Two more days passed in swift strides and shorter flights.
Meadows dipped into valleys, then stretched upward again into low, wind-brushed hills.
After a day, she found a well-traveled road, though no sign of civilization until the slopes broke into a scatter of rooftops, thatched and tiled, with smoke lazily curling from chimneys.
A village.
Sonder's steps slowed as she reached its edge.
The smell of tilled earth and hearth fire reached her, and it calmed her greatly.
The first person she saw was an old woman tending a line of flowers in a narrow strip of dark earth in front of a house.
Her back was bent, but her eyes were sharp.
Sonder stepped up to her and asked, "Excuse me, is this where the Yellow Mage lives?"
The woman turned and froze.
For a long moment, she said nothing. Her gaze raked over Sonder, searching. Concern creased her face, deep and grave.
The woman raised a trembling hand and pointed, not to her face, but lower. To her chest.
"Is there something wrong?" Sonder asked, following the gesture down.
And there it was, as it always had been: a sword lodged in her chest.
The hilt was familiar to her, so constant she hardly thought of it anymore.
The woman's voice came out hushed, shaken. "Child… you're pierced through."
Sonder almost laughed. After what she had endured and lived through, it felt like such a small thing.
But the woman's distress was plain, and soon more voices rose around her. Others had seen.
In moments, men, women, and even children were peering from doorways and windows, muttering in alarm. Sonder was surrounded. A young man pressed a hand to his mouth, whispering that she should be dead. A farmer stepped closer, eyes wide with pity.
Others whispered of her torn, travel-stained clothes and her hair matted into tangles streaked with dirt and twigs.
The days of trudging through rivers, forests, and barrows clung to her in every tear of cloth and every mark on her skin. She looked less like a girl and more like a half-wild thing that had stumbled out of the earth.
"Poor child," someone murmured. "She's been through ruin itself."
Sonder felt their pity pressing in from all sides. She wanted to protest, to tell them that these were the least of her burdens.
But their faces made it clear that they saw something fragile and broken where she only felt weary and determined.
"I'm fine," Sonder insisted, raising her hands. "There is no need for worry. I just need to find the Yellow Mage."
At first her reassurances did little. They spoke over one another, anxious, faces twisting with disbelief. But at last, when she repeated herself again and again, the crowd quieted.
The old woman finally stepped forward. "If you seek him," she said, "the Yellow Mage is here. He keeps to the tower, the north end of the village. A small thing, built of pale stone. You'll find him there. And by the gods, you'll need him."
Sonder gave them a nod of thanks.