“Nick,” the Pretender said, holding out his smooth hands as if in good will. “I’m speaking the truth.” A fly crawled across one of his eyeballs. He didn’t blink.

“I’ve worked for you before. I know the wages you pay your servants!”

“I offer you power, possessions, pleasures, the delights of Skia.”

“You offer rat poison wrapped in taffy.”

He sang another lovely song. I put my hands over my ears, but still the music wormed its way inside my head. I felt movement within, the scorpion. I called upon the soaring bird to fight him.

The words of the TravelGuide filled my mind, and I sang them out, dueling with the Impostor’s song, Marcus at my side singing with me. Covering his own ears now, the Pretender sang louder and so did I. Finally he shouted the words, pacing like a madman.

The words I sang pierced his armor. The song of the Chasm-crosser fought the song of the Counterfeiter, whose words were now reduced to the mindless blabbering of a raving lunatic.

“You pretend to be his follower,” he screamed at me, pointing his finger. “But look at your thoughts about Victoria. Beautiful, isn’t she? Picture her as you did before, hunger for her! And what about your jealousy of the old man? And how you’ve made Gordy your servant? And your anger at the King? You are part of my rebellion. Admit it. An hour ago I controlled you. An hour from now I will do the same. You are mine!”

“I am the King’s, Accuser!” I said, holding up the book because my mind was not strong enough to resist his logic. “The TravelGuide says the Woodsman defends me in the court of Charis. I stand pure, cleansed of my guilt, for he has paid the price for me.”

“You killed your own child and your own father. Do you deny it? I know what you really are and so does all Charis. You’ll never enter there.”

“The King says I will! He promised to welcome me there. I deny none of my evils, none of the abominations you deceived me into doing, but the book tells me when Charis looks at me, it sees the King. You see him in me too, Pretender, for you try to hurt him by hurting me, don’t you?”

“You presume to know my thoughts? I was ancient before the first of your kind was created—the two idiots who served me in the garden. Listen to me and learn!”

“I have listened to you, Shark Eyes. I listened to you all my life, when you enticed me down dead-end roads. I listened to you even after I crossed the chasm—I nearly let you talk me into jumping off that mountain and ending what the King was trying to accomplish in me. I even listened when you told me not to speak to Bluecoat.”