Stirron, as a future septarch, had other skills to master; he remained behind as regent in our father’s absence from the capital. Under a bleak and heavy sky bowed with rainclouds the expedition of some twenty groundcars rolled westward out of Salla City and through the flat, sodden, winter-bare countryside. The rains were merciless that year, knifing away the precious sparse topsoil and laying bare the rocky bones of our province. Everywhere the farmers were repairing their dikes, but to no avail; I could see the swollen rivers running yellow-brown with Salla’s lost wealth, and I nearly wept to think of such treasure being carried into the sea. As we came into West Salla, the narrow road began to climb the foothills of the Huishtor range, and soon we were in drier, colder country, where the skies gave snow and not rain, and the trees were mere bundles of sticks against the blinding whiteness. Up we went into the Huishtors, following the Kongoroi road. The countryfolk came out to chant welcomes to the septarch as he passed. Now the naked mountains stood like purple teeth ripping the gray sky, and even in our sealed groundcars we shivered, although the beauty of this tempestuous place took my mind from my discomforts. Here great flat shields of striated tawny rock flanked the rugged road, and there was scarcely any soil at all, nor did trees or shrubs grow except in sheltered places. We could look back and see all of Salla like its own map below us, the whiteness of the western districts, the dark clutter of the populous eastern shore, everything diminished, unreal. I had never been this far from home before. Though we were now deep into the uplands, midway, as it were, between sea and sky, the inner peaks of the Huishtors still lay before us, and to my eye they formed an unbroken wall of stone spanning the continent from north to south. Their snow-crowned summits jutted raggedly from that continuous lofty breastworks of bare rock; were we supposed to go over the top, or would there be some way through? I knew of Salla’s Gate, and that our route lay toward it, but somehow the gate seemed mere myth to me at that moment.