The Longskulls’ hunting camp looked like something out of an ancient Hierosoline temple-carving—the antechamber of the underworld, perhaps, or the midden heap of the gods. Certainly there seemed to be at least one of every misshapen creature Ferras Vansen could have imagined in his wildest night-terrors—squint-eyed, sharp-toothed goblins; apish Followers; and even tiny, misshapen men called Drows that looked like ill-made Funderlings. There was also an entire menagerie of animal-headed creatures with disturbingly manlike bodies, things that crawled and things that stood upright, even some that crouched in the shadows singing sad songs and weeping what looked to be tears of blood. Vansen could not help shivering, as much to see the misery of his fellow prisoners as their strangeness. Many had their arms or legs shackled, some their wings cruelly tied, a few with no more restraint than a leather sack over their heads, as though nothing else was needed to keep them from escaping.

“Perin’s great hammer!” he whispered hoarsely. “What are all these horrors?”

“Shadlowlanders,” Barrick told him, then, after cocking his head toward Gyir for a moment, “Slaves.”

“Slaves to what? Who is this Jack Chain?”

Gyir, who could understand Vansen even though he could not speak to him directly, bleakly spread his long-fingered hands as if trying to demonstrate something of improbable size and power, but then shook his head and let his hands drop.

“A god, he calls him,” said the prince. “No, a god’s bastard. A bastard god.” Barrick let his head droop. “I do not know—I can’t remember everything he said. I’m tired.”

They were shoved off to a place in the center of the camp by themselves, for which Vansen was as grateful as he could be under the circumstances, and where they huddled under a sky the color of wet stone. Vansen and Barrick sat close to each other on the damp, leaf-carpeted ground, for the warmth and—at least in Vansen’s case—the human companionship. The weird army of prisoners that surrounded them, dozens and dozens all told, seemed strangely quiet: only an occasional bleating noise or a spatter of unfamiliar, clicking speech broke the silence. Vansen could not help noticing that they behaved like animals who sensed that the hour for slaughter had come round.

He leaned close to the prince’s ear. “We must escape, Highness. And when we do, we must try to make our way back to mortal men’s country again. If we stay any longer in this never-ending evening, surrounded by godless things like these, we shall go mad.”

Barrick sighed. “You shall, perhaps. I think I went mad a long time ago, Captain.”

“Don’t say such things, Highness…”

“Please!” The prince turned on him, his weariness forgotten for a moment. “Spare me these…pleasant little thoughts, Captain. ‘Should not…’—as though I might bring something bad down on myself. Look at me, Vansen! Why do you think I am here? Why do you think I came with the army in the first place? Because there is a canker in my brain and it is eating me alive!”