Stretched out on the thick fragrant bed of fallen needles, Micum snored softly. Beside him, Seregil tossed restlessly, muttering in Aurenfaie.

The wizard had felt little need for sleep since his arrival in Plenimar. The quiet hours of the night were too precious to waste. Instead, he kept watch and wove his meditations, nurturing his returning strength. He only hoped it would be enough when the time came.

Seregil shifted again, uttering a low moan.

Nysander considered waking him, sharing this first sign of hope, but it was too soon; if Seregil believed Alec, was nearby, then he would strike off on his own after him. Alec was still too far away.

Leaning back against the pine's knobby trunk, he resumed his lonely vigil.

The Four was whole again; they would find each other.

Beka's raiders pushed due east until the moon set. At dawn they found themselves on a rocky highland overlooking the misty blue sea in the distance.

Mim's and Gilly's hands looked like bloated gloves, mottled with angry shades of purple, red, and yellow. When Braknil had finished with the new dressings, Beka drew him a little apart from the others.

"You've seen this before. What do you think?" she asked, keeping her voice low.

"I'd give a year's bounty for a drysian." The sergeant was careful to keep his back to the others.

"Even then I don't know if the hands could be saved. As it is here, field dressing's the best I can do and I've got no simples to work with but brine. That might be enough to draw the pus off, but if they take the blood poisoning—" He gave a small, expressive shrug. "Well, it'd be kinder to speed them on."

Looking back to the others, Beka watched Tare coaxing the wounded men to drink.

"Thirty-four of us rode out of Rhiminee together, a green lieutenant and green troops, except for you," Beka said grimly. "Now look at us."

"It was that attack on the regiment that cleaned us out,"

Braknil reminded her. "You led us well there. What happened wasn't your fault. Every one of us that fell went down with honor. We've fared damn well with all the raiding we've done since and that is your doing. All that counts now is getting back to our own lines with what we've learned."

Beka gave her sergeant a weary half smile. "So you keep telling me. Let's see if Mirn and Gilly have anything to add."

"Some of the other prisoners spoke some Skalan," Mim told them weakly, his head resting on Steb's leg. "One of them said the general's name is Mardus, a lord of some degree. He's got necromancers with him, too."

"Necromancers," snorted Gilly, staring down at his useless hands. "One of them looked more demon than wizard. Black as something raked out of the fire, but alive as you or me! No one knew where we were headed, but everyone knew what was going on at night and it was her doing it!"

"It was some kind of sacrifice," explained Mirn. "The guards came every night at sundown and you could see everyone trying to shrink down out of sight any way they could, hoping they wouldn't be the ones chosen. We were on the other side of camp from the ceremony most nights, but we could hear well enough to know that they were cutting up the poor buggers alive—"

He broke off, shuddering. "Afterward the other wizard, the man, would conjure up a black fetch to take away the bodies. The next day we'd march right over the spot where it happened and I swear to you, there wouldn't be so much as a drop of blood anywhere."

"A black fetch?" several riders murmured uneasily.

"By the Flame! You suppose that's what we heard howling in the woods last night?" Tare asked.

"Go on," Beka urged, ignoring the others.

"What I'll never figure is why they didn't do us," Gilly groaned, his voice suddenly unsteady. "By the Flame, Lieutenant, we were enemy captives. They planked us, all right, but nothing more. All the rest of the lot were plain folk: sailors taken by press gangs, Skalans, Mycenians. Women and children, too. But most of them were Plenimarans. Their own people!"

Both men fell silent, then Mirn sighed. "Sorry, Lieutenant, that's about all there is to tell."

Beka shook her head. "Don't apologize. You rest easy now." Getting to her feet, she looked around at the others.

"I figure we can't be more than four or five days ride from Mycena. If we're lucky, our side's made some headway south by now. Ariani, I'm sending you back to the regiment with a verbal dispatch. Take the two best horses, ride as hard as you can, and get word back to Commander Klia about what we've seen."

Ariani snapped a proud salute. "I will, Lieutenant."

"Corporal Nikides, you're in charge of taking back the wounded. We'll rig up drag litters for Mirn and Gilly here. Steb, you'll go with them. The rest of us will dog the column for a few more days."

Steb looked down at Mirn, clearly torn in his loyalties. "With all due respect, Lieutenant, that only leaves twelve of you. I can shoot and fight as well with one eye as ever I did with two."

"That's why I need you to protect the wounded," she told him, and saw his look of relief. "That goes for you, too, Nikides," she added, seeing that the corporal was about to object. "Head north as fast as you can. You're my secondary couriers in case Ariani doesn't make it. The rest of us are staying to spy, not fight."

Leaving Braknil in charge, Beka made a wide circuit of the camp, coming to a halt at last on a west-facing outcrop downhill from the others. She could hear them grumbling among themselves.

Those being sent away were none too happy about leaving the others behind; those staying wondered what more there was to be learned.

Beka sighed heavily. She'd already wrestled with the decision to further fragment what was left of the turma. None of her superiors would fault her for turning back now.

But what would they say about her reasons for staying? As her eye wandered north up the coastline she again felt the strange impression of familiarity and lightness that had come over her the night they'd first seen the comet.

Whoever this Lord Mardus was, whatever he was up to with his necromancers and pointless marches to nowhere, newly honed instincts told Beka that she was too close to learning his secrets to leave off now.

47

Cries rang out behind him as Alec fled the little clearing. The voices of the Man and the Other mingled for a moment, then were silent. An inchoate sense of confusion stirred again, but his animal consciousness drove him on, deeper into the forest and away from the carrion reek. He scented other Men in the forest around him but they were easy enough to evade.

The first time Nysander had cast the spell of intrinsic nature on him, all those months ago in the safety of the Oreska garden, Alec's conscious identity had been so totally overwhelmed by that of his beast form that Nysander had hastily changed him back before he could harm himself or anyone else in the resulting confusion.

It was the same this time, and it had been his overpowering animal flight instinct that had undoubtedly saved his life.

The wind was alive with scent as he dashed headlong through the darkness. Heeding the warnings that came to his nose, he avoided the Plenimaran pickets, bounding through thickets and over gullies and deadfalls with unthinking ease. As he fled, his mind slowly recovered from the shock of the change, blending with that of the stag into a state of heightened awareness that was neither animal nor human.

Emerging from the trees onto a rocky sea cliff, he stopped for a moment, muzzle dark with foam. Below him the tide crashed against the rocks, sending up great fans of spray.

The comet was burning across the sky and sight of it sent a fresh wave of panic through him. Every muscle trembled and twitched, every instinct screamed flight.