IT WAS ANOTHER stone man. He stood upright but his head was missing. Ramus searched through the knee-high ferns surrounding the petrified figure but could find no sign. There were no clothes or other belongings scattered around, either, and many pieces of the body were snapped off or worn away by the elements. It was disconcerting looking at this statue that had once apparently been a living, breathing person. He wondered whether, if he broke it in half, he would be able to identify the insides.

Lulah found another, twenty steps away. This one had fallen before being turned, arms stretched out as if to ward off some terrible fate. It was equally worn by wind and rain, features long since eroded to a shadow.

They followed the obvious path through the forest. Here and there were stumps of trees that had been cut down long ago, almost hidden by the ferns and other plants that had sprung from the ground now that the tree canopies above were gone. There was no sign of the fallen trees. Perhaps they had been used for building, back in the ruined village they had just passed through, though there was more to this path than simple harvesting. It led somewhere, and if the cleared trees were not proof enough of that, the stone bodies certainly were.

Ramus felt events pressing in on him. On their long journey here from Long Marrakash there had been trials and pressures, but now he sensed his past drawing to a close, and his future stretching out before him like this long-hidden trail through the forest. The present struck him harder than it ever had before.

“Another,” Lulah said. She stepped beneath the tree cover and approached a moss-clad mass.

Ramus stood beside the path and watched as she scraped away some of the moss with her sword. The shape was almost subsumed beneath the plant growth, but one arm protruded, fist closed around something long since stolen away. Two fingers had broken off, and Ramus thought of the digits he had tied on a leather thong around his neck. Konrad. What charms did he hope to gain from that dead Serian's pieces?

“Two of them,” Lulah said, surprised. She lifted a curtain of creepers aside to let Ramus see.

The taller of the two figures was worn and cracked by the plant growth, but the shorter shape—both arms slung around its protector, face pressed into his or her shoulder—had retained its features. Delicate, sharp and terrified, the face was damp and crawled with tiny golden insects.

He shook his head in wonder, then shuddered in terror as he remembered those words again. Mutter them now, with Lulah this close, and she would turn to stone. I have the power of a god, he thought, and he expected to be struck down for such presumptuousness.