She realized that she could not continue. She would have to enter the physical world and find rest. Once again she cursed her own carelessness. She had forgotten her Deck of Dragons. With them she would have known what to expect. She entertained once again the suspicion that an outside force had acted upon her, severing her from the Deck. The first distraction had come from Captain Paran, and while it had been pleasant, she reminded herself that Paran belonged to Oponn. After that, she'd experienced an unaccountable urgency to be on her way, so much so that she'd left everything behind.

Bereft of her Warren, she would find herself alone on the Rhivi Plain, without food, without even a bedroll. The mindless need for haste she'd experienced ran contrary to her every instinct. She was growing certain that it had been imposed upon her, that somehow she'd let her defences down, left herself exposed to such manipulations. And that returned her thoughts to Captain Paran, to the servant of Oponn's will.

Finally, she could go no further. She began to withdraw her strained power, collapsing the Warren layer by layer about her. The ground beneath her boots became solid, cloaked in spar yellow grass, and the air around her shifted into the dull lavender of dusk. A wind brushed her face smelling of soil. The horizon steadied itself on all sides – far off to her right the sun still bathed the Talhyn Mountains, the peaks glittering like gold – and immediately ahead rose an enormous silhouetted figure, turning to face her and voicing a surprised grunt.

Tattersail stepped back in alarm, and the voice that emerged from the figure pushed the air from her lungs in a whooshing breath of relief, then terror.

'Tattersail,' Bellurdan said sadly, 'Tayschrenn did not expect you'd manage to come this far. Thus, I was anticipating detecting you from a distance.' The Thelomen giant lifted his arms in an expansive, child-like shrug. At his feet was a familiar burlap sack, though the body within had shrunk since she'd last seen it.

'How has the High Mage managed to deny my Warren?' she asked. On the heels of her terror had come weariness, almost resignation.

'He could not do that,' Bellurdan answered. 'He simply anticipated that you would attempt to travel to Darujhistan, and as your Thyr Warren cannot function over water, he concluded you would take this path.'

'Then what happened with my Warren?'

Bellurdan grunted distastefully. 'The T'lan Imass who accompanies the Adjunct has created around them a dead space. Our sorcery is devoured by the warrior's Eldering powers. The effect is cumulative. If you were to open your Warren entirely, you would be consumed utterly, Tattersail.' The Thelomen stepped forward. 'The High Mage has instructed me to arrest you and return you to him.'

'And if I resist?'

Bellurdan answered, in a tone filled with sorrow, 'Then I am to kill you.'