Risking all, she glanced back to see if her pursuer was anywhere in sight. Her heart sank. A shadowy form was cleaving the darkness, keeping pace with her, coming much more quickly than should have been possible for someone so bent and old.

She pounded ahead, running faster, her stamina already waning, her breathing uneven. The old man continued to draw closer. She could not outdistance him.

She notched an arrow to the bowstring as she ran, swung about abruptly, and fired the steel-tipped missile directly at him. The arrow struck his chest and bounced away. The old man didn’t even slow.

Then he was right on top of her, so close she could hear his breathing. She heard his voice in her mind, screaming at her. Stop running! Running is pointless! You cannot escape me!

She refused to give up. She ran on even faster. But she was beginning to labor. Ahead, she could hear the sounds of the Trolls. She was running right toward them. She flashed on a corridor that would take her another way and turned down it without thinking.

She had run more than a dozen yards before she realized she had chosen a dead end.

She wheeled back, frantic now. The old man was slowing to a walk, not twenty paces away, blocking her escape. His smile was slow and mocking, as if he had known all along that this was how it would end. She notched another arrow to her bow and held the weapon in front of her, pointing it at the old man. He shook his head, a clear admonishment. But he didn’t say anything this time. He just kept walking toward her.

She cast aside the bow and arrows, knowing they were useless, and was reaching for her long knife, determined to die fighting rather than let him take her, when the light appeared behind her, sudden and intense. It came out of the darkness, out of nowhere, growing swiftly to fill the whole of the corridor. She risked a quick glance over her shoulder, but the light blinded her to whatever was there. She turned back to the old man, saw the perplexed look on his face, the sudden flicker of concern that changed quickly to rage.

Then the light closed about her and everything vanished.

IN THE AFTERMATH of the girl’s disappearance, his equanimity recovered, the ragpicker stood quietly in the darkness, thinking it through. She hadn’t gotten away from him by herself; of that much, he was certain. She had magic, but she didn’t have magic powerful enough for this. If she had that kind of magic, he would have sensed it immediately. No, another magic had been brought to bear; someone had intervened to aid her, to remove her from his grasp.