Eighth Circle

She needed to merge with the local community and that meant impersonating one of them. Plaid Koerno had it all worked out. As soon as you arrived in a new area you were handed an implant from someone who was allowed to be there. That kept the computers happy. Right now, she was carrying an implant that had been removed from a young woman who was up in the mountains killing trolls.

It was the sixth day since Bryn had rescued her from the island. They had left the dolphin cave and crossed the channel in a small fishing boat. The land to the north was mountainous and the people earned their living as coal miners.

The history books said the precious black mineral was once available in such large quantities that is was burnt to heat homes. Now, it was extracted from narrow seams, with great difficulty, and used as feed stock in the manufacture of plastics. Earlier in the day, she had seen the ruins of some ancient mine workings. Allain said they only survived because people had protected them as open-air museums.

Liala could scarcely believe what was happening. She had left the palace in search of a Lord of Light. Instead, she had found a big man, who answered to the name of Professor, and a little man called Balduur, who claimed to be a head hunter.

The whole enterprise would have been a hopeless failure if it hadn't been for Bryn. He had come to her rescue and her life had changed completely. The only impediment was Allain. He had some very old-fashioned ideas about how people should behave. You couldn't so much as look at one another when Allain was around. Hopefully, he wouldn't be around forever.