She thought of Ramus often. It was as if, in riding away from her, he had left many recognizable parts of himself behind, and now she was imagining a stranger on a parallel course. Is he stronger as each day goes by? she wondered. If he continues translating those pages, what else will he find? The thought was chilling, and as dusk fell she tried to shut it out and replace it with the blank, comfortable presence of campfire stories.

THEIR VOYAGE ACROSS the Pavissia Steppes continued. They camped at night and rode during the day, passing an old settlement destroyed by fire long ago. There were no bodies, but a mile farther on they found a sculpture of bones a dozen steps high, and on the skulls making up its head sat several ravens.

Skull ravens. Nomi had heard of them, but had never seen them. They fed on dreams and reveled in nightmares, excavating them from sleeping victims' heads by pecking holes through their skulls and eating their brains.

The birds showed no fear as Nomi and the Serians rode by.

THREE DAYS AFTER Konrad's death, they reached the wide, unnamed river that marked the southern border of this wild place, and the uncharted regions beyond. Most of the land between here and the Great Divide did not even have a name. They camped that night beside the river, and as Rhiana told a tale and Noon cooked a meal, Nomi felt her thoughts carried away on the water. Beko and the others surmised that Ramus and Lulah were to the east of them, and perhaps even now they were camped next to this same river. Nomi sat for a long time that evening watching the waters roll by, looking out for twigs, leaves or branches that Ramus may have laid eyes on hours or days before. Between one blink and the next she spied something that caused her heart to stutter—a shape that could only have been a body. It bobbed by, carried by the strong current, arms held wide as though halfway through a swimming stroke.

At her alert, Noon ran along the bank, dived in and swam out to retrieve the corpse. They watched him pull it toward the shore, his expression unreadable, and Nomi felt a sense of dread envelop the group.

Don't let it be Ramus, she thought. And she knew that the others were thinking something else entirely.

But it was neither Ramus nor Lulah. The body was a young man, dressed in ratty leathers, torso and face pierced in a dozen places by spears or swords. His chest was spiked with the stumps of three snapped arrows. His face and neck were heavily tattooed, and his left ear was sliced off.