“Gyir says the horse’s name is Dragonfly.”

Barrick’s words made Vansen jump. He had not realized the prince was so close. “He told you that?”

“Of course. Just because you can’t hear him doesn’t mean he’s not speaking.”

Ferras Vansen did not doubt that the fairy-man spoke without words—he had felt a bit of it himself—but admitting it seemed the first step on a journey he did not wish to begin. “Dragonfly, then. As you wish.”

“He belonged to someone named Four Sunsets—at least that’s what Gyir says the name meant.” Barrick frowned, trying to get things right. There were moments when, the subject of his conversation aside, he seemed like any ordinary lad of his age. “Four Sunsets was killed in the battle. The battle with…our folk.” Barrick smiled tightly with relief: he had got it right.

Chilled, Vansen could not help wondering what it was he had been tempted to say instead. Does he have to struggle to remember he’s not one of them? He shook his head. This was the puzzle the gods had set for him—he could only pray for strength and do his best. “Well, he is a fine enough horse, I suppose, for what he is—which is a fairy-bred monster.”

“Faster than anything we’ll ever ride again,” said Barrick, still boyish. “Gyir says they are raised in great fields called the Meadows of the Moon.”

“Don’t know how they would know of the moon or anything else in the sky,” said Vansen, looking up. “And it’s got worse now, the sky’s so dark with smoke.” Their progress had been slowed to a walk—they led their horses now more often than they rode them. Vansen had hated the eternal twilight but he longed for it now. It seemed, however, that he was fated to realize such things only after it was too late.

Skurn hopped into the road to smash a snail against a stone embedded in the mud. The raven pulled out his meal and swallowed it down, then turned his dark, shiny eye on Vansen. “Shall us ride, then, Master?” Skurn shot an uneasy look at Barrick, who was staring at the raven with his usual disdain. “If us hasn’t spoken out of turn, like.”

“You seem in good cheer,” Vansen said, still not quite accustomed to talking with a bird

“Broke us’s fast most lovesomely this morning with a dead frog what had just begun to swell…”

Vansen waved his hand to forestall the description. “Yes, but I thought you were afraid of where we were going. Why have you changed?”

Skurn bobbed his head. “Because we go away, now, not toward, Master. This new road leads us away from Northmarch and Jack Chain’s lands. ’Twas all us ever wanted.”

Vansen felt a little better to hear that. If it had not been for the continual dreary, ashy rain, the lightless sky, and the fact that he knew he’d be spending another day’s thankless journey surrounded by madmen and monsters out of dire legend, finishing with a bed on the cold, lumpy ground and a few bitter roots to gnaw, he might have been cheerful, too.