“No stopping!” he shouted to them. “No resting! Eat and drink of your food and water as you walk! We have a goal and we must attain it this day! We must reach our destination! We must sacrifice the few for the greater good! Press on!”

Amazingly, they did. Though he was using his magic and his oratory, those would not have been enough without a blind willingness to be misled. They were tough and strong, these people, but they were like sheep. They believed without question that what waited was worth any sacrifice. Years of expectancy, generations of stories told about their arrival and eventual departure from this valley, made them blind to the truth.

By sunset, they had reached the opening to the pass at Declan Reach. It rose ahead of them, a black gap in the mountains, empty and shadowed. Behind them, the valley was already cloaked in twilight and the first stars were beginning to appear. People hurried now, throwing aside whatever caution remained, anxious to gain the opening, to pass through and reach the outside world and the safety that had been promised them. They went forward in large knots, following the Seraphic, keeping him in sight as he beckoned, showing them the way.

They did not look back at what they had left behind. They did not see those still limping or crawling to catch up. They did not see those who could not do so. They barely noticed the desiccated corpses of those who had died defending the pass days earlier.

They did not see the truth of things.

“I WISH I COULD SEE what you see,” Aislinne said at one point, walking side by side with Prue Liss. “This scarlet dove you follow—it’s frustrating watching you search for it while I’m not able to see it at all. It might as well be invisible.”

Prue smiled. “Then you have a small sense of what it’s like for me. I can’t see colors, except for the dove, and it only lets me see it in small glimpses as it flies away and waits for me to catch up to it. I see only grays and blacks and nothing else. I search for the things that you can see without even trying, but they are lost to me.”

She glanced over. “Like you, I want to see them for myself.”

Aislinne nodded. “I suppose it’s the same thing. But it’s worse for you than it is for me, isn’t it? All those beautiful colors turned to shadows. How were you able to adapt, Prue? Are you getting used to it at all?”