Mena was at this for some time, working one-armed, stumbling because of her own injuries and fatigue. She could not help but speak to the creature. She kept apologizing, commenting on her features, talking as if she were a nurse and the patient simply holding to silence. Perhaps, she said, not all changed creatures should die. Perhaps she should have taken the time to see this one first. She wished she had.

Eventually, she had dealt with everything but the creature's head. Before she turned to it, she thought she would touch it with care. Lift and twist it over, set it right. She could do that. She would. She owed it that. So thinking, she turned and froze at what she saw.

The creature's head-which had been upside down-was now right side up. Her eyes were open. She was watching her.

C HAPTER

Dariel's eyes snapped open. He went from the nothingness of dreamless sleep to complete alertness. His heart, in its first seconds of wakefulness, banged against the cage of his chest like an animal trying to escape. Where was he? He was sitting upright, held in position by a band wrapped around his chest, hands still bound but his mouth free. He had no memory. He knew, though-as if pierced physically with the knowledge-that the things he had forgotten were huge. His gaze flew about the room, taking in individual things one by one: a water stain on the rough stone of the ceiling, iron rings bolted into the wall, a hanging lantern that cast a peculiarly constant light, the bare back of a heavily muscled, completely gray man sitting on a stool several paces away.

On this his eyes stopped. The man appeared to be eating. He made slight huffing sounds, interspersed with wet noises and an occasional crack, like twigs or bones being broken. He was a giant of a man. He was-Of course! It all came back. He was the one Dariel had seen on the docks of the Other Lands, the one who had lifted him bodily and carried him tucked beneath his arm. He was proof that it had all actually happened: the Lothan Aklun killed, the sea dotted with bodies, the strangeness of the city's inhabitants, Devoth of the Auldek stirred to anger, Sire Neen beheaded.

"Giver return," escaped Dariel's lips, a pious entreaty for aid unusual to him.

The gray man must have heard it. He stopped eating, head cocked, and then slowly eased his bulk around to face Dariel. He let out a low rumble of sound, sinister, bestial. It was hard not hear it that way, for the man's appearance could not have been more frightening. He was preposterously muscled, with two thick legs, a thin waist, and a torso ridged with neat compartments. His bulk flared up and out from there, chest muscles bulging beneath his gray skin, shoulder joints like two round stones, neck as thick as a boar's. And a boar was what he was. A swine in near-human form.

He approached Dariel, who bucked away from him, straining against the strap that held him fast. He kicked out with his feet, but could neither touch the man nor find purchase enough to move on the slick stone. The man brushed the locks of wavy black hair from his face with the wedge of his hand. He was just as tusked and horrific as Dariel remembered. The golden curves punched straight through his cheeks, just below the corners of his lips. "Ahhh, you awake. Good to see it! Thought you was dead on fright." He followed this with that same low rumble of sound. It took Dariel a moment to identify it: a chuckle. He was laughing. "You got tan skin," the man said in his deep timbre, "but you looking white just now. What, you think I going to eat you?" He reached out and tapped the ball of a large thumb on Dariel's cheek. "Truth is, I more like you than you know just yet."

Hearing Acacian coming from this man's mouth was both welcoming and alarming. His accent was strange. The words were spoken clearly enough, but the inflections he used were kin to no one region of the Known World. Still, Dariel could not help but find some hope. They spoke the same language. That was something to cling to.

The man stepped away, tugged his stool nearer, and returned. He sat down facing Dariel, leaning forward with elbows on his knees and fingers interlaced. "Name Tunnel. Hear it? Tun-nel."

Just when Dariel was getting over the surprise of the man's speaking to him in Acacian, he was shoved back into confusion. Name a tunnel? What tunnel? That couldn't be what he'd said. "What?"

The man smacked a palm against his pectoral muscle. "Tunnel. Name Tunnel." He bared his teeth, seemingly pleased. "Tunnel."

"You mean," Dariel sputtered, "your name is Tunnel?"

"He speak proper words! Good to hear it!"

Dariel shook his head. He closed his eyes and opened them and found everything exactly as it had been a moment before. Tunnel stood grinning at him; that, he realized, was what that ferocious-looking baring of teeth actually was. He was smiling. He had gold tusks and wire whiskers, gray skin and muscles that would have put a bull to shame. His name was Tunnel. Simple, really. What was he acting so perplexed about?

With all the feigned calm he could muster, Dariel said, "Hello, Tunnel. Very glad to make your acquaintance. Since you're not going to eat me, would you consider loosening these chains?"

This amused the giant more than anything yet. "Listen that. How pretty you speak! I told her we should keep your tongue in your mouth. Good we did."

Dariel creased his forehead. "I wouldn't disagree with you."

"No, you wouldn't. You be agreeable for sure. Best that way." He inched his stool closer. "Tell me, you really a prince? Akaran for true?"

Had he anything to go on, Dariel would have weighed the pros and cons of answering this question. But he knew nothing about what had happened, what was happening, where he was, or in whose power. Without anything to shape his answer, he shrugged and chose the truth. "Yes."

"What's your name, then?"

"I'm Dariel Akaran. Son of Leodan and Aleera Akaran." Saying the names, Dariel felt a tide of indignation sweep up from his guts. "In Leodan's name I demand you loosen these chains this minute! I'm a prince of Acacia! You cannot-"

"Dariel," the man said, rolling it around his mouth as he pronounced it. "Dariel Akaran. Son of Leodan and Aleera. I know them names, you know? We all know them names, and the ones before. Gridulan, yes?"

"My grandfather."

"That's the one. Tinhadin and them old devils, too. We know them all. Edifus."

Dariel shifted, trying to ease the pressure of the strap around his chest. He already felt his indignation slipping away, though he could not have said why. "You know much of my family, I see. I don't know anything of you or of here, of where I am or-"

"You don't know anything!" Tunnel said this with considerable joy. Clearly, he had suspected as much already, but he appeared pleased that Dariel confirmed it. "Don't know a knuckle's worth and, look, you a prince! Could be you more than that. Could be you Rhuin Fa."

"Rune Fay?"

Tunnel scowled, an expression only slightly more unnerving than his smile. "That's wrong way to say it. Rhuin Fa," he repeated, enunciating with exaggerated lip and tongue motions. "For a long time-I mean a long time-we been waiting for Rhuin Fa."

"Rhuin Fa… is a person?"

"It's you, maybe. Is the one who will come from the Old Land and flip the world. That's what they say. 'Flip the world.' Can you do that?" Tunnel broke into his horrifying smile again. "Rhuin Fa supposed to come for his children. Take them home. Tell how much he love them. Understand? We been waiting a long time. Generations, you know. Pass, pass, pass." He waved his thick fingers impatiently, indicating these passing generations. "All the time hoping for Rhuin Fa. All the time thinking he coming, knowing he can't go on doing that way forever." He drew back, pursed his lips, and squinted one eye nearly closed. "You know it's wrong, don't you? What they done to all us children. That's why you need to flip it."