Thulu shook his head. “I don’t think so. Uru-Alat, boy! You were as quick as a rabbit. I followed as best I could.” He touched Dani’s shoulder. “Well done, Bearer.”

“I’m glad you’re safe.” He hugged Uncle Thulu, wrapping both arms around his solid warmth, feeling his embrace returned. For a moment, the world was a familiar place, safe and loving.

“So am I, Dani.” Thulu’s breath stirred his hair. “So am I.” Squeezing Dani’s arms, he released him. “You know it only gets harder, don’t you?” His expression had turned somber. “We left the torches in the other tunnel. In a dozen paces, we’ll be traveling blind into Darkhaven. And I do not know the way, or what branchings lie along it.”

“I know. And I am afraid. But you are my guide, and I trust you to guide me.” Dani laughed softly, stroking the grass-plaited rope that hung beside him. “I have been traveling blind from the beginning, Uncle. It is only now I begin to see, at least a little bit.”

The plaited rope shivered beneath his touch. It was dwindling, the sere grass stalks crackling as they returned to their natural length. There had not been enough of the Water of Life to sustain its impossible growth, not with winter’s breath at their necks. Dani released it, and the Yarru watched in silence as it shrank, the loose end retreating into the dimly lit shaft high above their heads.

There it hung, brittle and useless. There would be no pursuit from that quarter—and no escape.

Thulu shuddered. “I told you it wouldn’t hold us!”

“Aye.” Dani grasped the flask at his throat, feeling at the cork to ensure it was firmly in place. “But it did.” He squared his shoulders beneath the burden of the Bearer’s responsibility and set his face toward the unknown. “Let’s go.”

Together, they set out into the impenetrable dark.

THEY WERE COMING.

In the swirling, gleaming darkness that encircled the Tower of Ravens, it was all the Ravensmirror showed.

It was nothing they had not seen before, in bits and pieces. And yet here it was in its entirety. The promise of the red star had come to fruition. Upon the outskirts of Curonan, Haomane’s Allies had converged into an army the likes of which had not been seen since the Fourth Age of the Sundered World.

And perhaps not even then, Tanaros thought, watching the images emerge. Dwarfs. Yrinna’s Children, who had maintained her Peace since before the world was Sundered. They had turned their back on Lord Satoris’ Gift, refusing to increase their numbers, refusing to take part in the Shapers’ War, tending instead to the earth’s fecundity, to the bounty that Yrinna’s Gift brought forth.

No more.