“I think I know some,” Lala replied. “They came with my voice.” And she sang the chorus of a ridiculous drinking song.

“No, no,” Grandmother said as gently as she could. “I need to teach you some songs of Arcosia that have been passed down, and others that will help you with the art.”

“Oh.”

Grandmother was too tired for teaching this night so they sat in silence for a time as rain hissed and steamed in their campfire. It looked like their journey home was going to be no easier than their journey in, especially since it appeared God had rescinded his promise of protection. Grandmother sighed, not looking forward to the perilous walk. She brightened when she thought to look in on Birch. She had wanted to see how his campaign fared, and maybe God would come to her and she could plead for His protection.

So she knotted some of her precious dwindling yarn, and with a nail clipping of Birch’s wound within, she tossed it onto the fire.

And saw dusk. The evenings there were less dark, and it was not raining. She heard the clash of steel, and she gazed through Birch’s eyes. The dead surrounded him where they’d fallen in the woods. They appeared to be—No! Not their own!

“Retreat!” Birch bellowed, waving his sword.

A glance over his shoulder revealed men coming after him with pikes and swords, whose mail glinted beneath home-spun clothes. Snatches of black and silver uniforms showed from beneath plain coats and cloaks.

From Birch’s mind she gleaned he’d allowed his men to walk into a trap. He’d gotten overconfident and his band of warriors had been overwhelmed—there had been more than the thirty of the enemy his scout had reported. They were slaughtered by the Sacoridians.

“Retreat!” he cried again to those of his men who survived.

Grandmother withdrew from the connection and placed her face in her hands. She had to get home now. She could not permit Second Empire to fail.

THEIR SEPARATE WAYS

The wind hissed across the tips of dead grasses, but the scent of new, green growth crushed beneath Lynx’s body filled his nostrils. He gazed up at the sky—it was dull, brooding, but it was not Blackveil. The alien voices of the forest were gone, replaced by the ordinary minds of somnolent wolves awaiting the evening hunt and ground squirrels busy in their burrows.

He sat up to the endless, undulating plains before him, and discovered stony ruins behind him, two partial walls, the rest crumbled to the ground. How had he gotten here? What happened? Silver glass glinted on his legs, torso, and arms, slivers he pulled out of his flesh with sharp little pains and tossed aside. They winked with light as they fell among the grasses.

They’d been in Castle Argenthyne, the chamber with the tree, but that’s as far as he got. Someone moaned nearby.

Another moan and he found Yates likewise speckled with silver glass, but worse, with shards deeply embedded like daggers, his flesh pale.

Lynx knelt beside him. “Yates!”

“The beast burned me out,” Yates whispered. “She wounded him good, but . . .”

And then Lynx remembered—Mornhavon the Black had occupied Yates’ body.

“I am ashes,” Yates said.

“No, I’ll take care of you,” Lynx replied, but with each moment, Yates slipped farther and farther away.

“Tell her . . .” Yates’ whisper was ever so faint. “Not her fault.”

“I will,” Lynx promised.

Yates did not respond. A stillness blanketed him; his eyes, his face, lost all animation. Lynx clenched his hands and growled as if to threaten away the looming grief. This was why he stayed solitary, why he remained aloof from the others. Forming attachments only meant being speared with unbearable pain when there was loss. His growl grew into a howl. He howled as the wolves do.

And when his voice faded over the plains, he gently closed Yates’ eyes.

Telagioth and Ealdaen found him carrying rocks from the ruins to raise a cairn over Yates. The wind had taken on a mournful note as it rushed through the ruins, and Lynx had felt restless souls among them.

“Friend Lynx,” Ealdaen said, “let us aid you. We are sorry for Yates, for his spirit held much joy.”

As they labored with the rocks, they came to an agreement that they were somewhere on the Wanda Plains.

“I will know more when I see the stars,” Ealdaen said.

Neither Lhean nor Karigan appeared, and after raising the cairn, they spread out and searched, but without success. Either of the two could be lying in the deep grasses and they could be missed at even a few feet away.

At night they took shelter near the ruins and built a large bonfire from old timbers they found in the collapsed structure, and dried thatches of grass. If Lhean or Karigan were out there, perhaps they would see not only the fire, but the light of Eletian moonstones.

“I judge we are in the north-central plains,” Ealdaen said, gazing into the sky at the stars that shone through the clouds. Telagioth agreed with him.

“I have quite a walk home then,” Lynx said, missing his Owl intensely.

“As do we,” Telagioth replied.

“What happened? How did we end up here all the way from Castle Argenthyne?”

“We believe it was the Galadheon,” Ealdaen said, “and that mask. That mask was nothing to trifle with.”

“The looking mask,” Lynx murmured, and he remembered. Karigan had smashed it on the floor at Yates’ feet and then ...

And then he’d awakened among the grasses.

“It caused a rupture in the wall of the world.” Ealdaen sounded uncertain of himself. “I believe so, anyway. And with the Galadheon’s ability to cross thresholds, it may be that she is elsewhere.”