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checked the skin to make sure it was the same one he
had first seen, he said casually, ‘Don’t think to divert your
followers to me, Mantis. I’m too wily to be taken like that. This
map disappears the moment you leave this room. They wouldn’t find
it on me, and then they’d still be after you, madder than
before.’
    ‘I don’t have
the dribbling tongue of a betrayer,’ the Mantis said indignantly.
‘No one’ll ever hear aught from me, even if they ask.’
    ‘Look after my
horse. If ever you want to sell her back to me, send word to
Kibbleberry. Her name’s Ygraine.’
    ‘A
high-falutin’ handle, that.’ Legend—or was it history?—said that
there had once been a great Margravine of Malinawar called Ygraine.
She was said to have led an invasion into Yedron with particularly
nasty results for the Yedronese monarch of the time, simply because
she’d thought herself insulted. The Mantis evidently did not think
much of the choice of name, but he said, ‘I’ll take care of her.
She’s my passage out of here.’ He tucked away the paper and the
money, nodded briefly, and let himself out.
    Piers hardly
noticed his going. Instead he pored over his acquisition, revelling
in the beauty and workmanship, touching it with reverent fingers,
already looking forward to the moment when he would share his awe,
his joy, with Keris. And Thirl, of course.
    Reluctantly,
he secreted it away in the hiding place he used for valuables when
travelling. He was hoping that he would have another one or two
visitors, people wanting to buy his maps this time, and he did not
want anyone to see this purchase.
    Within the
next hour he made four sales of maps roughly updated with the
latest information, then—just as he was about to spread his bedroll
out on the straw mattress and turn in for the night—there was
another knock at the door. As before, the habit of a lifetime made
him pick up one of his knives and caution made him ask the visitor
to identify himself, but he was tired and he didn’t notice the
emanations that might have warned him what waited for him on the
other side of the door.
    The name given
in reply meant nothing, but he thought he recognised the voice of
one of the chambermaids and unbarred the door anyway. After all, no
one really expected to be attacked inside a halt. Certainly no one
expected to confront one of the Minions of Chaos within its walls,
especially not when there were kinesis devotions being performed in
the common room to ward off just such evils. And most of all no one
would have dreamed of seeing one of the Wild…
    Yet no sooner
had he lifted the bar than the door was flung open with immense
force, catching him across the chest and arm. His knife went flying
and before he could utter a sound he was flattened by his attacker
and two clawed hands the size of dinner plates were around his
throat, squeezing, crushing his windpipe. It happened so fast—and
his assailant was so unnaturally strong—that he never had a
chance.
    Even as he
struggled, even as he battered at the thickened nose and gouged at
the yellow eyes, he glimpsed the Minion standing with folded arms
behind her pet. He saw her blood-soaked nails tapping impatiently
on her bloodied forearms, and knew he was going to die. His only
thought was one of surprise it was all going to end this way, in
the relative safety of a halt, and not out there in the Unstable
somewhere as he had always thought.
     
    ~~~~~~~
     
     

Chapter
Two
     
     
    And no more
did the lands beyond the sea send their sailors; nor yet did the
Margravate of Malinawar see its own sails return on the wind, decks
piled high with the fragrant oils of Premantra and the golden cloth
of Brazis. No more did the caravans come from Yedron and
Bellisthron and the lands behind Beyond. All about was Ley. All
about was unstable, and Humankind feared to cross. Malinawar was as
eight rafts afloat on a storm-soaked ocean, and none knew the way
to swim.

    —The Rending I:
7: