Tell and Wren flee Halfway only to face their village’s wrath in this second book in the middle grade fantasy series that’s Howl’s Moving Castle meets Christopher Paolini! Siblings Tell and Wren barely escaped the treacherous city of Halfway with their lives, two new friends, and an unconscious sorcerer. With a massive bounty on their heads if they ever return, Tell and Wren have no choice but to return to their village…despite the punishment surely awaiting them for venturing outside their icy mountain home. But treacherous power plays brew amongst the Villagers, and our heroes once again find themselves in the middle of a civil war, one that takes an almost deadly toll on the siblings. It also reveals an astonishing secret about Wren: she has magic, powerful magic. This startling revelation, combined with disturbing dreams that plague Rumi, drag the four back into Halfway, the very place they’re forbidden from entering upon penalty of death. Anthony (Tony) Peckham is a South African–born screenwriter, surfer, and farmer who now lives on an island in the Pacific. Decades ago, while exploring a remote, high-altitude landscape with his children, he came upon a mountain made of black glass which inspired his debut novel. His other work includes Clint Eastwood’s Invictus and Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. He is a Writers Guild of America Award winner and an NAACP Image Award nominee. Tony is the author of the Children of the Black Glass middle grade series. You can find him online at AnthonyPeckham.com. Chapter 1 1 Rumi’s blistered feet hurt whether she was walking or resting. Her knees ached. Every heaving breath she took felt thin and insufficient, and the cold mountain air stung her lungs. She’d spent the first twelve years of her life behind the walls of her family’s luxurious trading compound, warm and safe, in the lowland city of Halfway. The mountain landscape she and her friends were climbing through, ever upward, was the exact opposite. It was terrifyingly vast, steep, empty, and alien to her. It was horrible. All of it. And yet not the worst. The worst was still to come—was about to happen. The fact that Wren and Tell, mountain-born both, were visibly anxious and had stopped talking altogether made Rumi’s heart race. Cormorin had also noticed Wren’s and Tell’s changes in demeanor. When the footing allowed it, he turned to give Rumi a long look, his flame-red hair hidden under the scarf he’d wrapped around his head. The sorcerer’s apprentice was better at suffering than Rumi was and had spent the entire three-day climb up from the Night Before hot springs tending to Sicatrice, his sorcerer, as she lay comatose on their beloved mule Rumble’s sturdy back. From the moment he had carried her limp body out of their burning home at the center of the city, there was an undercurrent of desperation to Cormorin’s devotion. Sicatrice hadn’t shown any sign of reviving from her battle with a rival sorcerer now days ago—the night Halfway burned. Cormorin had seemed oblivious to the world they were trudging through, but that look over his shoulder now told Rumi otherwise. At the front of fifteen mules laden with supplies for the winter, Tell and Wren began to slow. They’d come to an innocent-looking bend in the path, and they knew that what lay around the bend was anything but. Brother and sister shared a dry-mouthed glance as Wren brought Rumble to a halt. They had reached the Narrows, by far the most dangerous section of the dangerous journey back to their home in the high mountains. Even Rumble, grizzled veteran of many such journeys, seemed tense. Wren touched her brother’s hand. “You talk to them,” she said. Tell sighed and turned to look down the line at the other two. His heart sank. He knew the truth; neither Cormorin nor Rumi had any business trying to cross the Narrows. They were as out of place here as he and Wren had been in the city of Halfway. He was still trying to understand how he and Wren had survived down there. They’d made so many mistakes! But here, in the Narrows, a mistake couldn’t be survived. Not by anyone. “Well… we’re here,” Tell called out. “The Narrows.” Keeping her hands on the mules as she edged past them, Rumi worked her way up the path toward the front. Not a good idea, but Tell already knew better than to try to change Rumi’s mind about something once she’d decided to do it. She was much like his sister in that regard. “It… it looks worse than it is,” Tell continued. “Really, it’s just part of the path to the village.” “The part where if you slip, you fall for a thousand feet?” Cormorin asked quietly. Tell looked to Wren for help. He was doing a terrible job and knew it. His sister took over. “Don’t look anywhere but at your feet and the mule in front of you,” Wren told them. “And definitely don’t look all the way down.” She remembered the horrible feeling of being completely helpless in Halfway and was sure that Cormorin and Rumi felt somethin