"It is all too confusing," Stormlight murmured.

He closed his eyes and prayed again to Mishakal, for insight and healing wisdom. After all, this land was named for her, and hers as well was the power of healing, to restore the fractured and distorted body to its natural health.

No voice of the goddess did he hear, whistling through the crystal fields with revelation. And yet-

The solution came to him softly and slowly-it was so simple that his laughter rang through the Tears in recognition.

He would need eyes, of course, to guide him out of the salt flats. And his own eyes were subject to the mirror maze of the crystals, the distraction and dis shy;tortion and misdirection.

Still chuckling to himself, Stormlight mounted and, leaning back in the saddle, laid the reins gently over the animal's withers. He closed his eyes, brought down the lucerna, and surrendered to the horse. The animal serenely wandered through the crystals, bent toward the edge of the salt flats, toward open country, and toward his breakfast.

Stormlight let himself be carried homeward, his thoughts on cool water-if water indeed had been found-and the morning's quith-pa and bread. A sudden lurch from the horse snapped him back to alertness. Instantly wary, Stormlight opened his eyes and sat upright.

Dark shapes lay ahead of him, gray lines and imprints on the surface of the black salt. Stormlight took up the reins and guided the horse toward them.

One of the crystals-once a very large one, he guessed-lay in powder and rubble, a forlorn heap in the middle of a wasteland. Half out of idleness, half out of curiosity, Stormlight dismounted to examine it more closely.

The facets of the crystals caught the first pink light, and for a moment they shone softly, warmly, like freshly mined gems. Was it this that had prompted his people to go underground years ago? Had they mistaken something like this black glim shy;mering for the stone more rare, for the glain opals their priests and Namers had told them lay deep beneath the Khalkist and Vingaard Mountains?

It was a story older than his own memories-how, adopted, he had come to reside with the Que-Nara.

Stormlight had little recollection of his people. He recalled a face half-revealed by firelight, the smell of buckskin and pine, the touch of a soft hand …

Memories from childhood, or from a hundred years of wandering. He could not distinguish which.

But he remembered well the ambush at the desert's edge. The red armor and white banners of Istar, the knives of the slavers and the white-hot pain in his side.

He shrugged, pushing away the memory. Alone then, he was even more alone now in the Tears of Mishakal. That was the past, and to dwell on it was foolish, especially here in the deceptive salt flats, where a despairing thought could be your last.

Idly, the elf shifted his foot through the odd rubble.

Then the new light shone on a track-a single deep footprint in the black salt.

Stormlight crouched in the rubble, peering more closely.

A woman's print. Two days old, maybe three. Narrow and graceful, and incredibly deep.

As though she had sunk to her knees in the packed sand.

Yet the print was strangely delicate. The soft whorls of the heel marked the fine-grained, com shy;pressed salt, and the foot was clearly defined and free of callus and scar.

She did not walk much. At least not barefoot. Even a child among trackers would know that.

With a rough, leathery finger, Stormlight traced the graceful instep of the print.

He should know something more. The footprint taunted him with a mystery, with a secret in its spi shy;rals and simple, deep lines …

Lines. Like the foot of an infant.

Stormlight rested on his heels. Slowly, with a judi shy;cious sweep of his hand, he blew the drifted black salt from another print, and another. Then risingto his feet, he mounted the horse and followed the trail of the woman out of the Tears-a trail that seemed to rise out of nothingness, out of the blank center of the flats.

It could be a trap, he cautioned himself. The gods know there is danger in this . . . there is danger . . .

Yet he followed with a strange, fascination as the path weaved sinuously through the standing crys shy;tals. Leaning low, face pressed against the horse's withers, he read the dark sand with a skill born of centuries in the hunt. When the slowly rising sun gave him direction, it revealed the footprints again, a thin path stalking over the salt flats, the steps wider and wider apart.

Had he looked up from this close, intent scrutiny, he might have seen the Plainsman's form reflected in the mirroring crystal-the wounded man lying in the salt flats, his ruddy beard matted with the last swallow from his now-empty waterskin.

He might have found Fordus, helped the Prophet to safety.

But in his oblivion, Stormlight passed near the wounded commander, who stared at him blearily, resentfully, through the maze of crystals.

She's running now, Stormlight thought, rising in the saddle, his thoughts focused on the strange, fem shy;inine tracks.

But running to what? Or from what?

Now it seemed that the woman's foot had expanded, widened, kept changing, the toes fusing and splaying.

Stormlight leaned against the warm neck of the horse and let forth a slow, uneasy breath. It was a clawed creature he followed now, an enormous thing that had trampled a path over the salt flats, crushing rock and crystal in its heedless journey. All of his instincts told him to leave well enough alone, that the danger he had only suspected when he took up the trail was close to him now, a rumbling just at the edge of his hearing, an acrid smell beneath the smoke of a distant campfire.

The fires of the rebels. The monster was headed toward the Red Plateau, toward his drowsing, battle-dazed people.

With a click of his tongue and a shrill whistle, Stormlight spurred his horse through the black flats, longing for Fordus's speed, for the speed of the wind or a comet.

You are too late, a deep, denying voice told him, its cold, resonant words mingling with his thoughts until Stormlight could not tell whether it was the voice he heard or the bleak suggestions of his own worst imaginings.

"No!" Stormlight shouted. Suddenly the trail ended before him, the monstrous tracks vanished into unruffled black salt. Alarmed, confused, the elf wheeled the horse in a wide frantic circle and retraced his path. In the heart of the last track, in the very center of the enormous, splayed claw, a man's booted footprint lay in the dark sand as though he had stepped in that spot only, dropped from the sky or born from the swirling earth.

Stormlight reined in his horse. The human print was like a deep embedded thought of the clawed thing, like a glyph drawn in a time of dreams and dragons. Out of the monstrous print, boot prints led-the heavy steps of a man walking resolutely toward the rebel camps.

Cautiously, with his horse slowed to a walk, the Plainsman followed.

* * * * *

Tired and dirty, Larken watched the last of the flames lick the black rubble of the pyre.

Children, the old, and the flower of Plainsmen manhood had been put to the Istarian swords. Inno shy;cent and defenseless or ill-prepared and rash, they had fallen before the enemy like sacrificial offerings. Their deaths were even more monstrous because of the dishonor involved-the cavalry ambush that savaged graybeard and infant alike.

In the brilliant dawn, there was no way to mask the night's slaughter. The Istarian cavalry had left over a hundred rebels dead. Now, as the funeral fires themselves died and smoldered, it was the bard's duty to sing the Song of Passing, a farewell to all the departed, from the youngest to the wizened old. Each of the dead would be remembered in a verse, a line, a phrase of the song, so that none left the world unheralded. Larken's song would proba shy;bly continue through the next night.