Yann slammed down on the ground and rolled down a slope covered in grass. The fall tore his glaive out of his hand—not that he’d be able to fight anything anyway.

This grass was fresh, green, cool, and clipped short. The air around him chilled him instantly and the fresh smell of lush foliage stung his nose.

He rolled to a slightly flatter place and pitched onto his stomach. He sprawled there trying to make himself as wide as possible so he wouldn’t roll anywhere else.

The other Watchmen groaned around him. He heard Eliska whimpering like she might be in pain.

That sound made Yann look up. She lay only a few feet away from him, but she was already pushing herself up onto her hands and knees.

Yann looked around to make sure the other Watchmen were okay. That was the moment when he saw Anríq walking down the mountain toward them.

He wore his axe across his back again and his club on his belt. He looked exactly the same way he looked when the Watch first spotted him. Yann didn’t see a single hair out of place on Anríq’s head.

He took one look at the Watchmen pulling themselves out of the grass. Anríq halted in his tracks, frowned, and shot a glare to his left.

Yann didn’t see anything over there until Omer asked, “Where’s Niyazi? He isn’t here.”

Yann got a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach when Anríq turned aside and set off across the mountainside.

He had to climb over ridges and rock ledges until he stopped looking down the other side.

“Niyazi!” Yvan yelled. “Niyazi—where are you?”

“I think Anríq knows where he is, Father,” Yann murmured.

Every man of the Watch went still and silent staring at the back of Anríq’s head. He didn’t move for a second—and then he jumped off the edge and vanished behind the mountain.

Everyone hustled over there and looked down into a crevice between two enormous rock cliffs. Niyazi lay broken, bleeding, and unconscious at the bottom.

One of his legs stuck out at the wrong angle. Blood stained the rocks near him and the cliffs up to the crevice’s top edge.

“No!” Yvan husked.

Anríq squatted down next to Niyazi and flattened his hand on Niyazi’s chest. Nothing happened for a second. Niyazi didn’t wake up.

The group watched in silence as Anríq shifted his position down to Niyazi’s leg, took hold of it, and compressed it back into a straight line. Niyazi didn’t wake up.

Anríq held onto the leg for a few minutes before he went back up to Niyazi’s head.

Anríq placed his hand on Niyazi’s forehead, shut his eyes, and bowed over the unconscious Watchman.

Yann’s throat constricted watching this. If only Anríq could fix what was wrong Niyazi…..

The chaos, danger, and confusion of the last few days somehow shielded Yann from thinking about all the Watchmen—and all the other people—who died when Middleborough went down.

The group had already lost everyone else.

The men in this group were all any of them had left. Wesh lost all the other Guardian Templars who left the Temple with him.

Eliska never had anyone to begin with. None of them could afford to lose anyone else.

How ironically perfect it turned out to be that Anríq met up with this group. He was another lost soul with no family and no home to which he could return. He had no one, either.

After a few minutes of silence, he took his hand off Niyazi’s head, scooped up the injured man in his powerful arms, and looked around for a way out of the crevice.

He noticed everyone standing around watching him, but there was no way out. He’d jumped down there to save Niyazi’s life. Now Anríq couldn’t get out.

Eliska raised her staff to do something, but she didn’t get a chance to before Anríq flexed his knees and jumped.

He soared much higher than any normal man should have been able to jump. His magic carried him out of the crevice and he landed on the rocks where the Watchmen stood waiting for him.

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“We need to keep him warm,” Anríq said to no one in particular.

“I’ll take care of it,” Wesh offered. “Bring him over here, my boy.”

Wesh led the way to a rock overhang against the mountainside. Anríq laid Niyazi on the ground and Wesh squatted down next to him.

Yann surveyed the area. The only trees he could see were more than a mile down the mountain. A few scrubby bushes clung to the rocks nearby, but they wouldn’t give the group enough wood for a fire.

Wesh flicked his empty hand at the gravel next to Niyazi. A bunch of sparks flew from Wesh’s fingertips and ignited into a blaze.

Vidal and Omer left immediately. They didn’t ask for permission. They set off hiking down the mountain on their way toward the trees in the distance.

Yann, Eliska, and the other Watchmen gathered around the blaze.

Anríq took off his axe and all his other weapons, laid his three shoulder bags to one side, and dug around in one of them.

“Can we do anything?” Yvan asked.

Anríq shook his head and started pulling random objects out of one of his bags.

The group sat off to one side while Anríq got to work on Niyazi. Yann found himself sitting between Eliska and Barsali. Everyone watched Anríq in fascinated silence.

He brought some kind of marking pencil made out of chalk. He used it to draw long lines down the two sides of Niyazi’s neck and then drew dots down each side of both lines.

Yvan turned white. “What’s wrong with him? Did he break his neck?”

“And other things,” Anríq muttered.

He sat down cross-legged by Niyazi’s head, curved his fingers into a gripping position a few inches above Niyazi’s neck, and Anríq closed his eyes.

Yann leaned close to Eliska. “What is he doing?” Yann whispered.

“I don’t know,” she whispered back. “The Servants have their own way of doing things. Each person develops their own healing skills separate from everyone else.”

“You mean they don’t train each other?” Barsali hissed. “That’s outrageous!”

“They can’t train each other. Each one goes alone, so they all develop their own ways of doing everything.”

They fell silent when Anríq fired two beams of magical energy—one from his thumb and one from his fingers.

He flexed his hand in what would have been a choking motion around Niyazi’s neck, but whatever Anríq did didn’t harm Niyazi.

“Are you sure you and Wesh shouldn’t try to help him?” Yann asked. “Won’t three wizards be better than one?”

“Anríq wouldn’t be working on Niyazi if Anríq didn’t think he could heal whatever is wrong with him. I think we should stay out of his way and let him do it his own……”

She trailed off when another shriek echoed into the rocks. The whole group spun around to stare at the wild girl crawling up the mountainside to get closer to the party.

The noise distracted Anríq. His eyes snapped open and he stared down the mountain, too, but he didn’t release his magic from Niyazi’s neck.

“What the hell is she doing here?” Rien snarled.

“She must have followed us through all those Layers,” Eliska murmured back. “I wonder what she wants.”

“She better not be here for food,” Rien muttered.

“You and your food,” Barsali returned. “As if you would ever go hungry because of her.”

The wild girl didn’t come near the overhang. She crept and scrambled over the rock ledges until she got to a flat plateau twenty yards away.

She crouched there with her dingy hair hanging over her face. She didn’t come any closer.

The group turned back to Niyazi. Wesh and Yvan sat nearby watching Anríq.

He kept working on Niyazi, drawing on different parts of his body, and rubbing different objects into his injuries.

Omer and Vidal came back before Anríq finished. Both men carried armloads of firewood. Two biturongs hung from Vidal’s belt.

He lowered his firewood to the ground next to Wesh. “There are plenty of waterbuck down there,” Vidal murmured under his breath. “We could have brought more.”

No one said anything else for a long time. Omer and Vidal built up the fire. Eliska cleaned the biturongs for them and Neils took his usual place by the fire to cook them.

Anríq finally sat back on his heels, folded his arms on his knees, buried his face in his elbows, and didn’t stir again.

Niyazi still lay on the ground with his eyes closed.

“Should we do anything?” Yann whispered. “Anríq looks exhausted.”

“Do anything like what?” Eliska asked.

“I don’t know. We should do something, though, shouldn’t we?”

“I don’t know what we can do besides let him rest.”

“Give me your cloak, Eliska,” Yann told her.

She hesitated, but she eventually took it off and handed it to him.

He got to his feet, tiptoed around the fire, and draped the cloak around Anríq’s shoulders. He didn’t respond. He must have fallen asleep.

The others gathered around, but they kept their voices low. “Where are we?” Barsali asked.

Eliska created her Coil projection in her palm. She groaned when she saw it. “Oh, no! The Ancestral Empire is completely gone!” She glanced at Anríq, but he still didn’t wake up to get involved in their conversation.

“I wonder if his tribe is there—or was there,” she whispered. “Maybe…..”

She trailed off staring at him.

“Maybe what?” Yann asked. “Does this have something to do with him?”

“No, nothing like that.” She raised her projection and studied it. “We’re here—in this Island.”

“Are there any other people here?” Omer asked.

“There are some inhabited lands at the base of these mountains. This Island looks quite stable.”

“You said that about the Ancestral Empire,” Neils pointed out.

“We won’t be going anywhere until Niyazi gets better,” Yvan decided.

“He will get better,” Wesh told him. “He’s sleeping now.”

Everyone turned around. “Did Anríq heal whatever was wrong with him?” Vidal asked.

“I told you he would,” Eliska added. “He’s a healer.”

“We all see that now,” Yvan told her. “You couldn’t expect us to believe it when we knew nothing about him.”

Just then, Anríq raised his head and rubbed his eyes.

“Here.” Neils handed him a piece of the biturong meat—the first piece Neils cut off the roasting carcass. “Do you feel better?”

Anríq took the food, bowed to Neils, and then nodded.

“Thank you for healing our friend,” Yvan told him. “I don’t know how to tell you how grateful I am.”

“The Darkness took him,” Anríq replied.

Eliska’s head shot up. “It did? He didn’t get hurt from the fall?”

“The Darkness made him fall,” Anríq replied. “He would have landed with us, but the Darkness sent him over there.”

The other Watchmen looked around at each other. “Should we be worried about that?” Barsali asked.

“We’re all in equal danger from the Dark,” Wesh explained. “It could have happened to any of us.”

“It almost did happen to Anríq,” Eliska told him. “That Darkling tried to strangle him.”

End of Chapter 28.