I do not know. The wound is healed, at least the flesh is. How can I say?

Barrick took a breath. It does no good to fight against what the gods have done, he told Gyir, repeating without realizing it something Briony had often said to him. Perhaps we should find a place to hide, a place to wait and see if your wound finally heals? Wouldn’t that be better than riding across this place you think is so dangerous, with those creatures out hunting?

You do not understand, Gyir said. We cannot afford so much time. As it is, we may be too late.

Too late? For what? I…I carry something. My mistress gave it to me, and I must take it to Qul-na-Qar, and soon. If I arrive too late—or do not arrive at all—many will die.

What are you talking about?

Many of your race and many of mine will die, little sunlander. There was no mistaking the grim certainty of the silent words. At the very least, every human remaining in that castle of yours, and likely countless more—of both our kinds. I have been tasked to outrun doom.

“I don’t understand.” Vansen’s legs ached. They had been riding fast without a break for what must have been a few hours. “What are we running from?”

“Longskulls.” Skurn was huddled so low against the horse’s neck that he looked like little more than a particularly ugly growth. “Like the dead ’uns you saw.”

“You said that already. Why are they after us?”

“Not after us’n, after whatever they can find—meat and slaves for Jack Chain.”

“You keep talking about him? Who is he?”

“Not a him, not like you mean. An Old One. Does no good talking. Save your breath.”

“But where are we? Where are we going?”

“Not our patch, this.” The raven closed his eyes again and lowered his head near the horse’s rolling shoulders and would not be roused to say any more.

Vansen knew that whatever small control he had maintained over this doomed expedition was long gone. Gyir was armed again, they were on the run from something Vansen could not understand, and now the fairy-warrior was actually leading them. All this in a place that Ferras Vansen had intended never even to approach again in his life—a place which had all but killed him once already. Yet here they were, careening along the ancient, overgrown road, heading…where? Deeper into the Twilight Lands, that was all he knew. So even if he could have forced himself to desert the prince, Vansen could no longer turn back—he would never find his way back to the sunlands on his own. Doomed, doomed, he mourned. Why did I ever swear myself to these cursed, lost, mad Eddons?

Half a day seemed to have gone by when they finally stopped to let the two horses drink. Vansen stood as his mount lapped water from a muddy streamlet that crossed the road. The trees were thinner here, the land ahead hilly but a bit more open, and even in unending twilight it was good at least to be able to see a little distance.