of punching blows and beat him into the ground. But it wouldn’t do any good. She would do what he wanted, then she would go home.
And maybe, just maybe, she and Daddy would be alright.
“What do I do?” she said.
“I think you know.”
Step through.
She sighed, looked once more at him, and then stepped forward towards the ringstone. She paused and turned back to look at him over her shoulder. “Who are you?” she whispered.
He smiled, and for the first time, there was nothing scary or troubled about it. It was just a smile. “Call me Fol,” he said.
She blinked.
Is that a weirder name than Panda Man or not?
She decided she didn’t know as she stepped forward through the ringstone. A sensation of being bent through an impossible angle, and she was appalled to realise it was, by now, a familiar feeling. Then the plain, the sun and the sky, the grass, the pigeons, Fol, and the ringstones were gone, and she was flying once more. But this time, it wasn’t through darkness, and the moment of terror that filled her up at the thought that she had been tricked, that the Panda Man—or Fol—had sent her back to that void of torture, was replaced by open-mouthed wonder. She was flying. Flying over the world like a birdie. But she was moving faster than any bird; the ground was zipping past so fast it was only a blur of green and brown, mixed in with spots of grey and twinkling glass she guessed were cities.
Her stomach exploded with butterflies, and she was falling. She tumbled head over heels with a burst of that strange cold biting at her fingers and toes, and crackling in her hair. A rugged landscape of heathland, old broken towns, lakes and mountains rushed up to strike her in the face.
Then came a jolting impact. She saw stars, her head swam with soup-thick nausea, her back sang with pain against a hard floor, and a puff of dried leaves leapt into the air around her. She saw blue sky through a thick layer of fog hanging over her head and felt moist soil under her fingers. Thick ancient petrichor filled her nose.
She had landed.
But where?
CHAPTER 16
Lucian took another lash of the whip across his shoulders with a resigned grunt, ignoring the burn in his hamstrings, and pushed his way over the lip of the sharp incline. Uneven ground pockmarked with rabbit holes passed underfoot, and a high wind was kicking up, turning to an unforgiving gale. They had been climbing for almost an hour, trudging uphill on legs barely strong enough to hold them on even ground.
He dropped back aways, hoping the rear security would be more lax and he’d have a chance at escaping. But they weren’t fools, and a line of sentinels on horseback trawled at the very tail of the mile-long ant trail of prisoners, waiting to pick up any stragglers who weren’t yet too weak to abandon on the wayside.
He thought for a while that feigning exhaustion would get him left behind. All he had to do was wait until they were out of sight, then run for the treeline, and make his way back south.
But those who keeled over were trampled by their fellow prisoners, many of whom were lost to catatonic stupors of hunger and fatigue. Worse, the guards rode their mounts’ sharp hooves right over the torsos of the fallen, maybe to make an example, maybe for their own amusement.
Probably both.
Hundreds had been left behind on their journey. They were close to their destination—they had no clue where they were going, but a sense of closeness, of finality, pervaded them all. It seemed the guards wanted the rest of them alive.
And now, Lucian could see why. The ridge he had just crested overlooked a slight rolling valley, more of a dimple in the carpet of black rock and withered heather. He was looking along the furrow lengthways. Nestled within was a sprawling huddle of rawhide tents, interspersed with open fires and surrounded by palisade wooden fences.
Amongst it all were those already interned at the prison camp. He had never imagined there could be so many people in all the land. There were endless masses of them, an oozing myriad filling every inch between the tents, clustering in lumbering stoop-backed huddles around the glow of the fires. Filthy, stick-thin, harrow-eyed people marked by red welts from the lash.
A hand closed on his upper arm. “Come on, McKay,” Vandeborn said, tugging him