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gone hunting the shadow; Daros was sure now that he had found it. He was strong enough to face it; nor need he bow to any will but his own.
    Daros let go the greater hunt and focused himself on the lesser. He pressed it as close to the darkness as he dared under Merian’s eye. There was a hint, a glimmer—
    It dropped away. He pulled back in frustration, into the hall again, beside the fire that never shrank or went out. But if all the worlds were laid waste, would it not, itself, vanish into ash?
    Merian set a cup in his hand. It was full of honeyed wine. She gave him bread to sop in it, to fill his belly with care, quenching a hunger as strong as it was sudden.
    He ate and drank because he must, but his mind was not on it. “I have to go back,” he said.
    â€œNot now,” said Merian. “You’ll rest first.”
    â€œBut I almost found him. He’s there. I couldn’t—quite—”
    â€œI saw.” She pulled him to his feet. “Come and rest.”
    He fought her, but his knees would barely hold him up. “Stop that,” she said, “or I’ll carry you over my shoulder.”
    He did not doubt that she would do it. Sullenly but without further objection, he let her lead him out of the hall.
    This was a castle after all, with stairs and passages, and rooms that seemed mortal enough, if ascetically bare. One of them had a bed in it, and a hearth on which she lit a mortal fire. He lay because she compelled him, and suffered her pulling off his boots and covering him with a blanket as mortal as the fire, worn and somewhat musty, as if it had been long unused.
    The starkness of it comforted him. It was real; there was no magic in it. He was deathly weary of magic, just then.

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    He lay on the hard narrow bed in the stone cell. Merian was gone. He was aware of her in the hall of the fire, holding council and audience from afar with the army of her mages. She had kept a part of herself, a thin thread of awareness, on guard over him, but that could not constrain his vision.
    He stood on the shores of a wide and heaving sea. It was a sea not of water but of shadow, of darkness given substance. Things stirred beneath, great beasts rising from the depths and then sinking again with a sound like a vast sigh.
    Because he was dreaming and knew it, he set foot on the surface of the darkness. It felt firm and yet yielding, like a carpet of moss on a forest floor. It was darkly transparent, showing the play of shadow within shadow in the depths beneath.
    Slowly as he trod those swelling hills and sudden hollows, he began to distinguish among the shapes below. They were worlds, each floating in a bubble of darkness. Those that were nearest the surface came clearest to his vision. Some of them he knew, others were strange. He stooped to peer through the dark glass.
    It was a war. He had never seen one; there had been no more than bandit raids in his world since before he was born. Yet he had heard of battles, and seen them through the memories of those who had fought in them.
    Armies faced one another on a wide and windy plain. The beasts they rode, the armor they wore, were strange, but there was no mistaking what they were or what they did. One side was smaller by far, and had a desperate look. The other came on like a black wave.
    There , he thought. He bent lower, peering as closely as he could. The dark warriors were all armored, their faces hidden, their shapes not quite human.
    The sea surged, flinging him off his feet. A vast shape rolled over the world and its warriors. An eye opened, as wide as one of the worlds. It turned and bent, as if searching.

    He was tiny, a mite, a speck of dust in the vastness of the worlds. He was nothing; no more than a breath of wind. The dark thing need take no notice of him. It was far too great a beast for such a speck as he was.
    It rolled on beneath and left him gasping, tossed on the restless sea. He was lost; the land was