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almost infantile. Its whole body heaved as ragged breaths escaped its rattling, paper-thin lungs. Korel's loathing abated as sadness for the pathetic figure rocking before him gradually replaced it. He let the tension on the bow relax.
    The other continued to sob, but more deliberately, with its body relaxing through wet heaves. Near crusting blood and mucous dripped from its index finger. Eventually, the other stopped sobbing for a moment to peer up at Korel with a sheepish, remorseful, half-cracked grin.
    Korel broke the awkward silence. "Who are you and why are you following me?"
    "I am Hurnix," the other rasped. "I follow you because I must."
    "What is the meaning of this attack?"
    "I attacked because I must."
    Korel began to feel uneasy under the vague sense of madness running through the follower's answers. "How long have you been following me?"
    "Always," Hurnix said.
    Korel's disquiet deepened as he could sense no deception in the other's words, a strange truth forming out of the ruins of what seemed verbal nonsense. The back-and-forth continued as Hurnix answered every question with similar vague and obscure meanings, his words forming a tapestry of fragmented reality touched by an earnest insanity.

Chapter 3
    S lowly, the light of morning crept into the mountain clearing as the embers of the dying fire gave up their angry red glow for the dull gray of lifeless smoke and ash. The clearing where Korel first caught glimpse of Hurnix was quiet, a mute witness to the previous night's struggle, wholly without testimony except for a little scattered dust here or a drop of blood there.
    Korel loosened his bowstring for travel and started once again east along the faint and faded trail as it weaved its way through the tangle of trees and hillocks. Hurnix limped along behind, always just on the edge of sight, simpering and crying unintelligibly. But as the afternoon wore on, the small knife wound on Korel's forearm became a black crater that oozed a human form of crude oil as it dripped in marbled rivulets upon the ground.
    The trail lightly parted the underbrush as it moved out from under the canopy of firs and gently broke onto a high mountain meadow. Korel's arm continued to swell, blackening to the woody shine of an exquisite coffin lid. Pain shot black and hot up toward his shoulder, each step a study in liquid anguish. Midway across the meadow, he faltered as the cold heat of fever washed over him, a continuation of the burning deep within his viscera. As he sat resting, he took the boar tusks from his purse and began grinding them into a poultice. This he applied liberally to his left arm until the black became a dull gray beneath the gleaming white sheen of crushed boar tusk.
    Evening descend upon the meadow, with the stars in their brilliance sending keen opalescence down upon the meadow. Hurnix sat nearby with interchanging expressions of glee and fear playing across his decaying face as Korel faded in and out of consciousness. As his mind wandered from the meadow on the mountain to the meadows of his memory, Korel felt his past pressing closer.
* * *
    The Quenivorian sorceress compelled Korel to reach out and touch the sphere. Gouts of pain plunged up his arm and into his mind as white stars burst upon his vision. She had summoned him to report on his dealings with Lord Targor, and now he found himself once again in the sphere room, the same room she had shown him the first day he entered the palace. Her voice was mild, almost pleasant, as she spoke to him as though speaking to a cherished stallion or bloodhound.
    "You will not defy me. Do as you are told and we can avoid these boring unpleasantries. This pains me, but it is for your own good. Now do be a good boy and take your medicine."
    Fresh waves of blinding whiteness shot through his mind.
    Three days earlier, Syrilla had sent him to execute and take possession of the lands and throne of a lesser king whose small realm bordered the south eastern edge of