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The two locked gazes. “I do not know if this is wise, Biri-Daar,” Keverel said. “The breaking of the box will have alerted Philomen to our location. He will waste no time trying to get the chisel back. If we are to stay together, we need to move fast and be on our guard.”

“To Karga Kul, then,” Lucan said. “But we all knew that already.”

“And how are we to get there before the Road-builder comes back?” Remy asked. “How far is it?”

“On foot, ten days. On horse, four.”

“In ten days, we will have met the Road-builder again,” Keverel said. “Perhaps even in four.”

“Then we must travel more swiftly,” Paelias said. “We must return to Iskar’s Landing and trade on the hospitality of the halflings again. The river will take us to the cliff landing below Karga Kul in two days, will it not?”

“It will, but I fear those halflings will not be nearly so happy to see us now that Kithri is dead,” Lucan said.

Keverel shook out his blanket and lay down. “That must be balanced against another unhappiness,” he said. “Orcus will be in a fury that we have destroyed the Road-builder. All liches pay their homages to the Demon Prince.”

For a few minutes more, Paelias whittled. He sheathed his knife and blew an experimental note on the flute. “Orcus,” he repeated. “The Demon Prince will chase us all the way to Karga Kul. So will Philomen’s agents. And when we get to Karga Kul, we will have to contend with a disintegrating Seal and Corellon knows what else. Including, possibly, a reincarnated Road-builder whom our only chance of avoiding requires a boat trip with a tribe of potentially hostile, or at least indifferent, halflings.”

He looked around at them. “Do I understand our circumstances?”

“Mostly you have the right of it, yes,” Keverel said.

“Then as long as everyone knows what awaits us, let us await it no longer. What is it, half a day back down to Iskar’s Landing?” Paelias rose and piped a note on the flute. “To the river, comrades.”

Obek had said little since returning to solid ground. But he too stood. “I’m with the eladrin. Let’s move if we’re going to move.”

“It is not your decision,” Biri-Daar said.

Meeting her gaze, Obek said, “I didn’t make a decision. I offered an opinion. The right to an opinion I earned up there.” He pointed toward the spectral hulk of the Inverted Keep, somehow less ominous knowing the Road-builder was—however temporarily—dead. And the final blows, Remy thought, were struck by Obek and me. I helped to kill a lich. It was a story to dumbfound his fellow Quayside urchins back in Avankil.

Only Remy wasn’t any kind of urchin anymore. Perhaps he had already been beyond that when Philomen sent him out on the errand he was never supposed to complete. Certainly he was beyond it now.

“Dragonborn and tiefling, the assembled humans and elves have no interest in your grievances.” Keverel stepped between them, placing a hand on the back of each. “Obek, you fought well in the Keep, but we do not know you. Ask Remy about finding a place in the group. Biri-Daar, this quest is personal for you, and spiritual, and it will be the matter of great songs. But only if we survive. Obek willingly risked his life to join us, braving the Road-builder’s Tomb on his own. He has earned our trust until he proves himself unworthy of it.”

“That’s what I would have said if I could have thought of how to say it,” Remy said. Everyone looked at him and he realized what they were thinking. It was the first time he had claimed a voice in the group.

Biri-Daar cracked a smile. It was the kind of smile, Remy thought, he had seen on the faces of fathers at the sight of their children’s first steps. Partly he was proud of himself and of her regard, and partly he was spurred on by its slight condescension.

“Let us go, then,” she said. “And let us leave the memory of our comrade Kithri the halfling to Avandra. She, patron of halflings, the Lady of Luck and the spinner of fortune’s wheel, she will bring Kithri’s spirit to its rest.” All of them realized toward the end