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"Ivar! Ai, God, Ivar!" Baldwin ran over, having abandoned the horses at the trough "What happened?"

"Let’s go," he said in a choked voice, staggering up Each step ain, and by the time he reached the horses he had retched a dozenhis body up and over, as cluet into the saddle while Baldwin fussed "Get Now Go"

He couldn’t speak for forever Baldwin stewed and fretted and hison the road, until Ivar found his voice

"Dead thing," he said "We just go on Dibenvanger Cloister is close along this way I recall co past here They’ll have news"

When the cloister’s orchards appeared, he knew at once that they would find nothing different here Death marched before and behind them

"It’s those creatures, the ones with animal faces," said Baldwin in a low voice "They’ve come before us They’re the Lost Ones, only they’ve coe"

"We’re doomed," muttered Ivar, and was ashamed to hear himself speak the words

"For shame! Ivar! Do you not believe in the phoenix?"

"Of course," said Ivar, and he added, "I have to"

"Don’t despair," said Baldwin affectionately, and his s and so beautiful that Ivar found his own dark mood cracked by a sliver of hope

The cloister had housed a score of monks, novices, and lay brothers within a compound made of a tiny church, a miniature cloister with a separate novice’s house, a workshop, a byre, and a cunningly designed ardens had been turned over and planted Theon toward evening, they loosed the horses into the byre, brushed therain While there was still light, Ivar sent Baldwin to find what he could froh the cloister The slap of his feet made the only sound The wind had died Not even the earth see with twenty-six fresh graves Where had the others gone? He checked in every cell, but he found no bodies

"Must we sleep here?" Baldwin asked him when they met at the byre "There must be better beds in the cloister"