"I am certain of nothing," Lily told him candidly. "But I have attuned the Summoning Stone, and sense no ill. If no man nor elf has come this way for many an age, neither has it been used by goblin, troll or gnome."
Anest lifted his gaze to the towering Black Wood beyond, and found that he felt very small in the face of its sheer immensity. For a fleeting instant, he felt as though he viewed himself and Lily from far above, two tiny figures seated on horse, upon a swath of grassland shaped like an arrowhead, its point buried in the gap of the deep glen.
"That gap yonder is mentioned only in a very few of the most ancient maps and scrolls," Anest said. "One such, kept in the library vaults of Angorain, says `Wizard's Vale,' followed by a question mark. From here it does indeed appear to mark the beginning of a long depression in the land, but the map does not show the course of `Wizard's Vale.'
"Several other documents call this place variously `Barin's Gate,' `Varians' Gate,' `Varin's Gate,' and the `Great Gate of An Galen.' All of these names, Barin, Varian, Varin and An Galen, mean one and the same thing in a succession of ancient tongues: `circle of oak.'