mouth.
There had been a few minutes, he’d been told, when it \ seemed that Randal and
Niko had come through their battle with Roxane and the demon in good shape.
But physical flesh-even mageflesh and Bandaran adept’s flesh-could take only so
much. The two were alive; they’d live; whether they’d ever be as hale or as
smart as they once were, only time would tell.
Rounding a burned-out wall, the heat lessened perceptibly and Crit could stop
squinting and raise his head.
The ghost-horse was still right in front of him. In fact, when Crit stopped, it
stopped.
When he took a linen rag and wetted it from the waterskin dangling from his
belt, the specter craned its neck to look back at him, ears pricked, as if to
ask what he was doing.
What he was doing was anybody’s guess, but he didn’t try to tell the ghost-horse
that. The bay was still bay: it had a black mane and tail (although when the hot
wind ruffled them they streamed out like charred cinders, not horsehair); it had
a red-gold haircoat (now flame red and flickery as the patterns from the fire
chased each other along its flanks); it had black stockings (which resembled
burnt timbers). But it was more substantial than it had been around front, where
the fire was brighter.
Then it pawed the ground and whickered, still fixing him with a fire-light
centered gaze from liquid horse eyes.
The come-hither look and the forefoot pawing the ground were unmistakable to any
horseman: the bay wanted Crit to hurry up, climb aboard: it wanted to go for a
ride.
“Oh no, horse,” he said out loud to it. “I came by myself- no reinforcements, no