I did what the half-wit would do. What they reckoned on. I turned and plunged back into the trees toward the tent. And right into a man with white-blue eyes and wet rat’s-skin hair, who stepped from the mossy trunks into my path, holding Hwenit and a blade at her throat, and laughing softly, interestedly, the old laugh I remembered well.

They had come ashore at the far end of the island, the other side of the trees. The current was less favorable there, but they had managed it, or, to be accurate, their slave had managed it. This was the Dark Man, the guide who had tracked me from the tunnel and obeised himself before me when I slew the silver-mask with white killing Power. Presumably the guide had returned to his masters next . . . telling them what? Little, I guessed, for the Dark Slaves in Eshkorek had seemed to speak only in answer to direct and unequivocal questioning, never volunteering information on their own.

Apart from the Dark Slave, their navigator, there were two men. The other pair of the four must have grown bored with the chase and abandoned it. These, however, had their own personal reasons for keeping after me.

Zrenn stood, playing with Hwenit’s hair and stroking her throat with the flat of his knife, looking at me for my reactions, his porcelain eyes alert. He had taken off his mask, I think that I should have known him the more swiftly.

It was the fragile Orek who had come up at my back to put his own knife against my ribs.

I had been wrong. Not a spear but a knife. In a moment I should feel the iron enter my lung. His slender hand trembled with anger or gladness.

The slave was by a tree, and noncommittal.

Hwenit’s face was narrowed hard. After that one cry, she had ensorceled herself to black adamantine.

“It is a delight for old friends to meet once more,” Zrenn said. “It has been our hope that we might see you again, my Vazkor, before you depart this life. Not that your going shall be hasty. Erran, the leopard-chief, is not isolated in his artistic plan for a death. Slow and painful, my Vazkor. A limb, less—an organ, a finger at a time. I see you are healed of the cruel cuts I gave you in Eshkorek. We shall have to mince you very small to be certain you remain beneath the earth, shall we not? And between whiles, we will play with this midnight doll you have thoughtfully provided us.”

It seemed to me I could turn easily and disarm the willowy youth behind me. Meantime, Zrenn would slash Hwenit’s throat. This fathomed, I kept still. My grave was near as Orek’s hand, and I had foretold my grave. Yet it appeared ludicrous. As Zrenn reminded me, I healed of wounds. Could I recover from a death stroke, as Erran had more than half believed?