She cleaned out and killed off Raven’s family. Then he killed her and her whole gang except for the Limper himself. Maybe he could have gotten everything back if he had wanted. The Limper never was in good with the Lady. But Raven found Darling, the White Rose, who became the Lady’s mortal enemy...

Not a bad job of finding out, if I do say so myself. Even if I couldn’t find out one thing about Raven’s kids. I only run into two people who remembered there was kids. They didn’t know what happened to them.

Nobody cared but me, it seemed.

We sold the horses. They didn’t bring enough. They was pretty ragged after the beating they took coming south. Raven had a bad hangover and wasn’t in no mood to argue. But I was getting brave in my old age.

I asked him, “What’s the point in us chasing Croaker halfway across the world? Especially when the last time you ran into him he put an arrow into you? Say we do catch him. If he don’t finish the job, if he even listens, what’s he going to do about whatever happened up north?”

I got to admit I was plenty skeptical about what he claimed maybe happened up there. Even if he did study a little black sorcery way back when.

I guess you could call it nagging. I said, “I figure you got a lot more important business right here in Opal.”

He gave me an ugly look. “I don’t much care what you think about that, Case. Mind your own business.”

“It is my business. It’s me getting dragged halfway across the world and maybe ending up getting killed someplace I never heard of because you got problems inside your head.”

“You aren’t a slave, Case. There’s no one holding a knife to your throat.”

I couldn’t say I owe you, man, but you wouldn’t understand nothing about that. You taught me to read and write and believe I had a little value as human being before you went off the end. So I said, “If I drop out, who’s going to clean you up when you puke all over yourself? Who’s going to drag you out after you start a fight in some tavern and get your ass stomped?”

He’d done that last night and if I hadn’t showed up when I did he maybe would’ve gotten himself killed.

This guy who was riding off to save the world.

He was in a rotten mood. His head ached with the hangover. His hip hurt. His body ached from the beating. But he could not find a way to answer me even in that humor. He just said, “I’m going to do what I’m going to do, Case, right or wrong. I’d like to have you along. If you can’t make it, no hard feelings.”

“What the hell else I got to do with my life? I got nothing to tie me down.”

“Then why do you keep bitching?”

“Sometimes I like to have what I’m doing make some kind of sense.”

We got on the boat, which was a grain ship crossing over in ballast to collect a cargo, and we were off to a part of the world even Raven hadn’t seen before. And before we got to the other side we was both damned sure we shouldn’t have done it. But we did decide not to try walking back to Opal when the ship’s master refused to turn her around.

Actually, the trip didn’t start out all that bad. But then they had to go untie the mooring ropes.

A storm caught us halfway over. It wasn’t supposed to blow at that time of year. “It never storms this season,” the bosun promised us right after the wind split a sail the topmen didn’t reef in time. For four more days it kept on not storming at that time of year. So we were four more days behind when we hit the dock in Beryl.

I didn’t look back. Whatever I’d thought about Raven and his kids and obligations before, that wasn’t interesting now. They were on the other side of the big water and I was cured of wanting to be a sailor. If Raven suddenly decided he had to go back and balance accounts I was going to tell him to go pick his nose with his elbow.

The bunch we were chasing had left a plain trail. Raven’s buddy had gone through Beryl like thunder and lightning, pretending to be an imperial legate on a mystery mission.

“Croaker is in a big hurry now,” Raven said. “It’s going to be a long chase.”

I gave him a look but I didn’t say it.

We bought new horses and rounded up travel stuff. When we headed out what they called the Rubbish Gate we were seven days behind. Raven took off like he was going to catch up by tomorrow morning.

In the heart of the continent, far to the east of the Barrowland, Oar, the Tower, and Opal, beyond Lords and even that jagged desolation called the Windy Country, lies that vast, inhospitable, infertile, bizarre land called the Plain of Fear. There is sound reason for the name. It is a land terrible to men. Seldom are they welcomed there.

In the heart of the Plain of Fear there is a barren circle. At the circle’s center stands a gnarly tree half as old as time. The tree is the sire of the sapling standing sentinel over the Barrowland.

The few scabrous, primitive nomads who live upon the Plain of Fear call it Old Father Tree and worship it as a god. And god that tree is, or as close as makes no difference. But it is a god whose powers are strictly circumscribed.

Old Father Tree was all a-rattle. Had he been human, he would have been in a screaming rage. After a long, long delay his son had communicated details of his lapse in the matter of the digging monster and the buried head and the wicker man’s insane murder spree.

The tree’s anger was not entirely inspired by the tardiness of his son. As much was directed at his own impotence and at the dread the news inspired.

An old devil had been put down forever and the world had relaxed, had turned to its smaller concerns. But evil had not missed a stride. It was back in the lists already. It was running free, unbridled, unchallenged, and looked like it could devour the world it hated.

He was a god. On the wispiest evidences he could discern the shapes of potential tomorrows. And the tomorrows he saw were wastelands of blood and terror.

The failure of his offspring could be precursor to the greater failure of his own trust.

When his hot fury had spent itself he sent his creatures, the talking stones, into the farthest, the most hidden, the most shadowed reaches of the Plain, carrying his call for an assembly of the Peoples, the parliament of the forty-odd sentient species inhabiting that most bizarre part of the world.

Old Father Tree could not move himself, nor could he project his own power beyond certain limits, but he did have the capacity to fling out legates and janissaries in his stead.

The old man could barely keep himself upright in the saddle when he reached Lords. His life had been sedentary. He had nothing but will and the black arts with which to sustain himself against the hazards of travel and his own physical limits.

His will and skill were substantial but neither was inexhaustible nor indefatigable.

He learned that he was just five days behind his quarry now. The White Rose and her party were in no hurry, and were having no trouble getting around the imperial authorities. For all his desperation he took two days off to rest. It was an investment of time he was sure would pay dividends down the road.

When he left Lords he did so with a horse and pack mule selected for stamina and durability, not for speed and beauty. The long far leg of the next stage would take him through the Windy Country, a land with a bad reputation. He did not want to linger there.

As he passed through ever smaller, meaner, and more widely separated hamlets, approaching the Windy Country, he learned that he was gaining ground rapidly-if closing the gap by four days in as many weeks could be called rapid.

He entered the uninhabited land with little optimism for a quick success. There were no regular, fixed tracks through the Windy Country, which even the empire shunned as worthless. He would have to slow down and use his talent to find the trail.