Only instead of a tired soldier, of course, it was a ghostly swirl of shadow and dust coming up the path toward her now, the echo of a person. That echo kept evolving, too—holding on to its human form for a second or two, and then, as a breath of air met it, losing its edges, rippling, fading, until it could pull itself together again, back into something resembling the shape of a man, striding proudly up the slope, while all around it trees and stones and earth were being unmade, melted, ruined. And that terrible roaring tearing sound everywhere, the sound of the world having been bent too far—the sound of the real world finally breaking. “Maya,” said the man made of shadow. “Maya. Apprentice. Well done.” The music had stopped: Valko must have remembered to drag Pauline back into safety with him. Good. Maya took a breath of cold, steadying air and tried not to be worried about the tremors rippling through the ground under her feet, the soft whoosh whoosh of trees losing their last hold on treeness and melting away into nothing, into nonsense.
