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"I thought Miller's Grove was out of the way," Cornelius interrupted.

"Yeah, but obviously we can't cross the desert here. Does the land get any more hospitable between here and there?"

"Miller's Grove is long and stretched out." Wolstan gestured, indicating parallel to the desert. "We'll be in the surrounding woods long before we get to the mill, beyond the cliffs. There's always something to eat in the woods. And we won't be in the open."

The longer we waited to eat, the less fussy any of us was going to be. "Well, if you could carry ... Felice again."

I wasn't sure how much Mom was aware of. Wolstan picked her up, the head-down, rear-end-up technique she loathed, and she looked awfully limp.

As we started walking, an idea occurred to me. "Mom," I said. "Mom."

Mom opened her eyes and raised her head.

"Do you still have that necklace, the one from the troll statue? If Robin said the magic word in time, the crystal will be gone."

"Of course," Thea interrupted, "if Robin said the magic word in time, the sword would be gone too.
Of course
"—she raised her voice for Cornelius's benefit—"there's no telling where the sword is, since a certain member of our party made me throw
that
away."

Never turning back, Cornelius grunted like a pig.

Mom groped around her neck and the opening of her dress. "It
is
gone," she said.

Wolstan, ever the optimist, said, "A hundred opportunities for you to have lost it in the Shadow Caves."

Mom let her head drop back down without a word.

I hoped for all I was worth that Robin had made it—even though the chances were that, even if he had survived, he'd never catch up and we'd never see him again.

Our shadows got longer and longer until they disappeared entirely. To our right the
BEWARE OF SAND HANDS
signs, posted one every several hundred feet till the land met the distant horizon, melted into the evening darkness. To our left we were vaguely aware of the looming Sand Cliffs, despite the fact that they were miles away.

Eventually we reached the forest, where we were too exhausted to care anymore.

We debated whether to light a fire, weighing the attention it would draw against the warmth and security it would provide. But even Thea, who was the only one raising any objections, seemed to be hoping for a fire. She just wanted us to be aware that she had lodged a complaint; that way, in case anything went wrong, she could remind us that she had told us so.

Of course Cornelius had already lit a fire magically that day, so we had to use flints.

"I'm going to see if I can find any game," Wolstan announced as Thea and I struggled to set spark to dried birch bark.

He disappeared into the blackness of the night. Not that I could see he'd have much luck: the orcs had made off with our bows, and I couldn't imagine anybody—even Wolstan—sneaking up close enough to a forest creature to be able to stab it with a sword.

There was a full moon, though it was playing peekaboo with the clouds. When it was out, I could see Mom sleeping on her makeshift mattress of leaves. Waiting for the fire, Cornelius had fallen asleep still sitting up.

I helped Thea arrange the fish. We still had six of them: one for each of us, plus one that would have been for Robin. Too bad, I thought for the tenth or twelfth time that day, there had been no way to carry some of the river water with us.

We sat warming our hands at the fire, saying nothing to each other. I wondered how long we should wait for Wolstan before we ate without him, and tried to decide who would have first watch. And I didn't want to ask Thea what she thought, because she was obviously more patient than I was, and she'd probably take it as weakness on my part if I did.

From alarmingly close a wolf howled.

Close enough that Cornelius sat upright, instantly awake.

Close enough that the hairs on my arms sat upright, too.

I slipped my sword out of its sheath. Next to me, Thea mirrored my action. Cornelius stood, his back to the tree, his fingers flexing. Mom groaned in her sleep, as though the wolf's call had pierced through to her dreams, and she rolled onto her side.

Then the cry—of loneliness or challenge or declaration of territory—faded till it seemed to sink beyond my threshold of hearing rather than to cease. My heart thudded in my chest. The wolf repeated its howl. And again a third time. Never changing, never coming closer. Telling other wolves about us? Telling them dinner was near?

I waited for yet another cry. And waited. Locusts grated noisily. Branches settled in the cooling night air. The campfire crackled, no longer as cheery as before. But whatever the message had been, it was over.

And suddenly I had an awful thought. What if the wolf had already found its dinner?

"Wolstan?" I called.

Behind me, from the opposite direction Wolstan had taken, the opposite direction from which the wolf had howled, there was a whisper of leaves and underbrush that was more than just branches settling. I motioned for Thea to stay where she was, in case it was wolves, in case they were circling us in.

Cornelius moved to my left.
Should I wake Mom?
She wouldn't be able to help. She might in fact get in the way. Still, if we had to make a sudden escape, being awake would give her a head start.

Before I had a chance to decide, a figure stepped out from behind a tree at the rim of our firelight. It was a lot closer than I had estimated from the noise, and the fact that the shape was human didn't make me any less anxious. But then it said, "Cornelius, Harek," and stepped closer.

Anxiety evaporated into relief. "Nocona!" I sheathed my sword.

Nocona motioned for the others behind him to hurry up—Marian and Feordin. That was why I had been confused by their distance: it was the two of them I had heard; Nocona, Indian-stealthy, could have come up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder before I'd have been aware of him.

We all hugged and said how happy we were to see each other and asked, "Did you hear that wolf?" and everybody said, "Sure did," and we speculated how close it might be and wondered how safe these woods were at night. Then they asked, "How's Felice?" and we said, "No better," and they were shocked and dismayed and said they had been unable to find the town—that they'd kept riding and riding, and no matter which direction they went, they always found themselves back where they'd started—and they had been sure
we
had been on the right track and that she must be cured by now. We told them about Wolstan, and that orcs had eaten our horses, and they said they still had theirs, but they had tied them back in the woods when they had come to investigate our fire. Then Marian asked, "Where's Robin?"

"Ahmmm," Thea said, "I better tend the fire."

"Ahmmm," Cornelius said, "I better keep an eye out for Wolstan."

"Ahmmm," I said, but my mind went blank.

Marian put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot. "Where's Robin?" she repeated ominously.

I could have said I had to check on Mom, but it was too late for that now. One step and Marian would grab me by the shirt, I just knew it. "We ... ah ... sort of ... lost him ... Sort of."

"You
lost
him?"

"Sort of."

Marian grabbed me by the shirt after all. "
WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU LOST HIM?
" she screamed at me.

Nocona and Feordin stepped closer. I got the impression they might pull her off me if she started beating me up too bad—after all, we were short on players and getting shorter all the time—but they too seemed to take Robin's loss as a personal and intentional provocation.

I explained about the sand hands, stressing how Robin had chosen to ignore the signs and walk ahead of us. Thea and Cornelius nodded vigorously. Then I told the other things that had happened. About halfway through, Marian let go of my shirt. She sat down on the ground, resting her head in her hands.

"So you see," I finished, "it may just be that Robin is fine. We may be worrying needlessly."

Marian sighed. "Idiot," she muttered.

I didn't ask who.

"What about you?" Thea asked. "What happened to you after you realized you couldn't get back to the town?"

Marian just sat there, sulking. Nocona was poking at our fire with a stick, listening to all we said, but quiet himself. It was Feordin who spoke. "Well, we wasted about half the day at it. We kept thinking maybe if we circled around, or if we tried walking backward, or I can't remember what-all we tried. But finally we gave it up as another bug in the computer and took off after you four. Late afternoon we came to this old guy's cottage."

"Yeah?" I said. "Tell me about it." I had only explained that we'd gotten the boots, sword, and crystal from a sun-petrified troll. I hadn't brought up about how the old coot had stiffed us for six silver pieces, nor about how he'd conned us into fixing his stupid door.

Feordin shrugged. "Nothing much to say. Sweet old guy."

"
Sweet old guy?
" I croaked.

Feordin glanced at Marian for confirmation. "How would you describe Fred?"

Fred?

"Sweet old guy," Marian said.

Feordin glanced at Nocona.

"Sweet old guy," Nocona said.

Feordin continued. "Sure. He was full of useful information. Real friendly. Shared his dinner with us and everything. We fixed his front door. Some hoodlums had done a real job on it. He gave us six silver pieces for our help, even though we said he didn't have to. So I guess you could say that was the first treasure we earned."

Thea and Cornelius had the sense not to say anything.

"He had this statue in the back that he said was good luck if you rubbed it, which we did, and I guess we've had pretty good luck since. Wouldn't you say?"

Nocona nodded.

Marian said, "Until now."

"Say." Feordin turned back to me. "Fred's troll statue wouldn't be the same troll where you got your magic objects, would it?"

Thea, Cornelius, and I all nodded.

Before he could say any more, the skin-prickling howl of a wolf brought us all to our feet. It sounded as though it came from the same spot as before. Once again it howled three times.

"I don't like this," Thea said in the thick silence that followed. "Where's Wolstan?"

My thoughts exactly. "I think I should go look for him," I said. "Just in case something's happened."

"We're fresher than you are," Nocona pointed out.

"But he doesn't know you."

Nocona wasn't interested enough to argue.

"I'll come with you," Feordin offered to me. "Which way was your friend headed?"

I led him out of the little clearing, aware that while I might not step as lightly as Nocona, Feordin crashed through the underbrush like a dazed buffalo.

"Anyway," he picked up the story where he'd left it, despite my instinct to proceed silently, "come nightfall we camped just outside of the Shadow Caves, which was what Fred recommended. Only a fool would go there at night, he said. We got a good night's sleep, passed through the caverns at first dawn. No problems. Saw what was left of your horses. Nocona said there weren't any human or elf bones in the lot, so we figured you'd made it through. When we got outside, Nocona couldn't pick up your trail. Said he didn't think you'd passed by yet. But we knew you had half a day's lead on us, so Marian and I figured you
had
to be ahead of us."

"Yeah," I muttered. "That was probably about the time we were rolling around in rat dung."

"Uh-huh," Feordin said. He stopped talking while we climbed a small but steep hill.

I looked back and could just barely see the light from our campfire, despite the fact that we were only a minute's walk away; that's how thick the trees were.

"Fred had warned us about the sand hands, so we pressed on, figuring that's what you must have done. When we got to the mill, come about midday, the miller said he'd never seen you, and that's when we had to face the fact that we must have bypassed you in the caves."

"It didn't take you since noon to get here?" I asked. I'd been hoping we didn't have that much farther to go.

"Naw, the pixies threw a feast for us."

"Pixies?"

"Yeah, we had a real nice little adventure. That's where we picked up our treasure."

"Treasure?" I was getting pretty tired of his dropping this on me piece by piece while we dodged low branches and pushed through clinging bushes. The shirt under my leather breastplate stuck damply to my back.

"Oh, yeah," Feordin said, "I forgot you didn't see our horses. They're pretty well laden down, what with the reward the pixies gave us and the sprites. And the dragon."

"
What?
"

"You see, the pixies were having this May Day celebration, even though it's June—you know how pixies are—anyway, a bunch of sprites came along and captured the May Queen and her attendants. We rescued them."

"Sounds like a hard two minutes' work," I mumbled. Sprites are never, ever, even remotely dangerous. They have a weird sense of humor, but they wouldn't harm anyone.

"Hey, don't take it out on me just because we got pixies and sprites, and you got orcs and rats." Feordin snorted and stuck his big wedgy nose in the air.

"Sorry," I conceded. "What about the dragon?"
Don't tell me,
I mentally begged,
they met a dragon. Not a real dragon. Not without me.

"Well, the dragon gave us—"

Not more than a dozen yards away, a wolf howled.

Feordin and I put our backs to the nearest tree, knowing there wasn't time to actually climb it.

The wolf must have heard us and cut itself off midcry.

The trees were too thick for us to see anything, but we heard the crackle of branches and twigs, as though the creature might have jumped down from a tiny hill, or an outcrop of stone, or a tree stump, onto the forest floor. Then nothing. Just the hammering of my heart, the smell of the rich soil, the taste of sweat when I licked my lips.

"Wolstan!" I shouted, since it was for his sake that I was out here, and the wolf knew where we were in any case.