“He went to an ancient place. He found a carven strait.”

The man stared at Ghosteater. He smelled astonished. Finally he gathered his wits.

“I had not thought any of those devices were still at large, in this world or the other.”

Ghosteater chuffed with annoyance and said nothing. This species thought itself all-knowing. Many such workings were lost and forgotten eons before his own source species appeared, much less this man’s.

“Elder beast, do you know where the companion strait is located?”

“No.”

The man stood silently, thinking.

“Would you be willing to track the traitor for me?”

Ghosteater tilted his head. Becoming entangled with the émigré was dangerous. The wind had said so. A thrill ran through him, a pale echo of his first hunts, of his last battles.

The émigré seemed to sense his excitement. “The man is exceedingly dangerous. Any who track him will be struck down, unless their strength exceeds his. None of my trackers is strong enough.”

A hunt. A true hunt.

“If it is as you say, I will track him.”

The man nodded. “The debt is mine.”

Ghosteater was not, by nature, a keeper of accounts. He would help the émigré because the situation interested him, not out of benevolence or because he wanted a favor in return. Nevertheless, he said nothing. His long life had taught him some caution.

“The trail begins near the eastern edge of this continent,” the man said. “We can get there most quickly in my airplane.”

The great beast rose and came forward. The émigré stepped back, watchfulness and caution evident in his posture.

That was as it should be.

Ghosteater looked out the small window. The man, whose name was Cordus, had warned him of the airplane’s fragility, so he kept his once-paws carefully silent. He stared down at the tiny lights beneath, clusters connected by slender strings, sprinkled all over with single stars. Small pools of darkness marked bodies of water, and then a long darkness came as the airplane crossed one of the great freshwater seas the ice had left behind.

He sat back on his haunches.

How strange to pass over the land from far above. How deeply strange.

The aircraft struck him as insubstantial, ephemeral. He could have destroyed it with ease. Yet for all its frailty, it did something he would have thought impossible.

He felt unsettled. He had paid little mind to the humans who came to these lands mere millennia ago, thinking them a passing blight. Perhaps they deserved greater attention.

Outside, the violated wind howled by, its voice muted by the plane’s walls.

Danger, it said. Run.

Chapter 19

I wasn’t nearly so cold as I’d been the night before. Despite the dampness of my clothes, the heap of moss provided good insulation. I woke feeling cramped and filthy, and with a headache and a stomach ache, but at least I’d slept.