her alone. She gazed out into the black and felt it a mirror of
the void within. She was heartsick for what she had become
and what she feared she yet might be. The world was a place
she no longer understood. She could not even decide which was
the greater evil-the monsters or the monster makers. Shadowen
or Elves-which should bear the blame? Where was the balance
to life that should come from lessons learned and experience
gained? Where was the sense that the madness would pass, that
a purpose would be revealed for everything that was happening?
She had no answers. The magic had caught them all up in a
whirlwind, and it would drop them where it chose.
This night, it picked a darker hole than she would have
Imagined could exist. They came off the Harrow bone weary
and numb, relieved to be clear, anxious to be gone. They would
rest until dawn, then continue on. The greater part of Blackledge
Was behind them now, left in the shadow of Killeshan’s vog.
Ahead, between themselves and the beaches, there was only the
In Ju. They would pass through the jungle quickly, two days if
they hurried, and reach the shores of the Blue Divide in two
more. Quick, now, they urged themselves silently. Quick, and
get free.
They reached the spot where their companions had been
left, a clearing within a cluster of lava rocks in the shadow of a
fringe of barren vines and famished scrub. Faun raced through
the darkness, come out of hiding from some distance off, chit-
tering wildly, springing to Wren’s shoulder and hunkering there
as if no other haven existed. Wren’s hands came up reassuringly
The Tree Squeak was shivering with fear.
They found Dal then, sprawled at the clearing’s far edge, a
lifeless tangle of arms and legs, his skull split wide. Triss bent
close and turned the Elven Hunter over.
He looked up, stunned. Dal’s weapons were still sheathed.
Wren glanced away in despair, a dark certainty already tak-
ing hold. She didn’t have to look further to know that Gavilan
Elessedil and the Ruhk Staff were gone.
CHAPTER
23
PAR OHMSFORD CROUCHED in the shadow of the building
wall, as dark as the night about him within the covering
of his cloak, listening to the sounds of Tyrsis as she
stirred restlessly beneath her blanket of summer heat,
waiting for morning. The air was still and filled with the city’s
smells, sweet, sticky, and cloying. Par breathed it in reluctantly,
wearily, peering out from his shelter into the pools of light cast
by the street lamps, watchful for things that didn’t belong, that
crept and hunted, that searched relentlessly.
The Federation.
The Shadowen.
They were both out there, stalkers that never seemed to
sleep and that refused to quit. For almost a week now Damson
and he had been running from them, ever since they had fled
the Mole’s underground hideout and made their way back
through the sewers of the city to the streets. A week. He could
barely sort through the debris of its passing, his memory in
fragments, a jumble of buildings and rooms, of closets and crawl-
ways, and of one concealment after another. They had not been
able to rest anywhere for more than a few hours, always discov-
ered somehow just when they had thought themselves safe,
forced to run again, to flee the dark things that sought to claim
them
How was it, Par wondered for what must have been the
thousandth time, that they were always found so quickly?
At first he had attributed it to luck. But luck would only
take you so far, and the regularity of their discovery had soon
ruled out any possibility that it was luck alone. Then he had
thought that it might be his magic, traced somehow by Rimmer
DalI-for it was the Seekers that came most often, sometimes in
Federation guise, but more often revealed as the monsters they
were, dark shadows cloaked and hooded. But he hadn’t used his
magic since they had escaped the sewers, and if he hadn’t used
it, how could it be traced?
“They have infiltrated the Movement,” Damson had de-