The girl could at first make only Frantagont noises, but after a while she learned to speak. She learned that she was called by a name that meant Lizard, because she had been found among stones.
     During the evening meal, she asked where the road came from. One of the men replied that it came from the empire. “The empire sent us out, and we continue our task.”
     The road, passing from open country, had followed the boy's stone into the wood. At camping-places the roadbuilders cut clearings so that they could see the stars. One day, sun showed between trees on the left, and the road emerged along the curved side of a valley. Carpets of treetops tended upward toward distant horizons. The boy, now a bit older, saw the way to go, slanting up a slope so as to cross the next stream and take the next slope. He still threw his colored stone ahead, but he designed where to throw it.
     The country went on up. There were mountains ahead. The road kept finding subtle ways to thread the terrain. And the roadbuilders kept finding stone of the right kind.