Hours pass, as preparations are made and business is concluded.

Part way through the morning, a boy turns up carrying a tubular leather case, and a bundle of papers.  Morgan's map, and the notes used by Ren Mayhew in its creation.

People come, and go, all morning, and Donovan isn't sure that all of them use the door.  Still, he is kept busy preparing food and drinks for them.  It is a matter of pride with him, as he tells anybody who will listen, that nobody leaves the Blue Rose hungry.

At the appropriate time, the Rokt leads the way down to the harbour, and to one particular vessel...

The Seahorse she's called.  A two masted sloop, in reasonable condition (though parts of her have clearly been freshly repaired).  She is also too small to carry all of the panthers.

Morgan soon realises that his road map may see some use, after all.

The troops at the city gate, most of whom had not been on duty the afternoon before, are somewhat surprised when a horde of panthers, each of extraordinary size, approaches their watchpost, from inside the city.  Their shock at this sight is further compounded when they note that the panthers have saddles, and that one is being ridden.

They are somewhat relieved when neither beasts nor rider show any sign of causing trouble, and, instead, rush straight through the gate, and up the slope towards the mountains.

Morgan, meanwhile, urges the panthers on, and through the gap ibto the pass.  A short while later, he sees familiar figures on the road ahead, but the way forks, and his path leads him to the left, and down the steep valley wall, while Trista and her companions continue along the clifftop, high above him.

Eventually Morgan's road plunges into forest, and he loses sight of the upper road.  By the time he emerges from the dense forest, the road runs out onto an embankment across a wide, marshy lowland, and the air is filled with the reek of swamp gas.

He passes a village, built on tall stilts on the wetland.  The villagers stop to watch the peculiar cavalcade of beasts as they pass by on the road.

Morgan rides on, for hours, and the land starts to rise a little.  Eventually he finds himself entering a region of lightly-wooded hills.  Rounding a bend in the road, he sees a pair of horses ahead, and a woman crouched over something by the side of the road.  As Morgan approaches, she stands up, waving her arms, and calls out to him, "Please stop!  My uncle is injured!  Help!"

liding to the ground,Later Morgan would have to wonder at the phrase of two minds. He had thought he understood it before he left home, but these days, he has sometimes been having trouble confining it to less than a dozen.

In this case, instinct and learned caution play their tug of war across his face. She needs help weighed against a cynical assessment of traps. A protest that they aren't using the broken path set against the knowledge that there is nothing limiting the darker side of human ... well, sentient nature to those paths.

The twisting expressions resolve into a grimace, as he leaps from the edge of decision. There'll probably be a nice assortment of blades at the bottom to cushion my fall With that last bitter thought, he shrugs to himself, knowing he can no more bypass her than he could have swum to Amber.

Morgan twists to the ground as Leareth passes, the panthers take station a quarter mile around the scene, leaving a pair walking by him to get a closer look.

"Help us, please, I beg you.", the woman calls out, and closer, Morgan sees that she is little more than a girl.

The object she was crouching over turns out to be a man, perhaps in his fifties.  A man who appears to be bleeding from an unpleasant head wound.

"A serpent startled the horses, and Bors, my uncle, was thrown.  I think he hit his head on a stone, in the grass, there, by the road.  At least there is a little blood on the stone.  Help him."

She looks to be on the verge of tears, as she continues, "He's alive, still.  Breathing, at least, and I can feel his heartbeat... but I can't wake him.  Are you a physician?  Or a chirurgeon?  Or do you know anything of the their arts?"

At last, she can no longer hold back her tears.