"I've seen you," the young man said. "We've been in the same marketplace a few times. But we haven't been introduced, at least not so's you'd remember."

"Well, it's good to meet you," Torgan said, giving his hand one last shake before turning his attention back to his cart.

"Is it true what they say about your eye?"

Torgan glanced at him. "What is it they say?"

"That you lost it in a fight with a coinmonger. That you lost your eye, but he lost his life."

He briefly considered telling Jasha the truth. He quickly decided, though, that it might be convenient to have such a reputation, just in case there were brigands on the plain. Besides, anyone foolish enough to believe such a tale didn't deserve the truth.

"That's close enough," he said at last. "There were actually two of them: the coinmonger and one of his men. But the rest is true."

Jasha stared at him, just drinking it all in. Torgan could have told him that he'd bested five men, and the man would have believed him. He wanted to believe him. Fine, then.

In another few moments, Torgan had finished packing up his wares and was climbing onto his cart.

"Good-bye, Torgan," Jasha said, waving. "May gold find you wherever you go."

It was an old merchants' saying, one that he hadn't heard anyone use in years. The boy was trying far too hard.

"You, too" was all he said before clicking his tongue at Trili and steering his cart away from the sept.

He didn't push the beast hard on this day. She had labored enough recently-the last thing Torgan needed was for the old nag to fail him now, when he was this far north. When he halted for the night and made his camp, he was no more than a league south of S'Plaed's sept.

So when the first burst of fire arced into the night sky, Torgan saw it clearly. He was holding a half-eaten piece of dried meat, which he promptly dropped.

Coincidence. That was the word that came to him. It had to be a coincidence, a random act of magic that had nothing to do with what had happened in the Neck.

Then a second burst of flame lit the night, and a third. Torgan thought he heard cries coming from the settlement, though surely he was too far away for that to be possible. He stood, as if to go somewhere, but he didn't take a step. He just watched as the night came alive. Streaks of yellow fire stabbed up into the darkness like blades. Smoke began to rise from the plain. And yes, those were cries he heard. And screams. And the whinnying of horses.

He still had a mouthful of meat that he'd been chewing, and he spit that out now, though he didn't look away.

Pestilence, the Fal'Borna had said. Worst he'd ever heard of. Men and women driven mad, Y'Qatt destroying their own homes with magic. And now it was happening again.

Coincidence.

Surely, that's what it had to be.

He felt his stomach heave, and he bit back the bile rising in his throat. He'd been fine a moment before. But seeing what was happening at the sept, knowing with the certainty of a condemned man that this was the pestilence come again, he knew that he should have been sick.

He'd escaped the disease once; how could he possibly expect to do so again? His stomach heaved again and he gagged. But that was all.

I'm not sick.

"I'm not sick." Saying it aloud calmed him, and he said it again. "I'm not sick."

Trili looked at him and stamped.

More shafts of flame carved through the night. Smoke rose into the sky, obscuring the stars. He could smell it now: burning wood and grass, the bitter smell of charred flesh.

"That's the shelters burning," he told himself, reassured by the clarity of his thinking, the solid sound of his voice. "The z'kals," he added, remembering the Fal'Borna word for them, as if he were conversing with someone.

Why was the pestilence here? As the Fal'Borna said, if he'd been infected, he would have been dead days ago. He couldn't have brought it with him. It had to be one of the others. But they hadn't seemed sick either. Someone else then.

Worst he'd ever heard of. "I'm not sick."

He sat down slowly, his eyes fixed on the northern sky. What were the chances of the pestilence striking two towns that were so far apart, on the very days he had visited them? Not just the pestilence, but a strain of the disease that was so severe, it drove people mad and caused

Qirsi to lose control over their magic. That was what was happening. That was what had happened in C'Bijor's Neck.

Coincidence.

He wanted to believe it, but he couldn't. It's me.

This he didn't say aloud.

How could it be him if he wasn't sick? It had to be something else. What else did this sept and C'Bijor's Neck have in common?

He dismissed the thought as soon as it came to him. How could an object-or even ten-sicken people? More to the point, how could they infect entire towns and yet leave him unaffected? No, it couldn't be the baskets any more than it could be Torgan himself.

But the thought continued to echo in his mind. What did the two settlements have in common? Torgan, and the old woman's baskets. Yes, he had other items in his cart, but he'd had them for far longer, and as far as he knew, none of the villages or cities he'd visited prior to the Neck had been struck by the pestilence. If it was anything he carried- and really, how could it be?-but if it was, it had to be the baskets.

Still the streaks of fire darted up into the night. Still the smoke drifted over him, thicker now and acrid. The cries sounded closer, but he saw no riders approaching, no sick Qirsi converging on his small camp.

Why had that woman been so eager to be rid of her baskets?

He'd thought of Y'Farl several times in the past few days, wondering if the old peddler would still be angry with him the next time they met. He could only assume now that they wouldn't meet again in this world, and while he hadn't considered the Y'Qatt a close friend, he was saddened nevertheless.

Since leaving the Neck, however, he'd not given a thought to the old Mettai woman. It all came back to him now, though. The way she'd looked as she left the city. The satisfaction she seemed to feel at having gotten so little for baskets that appeared to be worth so much.

Had she known that there was something wrong with them? Not merely that they weren't as fine as they looked, but something truly wrong. Something… evil.

"This is nonsense," he whispered to the night.

It had to be a coincidence. Dark, even tragic, to be certain. But a coincidence, and nothing more.

Yet, now that the old woman had entered his mind, he couldn't drive her out. Nor could he help thinking that he was glad to be rid of those baskets. He knew that he wouldn't sleep-not this night. So once again, he started to pack up his belongings, intending to drive his cart farther south. The skies were clear, and this late in the waxing the moons were close to full and would be out for most of the night. He could put another two or three leagues between himself and the sept if he pushed himself.

Before he could finish loading his cart, however, he heard a horse approaching. An instant later he recognized the rattle of cart wheels. A peddler then.

He knew before the cart reached him that it was Jasha, and he stepped out into the open so that the lad would see him in the moonlight. Jasha steered his cart directly toward him, stopping when his horse was only a few fourspans from where Torgan was standing.

"Why did you do it?" the peddler demanded. His face looked white in Panya's glow.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

The man leaped down from his cart and strode toward Torgan, his fists clenched. "I don't believe you! You brought this here! You did to the Fal'Borna exactly what you did to C'Bijor's Neck!" He halted just in front of Torgan. "Tell me why!"