Meg and Conrad did the cooking at the fire that Conrad lighted only a short distance in front of the steps leading up to the chapel. The lights from the flames of the fire washed across the whiteness of the tiny structure.

Up on the hill to the west a wolf howled and was answered by another from the north.

"Some of those we saw early in the day," said Conrad. "They are still around."

"The wolves have been bad this year," said Andrew.

The glen, as full night came down, held the dank, wet feel of fear, of danger walking on soft pads, moving in on them. Duncan, feeling this, wondered if this sense of apprehension arose from having seen the defamation of the crucifix, or if it would have been present if there had been no chapel and no crucifix.

"Conrad and I will do double watch tonight," said Duncan.

"You're forgetting me again," said Andrew, but with something in his voice that sounded to Duncan as if it might be relief.

"We want you rested," said Duncan. "The both of you, so that we can put in a long day tomorrow. We'll start as soon as we can see. Well before full morning light."

He stood beside the fire, staring out into the dark. It was hard, he found, not to take alarm at an imagined shape or an imagined noise.

Twice he thought he saw movement out beyond the campfire circle, but each time decided it was no more than his imagination, sharpened by the fear that he sought to conceal but could not, himself, deny.

The wolves occasionally howled, not only from the west and north, but from the east and south as well. This country, he told himself, was crawling with the beasts. However, the howls still were from a distance; the wolves did not seem to be moving in. They might come later, Duncan told himself, after they had worked up more courage, and the activity about the campfire had quieted down. Although of wolves, they need have no fear. If they came in, Daniel and Tiny would wreak havoc on them.

If there were anything to be feared, it would be something other than the wolves. Remembering, once again he saw the frog's mouth full of teeth, the glowing eyes, the suggestion of a face that was made up of smooth planes and sharp angles—the face that had stared out at them from beyond the campfire of the night before. And the snaky evilness that had surged out of the black pool in the swamp.

Meg called them in for food and they squatted around the fire, wolfing it down. Andrew, despite his assertion that he would not be able to swallow a single morsel, did full justice to the meal.

There was little talk, only a sentence now and then and of inconsequential things. No one talked about what they'd found inside the chapel. It was as if all of them were busy in an effort to wipe it from their minds.

But it was not a thing, Duncan found, that could be wiped away. Never for a moment since he first had seen it had it been more than a short distance from his consciousness. Mockery, he had told himself, and it was that, of course, but it also would be, he thought, more than mockery. Hatred, he had said, almost as an afterthought. But now, having thought on it, he knew that there was in it as much hatred as there was mockery.

And that was understandable. The pagan gods of ancient days had a right to hate this new faith that had risen something less than two millennia ago. But he chided himself that he should think of the pagan gods as somehow legitimate in their hatred, that he should admit, even parenthetically, that they had existed and did now exist. This was not, he reminded himself, the way a Christian should be thinking. A devout Christian would consign them all to limbo, would deny there ever had been such as they. But this, he knew, was a viewpoint that he could not accept. He must still conceive of them as the ever-present enemy, and this was especially true in this place, the Desolated Land.

His fingers dropped to the purse suspended from his belt and beneath them he felt the crinkle of the pages that he carried. Here lay his faith, he thought; here, in this place where he sat, lay another faith. Perhaps a mistaken faith, perhaps a faith that should not be accepted, that instead should be opposed with every power at one's command, but a faith nevertheless—a faith that man, in his ignorance, with no other faith, and yearning toward something that could intercede for him against the vastness of infinity and the cruelty of fate, had embraced despite all its cruelty and horror, thinking perhaps that any fate that was worth embracing must be horrible and cruel, for in those two qualities lay power, and power was something that man needed to protect himself against the outer world.

Here on this very ground, undoubtedly, had been performed certain hideous and repugnant rites that he had no knowledge of and was glad he had no knowledge of. Here humans may have died as sacrifices. Here blood had been spilled upon the ground, here obscene practices had been acted out, here monstrous entities had trod with evil intent—and not only recently, but extending back into unguessed time, perhaps into that time that anteceded mankind.

Daniel walked up close to where he was sitting, thrust down his head to nuzzle at his master. Duncan stroked the big horse's head, and Daniel snorted softly at him.

From the west a wolf howled, and it seemed that this time the howl was closer.

Conrad came striding up to stand near the horse and man.

"We'll have to keep the fire burning high throughout the night," he said. "Wolves have a fear of fire."

"We have naught to fear of wolves," said Duncan. "They are not driven by hunger. There is plenty for them to pull down and eat out there in the woods."

"They are closing in," said Conrad. "I have been catching glimpses of their eyes."

"They are curious. That is all."

Conrad hunkered down beside Duncan. He pushed the head of his club back and forth upon the ground.

"What do we do tomorrow?"

"I suppose we go on hunting for Andrew's trail."

"And what if we don't find the trail?"

"We'll find it. There had to be a trail across these hills."

"What if enchantment closes the trail to us? Makes us not to see it."

"We escaped the enchantment, Conrad." Although, Duncan reminded himself, he had entertained the thought, earlier in the day, that the enchantment might still be with them.

"We are lost," said Conrad. "We don't know where we are. I don't think Andrew knows."

Out at the edge of the firelight circle two eyes gleamed back at Duncan and then, almost instantly, were gone.

"I saw one of your wolves just now," he said to Conrad. "Or at least his eyes."

"Tiny has been watching," Conrad said, "pacing back and forth. He knows they are out there."

They were moving in closer now. The darkness at the edge of the campfire circle was rimmed by shining eyes.

Tiny went walking out toward them. Conrad called him back. "Not yet, Tiny. Not quite yet."

Duncan rose to his feet.

"We're in for it," said Conrad quietly. "They are getting set to rush us."

Daniel switched around to face the gathering wolves. He tossed his head, snorting in anger. Tiny, coming back, ranged himself by Conrad. His ruff was lifted and a growl gurgled in his throat.

One of the wolves paced forward. In the firelight his gray fur seemed almost white. He was large and raw-boned, a death's head of a wolf. He seemed to teeter forward, his great gaunt head thrust out, the lips pulled back from the fangs, his eyes glittering in the reflection of the flames.

Another wolf came up behind and to one aide of him, stopped with its head at the first wolf's shoulder.

Duncan drew his blade. The rasp of drawn metal was harsh in the silence that had fallen on the clearing. The firelight glinted off the shining steel.

He said to the horse beside him, "Steady, Daniel, steady, boy."