"Where is this place?" he called.

"It is not a matter of 'where' but of something different… 'how,' perhaps…"

He found he did not care. It was enough simply to run, to feel the wind making his mane and tail snap, to thrill to the thunder of his own hooves as they tore the grass beneath his feet into flying clods.

She skimmed past him and for a moment was content to fly just a little way ahead, matching his pace so that she seemed to float, rowing herself through the air with her vast pinions, black-beaked head on a neck long as a spear. "Are you weary, child?" she called. "Would you like to stop?"

"Never!" He laughed. "I could do this forever." And it seemed like he had never said anything more true-that there would be no greater heaven than to run here forever, fit and strong and free of everything.

But what is this place? His stride faltered a little. Where am I? I was… I'm not… He felt his powerful body carrying him across the face of the world on four striding legs. But I'm not a horse… I'm a man…!

Heaven. Is this heaven? Does that mean I'm dead?

And suddenly he shuddered to a stop, the hills suddenly high and close, the sky darker, everything near and threatening. "Where am I?" he said again. "What have you done to me?"

The swan banked and circled. "Done to you? Those are hard words, Barrick Eddon. I brought you back when I could have let you go. I brought you back."

"From where?"

"From what is next."

"I was… dying?" A chill stabbed him deep in his center. Even through this fevered excitement, he could suddenly feel how close he had come.

"Do not fear it. It is a road all of us must tread one day… all of us except the gods, that is."

"What do you mean?" He was trying to look down at his curious body but his head and neck were not well-shaped to do so. It felt unfamiliar-but also strangely familiar. "You mean everybody dies? But you don't. You and the king and all your ancestors… you don't."