There was danger. I felt it now. The jamadars were nervous and excited. I let my psychic sense sharpen despite the aura of the grove. It was like taking a deep breath in a hot room where a corpse had been rotting for a week. I persevered. If I could take the dreams without bending I could take this.

I asked Narayan a question that sent him off on another ramble. I concentrated on form and pattern in my psychic surroundings.

I spotted it.

I was ready when it happened.

He was a black rumel man, a jamadar with a reputation nearly rivalling Narayan’s, Moma Sharrael, Vehdna. When we’d been introduced I’d had the feeling he was a man who killed for himself, not for his goddess. His rumel moved like black lightning.

I grabbed the weighted end on the fly. I took it away before he recovered his balance, snapped it around his neck. It seemed I’d played this game always, or as though another hand guided my own. I did cheat a little, using a silent spell to strike at his heart. I wasted no mercy. I sensed that that would be an error as deadly as not reacting at all.

I would have had no chance had I not sensed the wrongness gathering around me.

No one cried out. No one said a word. They were shaken, even Narayan. Nobody looked at me. For no reason apparent at the moment, I said, “Mother is not pleased.”

That got me a few startled looks. I folded Moma’s rumel as Narayan had taught me, discarded my yellow cloth and took the black. No one argued with my self-promotion.

How to reach these men without hearts? They were impressed now, but not indelibly, not permanently. “Ram.”

Ram came out of the darkness. He did not speak for fear of betraying his feelings. I think he might have stepped in if Moma’s attack had succeeded, though that would have been the end of him. I gave him instructions.

He got a rope and looped one end around the dead man’s left ankle, tossed the rope over a branch, hauled the corpse up so it hung head down over the fire. “Excellent, Ram. Excellent. Everyone gather round.”

They came reluctantly as the summons spread. Once they were all there I cut Moma’s jugular.

The blood did not come fast but it came. A small spell made each drop flash when it reached the fire. I seized Narayan’s right arm, forced him to put his hand out and let a few drops fall on his palm. Then I turned him loose. “All of you,” I said.

Kina’s followers do not like spilled blood. There is a complex and irrational explanation having to do with the legend of the devoured demons. Narayan told me later. It has a bearing only because it made the evening more memorable for those men once they had the blood of their fellow on their hands.

They did not look at me while they endured my little ceremony. I used the opportunity to hazard a spell that, to my surprise, came off without a hitch. It turned the stains on their hands as indelible as tattoos. Unless I took it back they would go through life with one hand marked scarlet.

The jamadars and priests were mine, like it or not. They were branded. The world would not forgive them that brand if its meaning became known. Men with red palms would not be able to deny that they had been present at the debut of the Daughter of Night.

Nowhere did I see any doubts, now, that I was what Narayan claimed.

The dreams were powerful that night but not grim. I floated in the warmth of the approval of that other who wanted to make me her creature.

Ram wakened me before there was light enough to see. He and Narayan and I rode out before the sun rose. Narayan did not speak all day. He remained in shock.

His dreams were coming true. He did not know if that was what he wanted anymore. He was scared.

So was I.

Longshadow had fallen into a permanent rage. The wizard Smoke, a trivial little nothing, was stubborn. He was determined not to be enslaved. He might die first.

A howl echoed through Overlook. The Shadowmaster glanced up, imagined mockery in the cry. That bastard Howler. He had pulled a fast one somehow. No one else could have freed Shadowspinner. Treachery. Always treachery. He would pay. How he would pay. His agony would go on for years.

Later. There was damage to be undone. There was that damnable little wizard to be broken.

What had happened at Stormgard?

The obvious assumption was that the Lifetaker character had been her. Dorotea Senjak had been in Taglios. Of that there was no doubt. But she did not have the powers to battle Shadowspinner to a draw while ensuring the defeat of his armies.

Who had that been with her, bearing the Lance? The real power?

A flicker of fear. He dropped his work, climbed to his crystal chamber, looked out on the plain of glittering stone. Forces were moving. Not even he could grasp them all. Maybe that had not been her. Maybe she was gone. The tamed shadows had seen no sign of her for some time. Maybe she had gone north again after taking her revenge. She’d always wanted to rule her sister’s empire.

Was there an unknown player in the game? Were Lifetaker and Widowmaker more than phantoms conjured by Senjak? The shadows thought some power was guiding her. Suppose Lifetaker and Widowmaker were real beings? Suppose they had put the notion into her head to create imitations so everyone would believe them unreal, actors, till it was too late?

Grim presentiments. Grim questions. And no answers.

Sunlight danced among the pillars on the plain. The Howler wailed. The wizard’s groans echoed through the fortress.

It was closing in.

He had to capture Senjak. She was the keystone. Her head held the keys to power. She knew the Names. She knew the Truths. She contained secrets that could be hammered into weapons capable of stemming even that dark tide waiting to break out of the plain.

But first, the wizard. Before all else, Smoke. Smoke would give him Taglios and maybe Senjak.

He returned to the room where the little man battled his terror and pain. “There will be an end to this foolish resistance. Now. I have lost patience. Now I will find what you fear and feed you to it.”

Blade’s army moved in twenty-mile stages. He scouted heavily, used his cavalry exhaustively. Sindhu’s men, who had hurried ahead to discover what had become of the Deceivers watching Dejagore, reported finding no sign of those men.

Blade took the news to Mather. “What do you think?”

Mather shook his head. “Probably killed or captured.”

Swan and Mather had their own scouts out, farther south. Swan said, “Word we have is the Shadowlanders really did get whipped bad. Our guys got past their pickets and checked their camp. There’s only two-thirds as many of them as there should be. Half of those are dinged up. That character Mogaba keeps hitting them with sorties, too. They never get to relax.”

“Are they watching us? Do they know we’re coming?”

Mather said, “You have to assume they do. Shadowspinner is a sorcerer. They don’t call him a Shadowmaster for nothing. And there’s the bats. Croaker thought they controlled the bats. There have been plenty of those around lately.”

“Then we should be very careful. How many effectives can they field if they decide to meet us?”

“Listen to this guy, Cordy,” Swan said. “He’s starting to sound like a pro. Effectives. My, oh my. She’s going to turn him into a real ass-kicking warlord.”

Blade chuckled.

“Too many of them if you ask me,” Swan continued. “If they sneak them away without Mogaba noticing they probably could put eight or ten thousand veterans in our way.”

“With the Shadowmaster?”

Mather said, “I doubt he would leave. That would be an invitation to disaster.”