“Yes, Zu,” said Uram, “Of course.” He stepped aside.

Argoth retrieved a lap blanket to pull up around Nettle’s neck. Serah and the children were already roused. He bid them a teary farewell, then joined Uram and the other dreadmen outside and mounted his horse.

As they rode away, he turned to survey his family and lands one last time. But the night still lay thick and all was dark.

Rubaloth, the Skir Master, stood on the deck of the ship watching the sun rise, the stiff morning breeze at his back. On the main deck half a dozen sailors guided the last pallet of barrels that contained seafire down into the main hold. “Report,” he said to Uram.

“Argoth and his escort are eating a fine breakfast at the Shark’s Tooth.”

“Did he give you trouble?”

“None, Great One. But I did find something odd.”

“Oh?”

“His son’s neck, Great One. In the early morning I caught the Clansman locking the door of a room. His boy was inside, lying on a bed. The Clansman told me the boy had fallen ill. And the pungent odor of a healing salve did fill the hallway, but underneath it all I thought I smelled the faintest trace of wizardsmeet. It was there one moment and then gone. Still, when my men had everyone outside, I went back in and quietly forced the door. They’d wrapped the boy’s neck with fresh linen and plastered it as if for a sore throat. But when I pulled the bandaging back, the skin on the boy’s neck had all the markings of a hasty and large harvest.”

Rubaloth nodded. He’d been right. These cursed Clansmen. Another scion from a vanquished line no doubt wielding old magics. Was he the one who had wrested Lumen from the Glory? If so, this could be tricky. But Rubaloth savored the challenge.

“When we’re a few miles from shore,” he said, “you will quietly search all his belongings.”

Uram bowed. “I shall, Great One.”

Yes, he’d have to be careful. But this Captain Argoth would soon find he was not the only one prepared for battle.

Sugar ran out of the cave into the light. She considered running back downhill to escape whatever it was coming at her in the inky dark of the cave, but because that was her first choice, she rejected it. It would expect her to run downhill; it would expect her to hide somewhere away from the cave, perhaps in the waters of the swamp. There was no way she could get far by trying to steal away quietly. Her very footfalls would make her an easy mark.

No, she wouldn’t run. She looked around for a place to hide close by and spotted one above the mouth of the cave behind an outcropping of rock. She didn’t know if it was big enough to hide her, but it would have to do.

Quickly, carefully, she moved away from the mouth and climbed up the small ridge that ran along the brow of the cave.

Something splashed through water just inside the mouth of the cave.

She pulled herself up the last few feet and slid behind the rock. But she didn’t have time to lie down, for the beast burst into view below her. It took a number of steps then stopped, surveying the slope below.

The creature stood like a man of freakish proportions. Heavy-limbed, wide, maybe seven feet tall, with a small, odd-shaped head. It was immense. She thought she saw an ear on the side of its head, but it was too ragged to tell exactly what it was. Shaggy grass grew unevenly over the whole of its body. Along its shoulder and back clung a large swath of blackened, ashy tufts and blades. Yet below the burned part, about where a man’s ribs would end, grew a patch of what appeared to be green grass mixed with the small white flowers of creeping wood sorrel.

If it turned around and looked up, it would see her. But she didn’t dare crouch, didn’t dare make adjustments for fear of making even the smallest of sounds.

The creature moved slightly and made a hideous sound that froze her spine.

It moved again. Again, the awful sound, and Sugar realized it was the intake of breath. A horrid gasp. Loud, like a man suffering from the black lung.

Was it trying to scent her?

The air about her was still, no morning updrafts or crosswinds. No downdrafts. The breeze in the cave blew outward, and so the thing would not have smelled her in there. But that also meant the breeze might, at this very moment, be carrying the scent that pooled about her.

A crack sounded from the woods below.

The creature turned to it.

Heartbeats pounded in her ears.

Then the thing moved, loping downhill in the direction of the sound, the grass about its body jolting with every stride.

Sugar realized she’d been holding her breath and gasped for air.

The creature leapt into the air, clearing a large tangle, and landed heavily on the other side. Two more strides, and then it was nothing but a flash through the trunks of the trees.

She gauged the distance it had covered in the few breaths since it had first moved. Never in her life could she have outrun it.

The rustling of a tree sounded from below, and she knew when it found nothing below, when it smelled her trail growing stale, it would come back.

Her legs shouted out for her to run, but she fought it. Sugar turned and carefully, oh, so carefully began to ascend the hill. She would find her escape on the other side, or not at all.

Hunger backtracked for about a quarter of a mile along the trail he’d taken earlier and then stopped under a cluster of tall pines. He had seen nothing. Heard nothing but a bunch of noisy grayfans. He would find nothing along this trail. The scent had been stronger back at the cave. He turned and began to walk back, looking, listening for anything at all.

He came to the tree in which the grayfans sat. He searched the ground and then looked up. It didn’t take long before he found it: one rotted branch hanging at a broken angle. Noisy birds cracking branches-that’s what he’d chased after. Or maybe some deer. It could have been anything that had made the noise earlier.

He cursed himself, crouched down on all fours, and began to follow the scent more closely. It was a woman; he could smell that.

Back up the slope he went, making sure to check for trails of scent leading away from this one. But he found none. He stood at the mouth of the cave, and could smell her in there. Could he have run by her in his haste? He followed her trail in, but found it ended not far inside.

If he’d run by, then she had come back out, but she hadn’t run downhill. No, Hunger examined the area around the mouth of the cave and found her scent clinging to the rock. He followed it up to a ridge and found a pool of her scent. She had stopped here. She could have been squatting right there when he’d run downhill like a fool.

But it didn’t matter. He had her scent and her trail. He would catch the wily thing and bring her back. He was the Mother’s now; his family depended on it.

He felt good to have such a clear purpose. He felt as if a burden had been lifted. Serving the Mother wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

Hunger followed the woman’s trail, sometimes loping on two limbs, sometimes staying close to the ground on all fours. He followed it up over the crest of the hill and back down into the valley on the other side and to the banks of a marshy river.

Wily, she was. But there were some parts of a person’s scent that did not sink into the depths. Some of it hung in the very air. Oh, water made it harder to track. Sometimes it flowed away at great speeds, erasing all traces of a trail, but not this sluggish river, this half marsh. He got down on all fours and strode out into the water and smelled her on the surface. The scent was faint, but it was thick enough to follow.