They arrived in a bubble of clear air surrounded by dust. A couple of the horses shied away nervously and almost all riders were white faced. One gulped, gulped once more and threw up over the side of his horse.

For once Harbend's hate had to step aside and give room to another emotion. Awe, pure and simple awe. What Escha had just done went beyond description. They had become part of something as vast as the universe, had for a moment been part gods themselves and for the second time since he lived one of Arthur's Weaves Harbend gleamed a little of what drew mages to immerse themselves further and further in the gift. He understood Trai's scars and why Escha's dead lover had faced the risks inherent in overusing the power.

A look at Escha's drained face sobered him. There was a reason for Escha's reluctance to indulge himself too much. Maybe both khars had been equals in power, but one was dead, and Harbend saw that very little coincidence had played a part in the choice.

Harbend turned his attention to his surroundings instead. He'd been here less than half a year earlier. Winter then. Of the wintry and barren landscape he remembered from their frantic attempts at locating Arthur nothing was left. Spring flowers filled the air with smells and promises of summer.

A summer he by rights should have shared with Nakora. Well, he brought promises of his own here.

The outer city still sprawled along the southern road barely hiding the stone structures of Ri Nachi proper, and people were everywhere. Not a few of them gaped at their sudden appearance. Harbend wondered why. Mages often came here, and then he recalled the way they had arrived. The jump tower soared into the air a fair distance behind them. Bringing horses to the glassy platform had been out of the question of course.

He barely had time to throw Escha a questioning look before the khar nodded at Gring.

"It was empty, Escha brought my mind here first," she confirmed.

Harbend shuddered. Trai would never have given that a single thought. Jumping into something spelled disaster for anything involved. Escha had proved that when he tore down the castle where they finally found Arthur.

Trai's fiery magic may have looked more impressive, but Harbend suspected that whenever Escha used his gift of jumping as a weapon the results were only so much more horrifying.

Slowly order returned, and Karia had his men ride through the gawking crowd in good order. Some of his men still looked slightly sick, but the need to handle horses among people quickly took over.

Harbend walked beside Escha and followed the riders from Braka. No need to hurry now. Across the river answers lay waiting, and death.

***

"I think he's mad."

"He is, and so were we. Let him have his revenge," Karia told Aphitus. "We cheated him. You know that. In his heart he feels cheated even if he never says anything," he added.

Aphitus opened his mouth but kept his silence.

"Yes, he is mad," Karia confirmed. "What would you do if someone killed your wife that way, or your daughters?"

Aphitus mumbled something through his beard, but Karia could see his face redden slightly. The daughters were a subject you didn't bring up easily. Two dead already, one this very winter when madness hit Belgera. It had taken him all his strength and ability to enforce the loyalty of a sworn man to prevent Aphitus from killing the outworlder outright when he learned she'd been captured.

She hadn't even been directly responsible either. A stupid accident. Two days after the attack a gutted house caved in and the falling walls had been enough to scatter a cooking fire. When the housewife got the children out of danger the girl fell from the stairs. The riders below never had a chance to prevent what happened later.

The memory made Karia regret his words. Maybe Harbend was taking his revenge too far, but Karia was part of it as long as Gring was, and that made his sworn men part of it as well.

He swallowed bile and moved forward in the night. They were dealing out justice to someone who didn't even know he was guilty and that made it wrong somehow. He shrugged as he took another step. He should have had those thoughts before he promised himself to Gring. Now it was too late.

Ahead of him she and Harbend moved like shadows. If anyone was awake in the building they still wouldn't know that death approached. A steady drizzle cut noises to nothing audible in the wind and the darkness was absolute for anyone who hadn't spent a season on the plains. How Harbend managed to see where he was treading Karia didn't understand. Maybe Gring lent him some of her powers.

They reached wooden stairs and Karia almost hoped they would creak to give warning. Another thought that shamed him, and he resolutely climbed them together with Hlavac.

Aphitus had fallen slightly behind, and the rest of the men were guarding horses. Four were more than enough for what they had come to do here.

As Harbend forced the door open it did creak a little, but they were soon inside. Gring waited just inside the door. Her weight would give them away if she entered walked too far inside. Her mission was to make sure no one escaped.

Karia made way for Aphitus and hugged the wall to his left. The information Harbend had bought said he would find a doorway if he followed the wall far enough. Karia hoped it was correct. Getting lost in a building he had entered to commit murder in wasn't what he wanted.

It was correct, and he slowly made his way into the bedchamber where a secretary slept. Secretary and son, and thus somehow involved in Nakora's death.

The darkness wasn't as compact here. A night lamp behind a screen shed a little bit of light in the room, and Karia saw the sleeping body in the bed. He drew his dagger as he bent over his victim.

The deed was quickly done. Secretary, or son, or guilty. He would never know, and neither would the dead man he left behind as he made his way back.

He felt dirty. It was murder. Nothing could change that. A defenceless man lay dead in his own bed, and Karia had been the one taking that life.

Muffled noises reached him from the darkness. Up the stairs? Probably. A silent struggle signalling that Aphitus hadn't entered unnoticed. Then the noises subsided and he knew that whoever had spotted Aphitus was dead by now.

After that they killed undisturbed. An old woman, her husband, the master of the house and his son all went to the blades, and they returned out into the night.

Karia tried not to think too much of what he had been part of. It was his duty, and duty knew no remorse. Maybe later there would be a price to pay.

***

Gring ran over the hard ground. Behind her the farm roared and writhed in flames, almost as if it had been given life just to have it sniffed out. Two men ran for the woods and she followed them. Her task was to be as visible as possible. Karia waited with three of his sworn men behind the tree line she shepherded her prey toward.

Setting the farm on fire had been an accident. Sloppy ambush, but they were in a hurry now. Rumours spread faster than they killed, and she needed to be done with this region before those rumours grew into knowledge. The real problems would start when they began killing north of the forest. Any hope of a local killing spree would vanish then.

The smoke stung in her nose. Even halfmen would feel it, but for her it was painful. An acute sense of smell carried a backside as well.

She ran on and laughed. Mirth sounded like roars to halfmen who didn't know humans, and she wanted them to run heedlessly into the waiting ambush. It was only suiting they should run from the last show of joy they were ever going to experience. The irony appealed to her, as did the justice.

Cattle and chicken fled from her as she charged on. From time to time she released small bursts from her glands. It was involuntarily. She could avoid it while hunting just as much as she could avoid breathing.

Ahead of her the tree line quickly grew until it dissolved into individual trunks and branches and at that time she heard the screams when her prey understood they'd run into a trap.

Metal clashed against metal and suddenly one man staggered back into the field. She fell on him from behind but he managed to turn and face her just as she clawed into him. A flicker of horror and recognition reached her from his face, then surprise as she tore his chest open.

There would be very little pain. She knew that, and his face only displayed resignation when his bowels spilled onto the ground. Then life fled him.

The man caught between the trees lasted little longer, and Karia came out in the open.

"Are we done here?" he asked. He seemed strangely subdued as he wiped his dagger clean. Something ate him from the inside.

"We are," Gring answered. "Khar Escha waits with Harbend. He's promised to jump us close to our next prey before dusk."

Karia threw a glance behind him as the others emerged from the trees. "He's tired, isn't he?"

Gring nodded in the halfman way of affirmation. "He is. I could not balance such amounts of the gift. I don't understand how he does."

They started on their way back to the horses as soon as Karia's men reached them.

"I've heard rumours about Khanati," Gring said.

Karia grinned. "So have I. They say it never snows there."

"I've heard that as well, but I was thinking about their khars. Those not strong enough either die or are forced to become battlemages."

"I didn't know." Karia kicked away at a small stone and swore. It was only the tip of a larger one. Nursing his foot he fell behind. "The khars in Ira are even stronger I've heard," he said from behind her.

"Stronger than Khar Escha? I doubt that. A golden, and perhaps not just any golden maybe."

"Maybe so," Karia agreed. "Just heard that Ira makes more khars and stronger khars than Khanati."

Gring didn't answer. Karia was right, to a degree.

"I wonder what it takes to be a khar?" Karia continued.

"The spark, and an education," Gring said and growled.

Karia laughed and gave her a shamefaced grin. "You would know," he said and laughed again. Then he became serous again, and they continued in silence. Only Karia's men kept up the small chatter men are prone to do after a fight, even one as one sided as this had been.

Gring veered away from the burning farm. The smoke stung too much. Three dead lay inside. One of the oddities of Ri Khi. One farm for five unmarried men. Royal mercenaries paid with even more hard work.

She felt an urge to rush inside and drag their bodies out. Killing without feeding was wrong. It grated in her. She forced the want away. Karia would never understand. His kind never ate their enemies, and she had to respect him with peculiar taboos, customs and all he'd grown up with.

She looked at him. Once again he pretended this was just a mission like any other. She could smell that pretence, but she knew, and it worried her. The mindwalker in her called and warned her about the danger. Sooner or later she would have to release him from what they were doing or he would become twisted from the horrors.

The warrior in her told her to be silent and kill more. That voice had grown stronger, and she realized that Karia wasn't the only one she needed to be worried about. No mindwalkers were warriors. Warriors relied on their external senses only. Walking the mind of a prey while killing it was walking the path to madness.

They reached the horses. Gring watched Harbend's grim satisfaction as he watched the fire consume the farm only to be halted at the fields. Late in summer it would have spread across them. Late in summer they'd never been noticed during their approach, so maybe the farm would still be standing. She left the world of ifs, gave her warrior voice a hard mental kick and headed for the well behind the burning buildings.

She washed herself clean from blood and drank a bucket of water as well. Thankful that the well lay upwind from the smoke she started on her armour and weapons. She barely noticed how Karia's men joined her, and they worked silently side by side.

The second boon of being upwind was that she didn't have to feel the stench of burning flesh, and she knew it would have made her hungry rather than nauseous.

By the time they finished birds of prey circled above them and carrion eaters had already gathered at the tree line. The sun glared down on its last rise and they left the ruins behind them.

Gring didn't mind eating among the dead, but the other, used to death as they were, still showed unease at the silent company. She allowed that insight of differences between humans and halfmen to bounce around among the others she had taken to heart since she took up company with the taleweaver that day half a year earlier. And one thought cut her short. She had promised not to think of Karia and his men as halfmen. They had deserved that she kept her promise.

Fixed in that resolve she once again let her thoughts come and go as they made their way into the forest, and not until they paused to make a hasty meal did she focus her mind on the task ahead.

More killing, but this time it wouldn't be as easy as it had, or at least the second target would be harder to get at. They still had the advantage of surprise when they move away from the capital for the first time. When Escha jumped them away from the capital in a way few other living mages would have been able to, she corrected herself.

She thanked Karia when he handed her a strip of dried meat, and most of the bones from the pig they'd slaughtered a day earlier. She could crush the bones with her teeth and the marrow was fresh food for her. The others didn't like it much.

The dried meat was but a trifle, but she accepted it for the gesture as well. Karia really wanted her to feel like one among them. He went to great lengths to show that in actions as well as words. If the thought hadn't been so hilarious it almost was as if he pampered her.

The leaves wrapped around pork fat was another matter though. She gulped the package down, leaves and all. She needed a lot of energy to keep her body moving. More than the difference in weight could account for. Tapping into the gift almost continuously drained her, but she was their eyes and ears watching far beyond where mundane senses reached. She could starve herself to death without never knowing if she wasn't careful.

The meal was over far too soon, and she made herself ready among the grim men around her.

Escha looked at each of them in turn and nodded. Then he looked north, eyes fixed in concentration and she could feel the maelstrom of power gathering as he brought swirling threads of power around them. Strange words, more shouts than speech left his mouth, and even if she knew them for the tricks of concentration they really were, there was never a doubt about how rumours about mages and their words of power were born.

Then she felt the nexus closing in and they reached a crossing point of two lines of communications between sleeping gods, and another one, and yet another one. Escha moved between the lines, forced them together and unleashed the power when he had managed to tie five of them together in a single point. The rush of power filled her and she left the world and re-emerged on it—somewhere else.