weeks, Ingold and Rudy encountered the decimated remains of clans or villages, fleeing cold and fear and darkness. The stories those men and womerrltold were always the same: of small things that crawled down cold chimneys, or slipped between the window bars; of huge things that ripped doors from their hinges, or blasted down stone walls with the wrath of all the devils of the night; and of chill, directionless wind and the scatter of stripped bones upon the ground.

'And wizards? Ingold asked of those circling the low glow of the dim campfire light.

'Wizards.' A fat, heavy-muscled woman with a face like a leathery potato spat scornfully into the fire. ' Lot of good their wizardry did them or any of us. I talked to a student out of Quo. They're all gone, hidden, locked up in a ring of spells, and they've left us to fend for ourselves. We won't see them till the Dark have gone.'

'Indeed?' Ingold said, wrapping together and stowing away his packets of medicines. He had returned the band's hospitality within the makeshift circle of guards by healing the wounds either incurred in battle against the Dark or the White Raiders, or the effects of exhaustion and exposure. 'When was this?

She shrugged. 'Months gone,' she said. 'He spent a night with us. We buried his bones and my husband's in the morning. Never knew his name.'

'Fled, I say.' the big patriarch of the clan rumbled. In the firelight, his greenish eyes, so common in Gettlesand, regarded them askance, but he did not ask how they came to be travelling alone and westward in these bitter times. 'Fled south, to the jungles and the Emperor of Alketch.'

Ingold paused in surprise. 'Where did you hear this?'

The big man shook his head. 'Stands to reason,' he said. Far out over the plains rose the thin silvery chorus of wolves crying the moon. The camp guards shifted, calculating their distance; nearby an ox lowed in fear and jingled its tether chain. There are no Dark in the Alketch, they say. But I'd sooner die free than live there.'