Three monks in their ankle-length brown robes came blundering out of the forest. They were hot and sweaty and scared, and they peered and poked about. Their eyes, with that strange half-mad glint, went from ground to water and even sky, as if somewhere in their confused brains they imagined that their prey might have grown wings and taken flight.

“They’re not here,” said one, bewildered.

“What did you expect?” another asked. He seemed more sane than the rest. His searching had been more methodical. He’d stared a long time at the footprints. “That they’d wait around for you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” The other two continued to search, not with hope of finding anything, but because they didn’t know what else to do.

“The boats are gone,” one pointed out.

“They used the boat to escape,” said the lucid monk.

“But all the boats are gone,” the first reiterated.

“They set the rest adrift.”

“Ah!” The monk seemed to consider this an act of genius, for he stared, wide-eyed, at the sluggishly flowing water. “I’ll go find them.”

He plunged into the river, splashing and floundering, his arms flailing. The lucid monk, shaking his head, waded in to grab hold of his companion and drag him back to land.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the monk asked sternly. “You can’t swim. You’ll only end up drowning yourself.”

The monk shook free. He cast a look back at the water—a look that was bleak and wistful—and then he turned away. Ven shivered in the cool shadows and was sorry he’d stayed.

“What do we do?” asked the sopping wet monk plaintively. “We can’t go after them. We have no boats.”

“We go back to Dragonkeep.”

“What do we tell Grald?” The monk sounded nervous.

“That we couldn’t find them. And that there were no boats.”

“Grald will be angry.”

“Grald is always angry,” said the leader, and he shrugged.

The three did not leave immediately, however, as Ven had hoped. The leader stared intently up the river, as though he were reaching out, searching with his mind. The other two continued to poke about in a desultory manner.

Ven cursed them silently and willed them to depart. The mysterious explosion had thrown the city into confusion and turmoil, but he was afraid that now his absence would be noticed. He was just thinking he would have to risk slipping off into wilderness, when the lead monk announced that they should be returning.

“Grald will be eager for our report.”

“He didn’t seem eager,” one of the monks muttered. “Otherwise he would have opened the gate when we first reported that the two escaped.”

“Grald has his reasons.”