"Keep going," said Krawg. They moved in where the ground grew stonier, and the ravine became a deep canyon.

She heard the crackle again. The knuckled limbs of a massive viscorclaw fingered the precipice of the rising ridge to her left. It appeared to be seeking refuge from the flames. It hissed, and she knew it sensed them now.

She crouched down among the bushes, whispering a warning. Several steps ahead, Krawg saw the viscorclaw and stood very still.

The crawler, about the size of a bear, tumbled down into the ravine, landing between them. It sprang up onto its spearlike feet, poised and tense. But then it slowly lifted two of its seven legs as if choosing Auralia as better prey.

Backing toward the brush fires, she squinted through the smoke. Heat from the advancing flames engulfed her. She choked and collapsed, pressing her sleeve over her face. The needles of a bush beside her blackened and blazed.

She thought she saw Stricia, Ark-robin's daughter, a ghost from long ago, through the fierce red inferno, shards of lantern glass brilliant on the floor in front of her. "Wretched girl," Auralia muttered, dizzy. "You don't love Cal-raven at all. But I do."

The viscorclaw stalked toward her like a massive centipede, its oily sheen flickering in the firelight. Then she leapt and pressed her hands against the hot stone of the escarpment, crying out.

"Auralia!" Krawg shouted, running to her.

"Krawg, stop!" she answered.

The rock liquefied under her hands, stone spilling down like a mudslide. The melt caught and engulfed the viscorclaw, and it fought like a giant insect trapped in honey, rolling in the slow wave. As the stone solidified, it became a new ridge that blocked the ravine, and the crawler's muddied spikes jutted up through the surface like points of a dark crown. Auralia gulped in air, then spun to face the old Gatherer.

"What did you call me?" Her voice wavered.

Krawg blinked, realizing the name he had shouted. Then he looked down and stammered, "I mean. I'm sorry ... I ..." He waved his hands in the air as if groping for a sure defense. "I knew a stonemaster once. An artist. She had that name. Your name is Milora, and I ..."

She rose, sparks glittering on her cloak, and stepped forward to wrap her arms around her old friend. She felt him tremble, and when he tried to speak, he could only cough. Then he pressed his hands to the sides of her head and touched her small nose with his, which was substantial.

"You can't tell Cal-raven," she said. "You hear me? You can't tell anybody. I'm not ... I'm not ready."

"Well, ballyworms, Auralia," he laughed through his tears. "I don't understand this. But I'm never lettin' you get out of my reach again. Good thing Warney caught up with me, because you got lots of explainin' to do ... to both of us."

Looking over her shoulder, he groaned, "We gotta move."

They climbed over the buried crawler, Krawg taking Auralia's left hand in his right and drawing her along.

"You're famous, you know," he said. "They tell stories about you in Bel Amica. The stories are all wrong, but I guess that happens."

"I don't want stories," she said. "I didn't do anything much."

"Fire!" he said. "Run."

Smoke thickened, rolling over them like a stampede of frightened animals. Krawg was ahead of her again as walls of fire brightened alongside them, and his voice was lost in the inferno's roar.

And then there was a horse and a rider crashing through the barriers of memory and dream. The rider looked down through the smoke. He reached out for Auralia, clasped her hand, and lifted her up easily before him.

"Cal-raven." She leaned back against his smoky garments, turned, and felt his beard against her cheek.

"Come, Milora. I think you're the last one on my list."

"But Krawg-"

"Jes-hawk's got him. Jes-hawk tells me you have a bad habit of wandering off into danger. Don't make me chase after you again."

They plunged through flame and darkness together.

Much higher up the slope, Cal-raven rode the horse into a canyon wide enough for three horses abreast, and they slowed as they caught up to the company.

"Seventy-seven," he said. "The fire's stalled back there, and there's not much for it to burn here. This is our chance to-" He was interrupted as two men on vawns pushed through the company to face him.

"We're stuck, Cal-raven," wheezed Tabor Jan, sliding from his vawn, his face hollowed by grief and rage. "We were wrong. I've gone up this ravine. It forks, and all its branches head back down."

Jes-hawk explained that, on closer inspection, what had seemed an open run ahead ended at a sheer reflective wall that had given the illusion of an ongoing corridor.

It sounds, he thought, as if a stonemaster has raised a barrier to stop us. As he listened, Cal-raven looked up and saw a figure crouched on the rim of the canyon. Ryllion, he thought. I told you to stay hidden. Jes-hawk whirled, notching an arrow. "Shall I shoot?"

"Save your arrows for viscorclaws." What little resolve Cal-raven had left began to crumble. The people were exhausted, if not injured, and the losses of Wynn, Brevolo, and two Bel Amican drivers were weighing them down. "We've no other enemies here."

As the exhausted company moved in closer to hear him speak, the ground trembled with another mysterious shock. A wide patch of slate broke free of the wall just behind them, sliding and shattering against the opposite wall.

"What is shaking the world?" Warney cried.

"They're coming!" Tabor Jan roared, pointing to the path behind them.

Spinning around, Cal-raven saw viscorclaws crawling up the ravine, scrambling like a swarm of insects newly hatched, moving with the single-minded purpose written in the poison of the Cent Regus Curse-to consume without a thought.

Tabor Jan dismounted his vawn, snatched torches from a merchant and a Bel Amican, then marched past Cal-raven toward the river of predators, expressionless.

"Help him!" Cal-raven cried, although he knew not who might answer.

As if competing for the kill, viscorclaws climbed over one another. And the captain met them, swinging the torches, dodging their sharpened thrusts. The creatures' aggression overwhelmed him. He became a figure clad in writhing branches, their claws striking like scorpion tails. He turned the torches back against himself, falling to his knees. Viscorclaws leapt free, burning and crumbling.

Cal-raven sprang from his horse and raced empty-handed toward the blazing man.

"Watch out!" Jes-hawk cried behind him.

Cal-raven glanced up to the canyon wall's edge to see a man hoisting an enormous tree over his head. It flung sheets of flame into the sky. Then he cast it down into the swarm advancing on Tabor Jan. The blazing tree exploded into sparks, embers, and smoke. Viscorclaws scattered, leaping to the walls. Tabor Jan rolled into the smolder, bellowing, crushing the attackers into the embers.

Cal-raven and Jes-hawk seized the captain and dragged him from the fiery debris. The ruined tree was burning itself out, and the viscorclaws were shedding their charred limbs and tensing for another surge.

The figure then leapt from his high vantage point and dropped through the haze.

Cal-raven gasped. It wasn't Ryllion at all. "Jordam!"

"rrRun," Jordam barked, his shoulders hunched. His massive hands opened and closed like the mouths of hungry predators. "rrRun fast! Strongbreed!"

"What?"

"rrRun!" The beastman picked up the torches Tabor Jan had dropped, and he turned to face the viscorclaws.

Tabor Jan, painted head to toe in blood, reached up and grasped Cal-raven's arm weakly. "I can walk," he said through bloodied teeth.

As the crowd collected, Milora urged Cal-raven's horse toward the king, her eyes on the beastman beyond him.

"Get back, Milora!" Cal-raven ordered.

"Master!" The combined cry from the sisters, Margi and Luci, seized his attention.

Jes-hawk was aiming an arrow at the top of the ridge ahead.

Time seemed to slow down. He felt his plans dissolving, his voice breaking. The people began to move like a herd of sheep, panic-stricken, rushing to one side of the canyon, then the other, then toward him.

Two lines of red-armored figures lined the edges of the canyon there, wielding enormous bows and thick wooden missiles.

The Seers have sent the Strongbreed. Again I've led my people to slaughter.

Cal-raven's horse shrieked and fell, taking Milora with it.

The Bel Amican guards knelt down in a line, some aiming left, some aiming right, and launched volleys of arrows that clattered off the assailants' armor.

The captain stepped in front of Cal-raven, and he tried to push him aside. "No, Tabor Jan."

"I will not let them strike you," he roared.

Cal-raven looked back. Jordam was in a frenzy, lashing at the viscorclaws with two heavy whips he had set ablaze. The crawlers seemed intent on getting past him, as if he did not interest them at all.

Jes-hawk staggered sideways into the king. The bristling shaft of a beastman's arrow protruded from an eruption at his left shoulder. Cal-raven felt the wind of an arrow brush his face. Another ripped through the slack of his tunic sleeve.

A shock rocked the ravine.

Strongbreed, unleashing a unanimous snarl, dropped to a crouch in confusion.

Rocks and rubble rained over Cal-raven. Battered, he knelt, took hold of a stone, and unleashed a surge of stonemastery. The stone fanned out like a rain canopy, smoothing into a broad, curved shield, which he cast to Tabor Jan's feet.

Blinking in surprise, the guardsman lifted it just in time to deflect a heavy arrow. "Cal-raven!" He pointed to the wall just ahead.

A cave was opening.

Margi and Luci, pressing their hands to the canyon wall, were boring a depression into the stone. Luci yelled, "There's a break in the wall here! There are ... echoes, master! Open space!"

Cal-raven spread another rock into a shield and dashed to the girls. With his free hand he leaned against the wall, groaning as he pressed what shreds of strength remained out through his fingertips. Stone melted away from him as if he were spraying flames into a snowbank.

It's not enough, he thought.

An arrow embedded itself between his fingers in the softening stone.

Then Milora was beside him, her palms beside his. He was surprised at this but had no chance to make sense of it. Pressing with all her might against the wall, she uttered an impassioned cry. Cal-raven felt a shudder of power unlike any he had known in his training with Scharr ben Fray. The wall burst open, revealing a burrow that reached a large, echoing space beyond.

Milora stepped back.

"More," Cal-raven shouted as his faithful defender Bowlder stepped between him and the attack. Together the stonemasters broadened the opening. As travelers began to crowd around them, archers formed a perimeter, raising shields and firing arrows outward and upward.

"It's not enough!" Cal-raven said, for the passage was still too narrow for anyone to slip through.

An arrow struck Bowlder's side, and he fell hard as a stone statue, growling like a wolf in a snare.

Another shock rocked the earth, and an avalanche of rubble cascaded down, catching an arrow midflight, skewing its trajectory. Cal-raven glimpsed Jes-hawk, his left arm hanging useless, trying to crawl toward Bowlder to draw him out of the arrows' reach. He heard Hagah barking madly in the distance, and the sound brought a sob to his throat.

The Strongbreed howled, distracted from their purpose by something only they could see.

As Jes-hawk pulled Bowlder to the wall, Cal-raven pressed his hands to the stone and bellowed, blasting energy against it. The break opened enough for Margi and Luci. Shaking and crying, they climbed up through the burrow into safety. Working the stone from inside, they opened the tunnel further.

"Say-ressa." The healer slipped in, carrying little Cortie in her arms, her hands already bloody from tending to the fallen.

Cal-raven would not even remember how he roared then, compelling everyone into the cave as heavy arrows clattered against their shields.

They crawled. They staggered. Abascar survivors, Bel Amican soldiers, and merchant strangers. They pressed themselves into the waiting cave as a storm of large, blind-eyed reptiles took wing and rushed into the air, awkward and frightened as moths driven from a cupboard.

Defending the travelers until the last was through the door, Tabor Jan spun around with a cry, falling hard beneath his shield, an arrow in his neck. Cal-raven cried out as if he'd taken the blow himself and dragged the captain back into the cave, tears blurring his vision. As he did, Luci, Margi, and Milora brought down a curtain of liquefied stone to seal off the cave.

"Wait." He lifted the shield and dared to stick his head back out.

Jordam was deep inside a storm of flames, smoke, and scattering viscorclaws. There would be no helping him.

Feeling as though he was sawing off an arm, Cal-raven sealed the door.

In the torchlight they listened. Arrows thudded against the solidifying stone.

"Jordam!" Milora threw herself against the closed door. "We have to open it again."

"No," said Cal-raven, pulling her back, perplexed by the glassworker's fury. "We stay here now. We save these lives. While we can. Until the Strongbreed are-"

The cave shuddered. Dust, stones, and shreds of root crumbled from the ceiling. Then a sound like a hundred trumpets resonated through the stone seal, followed by a deep reverberation. Those earthshaking drums rolled on and on.

"What in the name of Tammos Raak?"

And then there was silence.

"Are we doomed to hide in caves and cower through earthquakes?" someone cried.

They waited.

Milora, her face streaked with tears, walked back into the shadows. Cal-raven, Margi, and Luci quietly layered more stone over the door.

The company clustered in the dark, weeping and gathering around the wounded, where Say-ressa was already putting her hands on them and whispering.

Margi and Luci had collapsed against each other. Milora spread her arms around them like wings, and Krawg-old Krawg, still standing, unharmed-stood over them, his hands on Milora's shoulders. "I'm glad now," said Luci, "that Obrey didn't come with us."

Tabor Jan was choking as Say-ressa tried to stop the bleeding from his wound. Cal-raven knelt beside the captain and clasped his hand. Tabor Jan squeezed back, faintly. Blinking through the gore, he sighed. "Tell me." His voice was just a thin rush of air. "Tell me we'll be there soon." And then he closed his eyes.

Cal-raven tensed, but Say-ressa nodded her head. "He'll live. In what condition I cannot say." She turned to Jes-hawk who lay unconscious, his chest in spasms, his shoulder shelled in blood. Beside him lay Bowlder, his body unmoved by breath, a cloth already covering his face.