Passing a woman frying sausages on a brazier, he paused longingly, then moved on still hungry.

An hour later, after some hard bargaining, he was the owner of a battered pony cart. Though hardly more than a large box set on a single axle, it looked sturdy enough. This, and the purchase of a few modest provisions, left him with exactly two copper halfs and the Skalan coin. Buying a horse was clearly out of the question.

Time I turned thief for good, he thought, still stinging from Seregil's parting admonition.

He returned to the inn for a few hour's sleep, then slipped quietly downstairs just before dawn.

Letting himself out a side door, he pulled on his boots and headed for the stable.

Great droves of silver-gilded clouds moved slowly past the sinking moon. Alec's heart hammered uncomfortably in his chest as he lifted the latch on the stable door. With a silent prayer to Illior, protector of thieves, he crept in.

A guttering night lantern gave enough light for him to avoid the drunken stable hand snoring in an empty stall. Moving on, a shaggy brown and white pony caught his eye. Throwing a halter around its neck, he led the beast out to the nearby alley where he'd hidden the cart and harnessed it. With this completed, he hurried back to the room.

Seregil was awake and ready to go. One look told Alec that his night had not been a peaceful one.

Despite this, he eyed Alec's cart and pony with a shadow of his old crooked smile, his face just visible in the failing moonlight.

"Which one did you pay for?" he asked softly.

"The cart."

"Good."

By sunrise they were well on their way to Keston.

The road wound through rolling winter-bare farmland and countryside and they met only a few wagons and an occasional patrol of the local militia. With the harvest in and the Gold Road closing down until spring, Mycena would be a quiet place through the winter.

Seregil sank deeper into gloomy silence through the day, answering Alec's few attempts at conversation in such a dispirited manner that he soon gave up. When they stopped for the night at a wayside inn, Seregil retired immediately, leaving Alec to sit alone over his ale in the common room.

By the next morning Seregil's hunger had faded to a hollow ache; even the thought of water nauseated him.

Worse still, he was feeling guilty about Alec. The boy had proved too honorable to run off, but how he must be regretting his vow to stay. Seregil was trying to gather the strength for pleasant conversation as they road along when a hint of motion caught his eye off to the left. He turned quickly, but the field was empty. He rubbed at his eyes, thinking it was a trick of his weakened body, but the flicker came again, just on the edge of his vision.

"What's the matter?" asked Alec, giving him a puzzled look.

"Nothing." Seregil scanned the empty countryside. "Thought I saw something."

The annoying flicker came repeatedly as the day went on, and by afternoon he was more tense and withdrawn than ever. It might be some new quirk of the madness growing in him, he thought, but well-tried instincts counseled otherwise. Another violent headache had also grown through the day, leaving him too dull-witted and queasy to give the matter proper consideration.

Pulling his cloak tight against the cold wind, he kept watch and fought off the desire to sleep.

They spent that night in the hayloft of a lonely farmstead. Seregil's nightmares returned in force and he woke up bathed in a cold sweat at dawn.

An undefined sense of anxiety gnawed at him; he couldn't recall the details of the dream, but the wary sidelong glances he caught from Alec suggested that he'd been more restless than usual. He was just considering asking the boy about it when he thought he saw motion in a dark corner of the barn. Alec was busy with the harness and didn't see him brace, reaching for the sword that no longer hung at his side. There was nothing there.

This will be his fourth day without eating, Alec thought as they rattled off down the road again.

Wan and hollow-eyed as Seregil looked, he was bearing up better than Alec had imagined possible. Physically, that was; Seregil's odd behavior was increasingly alarming.

Today he sat hunched over like an old man, despondent except for occasional bursts of intent alertness. At those moments, a terrible glitter came in his eyes and his fists would clench until it seemed his knuckles must surely break through the skin. This new development, coupled with the strange events of the previous night, did not bode well.

Alec was beginning to be as frightened of Seregil as he was for him.

He hadn't intended to sleep the previous night, but the exhaustion of the past few days caught up with him and he'd dozed off. In the middle of the night he'd awakened to find Seregil crouched less than a foot away, eyes shining like a cat's in the dark, his breathing was so harsh it was almost a growl. Motionless, he simply stared at Alec.

Alec wasn't certain how long they'd remained frozen like that, staring each other down, but Seregil finally turned away and threw himself down in the straw.

Alec had spent the remainder of the night keeping watch from a safe distance.

In the morning neither of them spoke of the incident.

Alec doubted whether Seregil recalled it at all. But that, together with Seregil's nervous vigilance today, strengthened his resolve to not close his eyes again until he could lock his companion safely in a ship's cabin at sea.

Driving along in daylight, however, Alec could see all too clearly how Seregil was suffering. Reaching behind the bench, he pulled out one of their tattered blankets and laid it over his shoulders.

"You're not looking so good."

"Neither are you," Seregil croaked through dry lips.

"If we drive through the night, we might make Keston by tomorrow afternoon. I could probably manage the reins for a while-if you need to sleep."

"No, I'll be fine!" Alec replied quickly. Too quickly, it seemed, for Seregil turned away and resumed his morose vigil.

The sense of pursuit grew stronger as the day dragged on. Seregil was beginning to catch glimpses of whatever it was that stalked him, a glimmer of movement, the blur of a dark figure that disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Just after midday he started so violently that Alec laid a hand on his arm.

"What is it?" he demanded. "You've been doing that since yesterday."

"It's nothing," Seregil muttered, but this time he was certain he'd caught sight of someone on the road far behind them.

Soon after, they topped the crest of a hill and came upon a Dalnan funeral. Several well-dressed men and women and two young children stood by the road, singing as they watched a young farmer driving an ox and plow in the middle of an empty field. The winter soil gave way grudgingly before the plowshare, coming up in frozen plates of earth. An elderly woman followed the driver, scattering handfuls of ash from a wooden bowl into the fresh furrow. When the last of it was gone, she carefully wiped out the inside of the dish with a handful of earth and poured it out onto the ground. The farmer turned the ox and plowed slowly back over it.

A dusting of snow floated down as Alec and Seregil rattled past in their cart.

"It's the same as in the north," Alec remarked.

Seregil glanced back listlessly.

"The way they plow the ashes of the dead back into the earth, I mean. And the song they were singing was the same."

"I didn't notice. What was it?"

Encouraged by his companion's show of interest, Alec sang:

"All that we are is given by you, O Dalna, Maker and Provider.

In death we return your bounty and become one with your wondrous creation.

Accept the dead back into the fertile earth that new life may spring from the ashes