Dusk had crept over them without his noticing. The gleam of their cloaks gave them an aura, and made them targets. The horses, of course, could barely be seen. He saw an inconstant pattern of light fading and waxing by the nearest thicket of chamber-bells; their delicate tinkling caught in the wind.

A woman stepped into view, wrapped in a bone-white cloak. He knew that cloak. Once, he had known the man who wore it.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you?”

The girl nocked an arrow and drew back the string with thumb and forefinger.

The woman shifted, not moving closer but not retreating. “Nay, that was ill-said. I am here to talk with you, nothing more. Do not think I am here to threaten you.” Yet her tone was that of a woman accustomed to ordering people about. “I would know who and what you are, for others have spoken of you, and I think you are not what you seem. Oh, the hells!”

Almost he chuckled, to hear the voice of authority break with frustration.

She continued. “Are you Guardians, or are you not? I beg you, tell me what you know so I can understand what has happened to me.”

The girl glanced at him as a soldier looks to her captain for the order to loose, but he shook his head, yet raised a hand to show that she must stay ready.

“Show me your staff,” he called, “and we can talk.”

“I have a walking stick.” She held out a trim pole. “I can defend myself, lest you believe otherwise!”

His disappointment was sharper than he expected. Also, he recognized the stab of fear that pricked his breast, but he smiled to show a bland face. “No need to quarrel with me. I am a peaceful man, camping here in the wilderness where I had hoped to bide undisturbed.”

“You don’t trust me!”

“It seems you are standing a long way from me.”

“I want to trust you. But I don’t know who to trust. I have seen others. . .” She glanced at the girl with a shake of her head. Then she clucked, and a pale shape moved out of the shadows: a horse.

Telling snorted, as in greeting, and the other horse replied with a whinny and a toss of its head. Seeing flicked her ears dismissively.

“What others?” he asked, because, alas, he knew now what she was. She belonged to his opponents, her staff held by them as hostage to keep her a prisoner to their will. They had sent her to hunt him down.

“There’s no point in loosing that arrow at her,” he said to the girl, “because even if you hit her squarely, you cannot harm her.”

She nodded to show she’d heard, but her gaze, and the arrow, remained fixed on the target.

“There are others like us,” said the woman.

“How do you know?”

“I have spoken to them within the labyrinth.”

“Have you approached them, as you approached me?”