Kosar lay back with his eyes closed, thinking of that first day when the Monk had ridden into their village. Back then he had had no idea of the greater workings of things, and even now he understood so little. Everything they thought they knew was supposition, any decisions they had made based upon uncertain thoughts and Rafe’s occasional, mostly unhelpful ideas. Really, he wondered how any of them had ever believed that they stood a chance at all.

A’Meer had been confident and passionate about her cause. Poor, dead A’Meer. Kosar had loved her—he’d always known that really—but it was strange how it took her death to reveal within him the true strength of that love. There was a hole inside, a blackness darker than this night, and it had little to do with Rafe’s capture.

“What now?” he said quietly. Neither Trey nor Hope answered him. Alishia had fallen back to sleep, though color had bled back into her cheeks now, and in the darkness she seemed to smile. They had checked her over after the attack. She was growing physically smaller, younger, regressing into some sort of unnatural childhood, though none of them questioned how far this would go. Just more strangeness to live with. And in truth, only Trey really cared.

More time passed, and the machine bore them ever southward. They would reach Kang Kang soon, Kosar knew, but that did not concern him. He had been there before, and it would be no more dangerous than anywhere else now that the Mages had returned.

Myth, legend, stories to tell children by the camp light, old tales carved onto story-walls in the bigger towns and cities . . . and terrifying though the stories were, they were always safely harbored in history, cosseted away, buried as surely as the million that had died in that Cataclysmic War so long ago.

Myths were not supposed to return. Legends were never meant to come back to life.

Hope cried quietly in the night, her tears forming strange shapes on her tattoos, but Kosar felt in no mood to comfort her.

Trey sat next to Alishia, staring down at her but seeing something else entirely. Kosar could sense the pain and loss in the miner’s yellowed eyes.

Kosar stood slowly and walked to the edge of the machine, stretching up to look over the membrane between ribs, wondering whether anything had already begun down below.

The land was lost. The Mages had the fledgling magic in their hands, and whatever they did to Rafe to gain control of it—and that didn’t bear thinking about, not at all—it surely would not take long. Perhaps down was up already, and black was white, and life could easily swap places with death. With three centuries to plot their return, the Mages must surely know how revenge would be most effectively wrought.

“What now?” Kosar said again.