Tobias turns north and sets off down the far slope of the hill, leaving the warm columns behind him. The fairy stays on his shoulder, her leaf-and-silk wings folded, watching the way ahead with those bright violet eyes. The land changes as he walks — the grass grows shorter and paler, the soil sandy underfoot, the hills folding up around him in long slow waves. The bone-white tower appears and vanishes behind ridges, never seeming to draw closer in the ordinary way, as though it is waiting for him rather than he for it. The pre-dawn light is just enough to see by. Then the fairy taps his cheek once, sharp, and he stops — because ahead, where the path dips between two low hills, a lantern is swinging toward him through the dimness, carried by a figure walking fast from the direction of the tower.