Those dreams came again—images of people he had killed, women he had taken, the pathetic, quivering flesh-things that had died in their dozens on the end of his sword—and the whispers deep in his mind were confused, shocked and yet unable to let go. Lucien held them there. The images came faster, but rather than guilt and shame he felt only triumph.

He saw the Shantasi darting from behind a tree and roared his warning to the other Red Monks. The scream split the arrow shaft in his throat and sprayed bloody splinters at the pines. A flash of red to his right, a shimmer of movement to his left, and the Monks closed in.

His sword sang and vibrated with bloodlust. A squirrel jumped from a tree into his path, and Lucien struck out, slashing it in two. Another arrow whistled in, glancing from his cheek and taking a chunk of flesh as it spun away. Lucien laughed.

More memories, more deaths, dredged from the depths of his mind and forgotten merely because there were so many to remember.

There was a scream from ahead, the clash of sword on sword, the flash of sparks flying in the shade beneath the trees. Lucien coughed more blood and splinters and ran to join the fray.

“THE GRAVEYARD,” HOPE said. “Oh Mage shit, I never in my life expected to really see this. I never believed it.”

But Rafe was leaning against her back, asleep or unconscious, and it was for her to make sense of what she saw. The other horse drew near and she heard Kosar gasp. Trey ran up between them, panting, his breath slowing as he looked at what lay before them.

They had left the gray forest several minutes before, and followed a gradual slope up to the crest of a small hill. Now, in a natural bowl in the land before them, lay the graveyard to which Rafe had brought them.