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toward Seagryn and whispered, “They’re having a quick meeting to decide what to do with us. They’ll agree to kill us, plan how to do it, then Quirl will return all smiles to convince us they’ve accepted us into the family.”
    “You’re certain of all of this?” Seagryn wondered, amazed at the boy’s self-confidence.
    “I was certain of it last night! If you’d let me stay I could have told you this whole day’s events. Of course, I knew in advance you wouldn’t,” Dark grumbled.
    “Just as you knew of the beating,” Seagryn murmured to himself.
    “Oh,” the boy moaned, “I’ve known about that for months.”
    Dark shivered. “I’m so relieved to have it over, at last. Can you imagine what it’s like to know for months you’re going to get a drubbing and not be able to do a thing to avoid it?”
    “But that makes no sense,” Seagryn said. “If you knew such and really wanted to prevent it, you’d simply be elsewhere! I think you planned last night to let yourself be caught, knowing that I’d —”
    “For what!” Dark snapped, truly angry. “That’s exactly what these forest fools thought, and why they were beating me! Just because I know something’s coming does not give me any control over it! Why is it everyone thinks it should? I told Quirl and his people they would be ambushed. They were. Does that make me responsible? It does to them, even when I tried to warn them! You don’t like the future? Punish the prophet. Happens all the time.” Dark swirled the liquid in his cup and took a long, ferocious draught.
    “Then — you actually know the future ...”
    “Anything I care to know. And a whole lot I don’t care to know.”
    Seagryn nodded. “And you already know what will happen tonight — that these Marwandians will try to kill us but we’ll manage to escape?”
    “Close,” Dark corrected. “They’ll attempt to kill us and most of them will manage to escape — from you, anyway.”
    “Then — I’ll turn tugolith again tonight,” Seagryn said quietly. When Dark didn’t reply, Seagryn asked, “How long have you known?”
    Dark raised his eyebrows. “Known what? You have to be specific, Seagryn. I can read the future, but not minds.”
    “That I would become a tugolith.”
    “Oh, that. Long enough.”
    “Long enough for what?”
    Dark sipped his drink and swallowed, his eyes not leaving Seagryn’s. He seemed about to answer when the tent flaps opened.
    “Ah, my friends!” Quirl smiled as he stepped inside, bearing two steaming bowls. “Marwandian stew! You’ll enjoy it.” As Quirl passed the bowls to his two guests, his smile seemed a bit too brilliant. Dark caught Seagryn’s eye and nodded knowingly. Seagryn looked at his bowl with some worry, then back at Dark, but the boy was already eating. So ... not poisoned. Seagryn tasted the stew and found it to be delicious, but he ate without appetite, due to Dark’s revelations. That annoyed him. Why did this lad burden him with such disturbing predictions?
    Quirl had fetched a bowl for himself and reentered the tent to sit cross-legged in front of Seagryn. “Now my friend,” he began. “Just tell me straight. Weren’t you really sent by the Conspiracy to destroy us?”
    The question stunned Seagryn. “Sent by whom?”
    “The Conspiracy!” Quirl smiled belligerently. Seagryn looked at Dark for support but found him studying his stew meat. “Oh.” Quirl chuckled. “You’re going to pretend you’ve never heard of it.”
    “Of course I’ve heard of it. Who hasn’t? But it’s really only a rumor — a theory people in distress rely on to rationalize their failure.” As he listened to himself quote Ranoth, a dart of doubt stabbed at his heart. This is what he’d always been told, but then he’d always trusted his teachers. Why should he now, when they had so swiftly abandoned him in his need?
    “I see.” Quirl mod Kit smiled dangerously. “So you’re saying that I lead a band of distressed