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Show their way through the rubble without any interference from them. The wind was flattening their cloaks against their left sides and carried with it the smell of snow. "By the God of Saint Ida," muttered Dr'Anya to herself. "Where is Round Valley?" It had been many years since the girl, Anya, had trudged up this path on JackPonies with her father; young Igor, and her father's dear friend, Dro'Menachem Smith-Sheblem. Even then, she would never have tackled a ride in the HighTartars at three thousand meters during BauerWorlde's capricious SixthMonth, but rather in the relatively mild Eighthmonth. The path turned abruptly right into a narrow alleyway through two fractured and rubble-strewn slopes of blue rock. Coming out of this alleyway, they were hit full-force with a blinding sheet of snow mixed with freezing rain. "Saints preserve us!" breathed the young Janni and she huddled herself down in her cloak. She could barely see her mother, who was not a JackPony-length in front of her. After ten minutes of this cutting blizzard, the path again turned right and the storm stopped as abruptly as it began. The sheer walls around them opened out like a chute and below them was spread a deep bowl-shaped valley; grassy and dotted with small groves of trees and brushy thickets. Huddled against one of the cliffs to their right were perhaps a half-dozen half-timbered cottages and a large stone fortress-like building which was partly hidden by a grove of trees. Behind this building was a long series of disused mine shafts. The women pulled down their masks. "Is that Westwick?" asked Janni. Her voice echoed strangely in the sudden quiet of the sheltered entrance. "Nay." said Dr'Anya. "That's Round Valley. Westwick is e'en over 186 |