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the Prince only stared and smiled.
    “Water?” the monster offered, polite as a maître d’ at any four-star restaurant.
    Richard was almost overcome by a wave of hatred. He wanted to pummel the sluagh until the ghoul’s ugly face was nothing more than slime, until those knowing green eyes were jelly on his knuckles. Only the pulsing agony in his broken hand kept him from trying.
    “Yes,” he said.
    The Prince whistled, the sweet trill of a bird in spring. A smaller sluagh detached itself from the shadows of a boulder. Richard recognized the sluagh by its vacant, one-eyed stare. A warty growth of small tentacles undulated where its other eye should have been.
    Richard had taken to mentally calling the one-eyed ghoul ‘Water-Bearer,’ because as far as he could tell its only purpose in the small army was to lug around a large leather jug full of drinkable water.
    Water-Bearer bent at the knees in front of Richard. It unstoppered the jug and held it out so Richard could suck from the leather tit like a baby. The sluagh smelled of rotting flesh and moldy soil, and the water from its jug tasted metallic, but at least the water was cold and not poisonous.
    Water-Bearer waited patiently while Richard drank, then resealed the jug and took it back into the shadows.
    Bracing his injured hand, Richard inched backward until he could set his spine against a boulder for support. The rock was cold even through his clothes, but it was dry, which meant he didn’t have to worry. The sluagh had quickly put the poisonous lake at their back, marching away from the shore on a well-worn path. Even with the lake well behind, the air remained acrid until they passed into a rocky valley between low hills where the wind died down.
    Now he could breathe the air without searing his mouth and lungs. His eyes still burned and wept, but some of the blur was clearing from his vision. He no longer felt like he was watching the alien landscape through a pair of foggy glasses.
    The Prince rose, stretching its dark-angel wings. It lifted its chin, opening its mouth, fat tongue quivering between sharp teeth, tasting the air. It hissed, then leapt from the gravel and into the air.
    The draft from the Prince’s wings smelled foul, but once in the air the monster was graceful, almost beautiful, a misshapen dancer between the white sun and dark hills. Richard couldn’t look away. He watched until the Prince disappeared, and he couldn’t pretend the lurch in his heart wasn’t more envy than fear.
    Water-Bearer stirred. As Richard watched, it inched away from its solitary pool of shadow and approached the rest of the Host where they gathered in a knot against the sheltering hill, guarding the changeling. Richard could see only their dark forms, a wall of feathers and grotesquely twisted limbs, but he knew Aine was there among them, guarded by sharp teeth and wicked claws.
    At first Richard assumed they were protecting her from the poisons in the air. Now he wondered if it was something more.
    The group muddled, parting just enough to let Water-Bearer squeeze through. Richard rolled onto his knees, hoping to catch a glimpse of Aine, but the feathery gap closed again too quickly.
    Once he’d eased back onto the gravel it occurred to Richard that he was being ignored. Whether out of curiosity or distrust, the Prince had been his guardian since they’d crossed through the portal. As far as Richard could tell, the rest of the Host had dismissed him in favor of the jewel that was Aine. And now the Prince was gone.
    Go! Richard’s conscious always sounded an awful lot like his father. Get your ass up and go! Just like I taught you, Rick! Now!
    He was up and away before he really thought about it, running through the ever-present twilight, dodging boulders and slipping on gravel, leaving the sluagh path behind. The resulting pain in his hand made his head spin, but he didn’t slow, even when his damaged leg began to drag.
    Richard put the lake at his back and