One more limb down, and he would be able to throw the spear…
In the darkest hours of the night, Cheyne finally found sleep, but no peace. The bad dreams of his youth came back, this time with an intensity and sharpness he had not experienced since the months directly after Javin had brought him home for the first time. Over and over again, he saw the figure with the clawed hand drop down onto him, ready to devour him, and the shape of the totem's glyph flashed in front of his eyes like a bright beacon.
Then the dream shifted to a terrifying new image. He saw Javin, his hand awash in flames, the fire about to consume his body, fighting dark shapes in the moonlight. The three sisters tilted overhead, and a hundred gleaming red eyes burned in the darkness, circling and closing on Javin.
Cheyne awoke, his lungs strained with unvoiced agony. He sat up and peered around the lodge, slowly remembering where he was. Clarta lay still and lovely in the darkness, moonlight glowing on her skin as it shone down through the lodge's skylight. But Cheyne thought he was still dreaming when, out of the shadows of the smoky lodge, stepped a tall elf, his face divided by a long scar, a silver chain for his belt and a brooch carved with the glyphs of the Sarrazan potters upon his breast.
"You!" Cheyne shouted. "Who are you? Have you been following us, too?"
"Who's there?" said Wiggulf sleepily from the far side of the hall.
The tall elf held up his hand, long thin fingers pale in the low firelight. "Forgive me, Riverking, for the intrusion. But I have urgent business with your guests and have just come from the Treefather with a message for the Argivan."