Rachel had not been studying long with the charm woman, but she already recognized how difficult it was to mentally translate Edomic expressions into English. The English versions always proved less precise, requiring far more words to convey the same meaning as the Edomic, and inevitably falling a little short.

“Well done,” the charm woman enthused. “You’re a prodigy, Rachel. Some individuals have a natural talent for a particular category of Edomic endeavors, but this undertaking was quite different from calling fire. Making that pronouncement stick was no casual task. The doll should have proven adequate, even without your formal permission, but now I expect the lurker will be thoroughly baffled. With my charms shielding your mind, the lurker ought to follow the decoy with full confidence.”

Rachel fingered her braided necklace of bead and bone. The charm woman had custom made one for her and another for Drake. Rachel also wore a bracelet, a ring, and an anklet, all intended to disrupt efforts to perceive her presence.

“What happens if the lurker gets too close to the doll?” Rachel asked.

“The camouflage is strong,” the charm woman said. “For a time, the illusion should withstand close scrutiny. Eventually the lurker will recognize the deception. No illusion endures forever. But torivors do not perceive the world the same way we do. Based on my studies, I’m not even sure if they have any faculties comparable to human sight, smell, hearing, or taste. Instead they reach out with their minds. Our decoy is specifically designed to confuse that method of perception. The lurker will sense the doll as a seriously injured or partially shielded version of you. With your actual self heavily cloaked by charms, the lurker should have little reason to doubt the authenticity of the proxy. If fortune favors us, by the time it realizes we pulled a trick, we’ll be far away and shielded by charms.”

“What exactly are the torivors?” Rachel asked. “Drake wouldn’t explain.”

“He was trying to keep you safe,” the charm woman said. “Ignorance can offer some protection from their psychic abilities. But after the extended exposure you’ve endured over the past weeks, I expect knowledge will serve you better than ignorance. There has been considerable debate regarding the nature of torivors. The wizard Zokar claimed to have created them, and although most who have investigated the race refute his assertion, none contest that they first showed up as his servants.”

“Then where did they come from?”

The charm woman grinned. “I’ve done my best to understand the torivors. Self-preservation is a potent motivator. I’ve read extensively about them, shared dreams with them, traded information with others, and spent years practicing how to use Edomic to mislead them. Based on all I’ve learned, I suspect Zokar summoned them. They don’t belong in Lyrian any more than you do.”

“You mean they’re Beyonders?”

“That’s my guess.”

“I’ve never seen anything like them in my world.”

“I suspect there is much more to the Beyond than just your world,” the charm woman said. “If I’m right, the torivors come from a much more foreign reality than yours.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know a name for it. But Zokar took great interest in the Beyond. It was a specialty. My best guess is that he somehow lured the torivors to Lyrian from afar and bound them into his service.”

“How many torivors are there?”

The woman shrugged. “No less than twenty. Probably no more than a few hundred. It is difficult to estimate with any certainty. Lurkers are seldom seen abroad anymore, and they tend to show up solo. During the great war between Eldrin and Zokar, torivors occasionally appeared in groups, giving us our only basis for guessing at their numbers.”

Oncoming hoofbeats made the charm woman turn.

“A single horse,” Rachel recognized. “Should be Drake.”

The charm woman nodded. “I still have defenses up that would reveal the approach of an enemy.”

Astride Mandibar, Drake burst into view through a pair of tall shrubs and loped over to Rachel, dismounting smoothly. “The lurker has brought soldiers.”

“How near are they?” the charm woman asked.

“They’re coming from the east and the west, fanned out in wide lines, at least sixty in all; half soldiers, half militia. I watched from the hilltop to the southwest.”

The charm woman frowned. “Lurkers are clever. Once this one lost you, it recognized that you had found a way to conceal yourselves. So it has brought others to converge on the area where you disappeared, to flush you out. My charms are meant to divert casual attention, not intense scrutiny.”

“We have maybe half an hour before they come within view,” Drake said. “If you two go north and I head south, we should avoid discovery.”

“We’re ready to go,” the charm woman said. “This may work to our favor. Just when the lurker is expecting to flush us, you’ll run south with the doll.”

“If it takes the bait, I’ll lead it southwest to the Purga River. After I set the doll adrift, I’ll ride hard to the north. We’ll meet on the highest ridge above Crescent Valley, to the northeast of Trensicourt.”

“That’s the plan,” the charm woman confirmed. “It’s time I uprooted for a change of scenery. I was getting too comfortable here. Don’t forget the doll.” She gestured toward it while mounting a donkey. Rachel climbed onto her mare.

Drake looked at the doll, and froze. He blinked and squinted, glancing from the doll to Rachel and back. “Uncanny resemblance,” he muttered.

“Ha-ha,” Rachel said. “Let’s just hope it confuses the lurker.”

“I’m not jesting,” Drake assured her, crouching over the doll. He held out a tentative hand, passing it through the air above the wooden figure.

“It’s the power of your permission, coupled with my preparations,” the charm woman told Rachel. “The doll is speaking to his mind with more authority than his eyes.”

“He sees me?”

Drake fumbled almost blindly for a moment before laying hands on the doll. He patted it, as he might in the dark, to confirm its size and shape. “Masterful work.”

“The first layer of enchantment directs attention away from the doll,” the charm woman explained. “Under that layer, the decoy registers as Rachel to the mind.”

Drake picked up the doll, shaking his head. “Enough to make me hallucinate,” he agreed. “And that was with the real girl right in front of me.”