The boy smiled, his smooth face wrinkling only slightly. “I welcome fresh opportunity. In which direction does it point?”

Skeal Eile hated looking up at the boy like this, but he didn’t want to let him know that this was a problem. Nevertheless, he climbed the steps and stood next to the other, addressing him at eye level. “It points in the same direction as before. But time is your ally on this occasion, if you make good use of it. The boy sleeps this night. You can track him when he wakes and slip ahead to set an ambush. He says he goes one way, but I am not sure he can be trusted. So you will have to discover the truth of things. Can you do that?”

“If it pleases you, I can do anything.” Bonnasaint paused. “The task given me is the same? Both the boy and the girl are a problem?”

“The girl is no longer with the boy,” the Seraphic advised, wondering as he did why that was so. It was his impression that the two were inseparable. He wondered momentarily what had happened to the girl, and then brushed the matter aside. “The boy is who I am interested in. I don’t want to see him anymore. Not here or anywhere. I don’t want anyone to see him ever again, and I don’t want any part of him ever found.”

Bonnasaint cocked his head. “Not even the smallest bit of fingernail or sliver of skin? Not even the whisper of his last scream or the smell of his warm blood as it drains from his body?” When he saw there was to be no reaction from the Seraphic, he shrugged. “Consider it done.”

“I considered it done the last time I sent you out. This time I will reserve judgment on your success until I hear it from you firsthand.”

“Fair enough, Your Eminence.”

The boy bowed low, but Skeal Eile stopped him midway with a soft touch on one shoulder.

“Bonnasaint,” he whispered, and waited for the other to look up at him. “Don’t fail me.”

WHEN PANTERRA QU FINALLY CAME AWAKE in the slow, dream-time hours that precede dawn, he was so disoriented that for a moment he couldn’t remember where he was. But then he recognized the feel of his bed and knew he was in his own home for the first time in weeks. He lay where he was, pulling together the tattered threads of his memories of the past three days. It took time and effort to do so. Nothing came easily; each step was slow and painful. Even Sider Ament’s death was a reality he could not seem to come to grips with, an event that had the consistency of smoke and lacked anything of substance.

Even what he had become, the new bearer of the black staff, had the feel of a dream.