Tull heard the distant sound of a child wailing in terror, like a tea kettle as it boils.

He knew that this wasn't Jenks standing before him, knew he should strike with his kutow or run. Waves of nausea and fear crashed against him, slapping him to the ground. And somewhere beside him, a child was wailing.

The Mastodon Man turned and peered at Tull, casually ripped Little Chaa in two at the waist, then bit deeply into his liver and chewed tentatively, as if to decide whether it liked the flavor.

Suddenly Tull saw two other Mastodon Men stalk across the clearing, stopping to sniff at the wagon. They began pulling out barrels, shattering kegs of wheat and beans with their fists.

Tull wrapped his arms around his legs and curled in protectively, too terrified to move.

Beside Tull, a child was whining.

The Mastodon Man that dined on Little Chaa studied Tull, then stepped forward tentatively, reached out with one giant finger as long and thick as Tull's jaw, and lightly thumped him on the chest, knocking him over. Tull felt as if he were falling through deep water that crushed his lungs, making it impossible to breathe, where the air carried the cold weight of many atmospheres.

He fell into a world of alternating bands of light and dark, light and dark.

Tull woke to the sound of a child wailing, a keening sound both distant and perilously close. Phylomon stood before him in the dark, swinging a medallion that flashed as if it were an ember from a fire.

"Come now, come," the blue man said softly, taking Tull by the shoulder. "Terror is for children."

Tull's chest began to heave, as if he were coughing heavily, and he realized that there was no child crying beside him, that the sound came from his own throat, and he began to shout. His limbs trembled uncontrollably.

Phylomon held him for a moment. "So, you have met the Mastodon Men before? The kwea of old fear is upon you."

"No! No," Tull gasped. "Father. My father!"

Phylomon studied. "Ayaah," he said. "How old were you when you fled home?"

Tull shook with the chills of old fear and considered. He could not remember, only wanted to vomit. Yet he pondered the question, focused on it. "Thirteen."

"So, and you are what, eighteen, twenty?" Phylomon calculated. "Then if you were human, I'd say you might recover in another ten years. I've found it to be a good rule of thumb—for every year we live in the care of our parents, it takes a year to recuperate."

Tull listened to Phylomon, and each word seemed complete, yet somehow separated from the others. Words could be strung together, but they didn't make coherent thoughts. Tull peered into the darkness behind Phylomon. Scandal sniffled, and at his feet was the spindly arm of Little Chaa, ragged flesh still clinging to the bone.

"Where's Wisteria?" Tull asked.

"In the hills, I imagine, still running in a blind panic," Phylomon said. "Ayuvah is tracking her by scent. We should get her back in a few hours."

Scandal picked up Little Chaa's arm and placed it in a bag. His face was pale, rigid with shock. "We'll need to build a pyre," he said, searching the ground, as if unsure how to build a simple fire. "Then go back home to tell Chaa that his son is dead."

Phylomon spoke. "Chaa spirit-walked this journey. He already knows."

The force of his words hit Tull like a blow to the gut. "Chaa knew this would happen?" He remembered how Chaa's face had been drawn in a horrible grimace of grief after his Spirit Walk. Tull realized why now. He'd known that his son would die.

But what does he hope to gain from this? Tull wondered. Chaa didn't just see the future, to a degree he helped to create it. What did he gain by sacrificing his own son?

Then a more terrifying thought hit. And what other sacrifice will we be required to make?

Phylomon peered at Tull and said, "From the looks of it, you are fortunate to be alive. The Mastodon Men would have eaten you, but when they saw Snail Follower they went for tastier game."

Could that be it? Tull wondered. Did Chaa send his son to die, just so that I would survive this attack? The notion seemed impossible.

Phylomon stood up straight, and groaned as if in pain.

"Are you all right?" Scandal asked.

"A little bruised," Phylomon said, holding his ribs. "I'll recover."

"They drove our mastodon off!" Scandal said, shaking his head. "We needed that like a lizard needs tits."

Tull sat disbelieving—Little Chaa dead, Wisteria running blindly in the woods, the mastodon lost. "What will we do?"

Phylomon answered, "We'll wait for Ayuvah to return with Wisteria. We can walk to Denai without the mastodon, if need be, and perhaps replace it there. But many things could go wrong. Scandal would have to be the one to buy a mastodon, and he would be forced to stay in the city for weeks. The Crawlies are notoriously curious about strangers, and if they suspect him, it could spell ruin. No, I think we had better hope we can get our mastodon back."

So the four men set out, following a trail in the growing dark. Phylomon led, and Tull imagined that he was searching for Wisteria. Thor began to rise, good and full, and it left a ghostly green light to see by under the trees. Moonlight would have to suffice.

Distorted images flashed through Tull's mind—the Mastodon Man tearing Little Chaa in half. Wisteria running. Jenks rattling chains.

They raced through deepening darkness, Tull's thoughts a jumble. He'd heard a big gun firing, suspected that Phylomon had had a run-in of some kind, but could not make sense of things.

He kept remembering Chaa's words, "You alone must catch the serpents! You alone!" And he realized dully that Chaa had meant it to the core of his soul. You alone must catch the serpents. The future Chaa had seen so terrified him that he had sacrificed his own son to avert some greater tragedy.

Somehow, until that moment, the quest had seemed a mere lark to Tull, nebulous, not something to take seriously.

An hour later the three men stumbled through the shadows of the redwoods, Phylomon carrying his medallion in hand, so that it glowed like a lantern, and they came on some corpses, laid out side by side, like fish on a dock.

The swivel gun lay on the ground beside them. It was only then that Tull realized that Phylomon hadn't been searching for Wisteria. He'd brought them to his kill site.

"Do you recognize these men?" Phylomon asked.

Jen Brewer, one of Scandal's own employees, lay on his back, shot cleanly through the heart with an arrow. Caral Dye, an old sailor, and Denzel Sweetwater, the schoolteacher, had both been hacked with the sword. Saffrey and Hardy Goodman lay on the ground, their skin blackened in places, smelling of smoke, looking for all the world as if they'd been struck dead by lightning.

Only a week before Tull had watched Hardy toss a bee's nest into an outhouse down in the warehouse district, and Jen Brewer had come bolting out so quickly that he'd left his pants by the toilet.

Tull gazed at Hardy's thick beard, his staring eyes, mouth still open in terror. It was the first time Tull had seen the simpleton without a smile on his face.

Scandal stared in blank horror, while Phylomon began searching the men. He moved efficiently, nabbing rings, checking pockets, searching for money bags. He'd obviously looted the bodies of many dead men before.

He pulled a mere dozen cartridges for the big gun from a backpack on Hardy's corpse, and searched in vain for more.

Neither Tull nor Scandal would touch the men.

Phylomon grumbled, "I should teach you all how to use the bow better. You can't rely on a steady supply of gunpowder in these parts."

Dire wolves began howling deep in the forest. Phylomon glanced toward the sound and said, "Unfortunately, I only wounded one of our attackers. I suspect the wolves will take him down for us. He left quite a blood trail."

When Phylomon had stripped the bodies, they lugged the swivel gun back to camp, then fixed it to the wagon with its bolts.

They had hardly got it mounted when Ayuvah returned, carrying Wisteria on his back as if she were a bag of turnips.

He glanced toward the body of Little Chaa, lying not sixty yards off.

Ayuvah gently set Wisteria beneath the wagon, a blanket wrapped about her. Their huge beer barrel was gone, and so she had little shelter. Tull held her as she shivered and sobbed.

"You are lucky she is human," Ayuvah whispered to Tull. "When she calmed down, she stopped and stayed in one place. It was not hard to find her. If she were a Pwi, she would still be running."

Tull nodded, and held his wife closely.