"But I tell you he won't be coming back!" Toede imitated his subaltern's whiny voice.

"Too bad," replied Toede-as-Charka. "Charka start skinning you now. Hold hostage down, boys. Charka get rusty knife."

All in all, a win/win situation. Transportation, money, and elimination of all witnesses, without so much as bloodying his own hands. Earlier, Toede had spotted a western path that broke from the main route, not as well traveled, but still serviceable. That western path promised relief from gnolls, scholars, kender, assassins, Hopsloth, and Groag. All in all, a good day.

Except for a grumbling in his stomach, but that was brought on more by Groag's cooking than anything else. There was still some jerky in the saddlebags. He could probably find some farmstead or army post long before he hit Balifor, someplace where a few coins would wangle a hot meal and a decent bath.

These assurances did nothing for the present state of his stomach however. Toede leaned back and rummaged through the left saddlebag, looking for the jerky.

Instead, his fingers closed around a disk hanging from a chain.

He hauled it out to examine it, even though in the pit of his stomach he knew what it was the moment he touched it, and a sympathetic pain shot up from his belly, stabbing at his heart.

The disk had an engraved picture of Hopsloth on one side. On the other was a deep, crudely etched T, some lighter, spidery writing, and numbers.

It was the holy symbol he had pulled from the assassin in the Jetties back during his first reincarnation.

When, exactly, Toede had lost the device was unknown to the highmaster. Probably when we were jumping around trying to avoid being toasted by Gildentongue, he thought. But how would Groag have found it? Either in the heat of the battle, or perhaps in the burned debris afterward. More likely one of the scholars had found it near his smoking body.

Then why did the device have the hand-drawn T?

Toede held it up to the russet moonlight, tilting it to catch the faint illumination. To the lower left-hand side of the T was the date, about six months ago, give or take. And in the right-hand corner, more faintly inscribed in Groag's spidery hand, were the words: DIED NOBLY.

Live nobly, the shadowy figures had said, the mountain-high being and sea-wide creature. Well, if he needed proof when they came calling, perhaps this was it. Somebody had certainly mourned his passing this time, unlike the previous occasion with its festivals and general relief. He pictured Groag laid up in a cot with the scholars bustling around him, turning the disk over and over in his hands, finally inscribing it as a small memento to crystalize his feelings of regret and loss.

Groag would probably be telling the shadowy beings about these very feelings firsthand by the end of the day tomorrow, tops, after the flesh had been scoured away from his quivering form (Charka had been very explicit, and though gnollish vocabulary was limited, on the matter of death it was quite expansive). Of course, between now and then Groag might quite possibly change his opinion of Toede.

The pain in Toede's stomach flared, and he dropped the disk back into the saddlebag, finding a chunk of smoked beef in the process. He chewed it as he rode. The meat was the best thing that had landed in Toede's stomach for six months, but did little to abate the vast hunger there.

"Only a fool," Toede said aloud, presumably to the horse, "would fail to take advantage of this situation. To escape and start a new life, where one can 'live nobly' without danger of one's past biting one on one's backside."

The horse, respectful of its place in the scheme of things, said nothing.

"And," said Toede, "and… it's not as though Groag didn't have a chance to join me. No, we could have both been gone, have taken the western fork, and never have met the gnolls. He made his choice. I cannot deny the right of any creature to determine its own destiny, and verily, he determined his."

The horse remained silent, but it seemed an accusing silence, pregnant in its damning hush.

"Not to discount the influence of the gods," added Toede quickly. "Gods are important." That he said loudly enough so that, if any were resting in the trees among the slumbering squirrels, they would hear his affirmation. "But gods are subtle and show their works best in signs and portents. I mean, dropping a mountain on Istar was a definite message, if you follow my meaning."

The horse continued to impugn Toede silently.

"So indeed, if the gods did want me to hang about here, they would have given me an obvious sign, right?" Toede asked.

The horse refused to be drawn into Toede's line of argument. The branch to the western path appeared up ahead.

"So if the gods are paying attention," said Toede, "then it wouldn't be out of line to ask them for guidance. Correct? I mean, the words were "live nobly" not "prove your faith in us, whoever we are."

The fork was upon them. To the west lay freedom, to the south more problems than Toede wanted to think about.

He pulled back on the reins, and the horse halted. "So we have a decision to make, and need guidance, and are willing to leave it up to the will of greater powers. Should the mount turn west, we shall go west. Should it turn south, we will follow the trail to wherever it leads us." Toede eased his grip on the reins.

The horse did not move. Toede dug his heels in its sides to spur it forward, but still the horse did not move. Toede slapped its flanks with the ends of the reins, and even then horse did not move.

Toede pulled lightly on the right rein, the one that would lead the horse west, but the horse remained immobile. He pulled again, harder, then gave a firm tug. Nothing. Toede gave the slightest tug on the left rein, the one that would lead south to the scholars. The horse swung, as if it had been fixed on a pivot, immediately in that direction.

"Stupid horse," said Toede, realizing at once that the animal would rather travel a well-worn route than one never trod before. Not a fair test, all in all, he reasoned. Toede pulled the defaced symbol of the Water Prophet out of his saddlebags again and held it up in the moonlight. "Right then. Toede-side up, we go south. Hopsloth-side up, we go west."

He flipped the disk as best as he was able from horseback, the symbol spinning and dragging along its chain in a loose elliptical orbit. The flip carried it out of Toede's reach, where it landed among the debris of fallen leaves and dead ferns by the side of the path.

Toede squinted into the dark to see on which side the amulet had landed. Then, seeing the result, he snarled, and thought for a moment of just riding on anyway, of defying the coin-tossed decision influenced by the gods.

"Dark Lady in ribbons and bows," he muttered. "Probably a rock slide would fall on top of me if I went west anyway," and with that, he turned the horse south.

In the forest debris, the abandoned holy symbol shone in the crimson moonlight, the etching of the faceup T deep and visible from a surprising distance away.