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started to walk away, not even cradling his bitten arm—he let it hang and bleed. But at the forest’s verge he paused. “Give my greeting to Sakeema,” he mocked.
    â€œSakeema help you,” I whispered, so softly that perhaps Ytan did not hear me. “Sakeema help us all.”
    â€œâ€™Ware Cragsmen farther down,” Ytan added with poisoned calm. Then he left me, gone in the dusk.
    Numbly I made my way back down the hard, cutting rocks of the ravine, the light rapidly failing me. Talu was waiting for me where I had left her, and she greeted me with a scornful huffing and a rolling of her eyes, as if to say, Fool.
    â€œHold your tongue,” I grumbled at her. “Bighead.”
    We traveled until nightfall and past. I wanted to put distance between myself and Ytan. But riding under the thin light of a scantling moon, sending Talu stumbling through the shadows for no better reason than to get away from him, I seemed still to hear Ytan’s laughter.

Chapter Three
    â€œNow truly I do not know what to do,” I said to the wolf lying not far from my feet.
    When we stopped at last I sat in the night like an oaf, without a fire, gnawing at the last of the seedcakes the deer people had given me. Head flattened to the ground, my companion the wolf looked back at me without moving, and I frowned in sympathy.
    â€œYou are hungry? I am sorry you do not eat seedcakes, wild brother. There has been bad hunting for you, has there not? Even the lemmings are scarce, and the mice and the voles. No pika in the rocks. We must find Sakeema.… But what if my heartless lout of a brother comes to Tassida meanwhile?”
    Perhaps he was somewhere in the darkness near at hand, listening and taking pleasure in my unease. I had tried to leave him far behind, but it was possible that he had followed. And there I sat, speaking to a wolf as if it could help me more than already it had, and it gave no reply but to raise its head and yawn, showing bone-white teeth and a pink expanse of gullet and tongue, shadowy in the moonlight. Suddenly I felt how very much alone I was. The night hung dark, and talking to this indifferent creature made a poor substitute for talking with Kor.
    Powers help me, every time I thought of my bond brother I felt as if half of me had been torn away. And if Ytan was to be believed, the other mortal whom I chiefly loved was in danger as well. A long-limbed, knife-twirling, wild-haired, bold-riding, mettlesome mystery of a warrior woman named Tassida.
    â€œBlast,” I whispered between clenched teeth. The wolf looked at me blankly.
    â€œI feel as if I am torn in three parts, Kor and Tass and Sakeema. But I have forsaken Kor, and I am going to have to forsake Tass, too, until this quest is done.… The world, wolf, the whole ill-wished world is dwindling down to ruin! I cannot be thinking of one comely woman overmuch.”
    Not even when she was threatened with that most dishonorable of torments, the abomination called rape.
    â€œTassida is well able to take care of herself,” I muttered.
    The wolf grinned hugely.
    â€œMore able than I, perhaps, to deal with Ytan. She will take her sword to him, while I cannot. I must find Sakeema.”
    Far away an owl cried softly, darkly, perhaps bewailing its own hunger. My hunger was not of the body.
    â€œI cannot go to Tass, any more than I can go back to Kor. I must find … our savior. Why does it feel so wrong?”
    The wolf yawned again, laid down its head and went to sleep. A sensible creature. I did likewise.
    It seemed a small while that I slept. Then sense of something wrong jarred me awake, and I could not tell whether it was moonset or sunrise or the end of the world, for a cold, crushing weight lay atop me, shutting off light and air.
    A devourer had me in its grim embrace.
    Ai! I fought to throw it off. Hard, seawater-chill breasts against my face, thick serpentine tail binding my legs, fish-gray folds