At a full gallop, Sturm and Luin charged north and east-or what Sturm thought was north and east-across the Solamnic Plains. The lad's hopes sank further with every swell and irregularity on the horizon: Who would have thought Solamnia was so wide, so incomprehensibly vast?

Sturm closed his eyes as the wind rushed by him. He would never belong to the Order now.

Downcast, his panic at last subsiding, he slowed Luin to a canter. It was then a breeze passed over them from his left, carrying upon it the faint, muddy smell of the river.

Encountering the castle had spun about his sense of direction. He had been traveling south, away from the ford and the road to Lemish. The edged green of the Solamnic grasslands had swallowed the green of Vertumnus's road, and the lad had galloped for an hour, directionless across a directionless plain.

Quickly Sturm reined Luin to a stop, stood up in the stirrups, and looked despairingly across the landscape ahead of him, bleak and featureless in all directions, save for a copse of evergreen here, a solitary vallenwood there.

He thought of how, in this desolate spot, his failure and delay-perhaps even his death-would disappoint the Lords Gunthar and Boniface. He thought of Derek Crown-guard's gloating and mean joy. The other pages and squires would squawk and crow like a flock of ravens…

Where are the birds? That was it! Where are the birds?

Sturm whirled and looked about him, his bafflement turning to a strange, rising hope. For this Solamnic spring, despite its warmth and greenery, was empty of birdsong. The plains were silent-as quiet as the death of winter.

Sturm rose once more in the stirrups. At the edge of his sight, eastward toward the smell of the river, he saw more winter, and strangely more promise. For the green of the plains turned suddenly brown, and the mist hanging over the land was a winter's mist that sunlight could not disperse.

"It's… it's still winter!" Sturm exclaimed, slipping back into the saddle. Suddenly the music rose in front of him, brisk and alluring and drawing him on across the wintry plains. Jubilant, he spurred the mare beneath him, and off they went, barreling eastward at a full gallop.

He smiled to himself. The adventure was only beginning.

Luin surged beneath him, hurdling an ancient downed fence as they galloped through farmlands, through fallow pastures. Always the music lay before them, coaxing them onward, and behind them, the greens of spring returned suddenly to winter's brown and ice-crusted landscape.

Sturm laughed. It was easy from here. And so he was thinking when he felt the horse dip and stagger beneath him.

They were lucky not to be injured, even killed. It was some alertness in Sturm that caused him to rein in quickly, with such authority that the mare slowed to a walk at once, then stopped. He scrambled down to her right rear hoof and examined the damage.

It had been no accident. Experienced beyond his years at horsemanship, he could tell at once that someone had loosened a nail, perhaps more, so that any sustained gallop could throw the shoe.

"Why not earlier?" he asked aloud as he walked the mare toward a copse of evergreen, looking for shelter from a wind that once again had become fierce and wintry. "We raced through fog together, away from… from whatever it was. Over far rougher ground than this. Why didn't you throw the shoe then, Luin?"

Unless…

The lad shook his head. Someone had loosened the shoe at Castle di Caela. The same someone who had locked him in. Someone who was following him and trying to make him late.

Sturm walked away the afternoon, grasping at possibilities, traveling vaguely eastward. Luin stepped gingerly behind him on a long tether, stopping occasionally to browse the dried grass. Just how the two of them would get to the Southern Darkwoods remained to be seen.

The music that evening was almost a relief, rising from the emerald gloom of the copse ahead of them. Leading the mare at a walk behind him, Sturm drew his sword and trudged toward the stand of juniper and aeterna, his mind fixed on the solid and possible.

It was not Vertumnus who played, as Sturm had hoped. Nevertheless, the girl who held the flute seemed almost as wild and gifted. Her almond eyes and slanted ears marked her as clearly elven, and the painted designs on her body were those of the Kagonesti.

It was all Sturm knew of that elusive woodland people. For of all elves, the Kagonesti were the most secretive, and nowadays the most rare. Less organized, with a much less complex civilization than their Silvanesti and Qualinesti cousins, the Wild Elves lived in small bands or traveled alone through the forests and glades of Krynn. Sturm was surprised to see that one of them had settled herself long enough to play. He lowered his sword, crouched behind an aeterna bush, and watched her in wonder.

The elf maiden sat in a clearing in the middle of the copse, cross-legged on the thatched roof of a little cabin, her dark hair awash in moonlight. She was wrapped in fur against the wind and the cold, but one leg stretched forth, bare of white fox or ermine, painted with green swirls and helixes, brown and provocative. A silver flute was lifted to her lips, and she played a slow, stately melody.

Hypnotized by green on brown, by the centripetal swirl of the paint, Sturm felt himself grow short of breath.

Above the girl, the branches of evergreens swayed in the wind, then bent away gracefully, as though allowing the moonlight to shine on her for some mysterious, intricate purpose.

Soon enough, as though she had called it there with her song, the moon appeared in the gap between the trees, shining directly down on her-or two moons, rather, for white Solinari in its radiant fullness sat overhead, awaiting Lunitari, its red sister, to join it at the sky's absolute zenith. Slowly the red moon sailed into view as the girl played and the music filled the grove.

Sturm found himself strangely touched in spite of the day's hardship and accidents. There was a fathomless peace to this scene, as though all good things-beauty and health and virtue and purity-danced for a moment to the flute's measure. There was something sad about it, too. Though he had only chanced upon the moment, Sturm knew that it would pass too suddenly and too soon, and that somehow he was not meant to be a part of it in the first place.

Indeed, he was leaving, putting away his sword and turning back to the road ahead of him, when he saw the spiderweb.

The strands were finger-thick and twenty feet long, its hub the size of Sturm's shield, spoke and spiral stretching from tree to tree like an enormous fishnet draped over the clearing. Sturm lifted his sword. The spider who could spin such a thing must be dog-sized… man-sized… horse-sized. His shield high and ready, Sturm spun about, looking for the monster, but the web was empty except for dried leaves and the skeletal remains of ravens and squirrels. Crouching, the lad moved toward the clearing, bent on warning the girl.

He was almost too late. There was the spider, bulbous and huge and mottled gray and white, its front legs arched above the heedless elf-maiden, who continued to play, her eyes closed, her dark hair swaying. Sturm cried out and sprang into the clearing.

The music stopped at once. The girl looked at him with alarm. The spider leapt back, scuttling down the side of the cabin, its movements abrupt and blindingly quick. In an instant, it stood between Sturm and the girl, its forelegs raised as though ready to pounce, its long black fangs flashing and clacking.