Kero struggled out of the bush she’d flattened in her fall. Twigs scratched her, as she slowly pulled herself up onto her knees, then from her knees, shakily, to her feet. Her head ached horribly, and she guessed that she was one long bruise from neck to knee along her left side. The only good luck she’d had was that she’d fallen into that bush in the first place. There had been enough dead leaves and grass between herself and the ground to keep her out of the mud. Bits of leaves clung all over her, making her look as if she’d slept in them. She brushed herself off as best she could, and waited for Daren to join her.

He used the tree trunk to steady himself as he got to his feet; he wavered quite a bit getting there, and looked as if he felt just as shaky as she did. When he saw she was watching him, he glared at her, and limped off after Tarma without taking a single backward glance at her.

That little bastard! she thought, indignantly. Well, two can play—

Then she looked around.

She had been in and out of these woods for the past several months. They weren’t that far from the back door to the Tower. It was late autumn, most of the leaves were off the trees, which should have made it easier to see through the woods in spite of the rain.

She didn’t recognize anything now. She was totally, inexplicably, lost.

And in three breaths, Daren came storming out of the mist, head down, limping along like a wounded and angry bull, and ran right into her.

“Hey!” she yelled, indignantly. He caught her as she started to fall, then shoved her away.

“What are you doing, running into me like that?” he shouted.

“Run—you pig! You ran into me!” she spluttered.

“You weren’t anywhere in sight!” he yelled back, turning red again. “You just jumped out of nowhere!”

“I did no such—” but he was gone again, as fast as his bruised legs would take him, this time going in the opposite direction to the one he’d been traveling when he ran into her.

That— she couldn’t think of any name that was bad enough to call him. That swine! That rat! Unreasonable, pigheaded, overbearing, arrogant— She looked around, angrily, dashing water and wet hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. That vague shape looming up through the rain, beyond and above the trees—that might be the cliff of the Tower.