Though- Ilna knew that meeting Asion and Karpos wasn't really chance. Her oracle had directed her over a ridge and into a valley to the east of the one she'd been following for the first week after she left the royal army and her friends. Her surviving friends. The smell of a fire had led her to the hunters, smoking thin-sliced venison on a rack of green twigs. Asion and Karpos followed her because they were confused and fearful, while Ilna had purpose. The Change, the mixing of eras by wizardry, had turned the Isles into the single great continent which had existed in its far past. The hunters-Ilna assumed they were from a much earlier time; she and they struggled occasionally with each other's dialect, though they understood one another well enough-had been completely disoriented by what had happened. Ilna didn't understand the Change any better than the hunters did, but that was simply one more thing that didn't matter to her. She lived to kill the catmen, the Coerli, because they'd killed the man and the child who'd given her life meaning. The hunters would've been willing to do things they found difficult to be allowed to accompany Ilna. All she asked them to do was to kill, and at that to kill animals rather than men. That Asion and Karpos found as natural as breathing. Karpos went down with Ilna, angling a little out from her left side and letting his long legs carry him enough ahead that he could be said to be leading. His right thumb and forefinger rested on his bowstring, ready to draw it back to his ear and loose in a single motion. Karpos was a raw-boned man with beetling brows. He looked slow and awkward, but he'd shown that he was neither. Ilna smiled. The oracle of her cords wouldn't have led her to Karpos and his partner if they hadn't been the sort of men she needed as helpers.

Asion waited on the ridge, watching the back-trail as Ilna and Karpos walked down the gentle slope. The men had hunted dangerous game together for a decade, so they were naturally cautious.