Qown frowned with disappointment. “Dorna, I am. My lord Selanol is one of the Eight. I’m as much a priest of the Eight as anyone who follows Khored or Galava.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “Sorry. Guess I didn’t think of it that way.”

I touched Brother Qown’s hand. “I’m sure they would be grateful for someone to speak for the dead. Please.”

Dorna gave me an odd look. “What? You ain’t doing that?”

“I cannot. I’m going to sleep now.”

Dorna’s hands froze on the armor.

“Early for that, isn’t it?” Sir Baramon asked.

“Quite the opposite. I’d hoped we might make camp earlier. Now I fear I’m too late.” I stood and gathered up the cloak I’d picked up from the Red Spear’s body. I saw where everyone put their blankets together for sleep and headed to the other side, where I would be alone.

I would have liked it better if Arasgon had been with me, but I would have liked it better if none of this had happened too. I bundled my cloak into an impromptu pillow and lay down, curling myself into a ball.

Death’s touch came immediately, as it always does.

Janel’s Turn. The Afterlife.

In sleep, I walk the lands of the dead.

Even within the Afterlife, I often wake to find I have been drawn to some death scene. Some spot where the crossing of souls has made the barrier between the land of the living and the land of the dead easier to pass. Demons seem drawn to these places too, hungering for a return to the land of the living—which is otherwise so difficult for them to reach.

Or was it?

(A treaty was the only thing preventing them from attacking us at will, Brother Qown claimed.)

I found myself back in Mereina.

A great many lives had crossed over in the old fortress’s history, so it was easily recognizable. And each death had created echoes through the Veils, giving its castle more strength. The newer town itself might have been invisible here, under other circumstances. Previously, the town had been too young and too peaceful for its structures to have left a memory resonating into the Afterlife.

Now?

Town and castle both stood in grim relief, solid and firm. Glowing phosphorescence lingered along battlements or outlined the patios, the tournament stands, the azhock. Ghosts wandered the grounds, addled and frightened. Their appearances mirrored their deaths. The poor warder stood in the nobles’ box, blue-faced, freed from his illness but perplexed by his current predicament.