Smoke drifted across the battleground, obscuring everything. He heard the cries of his companions, but he could not see them. Walker had disappeared entirely, as if the earth had swallowed him. Disembodied voices cried out in the darkness. Everyone was cut off, surrounded by fire threads and creepers, caught in a trap from which none of them seemed able to escape. He didn’t care. The magic buoyed and sustained him. He wrapped himself in its cloak and, unstoppable, fought with even greater fury.
Finally Panax shouted to him that they had to get clear of the square. It took several tries before he heard the Dwarf, and even then he was reluctant to break off the battle. Slowly, they began to retreat the way they had come. Creepers sought to bar their escape, turning them aside at every opportunity, giving pursuit like hungry wolves, skittering along on their metal struts and spindly legs, strange and awkward machines. The chase veered from one building to another, down one passageway to the next, until Quentin had no idea where he was. His arms were tiring, leaden from swinging the sword, and the magic did not come so easily. The Elves and Panax were grim-faced and battle-worn. Time and numbers were eating away at their resistance.
Then, without warning, the creepers pulled back, the fire threads disappeared, and the Highlander and his three companions were left in an empty swirl of smoke and silence. Weapons held before them like talismans, the hunted men backed through the haze, putting distance between themselves and their vanished pursuers, watching everywhere at once, waiting for the attack to resume. But the ruined city seemed to have become a vast burial ground, a massive tomb empty of life save for themselves.
So it had gone ever since, with Quentin and the other three edging their way ahead, not entirely certain to where they had gotten themselves or were going. Once or twice, there had been sudden, hurried movements in the shadows, things skittering away too swiftly to be clearly seen. The night had begun to fade and dawn to approach, and sunlight was creeping through the haze that cloaked the city. They searched for signs of their friends, for familiar landmarks, for anything that would tell them where they were. But it all looked the same, and the look never changed.
Now, crouched in yet another part of the ruined city, Quentin found himself almost wishing he had something to fight again, something of substance to combat. The sustained tension of watching and waiting for invisible creepers and vanished fire threads was wearing him down. Traces of the magic still roiled within him, but a mix of fear and doubt had replaced his craving for it. He did not like what the magic had made him do, as if he were as much a fighting machine as those creepers. He did not like how thoroughly it had dominated him, so much so that even thinking became difficult. There was only response and reaction, need and fulfillment. He had lost himself in the magic, had become someone else.
Without looking at Panax, he whispered, “I can’t trust my senses anymore. I’m exhausted.”
He felt, rather than saw, the Dwarf nod. “We have to get some rest. But not here. Let’s go.”
Quentin did not move. He was thinking about Bek, somewhere out there in the haze and rubble, lost at best, dead at worst. He could scarcely bear to think of how badly he had failed his cousin, leaving him behind without meaning or wanting to, abandoning him as surely as Walker seemed to have abandoned them all. He blinked away his weariness and shook his head. He should never have left Bek, not even after Walker had separated them. He should never have believed Bek would be all right without him.
“Let’s go, Highlander,” Panax growled again.
They rose and started ahead, easing away from the place where the Dwarf had seen movement, skirting the building and the rubble both, choosing a wide avenue that passed between a series of what looked like low warehouses with portions of their walls and roofs fallen in and collapsed. Quentin’s thoughts were dismal. Who was going to protect Bek if he didn’t? With Walker gone, who else was there? Certainly not Ryer Ord Star and maybe not even the Elven Hunters. Not against things like the fire threads and the creepers. Bek was his responsibility; they were each other’s responsibilities. What good was a promise to look after someone if you didn’t even know where he was?
He peered into the gloom as he walked, seeing other places, remembering better times. He had come a long way from the Highlands to have it all end like this. It had seemed so right to him, that he should do this, he and Bek. To live an adventure they would remember for the rest of their lives—that was why they must come, he had argued that night with Walker. That argument seemed hollow and foolish now.
“Wait,” Panax hissed suddenly, bringing him to an abrupt stop.
He glanced at the Dwarf, who was listening intently once more. To one side, Kian and Wye stared out into the gloom. Quentin thought that maybe he was too tired to listen, that even if there was something to hear, he would be unable to tell.
Then he heard it, too. But it wasn’t coming from ahead of them. It was coming from behind.
He turned quickly and watched in surprise as a slender figure appeared out of the haze and rubble.
“Where are you going?” Tamis asked in genuine confusion as she approached. She pulled off the leather band that tied back her short-cropped brown hair and shook her head wearily. “Is this all of you there are?”
They welcomed the Tracker with weary smiles of relief, lowering their weapons and gathering around her. Kian and Wye reached out to touch her fingers briefly, the standard Elven Hunter greeting. She nodded to Panax, and then her gray eyes settled on Quentin.
“I’ve just come from Bek. He’s waiting a couple of miles back.”
“Bek?” Quentin repeated, a wave of relief surging through him. “Is he all right?”
There was blood on her clothing and scratches on her smooth, tired face. Her clothes were soiled and torn. She didn’t look all that different from him, he realized. “He’s fine. Better off than you or me, I’d say. I left him in a clearing at the edge of the ruins to watch over the seer while I came looking for you. We’re all that’s left of our group.”
“We lost Rusten,” Kian advised quietly.
She nodded. “What about the others? What about Ard Patrinell?”
The Elven Hunter shook his head. “Couldn’t tell. Too much smoke and confusion. Everyone disappeared after the fighting started.” He nodded at Quentin. “The Highlander saved us. If we hadn’t had him and that sword, we would have been finished.”
Tamis gave Quentin an ironic look. “It must run in the family. Look, you’re going in the wrong direction. You’re going inland instead of back toward the bay.”
“We’ve just been running,” Quentin admitted. He blinked at the Tracker in confusion. “What do you mean, ‘It must run in the family’? What are you saying?”
“That young Bek saved us, as well. If it hadn’t been for him, we wouldn’t have gotten clear. He smashed those creepers as if they were made of paper. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Quentin stared at her. “Bek? Bek did that?”
She studied him carefully. “Didn’t he tell you? Or did he just discover it for himself, I wonder? He didn’t seem all that sure about what he was doing, I’ll grant you. But to have that kind of power and not know anything about it … Well, maybe so. Anyway, this is what happened.”
She related the details of their escape, of how they had fled back through the ruins, the three Elven Hunters, Ryer Ord Star, and Bek, until the creepers had hemmed them in. The other two Elves had died quickly, but she and the seer were saved when Bek used his voice to call up magic.
“It was eerie,” she admitted. Her eyes held Quentin’s. “He was singing, a strange sound, but it tore the creepers apart, like a wind or a weapon cutting through them. One minute they were there, killing us, and the next they were scrap.” She nodded solemnly. “Bek saved us. And you don’t know a thing about what I’m saying, do you?”