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not the only thing that gained them the esteem of the Sithi. We loved the kindness of trolls as well.”
    Nunuuika touched the combs in her hair, her gaze hard. “Kind hearts must never overthrow just law, Prince Jiriki, or all Sedda’s spawn—Sithi as well as mortals—will return naked to the snows. Binabik shall have his judgment.”
    Prince Jiriki nodded and made another brief bow before turning away. Haestan half-carried the stumbling Simon as they walked back across the cavern, down the gauntlet of curious trolls, back out into the cold wind.

2
    Masks and Shadows

    The Fire popped and spat as snowflakes drifted down into the flames to boil away in an instant. The surrounding trees were still striped with orange, but the campfire had burned down almost to embers. Beyond this fragile barrier of firelight, mist and cold and dark waited patiently.
    Deornoth held his hands closer to the embers and tried to ignore the vast living presence of Aldheorte Forest all around, the twining branches that blotted the stars overhead, the fog-shrouded trunks swaying somberly in the cold, steady wind. Josua sat across from him, facing away from the flames toward the unfriendly darkness; the prince’s angled face, red-washed by rippling firelight, was contorted in a silent grimace. Deornoth’s heart went out to his prince, but it was too difficult to look at him just now. He turned his eyes away, kneading his chilled fingers as though he could rub away all suffering—his, his master’s, and that of the rest of their pitiful, lamed flock.
    Someone moaned nearby, but Deornoth did not look up. Many in their party were suffering, and some--the little handmaiden with the terrible throat wound, and Helmfest, one of the Lord Constable’s men, gut-bitten by those unholy creatures—he doubted would live through the night.
     
    Their troubles had not ended when they had escaped the destruction of Josua’s castle at Naglimund. Even as the prince’s party had staggered down the last broken steps of the Stile, they had been set on. Mere yards from the outer stand of Aldheorte, the ground had erupted around them and the false, storm-carried night had rung with chirping cries.
    There had been diggers everywhere— Bukken , as young Isorn called them, shouting the name hysterically as he lay about him with his sword. Even in his fear the duke’s son had killed many, but Isorn had also taken a dozen shallow wounds from the diggers’ sharp teeth and crude, jagged knives. That was something else to worry about: in the forest, even small wounds were likely to fester.
    Deornoth shifted uneasily. Those small shapes had clung to his own arm like rats. In his choking fear, he had almost cut his hand loose from his body to get the chittering things off. Even now, the thought made him squirm. He rubbed at his fingers, remembering.
    Josua’s beleaguered company had finally escaped, hacking free long enough to make a dash for the forest. Strangely, the forbidding trees seemed to provide a sort of sanctuary. The swarming diggers, far too numerous to have been defeated, did not follow.
    Is there some power in the forest that prevented them? Deornoth wondered. Or more likely, does something live here more fearsome even than they are?
    Fleeing, they had left behind five torn things that had once been human beings. The prince’s troop of survivors now numbered perhaps a dozen—and judging by the tortuous, gasping breaths of the soldier Helmfest, who lay wrapped in his cloak near the fire, they would be fewer than that soon.
    Lady Vorzheva was dabbing the blood away from Helmfest’s ghost-pale cheek. She had the distant, distracted look of a madman Deornoth had once seen, who had sat in the Naglimund-town square pouring water from one bowl to another for hours at a time, back and forth, never spilling a drop. Tending this living dead man was just as useless a thing to do, Deornoth felt sure, and it showed in Vorzheva’s dark eyes.
    Prince Josua had been