Lhani stirred. Evening had fallen. Red-orange sunlight shimmered on the water as the indistinct forms of the treeline merged into the darkening sky. This was the hour it was hardest to see. In another hour, the trees would be dark and the sky would seem bright by comparison. The river would be a ribbon of reflected moonlight over swirling darkness.

She lay wedged between her brothers in a canoe. Glim and Gerard bobbed beside them in the current, paddling to stay at the center.

Lhani yawned and stretched, and saw Arrad relax in relief. Hours had passed. No wonder he’d been so concerned.

Behind them, barely visible in the rosy wash of the sky, the storm seethed. So. They'd raced past it on the river while she had been sleeping. What drove that maelstrom of ice and wind? Lhani's need to find out became acute. No longer curiosity, nor caution. Not even protection. She had to know.

“Pull over,” she croaked weakly. “We must switch!”

“Shh. Stay calm!” Arrad said. “You need more rest.”

“I am perfectly calm. Yet -- not calm at all. We cannot defend against this thing if we do not know it! I am recovered enough to find out the truth. I need to enter his mind once more. Once more! Then it can be done and we will know.”

“How will it be different?” Arrad asked with a frown. “You have tried three times now!”

“I will do what I should have done in Hiehaven.”

“What’s that?” Arrad said.

“I will steer his mind.”

Tomyko sucked air through his teeth behind her. She felt him grip her shoulders, as if to physically restrain her. “Would you tarnish yourself so completely?”

Lhani looked back at him with an anger she could feel boiling to the surface. Tomyko winced and pulled back. She softened her eyes. “How many towns must perish, Tomyko? Should I stand by and watch as Hammerfall is ruined?”

Gerard cleared his throat. “Remarkable how well sound carries over water. We are coming upon a narrows anyway. Let's stretch our legs and put our heads together.”

The canoes slid onto sand and they disembarked. With a flush of guilt, Lhani realized that Glim must have overheard her plans to pillage his mind. The guilt made her even angrier. Why should she be the one ashamed?

As soon as her feet touched solid ground, Lhani ran at Glim. She shoved him in the chest, which hardly budged the young man. So she punched him once for good measure, then screamed into his face.

“I don't care if you heard me! It's true all the same. Stop dancing around the truth!” She punched him again. “What are we running from? Tell me!”

Arrad and Gerard pulled her away. She shoved them aside and walked away, screaming once more in frustration, just as Tomyko had done in Gerard’s cabin.

Lhani sunk into the sand and struggled to think clearly. The very last light of day showed the storm following inexorably in their wake. The canoes had bought them time—an hour or two, perhaps?—but the thing inside still moved downriver. By this time tomorrow, if its path held true, Hammerfall would be no more. If they canoed all night and befell no mishap, they might have time to warn the town.

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She considered the possibilities. Fight, flight, or freeze. Let others die, or die herself. Ignore her empathy and live as a shell of herself, or give into it and rob her own mother of having the children she’d raised with such love. No choice gave Lhani any hope. She only knew one thing: She would not sit by and watch a town perish if she could help save it. Her mother and father would understand.

Lhani settled herself as much as she could, and stood to face the others. Lhani pulled her sleeve down, revealing the eye-shaped wound, and shook it in Glim’s face. “What is this?”

Glim thought for a minute, staring at the storm. She saw the same desperation of choices play out in his own face that she’d just gone through.

Please, Glim. Please find your empathy again.

At last, he pointed at the storm, and then at his head, then touched Lhani on the forehead. At his touch, a scream of abject terror filled her mind. Lhani jerked away from the contact.

“Switch canoes.” Gerard said urgently. “Glim, share your thoughts with her as we go. But get right to the point. Lhani is drained already and we have no time to spare. Also, I need you to take a shift for me. I cannot row this canoe through rapids the entire night by myself. I am bound to wreck us that way. Can you do this?”

Glim nodded. Gerard sighed. “This plan is reckless... but there is little choice.”

Lhani scrambled into the canoe and they hit the water hard. When they passed into the deeper, calmer waters that characterized the southern run of the river, Lhani took Glim's hands.

Be only a feather. Be only a feather. The evening brightened as a tendril of light writhed from his eye into hers and became daylight.

Lhani wanted to shut her eyes against the sun, but they were not her eyes. They did not close at her bidding, so she remained disoriented by the brilliance of day. Eventually her sight adjusted. Lhani looked down and nearly retched. Glim walked the edge of a knife. Not literally, but near enough. The ridge spanned a hand's width. On either side, sheer rock fell away into dark glaciers and snowy cliffs far below. Only the insane, suicidal, or desperate would try this path. Which, Lhani wondered, is Glim?

Lhani got hazy impressions of an old tower and some caves, then Glim entered the strangest room Lhani had ever seen. Metal monoliths with runes and levers ran to the ceiling of an immense cavern. Beacons of unnatural light ringed the floor. Occasionally a spire shimmered in the corner of Glim's eye to release a writhing swirl of silver light into the air. It reminded Lhani of the light that connected her to Glim's mind.

I wonder if a similar light is binding us even now? she thought.

The cavern grew dark, and Lhani swore she heard the rippling of water as she looked at Glim, who sat across from her in a bobbing canoe.

Focus! Lose your own mind! Be only a listener in this mind, she entreated herself. The sound of water faded and the cavern brightened again.

Glim looked down from a tower onto an ever-widening circle of ember that burned a rough circle into the floor. A glass floor? Beneath it lay an enormous statue of a horned giant. Grim, with exaggerated features.

The rendering was uncanny! The sheer artistry moved her to tears. The Elderkin must have been master artists to create such a statue. Lhani understood why Glim had gone through all of this trouble. Whether his interest was that of an artist, a historian, or a treasure seeker, Glim would become famous for locating this find.

But pride did not swell in his heart. Why would the discovery of an exquisite Elderkin statue unsettle him so?

Sunlight caused strange shadows within the glass. Lhani watched as a shadow pulsed across the statue's forehead like a vein. How odd... Fear seeped into the edges of her thought, but Lhani fought to retain a semblance of logic. This could not be... a living creature? It dwarfed the cavern! This thing cannot be alive. How long had it hibernated here? Who had imprisoned it?

Questions swarmed her mind like the leathery butterflies that had attacked Glim on the path to the chicken coop. She felt as though nothing were real anymore. Ever more fearful, Lhani wanted nothing more than to be rid of this vision, but she remained locked in Glim's mind.

Lhani heard a crackling tinkle of ice somewhere in the distance. Not loud, but loud enough in the tomblike atmosphere of this place. The crack widened and the statue stirred. She looked down at the fluttering eyelid. The giant's pupil opened into a black void beneath her feet and Lhani saw nothingness. She felt nothing but pure sorrow.

Despair completely consumed her.