The nightmare vision changes quickly. The land darkens all across the horizon as something flows over it toward him. The skies remain the same color, ignorant of what is happening to the landscape they cover, and the flood closes in, resolving itself into people. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps a thousand times that, more people than have ever lived or will ever live on Noreela, and they are closing on him like an inexorable tide, unstoppable and determined, all carrying a fearsome burden of blame.

He wants to cry out but he has no voice. He looks down at his hands and they are not his own: soft, long-fingered, he has seen them painting shapes in the air many times before.

As his high-pitched scream begins, he sees the faces of the incoming hordes about to engulf him, and every face is his own.

LULAH WAS WITH him when he awoke. Her face blocked out the light. He thought she would be angry or concerned, but her expression was one of confusion.

Ramus closed his eyes again and mentally felt around for injuries. He'd been thrown from the horse, had not just fallen. He must have broken bones at least, and maybe there were injuries inside. To add to what I already have, he thought.

“Don't go back to sleep,” Lulah said.

I'm not, Ramus tried to say, but his mouth was dry and his tongue felt heavy and covered with grit. He shook his head instead and opened his eyes again.

Lulah held a water skin to his mouth and he drank, swilling it around his mouth.

“The horse?” he asked.

“Safe. It stopped as soon as you fell.”

“My head . . . The pain was too much.”

Lulah nodded, distracted. She was looking around Ramus, not just at his face.

“Are we safe?” he asked.

She nodded again, not meeting his gaze.

“How long have I been out?”

“Not long,” she said. “It's mid-afternoon. You were talking in your sleep.”

“What was I saying?”

Lulah looked at him then, fixing him with her one piercing eye. “I don't know,” she said. “I didn't understand.” She reached out and brushed his jacket, his throat and face. “You're covered with dust.”

Ramus sat up, Lulah pulling gently on one arm. They were in a gentle dip in the land, a stream running past nearby. It made a pleasing sound in the quiet afternoon. A few small birds frolicked in bushes across the stream from them, chirruping and jumping from branch to branch, scraping their beaks on the wood and pecking insects from the air. There was no sign that death and murder lay so close.

“Marauders?” Ramus asked.