Taking a deep, steadying breath, she slid down against the wall. A shiver passed through her slender body, and she closed her eyes. She tried to think of what she needed to do. She must retrace her steps quickly and close and lock the door. She could not chance going out again now. She was too frightened, too unsure of herself. She would wait, as she should have done in the first place. If Pan were here, he would approve. He would tell her she was doing the right thing.

She stared at the body of the dead Troll a final time and realized suddenly that she was crying.

THE HOURS PASSED and dusk approached in a webbing of shadows and ground mist crawling down off the heights. In the vast expanse of the wastelands surrounding the complex, the Trolls were still at work, searching for a way in, trying to find a weak spot in the mix of stone and steel. The ragpicker counted five of them—big, hulking brutes with tree-bark skin and hunched shoulders. He didn’t like Trolls much. They were all the same, using their size and their strength to intimidate and, if need be, to overpower. Reasoning with Trolls was of little value. Trolls had a different mind-set about creatures like himself. Why reason with things so much smaller and weaker, they asked themselves, when you could simply crush them like eggs?

His ragged, scrawny figure was hidden by the glare of the fading sunlight as he approached them, barely more than a blurred image. The Trolls hadn’t noticed him at all, even though he had gotten to within a quarter mile of them and was traveling over ground that was mostly flat and bare. He had no wish to engage them, and so he was moving away, heading north toward the darkness, when he sensed the magic.

He stopped where he was, surprised.

Where was magic coming from in a place like this? Not from those Trolls, surely. From someone else, then? Someone inside the buildings that the Trolls were trying to penetrate?

He considered the possibility that it might be the man with the black staff, but couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that he was that lucky. For one thing, the magic he sensed did not appear strong enough. Nor did it appear to be of the right type. The ragpicker could parse degrees of magic; he could intuit their shapes. Over time, during his travels, he had encountered it often enough that he recognized its differences. This magic that he was sensing now was not that of a talisman, but of a living creature—a magic that was personal and innate.

Still, one thing usually led to another. A source here could lead to a source elsewhere and eventually to the one he was seeking. Baby steps, he reminded himself. Small successes.