Varnhold Town was so quiet that the sound of Gale's hooves seemed to echo on the hard-packed dirt streets. Chicks were running about unattended, rabbits were having a go at the cabbages. There were footprints, many footprints, leading southeast. For Darlac, that meant Gekkor and the Bruiser had already reached the capital and sounded the alarm, and the baron had immediately evacuated the townspeople. She wondered where they had gone. They had never made a contingency plan for the case of an evacuation, and she couldn't imagine where the citizens of an entire town could find shelter. And why had the baron chosen this course of action, instead of simply defending the town, for which they did have a contingency plan?

  Nonetheless, the evacuation seemed uncannily complete. There were no stubborn people lagging behind, sticking to their homes relentlessly despite the baron's order. There were no signs of hastily emptied treasure chests, either. Instead, Darlac saw doors and windows left askance, dinner burnt to charcoal on stoves, tools dropped mid-work and left out in the open.

  Just in case, Darlac checked the graveyard as well. Nothing had changed there. No disturbed graves, no signs of self-burial, no discarded eyeballs on the ground. The horrific vision she'd seen through that portal in Lostlarn Keep had still not come true, and that was reassuring. Well, kind of.

  Gale splashed through the ford of the Kiravoy, kicking up water on Darlac's trouser legs and into her boots, and carried her to the keep to search for answers or guidance left behind for stragglers like herself. Maegar couldn't have forgotten about that, or could he? Even though he'd thwarted her campaign and left the barony almost defenceless, he still loved her and cared for her. He must have tried to contact her in some way, or at least left a message for her. Perhaps he'd attempted a Sending to Tehara after she'd been taken by madness?

  Tying her horse to a tree outside the keep, Darlac ran through the open gates and up the bastions, one by one, to get a view on the countryside. Everything was quiet, except for the wind. The road to the north was empty, too. Whatever the barbarians were up to, they chose to do it as stealthily as possible. Darlac closed her eyes for a few moments, praying to her goddess to show her the way. Gone was the atheistic paladin Hazel Stormwalker had once made fun of. Now she prayed more in a single day than she used to in a week. But would it be any use?

  By the time she opened her eyes again, she'd made her decision. Once she was done in the keep, she would have to go and get reinforcements. That was even more important than finding the evacuees. The better part of the Host was abroad, far from their homeland, and by the time they returned, it might be too late. It was time to rally Varnhold's allies.

  Her first instinct told Darlac to ride to Tuskdale: take the south road out of town, then turn west and follow the Gudrin. However, that would require about two days, even if she pushed Gale and herself to their limits and beyond. She could reach Restov in a quarter of that time.

  Restov would it be, then. Lady Jamandi had alerted Varnhold of Nightvale's troubles during the Bloom. She must be willing to extend a helping hand to Varnhold as well – provided that Darlac had done enough to assure her of Varnhold's loyalty, despite Maegar's blunders.

  Unless, of course, the barbarians were heading to Restov.

  The baron's private quarters were abandoned, as was the throne room. Even the faint smell of tobacco smoke that Cephal used to bring in from his pipe breaks was gone, giving way to the characteristic smell of uninhabited houses.

  Darlac grabbed a sheet of paper and a quill from Cephal's desk, and wrote a note on the Bag of Holding she still carried. She slipped the note under the strap of the bag and left the pack under the desk. Sooner or later, someone would take care of poor Tomin Hanvaki.

  She tore off another narrow strip of paper and scribbled another message on it, calculating with the faint possibility that she'd never make it to Restov. If she got captured or killed, that must not jeopardise her mission to alert Varnhold's allies, and a bird message to Tuskdale seemed to be the best backup plan. Darlac usually ventured near the rookery only under Faeli's supervision, and embarrassing or not, she was a little afraid of those ravens, but she knew the basics of sending a message by bird mail. She stuffed her message into a mail capsule retrieved from a drawer in Cephal's desk, and hid it in the palm of her hand until she would find a bird patient enough to tolerate her fumbling touch.

  Next, she had to rifle through the baron's papers. There was no instruction for her on the bulletin board, so the only place that could still offer her something was his desk.

  Indeed, it was there that Darlac found what she'd been looking for – if not an instruction, at least a clue. An unfinished letter to Baroness Guelder of Nightvale regarding Willas Gunderson's cyclopean jewelry (which was, by the way, missing from the desk). Darlac almost tossed it aside. Even if it was about an important but long procrastinated issue, she felt icky reading his correspondence to Guelder, and a part of her was afraid of what she would find in it. And with good reason.

  As Darlac reached the end of the letter, her entire body shuddered with horror. Tehara's strange word, still faintly pulsating in her subconscious, stared back at her from the paper, repeated several times, like the writing practice of a school kid. Even the handwriting was different from the baron's usual penmanship of casual elegance.

  Inheritor help us all. This was not an evacuation.

  She let the letter fall back on the desk, and dashed out of the throne room.

  As she stomped down the stairs to the courtyard, the realisation hit her like a punch on the chin. The silence was too deep, too perfect. Whatever had happened to the rookery?

  Darlac made her way to the hidden nook of the courtyard where Faeli kept the mail-carrying owls and ravens, and a gruesome sight opened up before her eyes. The doors of the cages were hanging askew, and the ground was littered with black and brown bird carcasses in a carpet of bloodstained feathers, heads crushed, eyes plucked out. Had the birds fallen to the mysterious madness as well and murdered each other? More importantly, how would she get her S.O.S. message to Guelder, if all the mail carriers were dead?

  All but one.

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  A single survivor perched on top of an empty cage, staring at her with tilted head. Darlac extended her hand in a gesture she'd learnt from Faeli, indicating that she had a mission for the bird. The raven didn't react but continued eyeing her. Was she supposed to offer a treat? Would it even want a treat, now that it had plenty of carrion to feed on?

  Darlac quickly let go of the idea of trying to catch the bird. Angelic heritage or not, she had no wings. And if the raven didn't respond to the usual gesture, it was probably not trained well enough to deliver the message.

  Riding to Restov was Darlac's best and only bet.

  Before setting out, she headed back to the inn to retrieve Kyle's amulet from the chest in her room. Barbarians were generally of chaotic alignment, so if she wanted to sneak past them, the amulet would be of immense help. Darlac dismounted in front of the building, tied Gale to a tie ring at the front door, and entered.

  She found no sign of life here, either.

  Before running up the stairs, her glance fell on Willas Gunderson's usual table. A toppled inkwell, a pool of ink drying on the table and on the floor, a pen dropped negligently across an open book, blotching the blank page. She stopped to read the last, unfinished paragraph, hoping for a clue that would help her understand what was going on.

  It was a grave mistake. The book Willas had last been working on was definitely not the Chronicle of Varnhold.

  As Lady Alicia reached back to fix her deep red curls in a messy bun, allowing me to rest my eyes on the lovely curve of her neck, she accidentally let go of the towel covering her body. It slipped off her ivory limbs and collected itself in soft ripples at her feet. Her glowing orbs widened, and a quiet gasp of frightened chastity escaped from her golden lips. She tried in vain to cover her nudity with her hands, while the glorious cataract of her cherry-coloured hair tumbled down her shoulders again, but alas, it was not long enough to cover her firm, shapely breasts. I stepped up to her and silenced her protest by pressing my thirsty lips against hers. Whilst our tongues were battling for dominance VORDAKAI VORDAKAI VORDAKAI VORDAKAI

  Never before had Darlac wished so badly that she were a full-blown angel, able to call down holy fire from Heaven and burn this filth out of the world and human memory, including her own. For lack of a better idea, she drew her sword, lit up the blade with the flames of holy power, and rammed it into the book. The blade passing through the paper pierced the table as well and got stuck in the hard wood. Darlac had to climb up the chair and put a booted foot on that book-shaped abomination to hold it down while she ripped her sword free, while the tiny flames spreading outwards from the blade across the pages slowly consumed the book.

  The mysterious word at the bottom of the page, hitherto unnoticed by her furious eyes, flared up in four copies before the entire volume became smoke and ashes. Darlac's contentment with a job well done vanished in a heartbeat and gave way to a chill running up her spine.

  As she started up the stairs to get to her room, she heard Gale scream in distress.

  Forgetting about the amulet, Darlac stormed out of the inn. Her horse was dancing nervously in place, struggling against the halter, blood trickling into his eye, trying in vain to fend off the dive attacks of a big black bird.

  Was that raven not a survivor of the massacre but its perpetrator?

  As the bird spotted Darlac, it soared up high and circled above her head, cawing:

  "Thief! Intruder!"

  A talking bird? Perhaps Faeli had been experimenting with training guard ravens and teaching them to give off an alarm cry if they saw unusual movements in an area. It wouldn't have been her craziest idea. However, given the bird's aggressive behaviour, it was best to remove Gale from the situation. Darlac untied the horse and, after some struggle to bring him under control, she heaved herself up into the saddle to get out of here, the sooner, the better.

  The bird took a dive and went straight for Gale's eye. The horse reared up and bolted, just in time to dodge it. Darlac flattened herself against her steed's neck and held on for dear life. They galloped into the river again, kicking up more water and silt, and continued towards the east.

  Her years of riding routine finally allowed Darlac to rein in Gale once again. The horse slowed down to a trot and snorted an apology. Darlac patted his neck, feeling guilty. She'd failed him on the very first occasion, against a bird, of all things. She turned the horse around, intent on finding her way back to the Restov road.

  She hadn't expected the raven to be such a tenacious pursuer.

  The bird swooped down again, and Gale fled. Another fight for control began, and Darlac got diverted farther and farther from her chosen direction. Once she calmed down her mount and healed him up, another attack came.

  "Begone, foul bird!"

  "Bold little thief," cawed the raven, as if cackling. "Kick against the goad as much as you want, you will finally submit. My master will make good use of you."

  Darlac shuddered. This message definitely wasn't part of Faeli's bird-training project. Someone was out there, controlling the raven, and that someone wanted her.

  Finally, it all clicked into place in her brain. She remembered the sleepless corvid at the Gates. The war with the necromancer had started before she'd had time to even muster her troops. And now her troops were no more. She stood all alone against the enemy, getting repeatedly humiliated by what had to be its weakest minion.

  Well, it was time to send a message.

  Darlac's mind tentatively reached out towards the bird, and identified its alignment as evil. Somehow she wasn't surprised. However, this meant that it was an appropriate target for a Smite – so appropriate that it seemed to be asking for it.

  "Who is your master?" she demanded.

  Another dive bomb came as an answer, but this time Darlac was ready. She wrapped the reins around her left wrist, and as the bird flew by, her right hand shot out to sweep it away. It was not a well-positioned backhand, but it connected. Increased by her Smite, the force of the blow tossed the raven on the ground, making it bounce and somersault a few times before it ended up as a dishevelled heap of black feathers. Darlac tried in vain to nudge the shying horse towards it to end its annoying existence with his hooves. Instead, Gale leapt into a mad gallop in the opposite direction, paying no heed to Darlac's desperate attempts to regain control. She held onto the reins as best she could, gritting her teeth in helpless fury. Once again, she felt she was struggling waist-deep in molasses, so close to and so far away from rescuing someone who needed her.

  Wait for me, Maegar. I will find you, whatever it takes.

  If only she could be sure of that.