Page 241 (1/2)

When sleep took hi, not to feed, but to deliver … so else; he knew not what The quarry wandered alone, the quarry fled when it saw him Brothers and sisters at his side, he pursued Relentless, leagues passing effortlessly beneath his paws The shtened creature could not elude theainst the slopes of hills, until finally it faltered, then collapsed They surrounded it

As they closed in, to deliver… as to be delivered … the quarry vanished

Shock, then despair

He and his kin would circle the spot where she’d lain Heads lifted skyward,without surcease Until Toc the Younger blinked awake, in the e to dance with the fading echoes of his howls The creature would tighten her hold, then Whied snout, her breath like sugared milk

The cycles of his life Sleep, then wakefulness punctuated by hallucinations Sht, delusions of being a babe in hisat her breast -- the Matron possessed no breasts, so he knew these to be delusions, yet was sustained by the his bladder and bowels, and she held him out when he did this, so he fouled only hiesture that stripped hinity

Her embrace broke bones The hter she held him He had learned to suffer in silence His bones knitted with preternatural swiftness Sometimes unevenly He knew himself to be malformed -- his chest, his hips, the blades of his shoulders

Then there cahostly face, sheathed in the wrinkled visage of an oldtusks, took forlee fixed on his own

Fa faces, but Toc was unable to take his recognition any further

The visitor would speak to him

They are trapped, my friend All but the T’lan Imass, who fears solitude Why else would he not leave his couleh -- no need to fear them Never was I but played And the wo have vanished Fled Aye, the kin, brother of your eyes fled Tail between legs, hee hee!

And again