He didn’t say anything further, so she stepped away from him and faced off into the distance, holding the staff before her, both hands gripping its smooth surface, her fingers working slowly over the indentations of the runes. The staff was her life, the verification of who she was and what she did. She needed to know that her close brush with death hadn’t robbed her of its power, hadn’t leached it away. She knew she was probably being foolish, that such a thing couldn’t happen. But her confidence was diminished, and she needed to strengthen it anew.

She reached down inside herself and called the magic to her, joining with the staff, feeling it become a part of her.

The runes began to glow instantly, bright red beneath her fingers, and the magic flared from the staff in a soft, white glow that widened against the dappled shadows cast by the branches of the trees. She felt a surge of relief, vindication of her need. The magic was there and it was hers. She was still a Knight of the Word.

She let it fade quickly, exhaled sharply, and turned back to Larkin Quill.

“Are you reassured?” the Elf asked with a wry smile. “Doubts chased back into the dark corners, everything sunny and bright?”

“Everything sunny and bright,” she replied.

NOT FIVE MILES DISTANT, close by the waters of the Columbia, the Klee stiffened in recognition. It stood where it was for a long moment, as if become a stone carving, its huge, shaggy bulk blocking the way forward on the narrow trail it followed, bits of debris broken off by its cumbersome passage littering the ground behind it. A deep quiet settled in all around it, a widening arc of silence that reached well beyond what it could see with its weakened eyes, a caution that reflected both the nature and extent of the danger its presence posed.

When the moment ended, it turned slightly in the direction of the magic that had attracted its attention, magic generated by a creature that it sensed instinctively was not a demon. Its instincts told it that the magic was of a foreign nature, of a different form. The Klee was not overly bright, but it was deeply attuned to and capable of differentiating among forms of magic. It could not see well, but it could hear and taste and smell what other creatures would simply overlook. It tested the air now, and, even as far away as it was, it caught a whiff of what had distracted it from its search. A whiff, it concluded, of what it might be searching for.