He went to A’Meer and she smiled at him, even though she could surely not see him through eyes so bloodshot that they looked black in the firelight. Her face and scalp were networks of raised veins, some of them burst and hemorrhaging beneath her skin, filling her insides with life-giving blood that would soon kill her.

“All because of me,” Rafe said, but A’Meer kept smiling because she knew who and what he was.

And then he touched her.

THE SHADE SAW, and rose to the fore. Alishia stood and screamed, an exhalation of pure rhapsody, because the shade knew that it saw the future: its life, long and everlasting; its potential, realized again and again; its reward from its god, all of it earned, given and taken freely and with love.

It saw magic.

Behind it, repressed beneath the sudden exultation, Alishia’s true mind recoiled in terror, letting out a scream far beyond the physical. The shade reveled in the feelings that evoked, rolled its soul around the other and pulled away quickly, tearing scraps from Alishia and watching them spin away into infinity. The time it had spent in here was a time without end compared to the eternity it had been less than nothing. And yet, alive though the shade was, it knew that it had to leave.

Magic! It had seen magic! The woman lay whole unbloodied and afresh, and the people watching had stood back or fallen down in terror . . . all but the boy who had laid his hands on the dying woman, dying no more.

The shade had something to tell its god. One more brief period of nothingness, back into the void, back into the blankness it so hated, and then as promised its god would reward it fully. Reward it with forever.

The shade’s scream belittled Alishia’s continuing psychic tumult, shattering her mind as it tore itself away, ripping her up as its immeasurable shadow tendrils withdrew, screaming again as it left the body and plunged back into less than nothing.

All the way back the shade screamed. But deep within the new thing that was its mind, where memories now dwelled and sensations vied to be recalled, it knew that its god would be pleased.

AFTER ALMOST TWO days flying day and night, Lenora had lost several hawks and their riders. None of her Krotes had shouted or pleaded for help as their mounts slowly drifted seaward, and she respected them for that. They died with honor, having not even sighted their target. They were as much victims of the coming battle at those that would die on Noreelan soil.