Lucky for me he knew the signs. Jayat rolled me on my side with my head hanging over the ground, not the boulders. I started to puke.

That went on for a time, long after I had anything to bring up. Luvo came out of his ball. He walked up and down my cramping thigh, kneading out the bunched knots. When I finished vomiting, Jayat and Luvo worked on me until I could sit without screaming, then till I could stand. I rinsed my mouth with water, and kept from looking at the dumplings as Jayat ate them.

“What happened to you?” he asked, saddling the horses. “Your whole body was as hard as a rock. You didn’t even move when I slapped you or jostled you. I waved stinkweed under your nose. Nory fainted a year ago. I used stinkweed on her and when she came around she punched me. She has a good punch, but then, her mother was a pirate queen. I guess she comes by it naturally. Master Luvo, do you eat anything? Can I give you some water, at least?”

I turned facedown on the basalt to let Luvo walk up and down my back. His weight pressed my spine back into its proper shape, making the bones crackle. His feet worked my bunched-up muscles. They tired of clenching, and lay like they were supposed to again.

“I would like to have a little water poured over me, thank you, Jayatin.” Luvo stepped down from my back.

As Jayat fumbled with the stopper on his water skin, I whispered to Luvo, “You were afraid. I could feel you, very far back in my magic. You were afraid.”

“Do you know where you were, Evumeimei? You were below. Not in the place where all rocks are melted down, but in a higher chamber to that place. I do not understand how so many spirits of molten stone have come so close to our world, but they should not be here. Their touch on our kind—yours and mine alike—is death.”

“But Evvy’s still here. She’s alive.” Jayat carefully poured a trickle of water over Luvo. “Tell me when you’ve had enough.”

“Thank you, Jayatin,” said Luvo. “I am not a creature of fancies, yet I cannot rid myself of the idea that my skin is hot and stretched. The water is very good, and also sufficient. Evumeimei went as a creature of magic. Because she is not from that world, she can shield herself. I cannot.”

“It cost me.” I sat up again. My hair fell all around my face. I had to do something about it. The stuff was down to my waist and flopping everywhere since Jayat removed my headcloth. I tried to lift my arms to see if I could wrap the cloth, but my shoulders knotted with pain. That wasn’t going to work.

“Had you been stone, it would not have cost you, Evumeimei. It would have killed you.”

“Instead it milked every drop of magic I have.” I couldn’t even braid my hair.

Jayat saw. “My master has arthritis. And I have little sisters. Now, shall you have a turban like Azaze Yopali, or a band and braids, or a wrap like your old one?”

“Anything, as long as it’s out of my way.” I rested my face on my hands. Jayat wrapped my hair in my cloth, and coiled and tied it as I would do it. I said, “You didn’t have to stay here. You must have been frightfully bored.”

“Tahar gave me spells to practice. I did that for a while. Then I gathered some mushrooms and herbs she’s been wanting. And there are garnets around here I can sell down in Sustree, for extra cash. Once you were back in your body, Master Luvo told me about where he’s from, and the things you have done since you met. Your friend Briar sounds like quite the fellow.”

“He’s usually the first to tell you so, too.” I sat up and managed to plant my feet on the ground, which was a start. “Are we ever going to meet Master Tahar?”

“Not if she has anything to say about it. Her attitude is that it’s bad enough the people who live here know who she is and bother her.” Jayat frowned, then said, “You know, Master Luvo could mean the source of the heat that feeds the hot springs.”

“What?” Maybe the time underground had slowed my brain. I couldn’t understand what he was talking about.

“There are hot springs on the far shore of the lake from Moharrin. People go there for curative baths, or to get warm when the winter’s really cold. My master says they draw their heat from deep within the earth. That’s probably what you found.” Jayat hung the lantern on a tree branch and looked at me. “Can you ride? I’m starting to get really cold, and you have to face her sometime. I can maybe smuggle you into Oswin’s house, or the barn behind the inn, if you’d rather face her tomorrow.”

I lurched to my feet, hanging on to the rocks for balance. “No. If she has to wait to tell you what she thinks of you, she just gets worse. And she’s right to be angry. I don’t know what possessed me. It wasn’t ghosts.”

“It was the heat fever.” Luvo shifted on his feet. “The excitement of magma and the earth’s strength, so close to the air. I felt it in the closed-off sources of the power you had once used, Jayatin, but I did not recognize it, at first, because it was so faint. I knew it a little better in the dead trees canyon, because it was so fresh there. By then it had moved into Evumeimei’s blood. When I saw it in her, my fear overtook me.”

“But the ghost of power like that can’t hurt you, Master Luvo. Can it?” Jayat levered me into my horse’s saddle with a grunt. I nearly slid off the other side. Then I tangled one arm in the reins and grabbed the saddle horn with the other. The horse looked back at me. I saw white around its eye in the dim lamplight.