"You mean Karoy's going to die?" Danid demanded. "How would you know?"

"Does that happen every time too?" Rynere said, running to catch up.

"Good and the bad, darling," Tass said without looking back.

"How do you know when it happens? Why?"

"Leave the 'why' to someone a bit more long-lived than me."

"But how do you know when it will happen? You said it was earlier this time -how do you know you're not -"

"How do I know I'm not jumping the gun?" Tass stopped suddenly and turned around. "The guard only gets water once during the whole journey. The rest of the time it's me. And it's the one time the guard goes to get the water that he dies."

"How does he die? Why didn't you tell -"

Tass was off and running again.

Rynere ignored her headache and ran after him. Danid lost no time joining her.

They were at a stream a minute later. Rynere didn't see anything particularly unusual about it on first glance. But Tass looked at it once and headed upstream, staying just within the edge of the woods.

Rynere looked again at the stream. A thin trickle of red was running down the other side. Her eyes followed it, and then stopped.

Karoy was lying at the bottom of the running water. Two arrows protruded from the water -one in his chest, one in his neck.

Tass lost no time climbing into the water, lifting Karoy, and getting back to dry land, where he immediately took cover in the trees.

Danid and Rynere glanced at each other.

"What -" Rynere began.

Danid's eyes suddenly grew wide and he shoved her to the ground. Face first.

Rynere pushed herself to her knees and wiped the dirt off her face with the back of her hand, turning as she did so.

"What were you thi -Danid!"