“Master!” Skurn again took a clump of Vansen’s hair in his beak and yanked. The bird’s foul breath was right in his face. “Wake up! Something out there!”

Awake, dreaming, it made no difference—fear and misery were everywhere. Vansen rolled over. The bird hopped off him, flapping awkwardly back to the ground. “What?” he demanded. “What is it?”

“Us can’t say,” it whispered. “Smells like leather and metal. And noises there be, quiet ones.”

A tall, menacing shadow fell over Vansen, blocking the faint glow of the guttering fire. Suddenly very much awake, he snatched at his blade, tangling it and himself in the cloak he used as a blanket, but the shadow did not move.

It was Gyir, his hand held out in a gesture of demand, the eyes in his featureless face staring at Ferras Vansen with an intensity that seemed to glow.

Give. Vansen could almost hear the word, although the faceless creature had not spoken aloud. Give.

“He wants his sword,” Prince Barrick whispered, sitting up. “Give it to him…”

“Give him…?”

“His sword! He knows this place. We do not.”

Vansen did not move for a moment, his eyes swiveling between the prince and the looming, red-eyed fairy. At last he rolled over and pulled the scabbarded blade out from under his cloak. The fairy-man closed his fingers around the hilt and pulled it free, leaving Vansen holding the empty sheath as Gyir turned and vanished into the undergrowth around their small hillside encampment, swift and silent as a breeze.

“This is mad…” Vansen muttered. “He’ll sneak back and kill us both.”

“He will not.” Barrick took off his boots and wiped his feet with the edge of his tattered, filthy cloak before pulling the boots back on. “He is angry, but not at us.”

“What do you mean, angry?”

Skurn fluffed his feathers in worry. Small fragments of sticky eggshell flecked his beak and breast. Whatever had startled the raven seemed to have caught him midmeal. “Them all are mad, the High Ones,” the bird said quietly. “Have lived too long in the Black Towers, them, staring into they mirrors and listening to voices of the dead.”

“What does that mean? Have all of you lost your minds?”

“Gyir is angry because the raven heard the noises before he did,” Barrick said calmly. “He blames himself.”

“But why should…?” Vansen never finished his question. From farther up the hillside echoed a noise unlike anything he had ever heard, a honking screech like a blast from a trumpet that had been bent into some impossible shape. “Perin’s hammer,” he gasped, “what is that?”

“Oh, Masters, them are Longskulls or worse!” squawked the raven.

“Whatever the bird scented, Gyir found.” Barrick was still donning his boots, as calmly as if preparing for a walk across the Inner Keep back home.

Vansen struggled to his feet. “Shouldn’t we…help him?” The thought was disturbing, but he had little doubt there were worse things afoot in these lands than Gyir. He had seen one of them take his comrade Collum Dyer, after all.