"This is taking too long," Leesil muttered.

Wynn slumped, and her hands dropped to flatten on the ground and brace her up. She opened her eyes.

Across the world's night colors lay a translucent mist of off white, just shy of blue. Its radiance permeated everything like a second view of the world overlaid across her normal sight. Within the buildings' dead wood, the radiance thinned, leaving shadowed hollows in the shapes of shacks, huts, and shops. The glimmer diickened near the earth and was even brighter in her hands upon it. She looked out through the forest, and the ghostly mist became a net through the branches, leaves, and needles of trees and brush.

But even there, Wynn saw the waning essence as in the town structures.

A nearby tree with barren limbs had lost nearly all its inner sheen, its frame like a skeleton of deep shadows. It was almost dead. She swallowed hard and breamed deep to quell the urge to vomit.

"Wynn… did it work?" Leesil asked. "Can you see anything?"

She turned, and the sight of Leesil startled her. He shimmered like a ghost illuminated from within. He shone most where his dark skin was exposed and least where his hauberk and clothing covered him. His amber irises were like stones caught in sunlight, so brilliant, they pained her eyes.

"Yes…" she answered, her voice heavy with effort. "I can see."

Leesil's radiance blurred ever so slightly.

Wynn sat upright, though her stomach lurched. She looked about the forest and at the town ahead along the inland road. Nothing changed.

Then she saw it again. A perceptible shift in the glimmering mist. It moved.

"It… He is coming," she rasped.

"Where?" Magiere demanded from behind her.

Wynn looked bom ways, along the town's landward side and through the trees, trying to discern the mist's flow. It was slowly building momentum. Its currents aligned, moving in the same direction.

'To the east," she said, and heard Chap's low snarl in answer. "In the trees back beyond the town."

"Leesil, cut through the town, and try to get past him," Magiere said. "Chap and I will draw him back toward the road and try to ambush him this side of the bridge. We'll at least keep him off balance until you come up from behind. Wynn, stay behind Chap and me, and keep out of sight if possible."

Wynn reached for the dark shape of her crossbow.

The mist's currents in the earth changed before her eyes. Still heading east, they paralleled the riverside road through town.

"Wait," she blurted out. "I think… think he moved on to the main road."

Leesil hissed under his breath. "Valhachkasej'a! He's walking straight into town. All right, same as before, but I'll head east through the woods and backtrack toward him. Try to keep him occupied."

Wynn watched Leesil snuff his torch and take off into the trees. His own glow mingled in the forest's web of essence, and then he was gone.

"That's enough, Wynn," Magiere said. "We know where he is. Come on."

Wynn arose and stepped from the circle.

The world remained a distorted overlay of the ghostly and solid slurred across each other. It should have ended the moment she stepped free of the symbols scratched in the earth, but it did not.

Her vertigo sharpened. She crumpled to her knees again and vomited up her supper.

Two hands grabbed Wynn's shoulders from behind, holding her upright.

"What's wrong?" Magiere said.

"It should have stopped," Wynn gagged out. "I cannot… make it stop."

"Close your eyes," Magiere said. "Don't look at anything. But we have to go, now!"

Wynn was jerked around before she could close her eyes.

Trails of radiance flowed through Magiere, as in Leesil, yet without his strange brilliance.

And tangled as well within Magiere's essence were lines of shadow, like those of the dying tree. Ribbons of black wove through her glimmering blue-white essence, and…

They moved.

Wynn saw her hands clasped on Magiere's forearm and saw the glow from her own essence-her spirit-creeping toward Magiere's flesh. She lifted her gaze upward, but did not find the amber sparks of light she had seen in Leesil.

Magiere's eyes were pits of darkness.

Welstiel sat up without disorientation that night. For once, he had no dreams, no momentary lapse trying to remember the previous dawn.

Chane had procured a large piece of heavy canvas and, as sunrise approached, found a dense copse. He hid the horses and rigged an enclosed tent, which he covered in branches until it blended with the land.

"My father taught me," he explained. "When hunting, we often slept outside."

Upon waking, Welstiel heard the soft sounds of creaking leather outside the tent and assumed Chane was saddling their horses for the night's travel. In spite of peaceful rest, Welstiel could not escape the memories evoked by the sight of his father's keep and all that happened mere. He sat in the makeshift tent, torn between relief for a moment's solitude and wanting some distraction to pull his thoughts from the past.

"Are you awake?" Chane asked from outside.

Welstiel twitched. "Yes. I'll be with you in a moment."

He closed his eyes and tried to clear his thoughts, but his frustration over Magiere's mysterious path wouldn't fade. This was the fourth nightfall since leaving Chemestuk, and still she traveled east.

He pulled the brass plate from his pack and placed it on the ground with its domed bottom surface facing up. Murmuring soft words, he cut the stub of his little finger and let a drop of his black fluids strike the dome's center. It clung there for a moment then shifted slightly across the surface to the east. Welstiel roughly wiped the plate clean and repeated the act, but the result was the same, so he tucked the plate away and crawled from the tent.

Chane stood waiting with the horses.

"Is there a village nearby?" Welstiel asked. "Have you checked the area at all?"

"There is smoke rising east of us," Chane answered. "Since the dhampir travels upriver, I assumed that's where we would head next. What is wrong?"

"I'm not certain," he answered. "I think she has stopped again and not far off."

Chane frowned but mounted up, waiting for Welstiel, and the two moved off through the forest. It was not long before Welstiel noticed the first dead tree-and then another.

They emerged to see a settlement next to the river almost large enough for a town. The main road ran directly through it. Fading smoke rose from shops at the near end, as well as from a few other chimneys up the way… too few chimneys for this cold time of year.

Welstiel looked back over his shoulder. In the distance down the road, the forest was lush.

Chane's horse stumbled and wheezed.

"Can you feel it?" he asked, and the tall undead slid from his saddle, clutching his mount by the bridle. "Whatever is happening here, it's affecting the horses."

Before Welstiel could answer, a familiar sound carried down the road-the eerily drawn-out howl of a dog.

"They are here," Welstiel said. "On a hunt."

Chane was already back up on his horse, urging it forward.

Magiere suppressed the urge to charge from around the shop's corner where she hid. She peeked out to see the lone figure walk steadily down the center of the main road. Leesil needed time to circle around behind their target, and she hoped to get in at least one strike before Vordana could act.

She had dragged Wynn behind a water trough across the way, and Chap waited there, too. Wynn was still sickened from what she'd done to herself to spot Vordana's approach, but Magiere could do nothing for her at present. She told Chap to hold until she emerged to face what came, and the dog grunted once in agreement.

Hunger grew in Magiere's stomach, but it was different from before, wrapped around a cold core rather than heated rage rising into her head. She let it seep out until her night sight expanded and the approaching figure became clear.