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Seventeen: Weeds and Ashes

"I can't believe you stole the lute."

Marc couldn't tell if he was waking up, or if the voices he heard whispering were still a part of his dreams. He hoped he was still asleep. He didn't want to wake up without having at least one dream that wasn't a nightmare.

"I didn't steal it. I brought it with us so that it wouldn't get burned up in that fire. Trust me, if the guy it belonged to was still alive, he'd thank me."

"If he was still alive, he'd want his lute back. What do you plan to do with it now that you've rescued it from the fire?"

"I don't see the harm in keeping it."

"So you stole it! You should give it to the Right, or to one of his soldiers. If it belongs to anyone, now, it's them."

"If they ask for it, I'll hand it over, okay? But let's be honest; if the Right wanted to, he could probably buy his own symphony, so I doubt he'll miss one lute, and neither of the soldiers still alive look like they're all that musically inclined."

"Whether or not they can play it isn't the point. Besides, if we're judging by looks alone, you're the last person I'd expect to have any skill with a lute. Who's to say one of the soldiers can't play it?"

The backs of Marc's eyelids lit red as a beam of morning sunlight filtered through the trees sighing around him and landed squarely on his face. There was no use fighting it any longer. He was awake.

"If anyone else wanted it, they would have grabbed it when they had the chance." Trent said from somewhere to Marc's left, continuing his whispered argument with Dola.

"The rest of us were just a bit busy fighting for our lives. I saw you trying to run away while everyone else was getting killed. You didn't lift so much as a finger to help anyone but yourself."

"I don't know the first thing about fighting. I would have only gotten in the way of those of you who were able to hold your own against the demons. It's true I was trying to save my own neck, but getting myself out of the tavern and giving the rest of you more room to maneuver was the most helpful thing I could do."

Marc groaned, throwing an arm over his eyes. He ached everywhere, the previous night's abuse at Durim's hands combining with the unforgiving stone he was using as a bed to turn his entire body into one unending cramp. Even the small movement of raising his arm to his face sent twinges up and down his right shoulder and side.

"Quiet, he's awake." He heard a crunch of gravel as Dola moved closer and knelt beside him. "Are you okay, Tolinom?"

Marc let his forearm slip down over his muzzle and to his side, only to wince when his elbow connected hard with the stone beneath him. "Oh, I'm spectacular," he rasped hoarsely, then broke into a small coughing fit. His throat ached from Durim's attempt to strangle him before they'd all fled the Riversider, and from all the smoke he'd inhaled. He opened his eyes cautiously, but the canopy had shifted to shade his face again, so the morning sunlight, at least, wasn't at all painful.

"Here, let me help you up." Dola bent to slide an arm below his upper back, but he shrugged out of her hold and sat up on his own, despite his protesting muscles and joints.

"Thanks, but I can manage," he said, his voice still a dry rasp. He didn't want to feel like an invalid every time he woke up in that world.

He looked around himself at their makeshift riverside camp. Taurus stood on a boulder that jutted into the river's bend, staring like a statue back in the direction of Dentos Crossing. Some of the inn staff clustered in their own small group a short distance downriver, two women murmuring to each other with their shoulders slumped wearily while another woman and Kicoba's older sister still slept. Marc didn't see Durim or Kenner anywhere, nor the two remaining soldiers of the Right Guard. "Where are the others?" he asked, finally managing more than a rough croak when he spoke.

"Kenner, Durim, and one of the soldiers are all out standing sentinel while the other soldier scouts out the town," Trent replied, squatting on the other side of Marc as Dola. The big man was indeed holding the lute he'd been permitted to play the previous night at his side. Marc had forgotten his friend had grabbed the thing during their rushed escape.

"While he scouts the town?" Marc repeated. "I thought we were just going to skirt around Dentos Crossing and follow the road to...to..." He couldn't remember the name of the place Taurus had told them they would head to.

"To Joharla," Dola supplied. "They'll be heading that way once the scout gets back. I think the Right wants to know how many demons are left in Dentos Crossing so that he can gather a large enough force to drive them out. And if the dragon's still there, too, of course."

"You said 'they'll' be heading out," Marc noted. "Are we not going with them?"

"Dola still wants to cross the river and go find her magician," Trent said wryly, clearly against the idea.

Dola shot Trent an irritated glare. "You still want to get home, don't you?"

"Of course I do. That's why I can't understand why we should leave the Royal Right without at least asking him if he can help us." Trent met her glare with an expression of open expectation, waiting for her response, but she broke eye contact to dart a nervous glance in Taurus's direction.

"If the Right could use magic, he would have done something to save everyone back in the Riversider," she said, but she dropped her voice to an even lower whisper, as if, despite what she'd just pointed out, she suspected Taurus might have been eavesdropping on their hushed conversation with supernatural hearing.

"Just because he can't use magic doesn't mean he doesn't know anything about it," Trent argued. "Come on. What could be the harm in telling him what happened back on the ship? After last night, I'm sure he'd want to know about the sorcerer's fight with a dragon, and about the green dragon Rias and I saw flying inland when we sailed over the reefs, not to mention the melted beach at Dentos Falls."

Dola shook her head and only offered two words against Trent's insistence. "It's complicated," she said.

Marc didn't feel like letting her get away with such a vague dismissal again. "That's what you told us last night before the demons attacked. What is it that makes asking the Right for help so complicated?"

Instead of answering, Dola just tilted her head at Marc and said, "Herschal," lifting an eyebrow significantly.

"What does Herschal mean?" Trent asked.

"Herschal is a name," Dola replied without looking away from Marc, as though waiting for his reaction, "and it means you know exactly what makes everything so complicated."

It took Marc a few moments to remember exactly what Dola was referring to. "I said something about Herschal last night," he recalled slowly, "just after we'd gotten out of the inn." Try as he might, though, he couldn't remember who Herschal was, or what had made Marc bring him up to Dola. In a night full of traumatizing events that had branded themselves unshakably into his memory, that moment remained strangely blurry. All he could remember was feeling dizzy from inhaling so much smoke.

"That's right," Dola said with a satisfied nod, "and I haven't mentioned Herschal to you once since you woke up on Falcon Wing." She leaned closer, her diamond, feline eyes boring into Marc's. "I know this is all an act."

"Dola, I'm not--" he began, but she cut him off as she sat back on her digitigrade heels.

"I don't know why you're pretending to have someone else's memories. I don't have any idea what _he_has to do with anything." She pointed across Marc at Trent with a black furred thumb. "And I certainly don't know why you felt you had to hide it all from me in the first place, but you let me know you've just been faking your crazy amnesia when you told me that I was beginning to sound like Herschal." She leaned forward again until Marc had to arch his back over the boulder propping him up to keep her nose from bumping into his. "So you can stop lying to me."

She didn't snarl or raise her voice, but something in her eyes showed Marc the intensity of the emotions she must have been suppressing. With everything she knew combined with everything she didn't, he couldn't blame her for coming to the conclusion that she had, or for feeling betrayed by the friend she believed was leaving her in the dark about some intricate secret.

Neither could he start lying to her then, though, with her coming so close to begging for honest answers. "I'm sorry, Dola. I know I said something about this Herschal last night, but I swear I don't have any memory of who he is, or even why I brought him up."

Dola let out an exasperated breath and sat back again, letting Marc straighten away from the uncomfortable stone behind him. "Fine," she muttered, and this time she did snarl a little. "I can only assume you found out something crucial to the safety of Bandarethe that's too important to tell me about. It probably has something to do with all these dragons and demons that have been appearing." She stood, then, brushing off the front of her trousers before walking off toward the trees upriver from the rocky shore. "I just hope it's worth losing a friend for," she added before vanishing behind one of the tree trunks, her voice wavering slightly.

For a long while, neither he nor Trent said anything, just staring at the tree line where Dola had left them. Then Trent sighed quietly. "Sometimes, she scares me."

"She's as confused as we are," Marc said, feeling oddly defensive on Dola's behalf. "She has a right to be frustrated."

"Of course she does," Trent said, getting to his feet. "The best thing we can do for her sake, then, is find a way to get ourselves home and get the real Tolinom back to her, right?"

He took a step toward the boulder on which Taurus stood, but hesitated when one of the soldiers stepped into their small clearing from the forest near the spot where Dola had departed. The soldier strode past Marc and Trent without sparing them a single glance, though Marc noticed the frown creasing his blocky face before the man passed them.

The soldier and the Right exchanged words briefly, their quick conversation barely audible to Marc. He would have expected his Oncan ears to be sharper than a human's, but even though he could hear the quiet timbre of the men's voices, he couldn't understand what they were saying.

It wasn't long before Taurus nodded crisply and stepped down off his boulder, making his way along the river's rocky shore to the forest's edge where his soldier had come from. Like the other man had, he passed Trent and Marc without so much as looking at them, ignoring Trent's cheerful, "Good morning." The soldier, though, following in the Right's wake, glowered at the two of them that time until he could no longer keep his eyes on them without walking backward.

Durim was at the tree line to meet the Right. "If it's time to head out, Master Taurus, I can have my daughter awake and ready to go in just a few minutes."

Taurus shook his head. "Let her sleep a while longer, Durim. Dossek is just going to show me what he found back in the town. We'll return when we're ready to depart."

"You won't mind if I come along," Durim said. Despite the authority of the man he was addressing, he made the comment neither question nor request, but rather a confident assertion.

"It will be safer if you stay here to protect your family." Taurus's advice had the tone of a command.

That's when Kenner stepped from behind a tree, apparently having abandoned sentry duty along with Durim. "Our family will want to come, too," the teenager said, and hurried toward the cluster of women without waiting for the Right's permission. He skirted around Marc and Trent in a wide arc, never looking directly at them.

The Right shook his white haired head again. "I must advise against this, Durim. We're not going to have the luxury of drawing attention to ourselves, and none of your family has had training in moving stealthily through woodland."

"With all due respect, Master Taurus, we're not moving on to Joharla until we see what's become of our home. We'll stay quiet." He nodded toward the soldier, Dossek. "If your Guard can sneak through the forest without making a noise in all that chain mail, we should be able to manage."

Taurus looked back toward the women, who were already following Kenner up the clearing toward him, following the same route Kenner had before to keep a safe distance between themselves and Trent and Marc. They must have woken up the sleeping woman and serving girl when they'd first noticed the soldier's return from his scouting mission. "Very well," Taurus said. "But no matter what you see, none of you are to do anything rash. Understood?"

Trent plucked at Marc's sleeve as the Riversider family all nodded their agreement. "Come on, Marc. We should go with them. I don't want the two of us to be alone when dragons and demons could be lurking out in the woods."

"What about Dola?" Marc asked while getting unsteadily to his feet. "We can't just leave without her. We need to at least tell her where we're going so she can follow us once she's calmed down."

"Don't worry. Cat girl won't have any trouble tracking us through the forest. We can't say the same about ourselves, if we lose sight of everyone else, unless you're as good at tracking as you are with a sword." He gestured toward the group of people walking into the woods.

Marc wanted to argue that he'd never held a sword in his life before the previous night, but Trent was right. The others were leaving them behind without a single glance back. The inn staff seemed to want to pretend that Marc and Trent didn't exist. Marc could understand their quiet hostility, after the demon sword had almost made him kill Durim's younger daughter, but the Right's apparent indifference toward Trent and him made Marc uneasy. Surely Taurus hadn't forgotten that the demon woman had named Marc the Wanderer, or that she'd kidnapped young Kicoba just to lure Marc into following her. He had a feeling the Right was only pretending not to notice him, and he very much wanted to know why.

He and Trent had to hurry to catch up with the others before the trees blocked them from view. Marc wanted to make his way to the front of the group and ask Taurus more questions than he could count, but the silence in which everyone was walking reminded him that they were trying to be as stealthy as possible. They were heading back to the demon infested town that they'd barely escaped the night before. His questions could wait.

Once Marc and Trent had nearly caught up with the two women at the back of the rest of the group, Durim casually slowed and fell back away from everyone else, walking between Trent and Marc and the others. "You two keep your distance, if you know what's good for you."

Marc said nothing in response, but he could feel the fur on the back of his neck rise against his shirt and tunic collars. Durim, at least, had no reservations about letting Marc know how he felt about him, and Marc could understand the man's reasons, but that didn't mean Marc wouldn't chafe when so much open hatred was directed toward him.

It wasn't until Trent put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head warningly that Marc realized he was growling quietly under his breath.

After walking quietly a short distance farther, the Right's second soldier appeared out of the woodland beside their small party and fell into step beside Marc and Trent. He gave them a nod of acknowledgment when Marc glanced at him, then began scanning the trees around them for potential danger. Marc recognized the man as the giant of a soldier who had saved his life before he'd gotten ahold of one of the demons' swords. Now that they weren't fighting for their lives, Marc had the time to get a better measure of the man, and found that he was even taller and broader than Trent. Marc couldn't be sure with the soldier's chain mail and blue and silver tabard covering most of his form, but the man looked built of muscle, without an ounce of softness in him.

Walking between Trent and the soldier, Marc felt especially small. He was shorter in Tolinom's body than most of the human men he'd met since awakening on Falcon Wing, and about as skinny as he had been back on Earth. The statures of the men walking to either side of him made him seem like a child in comparison.

They walked onward for a longer time than Marc had expected. Evidently they'd plunged more deeply into the forest than he'd realized during their mad rush away from the town. Their progress was particularly slow that morning since everyone was taking pains to stay as quiet as possible.

Well, almost everyone.

"Trent," Marc whispered, "stop humming."

"I was humming?" Trent whispered back, and Marc nodded with a silent laugh. Trent had been humming a suspenseful melody that belonged in a James Bond film, or in Mission Impossible, the tune's swift rhythm somehow matching the slow beat of his footsteps. Marc wasn't sure how long his friend had been doing so, since the noise had been going on for some time before Marc had noticed.

Trent's apparent obliviousness to his own humming helped to lift some of Marc's tension, though, which he was grateful for. After a night sleeping on rocks and boulders, his arms and legs threatened to cramp up with every step.

Watching the ground in front of him for twigs or leaves that might make noise underfoot, Marc almost walked straight into Durim's back when the man stopped. They had reached the forest's edge.

One of the women retched so loudly, Marc was certain that if any demons had been nearby, they would have been upon the group of survivors within a few heartbeats to investigate. For better or worse, he didn't think they needed to worry about that. The demons were nowhere to be seen.

They had taken Dentos Crossing with them.

Almost nothing of the town remained. Every building, every shop and home, had been reduced to ash and char. Embers still glowed a sickly orange and red in many of the blackened, decimated lots. Here and there a lonely, splintered beam stood among the ruins, or a fragment of a stone foundation, or half a chimney whose hearth stones had melted together, but no building had so much as a single wall still standing unbroken.

There were few places left in town where a demon might have been hiding and waiting to ambush someone as they wandered past, and Marc doubted any demon remained in the ruins at all. Several other bands of survivors roamed through the desolation unmolested by any hostile force, their skin and clothing blackened by soot as they scavenged among the scant remains of their homes. More townsfolk had escaped Dentos Crossing with their lives than Marc had expected, but there were far, far too few of them, all the same.

He could do nothing but stare, the sheer level of destruction striking him speechless along with everyone else. Without buildings to impede his view, Marc could see the far side of the river, but the other half of Dentos Crossing had fared no better.

Suddenly, Kenner dashed forward from where he stood among his family, only to be brought up short by the Right, Taurus turning at the sound of the teenager's movement and sidestepping to block his path.

Of a similar size and build as the Right, Kenner obviously had trouble keeping himself from bowling the other man over in his haste. "Let me through!" he protested loudly. "I had friends--"

"Quiet!" Taurus cut him off, his voice a low hiss.

"But--"

"Patience, boy," the Right admonished, and, remembering whom he was arguing with, Kenner stepped back sullenly.

Taurus looked past the inn staff at the soldier standing beside Marc, who made his way up to the front of their group without words needing to be exchanged. With the soldier standing so close, the Right almost had to crane his neck to look the other man in the eye, but he somehow managed to seem no less imposing. "Caerts, I want you to approach those three," he said, pointing to a woman and two young children milling about the smoking heap of ashes that was left of a small house. "Stay alert."

"Alert, sir?" Caerts repeated, his voice not quite the low rumble that Marc had expected to come from such a large man, but not very far from it, either.

"Yes, alert. One of the demons in last night's attack was a powerful sorceress. We don't dare trust our eyes completely." He paused to let that sink in, and Marc's eyes widened when he caught Taurus's meaning. The Right suspected that the other survivors they saw might not be real, but rather an illusion meant to lure them into complacency. Marc's stomach fluttered. If that sort of trick was possible, how could he trust anything that he saw?

"Ask the mother if she has friends or family in any town nearby that she and her children might stay with," Taurus went on. "Be polite, but don't let your guard down. Once she says the name of a person or place that you recognize, or if you're unable to coax any sign from her that she is what she appears, excuse yourself and come back to report."

"Understood, sir," Caerts responded crisply, then made his way casually, yet swiftly, into the ruined town.

One of the children, a girl no older than five or six, noticed Caerts navigating toward them around the ashes left of several buildings. Wordlessly, she backed into her mother's legs while the woman bent and prodded at something unseen in the char with a soot darkened stick. The woman didn't look up when her daughter began tugging at her nightgown's skirt urgently. She seemed in a daze, barely aware even of the ashes she was searching, and didn't raise her eyes away from the ruined house until her other child, a boy only a year or two older than infancy, caught sight of Caerts and began crying. When the woman finally noticed the big soldier, nearly upon her by that time, she let out a startled yelp of a scream that set her daughter to wailing as well.

"Is this necessary?" one of the women asked, stepping forward beside the Right as their small party watched from the safety of the trees. "That's just Lissia Mosser and her children. We've all known her for years. She's no demon in disguise, I'd wager my life on it. Her little girl is a playmate of our..." She was unable to finish her sentence. Behind her, Kicoba's older sister began weeping silently, and both Kenner and Durim shot swift glares as sharp as daggers back at Marc. He returned their glares with one of his own, their continued animosity chafing at his nerves.

"We can take no chances," was Taurus's only response.

Marc glanced at the Right's back consideringly. The man did seem to know something about magic, at least enough to take precautions against a possible trap of illusions. Yet Marc had to wonder if Taurus's suspicions were genuine, or all for show. The man was a politician, after all. He could have just been trying to convince everybody that he was in control of the situation.

Before long, Caerts turned away from the Mossers, and his casual return eased much of the tension in the Riversider family's stances. "Her name is Lissia Mosser, and she plans to take her children to Pedrel, where she has a stepbrother who might take them in," he reported. "She just has to wait until someone rebuilds the ferry to cross the river."

Taurus nodded, his concerns apparently alleviated, and turned to Durim. "I'm headed to Joharla, now. It should be safe enough for you to salvage what you can, and rebuild or relocate."

"What about the demons?" Durim asked. "Do you think they're really gone?"

One of the women spoke up as well. "And what about that dragon? What if it comes back?"

Kenner nodded emphatically and gestured toward the devastation in front of them. "Surely it was the dragon that did all this. Even a wildfire couldn't have burned down every single house so thoroughly, not in last night's storm."

Taurus only shook his head. "Hopefully, the demons and the dragon have all returned to wherever they came from." He didn't sound at all reassuring. "Whatever you decide to do, remain vigilant, but I don't believe the demons will attack Dentos Crossing again."

"Why is that?" Durim asked.

For the briefest instant, Marc thought he saw the Right glance his way, but Taurus's eyes returned to Durim so quickly, Marc might have only imagined it. "They've already reduced the town to ash," Taurus replied. "If they are still nearby, I expect they will move on to someplace that they can do as much damage as possible. They didn't seem intent on conquest, but rather purely on destruction, so they won't likely linger around a town they've already destroyed."

It seemed to Marc that some demons might have stayed behind to make sure that Dentos Crossing _stayed_destroyed, but the Right's reasoning apparently reassured the Riversider family, so he didn't bring up his concerns. Besides, he knew the demons hadn't attacked the town for the sheer joy of destroying it, and he suspected Taurus knew as much, too. The demons had attacked because they'd been looking for the Wanderer.

And they'd found him.

"So you're just going to leave?" Kenner asked the Right. "Isn't there something you can do to help?"

"One diplomat and two soldiers?" the Right replied with a wry grin that took much of the harshness out of his face. It only appeared for a moment, though, before he became deathly serious again. "The best way we can help is by reaching Joharla quickly, and the villages beyond, so that we can spread word of the attack and send craftsmen to help rebuild. Dentos Crossing is a critical post along the trade route between Bandarethe and Boendal. The ferry must be repaired or replaced quickly, and when tradesmen hear that their wares can't cross the river until that is accomplished, you'll have all the help you will need."

"What about us?" Marc asked, tired of feeling either despised or invisible.

Taurus looked at him, then, and all notions of having gone unnoticed disappeared. The Right was giving him the same penetrating, measuring stare that he'd all but paralyzed Marc with the first time they'd locked eyes the night before. Marc stared back without blinking, but he suddenly felt like he'd been put on the defensive. "You'll accompany me to Joharla," the Right said, with a degree of certainty that Marc found just a little bit insulting, as though he had no say in the matter.

"We will?" he asked, and managed to raise a white furred eyebrow in some semblance of defiance.

"Yes. You will." Taurus nodded confidently.

"What if we want to help repair the ferry so we can head to Bandarethe?"

Beside him, Trent shifted his weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably. "Marc, what are you doing?" he muttered, his voice almost inaudible. "We've got questions to ask before you provoke the Right into a fist fight."

Taurus made no sign if he noticed Trent's comment. He just kept staring at Marc with a grim frown. "You will both accompany me to Joharla, as well as your friend, if and when she returns. From there, we will continue east to Freeman's Road, then north to Eyrasabi, where you will testify before the king about what you witnessed here. Somehow I suspect you will be able to offer a unique perspective on the attack."

"That's it?" Marc asked, ignoring the Right's comment about his perspective. "You need us to come with you to Eyrasabi so we can tell your king about the attack? You were there, too. You should know more than we do about the demons and the dragon, and why they showed up in the first place. If you need witnesses, I'm sure there are plenty of other survivors who would be happy to go with you if you just offered them a place to stay for a while."

"After you tell us what you know about the attack," the Right went on as if Marc hadn't said anything, "you, Oncan, will stand trial, having been accused of being the Wanderer foretold by prophecy that will bring about Gotrala's end. You will either prove your innocence, or your sentence will be carried out."

"Whoa, wait a second," Trent spoke up, and when he stepped forward to get the Right's attention, Taurus's soldiers moved forward as well, their fists around their swords' hilts. Trent raised his own hands in front of him, one still holding the lute, to show that he wasn't a threat. "You're going to put Marc on trial for something a demon said to him? You don't really think you can trust that sorceress, do you? You had to double check just to make sure those people out there are real, and not some spell she cast to trap us." He used the lute to gesture toward the isolated clusters of survivors roaming through what was left of Dentos Crossing.

Marc put a hand on his friend's shoulder and gently pulled him back so that he could speak without Trent acting as a shield between him and the Right. "What sentence will be carried out if I can't prove to you that I'm not this Wanderer?" he asked. He suspected he already knew the answer, but for some reason he needed to hear it said out loud.

The inn staff began whispering to themselves while Taurus's eyes bore into Marc's, the man's frown deepening slightly. "Anyone accused of being the Wanderer and unable to reasonably prove their innocence cannot be allowed to live," he said slowly, confirming Marc's fears.

"There's not a soul in all of Sarutia who doesn't know that," Durim muttered, and Marc didn't think he'd intended anyone but his family to hear him.

"Or in the old Empire, either," Kenner added, somewhat more loudly.

Beside Marc, Trent was shaking his head. "You can't be serious. You can't condemn someone to death when they haven't even done anything wrong. If not for Marc, we might never have gotten out of that inn alive last night."

"If not for him, those demons never would have attacked our home in the first place," Kenner argued, and his family all nodded angrily behind him.

"And you believe that because a demon told you so?" Trent asked sarcastically, and Marc was a little surprised to see some of the women glance at each other uncertainly. The serving girl didn't share her cousin's open animosity towards Marc and Trent, either. "Look," Trent continued, "he and I aren't exactly what we appear to be, I'll give you that, but we didn't cause the demons to attack. We didn't cause this." He gestured again at the desolation left in the demons' and dragon's wake, then turned back toward Taurus. "We were going to ask for your help before all this chaos started."

"It's nearly a two week journey to Eyrasabi from here," Taurus told them. "You'll have more than enough time to explain yourselves and ask for as much help as you want on the way there. We leave now, though. I intend to reach Joharla in two days, which doesn't leave me enough time to conduct a trial here."

He dismissed Trent and Marc, then, the matter apparently settled, and turned his attention to Durim and his family. "There is one other matter. If you, or anyone else who survived, find any weapon or tool made of torialis, you must bury it in a place far from any farmland or water source. Seal it in stone, if you're able to, and be careful to never touch it directly."

The inn staff shared confused glances with each other, and Marc was somewhat relieved that he wasn't the only person who didn't understand what he was being told, for once. "What is torialis?" one of the women asked.

Taurus began explaining as though he'd been expecting the question. If Marc had to guess, he thought that the Right might have mentioned torialis without describing it just to see whether or not Marc seemed to know what it was already, though the man wasn't even looking at him any more. "Torialis is a metal from the demons' realms that doesn't naturally exist in ours. It is said that mortals react to its presence and touch in the same way that angels react to iron. Last night we saw the truth of that legend. The demons' swords and arrowheads were forged of torialis."

"The way angels react to iron?" Trent muttered quietly. He was frowning thoughtfully, but if he wanted to ask Taurus a question, a small rustling in the underbrush nearby caught everyone's attention before he had the chance.

They all stood motionless at the sound, the memories of fighting for their lives too fresh for anyone to casually dismiss the noise as wildlife. When a second rustling sounded and the leaves of a fern behind an unusually thick birch tree shook as they were disturbed, Taurus nodded to his soldiers, and Dossek left their group to investigate.

"Do you think it's Dola?" Trent whispered to Marc.

"Why would she be hiding?"

As soon as Dossek stepped behind the birch tree, though, Dola did appear, but from the other direction. She was a streak of black fur, bolting past the Riversider family and leaping through the air to plant a double-footed kick in the middle of Caerts's armored chest. Surprise and the Oncan's momentum sent the huge soldier sprawling, and Dola rolled to her feet before Taurus could draw his sword or any of the inn staff could think beyond their shock to subdue her.

"Run!" she shouted at Marc and Trent, and followed her own command, sprinting into the forest back in the direction she'd come from while Caerts scrambled upright and Dossek began barreling toward them from the birch, where Dola had evidently been throwing stones to distract everyone.

Marc started running after Dola before he managed to recover from his surprise, Trent right beside him. Dola was a black blur ahead of them, leading them straight toward the river's bank. Marc hoped she knew what she was doing. He could hear Caerts and Dossek crashing through the woodland behind him, but their armor must have been slowing them down.

It was beginning to look like they would outrun their pursuers, until Marc tripped over a stone or a root he hadn't noticed underfoot. He crashed heavily onto the bare forest floor, the impact knocking his breath out of him, and Trent ran on another five steps before he realized Marc had fallen behind.

Just as Marc pushed himself onto his hands and knees, a heavy body flew into him from behind, knocking him forward and pressing his face into the dirt as soon as they settled. "You're not going anywhere," the man said, and Marc realized it was Durim kneeling with all of his weight on the knee planted between Marc's shoulder blades. "You've got too much to answer for."

Marc just growled wordlessly at the man as Caerts thundered past them to chase Trent and Dola now that Marc had been caught. Marc knew that he sounded like a feral animal caught in a trap, growling as he was, but he didn't really care. At that moment, that's exactly what he was, really.

When Dossek caught up to them, he gave up his pursuit of the others to help Durim guard Marc, as if Marc had any chance to escape with the man smothering him against the ground. Durim might not have been as large as the soldiers or Trent, but he still had a significant weight advantage over Marc.

"Do you have him?" Taurus asked from the trees somewhere outside of Marc's field of vision.

"Yes, sir." Durim's reply was filled with a tone of righteous satisfaction.

"Good man," the Right said, and even though it sounded to Marc like he was praising a loyal hound more than another human being, he could see Durim beaming proudly out of the corner of his eye. "Dossek," Taurus said, "we passed a stand of hemmet weed on our way back to Dentos Crossing. Do you remember it?"

"I remember it, sir."

"Good. Gather as much as you're able. It seems our Oncan friend is going to need some persuasion to cooperate."

Dossek's boots left the spot they'd been filling in front of Marc's face, his heels disappearing between a pair of spruce saplings.

More footsteps shuffled through the undergrowth behind Marc. "What can I do?" That was Kenner.

"You can stay here and help your uncle and me keep an eye on him," Taurus said. "If Caerts can catch his followers, all well and good, but it's more important that we make certain he doesn't get another chance to escape."

Marc snarled up at them all, even though he couldn't see them, and tried to get his elbows underneath him so that he could lever himself upright, but his position flat against the ground was too awkward to budge Durim's weight on top of him. "You're making a mistake," he said, unable to keep a deep growl from turning his voice into something bestial. "The demon sorceress said that if I followed her into her realm, she would let Kicoba go." That wasn't exactly what the gray woman had told them, but she had at least implied as much. "If you believed her when she said that I'm the Wanderer, you must believe that, too. You might never be able to get her back again if you kill me."

He felt Durim tense on top of him, but the Right remained unfazed. "'He will join with the Nemesis to do what he cannot, and bring a weapon to the Light that only Hell could conceive,'" Taurus quoted. "We will do what we can for Kicoba, but rest assured that you will never be allowed to pass into the demons' realms." His stern tone changed to one of probing curiosity. "You seem rather certain that you will be found guilty at your trial, Oncan."

"As far as I can tell, the trial's already been carried out," Marc said with a grunt. Durim's knee was pressing hard into his spine, making it difficult to draw a full breath. "Your 'guilty until proven innocent' policy doesn't give me much of a chance, does it? How am I supposed to prove that I don't intend any harm to your world?"

"'To your world?'" Taurus repeated, and Marc could almost hear the man's eyebrow lift. "Not to 'our' world? After hearing something like that, I can't afford to assume you are anything less than the Wanderer."

Marc gritted his teeth, but held his tongue. The Right had clearly already come to a decision on the matter, and nothing Marc could say would do anything except drive more nails into his coffin.

After a short stretch of silence, heavy footsteps tramped toward them from the river's direction. "I'm sorry, sir," Caerts said, sounding somewhat out of breath. "They got away."

"No matter. We'd have had trouble keeping a guard on three prisoners on the road to the capital. One should be easier to manage."

"Easier still with a pound of hemmet weed to feed him," Dossek said as he returned to their small group from between the same thin saplings that he'd passed through when he'd left.

"You were able to collect a full pound?" Durim asked while Dossek stepped behind Marc.

Dossek didn't answer, though. As Marc strained against the man holding him down, he heard a sound like paper tearing behind him. Soon, Durim was flipping Marc over onto his back, Caerts stepping forward to help the man when Marc began struggling. With the soldier pinning his legs and tail to the ground, and Durim keeping a firm hold of his wrists, Marc could do nothing but glare up at them as Taurus crouched beside his head and held an open water flask in front of his muzzle.

"Drink," the Right ordered.

When Marc just smirked and laughed incredulously at the man, Dossek knelt on his other side and brought a meaty hand over his face, pressing his thumb and forefinger into twin points at the hinges of Marc's jaw. With a muffled grunt, he opened his mouth against his will, and Taurus immediately poured so much water into his muzzle that he had to choose between swallowing and drowning. The water tasted terrible, laced with a combination of the flavors of licorice and dirt, and no matter how much he managed to swallow and how much more poured out the corners of his muzzle to soak his neck and shirt collar, some of the liquid still fell into his wind pipe, sending him into a gagging and coughing fit that was nearly strong enough to make his arms jerk out of Durim's grasp.

By the time Marc managed to stop hacking and spluttering, his entire palate was numb, as well as his throat, and the forest canopy had begun swirling chaotically above him, a crazy tie-dye of browns, greens, and blues. He saw the men's mouths moving above him, but only managed to decipher something about someone carrying him before their voices merged into a single, blurred drone. Sound swirled as intangibly in his ears as light did in his eyes, and when motion was added to the chaos as someone hefted his limp weight off the ground and slung his body over their shoulder, his mind was finally overwhelmed by the maelstrom of sensations, and blocked them out entirely.

Sleep was a welcome reprieve from consciousness's confusion.