The air sang with violence, the ground shook with its effects and, though blood did not flow, Ramus smelled the stink of battle. It was not a smell he liked. Yet deep down there was enjoyment; he wielded words of such power that they could change the physical in a way no one had ever dreamed.

Something pattered across his scalp and he held out his hand, catching several small flies whose fine wings were already crumbled away.

When at last he heard no more hooting or crackling, no more footsteps closing in and the steam around him rose relatively calmly once more, Ramus sighed and slumped to the ground. He felt exhausted, but elated. His muscles twitched with cramps and sang with the need to be flexed again.

He stood slowly and surveyed the gray carnage around him. Nothing moved save the mist. It was time to find Lulah.

AS HE LEFT the steam clouds behind and hurried through clear, cool air once more, he heard more of those things hooting and bellowing behind him. The noise was much louder than before, more urgent and filled with a sense of dread that turned him cold.

Let them come, he thought.

But when he passed through a clump of trees, emerged on the other side and saw what stood before him, he knew that they would not stop pursuing until he was dead.

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

SHE TRIED TO think of Beko. If what Sordon Perlenni said was true, and the Sentinels had kept her alive because she was with child, then Beko was the father. So as Nomi huddled in the corner of her pit trying to ignore the various discomforts, she tried to remember the big Serian captain, his surprising smile, his love of free poetry, the scarred face that gave away his profession. But the only way she could think of him was dead. He grinned up at her through a rent in his skull, arms and legs angled out around him where he lay on a ledge halfway down the Great Divide. She shook her head and he was there again, broken across the lower slopes of the Divide. Animals picked at him, taking away the tastiest morsels to leave his bones to be picked clean by insects and ants. She still recognized his hair.