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The three silhouettes resolved into charging men wielding daggers and slender swords. She held back Angul's sure retributive strike; she retained hold of her mind by the barest of threads, enough to ask the sword, "Nangulis? Are you in there?"

The blade answered only by wrenching itself around in her grip, shearing off the crown of the man who charged her. Certainty of purpose beat up from the blade through her skin as it always had, like heat. Whether or not Nangulis walked again, Angul remained as he always had been: judge, jury, and executioner of what he knew to be right.

A dagger sprouted in the throat of a second attacker. He burbled and fell at her feet. Gage was flinging daggers from behind the log. The last attacked was turning, an expression of uncertainty breaking to fear, even as she strode forward and swept Angul through him from neck to navel.

From nowhere, the air cracked, louder than anything she'd ever heard.

The breath was drawn from Kiril's lungs, and Gage fell to one knee, gasping. Halos of shadow spun around both of them, off kilter and wobbling like a swarm of ethereal wagon wheels. A voice, far-off and airy, was audible over the ringing in Kiril's ears. An arcane voice. A voice in the midst of calling down more destruction.

She leaped just as the air convulsed again, even louder. She landed face-first in muddy snow, but her legs churned for purchase and her left hand groped for Angul's hilt. The blade pulled her to her feet despite the absolute silence that had descended. Blood seeped from her ears. The sword did not comprehend failure. The weakness of her flesh was something he would not tolerate.

Ahead, a clearing in the woods surrounded a bare hillock, mostly free of the night's snow. Upon the bald hill's ctown was a woman. She was sheathed in black fabric and obsidian jewelry that pierced ears, nose, and eyebrows. Even in the full light of day, shadows curled and scampered around her like negative flames in a stiff wind. The darkness whispered, but the words were too faint for Kiril to make out.

The woman gestured to Kiril, inviting her into the open. Kiril accepted the challenge.

Gage saw Sathra of the Shadow Tongue appear on the bald hill. "Queen of Air, why doesn't she give it up?"

The ctime lord of Laothkund apparently valued a prize as potent as the Blade Cerulean too much to allow it to slip away. Gage could understand that. But he wouldn't have guessed the woman would track them-into the wilderness.

"Bitch of Dark Corners!" he hissed when he saw Kiril charge toward the slope. He'd told Kiril he'd already dispatched the ctime lotd… now she'd know he'd lied.

A branch snapped, then two mote. Something lacking grace lumbered through the trees, heading directly for him.

He was running low on blades! Gage pulled a throwing knife from the felled attacker lying across the log, simultaneously drawing a dagger. He tensed, seeing a dark figure moving closer through the trees.

It was… a man sustained by shadow. Not a man hiding in shadow, like the three who'd first attacked. No, this one was dead, but animated by tendrils of darkness that clawed and writhed across his body. It was someone he'd met before.

Stolsin, Grinder of Tribes. The Rashemi barbarian he'd killed in Sathra's lair. Back from the dead with a little push from Sathra's necromancy. The barbarian carried his maul, but dusk dripped from the gray stone cudgel as if it were dipped in ink. The tattoos scrawled across the man's flesh now writhed and twisted, as if ready to animate with tiny, nasty lives all their own.

Gage flipped the dagger, grasped it by the blade, and thiew. His aim was true. The blade punched straight into Stolsin's left eye.

The beshadowed barbarian opened his mouth to yell or scream, but all that emerged was dripping night. He didn't cease his relentless march across the forest floor.

The thief jumped up onto the log, then ran along it to the

" great root ball that had come free when the ttee crashed over in whatever wind or rain had