A few hours later, after backtracking twice, they managed to find Barius and Darnak. They lay as if dead, hands folded on their stomachs and their equipment placed to one side. The lantern, lit but shuttered, sat between them. Indeed it was the faint orange lantern light that Riana had spotted to guide them here.

Jig opened the lantern and sighed with relief as it lit up the woods around them. He could see again. As well as he ever did, at least.

“Ryslind’s glyphs?” Riana pointed at Barius’s face.

Two red lines traced a circular path around his forehead, starting at the eyebrows and merging by the bridge of the nose. Darnak had the same character inked onto his brow, though they had to shove his hair out of the way to see it.

“Ryslind said we could wake them up by breaking the glyph,” Riana said. Her eyes narrowed. “I’ll do it. You take the lantern and make sure nothing’s out there.”

“Why me?” Jig asked, looking around at the dark woods. The last thing he wanted was to go wandering alone.

Riana’s knife appeared in her hand. “Don’t argue, Jig.”

Right. He picked up the lantern and walked a few paces into the woods. “And she was complaining about bullies,” he muttered as he shone the light around. Despite the stars, the darkness here felt somehow bigger than Jig was used to. Up above, the lantern would have revealed solid walls. Here, darkness engulfed the light like a predator. If anything crept near, it would have to step directly in front of the lantern for Jig to notice.

A loud scream came from behind, and Jig immediately dropped the lantern. He started to run, stopped, ran back, and grabbed the lantern. Seconds later, he shifted it to his other hand and stuck his burned fingers into his mouth.

“Grab the lantern by the handle, stupid,” he muttered, voice muffled by his fingers.

Had he stopped to think, he might have run the other way, into the darkness. Instead he hurried back to the others, to find Darnak and Barius both awake and staring at something in the prince’s hand. No, not in his hand.

Riana sat on the ground in front of them both. She sounded deeply forlorn as she explained what had happened. “Ryslind cast a spell on you and escaped. He wants the rod for himself. He said we should leave. We came back as soon as we could.”

She shook her head sadly. “He said something about a spell that would let him look like you, Barius, to fool your father. I’m afraid that, for one of the spell ingredients, he had to cut off your finger.”

Jig bit his lip and hoped that neither the prince nor the dwarf could hear the satisfaction beneath Riana’s words.