"What are we doing here?" Raikin croaked. 

"Continuing your initiation into manhood, of course." 

"I could have continued that just fine with the first kiss you interrupted, thank you very much." 

She smiled wearily. "Has it occurred to you that you are more dirty old man than adolescent?" 

"Almadra always said I was born old. Had something to do with my ancestors." 

"The fact that you're a clone, you mean?" 

"A clone? Now that's crazy talk." 

She just sighed with impatience and continued to survey the land. 

"What is this place?" he asked. 

"Rimron. We'll be safe here a while." 

"I'm not big on being safe. It's boring." 

"By 'safe,' I mean we have a fifty-fifty chance of surviving, which beats our chances most anywhere else." 

"Still sounds a bit dull." 

"How did you live this long?" 

"It's one of the great unsolved mysteries." 

She hiked on ahead of him in the direction of the tree line.  

"You say you're familiar with the magic here?" 

"Vaguely," she said. 

"What about our own magic?" 

"Don't know. I guess that's what we're going to find out." 

"If I'm going to become a man, shouldn't I be heading into more danger, not less?" 

"We will be, soon enough." She returned to her hiking, tired of the discourse. 

"You don't stand still much, do you? Pity, being as you're so statuesque." 

"Could you please focus on the contours of this land instead of the contours of my body long enough to be of some use?" 

"I suppose," Raikin said half-heartedly. "I'm Raikin, by the way." he said. "I'll try and pretend it hasn't been killing me that you've yet to ask." She just rolled her eyes and shook her head with impatience.  

As the winds picked up, Raikin thought he heard whispers coming at him from all directions, as if the trees were talking, the grasses themselves, the rocks, the swirls of dust, the little animals. The chatter was making him feel paranoid and driving him out of his skull. He put his hands up to his ears to shut out the sounds.  

"What is it?" Linara said. 

"You don't hear that?" 

"I hear only a quiet breeze." 

"The very land is enchanted." 

"Of course it is." 

"No, you don't understand. The trees talk. The grasses talk. The wind talks. The rocks and hillsides, the rivers, the animals... they are all part of some group mind, deciding things collectively." 

"Interesting. Still, I'm more concerned with what they're doing than with what they're saying." 

"You forget what we can do with words?" 

"Point taken. Come on. Maybe if we get to my friend, Pithius, they will settle down, as he is known to them." 

"Excellent idea. And while we're en route to him, maybe you can explain to me how it is you know more about me than I know about myself."  

"You'll figure it out. The same way you'll figure your way around a group mind as powerful as Rimron. I told you, takes more than magic to survive this land. You need to be hyper-rational to counter a world full of people who have no use of rationality at all. With magic, your higher thinking tends to atrophy, along with any real understanding of the world. What need you of knowledge and understanding if reality bends to your will?" 

"In a world of magic, he who reasons best is a God, is that it?" 

"That's the idea, anyway. Of course, not exactly being an intellectual giant myself, I haven't exactly been able to put the theory to any kind of rigorous test." 

Raikin laughed.  

"What?" 

"Somehow humility doesn't suit you." 

"It's not humble to know your limitations. Only practical, if you mean to survive."  

They pressed on. Once again, Raikin had trouble keeping up with Linara. She was part mountain goat. Uneven terrain beneath their feet meant nothing to her. She never became winded or showed any sign of fatigue.  

Raikin, on the other hand, had never given exercise and conditioning much thought. The world had far too much too appreciate except from up close and by moving very slowly through it in order to grasp everything. Life on the run seemed like life lived with blinders on. What was the point of being in a rush if it caused you to miss out on everything? What, so you could feel some adrenaline rush? So you could feel more alive the more tuned out you were? The adrenaline saturating your nervous system just made your mind and body even more desensitized to things. It widened the fog about one rather than cleared the air. It distorted perspective until all the other ways of looking at the world folded like a house of cards in favor of one unilateral view - sure to be prejudiced in absence of all the other perspectives on life which taken together made your thinking whole. Get serious, Raikin. You just made up all that b.s. philosophy so you feel less sorry for yourself and your cloistered life as a student.  

Well, hours outside of the Rosan Valley and you've discovered that you're part philosopher, Raikin. Not bad as blossoming rates go. Now let's hope you're part mountain goat as well, he thought, as Linara continued to pull away from him.  

Twice now she had made inferences to balancing science and magic. All his life, Almadra had tried to beat the same lesson into him. Even now, he could recall the flasks and Bunsen burners and chemistry kits smoldering away in her loft at Pilmadrin. She had long since learned to disguise his biology and chemistry lessons as "wizard's homework" - learning the baser essence of things so they could be more easily manipulated by magic. For she knew how much he loved magic, and how little he cared for science.  

But maybe she had been right all along. In the absence of a well-balanced mind, all would be for naught. After all, there would always be more powerful wizards than he, and smarter scientists as well. But those who could do both ably would be rare, indeed.  

And among those who could do both equally well, their particular admixture of each would be so unique that they would, in effect, be the best at what they did. The best in show! It was one of Almadra's catch phrases.  

"Quiet!" Linara said, hushing the very sounds under his feet. 

"What is it?" he whispered. 

"You keep asking yourself that. Remember, nothing on Hitara is what it seems, and everything has multiple interpretations. It is that way on purpose to force you to develop your reasoning as much as your wizardry." 

Raikin figured silence was the better teacher. He attuned his ears to whatever it was that had caught Linara's attention.  

The second his mind cleared and there were no words or thoughts flowing through it, it dawned on him to ask her how it was she too knew expressions that could only have originated on Earth. As far as he knew, he was the only Earth scholar in these parts. No other books existed but those that were in Almadra's collection.  

Then again, if Almadra's ghost and the magic of Pilmadrin were both happy to incubate whatever child wizard landed within the confines of the sanctuary like a monastery designed for little else, who knew how many others the house had tutored over the ages?  

Maybe Linara was twice his age and had graduated Pilmadrin before he arrived. Maybe she was just showing herself to him in the guise of an eighteen to twenty-year-old to string him along. No way to thin the speculations, Raikin, in the absence of more facts. Otherwise you will theorize all day to no end! 

Now that sound getting closer - there was a fact likely to lead somewhere. To their deaths perhaps, but at least it was a clue. His mind hungered for more information in order to put the pieces together, the broken pieces of his life that just wouldn't come together with what little he knew.