That scared away lots of our local folk, right there. After a while, though, hardly anybody using the road did for most of the rest of us. There are still people in these parts, especially the ones up in the hills, or the towns with high walls, but the villages along the road are all but empty." He shook his head, a man suddenly aged by fear and uncertainty. "And just like that, it all goes. You think it will never change but that's a lie. Things can change in a day."

In an hour, thought Briony. In a heartbeat. She was saddened by the innkeeper's confused, frustrated face, and saddened even more to know it would be a long time if ever before she could give these people any real help.

But here is something that the nobility can offer, she thought. In bad times, a king or a queen can be a rock for the waters to crash against, so those less strong are not washed away.

I will be such a rock. Only give me a chance, sweet Zoria, and I will be a rock for my people.

Qinnitan had only been awake a few confused moments when a glimpse of something manlike crawling on the beach drove her up the hills and into the forest. The thick morning fog hid the thing's full shape, but the look of it frightened her badly: either it was Vo, crippled by the poison, or something demonic, an affir out of old nursery tales lurching crablike along the gray northern sands. Qinnitan had no urge to find out which.

She made her way up the hillside, trying to stay on grass to protect her feet but often having to clamber through the thick, scratchy shrubs that covered the slope like blotches on the face of a beggar. After a sizable part of an hour had passed, and she had put the beach far behind her, Qinnitan began to feel the sharp jab of hunger, a pain she welcomed because it came from a problem she might be able to do something about. The larger matter seemed hopeless: she was lost in an unfamiliar land, and even if she had truly escaped her captor and what she had seen on the beach had been only the last wisps of a dream, Qinnitan knew that there was little chance she would survive in the wilds for a tennight without help.