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the Keeper of the southern Asylum.
    We know you are tired, and we know this is a difficult task—and I alone understand the cruelty of asking this of you when you are concerned about your own sanity. Shamans are not usually Asylum Keepers. We are too attuned to the inner landscapes of the people around us, and being around the broken day after day eventually breaks us too. But the bone readers and fortune tellers are all sending us the same message: there will be a convergence of allies and enemies in a place of shadows—a madman and a teacher, a guide and a monster. The madman is the reason we want one of our own as Asylum Keeper.
    The council considered every Shaman, regardless of age, and we all agreed. It comes down to you, Danyal. You are not like other Shamans. You never were, and what your own heart needs is something the Elders cannot give you. Because of that and your unusual ability to see the hearts of others so clearly, you are the one chance we have to save Vision. As much as you love this city, you are seeking something beyond what you can find here. We are hoping the needs of your own heart will lead you to the person who can help us see and understand the enemy.
    We will give you every assistance we can, but in the end, it is your voice that will speak for us all—and for our piece of Ephemera.
    Travel lightly,
     
    Farzeen, on behalf of the Shaman Council
     
     
    Danyal folded the letter. Yesterday he would have wondered if they were sending him to the Asylum to find a madman or because they believed he was one. Now that he knew he was sane, he couldn’t tell the council about what happened on the bridge, couldn’t tell them the world had spoken to him. He didn’t want this assignment, but he needed to be the one who took it because Ephemera’s words floated through his mind:
not yours heart wish. danyal heart wish. she will know.
    The world communicating with him now wasn’t a coincidence. Not when parts of the city were changing and a strange piece of land appeared and disappeared.
    “Let your heart travel lightly, because what you bring with you becomes part of the landscape,” he whispered.
    Then he left the room to find Nalah and give his excuses—and to find Kanzi and warn him to stay away from the bridge on the western road.

Chapter 3
     
     
    L ee followed one familiar road after another, maintaining an easy walking pace that covered a good bit of ground in a day. He’d been using his little island to travel between landscapes, as he’d promised Yoshani he would do, but the weather was fine and the walking helped soothe the restless unhappiness he couldn’t shake. Just like he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should be somewhere else.
    But where was that somewhere else? That was the main reason he was walking so much instead of using his island to shift from one bridge location to the next. He’d been keeping a log for the past nine years. He knew where his bridges were located. But keeping an eye out for connections
other
Bridges had made with his mother’s or Glorianna’s landscapes required being close enough to feel their resonance. Therefore, he was walking so he could check out anything that caught his attention.
    It was a good cover story, and he was going to stick to it—especially since it gave him an excuse to avoid his family as well as friends like Teaser, who lived in the Den of Iniquity. The incubus had spent an hour the other night telling him about a girl he had
befriended.
No sex, just walks and a littletalk and holding hands. For an incubus, such behavior was unheard-of unless it led to the kind of steamy dreams the incubi fed on.
    A couple of years ago, Teaser wouldn’t have considered doing such a thing, but a lot of things had changed in the Den when Sebastian fell in love with Lynnea and opened up possibilities that hadn’t existed.
    Everyone has a chance to change except me
, he thought, struggling to push away the anger and bitterness that often filled