They had seconds now, if they were lucky, and Renie cursed her own earlier decision to pick the longest vines. She had wanted to get as far away from the tower as possible before having to touch the ground, but now she desperately wished there was a roof somewhere close by onto which they could jump. She put her head down to concentrate on her footing, trying to see each coming step in the inconstant, glaring light as she hurried sideways. The Stone Girl clung to her shoulders, crying softly.

She had only an instant's warning: the vine seemed to tighten beneath her hand as though someone had given it a hard tug. Renie made a lightning decision and let go so she could grab at the lower vine with both hands.

"Hold on tight!" she screamed as she wrapped hands and legs around the bottom vine. The weight of the little girl snatched her over backward but Renie kept her desperate grip and so did the Stone Girl. As they dangled upside down, the upper strand parted with a distant crack and a second later the broken end swept past, glowing red, flying away from the collapsing tower like the lash of a bullwhip. Renie felt its rough hide score her fingers as it flew past.

Would have taken my head off, she thought, a dizzy, horrified fragment of thought. The broken vine had whistled going by, a ton of fibrous cable moving at bullet speed. We have to let go, she realized in horror, before the next. . . .

This time she did not even have a chance to warn the little girl. Renie's fingers released just as the second vine snapped with another whipcrack explosion. They tumbled down into the dark even as it hissed through the spot where they had been.

They landed in something like thick bushes, but Renie still felt the air leave her body as though she had been slammed by a giant hand. For long moments she could not get the breath back into her lungs and lay straining, facedown in prickly leaves.

When she was able to stagger to her feet she saw that the flaming tower had collapsed into a wildfire fifty meters wide, with tendrils of flame already marching out into the surrounding greenery. Some Ticks had been caught in the collapse—she could see writhing shapes in the blaze—but far more of them remained in an agitated mass around the perimeter of the fire.

The Stone Girl groaned. "Are you okay?" Renie whispered. "Anything broken?" The little girl seemed able to move, but did not get up. Renie reached down and pulled the child into her arms, then stood. "Which way?" The Stone Girl groaned again and pointed. Renie began to run.

It was terrible country in the dark, so much vegetation that there was little hard ground beneath her feet, brambles and vines and trailing roots everywhere, snatching at her and tripping her up like malicious fingers. After a few hundred meters she was gasping for breath and feeling the bruises of the fall from the vine. She stopped and set the solid weight of the little girl down on springy leaves before looking back. She was relieved to see that the spreading fire was still surrounded by squirming, confused Ticks, and that she could see no others any closer.

"Can you walk? I don't know if I can carry you much farther."

"I . . . maybe I can." The little girl struggled up. "I hurt my legs, I think."

"Just try. If you can't make it, I'll carry you again. Let's hurry. We don't know how long this will distract them."

They quickly stumbled out of the vicinity of the fire. Renie's feet were achingly sore, her legs scratched and cut so many times she had stopped paying attention, but there was nothing to be done. Run or die, she thought. It's been like that since we first got onto this damn network. "Are we almost there?" she asked the little girl. "Are we still going in the right direction? Can you tell?"

The Stone Girl only plodded forward. Renie surrendered to trust.

A quick glance back sent a wave of terror through her: this time she definitely saw pale shapes behind them. She had no idea if the Ticks could follow a trail, or even if these were some of the same creatures who had surrounded the tower, but it wouldn't matter much if they got close enough to see her and the girl. She had no illusion they could outrun the pallid monsters for more than a few steps—she had seen their terrible, darting speed.

Something rose out of the dark shrubbery before them. Renie gasped in alarm and tripped, slamming down onto one knee and dragging the Stone Girl face-first into the undergrowth. She scrabbled desperately for something to use as a weapon—a weapon she already knew would be useless—but the expected attack did not come.

The thing in front of her had a face.

"Klement! How did you . . . you're not. . . !" The Grail master was still holding the strange blue infant, although it was almost invisible in the dark night. "They're behind us," Renie said. "I've just seen them. You'd better run, too."

"I am . . . waiting."

"Waiting for what? To get eaten?"

Klement shook his head. "I do not know if this is the right . . . place. I . . . we . . . cannot feel. . . ."

Renie scrambled to her feet and pulled the quietly weeping Stone Girl up as well. "No time for this. You do whatever the hell you want." She swept the little girl into her arms, a weird mirror of Klement and his malformed charge, and sprinted ahead.

Once Renie looked back and was sure she saw maggoty-white shapes pursuing them, another time there seemed nothing behind her but endless vegetation. She no longer trusted her own eyes. Her lungs were burning. It seemed almost impossible to believe she had ever done anything but run through this endless, tangled nightmare world.

She was tripping and crawling her way up a long slope, the wildfire in the town now a small coin of flame in the black night behind her, when the Stone Girl's arm tightened around her neck.

"I feel it," the girl said. "We're almost there."

A high wall ran along the top of the hill, as leafy as everything else in More Very Bush. Renie stopped to lean against it, desperate to suck some new air into her chest before attempting the climb. She looked back and saw Klement walking stolidly up the hill, still a couple of hundred meters back. Behind him, but closing fast, half a dozen Ticks were sliding through the undergrowth like sharks. From this angle there was no question. They were moving rapidly and in concert. Whether it was Klement or Renie and her companion they were trailing, they were actively in pursuit!

Renie cursed bitterly. She lifted the little girl, who seemed to have tripled in weight, up onto the top of the fence, then left her clinging there while she began her own climb. Pulling herself up a vertical nearly defeated her, but somehow she found the strength.

From the top she could see the blessed river only a short distance away down the hill, its waters a meandering black stripe through the endless bramble. She turned again and saw that the Ticks had broken out of the deeper growth at the base of the hill and had almost caught up with Ricardo Klement. They boiled up the slope like hunting hounds, swiftly overtook him, then parted around him as though he were a tree in the middle of their path, leaving him untouched and seemingly unnoticed. Without a moment's hesitation they continued up the slope toward the spot where Renie still hung at the top of the wall, dumbfounded.

She had only enough time for a single startled and horrified curse, then she grabbed the Stone Girl and lowered her far enough to let her drop to the ground, then swung her own legs over and slid down the scraping branches.

"Where's the bridge?" she shouted to the Stone Girl. "They're right behind us!"

The little girl took her hand and pulled her on an angled course down the slope. The Ticks were flowing over the wall behind them like fingers of cloud coming down a mountainside. Renie snatched up the little girl and sprinted.