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The flames died beneath a thickening column of white smoke that obscured the stake and the boy tied to it.  
    Barryn tugged the loose end of the rope in his hand and felt his bonds loosen. His eyes stinging from the thick smoke enveloping him, the prisoner wiggled, tugged himself loose, and scrambled off the piled wood. He darted between two coughing druids and shoved through the panicking crowd. Three warriors started after Barryn, but were stopped short when Paardrac intercepted them.  
    “Let the boy go,” he said. “His deva will follow him away from our homes and fields. She will leave us unmolested if we do the same for her chosen servant.”
    Barryn ran blindly and zig-zagged between the houses and barns in the village. His legs propelled him furiously through the back gate in the palisade and toward the safety of the woods—and the oblivion of exile.   

CHAPTER SIX
Barryn

    Barryn pressed on through the underbrush between the grizzled trees as quickly and quietly as he could. He had crossed through the village and open fields before the men could organize a pursuit and mount their horses. Now that the had disappeared into the woods, only the best hunters and scouts would have a realistic chance of catching him—if he was smart. If he made no mistakes. And, of course, if he was lucky.  
    Which one could argue both sides of that question. Goodness me, what stroke of fortune , he thought, allowing his body to carry him like a deer through the thickening forest toward his secret fishing hole. I’ll probably starve to death in the forest, true, but at least my own people won’t burn me alive! Huzzah to that.  
    Barryn stopped to check his bearings. There should be a big rock tangled in the roots of an old tree nearby. He spotted it and hurried on. He was surprised that his mind had room for petulant sarcasm, considering the circumstances. But for the past few weeks, he had not been a child, but by turns an earnest druid candidate, a despondent prisoner and a hunted fugitive. In the woods, where he had hunted small game and played tricks on the older children, he was again a child of the Caeldrynn darting through branches and brambles like a lithe young fox.
    Barryn heard the tiny falls in the stream and knew he had navigated true. He turned downstream and angled toward his fishing hole. As Barryn picked his way down the bank, he noticed a pile of driftwood that was not there the last time he had fished at the hole. He paused behind a tree at the edge of the bank and scanned the area upstream and down before approaching the strange pile. Sure enough, it yielded a filled shoulder satchel, a green woolen cloak bundled and tied with much more cord than was needed to keep it in a tidy roll, his belt with pouch and knife in a scabbard, and a short bow with a quiver of 23 arrows.    
    And, at the bottom of the pile, was his favorite hunting stick. Barryn hefted the crooked, smooth instrument and smiled. He had taken more rabbits and squirrels with this throwing stick than many of the older hunters had taken deer with their arrows. Luck seemed to finally be with him.

    Barryn spent the next fortnight traveling under the cover of darkness and sleeping by day, looping through the forest in a rough clover-leaf shaped path toward an abandoned Imperial road that he had heard of but never seen. He dared not build any fires lest he be discovered, so he went to sleep cold and hungry and awakened even colder and hungrier. He ate enough roots, berries and other plant parts to stay alive, but barely.  
    A few days into his flight, the tormenting voice in Barryn’s stomach overcame his fear of capture. He spent half a day hunting squirrel and another full day drying the scraps of meat from the two he was able to kill. But the anxiety he felt waiting for the morsels to cure overwhelmed his desire for cooked meat. By the time he came to the ancient road, he was greedily eating live grubs when he could find them.  
    The road