Tol slept no more that night. The cold was merciless, held at bay only by the little fire he tended. Conditions promised to be even harsher in the higher elevations ahead.

They skirted Caergoth the next day, keeping well clear of the flow of travelers drawn to the city. They saw smoke rising from myriad chimneys and knew snug hostels and a hot meal waited within the city’s walls, but also within were potential informers and assassins. The wizard’s gold could buy a great deal of trouble in Caergoth, so they were forced to pass it by, keeping to the gray shadows in the snowy woods.

The cold and lack of sleep wore on Tol, but he pushed onward even harder. Echo Pass, the gateway to Mount Axas, was eighty-odd leagues from Daltigoth, an eight-day journey under the best conditions. The deep snow would make the going even slower, but Tol was determined to make the pass in five days. Mandes’s dreams tormented him only by night, when he slept. If night and slumber were required for the attacks on his friends, Tol wanted to reduce the number of opportunities Mandes had to strike at them.

They turned north, following the west bank of the Caer River. Once they were through the Forest of Aposh, north of Caergoth, the snow eased. By late afternoon they had reached the fork of the Caer, where Tol had found the millstone in the Irda ruins half a lifetime ago.

The sky north and east was a band of bright blue, shining under the wooly mantle of clouds behind them. Across the fork was the Eastern Hundred, Tol’s old homeland. The high plain was dry, only lightly dusted with snow, but a bitter wind scoured down from the north, bringing tears to their eyes and cracking their parched lips. Early taught Tol an old kender trick: he smeared butter on their faces. The grease would protect them from the desiccating wind.

They camped on the bluff overlooking the confluence of the east and west branches of the Caer. Their short day ended, with Early laying the night’s campfire as Tol gazed down at the Irda ruins, almost invisible beneath the vines and brambles. He would like to visit the ruins but feared Mandes might be watching from afar. He didn’t dare betray any knowledge of the Irda. Mandes might connect that with Tol’s puzzling immunity to magic and infer the existence of the millstone.

The horses, tethered in the lee of the icy wind, huddled together for warmth. Tol fed and watered them, noting how they trembled with cold and fatigue, even his stalwart Tetchy. Tol felt as miserable as they looked.

Early, lying in his bedroll, groaned loudly. Though a seasoned wanderer, he’d never ridden so hard or so long in a single day before. He claimed to be too tired to sleep.

Tol, loath to fall asleep and leave himself open to Mandes’s manipulations, kept himself awake by regaling Early about his past, relating his adventures in the Great Green as a youth, how he had defeated the Dom-shu chief in single combat and thus earned his two “wives,” Miya and Kiya. He’d just begun to speak of XimXim and the Tarsis war when the kender interrupted him with a piping snore.

Tol sighed. He drained the last of the broth from his cup and hunkered down, facing the fire. His eyelids slowly closed.

Instead of the dreaded sound of Mandes’s voice, instead of the bitter, icy wind, Tol dreamt of warmth. He was on the Bay of Ergoth, the Blood Fleet under his command. The thumping of oars, the salt breeze, the hot sun were balm to his soul. He leaned against the mast of the quinquireme Thunderer and let the wonderful heat penetrate his bones.

“Ship to starboard, two points off the beam! A merchantman!”

Tol shifted his gaze. Though he’d given no order, the helm was put over, and the galley churned toward the tubby merchant ship. Sailors spilled out on deck, distributing cutlasses and pikes. A springald catapult on the poop was winched around and quickly cleared for action.

“Stand down!” Tol said. “We’re not attacking.”

No one paid him the slightest heed. Indeed, the pirates rushed past him as if he wasn’t even there. He tried to grab the nearest fellow and found he couldn’t. His reaching hands passed through the pirate’s sun-browned arms without hindrance.

The merchant ship piled on more sail and turned, trying to run from the powerful galley. The pirates unfurled a sail of their own, adding the wind’s power to their oars. Inexorably, Thunderer overhauled the clumsy trader. Soon Tol could see men stirring on its deck. Bronze glinted in the ship’s waist. They were preparing to resist.

The galley could have rammed the fleeing ship easily, but that would’ve destroyed the pirates’ plunder. They had to board her. Pulling parallel to the merchant, separated by only the length of the portside oars, the pirates trained the catapult on their prey and let fly.

Instead of a wooden javelin or stone ball, they flung a bronze-tipped arrow tied to. a long line. It buried itself deeply in the merchant’s hull. The galley’s portside oars were run in, and a dozen pirates hauled away on the line, drawing the two ships together.

A horn blared. Pirates swarmed over the galley’s side and onto the merchant ship’s deck. Iron clashed, blood flowed, and men toppled into the sea. Tol dashed back and forth, shouting for the pirates to cease, but he was a phantom to them, unseen and unheard.

– and then he was on the deck of the merchant ship. The ship’s waist was a busy battlefield, with sailors from both ships locked in fierce combat. On the sterncastle, men in Ergothian armor fended off twice their number in pirates. In the midst of the frantic throng, Tol spotted a familiar face.

“Darpo!”

Tol tried to go to his comrade, but his feet were sluggish, as though mired in mud. He could barely make any headway.

Bowstrings twanged. Pirates had gained the rigging of the merchant ship. Holding on with their legs, they drew and loosed arrows into the defenders. Tol watched in horror as one archer took deliberate aim at Darpo, unaccountably the only Ergothian warrior who wasn’t sporting a helmet.

“Darpo! Look out!”

With awful clarity, Tol saw the archer release. The arrow hummed forward, twisting through the air as the fletching caught the wind.

Darpo cut down a bare-chested pirate and stood back to draw a breath. At that instant he must have heard the arrow’s thrum, because he turned toward it-

– and received the broadhead in one eye.

Tol bolted upright, shouting hoarsely. Early sat, legs folded, staring across the small fire at him.

Uncharacteristically, Tol began to curse. Disheveled, the sweat rapidly cooling on him in the frigid night air, he clenched his hands into fists and cursed.

“What did you see this time?” Early asked. His voice was strange, low and deep.

“Darpo-my old friend Darpo, commanding the imperial fleet. I was on a pirate ship that attacked him.” Tol swallowed hard. “He was shot by an arrow-”

He shivered, then was struck by several thoughts. It was winter now, yet in his vision the weather had been warm. That could not be. Besides, Darpo was in command of Thunderer, not plying the seas on a merchant vessel being attacked by Thunderer.

“It must’ve been only a bad dream,” he said, forcing himself to breathe deeply, forcing himself to believe his own words. “Only a dream!”

“I fear not. What you saw was truth, disguised as memory and dream. Something grave may have befallen Darpo.”

The kender sounded so unlike his usual breezy self Tol said sharply, “How do you know all this, little one?”

“Sometimes I see far.”

Early’s face had taken on a completely different cast, more serious, more powerful-and was his skin darker than before?

Tol shook off the strange impression. Lack of sleep and raw nerves were affecting his judgment. Wasn’t that just what Mandes wanted?