Part 7: Be You of Good Courage

Finally the plateau began to decline. She walked down through an area of scrub and nettles, and into a wood, lusher than any she'd seen before in the hills, where young oaks grew alongside the hawthorn and rowan. The shadow-canopy that spread across the floor set her on edge, but there was no way to leave Deramoor without passing through woodland. The air between the soft floor and the spreading branches smelled of green.

How nice it would be to lie down to sleep here, and how fatal.

By the time they emerged from the trees, Elanee's weight was making her arms ache, and the straps of the haversack were trying to saw through her collarbone. But she could see where they should be going now.

The ground continued downwards until it reached a dry streambed lined with bilberry bushes. Beyond that the next hill rose up steep and bare of everything except shale. A little further, and they were in the streambed. It would make a fair enough walking surface, and seemed likely to take them to the banks of the Dardeel.

She trudged on westwards. Soon she'd have to stop and rest her arms, her shoulders, her back, but right now she didn't dare. Not while they were still so close to the farmhouse.

The pebbles became larger, and began to dig into her feet. One particularly nasty dig felt as if it had broken the flesh. She shifted her path to the edge of the streambed, where the surface was mostly sand and grit.

And trudged on. Her throat was very dry again. Occasionally Elanee muttered something, but the words were too jumbled to understand. The last thing she said might have been borefyd, the Morning World when elves ruled Faerun. Or it might have been "bugger this for a game of soldiers", which would mean that the two of them would be completely in sympathy, for once. Though given what happened next, it also seemed possible she had been saying, "Blurgh. I'm going to throw up. Stand well back."

Most of the vomit missed Lila. That was lucky. The few spots that landed on her feet and ankles were easy enough to wipe off in the bilberry bushes. The vomit itself had a watery, greenish look.

She had to put the elf down to examine her. Once the edges of her mouth had been cleaned with a fistful of moss, she didn't seem to be on the verge of death. Her breathing was regular. If anything, there was more colour in her cheeks and lips than there had been.

Lila rolled her onto her side in case there was anything left to come out. A trickle of water had appeared in the centre of the streambed, and here and there tiny pools were forming. There must be an underground spring somewhere. That would explain why the bilberries were looking so vibrant. Beside the stream, the earth felt sucked dry of all moisture.

She moved the straps on her shoulders once more - how many times had she done that since yesternight? – and swung her arms up and down. As she stretched, she scanned the course of the little valley, the shallow wooded slope up to Deramoor, and the much steeper one to the south. No enemies in sight. Yet.

How long would it be till the shadows descended on them? Would it be soon, or would they give her time for hope to form? Would the flags of the Keep be almost within view when a mass of dark claws and eyeless faces closed over her? She shivered. It did no good to think like that. Instead, she lifted Elanee up gently, making sure the elf's mouth was pointing away from her, and plodded further.

Really, she should be able to see the Dardeel by now. But the streambed was deepening into a gulley, and wound round a flank of the southern massif before going on another detour that skirted Deramoor's south-western promontory.

She must have been walking for over an hour when the streambed reached its point of termination. Lila found herself standing at the end of a hanging valley. Beneath her, spreading out from the north-east to the south-west, was the broad dale of the River Dardeel.

Grassy, but bare of trees, and crisscrossed with stone walls at the field boundaries. The Dardeel ran along the centre, wider than Hunter's Brook and already deeper than the Selverwater. The surface of its water had a black and stormy look to it; if it had been a person, it wouldn't have liked anyone very much. Still, this was the river that would guide her back to civilisation, or the closest thing to it.

The first problem was how to reach the river. A few feet beyond her position, the stream plunged down a slope so steep that it was almost a cliff. Far beneath her it spattered into a pool – the ideal depth to break her neck in. To her right, the way seemed more passable.

After shoving Elanee up onto the bank above the gulley, she clambered up, and stood, plotting her route. A ledge here, a bent hawthorn tree there... The first twenty yards would be the worst part; further down the gradient softened, and there were more footholds. Not as bad as the washed-out pass in the Crags she'd once forced herself across. She survived that; she could survive this too.

With Elanee back in her arms, she took a small step forward. A trickle of earth and pebbles came loose under her foot, and slid down the hillside. She lurched away from the edge. A rethink might be required.

Giving into necessity, she sat, still holding the druid, and skidded down the worst of the slope on her backside. Bishop would have laughed. Gods knew what he'd have made of the rest of this mess. Bastard was probably back in the Phoenix Tail by now.

By the time she'd reached the start of the grazing land, she was bleeding from a cut to the ankle, and the legs of her hose were scuffed and torn. Nothing serious, she told herself. Elanee hadn't even noticed the descent.

"Still with me, Elanee?" she asked, prodding her less than gently in the ribs.

"Yes...where am I?" The druid's hazel eyes flickered from side to side before looking up into the empty blue sky.

"In the fields near the Dardeel. You were hit on the head, do you remember?"

"No...no, I don't remember. I was a bird in the Sword Mountains...I flew higher than all the others..."

"Glad one of us has been having a nice time. See anything interesting while you were up there?"

The muscles under Elanee's cheekbones twitched, her mouth opened, a gloss spread over her eyes. To Lila's horror, the elf was sobbing. Sobbing quietly, but still... This was a high price for not carrying her straight on to the river.

"Come now. Everything will be fine," she said, lying as cheerfully as she could. "We're going home." There was no noticeable improvement.

"I saw him ambushed. Casavir. I saw him cut down by the orcs. They filled his body with arrows and swords, and left him on a mountain top."

Lila winced. "It was a nightmare, Elanee. Casavir is safe and sound at the Keep. And if he's not there, then he'll be looking for you on the road." She touched the elf's forehead. "Don't worry. He's fine."

She quieted then. When Lila lifted her up once more, she leant her head against Lila's shoulder, and fell into some sort of sleep or trance. Next time she woke, it had better not be share the details of any more nightmares. Lila had been imagining life at Crossroad Keep going in on its useful cheerful squabbling way, crowded with people who were to greater and lesser degrees her friends. Now she couldn't get the idea of ambushes and night rides to the mountains out of her head. What if there was no Keep to return to? If the attack of the evening before had just been one pressure point in a general offensive?

She couldn't let herself think like that. Elanee was ill, injured and lovelorn. An odd, lonely elf with a mind too apt to become shadowed by what she saw. The vision of Casavir was just a mangling of the fate that had befallen Katriona.

On the eastern bank of the Dardeel, she paused. As expected, it was much too deep to cross here. She narrowed her eyes, and squinted upriver. No shadows, nor any sign of Luan and Eyepatch. But that was no cause to worry: a journey without incident could mean they were already within the gates of Darmon's tower house. Would the officer there send a troop out to escort her to safety? Unlikely. She hadn't told Luan which direction she'd take on the grounds that the less he knew, the less he could betray to their enemies if he were captured.

She turned her back on the north, and began trudging along the riverbank, following the Dardeel's black flow. The limestone walls that blocked her path every so often did at least provide her with a target to walk towards, and measure her progress by. Deramoor was getting further away. The Keep was getting closer.

One field. Two fields. Three...four...five. Getting Elanee over the walls was more troublesome. She started taking a quick break at each one until the stabs of pain in her arms and back diminished.

To distract herself, she started imagining that her friends were with her. Khelgar wanted to know all the details of the fight at the camp, and told her how he could have turned the tide in her favour with a few well-placed punches. Neeshka rolled her eyes at the dwarf, and started talking about a tiara she'd seen in the treasury, and how no one could possibly miss one little tiara.

"But Neesh," Lila murmured. "What would you do with it? You couldn't wear it round the Keep without giving the game away..."

She hauled Elanee over another wall, and rested. In the next field, Zhjaeve reminded her of the struggles of Zerthimon to free her people, while Sand looked at her in a mildly concerned sort of way before advising her to avoid all forms of outdoor exercise in future.

"Will do." She replied. "No more fresh air and grass for me ever. I'm moving into the library."

The field after that began less pleasantly when a loose rock from the wall fell on her foot. She managed not to drop Elanee. "Sodding, fucking, buggering damn shitty bit of masonry. If I see you again, I'm going to have you ground up and used as roughage for the goats."

"Language, Knight Captain. Wouldn't want Nevalle to hear you talking like that." The imaginary Bishop stalked alongside her, disturbingly realistic in tone and mannerisms. Her mind hadn't got his appearance quite right though; it had made him look as he had that first autumn in the Flagon before his mode of life had impressed itself in the lines at his mouth and on his forehead.

"Sod off, Bishop." Elanee didn't seemed to know or care that her would-be-rescuer was carrying on conversations with invisible people. It could be worse; she might be talking to the Wendersnaven. "I want to talk to Neeshka again."

"Tough luck, swamp girl. We don't get what we want. Our kind never do."

"Nonsense. I left West Harbour, made a name in the city, own a castle and three silk tunics -" which she never got to wear because of the hazards of her trade "-I get what I want all the time."

Bishop huffed derisively. "You'd better hope you don't. You think that demon wrangler of yours is interested in anything about you except how he can use you to pursue his obsession? He isn't. Or your 'friends'. Do you think they'll hang around for your sake when the money and fame run out?"

She would have told him to sod off again, but if this Bishop-figment were true to life, that would make him hang around even longer. Attack was the best form of defence here.

"So what do you want?" she asked. "I don't understand you. I never did. Do you want Elanee? To take him from Casavir? To kill him? To be him?"

A hint of a smile curled round his mouth before he and it faded into the grass. "You made me, swamp girl. You should know."

She bit back curses against the ranger. Although he might well deserve them, on this occasion she could blame no one but herself; the borrowed appearance had merely helped the words cut deeper.

"It's not a swamp, anyway," she told Elanee, who must have heard the same speech several times, and was already poised to sleep through its reiteration. "The Mere of Dead Men is mostly fen, with saltmarsh in the coastal areas, and a stretch of bog at the eastern end. That's why they burn peat as much as wood there. In the oldest houses on the little islands in the middle, the roofs are still made of dried bundles of reeds"

"For someone who always said they hated their little swamp town," said the snide voice of Bishop in her head, "you talk a hell of a lot about it."

She reached the next wall. For a while she could only lean against it. Climbing over with Elanee was far too much work. Across the last – however long it had been – two? three? four? miles – she had hardly looked around her. Now she rested her hips against the dry limestone, and stared back the way she had come. The sun blazed onto her left side, though that granted her right arm and shoulder some respite from the constant broiling heat.

Initially, her mind failed to make sense of what her eyes saw.

The river valley had become wider, its natural walls retreating, though not yet giving up their bleak majestic grandeur. On the nearest of the hillsides, where she had expected to see nothing but rough grass and stones, there was a wheel. From her position, it looked vast, rising almost to half the height of the hill itself. The thought of standing underneath the monstrous construction made her stomach roll. A human would feel like a mouse next to it. And it was turning...

Water was splashing onto its uppermost scales from a flume. That must be providing the propulsive force. Where the water ran after that...she inspected the between-lying ground for streams or pools, and found nothing.

At the foot of the immense wheelhouse, figures were moving. Humanoid. Some lithe, some short and stout. She narrowed her eyes. They had a greyish, uncertain quality, as if she was looking at them through a morning roke. They seemed preoccupied, little inclined to go hunting down the slope after a couple of strangers by the riverbank.

But she had no intention of hanging round to test her assumption. Already she had noticed several other low stone buildings sunken into the hillside, and chimneys standing on their own with no house to keep clear of smoke. The labouring shapes were solidifying. Sunlight glinted off metal rivets on the giant waterwheel.

Snarling from the exertion and attendant pain, she boosted Elanee onto the wall, and followed after her. The next four fields went past slowly; she made herself concentrate, watching for enemies to the front, straining after the sound of pursuit.

An abandoned hunting lodge decayed in depressed elegance on the far bank. There was no movement within the empty windows and doorframe. Only a pattern of owls amidst oak leaves cut into the masonry of the outer wall peeped back at her.

The river that separated her from the lodge had grown wider and deeper, not unlike its size as it passed under the Neverwinter Road. She felt almost giddy with joy at the thought. Remembering that her first experience of the road was being beaten up on it by some rowdies outside an inn, she laughed aloud. Funny how things changed.

Field followed field, Elanee still slept, and Lila relaxed back into the mists of her imagination, where her feet didn't hurt quite as much. Reluctant to hold any more unpleasant dialogues with herself, she left the present altogether, and summoned up an image of a summer's day many years ago near West Harbour, when she and Amie and Bevil had followed Tarmas along well-worn paths into the deep fen to look for herbs.

She imagined their faces at the age they were now. Well, Tarmas and Bevil. Amie was more difficult. Had the scar on her lip been on the right or left side? But it didn't matter. What counted was that she could walk onwards, her companions quiet and content to keep pace with her, and not be alone.

She continued, and at last – at last – the fields ran out. Instead of grass and the odd sheep, she stood before a forest of pine trees. Their trunks were thick; she doubted she could wrap her arms around the circumferences of the oldest among them. As she stepped under the branches, a spongy layer of pine needles cushioned the soles of her feet, and the resin-rich smell of the air felt like an invitation.

She left the dreams of her friends at the forest edges, and went further in. It was not difficult to walk there. The ground seemed to send a balmy warmth into her painful legs; there was enough light to see by, an enough shade to cool her head. The grand old trees observed a respectful distance from each other so that it could hardly be easier to wander between the low sweeping branches.

One of the tallest looked ready to provide a mast for the finest galley in the Luskan fleet. It grew straight, its reddish bark not covered by moss or damaged by fungus. But it would be a crime to fell such a beauty, and leave a trail of needles and unripe yellow cones all over the earth like the organs of small mammals abandoned by cats after a night's hunting.

She carried on deeper and deeper into the forest. The scent of resin and the gentleness of the ground made it almost a pleasure. No gargling of water flowing along the Dardeel could be heard, but, she reasoned, the natural tendency of forests was to muffle the sounds of the world outside, while amplifying their own.

A branch high up above her creaked in a breeze that she couldn't feel in the shelter of the forest floor. A spray of pine needles brushed against her hip with a noise like a sigh.

And something squawked. A harsh, inelegant voice. Ahead of her, looking at her from the low bough of a pine-tree, a thin grey bird was perching. A heron. But how absurd. Herons never lurked in pine forests. It opened its beak, and another of those squawks trumpeted out.

Lila drew her breath through her teeth; she would have blocked her ears if she could. Then the toes on her right foot cracked hard against something. She stumbled. Swore. Her kneecap was suddenly on fire with agony.

Spitting and hissing more curses, she straightened. And blinked. Everything had changed. There were no pines, no forest at all. She was in a field full of short-cropped grass, standing next to another limestone wall. The air was still hot; the smell of resin gone.

A dark-coloured heron flew with slow, steady wingbeats towards the hills that rolled south from Deramoor. Hills that were much closer than they should have been.

She turned and looked for the Dardeel, expecting to find it directly on her right. In fact, it was barely visible. She had somehow walked over half the distance across the floodplain between the river and the hills.

Redistributing Elanee's weight so that it lay for the most part on different areas of her arms and shoulders, she marched back to the river. That walk was not an easy one. She hazarded one glance behind her, and saw her shadow stretched out long and thin, almost like a pine-tree, pointing unerringly towards Deramoor. She shuddered, and staggered forwards.

Returning to the bank of the Dardeel was some comfort. The sight of its dark waters roiling past towards the south and the road home – that was a reason to hope. She could almost convince herself that the misanthropic looks of the river concealed a better nature than the sparkling Selverwater, or the business-like Hunter's Brook.

But Elanee had started giving her cause for concern. Was it just pessimism, or had the druid's breathing weakened again? There was no fresh blood on the bandage round her head. Though head wounds didn't have to bleed out to prove fatal. Listening intently, she could detect no catch, no rattle in the lungs.

"Elanee? Speak to me, Elanee..."

The eyelids didn't flicker. The auburn lashes stayed perfectly still.

"Shit." Not dead yet. How long would Elanee last without attention from a healer? She had no idea.

The wall that constituted the southern boundary of the field was low, ruinous. Assuming it was real and not another illusion. Hallucination. Whatever. She could simply step through a gap in the unworked rocks. The grass on the further side was longer, and mixed with dandelions and thistles. After spotting them, she took care to walk on the stony bank above the river. With a mirthless smile, she thought that if she stepped on a thistle in her bare feet, she was going to chuck the druid in the water and sit down to wait for the shadows.

An amber glow had started to halo the sun. Instead of a place in the sky of all-penetrating whiteness, she could clearly see a yellow disc. But since the heat of the afternoon was still billowing up from the ground, it didn't feel any cooler. Still, there was no doubt about it: the sunset was drawing nearer. As this time of year, it would be long before night fell across the land entirely.

What could she do? Dusk was a dangerous time to walk abroad in a land of shadows, but there was no shelter, no position with any obvious defensive advantage. And if they came upon her again, she'd rather die on her feet with her sabre drawn, not cowering in the lea of an old stone wall.

The disc of the sun itself was turning from daffodil-yellow to gold when she came to the pool. It was something between a lake and a pond in size, created from the black waters of the Dardeel. Bullrushes and water lilies grew round its borders in abundance, while the centre, large enough to contain within it the bailey of Crossroad Keep, was still and clear.

Of more interest to Lila were the buildings. A clapboard boathouse squatted at the water margin with a wooden jetty on its nearer side. A hundred yards away from them, there was another little farmhouse. She prayed that it had been evacuated.

She traipsed on. The germ of an idea, of a hope, began to take shape. She was so afraid of disappointment that she couldn't bear to give a name to it, not even in the privacy of her own head.

"You'd like it here, Elanee. It reminds me of the Skymirror. If we'd been here at noon, I'm sure there'd have been dragonflies and water-boatmen from one end to the other."

Still no reaction.

When she reached the jetty, she nudged it with her foot. It didn't immediately crumble into the lake. It would do. She spread the limp form of the druid out across the warm, knotted planks.

"You rest there for a bit." She was close to tumbling next to her, and disappearing into the longest sleep of her life. A never-ending sleep, most likely.

She drew her sword, and headed for the boathouse. Moving was so much easier when you weren't carrying an unconscious elf around with you. Even the statue head felt lighter. If her path should ever cross Katriona's in the land of the dead, they could commiserate about that.

What would she do if there was nothing in the boathouse? Only rot and a few spiders. Elanee seemed peaceful lying there by the lake, her hair and skin burnished to red and bronze in the setting sun. Would Lila find the willpower to raise her up once more, and carry on the endless slog to the road? And then more miles on top of that to Crossroad Keep.

If Ammon were here, he'd be constructing one of those exaggerated oppositions that he used to try and strong-arm her into doing something she didn't want to do. Or to convince himself of the validity of the role he'd chosen. Climb a tree to rescue a kitten, and Neverwinter will be wiped from the map while you're still on the first branch. That kind of thing. She'd got wise to the technique in the early days of working with him.

But right here, right now, one of his damned oppositions was ready to snap its pincers round her. Try to save Elanee and risk her own end, or leave her, and increase her own chances of survival, along with the chance of bringing back the head of the Illefarn ritual statue.

An old but solid padlock secured the door of the boathouse. Through the cracks in the frame, she could hear water sloshing gently within. Well, with nothing on her feet, she definitely wasn't going to kick the door down. She grabbed the handle and gave it a push to see how much force it would need to break the door free of its hinges. Doable, but messy and tiring.

Instead, she stood side-on, shifted her weight from one leg to the other to test her balance, raised her sabre and brought it down. The jerk of the hilt in her palm was not pleasant, nor was the metallic screech of the blade biting into cast iron, but it was worth it – the padlock dropped into the grass after a single blow. As a bonus, the sabre's edge remained free of notches.

Elanee was still lying quietly on the jetty. Nothing was moving, except for a few ripples on the surface of the lake. Perhaps their luck today was improving. Her left hand trembling a little, she pulled open the door.

The lake entrance to the boathouse faced almost due west. Red and orange light streamed in, not illuminating the interior as much as goldening it. The floorboards by the door had been sawn off a couple of feet to her right. Past them was black water stained with the evening sun, a floating platform, and – she almost sobbed in relief – a boat.

Not a river boat, she quickly ascertained. It was the kind of flat-bottomed punt most families in the Mere of Dead Men owned. Used to own. Well-suited to paddling around in pools to check fish traps, less so to strong currents and rapids. But the hull had been freshly varnished, the bilge was free of water, and there was enough room for two. A couple of paddles were stowed beneath the benches. She could not ask for more.

She patted the snub bow of the punt once, and turned. Carrying Elanee ten yards from the jetty to the boathouse should be within her powers.

At the door she stopped dead. Hope dropped away. Between the boathouse and the jetty, blocking her path, there was a man in a grey shepherd's smock holding a black quarterstaff. He had been looking west across the lake, but as she stood in the doorway he turned towards her.

His face was in a state of chaos. Sometimes the dark-eyed shepherd of the meadow stared back at her, and sometimes the mistress of the house, and sometimes the half-elf archer. At its worst, it was a dreadful blend of all three, and shot through with shadow. Sometimes she saw fragments of others press to the fore, an eye or a mouth or a curved brow that recalled one of the ghosts trapped in Arvahn.

The shepherd's form writhed and twisted, as if he was being torn by invisible claws. As she watched him, his struggles intensified. He collapsed to his knees, gripping the turf with his left hand. The arm behind it was covered in charcoal-grey feathers.

He raised his head. The shepherds olive skin and black hair briefly reasserted themselves. "No," he said, beseeching. "No, not this time. I don't want to go. Please."

Then his body broke apart. She'd seen two women in the Duskwood undergo the transformation into wolves. That had been brutal; this was beyond brutality. In the physical world the change happened in total silence. Inside her head, she could hear him screaming. His cries for mercy only stopped as the creature that had negated then reformed his substance drew itself up.

A night-walker. Long-limbed, huge, and formed entirely of shadow. This was the first time she'd seen one with her own eyes, but it matched Ammon's description of the thing he had fought at West Harbour. The avatar of her enemy. It could be nothing else.

If she retreated now, she could get the boat and take it out onto the lake. The monster might not follow her over water. Elanee couldn't be helped. Ammon could barely be said to have survived his encounter, and he'd had the most coveted sword in creation, and an army of demons. She had to go.

To her surprise, she found herself shifting to the right to set her back against the outer wall of the boathouse. She rotated the hilt of her sabre, and redoubled her grip on it.

The night-walker had no mouth – only a black shape where its head should be. Still, she heard cold laughter echoing round her and through her.

"Do you think you can fight me, mortal trespasser?" The meaning of the sentence communicated itself to her in feelings rather than words. "Be warned: the penalty for spies and trespassers in the lands of Great Illefarn is death."

One of its talons flicked impatiently. A shock stabbed through her right hand. She dropped the sabre, and the blade shattered into dozens of pieces.

"You have no weapon, little spy. Your friend is dying. Why not run? My servants will enjoy chasing you down."

Lila looked at the pieces of broken steel that lay scattered across the grass. She let the useless hilt fall to lie amongst them. She expected to feel terrified. But perhaps she was too tired for fear. What was left – it felt like anger, though purer than anger. More useful.

A long time ago, long before Illefarn ever existed, a slave made a sword to free his people. It was a weapon that could exist on the material plane almost as if it were just another sword. But it was more than that. Silver, she finally understood, was the least of its constituent parts. As the smith laboured over his work, he gave his dreams to it, he hammered belief and sweat and hope and blood deep into its fabric, in a way that no craftsman before or since had ever been able to match.

"Well," said Lila, poking ruefully at the worn hilt with her toe. "It's a pity about the sabre. But I brought a spare, naturally."

She held up her right hand, palm open. Kept her eyes fixed on the night-walker. Don't ask it to be there. It is there. Be certain of it. Be certain, as the smith was certain.

Her fingers closed round a hilt that was much thicker and smoother than her broken sabre's. She observed the night-walker flinch back in surprise, and hazarded a glance at what she was holding.

In shape and colour it was the Sword of Gith – except that the western sun glowed through its outline; its substance was translucent. And this sword was complete, unlike her patchwork version at the Keep. The only thing missing was a needle-like splinter from near its tip, which would, she was sure, match the piece lodged in her chest exactly.

"Your sword is not real, human." The stream of feeling seemed hesitant, fractured.

"Let me test it on you." If it could not be said to fully exist, neither could the night-walker. She grasped the ebony hilt with both hands, and held it so the upright blade shone on her cheek. It looked more solid this close. She smiled, and charged.

A talon reached for her. She dodged it, and dived under the other. The long barbed edge of the sword slipped into the creature's side. It was more in charge of her than she was of it. Not that she was objecting.

The night-walker shook under the blow. Her sword was real enough then. A talon came at her from the flank. The sword scythed straight through it. Although the talon wasn't amputated, it did lose form, become wispy, tentacle-like. From a foot away, the monster was even more uncanny: odourless, soundless, more of an absence than a presence, and yet somehow more material than its shadow slaves.

Lila grinned. She could rarely understand Khelgar's ecstasy in combat, but just occasionally she verged on it. The sword wanted to strike again. She tensed, looking for her next target.

The night-walker gave her no chance, turning at bay as the idea-stream re-entered her mind. "Until harvest, trespasser. The Guardian will take you then, when he restores all the sacred boundaries and holy places. He will bring order to the cities, and plenty to the fields. If you are fortunate, he may permit you to join his flock. Or he will strike you down with the foxes and wolves."

She could not comprehend precisely what happened then. The night-walker was there, and then it was not. In between – some kind of portal must have opened, and the monster passed through. But it was neither like a door nor like a vortex. It was not like anything she had seen before, and trying to hold the image of it in her mind's eye made her temples thrum in protest. Zhjaeve might be able to explain it...or at least suggest a suitable metaphor.

"Thank you, o sword of swords," she said, letting the blade vanish back into the air. It had saved her life for sure, but the effort of wielding it had consumed even more of her energy. Gods knew how she was still standing.

She bent and picked up the larger pieces of her sabre, and dropped them sadly into the sheath. The hilt she placed in the haversack with the statue head. It might not have been equal to the Sword of Gith, but it had been a fine weapon nevertheless. And it had once been the property of Ammon's soldier-brother. Jacoby should be able to reforge it...

For the first time in many hours, the prospect of returning to the Keep seemed real, not like a mad dream she'd invented to keep her legs moving. Her home was there to return to with its bailey full of Greycloaks and angry geese, and its library and smithy, Kipp, Kana, Sal, and the war room that generally contained a selection of her associates having a long, inconclusive argument about something obscure. Hells, she even missed the arguments.

Elanee was lying just as she'd been left. Still breathing. Lila felt her cheek, checking for warmth before lifting her still burden up once more.

She managed not to drop her into the lake as she placed her in the boat. Initially she wanted to lay the druid in the bow with her back against the foremost bench, but that just resulted in her sliding sideways.

"You're disturbing the balance, Elanee!" she quipped. Neeshka would have laughed.

In the end, she arranged it so that the druid was lying with her head in the bow, and her body stretched out down the middle of the boat under both of the benches. If they capsized on the Dardeel, Lila would have to right the punt or else pull Elanee free before the river could nullify all her efforts to keep the druid alive. Katriona's efforts too.

But with Elanee spread out like that, they were much less likely to capsize; the elf would serve as some very necessary ballast. She paused to consider her preparations, then grabbed a piece of sacking from the wall of the boathouse. After shaking a few dead spiders out of it, she placed it under Elanee's head to shield her skull from the impact of any rapids or – worse – rocks.

She untied the painter, and climbed in. The punt tipped a little from side to side, until she had settled herself on the bench at the stern. With her feet on the right of Elanee's legs, she loosened the straps of the haversack so that the weight could rest on the bench behind her. Then she picked up a paddle, and began the slow business of backing them into the open water.

The south-western end of the lake was fringed with more bullrushes, except for an area some six yards wide that marked the outflow, where the Dardeel renewed its journey from the mountains to the sea. Paddling across to get to it was not technically difficult, but felt very slow. The slowness of the task struck her all the more as she looked back and saw shadows creeping along the north-eastern bank.

"Go on, boat," she muttered. "Pretend you're a smugglers' cutter on its home run."

She gritted her teeth, and dug the paddle deeper and harder into the water. The rushes along the eastern bank obstructed her view of what the shadows were doing. In their place, she knew she'd be racing to cut off her escape route. There had to be a barrier of some sort there at the outflow...a dam or –

The sound of running water racing across stone drifted across the sun-reddened lake surface. A weir.

She caught a glimpse of a shadow scuttling round the boathouse just as the bow of the punt nudged the weir's top. She squinted over the edge: it extended about four feet down to the Dardeel at a walkable pitch.

Quickly, she brought the punt round so that it floated side-on to the weir, and hopped out onto the crest. Whether claimed by the shadowlands or not, the water that rushed and foamed over her feet didn't seem about to strike her dead immediately. That was more than could be said of the shadows. One had appeared on the bank to her right, and where there was one, there would be more. They avoided running water, but with their quarry escaping, would they overcome their aversion?

She braced herself, and hauled on the boat's shallow gunwales, a hand either side of the bow. She almost had it up and over the edge, when one of her feet went from under her. She landed on her knees with her face almost in the foam. Her elbow throbbed where it had hit a stone tile in an attempt to keep her head up.

Cursing, she staggered upright. The shadows were drifting closer to the surging water.

The next time she got the bow and most of the boat behind it across the weir's edge before she slipped once more. But she didn't let go. One more pull, and it was done.

The punt surged forwards. She seized the painter and wrapped it round her fist to stop her transport escaping. It landed with a crack and a splash in the waters of the Dardeel.

One shadow had finally dared to enter the water above the weir. It was not a wise choice. The flow and the foam danced through it, breaking whatever force held it together. After a few seconds, there was nothing left to be washed away.

Lila turned away and scrambled into the madly bobbing craft, thudding onto the boards at the bottoms. She was unable to seat herself on the bench amidst the turbulence, so began the journey downriver kneeling uncomfortably around Elanee's legs, while the statue head whacked her on the hip whenever the punt shook in the force of the water. Leaning over the left gunwale, she shoved a paddle against the weir, so that they bounced free of its orbit.

There were no more chances to look back. She stared straight ahead, paddling to the left or right to keep the punt midstream. The current was bearing them on fast – almost too fast for her liking. A rock downriver might split the bow before she could bring them safely to one of the banks.

She hadn't done anything like this before. Her last lone boating expedition had been several years ago during one of West Harbour's few pleasant summer days. She'd borrowed a large coracle from Georg, and floated round Faross Creek in it until she fell asleep curling in the bottom of the wicker frame with a book of Ruathym legends open across her face.

If she ever should paddle down a river again, it would not be in the evening. The swirls and eddies and the fiery light mingled uneasily together, making her doubt her own eyes. Often she thought she saw a rock looming ahead of her, and exhausted her arms steering the punt towards the further bank, only to pass an area of still black water where the riverbed deepened, and where no rocks at all were to be seen.

As the sunlight faded and was replaced by a calm, humid twilight, the landscape changed. Little wooded mounds crowded in on both sides of the river. Beyond them she could still see the silhouettes of larger hills, but even they seemed milder, less austere than what had gone before.

Several streams fed into the Dardeel in quick succession, and the current slowed. Lila managed to pull herself up onto the bench, and winced and sighed with relief at the same time as she stretched out her stiff legs. The torn remains of her hose were sodden after her struggles on the weir. No matter. She was fairly sure now that the Dardeel's water was not tainted – though not sure enough to drink it.

On her left, the bank grew precipitously. It reared about fifty feet above her as the little punt was swept and downstream. Weeping willows on the lowest level were supplanted by birch, beech and ash on the upper slopes. Lila leaned forward, eyes still glued to the river, and took hold of Elanee's wrist. There was a faint pulse there. Ever so faint.

"Well, Elanee, we've reached Farnhowe. Casavir said it was a special place for you. Spiritual. If there are any spirits or gods that live here, perhaps they'll be looking out for you..."

She leaned back tiredly. It was hardly necessary to paddle at all. The Dardeel was changing rapidly from a highland river into a meandering lowland waterway. Woodland had sprung up on both banks; the air had started to smell of night. Her eyes drifted shut.

When the phantom call came scudding over the treetops, she was jolted back into alertness. Her hand automatically jumped to her side, until she remembered that her sabre was broken. The call came again. But it was only the cry of a tawny owl patrolling the darkening skies above the forest.

Shaking her head to get rid of the fog of sleep, she punched her shoulder and rubbed her eyes. If she blacked out now then they could end up crossing the bar at Highcliff.

For a while after that it felt as if she was hovering between sleep and wakefulness. She could discern less and less of the land around her, only silhouettes on a grey-blue sky with a smudge of purple haze to the west. A dream-like world. Water murmuring. A slight breeze.

There was a bone-shaking crunch. She had no chance to snatch hold of the boat's sides. She felt herself thrown back over the stern.

Cold mountain water was all around her, over her head. She tried to swim, and felt the haversack pulling her down. She panicked. Thrashed. The damn statue was drowning her.

Then her toe scraped along the riverbed. Belatedly, she remembered that the Dardeel could still not be very deep. With both feet on gravel, she drew herself up. Her mouth broke the surface. Water was speeding past her at shoulder height.

Whatever she had collided with, it had stopped the punt from continuing its journey; she grabbed the stern before it could work its way round the obstacle and disappear downriver, carrying Elanee with it. Laboriously, she pulled it round. Her hand reached up and found the painter.

The right bank seemed shallower than the left. She made for that, first taking little, cautious steps, then wading, then splashing onto dry land. An attempt to beach the punt failed after she discovered a shortage of beach. Instead, she tied the painter round the trunk of a willow sapling.

It was only then, able to pause, that she realised what they'd hit. The punt had struck the central pillar of a bridge. Her heart sped up as she recognised the outline of twin arches on either side of a central support. Hurriedly, she lifted Elanee from the bottom of the punt, and strode up the bank.

After a few more yards, she let herself fall to her knees. Supporting Elanee's head in the crook of her elbow, she let her right hand stretch out to touch smooth paving stones. She touched her fist to her forehead in a silent prayer of thanksgiving.

She was on the Neverwinter Road.