He tilted his head back to look up at her, examining her as if she had become a stranger in his eyes. “I don’t understand how you know so little about yourself. He’s like to you and to me, the real me, I mean, not the prince. You and I aren’t eaten up by the Pall. Neither is he.”

“Then why hasn’t he gotten up?”

“Ah, that would be the water. We have to haul him out before he can shed his shell.”

“You and I can shift him?”

“I can shift him. Your viper will be able to make sure he doesn’t bring any Spore with him that might have lodged in his nostrils or fastened to his epidermis. That way he won’t inadvertently spread Spore beyond the Pall.”

“What will you tell the others?”

“They know Fulmo is immune to the touch of the Pall because he is a gagast, if I am reading correctly between the lines of remarks they’ve made.”

“You seem to be getting good at that.”

“I am, aren’t I? Quite the clever fellow.” His cheeky grin made her snort-laugh, an incongruous sound she was suddenly ashamed of as her gaze lifted to take in the ground at the base of the south wall, the ropes and planks of the first bridge hanging down the rock face, and three visible bodies lying among the rocks, one within an arm’s length of the Pall. The thread of Pall itself lay as still as a ribbon of dawn fog on a windless day, unmoving. Was the body nearest the Pall dead? Or just out of reach?

Then the fallen man stirred with a gasp. Choking, he tried to drag himself up, but his legs were broken. In a spasm of pain, he rolled the wrong way. A foot touched the Pall.

Elen’s voice stuck in her throat.

The mist churned. A ripple spread to engulf the man’s foot. Life, life, life. A tower of Spore bubbled up, building a grotesquely elongated foot that split the seams of the man’s leather boot with a hundred seething tendrils. The man heaved and huffed, fingers scrambling frantically for the knife at his belt. The Spore hissed with eager whispers as it began to boil up his leg. He couldn’t get a grip on the hilt. Something inside him broke. He spasmed. Spittle and pink foam leaked from his mouth until finally he slumped, going limp. Dead. She knew it at once, felt its finality. The Spore gave a despairing puff and collapsed, retreating back into the Pall.

The mist settled. All lay still.

Elen pressed a hand against her face to suppress a flash of memory: a horse, stumbling. No, not that. She did not want to see that again, so she shut away the distressing image and, with a determined exhalation, lowered her hand.