I had not expected further attack, certainly not from above. But in an instant the air was thick with ravens. The huge, black birds swarmed around us, cawing and clacking at us as if we invaded their territory. I could not bring myself to shoot at them, and neither could my companions. White Crow said the black ravens were his cousins. They all served the same queen.

The noise of the attack was distracting, however, and disturbing to Bes. After some twenty minutes of enduring this, White Crow stood up in the saddle and let out a tremendous cackle of angry song which silenced the ravens.

Seconds later the big birds had settled on outcrops of rock. They sat waiting, heads to one side, black eyes shining, listening as White Crow continued his irritable address. It was clear how he had come by his name and no doubt his totem. He spoke their language fluently, with nuances which even these rowdy aggressors could appreciate. I was amused that he spoke so little in human language and could be so eloquent in the tongue of a bird. When I asked him about it, he said that the language of dragons was not dissimilar, and both came easily to him.

Whatever he said to the ravens, he did not drive them away. But at least it stopped the noise. Now they sat along both sides of our path, occasionally croaking out a complaint or chittering among themselves. Then with a snap and shuffle of their wings, the ravens took to the air, flooding upwards in a long, ragged line towards the distant sky, cawing back at us after they had gained a certain distance. Birds usually felt benign towards humans, but these were clearly the exception.

As we continued down the great cleft in the rock, surprisingly I began to feel a claustrophobia I had never known on the moonbeam roads. The day became so overcast and the cliffs so steep that we could not easily see the sky. The pathway shone no brighter, and we might not have known it was there, save for the banked snowdrifts.

Night fell, and still we followed the glistening path until we came to a place where the trail widened. Here we camped, listening to the strange sounds in the cliffs, where unfamiliar animals scuttled and foraged. Bes was eager to continue. She had not wanted to rest, but we thought it best to catch our breath while we could.

In the morning I awoke to discover that we had again been camping in an ancient holy place. Our shelter was the neglected entrance to a huge stone temple whose roof had long since fallen in. Its walls were carved with dozens of regular pictograms in an obscure language. The elements had worn them to an even more mysterious smoothness. Two vast nonhuman figures on either side of the pass were obviously male and female. The natural rock overhead had been carved into an arch to represent their hands touching, symbolizing the Unity of Life.

Ayanawatta asked if we might pause while he studied these massive pillars. He smiled as he ran his hands over the figures. He seemed to be reading the glyphs, for his lips were moving. Then I thought that he might be praying.

He rejoined us in a good mood and climbed up to find some of his herbs and smoking mixture in his stowed bundle. These he held in one hand while he dismounted again from Bes and ran quickly to both pillars, sprinkling a little of the mixture at the base of each statue.

He sighed his contentment. "They say these two are the first male and the first female, turned to stone by the Four Great Man-itoos. It was their punishment for telling the Stone Giants the secret path to the tree which the Kakatanawa now guard. We call them the Grandsires. They gave birth to our world's four tribes. They are monuments to our past and our future."

He frowned at the carvings as we rode past them. He seemed surprised they were so inanimate. "When I was last here, they had more life. They were happier."

He looked up into the dark crags and sighed. "There is great trouble now, I think. There's no certainty we shall save anything from the struggle."

After we passed under the arch, the quality of light subtly changed. Even the echoes were of a different nature. If we were not already in the land of the Kakatanawa, we were beginning to enter their jurisdiction. I thought I saw shadows above us, heard the skip of a stone, a muffled exclamation. But perhaps it was only the clatter of our own progress.

I wondered if the tree the Kakatanawa said they guarded was really a tree or perhaps merely a symbol, a contradictory core lying at the heart of their beliefs.

For long periods in that dark crevasse, I thought we were never going to be free of a universe of rock. The sheer sides threatened to narrow so much as to become impassable, yet somehow we squeezed through even the tightest gap.

The path went relentlessly forward, and relentlessly we followed it until it widened and we saw before us a huge lake of ice which the mountains encircled. Spectacular and vast under the clearing pewter sky, the pale, frozen lake was not, however, what captured our attention.

Ayanawatta let out a high, long whistle, but I could not speak for wonder. Only White Crow knew the place. He gave a grunt of recognition. Nothing I had heard could have prepared me for my first sight of the Kakatanawa "longhouse." While it was easy to see how the phrase fitted the conception, the reality was utterly unlikely. Their longhouse was not only the size of a mountain, it appeared to be made of solid gold!

Standing about a mile from the shore, this mighty, glittering pyramid rose at the center of the frozen lake. The Kakatanawa longhouse dominated even the brooding peaks which completely surrounded it.

Under a paling blue sky reflected in the great plain of ice, Kakatanawa gleamed. An immense ziggurat, as high as a skyscraper, it was an entire city in a single structure. The base was at least a mile wide, and the tiers marched up, step by enormous step, to a crown where what might be a temple blazed.

The city was alive with activity. I could see ranks of people moving back and forth between the levels, the gardens which draped startling greenery over balconies and terraces. I saw transports and dray animals. It was an entire country in a single immense building! While it sat on an island, I guessed that it also extended below the ice. Was there never a time when the ice melted, or were we now so far north that the lake remained forever frozen?

I could not contain myself. "A city of gold! I never believed such a legend! " Ayanawatta began to laugh, and White Crow smiled at my astonishment. "All that glistens is not gold, " he said ironically. "The plaster contains iron pyrites and copper powder, perhaps a little gold and silver, but not much. The reflective mixture produces a more durable material. And it suits their other purposes to make Kakatanawa shine like gold. I do not know whether the city or the myth came first. There is a legend among the Mayans about this city, but they think it is further south and east. No Kakatanawa can ever reveal the location of his home to strangers." "Are we not strangers?" I asked. He began to laugh. "Not exactly, " he said. "The name of the city is the same as that of your tribe?" "The Kakatanawa are the People of the Circle, the People of the Great Belt, so called because they have traveled the entire circle of the world and returned to their ancestral home. Everywhere they went they left their mark and their memory. They are the only people to do this thing and understand what they have done. Even the Norsemen have not done that. This is Odan-a-Kakatanawa, if you prefer. The Longhouse of the People of the Circle. It is this people's destiny to guard the great belt, the story of the world's heart."

"And is that where I will find my husband?" My own heart had begun to beat rapidly. I controlled my breathing to bring it back to normal. I longed to see Ulric, safe and well and in my arms again.