"Yeah. You want to wake the troops? We get an earlier start today, we ought to be able to get back before dark."

"What?"

"I thought I was pretty clear. We've got to go back out there. Now. We've used one of our days."

"Hey, man, I'm ripped. I'll die if you make me. . . ."

"Sleep in the saddle. That's always been one of your big talents. Sleep anywhere, any time."

"Oh, my aching butt."

An hour later I was headed down the Shaker Road again, with Silent and Otto added to the crew. Shed insisted on coming along, though I was willing to excuse him. Asa decided he wanted in, too. Maybe because he thought Shed would extend an umbrella of protection. He had started talking mission like Shed, but a deaf man could hear its false ring.

We moved faster this time, pressed harder, and had Shed on a real horse. We got down to the clearing by noon. While Silent sniffed around, I worked myself up and took a closer look at the lump.

No change. Except the two dead creatures were gone. I did not need Hagop's eye to see that they had been dragged through the entry hole.

Silent worked his way around the clearing to a point almost identical with that where the creature trail entered the forest. Then he threw up an arm, beckoned. I hurried over, and did not have to read the dance of his fingers to know what he had found. His face revealed the answer.

"Found it, eh?" I asked more brightly than I felt. I had started to count on Raven being dead. I did not like what the skeleton implied. Silent nodded.

"Yo!" I called. "We found it. Let's go. Bring the horses."

The others gathered. Asa looked a little peaked. He asked, "How did he do it?"

Nobody had an answer. Several of us wondered whose skeleton lay in the clearing and how it had come to wear Raven's necklace. I wondered how Raven's plot for vanishing had dovetailed so neatly with the Dominator's for seeding a new black castle.

Only One-Eye seemed in a mood to talk, and that all complaint. "We follow this and we're not going to get back to town before dark," he said. He said a lot more, mostly about how tired he was. Nobody paid attention. Even those of us who had rested were tired.

"Lead off, Silent," I said. "Otto, you want to take care of his horse? One-Eye, bring up the rear. So we don't get any surprises from behind."

The track was no track at ail for a while, just a straight shot through the brush. We were winded by the time it intercepted a game trail. Raven, too, must have been exhausted, for he had turned onto that trail and followed it over a hill, along a creek, up another hill. Then he had turned onto a less traveled path which ran along a ridge, toward the Shaker Road. Over the next two hours we encountered several such forkings. Each time Raven had taken the one which tended more directly westward.