“If we just left him here, we wouldn’t have to worry about it,” Lucan grumbled. His good-natured, jousting demeanor was utterly gone, as if the brief battle had killed off his sense of humor and left him with an inexplicable hostility toward Remy. For his part, Remy could only wonder whether Lucan was ashamed of how he had reacted in the fight or something else was happening that Remy couldn’t detect.

“True,” Kithri said from a little distance away. “But if he’s not around and horrible monstrosities stop following us, we are going to have a lot less of this.”

Everyone turned to look as she came back into the firelight. “I know they’re only gnolls,” she said, “but all of you need to sharpen up your looting instincts. Look what we have.”

On a flat rock near the campfire, she spilled a number of objects she had bound up in a cloth.

“Trust Kithri to distract us with gnoll trinkets and trash,” Lucan said-but he went right along with the rest of them. “What wonders have you found? And which ones went into your pockets before you told us about the rest?”

“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies,” Kithri said as she spread her findings out on the rock. There was nothing in the way of coins-gnolls had no use for them-but there were four things of interest. An armband worked from silver in the shape of entwined snakes, with tiny jewels as their eyes; a human jawbone with its teeth replaced by cut gems; a gold ring set with a square green stone; and a pearl, a single pearl, worked into an earring with gold wire.

“And this was tied around the cacklefiend’s neck,” Kithri said, drawing a pendant from her pocket. “I thought I would save it for last.”

Biri-Daar took it and handed it to Keverel. “Do you see what I see?”