"I'm not trying to win you back."
"Come with me, Caithe. Join the Nightmare Court."
"I'm saving him!" Caithe yelled, reaching beneath the blackened figure and hoisting him from the floor. Caithe strode toward the barn doors.
But Faolain rose in her path and set her hand on Caithe's chest. The touch of her palm blazed like fire. Then a different sort of heat bloomed across Caithe's chest. She pulled back to see the farmer's throat fountaining, severed by Faolain's dagger.
"What?" Caithe cried, staggering back and falling to her knees. "You killed him?"
"I released him. Come with me."
"I will never turn to Nightmare."
Faolain's eyes flashed. "My touch-and the sacrifice of this man-have awakened darkness in you." She turned away. "You will be mine again soon."
PART I
GATHERING HEROES
FOOLS AND FOLLOWERS
Don't move!"
The huge wolf snapped his head upright, eyes blazing.
"Stay exactly like that."
No one else in the world could order Garm to sit still. He was, after all, a dire wolf-five feet tall at the shoulder and twenty stone, with jet-black hackles and fire-red eyes. He was made to lope and chase and drag down. Not to sit still. Not to listen. But he did.
For Eir Stegalkin, he did.
Garm flicked a glance toward the norn warrior. She was tall, too, her hand rising to the rafters twelve feet up and snagging a mallet that hung there and bringing the thing down in her brawny grip. Her eyes darted toward Garm, who glanced forward again and tried to look fierce.
It wasn't that he feared this woman and her big hammer, which she swung just then with terrific force, pounding a massive chisel and striking a wedge of granite from a huge block. Garm hazarded a look at that block, amorphous and pitted from chisel strokes. Soon, it would be a statue. A statue of him. But that wasn't why he sat still.