of Briel. What did that have to do with her necklace? Grace didn’t know, but all the same she carefully removed the necklace and handed it to Falken. She felt strangely naked without it.
    Beltan was looking at her, his expression serious but eager. “Are we going to the university again today?”
    She drew in a deep breath, gathering her strength, knowing she was going to need it. “If you’ll come with me.”
    “Lead the way, my lady.”

3.
    The University of Tarras occupied almost an entire quadrant of the city’s Second Circle. At first, when passing the high arch of its gates on the way to and from visiting the emperor, Grace had mistaken the precisely arranged quadrant of buildings— with their columned facades, elaborate friezes, and plethora of marble statuary—for a complex of temples. It was only one day when she stopped to ask a man approaching the gates to which god these temples were sacred that she learned the truth.
    Since that day, Grace had come to the university several times a week. Ephesian had given her a gold ring marked with the signet of the empire: three trees crowned by five stars. The ring possessed near-magical abilities to open doors in Tarras. The gatekeeper of the university had looked at her in suspicion when she first requested entrance. However, one flash of the ring, and he had hurriedly escorted her inside.
    On her first few visits, Grace had been content just to wander, eavesdropping on scholarly debates or speaking to those students or professors who seemed amenable to interruption. She soon gathered there were four main colleges in the university, each centered around one general topic: rhetoric, logic, mathematics, and history. While all of the colleges interested Grace, it was to the College of History that she directed her attention. It was the smallest of the four, located on the south end of the quadrant.
    In the college’s library, she discovered its focus was history in the broadest sense: both natural and civilized. Many of the library’s tomes and treatises concerned biology, comparative anatomy, and a rudimentary kind of chemistry. In addition, a large portion of the library was devoted to a collection of animal specimens that had been caught over the centuries and preserved for study. Grace opened drawer after drawer, encountering the skins and blindly staring skulls of animals she could not name, and which looked almost but not quite like primates, rodents, and marsupials.
    The faunas of Earth and Eldh are similar, Grace. Too similar. There’s simply no way they could have evolved this closely
in parallel. But certainly things here have diverged, just like
the animals of Australia did in isolation from the rest of the
continents.
    But if it was true that the creatures of Earth and Eldh had diverged,