Silver twilight stretched across the land on either side of the Dimduorn: a thinner and thinner membrane separating day from night. “How many of them do you see?” Durge said. The Embarran’s grim face shone like a ghost in the gloom. Beltan nudged his charger forward, peered past the end of the bridge, then shook his head. “It’s hard to say. There might be three, maybe four.” Grace tried to count the krondrim, but it was impossible to hold them with her eyes. They melted in and out of the gloaming, vanishing only to reappear in a different—and closer—place. Then she caught the red flickers low to the ground, like crimson blossoms unfurling in the dusk. The grass of the plain was igniting under their feet, burning brightly for a moment, then dimming to ash. By the telltale light she was able to guess the number of the dark beings. “Five,” she said, her voice turned into a croak by the hot wind. “There are five of them.” Already the Burnt Ones were less than a furlong from the river, lurching forward in a rough semicircle so that there was no clear route past them.
