The chase wore on past midnight as Arik Siq descended out of the high country toward the upper rim of the valley floor. He stayed well away from the villages and towns, skirting places where he might be seen, keeping to the woods and less traveled paths. He was working his way east again, an indication that he intended to try making his escape a different way, perhaps through Aphalion. Pan found this odd, given he must at least suspect the Elves knew of his deception by now and would be guarding the pass. But the Troll’s steady progress in that direction seemed a clear indication of his intentions.

Until, abruptly, his trail disappeared altogether.

It happened right at the beginning of a particularly rocky stretch where tracks would have been hard to locate under the best of circumstances. Panterra walked out onto the flats, searched the ground carefully, and found nothing. He crossed all the way to the far side, a distance of several hundred yards, and still found nothing. Even in the softer earth that lay beyond, there were no marks. He walked back again, hoping to sense something with the aid of the staff’s magic.

Still nothing.

Standing once more where he had lost the trail, he tried to think his way through his confusion. He knew he must have missed something. Arik Siq could not have simply disappeared. He had to have used a trick to disguise his trail, one that Pan simply hadn’t recognized. The trail led right up to the rocky stretch. Where had Arik Siq gone from there that would leave no further tracks at all?

Pan knelt to take a closer look at the footprints that ended at the flats, and a moment later he had his answer.

The tracks were deeper than they should have been and on close examination revealed that they had been stepped in twice. The Troll, taking no chances with anyone who might be following, had walked backward in the same tracks to leave the impression he had disappeared into thin air.

Pan retraced his quarry’s footprints for almost a hundred feet, at last finding the place were the Drouj had stepped sideways onto a patch of loose rock and then followed it north until he was safely away from his own trail. Pan, still following the first set of tracks, had walked right past without noticing the second. He took his time now, working with little more than traces of dust disturbed and rocks nudged from one side to the other. When he was finished crossing the hardpan, navigating both stretches of flat rock and beds of crushed gravel, he found the other’s trail once more.

To his surprise, the trail abruptly swung west again.