Redmede shook his head. “My people have mayhap five shafts a bow,” he said. “I agree; we cannot fight. But this is mortal slow.”

Kwoqwethogan was recovering. He raised his head. “I know these trees,” he said. “I know that great burl there, by the stream.” He pointed with a bronze talon, and Redmede could see an ancient maple with a burl the size of a farmer’s table growing from the side.

“We call him the old god,” Kwoqwethogan said. “We are not so far from roads the people travel. Over the next ridge is one of our trails. It runs to the Sononghelan; what you call the Black.”

Redmede’s heart flickered with hope. “A trail?”

“Broader than my shoulders and smooth as my tail,” the warden replied.

Redmede sighed. “Damn.”

The Cohocton—Ash

Ash’s war of metaphysical logistics had reached its limits, and the loss of his well in the north demanded an instant counterattack. But for the first day, he had to be careful; he’d overspent his resources, and he was vulnerable, and the endless limitations of the real continued to cloud his plans.

He abandoned a grandiose plan to trap the remnants of the enemy army with a force of bogglins thrown across the Cohocton with sorcery; he gave up the notion of throwing bridges of ice or even stone at key positions. He had the power, but it would have a cost. Even as it was, he knew he’d lost a sizable number of bogglins; some to the enemy, and some simply wandering off to live their own lives or return to their nests.

He rose from the ground at dawn, beating at the air with his enormous wings, feeling the shifting world of the real. To the west, four long columns of ash rising into the already clouded heavens showed that four of the newly formed volcanoes were still spewing. The clouds of ash and effluvia so generated were already changing the quality of the light.

Far to the north, north of the Inner Sea, he had another army, but it was too far away to seize the Sorcerer’s Isle. He had set that force to laying siege to Mogon’s network of natural caves and fortifications, the heartland of the mighty northern wardens. But they had become bogged in an endless series of small skirmishes that demanded his near constant attention; and the albino warden, Lostenferch, his lieutenant, was skilled at the use of magic but not at the employment of archers, and was wasting Ash’s time every day.

Ash dismissed the northern arm of his efforts. Too little; they will be too late. They failed to distract Mogon even from the prize.

In the east, he had Orley. Orley had too much of what Lostenferch lacked; Ash was tired of the thing that had been a man and his constant demands. Orley had a force that might or might not be strong enough to retake the Sorcerer’s Isle. Ash was poor at self-examination, but he had to confess that the seizure had surprised him; the revelation that Lot was not only alive but newly empowered . . .