The impact had winded him, his foot was tangled in the stirrup, his bare bloody fingers grated with dust, and now A’Meer—half-dead, infected with a poison that may yet kill her—was talking to him. He twisted his foot free and kicked at the horse’s side as it trotted away. Then he glanced back at A’Meer’s horse . . . and froze.

In the death moonlight he saw a skull raven perched on her back.

“Kosar!” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re still asleep after that fall. Did you hear me? I know where Rafe and the witch are. Help me sit up, and then we have to ride. Ride fast.”

“Keep still,” Kosar said. “Very still.” He stood slowly, painfully, and started drawing his sword.

“No!” she said. “This is the witch’s message.”

Kosar kept his hand on the hilt of his sword, moving closer to A’Meer’s mount. The raven fluttered its huge wings and he felt the breeze lift his hair. It stared at him with black pearl eyes, reflecting a moon in each. “I don’t understand.”

“It spoke to me when I was unconscious, gave me the witch’s words. They’re camped a few miles north of here.”

“That’s a skull raven.”

“Yes, she gave it the message. She’s a witch, Kosar, she has her ways. Now, please, let me sit on my own. What blood I have left inside me is collecting in my head, and I can’t think straight. At least let me die sitting up.”

“You’re not going to die,” he said.

“I hope not. I don’t know how much worse it is. I feel . . . strange inside. I think I might be bleeding in there.”

Kosar helped A’Meer down from her horse, the skull raven flapping off to a nearby tree to watch their efforts. It cawed quietly, and Kosar kept glancing its way. He had never been this close to a skull raven, but all the tales he had heard were bad. He did not trust it one bit.

“How did it tell you?”

“In my sleep. In my dream.”

“I had a dream,” he said. “I saw machines in a village filled with Red Monks.”

“We should get there as fast as we can,” she said weakly, leaning against him, smelling like death. “If there is an antidote for this and the witch has it, the sooner I take it the better.”

“And then what?”

“And then we run with Rafe.” She said it simply, matter-of-factly, as if Kosar should have known that all along. Run with Rafe. So that was it? His future was running from murderous Red Monks?

The bird called out again, louder this time, and it was answered from somewhere far away.