Nor did she break her word to the King by telling Pan anything about either his heritage or his destiny. Telling him that he was a direct descendant of the boy Hawk would do nothing to help him in his efforts to stay alive. It would not aid him in his struggle to master the magic of the black staff. It was hard enough carrying the burden that Sider Ament had bequeathed him—to be the staff’s bearer, to wield it in defense of the valley’s inhabitants, to become the successor that the Gray Man had envisioned. For the same reasons, she said nothing of the future that the King of the Silver River had foreseen wherein he would lead the people of the valley into the larger world. It wasn’t what he needed to think about now. She could not imagine how this exodus would come about in any case, but if it were indeed his destiny, it would have to find him without her help.

“I didn’t think there were any demons left in the world,” he said at one point. “I thought they were all destroyed in the cataclysm our ancestors escaped when they followed Hawk to this valley. I half thought they were a myth—that they weren’t demons, but something else that the word demons fit and so that’s what they were called.”

Prue shook her head. “We heard stories about them often enough when we were children. Doesn’t matter that no one has seen a demon since the valley was sealed up; there could still be others out there, some that escaped what happened to almost everything else.”

“It’s said they can shape-shift and make themselves look like someone else. That they are enormously strong and use magic we can’t even begin to understand. Remember what Aislinne told us?” Pan said. “That they were the leaders of the once-men, humans who had been subverted and turned to predators? Almost nothing could kill them—although Elven magic was said to have destroyed the one that tracked the Hawk. Still, thinking that a demon is out there, hunting us…that he’s real…”

“Oh, he’s real enough. You can take my word for it. You should have seen his eyes. He made me feel helpless just by looking at me. If he had been a little quicker, I would be dead.”

She trailed off, realizing she wasn’t helping things. “Tell me what’s happened in my absence, Pan. I know Sider is dead. I know Arik Siq lied. Is there more?”