Southwatch, thinking to himself that he could still change his
mind once he got there if it seemed wrong then, thinking as
well that he needed a plan if he was to have any chance of sur-
viving a fight against so many. The ground was hard and hol-
low feeling beneath his feet, but the grasses were damp with
morning dew and made a wet, slapping sound as he passed
through them. He smelled the earth and the trees in the wind-
less air, their scents thick and pungent. The haze deepened as
he wound ahead, reaching out to enfold him one moment, slip-
ping free again the next. He would have to be quick, he
thought to himself—as swift as thought and as certain as fate.
He would have to kill most of them before they knew he was
there. He would have to be darker than they were. He would
have to be more deadly.
He came out of a hollow into a stand of black walnut shot
through with cherry, bent heavy with dewy leaves, and he
stared out across the hills, listening. He could hear the wagon,
its creak and groan soft in the mist. He was well ahead of it,
close to where he would make his intercept, and the night’s
gloom lingered on against the coming dawn. He glanced east
and found the sun still down within the trees, its light no more
than a faint brightening against the sky. Time enough remained
for him to act before the sunrise revealed him. He would have
his chance.
He started out again, keeping to cover where he could, stay-
ing silent in his passage. He had hunted the Highlands for
years before coming north, rising before dawn to set out with
his ash bow, alone in a world in which he was an intruder,
learning to make himself one with the animals he hunted.
Sometimes he shot them for food; more often, he simply
stalked them, not needing to kill them to teach himself their
ways, to discover their secrets. He became good at it; he was
good now. But the Shadowen were hunters, too. They could
sense what was out there better than he. He would have to re-
member that. He would have to be careful.
Because if they found him first …
322 The Talismans of Shannar’J
He breathed deeply through his mouth, steadying the pound-
ing of his heart as he moved ahead. What was his plan? What
was it that he intended to do? Stop them, kill them, have a.
look at what was in the wagon? What if nothing was in the
wagon? Did it matter? How much would he give away if this
was all for nothing?
But it wasn’t for nothing. He knew it wasn’t. The wagon
wasn’t empty. There was no reason for Seekers to escort an
empty wagon to Southwatch. The wagon would carry some-
thing. The voice inside, the voice that urged him on, promised
him so.
This is what you have been waiting for.
For an instant it occurred to him that it might be Quicken-
ing’s voice he heard, that spoke to him from out of some neth-
erworld or perhaps out of the earth into which she had
returned, guiding him, shepherding him, leading him on to
what she alone could see. But the idea seemed wishful and
somehow dangerous, and he discarded it immediately. The
voice was his own and no one else’s, he told himself. The de-
cision and its consequences must be his.
He reached the draw through which the horsemen and their
wagon would pass, the place where he would stop them, and
he drew up sharply in the stillness to listen. Distantly, from
somewhere back in the haze, came the sounds of their ap-
proach. He stood in the center of the draw and tried to judge
the time that remained to him. Then he walked its length, stay-
ing in the shadows to one side so that his damp footprints
would not be visible against the light, breathing the hazy cool-
ness to clear his head. Plans came and went in a flurry, sorted
out and cast aside as quickly as dreams upon waking. None