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been
dropped.  The flame flickered bravely to the uphill side, but it foundered and
gasped in the welling oil.
    Moving tree limbs aside, Renda drew a cheerful breath to
call to Pegrine, but right away her smile faded.  From the glade ahead, from
just beyond the lantern, she felt cold, dark, a sense of disorder, something
badly out of place.  She had not felt that sort of unnatural chill on her spine
since her battle against Kadak.  No, it was impossible.  Kadak was vanquished;
she had killed the creature, watched terror fill those strange yellow eyes
right as the life leaked out of them at last.  Kadak was dead, there could be
no doubt.  Duke Brada himself had assured them of it before he died of his
wounds.  This could not be Kadak.  This darkness was too deep, too cold, even
for him.  This was something else, something at once much more ancient and
powerful than Kadak and yet somehow asleep, or...she could not be sure, and for
the first time since the war’s end, she felt real fear.  She sent up a silent
prayer to B’radik and rested one hand lightly on the hilt of her sword as she
moved, listening to the sounds of the forest as Gikka had taught her.
    “Peace, no,” spoke a weak voice from the woods beside her. 
The slender form stepped a bit unsteadily from the shadows, and Renda felt a
strong hand with a single long nail take her elbow and draw her back.
    “Gikka,” she whispered, stumbling in her squire’s grasp. 
“What in the name of—”
    Gikka was not bleeding visibly, but her eyes were swollen
and red, and Renda could feel her hand shaking.  Thoughts of poison, of a
dagger stuck in Gikka’s back came into Renda’s mind. 
    Renda reached out to grab an arm as the Bremondine woman
sank to her knees.  “Gikka?  How now?”
    But Gikka shook her head stubbornly.  “Let me tend to this.”
Renda could smell the acid odor of vomit on her breath, and the knight’s brow
furrowed in confusion and worry.   Gikka clutched her arm and said, “Don’t see
it, Renda.”
    “Speak sense.  I heard your horn, Gikka.  Where is
Pegrine?”  Renda pulled her elbow free and stood staring at the squire. Don’t
see it, Renda.  Don’t see what?  She could not help the shout of panic that
crept into her voice.  “Where is she?”
    “Renda—”
    But the knight stepped closer to the glade.  She would not
be stopped.  “Come, did you find her, or no?”
    At this, Gikka collapsed to her knees, defeated.  She nodded
weakly and gestured toward the clearing, unable to meet Renda’s gaze.  “No
sight is it for your eyes, please...”
    Renda’s pulse pounded in her temples, and she stifled the
slow scream that rose in her throat.
    Don’t see it, Renda. 
    The lantern Gikka had left in the clearing was nearly out,
and Renda could see nothing in the dim circle of wavering light.
    No sight is it for your eyes. 
    She stilled her dread and drew her sword. No moon shone
tonight, leaving only thick darkness beyond the edge of her lantern light. 
Soft black soil clutched at her boot heels, and new young trees bent
reluctantly against the flat of her sword, seemingly unwilling to let her pass.
    Don’t see it, Renda.
    She could see something ahead, something deathly still at
the center of the clearing, at the center of the icy blackness.  The shape was
so odd, the outline so vague against the darkness of the forest that her eye
could not bring it into focus. It was so still.  So very still.  It could not
be Pegrine.  Please, let it not be Pegrine.  With more courage than she had
ever called upon in her life, she stepped forward again and brought her own
lantern up.
    The sound she made was less a word than a scream of agony
ripped from her soul.
    Lifeless eyes stared out at Renda from just ahead—dark,
terrified eyes clouded nearly to white and turned somehow wrong, somehow upside
down in the darkness where the child’s head had fallen back against the rude
tree stump. Her black ringlets hung in