I had to hold tightly to the Fragments after untying the string for fear of the wind. Leaning back on my warm throne of sand, i lingered through the pile of pages looking for where I had left off. Matters had made a bitter mess of it, but it was not long before I found the image of the two miners and the foliate adrift on an ice floe in a near-frozen river.

Moissac was weakened by the intense cold. He lay on the ice, wrapped in a black coat, grunting and rolling slowly from side to side. All of his leaves had shriveled to brown, littering the surface of the floating island of ice. His face was barren bark, and the fire of his eyes was distant.

Beaton kneeled next to the foliate. Behind them stood Ives, the youngest of the original expedition. He held his rifle aimed, ready to fire, waiting for demons that weren't there. The wind blew fiercely. The sea was iron and the sky, dull.

"When I die, you must cut a hole in my chest. Inside, you will find a large brown seed with thorns. Take it with you and plant it in the spring," said Moissac.

Beaton wanted the foliate's thorny hand to release him.

"I will do that," he said.

"I have been to paradise," said Moissac.

"Tell me what I will find there," said Beaton.

"You will never get there; it is the paradise of plants. Humans have their own paradise."

"What is it like?" asked Beaton.

Moissac writhed back and forth wildly, and then a shudder began at his roots. Like a wind, it moved through his legs, his chest and extinguished his intelligence. Small trails of smoke came snaking up from his thatched sockets, but still he managed to say, "Like this," the words echoing up through Beaton's wrist.

He pulled out his knife and hacked away at the branches of Moissac's hand. The fingers still gripped him tightly like an elaborate wooden bracelet. It took him some time to chip and splinter the rest of it to pieces without cutting himself. When he was free, he plunged the knife blade into the chest of the foliate. Twigs cracked and flew as he sawed a hole in the chest. He lifted out the panel he had cut and found beneath it the promised seed.

That night the temperature dropped so fiercely that Ives could no longer keep the rifle in his hands. The ice floe came to a halt and Beaton realized that the river was freezing solid. He knew it was their only chance, a dash across the ice before the sun came up.

"Soon we are going to run," he told Ives.

"What about the demons?" asked the young man.

"There are no demons," said Beaton.

I rolled up the pages and retied them with the string. It was late afternoon before I got on my way, blazing a trail through the dunes. I swung the cane in my left hand and this helped me keep a brisk pace through the loose sand. For the first time, I felt some relief from the idea that Matters might hunt me down. I thought that if I was careful I could easily avoid him. The beating I had given him reminded me of some of those brutal encounters when I had been a Physiognomist, First Class, and it clearly brought back those dirty fighting skills. I was sure that in hand-to-hand combat, I was his superior.

The dunes of Doralice seemed endless. When night fell I finally just crawled to the top of one of the taller ones and lay down among the sea grass. The stars were magnificent, so perfectly clear you could see the space around them. I held the monkey cane across my chest and wondered what had happened in the mine that day, who had finally turned to salt and how it might have affected Matters's mind.

It was all very amusing until I heard the first howl. After the fifth howl, I could tell the dogs were drawing closer and closer from every direction and seemed to be converging on me. I grabbed the pages under my arm and held the cane up in a defensive posture. In moments, though, I could see the absurdity of my position. I had to get off the dune or I would be trapped.

I slid down the side and landed softly on the sand below. Once I had my feet beneath me, I began to run. The valleys of the dunes echoed with the barking of the wild dogs, and I had no idea where I was going. All I could think of was the demon attack I had been through with Bataldo and Calloo, and the sounds of the approaching beasts filled me with terror.

I expected at any moment that one would leap out of the sea grass at me as I rounded the turns in the sandy labyrinth. My leg muscles were burning, and I could hardly draw breath, but I fled until I tripped and landed with my face in the sand. I could see nothing, but I heard the low chorus of dogs begin to build around me.

As I stood, I waved the cane in front of me to ward them off. They began to snap and growl. Clearing the sand from my face, I saw what seemed a hundred pairs of yellow eyes bobbing in the shadows. Their upper incisors were like down-curving tusks, and their ears came to sharp points. They leaped forward. I shouted and swung the cane, and they jumped back. I had to keep turning inside their circle to try to stare them down all at once.

It became clear to me very soon that they were more than willing to let me stew there until I was weakened by fear. I had no choice but to comply. To make matters worse, a few had begun running laps around the outside of their circle, always counter to the direction I was turning. Trying to keep them in view made my head ache. I could hear them breathing heavily, a kind of weird, hungry laughter.

I turned for hours, to the right, to the left, and then I turned inward, spinning a glimpse of Aria moving amid the dogs. When I blinked she disappeared, but soon after her, I saw young Ives fall through the ice. I could feel the pack sense my confusion, because things got suddenly quiet. Trying to keep my sanity, I cut to ribbons with the cane a phantom of the mayor as he lurched out of the night, arm reaching forward, a perfect black hole in the middle of his forehead.

It leaped on my back, driving me to the ground. I could feel it snapping at my ear, trying to get to my throat. Covering my face with one arm, I rolled over and stabbed it with the end of the cane so hard I heard ribs cracking. It yelped and leaped off me. The next one was already on its way. I heard it running before I could turn to see. There was just enough time for me to hoist the cane up like a club and swing. The ivory monkey bit down into the dog's eye as my boot came up for the jaw.

I had sustained quite a few bites and scratches, and also wounded a good number of them, but near dawn, a shot rang out from the top of a nearby dune and the explosion chased off the dogs. I wasn't sure at first if it was another apparition or really Corporal Matters and Silencio coming toward me. The corporal wore no wig, and through his closely cropped hair I could see a suture that cut a longitudinal hemisphere across his scalp. He carried two pistols, both of which were aimed at my heart. Silencio followed close behind, carrying a rope.

"You've got a mother lode of sulphur to dig, Cley," said Matters. He looked down at Silencio and said, "Tie him up."

The traitorous monkey tied my hands behind my back and then wound the rope three times around my neck, leaving a long leash in front by which he could lead me. When he was done with the job, he clapped and did a back flip. Matters ordered him to bring the cane which was covered with dog blood. Silencio tugged me by the neck and brought the corporal his stick. I thought he was going to cry when he saw the condition it was in.

"I'd love more than life itself to beat you this very moment, Cley, but I'm saving you for something finer," he said, controlling his obvious anger. He walked close behind me with one of the pistols trained on the back of my head. Silencio led the way, the end of my leash over his shoulder.

"The monkey tracked you for a case of Three Fingers," said Matters. "After you're gone, he'll need it to console himself."