Rhazat watched with silent amusement as Klia picked at her dinner, trying to pretend she was hungry after a long day’s walk. But Rhazat smelled other food on Klia, and hadn’t missed the hint of color in her wan cheeks. She also detected the touch of something else, though she could not make out who or what it had been—neither ghost nor living. It was so pleasant to be surprised after a life as long as hers.

“How was your hike today, my dear?” she asked.

Klia glanced up at her, eyes devoid of anything but loathing. “The same as any other day, I suppose.”

“Oh, I doubt that. You’ve dined at someone else’s table. No wonder you have no appetite for my humble fare.”

The woman shrugged and ate a spoonful of what she believed to be lentil porridge. It had chunks of turnip floating in it, Rhazat noted. Interesting that she’d imagine such humble fare, except that she still reeked of fresh turnip, together with bread and dried venison.

“I believe you’ve had a visitor today.”

Klia didn’t bother to look up.

“Really now, it is quite an exceptional event. I think it wasn’t sweet little Mika, but another of your friends, perhaps the one who has eluded my stalkers on several occasions.”

Klia shrugged again and reached for the loaf of bread in front of her. Striking as swiftly as a rock adder, Rhazat pulled out the flint knife she’d used to carve the roast fowl and slammed the tip down through the back of Klia’s right hand. The woman screamed in pain, or perhaps outrage, then something very unexpected happened.

It happened so quickly that Klia barely had time to register the pain in her pierced right hand before she instinctively snatched the knife out with her left, threw herself across the table, and buried the blade in the dyrmagnos’s chest, then pulled it free and slashed at her neck. Rhazat had somehow moved out of reach, however, and Klia found herself once again in the repellent grasp of a dra’gorgos. It closed icy fingers around her wounded right hand in a crushing grip and the flint blade fell from her grip.

“That was most unwise,” Rhazat gasped.

Thick black blood welled slowly out of the wound on her chest, yet it did not stain the front of her gown as it ran down between her breasts. More of the black, oily-looking liquid stained the flint blade, now tauntingly just out of reach near Klia’s feet. Held fast, in danger of losing her right hand, she refused to struggle.

Looking up at Rhazat again, Klia noticed something else: the skin around the wound sagged slightly, like pierced tent canvas, and a hint of something dry and brown showed through, like the cast skin of a snake.