He stood where he was, unmoving. His breathing gradually slowed, but his mind was working rapidly as he considered his options. He would get Kirisin back from them; that much was settled. But how was he going to go about it? Should he annihilate them, so that he could be certain they would give no further pursuit? Or should he kill enough of them that they would think twice about coming after him? Or should he simply find and kill their leader?

Or should he do something else entirely?

The night was a soft, silky blanket of silence and darkness that enveloped him and rendered him invisible to those he had tracked and found. It whispered to him with words of encouragement. He could do whatever he wanted. He could make any choice and not be wrong in doing so. He could do anything. He was invincible.

Just like that, the choice was made.

KIRISIN WAS DOZING,drifting in and out of a troubled sleep, his hands and feet bound once more and this time cinched together behind his back so that as he lay on the hard ground he was twisted backward almost double. He wouldn’t have been able even to doze, so excruciating was his discomfort and pain, if he hadn’t already been exhausted.

So it took a minute for him to come awake even after he felt the hands, one clamping over his mouth, the other pressing him back against the earth so that he could not move at all. His eyes opened in shock, and he found himself looking at a demon. Black and gray stripes painted the skin of its face and upper body, turning its human form into something animalistic and feral. Black cloth bound its hair back, and its eyes were bright with hunger. He tried to jerk away, but the hands held him fast.

“Lie still,” Logan Tom whispered. “Don’t talk.”

Kirisin stared in disbelief.

“Do you know me now?” the other mouthed.

The boy nodded, though he could still scarcely believe who he was looking at. The Knight of the Word—he was still that, Kirisin supposed—took his hands away. A finger went to his lips in further caution, and then Logan Tom was cutting him free, stripping off the bonds, rubbing his ankles and wrists. Again he mouthed, Don’t move. Kirisin lay still, the circulation slowly returning. He glanced off into the night for his captors. One of them sat not a dozen feet away, propped up against the rocks. How it could not see them was beyond the boy’s understanding. Logan Tom’s disguise was good, blending him closely with the night-shrouded landscape, but he was crouched out there in the open as he worked over Kirisin, completely exposed.

“Lean on me,” the other whispered in his ear.