Skurn made a snorting noise. “Oh, aye, that makes a difference.” He thought, blinking his dark eyes slowly. “But you were my master’s friend. So—partners.”

“Partners. By the gods, who would have thought?” Barrick crawled into the bushes, not caring where he lay his head. “Let me know if anyone comes to kill me, will you?”

He did not wait to hear the raven’s reply, because sleep was already pulling him down into dark places deeper than any mineshaft.

Vansen kept on because there was nothing else he could do, putting one foot in front of the other, trudging forward along the endless pale span through black nothing. There were times that he paused to rest, but he never did it for long, because each time he would begin to worry that he might somehow get himself turned around, that he would confuse the two indistinguishable directions and by accident set off back in the direction he had come.

At other times he entertained the amusing notion that instead of a curving span across an abyss, he was walking on the outside of a great ring floating in darkness, that it had no beginning or end, and that he, Ferras Vansen, sentenced for crimes about which he was not quite certain (although he could judge himself guilty of much) would walk it forever, undying, an endless sentence.

But could the gods really be so cruel? And even if they were, why did he still feel tired, as a living man might feel?

And what was it about the gods that pricked at him? Why were they weighing so heavily on his thoughts? Every time he tried to remember how he had come to this place, what had seemed solid fell apart in his grasp, like fog. He could not remember where he had been before this—in fact, he could remember almost nothing that had happened since he threw himself against the guards in the demigod’s underground fortress. He seemed to recall a city, and something about his father, but surely those were dreams, since his father had been dead for years.

But if those had been dreams, then what was this place? Where was he? Who or what had set him on this unending track?

What if he just stepped off this pointless, endless bridge, he wondered, and let himself fall? Could whatever happened—death or an equally pointless, endless plunge—really be so much worse? It was something to keep in reserve, he decided—a door. It might turn out to be the only door that could lead him out of this dreadful emptiness.

Ferras Vansen had no answers, but being able to ask questions at least kept him from going mad.

It was as though he had blinked, but the moment of his eyes being shut had lasted for a year instead of an instant. When he noticed what had happened, everything had changed.

The abyss was gone, the infinite, eternal black faded in some strange way to a much more tangible darkness, that of ordinary shadow. Something that felt like stone still lay beneath his feet, but flat, not curved, and he had the distinct sense of being surrounded by something other than the dreadfully familiar void.