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“It’s because of me,” Pen said at once, and they all turned to look at him. “I’m responsible.”

He revealed to them what he and Cinnaminson had decided, how she had told her father, and what her father had obviously decided to do about it. He apologized over and over for not confiding in them and admitted that, by deciding to take the girl off the airship, he was thinking of himself and not of them or even of what they had come to do. He was embarrassed and disappointed, and it was all he could do to get through it without breaking down.

Khyber glared at him when he was finished. “You are an idiot, Penderrin Ohmsford.”

Pen bit back his angry reply, thinking that he had better just take whatever they had to say to him and be done with it.

“That doesn’t help us, Khyber,” her uncle said softly. “Pen loves this girl and he was trying to help her. I don’t think we can fault him for his good intentions. He might have handled it better, but at the time he did the best he could. It’s easy to second-guess him now.”

“You might want to ask yourself what Hatch will do to her now that he knows what she intended and no outsiders are about to interfere,” Tagwen said to Pen.

Pen had already thought of that, and he didn’t like the conclusion he had reached. Gar Hatch would not be happy with his daughter and would not trust her again anytime soon. He would make a virtual prisoner of her, and once again, it was his fault.

Khyber stalked away. She stopped a short distance off and stood looking out at the bay with her hands on her hips, then wheeled back suddenly. “Sorry I snapped at you, Pen. Gar Hatch is a sneak and a coward to do this. But the matter isn’t finished. We’ll see him again, somewhere down the road. He’ll be the one who goes over the side of that airship the next time, I promise you!”

“Meanwhile, what are we supposed to do?” Tagwen asked, looking from one face to the next. “How do we get out of here?”

Ahren Elessedil glanced around thoughtfully, then shrugged. “We walk.”

“Walk!” Tagwen was aghast. “We can’t walk out of here! You’ve seen this morass, this pit of vipers and swamp rats! If something doesn’t eat us, we’ll be sucked down in the quicksand! Besides, it will take us days, and that’s only if we don’t get lost, which we will!”

The Druid nodded. “The alternative is to use magic. I could summon a Roc to carry us out. But if I do that, I will give us away to Terek Molt. He will reach us long before any help does.”

Tagwen scrunched up his face and folded his arms across his chest. “I’m just saying I don’t think we can walk out of here, no matter how determined we are.”

“There might be another way,” Pen interjected quickly. “One that’s a little quicker and safer.”

Ahren Elessedil turned to him, surprise mirrored in his blue eyes. “All right, Pen, let’s hear what it is.”

“I hope it’s a better idea than his last one,” Tagwen grumbled before Pen could speak, and set his jaw firmly as he prepared to pass judgment.

He showed them how to build the raft, using heavier logs for the hull, slender limbs for the cradle, and reeds for binding. It needed to be only big enough to support the four of them, so a platform measuring ten feet by ten feet was adequate. The materials were easy enough to find, even in the Slags, though not so easy to shape, mostly because they lacked the requisite tools and had to make do with long knives. On more than one occasion Pen had built similar rafts before and knew something about how to construct them so that they wouldn’t fall apart midjourney. Working in pairs, they gathered the logs and limbs for the platform and carried them to a flat piece of earth on which they could lay them out and lash them together.

They worked through the morning, and by midday they were finished. The raft was crude, but it was strong enough to support them and light enough to allow for portage. Most important, it floated. They had no supplies, nothing but the clothes they wore and the weapons they carried, so after crafting poles to push their vessel through the swamp, they set out.

It was slow going, even