The road was still overgrown, half-invisible most of the time beneath drifts of strange plants or the damage from roots and floods, but the trees were beginning to thin: ragged segments of gray sky appeared on the hori¬zon, stretched between the trunks of trees like the world's oldest, filthiest linens hung out to dry. Even the rain was lightening to a floating drizzle, but Barrick did not feel a corresponding relief.

What are we running from? he asked Gyir. Not those bony things?

Take care. The fairy reached out a pale hand, pointing at a spot just ahead where the way forward dissolved into tumbled stones and shrubbery. Bar¬rick reined up and the weirdling horse named Dragonfly walked around the ruined section before resuming its trot. Gyir leaned forward over the horse's long neck again, looking like the figurehead of a most peculiar ship.

What are we running from? Barrick asked again.

Death. Or worse. One of the Longskulls escaped. A wash of disgust moved underneath the fairy's thought, as obvious as a strong odor.

But you killed two by yourself. Vansen is a soldier, and I can fight, too. Surely we don't have anything to fear from the one that got away?

They do not hunt alone, or even in packs of three, sunlander. Gyir seemed to bite back a rage that, if freed, could not be captured again. They are cowardly. They like company.

Hunt?

In fikuyin's service they are slavers or harvesters. Either way, those three were out hunting. They were scouts for a larger troop-I know it as I know that the White Root is in the sky overhead. This last came to Barrick as no more than the idea of a bright light shining through fog. The more disturbed Gyir be¬came, the less work he put into choosing concepts Barrick could easily un¬derstand. Would you rather be enslaved or eaten? It is not a good choice, is it?

And who is Jikuyin? You keep talking about him, but I still don't know!

The one the bird calls lack Chain. He is a power, an old power, and now that Qul-na-Qar has lost so much of its… — again an idea Barrick could not un¬derstand, something that came to him as «glow» but also «language» and perhaps even "music," an impossible amalgamation. Clearly fikuyin is confi¬dent of his strength, if he dares to spread his song so far into free territory.

Barrick understood almost none of this. His arm was hurting him fiercely-the wet weather in these lands had done him no good at all-and the rib he had injured in a fall still pained him too. But it was rare to get Gyir to speak at any length. He was reluctant to give up the chance.

What kind of power is he? Is he another king, like the blind one you the talk about?

No. He is an old power. He is one of the gods' bastards, as I told you. We de¬feated most of them back in the Years of Blood, but some were too clever or too strong and hid away in deep places or high places, Jikuyin is one of those.

Some kind of god? And he's hunting…for us? Barrick suddenly felt as if he might fall out of his saddle-a swooning, light-headedness that for sev¬eral heartbeats turned the forest around him into a meaningless rush of green. When the rushing ended, Gyir's arm was gripping his belt, holding him upright.

"I'm well, I'm well…" Barrick said out loud, then realized Vansen and the raven were staring at him. They were riding almost beside him when he had been certain they were a dozen or more lengths behind, as though he had lost a few moments of time during his spell of dizziness.

Shouldn't we turn back, if this… creature, thisfack Chain, is searching for us?

Not searching for us, I think. He would not send mere Longskulls to capture one like me. There was arrogance and pride in the thought, but also regret. He could not know I have been… damaged.

Damaged?

Now the regret felt more like shame. Barrick did not need to see Gyir's face (which obviously never revealed much anyway) to understand the fairy's grim mood. The Followers, when they attacked me-I fell. They struck my head several times and then I hit it again on a stone. I am… blind.

The word didn't seem right, somehow, but Barrick still reacted with as¬tonishment. What do you mean, blind? You can see!

Only with my eyes.

While Barrick puzzled over this, Ferras Vansen rode up beside them again-as close as Vansen's mortal horse would come, anyway: even after a

tennight traveling together, the animal always stayed at the stretched end of his tether when the company made camp, keeping as distant from the fairy horse as he could. "Your Highness, are you ill?" the soldier asked. "Yon.al-most fell out of your saddle…"

"There is nothing wrong with me. Let me be." He wanted to talk to Gyir again, not swap braying mortal speech with this… peasant.

A peasant who came with you when he didn't have to, an inner voice re¬minded him, and for once he was hearing himself, not Gyir. A peasant who came to this wretched place with full knowledge of what it was like.

Barrick took a breath. "I do not mean to be… I am well enough, Captain Vansen." He could not bring himself to apologize. "You and I will talk later."

The soldier nodded and reined up a little, letting Barrick's horse take the lead again. As they fell back, the scruffy black bird crouching on Vansen's saddle watched the prince with disconcertingly shrewd eyes, like Chaven the physician seeing through one of Barrick's tantrums to the real matter beneath. For a moment the prince was painfully lonely again for South-march, for familiar faces and familiar things.

You said blind. Why? he asked. Your eyes work, don't they?

Gyir would not speak for long moments. / am the Storm Lantern, he said

finally. It is given to me to see in darkness, to see what is behind the light, to see

things that are far away. I have an eye inside me, inside my head. Never before would

three Longskulls have crept so close to me. Never before would I have to learn of it

from a mere raven! But now I am blind.

There was so much misery in this thought, so much fury, that for a mo¬ment, as the sensations buffeted him, Barrick felt as though he would vomit. He put one hand on the saddle to steady himself-he did not want Vansen riding up again, prying at him with questions.

Because of the wound to your head?

Yes. Yes, and now I am all but helpless-forced to hide and skulk in terror in my own country, like a forest elemental caught out by Whitefire in the naked sunlands!

Barrick didn't know what Gyir meant, but he knew that sort of rage and despair when he heard it-knew it all too well. Will you get better?

I do not know. The wound is healed, at least the flesh is. How can I say?

Barrick took a breath. It does no good to fight against what the gods have done, he told Gyir, repeating without realizing it something Briony had often said to him. Perhaps we should find a place to hide, a place to wait and see if your wound finally heals? Wouldn't that be better than riding across this place you think is so dangerous, with those creatures out hunting?

You do not understand, Gyir said. We cannot afford so much time. As it is, we may be too late.

Too late? l!or what?

I… I carry something. My mistress gave it to me, and I must take it to Qul-na-Qar, and soon. If I arrive too late-or do not arrive at all-many will die.

What are you talking about?

Many of your race and many of mine will die, little sunlander. There was no mistaking the grim certainty of the silent words. At the very least, every human remaining in that castle of yours, and likely countless more-of both our kinds. I have been tasked to outrun doom.

"I don't understand." Vansen's legs ached. They had been riding fast without a break for what must have been a few hours. "What are we run¬ning from?"

"Longskulls." Skurn was huddled so low against the horse's neck that he looked like little more than a particularly ugly growth. "Like the dead 'uns you saw."