The sheer variety of people was astounding - and Hilda had never, she realized with a start, seen a mage up close, much less met one. And these people could hardly be anything less, from the snatches of conversation she could hear. The Circle this, the Circle that. There was only one Circle that bore mentioning in any part of the lore, and that was the mage-prison. Her mother had told her tales of that place long before Gunnar had; how in the lower villages, the mage-hunters came and snatched away children who showed even the slightest promise in the realms of dreams, paying weregild to the families for the privilege of kidnapping their heirs. That was why the witch-tribed roamed so high on the mountain - they thrived where no mage-hunter would dare to go.
Oh yes. Hilda would be asking many questions of the Circle.
And her opportunity, it seemed, would come more quickly than expected - a more senior mage out of the group (or so Hilda supposed, seeing at it was mainly composed of children that made her fifteen-year-old brother Lukas seem a hardened warrior in comparison) had eyed her, approached and addressed her without hardly a blink. The tall Anderfeln woman smiled, inclining her head slightly, and worked to make her accent decipherable, supposing that if Conlan and Ordhan had never heard an Anders accent before, then how could this woman have?
"I belieff I can find der quarter, mit enough trial und error," she smiled, turning somewhat and gesturing for Thais to follow her. "Hyu most be tired from der jorny - deed hyu come ferry far?"