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puzzled: they were almost unreadable, as a boar had recently taken a wallow.
    "This isn't only Thiazzi," said Torak. "See that heel print? It's not as heavy, and the weight's more to the inside of the foot."
"So someone was with him?" said Renn.
He chewed his thumbnail. "No. Thiazzi's tracks are darker, and a beetle crawled over the other's but not over his. Whoever it was, they came before." Wolf had smelled something. Leaving the canoes, they went after him, into a gully cut by a stream feeding into the Blackwater.
Twenty paces up, Torak stopped.
The footprint shouted at him from the mud. Bold, mocking. Here I am. Thiazzi stamping his mark for all to see.
"The Oak Mage," said Fin-Kedinn.
It told Torak a lot more than that. A single footprint is a landscape which can tell a whole story if you know how to read it. Torak did. And before leaving the Seal Island, he'd studied Thiazzi's tracks till he knew every detail.
    He found more. He made the gully reveal its secrets.
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"He left his dugout in the shallows," he said at last, "then climbed up here. He was carrying something heavy on his left shoulder, maybe his axe. Then he retraced his steps, got into his dugout, paddled away." He clenched his fists. "He's well fed and rested, moving fast. He's enjoying this."
    "But why come here?" said Renn, looking about her.
"I don't like it," said Fin-Kedinn. "Remember that sinew. Let's go back to the boats."
"No," said Torak. "I want to know what he was doing."
Fin-Kedinn sighed. "Don't get too far ahead."
Warily, they advanced: Torak and Wolf first, then Renn, with Fin-Kedinn at the rear.
The trees thinned, and Torak clambered between massive, tumbled boulders, while Wolf bounded lightly ahead. The trail veered to the right. The trees ended.
    Torak found himself on a huge, desolate hill of bare rock. A hundred paces above, the crown was streaked black, as if by fire. Before him, the slope was a chaos of fallen trees thrown there by a flood, with boulders jutting through like broken teeth. Below, the Blackwater coiled around the base of the hill and disappeared between two towering rocks that leaned crazily toward each other. Beyond these great stone jaws rose the looming oaks and jagged spruce of the Deep Forest.
    Wolf pricked his ears. Uff! he barked softly.
54 Torak followed his gaze. Under the willows overhanging the river, he saw the flash of a paddle. Wolf bounded down the slope. Torak ran after him, nearly losing his footing as a tree trunk shifted under his boot. "Torak!" Renn whispered behind him. "Slow down!" warned Fin-Kedinn. Torak ignored them. He couldn't let his quarry escape now.
Suddenly there he was, not fifty paces away: driving the dugout with long, powerful strokes toward the Deep Forest.
Wobbling and lurching over the fallen trees, Torak pulled an arrow from his quiver and nocked it to his bow. He no longer heard the others. All he heard was the splash of Thiazzi's paddle, all he saw was that long russet hair lifting in the breeze. He forgot clan law, he forgot everything except the need for revenge. A log rolled beneath him. Something snagged his ankle. He kicked himself free. Behind him, a loud snap. He glanced around. In one frozen heartbeat he took in the trip line lashed to the trigger log, its end sharpened to a point and smeared with mud to hide the fresh-cut wood.
    The hill of logs began to move. You fool. Another trap. Then the logs were crashing toward him and he was yelling a warning to the others and leaping for the nearest 55
boulder, flinging himself into the tiny hollow beneath it; and logs were bouncing over him, smashing into the river, sending up plumes of water. Huddled under his boulder, Torak heard laughter echo from hill to hill. He pictured Thiazzi's dugout sweeping between the great stone jaws, disappearing into the Deep Forest. Then the whole hillside was giving way, and Fin-Kedinn was shouting, "Renn! Renn!'"
     
56

SEVEN
    Silence boomed in Torak's ears. Dust clogged his throat. "Renn?"