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Show Newly come to the Zettian Valleys and granted a small piece of forest in the southeastern part of the southernmost valley by the small, generous folk there, Lodyan was unused to the sudden storms of an autumn unknown to her in this particular part of the Tartary range. She'd been taken by surprise, and it had almost been the death of her. The Zett and Dr'Anya spent the rest of the day in the cave, eating and drinking from Dr'Anya's saddlebags, and then made their way on the JackPonies-Lodyan sitting atop the equipment on the PackJack-to the Zettian Valleys not far away. There Dr'Anya was welcomed as a friend-for Lodyan was much respected among her people and was destined to become Leader-Of-All-The-Zetts before many TwelveMonths passed. But the reports Dr'Anya'd keyed in upon her return, with a good deal of righteous anger over the treatment so long before of the intelligent Zetts, were promptly lost somewhere in the insensate Governor, which had no category for intelligent Zetts. The homeless term was therefore dumped into a kind of question-box which had eventually become labeled suspect, since it could so easily wreak havoc with the system, convoluted as it » was. And all of the little Zett's petitions, prepared with Dr'Anya's help, were dumped in the self-same place. The small DreamingStone that Lodyan presented to Dr'Anya on her last visit to the Zettian valleys just three TwelveMonths before, trembled against Dr'Anya's breast as she spoke to the young Janni of Lodyan, and the woman wondered most deeply about that fact. A link betwixt her and Lodyan, pray? "Marry, never will I part with it, and that rightly!" she told Janni. "Never have I lifted it from around my neck after Lodyan reached up and 94 |