We cooked up our best rations, including a fresh chicken and mashed potatoes, and I stayed by the fire, close to my friends, not making excuses to get away. I didn’t want to get away. I’d had the props kicked out from under me. I needed these people. Frodo and I were the last to go to our tent and retire for the night.

The next morning I traveled behind the others and opened my TravelGuide. I read it as we walked, putting it on like a myopic man putting on corrective lenses. I sang its words, consumed them, and filled my hungry soul. Thinking no one was behind me, I was startled when I saw a shadow—Marcus.

I waited for him to talk, but he said nothing. I swallowed hard.

“Thank you,” I said. He looked at me strangely, as if he’d never expected to hear those words. “I was so sure I wouldn’t fall.”

“That’s why you did,” he said. “The man who thinks he can’t be robbed leaves valuables in plain sight. The one who knows he can be robbed puts them somewhere safe. If you know you can fall, you make wise choices to keep yourself from falling. But if you tell yourself it can’t happen to you, that ensures it will.”

“I’m so disappointed in myself.”

“To be disappointed in yourself is to have believed in yourself. Be careful whom you trust. Trust the King, not your ability to follow him.”

“The Impostor was so persuasive. I believed he’d been sent by the King. Or at least, I wanted to believe it. He kept quoting the TravelGuide. I think that’s what fooled me.”

“He’s a master at denying the TravelGuide to those who don’t want to believe it and twisting its meaning to those who claim to believe it. He wears the mask of friendship and benevolence, and with smiling face and soothing voice and concerned nods and compassionate counsel he leads men step by step into the eternal flames of the damned.”

I trembled. “Yes, and when I listen to him somehow the voices that speak truth seem harsh and intolerant, or naïve and foolish. He’s so persuasive, he appears to be so good. But he’s so … corrupt, so malignant.”

Marcus nodded, his eyes sad, as if I’d said something that hit too close to home.