n. The rest seemed too weak to last much longer. It
probably didn't make much difference what he did now or who had him;
time was running out for this world.

The light was dimmer by the time they reached the great capital city--or
what was left of it. They had left the sun pyre far to the south. The
air was growing cold already.

The roc flew low over the city. The few people on the streets looked up
and made threatening gestures, but there was no flight of arrows from
the ground. Probably the men below had lost even the strength to hate.
It was hard to see, since there was no electric lighting system now. But
it seemed to Hanson that only the oldest and ugliest buildings were
still standing. Honest stone and metal could survive, but the work of
magic was no longer safe.

One of the remaining buildings seemed to be a hospital, and the empty
space in front of it was crammed with people. Most of them seemed to be
dead or unconscious. Squat mandrakes were carrying off bodies toward a
great fire that was burning in another square. Plague and pestilence had
apparently gotten out of hand.

They flew on, beyond the city toward the construction camp that had been
Hanson's headquarters. The roc was beginning to drop into a long landing
glide, and details below were easier to see. Along the beach beyond the
city, a crowd had collected. They had a fire going and were preparing to
cook one of the mermaids. A fight was already going on over the prey.
Food must have been exhausted days before.

The camp was a mess when they reached it. One section had been ripped
down by the lash of wind from a huge piece of the sky, which now lay
among the ruins with a few stars glowing inside it. There was a
brighter glow beyond. Apparently one blob of material from the sun had
been tossed all the way here and had landed against a huge rock to
spatter into fragments. The heat from those fragments cut through the
chill in the air, and the glow furnished light for most of the camp.

The tents had been burned, but there was a new building where the main
tent had been. This was obviously a hasty construction job, thrown
together of rocks and tree trunks, without the use of magic. It was more
of an enormous lean-to than a true building, but it was the best
protection now available. Hanson could see Sather Karf and Sersa Garm
waiting outside, together with less than a hundred other warlocks.

The mandrakes prodded Hanson down from the roc and tow