«Lorn's taken her from me, just like she's tak everything else.»

«Captain:»

Paran's hand unconsciously gripped the pommel of his sword. «The heartless bitch has a lot coming to her, and I mean to deliver it.»

«Fine,» Toc growled. «Just let's be smart about it.»

Paran glared at him, «Let's get going, Toc the Younger.»

Toc glanced one last time into the north-east. This wasn't over, he said to himself, shivering. He winced as a savage, painful itch rose beneath scar. Though he tried, he found he could not reach through to it. And formless fire burned behind his empty eye-socket-something he had been experiencing often lately. Muttering, he strode to his horse a climbed into the saddle.

The captain had already swung his own mount and the trailing horse southward. The set of the man's back spoke volumes to Toc the Younger and he wondered if he hadn't made a mistake in accompanying him. Then he shrugged. «Well,» he said, to the two charred bodies, as he rode past, «it's done, ain't it?»

The plain below lay sheathed in darkness. Looking to the west, Crone could still see the setting sun. She rode the highest winds, the air around her bitter cold. The Great Raven had left Caladan Brood's company days ago. Since then, she'd detected no sign of life in the wastes below. Even the massive herds of Bhederin, which the Rhivi were in the habit following, had disappeared.

At night, Crone's senses were limited, though it was in such darkness that she could best detect sorcery. As she winged ever southward she scanned the land far below with a hungry eye. Others among her brethren from Moon's Spawn regularly patrolled the plains in service Anomander Rake. She'd yet to see one, but it was only a matter of time. When she did, she would ask them if they'd detected any source of magic recently.

Brood was not one to overreact. If something was happening down here that soured his palate, it could be momentous, and she wanted know of it before anyone else.

Fire flashed in the sky ahead of her, perhaps a league distant. It flared briefly, tinged green and blue, then disappeared. Crone tensed. That had been sorcery, but of a kind she'd never known. As she swept into the air the air washed over her hot and wet, with a charnel stench that remind her of-she cocked her head-burnt feathers.

A cry sounded ahead, angry and frightened. Crone opened her beak reply, then shut it again. It had come from one of her kin, she certain, but for some reason she felt the need to hold her tongue. Then another ball of fire flashed, this time close enough to Crone that she saw what it engulfed: a Great Raven.

Her breath hissed from her beak. In that brief instant of light she'd seen half a dozen more of her brethren wheeling in the sky ahead of her and to the west. She thrummed her wings and angled towards them.

When she could hear their panicked flapping about her on all sides, Crone called out, «Children! Attend to Crone! The Great Mother has come!» The ravens voiced relieved cries and closed in around her. They all shrieked at once in an effort to tell her what was happening, but Crone's angry hiss silenced them at once. «I heard among you Hurtle's voice,» Crone said, «did I not?» One male swept near her. «You did,» he replied. «I am Hurtle.»

«I've just come from the north, Hurtle. Explain to me what has occurred.»

«Confusion,» Hurtle drawled sarcastically.

Crone cackled. She loved a good joke more than anyone. «Indeed! Go on, lad!»

«Before dusk Kin Clip detected a flare of sorcery below her on the plain. It was odd, its feel, but clearly a Warren had just opened and something had issued on to the plain. Kin Clip spoke to me of this, then investigated. I shadowed her from above during the descent, and so saw what she saw. Crone, it has come to my mind that once again the art of soul-shifting has been exercised.»

«Ehr «Travelling on the ground and having just come from a Warren was a small puppet,» Hurtle explained, «animate and possessing great power. When this puppet detected Clip he gestured at her and she burst into flames. Since then, the creature has disappeared into its Warren, reappearing only to kill another of us.»

«Why do you remain?» Crone demanded.

Hurtle chuckled. «We would determine its course, Crone. Thus far, it seems to travel southward.»

«Very well. Now that that's been confirmed, leave and take the others with you. Return to Moon's Spawn and report to our lord.»

«As you command, Crone.» Hurtle dipped a wing and slid off into darkness. His voice called out and was answered by a chorus.

Crone waited. She wanted to be certain that they had all departed the area before doing some investigating on her own. Was this puppet the thing birthed in the pillar of fire? It didn't seem likely. And what kind of sorcery did it employ that no Great Raven could absorb?

There was an Eldering taste about this. Soul-shifting was no simple cantrip, and it had never been common-ustsuig the wizards even when its techniques were known. Too many tales of madness born within the shifting.

Perhaps this puppet had survived from Cese times. Crone thought about that. Unlikely.

Magic bloomed on the plain below, then faded. A small magical form scampered from the spot, weaving as it ran. Here, thought Crone, lie the answers to my questions. Destroy my younglings, will you? Would you so easily disdain Crone?

She crooked her wings and dropped. The air whistled around her. She raised a penumbra of protective magic that encapsulated her just as the small figure ceased its march and looked up. Faintly, Crone heard a manic laugh rise up to meet her, then the puppet gestured.

The power that engulfed Crone was Iowri;cse, far beyond anything she anticipated. Her defences held but she found herself buffeted, as if fists punched her from every direction. She cried out in pain, spinning as she fell. It took all her strength and will to; MM out her battered wings and catch a rising current of air. She voiced an outraged, alarmed shriek she climbed higher into the night sky. A tffice down revealed that the puppet had returned once again to its Warren, for nothing magical was visible.

«Aye.» She sighed. «What a price to pay for knowledge! Elder Warrren indeed, the eldest of them all. Who plays with Chaos? Crone knows naught. All things are gathering, %.L=.- here.» She found another stream of wind and angled south. This was something Anomander Rake must know of, never mind Caladan The "110 instructions that the Ti And? lord be kept ignorant of almost 4-i;;&~thing. Rake was good more than Brood credited him. VMMM Met, for one.» Crone laugh «And death. Good at death!»

She picked up speed, so did not notice the, — dead smudge on the plain below her, nor the woman camped in its centre. There was no me there to speak of, in any case.

Adjunct Lorn squatted by her bedroll, her eyes scanning the night sky. «Tool, was all that connected to what we witnessed two nights ago?»

The T'lan Imass shook his head. «I think — sro-t, Adjunct. If anything, concerns me more. It is sorcery, and it 1wres the barrier I have around us.»

«How?» she asked quietly.

«There is only one possibility, Adjunct. It is Eldering, a lost Warren ages past, returned to us. Whoever its wielder might be, we must assume it tracks us, with purpose.»

Lorn straightened wearily, then stretched her back, feeling her vertebrae pop. «Is its flavour Shadowthrone's?»

«No.»

«Then I will not assume it's tracking us, Tool.» She eyed her bedroll.

Tool faced the woman and watched in silence as she prepared to sleep.

«Adjunct,» he said, «this hunter appears able to penetrate my defences, and thus it may open its Warren's portal directly behind us, once we are found.»

«I've no fear of magic,» Lorn muttered. «Let me sleep.»

The T'lan Imass fell silent, but he continued staring down at the woman as the hours of night crawled on. Tool moved slightly as dawn lightened the east, then was still again.