Tareth was praying again.

It was the only word Adevan could think of for the strange, unintelligible whispering that slithered off the walls of the tunnels as they made their way through the darkness under the mountains. It was in the mage tongue, of course, the same one Tareth had spoken that first day Adevan had awoken in the tunnels.

They turned here at times then kept straight at others and sometimes the paths curved and meandered on their own. Adevan had long since finished his mortal rations, and lost his sense of time and direction—he only knew he was moving forward, one step at a time. He had thus far avoided asking questions with answers he wasn’t sure he wanted—both Tareth and Nysa had a way of speaking in riddles—but the endless murmurs were getting hard to ignore. Finally, driven by his growing unease and gnawing hunger, he groaned.

“What are you saying?”

The whispering didn’t stop. Instead, Nysa answered. “He is speaking us through the underpaths, back to the sun.”

Adevan sighed, regretting that he had asked. “That makes no sense.”

“And what would? For him to have the underpaths memorized?” The old half-blood scoffed at his back. “These tunnels go on for hundreds of miles and layer deep into the earth. It would be far stranger if he knew every one of them.”

Fair enough. “Whoever made these must have known every one of them.”

“I doubt it,” Tareth said confidently. Adevan still hadn’t gotten used to how young he sounded. “Their builders added to them many times, over thousands of years.”

“Who built them?” At least, when answering questions, the mage wasn’t whispering to himself. “Elves, probably.”

“Mortals,” Tareth answered. There was no hesitation or trace of jest in his voice.

Adevan breathed out a laugh. It echoed. “Mortals couldn’t build this.”

“They did. Long ago, when dreams held greater sway,” the boyish-looking mage replied. “When the world was more dangerous.”

In spite of himself, a chill brushed Adevan’s skin. Tareth’s words reminded him of Iven’s dire warning: Be careful, Adevan. The world is becoming dangerous again.

“I know a boy with dreams. They call him a ‘Drifter,’” Adevan admitted, his words bouncing around them. “I followed his dreams over the mountains to find that mage, and still she was taken. So, so much for that.”

Nysa clicked her tongue. “But she was there, wasn’t she?”

She was. Adevan remembered watching Evershade fly away, with the helpless mage draped over his raven’s back. It still stung. And I lost her.

That memory brought forward an even more unwelcome reminder. He had now been away from Sisela for an unknown stretch of time, more than a week certainly, and far exceeding any other length of separation since he had first reached Blackmoor, many years ago. There was a pit in his stomach, a tension that stayed with him, whether waking or sleeping. He feared she would be dead by the time he returned. She might already be gone. His hair brushed a lower part of the tunnel and he dipped his head.

“What happens to the Bladmuir and your lady if you return without a mage?”

That was only too clear. “There are some, perhaps many, in Blackmoor who would rejoin Arras at any cost.”

“Ah,” Tareth mused.

“A mage would give Sisela power, buy her time against her enemies,” Adevan sighed. “And it would offer protection. Blackmoor—or the Bladmuir—is safe but we don’t know why, or how, and that could change at any time.”

“No.”

Adevan waited. “No?”

Up ahead, Tareth shook his head. “The Bladmuir’s shield was laid down by a mage that never took the Gaunt. Mages who have taken the Gaunt, like those of the Counsel, cannot undo it,” he explained over his shoulder. “It will stand to the world’s end.”

Adevan had not expected to find good news, certainly not in some forgotten tunnels beneath Arras. And he had not received truly good news in many years. He was half afraid to receive it, much less believe it. He swallowed.

“I would have thought the Gaunt came after your time.”

Tareth let out a bitter sound. “The Gaunt is the greatest plague ever to be perpetrated on my people, greater even than the abuses of the elves.”

“The Gaunt,” Adevan repeated. He knew little about it. “How does it work?”

“The mechanics are simple,” he said. “Natural mages draw power from sunlight and, if you separate us from it for too long, we become desperate—hungry. Willing to consume other living things, if needed.”

Adevan had seen it more than once. Men and women and children turned to ashes.

“The first time, the mage’s own nature fights it. But it becomes easier and easier,” Tareth murmured. “Until the old way is too great a burden and stolen light is your only taste.”

Adevan fell silent, disturbed. Tareth resumed his soft whispering and was soon joined by the welcome music of running water. It grew steadily louder and the air began to change, growing fresher and lighter. The pinprick of fire that Tareth sent before them suddenly revealed a broader section of the tunnel, illuminating an underground stream that cut through the bedrock and brought the scent of sunlight with it. Tareth let the single point of light swell and brighten. There were two narrow openings on the other side of the stream and another, broader path along its bank that followed the water upstream as far as one could see. The mage stopped at the near bank and knelt, holding his hand above the rushing water. He went on whispering.

The walls of the chamber—for it had clearly been made—were blanketed in intricate and beautiful carvings of figures, patterns, and landscapes. The largest and most prominent of the carvings was that of a sun, which had been placed beside a very clear image of a mortal skull. You would only see it if you were heading upstream. A warning.

“Ey,” Adevan offered, over the rush of the water. “I am no mage, but I think that means the surface is this way.”

“It does,” Tareth said, filling his waterskin. Nysa was crouched beside him, doing the same. “But that is south, my friend. I believe the Bladmuir and your lady Ezouari are to the north.”

South. Adevan remembered it as if it were a dream. The desert Reaches that gave way to endless, grassy plains. Red mountains in the distance. Salty gusts from off the ocean. And the Mother whose name he had never spoken aloud, not even to Sisela. He could still just see her frightened eyes, curtained by her plain, brown hair. He still remembered how she had smelled of fruit and sun.

“You have been there.”

Adevan blinked at the mage’s words, and the rush of the river-room returned. Both Tareth and Nysa were watching him. He cleared his throat to speak. It had stopped up.

“I was born there,” he explained, taking to the riverbank. The water was deliciously fresh, almost sweet. He uncorked his waterskin and began to fill it. “It’s where I came from anyway.”

“Then there are others?”

“Other halfbloods, you mean? Of course.” Adevan drank then filled his skin again, wiping his mouth. “The halfbloods beyond the Reaches have been a fly on the Counsel’s meat since—well, since forever. By our standards, anyway.”

Nysa’s long, wrinkled face twisted into a confused frown. “If there are halfbloods living free, why do you not join them?” Free was certainly one way to put it. “Why keep to the north, where the Counsel holds more sway?”

“I’m a Dragar.”

Nysa took a swig from her waterskin. “So?”

Of course, they wouldn’t know a thing about it. His better self reminded him that they couldn’t know. They had been on the other side of the western mountains for who knew how long. They had missed everything that mattered, or so it seemed.

“Because of the Evershade-Dragar bloodbond, those around me are more likely to be hunted and found,” he said simply, corking his waterskin and slinging it around to his back. “To protect themselves, the halfbloods of the south purged their ranks of Dragar blood. My mother fled north to save me. I’m not welcome south of the Reaches.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Is she back in Bladmuir, then?” Nysa asked. “Your mother.”

He recalled red flames between the trees and the peace-shattering sounds of war—though he didn’t know it at the time. The warmth of his mother’s arms. And of someone closing in behind them. Quickly.

“No,” he said, pushing past the memory. He turned to Tareth, eager to conclude this conversation. “Now, which way, mage?”

Tareth stared at him but his words were directed at Nysa when he next spoke. “O var’essha de’fa an acor vec aiel’e. O var’essha de’la l’Bladmuir.”

Nysa shook her head, firmly. “We don’t have time—she could be taking the Gaunt as we speak!”

“Se o ger’an ma’sshe tar? O ger’an ma’sshe tar,” Tareth replied. “L’vea fer un al’thira apae’ara. Ella ge forr—o l’ae vero.”

The old woman seemingly couldn’t believe it. “You are putting a good deal of trust in her strength, Tareth.”

He did not relent, holding his own with a force belied by his apparent youth. After a tense moment, the old halfblood raised her hands, as if washing herself of something. She shook her head with a quiet exclamation of disappointment. Of course, Adevan had no understanding of the mage tongue, but he knew enough to tell they disagreed strongly on whatever Tareth was about to suggest. The mage turned towards Adevan.

“What if I accompanied you to Blackmoor?”

Adevan allowed his surprise to show. “What.”

“You would return with a mage. Give Sisela the power she needs.”

That was a shockingly good idea. Adevan hadn’t thought of it himself probably because he doubted whether Tareth would agree. But there was always a catch. And he suspected the mage’s true aim.

“I suppose you want me to, what, track Evershade?”

“If Obric can find you, you can find him. That skill will be useful in our effort to recover Vara,” Tareth said. “I had hoped that her capture alone would persuade you to join us, but your personal interests have proven too formidable.”

Adevan ignored the pointed jab. “I thought you knew where she was—Dabdagan, wasn’t it?”

Nysa’s hands were balled into fists. Tareth hesitated.

“She is in some kind of dungeon or hole beneath the keep at Orrendale.”

At once, Adevan recalled the gold and green standard. Orrendale was one of the wealthiest houses in Arras, with rich farmlands that just bordered Blackmoor’s southern edge. Lord Trebor and his lady were of the kinder ruling sort, with a developed skill for looking the other way on trading between Blackmoor and their people. They were rich and powerful, with a harmless young Counsel mage in their court—he couldn’t remember her name—and scores of freebloods working their land. It was an odd place for someone like Revon to stop. Not ideal for a Counsel mage.

Obelond would have been better. That house was grasping and merciless. Lady Athaba would have been only too happy to have him.

“If I’m right, and Evershade’s raven is as injured as I believe she is, it will be days before she can take flight again,” Tareth continued. “Orrendale’s defenses are nothing to Dabdagan’s, and their land is spotted by many hidden doors to the underpaths.”

“If memory serves,” Nysa muttered. “And if they haven’t been blocked.”

“The word of a dead man, elderblood or not, means little,” Adevan insisted, arms crossed as he prepared for an objection. “We go to Blackmoor first, of course.”

“Of course,” the mage agreed, the judgment clear in his voice. His eyes glimmered with a warning. “But know that you will not live long, if you betray me, Dragar. Unlike Evershade, I can enter Blackmoor.”

Nysa’s gaze was narrowed at Adevan. He glowered back. “Understood.”

“This way, then.”

A heavy mist cloaked either side of Farfal’s Gap, hovering above the quiet waters of the winding inlets. The going was slow and cautious, every eye on board searching for signs of rocks in the endless, billowing fog. The merchant sailors had grown quieter and quieter the further north they had gone and were even quieter now, as they took the brackish water inland. With the mist curling and twisting around them in the diffused early morning light, Althioc and Ayari relied entirely on their keen ears, listening for the splashing of rocks and jetties, and anything else that might be lurking out of sight. The mage’s footsteps, coming up from behind, interrupted the rhythmic quiet.

“The men will go no further inland.”

Althioc was not surprised. He had expected it would come to this. “I believe mortals call it ‘losing their nerve.’”

Isydenia sighed. “As that may be, they are taking us to shore. Now.”

Again, none of this surprised Althioc. The wind had not favored them and the men had been reluctant from the beginning of their northward course. In all honesty, he had been ready to disembark since they crossed the strait—their fear irked and disgusted him.

“Our overland journey has still been shortened,” he mused. “And, if you spoke truthfully about the fell beasts, there is no risk of encountering anyone loyal to the Usurper on our path. I would say we have done well.”

Smelling a hint of anger, he looked down at her. Her gaze was fixed on the sea, but her indignation was directed towards him. His father’s words echoed in his head like a mortal prayer bell: Do what you must. Just remember that mages cannot be trusted.

“Why would I lie about fell beasts, Dragars-son?”

Althioc turned his attention back towards the shrouded water. “To get us here.”

“And when you discovered the lie? What would I do then?”

“I did not claim it would make sense,” he murmured. “Just as your uncle’s refusal to defend my father’s crown did not make sense twenty years ago.”

Her expression darkened further but, before she could make some kind of answer, the captain approached. The bow-legged man looked between them, chewing something. His breath was unbearable, even from a distance.

“Take the landing boat,” he ordered. “You go to shore now.”

Isydenia smiled tightly, nodding. “Thank you, Don’aegyn. I won’t forget this.”

Althioc shook his head. Thank you—for what?

The aging captain grumbled unintelligibly and lurched away. Accompanied by two nervous sailors, the siblings and mage took the small boat. The men were quick to return to their vessel, leaving their passengers in the shallows and rowing back at double pace. As Althioc’s feet sank, a strange sense of finality overcame him. He knelt and pressed his hand into the coarse, wet sand, his fingers slowly curling into a fist around it. Ayari stood beside him, silent. He glanced up at her, knowing that her eyes would be glistening. They were.

Behind them, Isydenia cleared her throat, as if she had waited a moment to speak.

Althioc stood. “What.”

“We’re not far from the nearest village,” the mage said. “Or what’s left of it.”

“We know where we are,” Althioc interrupted, looking over his shoulder. The merchant ship had dropped sail and was already slipping back into the fog. He struck his hand against his leg to loose the sand. “Now, you can ride with my sister or me.”

Isydenia blinked. She looked increasingly disheveled. “Ride—you mean, on your back?”

“Yes. We cannot afford to go at your pace,” he went on. “Choose.”

The mage paled then reddened. Ayari took one knee. “I’m better company.”

Isydenia lifted a hand. “There is no need for your pace just yet—we should wait for sunset then begin the crossing. There is a small cave system nearby.”

Althioc frowned at the suggestion. “No. We go now.”

“No one takes the northern road during the day,” Isydenia insisted. “The best hope of getting through is by going unnoticed.”

Althioc’s eyes narrowed, his distrust ever present. He wasn’t going to wait at this mage’s bidding. Before he could speak and rebuff her again, her expression of bewilderment cleared, as though she had realized something.

“Very well,” she said, moving towards Ayari. “You will be the death of me.”

When they crested the sea cliffs, the wind that had given the Shudderlands their name hit them at full force. It swept away the fog and they found themselves looking at the vast and open expanse of the northern moorlands. The remains of a village lay on their left, silent and scentless, long since abandoned. The northern road stretched out before them, flanked on either side by barren wastelands, winding between the rolling, rocky hills. Dead, dried remains of trees littered the landscape like the tumbleweeds of the southern reaches. Brother and sister stared in disbelief. The Shudderlands had always been cold and unforgiving, but it was as if nothing ever had or ever could grow here. It was far worse than what they had ever imagined.

“The trees,” Ayari whispered. Althioc could see fifty miles in every direction. They were entirely exposed. “How can they have gone so quickly?”

There was nothing for it and no time to waste, so they fell into a steady but brisk run, always watching for any sign of life on either side. At noon, they stopped to catch their breath. Up ahead, dead west of them, was the dark line of trees that made up Bladmuir’s easternmost border. Isydenia slid off of Ayari’s back, her joints popping audibly as she stretched her legs and arms.

“I suppose I would travel whenever I liked, too,” Isydenia muttered to herself. “If I could move that fast.”

The wind screamed endlessly across the bleak landscape. Althioc looked back the way they had come, over his shoulder. Seeing nothing and no one, he faced west again, only to find Isydenia watching him. She had a knowing look.

“How long has it been like this?” Ayari asked, gesturing at the land.

“The Deladaris pulled back to Arysdur not long after your exile,” Isydenia explained. “Without their protection, most mortals do not dare live this far north. And without mortals, as you know, nothing really grows.”

“Of course,” Ayari finished. “But then how do your people live in Bladmuir?”

When the mage didn’t answer, Althioc looked at her sharply. Isydenia was facing south now, watching the outline of the nearest hillock. The head and shoulders of a lone person appeared—then another and another. As the lank figures crested the hill, it became clear that they were no mortals.

They were adevani. That meant Ayari and he were dead.

Isydenia hissed and waved frantically, drawing Althioc’s attention. She covered her eyes with one hand, gesturing at the adevani hunting party. She did it again, forcefully. She was trying to tell them something.

They cannot see us. Ayari copied her motions. With a silent sigh of relief, Isydenia lifted one finger to her mouth then to her ear, pointing back at the arrivals. Understood: They could be heard but not seen.

Ayari pointed at her nose. Isydenia nodded and shrugged, as if to say she could only do so much. Of course the hunters could smell them—that’s how they had found them. Now, knowing that Isydenia’s magic was awake, Althioc could identify its scent. With every muscle tensed and ready for one final fight, he looked back towards the hillock. The growing group of adevani were searching the landscape, their keen gazes roving but never landing on the illicit band of travelers. In any other situation, they would have already seen them and closed in. Instead, they were confused.

They were close enough now that he could smell them, and he knew every one.

Olen. Uroz. Dusan. He heard Ayari’s breathing heavy beside him and gestured for her to calm down. The Usurper’s firstborn and oldest daughter, Ithana, stepped forward in the ranks. Her unseeing, golden eyes seemed to sear the air before them. Her long, flaxen hair was drawn back tightly into the complex pattern that befitted a member of the royal family, the same pattern Ayari had once worn but could no longer, by adevani law. If not for her father’s betrayal, Ithana would have been Allar’s bride and queen of Karahas one day. But that would never be.

Now at the base of the hill they had crested, Ithana peered past the Dragars and their mage guide, then around them, then through them. But her gaze never lingered or found them. They truly were invisible to her. She breathed deeply, angling her head over her shoulder. Dusan, the fastest adevani alive and the Usurper’s right hand, stepped forward as though he had been summoned.

“Dje’nam da zu ov’the,” she said in the adevani tongue. “Moghe i’namir izhadi.”

I know they are here. I smell them.

Ayari flinched. She and Ithana had been inseparable all their lives. Now, Ithana was hunting her. Althioc sensed his sister’s grief, refreshed, at everything they had lost. Dusan sniffed the air.

“Ta’jo it’tha,” he murmured. “A’le me meresem na’mjagen. Sa vjasa.”

So do I. But I also smell magic. Fresh.

No one spoke for a moment. The wind screamed. Another adevani stepped forward, Olen Odreshoar, the young lord of one of the larger adevani houses. Althioc’s heart pounded and the rage began to build, blurring his vision. Now, it was Ayari’s turn to look at him sharply, crinkling her nose in a silent warning. If she could smell his anger, so too could their enemies. Althioc breathed deeply and stilled himself.

“We are too few to be this far north,” Olen said in the common tongue. He glanced northward, towards the Chaor mountains. “We should go.”

“You can smell them, too,” Ithana retorted. “They are here. Somewhere.”

“I do not fear the fellbeasts of Chaor.” Dusan scowled at Olen. “If the Dragars have broken the bloodoath, they must be taken back to Dabdagan to stand trial.”

“I do not deny that. But what we smell and what we see are not as one. If you are not worried about fellbeasts, at least consider—this could be magework,” Olen reasoned, growing impatient. “Something from Bladmuir to draw us in, so that we break the peace.”

Ithana scoffed. “Peace.”

“Yes,” Olen said, more loudly and with a tinge of judgment. “The peace your father promised us when we gave him the crown.”

Her anger was evident in her silence and the unyielding way she held her head. But she did not counter him. Olen bowed at her back and turned southward again, the hunters he had brought following him closely. Other lords and their fighters peeled away behind them, disappearing over the hill where Isydenia had first seen them, until only Dusan and Ithana remained. He watched her. She still faced northward.

“Bu’tha.” Fools. A strong word—the strongest. Then, with finality: “Dragar’an dje vreg’sithe myr. Uveg su h’tjel da ga raz’bizh.”

Dragar has broken the peace. They were always going to break it.

The wind had gone still, a trough between gusts, but it whipped up once more.

“On’che se pidro’sti sa mjaga, baz’kazho sam je’pozor.”

They will join the witches, just as I have been warning.

“Od’laz.” Come, Dusan replied, glancing once more at the apparently empty land ahead of them. “Dja’le zu ov’the, uzh’korr gjemo sath’nazhi. A’tov oda be’emo je’ruc si pov’radarr.”

If they are here, we will know it soon enough. Your father will have my hands if you are hurt.

Ithana’s proud posture gentled. Seeing her resignation, Dusan turned and began to leave. She took one last look towards Althioc, Ayari, and Isydenia, her certainty etched into her face. She knew they were there. She just couldn’t prove it.

“Pa’se tre bazho sa mjaga,” she hissed. “Sa mjaga.”

So you have thrown in with the witches. The witches.

Ithana’s golden eyes looked through them once more, eyes that Althioc had seen sparkle with happiness many times—now cold. She turned and sprinted away, disappearing over the hill with Dusan and all the rest. The small band of travelers remained utterly still. It was some time before Isydenia let out a deep sigh of relief and looked between them, pale and tense. But Althioc almost didn’t care that they had gone undetected. Once he knew Ithana and Dusan were too far to hear, the truth ripped from his throat, in their shared tongue:

“Dje’si vreg’sithe se’va gurvna d’zaqlethe!” You have broken every bloodoath!

He felt Ayari watching him. “Al.”

“Norr’vjorn a koza.” Faithless and accursed. Then, he turned on Isydenia: “I have never seen a mage do that—shield people totally from sight.”

He could not keep the accusation out of his voice. Isydenia blinked slowly, like a bored cat, and turned westward, walking away from him.

“You are most welcome, prince.”

“You should have told us,” he gritted out.

Ayari came up beside him swiftly, speaking the adevani tongue low and quickly.

“Do not estrange her, brother. Thanks to her quick thinking, we live and our plans live with us.”

It was true, of course. But how he hated it. Ayari scoffed.

“Al, you must come to terms with your distrust of mages,” she hissed. “Your entire plan rests on us making an alliance with them.”

“Our father says—”

“I know what our father says,” she bit out, uncharacteristically sharp. “And did he not lose us everything? Falsely befriending the mages was all it took for the Usurper to take the throne. His betrayal of them gives us a chance to do what he should have done.”

Althioc stopped. Something in her tone gave him pause. This was not the Ayari he had spoken to on the bluffs of Seraq, the Ayari who had been enraged by the prospect of splitting their father’s kingdom to satisfy an ally. He smelled a nervousness, a hesitation, yet resolve also. She was about to confess something.

“What he should have done.”

He remembered their discussion on the cliffs of Seraq. He realized now that she had never actually agreed with his plan to trick the mages, she had only guessed it and agreed to come. He realized now that her reaction had been too extreme, performative, intentional. Ayari always had a different end in mind—she had been that way ever since they were children and he was a fool to think this would be different. Her gift for political plots never ceased to amaze and annoy him. Althioc let out a bitter laugh, stopping in his tracks, now seeing the obvious.

“You always meant to give it to them.”

“A mage king for a mage kingdom,” she said with resignation. “Would secure our family’s rule for ten thousand years.”

“I would die first.” Althioc couldn’t control his disgust. “Pjer’var.”

Fraud. His sister blinked, taken aback. She quickly composed herself.

“Well,” she sighed. “We must reach Bladmuir either way.”

The remainder of their overland journey was made calmer by the realization that they could not be seen, but they could still be sniffed out, so they maintained their brisk pace. The deep green line of trees stretched and swelled until it took up the entire western horizon, the jagged western mountains pale and shrouded in the far distance. The northern road led straight to the dense forest, then disappeared among its shadows. As the forest folded in around them like a cloak, the wind calmed and the air suddenly smelled of moss and earth and water. Scents Althioc had almost forgotten.

He breathed deep again. This time, he smelled something else. Something he had never smelled before. He and Ayari shared an apprehensive look, having identified it at almost the same time. The mage stopped, holding up a hand.

“Someone’s coming,” she said. “There.”

She was right. Althioc’s skin tingled. He had not heard their approach.

On their overland journey, Isydenia had cleverly eased her magic over the Dragar siblings, so that Althioc had not smelled it distinctly or suddenly. But now, all at once, the intoxicating scent of powerful magic billowed into the air like a heady perfume, unseen but unmistakable. The ground warmed. The air around them shivered with a strange heat, the approaching figure becoming wavy as in a desert at high noon. Nearby moss wilted then blackened and smoldered. The air burned as though it had come from the bellows of a swordsmith. The breeze died. The earth hummed. Isydenia faced the approaching stranger.

“Who is it?” Her demand reached further than it should, as though amplified, yet somehow also closer to one’s ear. “Don’t come any closer.”

The figure, slender and plain, stopped. Somehow it was darker than the rest of the forest, as though bringing a shadow with it. Though the stranger was not far, Althioc couldn’t quite make out the face. It was shrouded.

“What, don’t you know me?”

Isydenia started at the youthful voice. Her surprise weakened the magic that surrounded them. The air cooled at once. She lowered her hands.

“Welcome home,” the newcomer offered, resuming his approach. He was now close enough that even the strange shadow around him could not quite hide his face. He was little more than a boy, with white-blond hair and a long, bony face. Not unlike Isydenia’s. They shared a similar scent but his was, somehow, corrupted. Turned.

“Oh my goodness,” Isydenia said, clearly surprised. She shook her head, letting out a laughing breath. “I—I did not recognize you.”

The young man chuckled but there was no joy in the sound, even as he and Isydenia embraced tightly and with all the signs of a true reunion. But his eyes, though slate grey like hers, had no depth or light to them. The longer Althioc looked, the more like a corpse’s eyes they appeared. There was something bitter about the air around him. Something grimy. Althioc felt Ayari’s discomfort matching his own. There was something off about this mage.

“This is my brother,” she offered. “Obric Nossidar.”

“A few months is enough to change a person of my age, I suppose,” the young man offered, turning his attention towards Althioc. He bowed, deeply. As he did, other figures began to emerge from the shadows up ahead, as he had. “Welcome to Bladmuir.”

Isydenia looked past him at the rest of the group, who had also approached without them quite realizing it. The sickly scent thickened. When Althioc glanced over at Isydenia again, her smile had dimmed and something in her face had shifted. It was fleeting and she hid it well, but he saw it. Doubt.

“Come,” Obric offered, firmly. “Our uncle is waiting.”

[Updated: April 11, 2026]

Kol’s message that one of the most powerful and dreaded mages of the present age, Revon Evershade, had left seclusion and was somehow in Orrendale, while she and Trebor were a hundred miles away, had nearly undone Idabel. In terms of political importance, the twins were safe enough, but her two younger children and her little sister—visiting for the summer—were back home. Thankfully, Sani had had all three spirited away to a nearby family lodge upon the mage’s arrival, but her family was fractured, and becoming more so every day. She felt it.

“I know,” her husband mused. “Nor can I. It’s increasingly important that we press our interests here, at the center of things.”

A pile of fine cloth had been delivered earlier that day, for the Festival of Light—an event which would also serve as Edrianne’s official introduction to Dabdagan, the Counsel, and her peers. Idabel had had it ordered before their arrival.

It seems an age ago.

She ran her fingers over the different textures, barely recognizing the brilliant colors, her mind uncharacteristically lacking in creativity. On any other day, in any other place, she would have already designed an enviable gown for her daughter. A dress fit for the girl’s delicate beauty. Today, it seemed that Edrianne would be fortunate to have a gown at all.

Enough. Idabel let the cloth fall and sat down into a chair across from Trebor. She sank, leaning her head back, exhausted for no good reason. He looked surprised.

“Done?”

“For now,” she sighed. “And you? How were the day’s meetings been? I hadn’t asked.”

He nodded. “Good—in business terms. Old contracts renewed, and all that. But everyone is vying for position, given the possiblity of a mortal throne,” he admitted thoughtfully.

“What?”

“I worry.”

She leaned her chin her hand. “Why?”

“The details on the issue are light, no matter who I ask. It could very well be a distraction.”

Idabel hummed. “That had occurred to me.”

“What better way to quell our displeasure at the unclaiming of so many houses, but to give us a chance at ruling over the rest,” he said with disgust. “And yet here we all are. Every one of us.”

Downstairs, the front door slammed open. Heavy, flopping footsteps took the stairs two at a time. Someone knocked, was granted entrance, and Edric pushed his way into the room. Whereas Edrianne had not minded coming to the capital and now found herself trapped there, Edric had disdained the trip and now found himself quite entertained. Some kind of match or sport was always happening on their side of the city, and getting from one inlet or peninsula to another was rather simple with the dozens of regular water ferries. Once he had happily failed the dreaded testing for dreams, the boy had figured out how to get from place to place, and spent his days keeping their guards very busy.

His nose was burnt, his hat was gone, and he stank of sweat and city grime. Trebor chuckled at his son, looking him up and down with reasonable pride. Edric was tall and strong, and confident to a fault. With the proper education, he would make a compelling Lord of Orrendale.

“Well, what is it now?”

“There is a halfblood fight happening in the pits tonight,” the boy panted. “But a guardian must attend with us. And Kol isn’t on our list.”

Kol appeared in the doorway then. The halfblood had always had a scarce smile, but Edric never failed to bring it out of him. He leaned against the jam.

“I should be heading back north—”

“Oh no!” Edric cried. “Not so soon.”

“—to check on things,” he finished. “Sani’s been on her own for a few days now. I’m sure my return would be appreciated.”

At Kol’s knowing look, Trebor stood, taking the halfblood’s hand. “Yes, you’re quite right. Thank you, Kol.”

Kol bowed in Idabel’s direction then turned to Edric: “Be careful in the streets and be home soon, young lord.”

Then he was gone. He would be halfway to Orrendale in no time at all. In spite of everything, the thought gave Idabel a measure of relief. Edric huffed.

“Will you come, father?” The boy was singular. “They’re already started.”

“Yes. Go downstairs and wait for me.”

Edric glanced around the room. “Where’s Edrianne?”

“Staying with my aunt,” Idabel said. “Until tomorrow.”

“Still mad then.”

Idabel shushed him and waved him out but didn’t deny it. Her normally gentle daughter had been quiet and brooding ever since she’d learned that Dabdagan was to be her home for the next few years, and had opted to spend a few nights away from the family. Several invitations for evening events had come in, and Edrianne had rejected them all. It was her way, when she was angry.

As Edric’s footsteps receded, Trebor began to ready himself for an appearance at the pits, a series of arenas made to exhibit halfbloods in the Counsel’s service. Idabel had never been keen on watching the fights, as too many ended in horrible bloodshed, but she knew better than to argue on whether Edric should attend.

“Now that Kol is on his way back, I can give you the rest of his news.”

Idabel frowned a little, not sure what to expect. “What—what news?”

Trebor unbuttoned the day’s linen shirt and threw it into their shared washing basket. He was a fine, sturdy man. She watched him in the mirror that hung above their shared vanity and clothing drawers.

“Revon Evershade wasn’t alone when he arrived in Orrendale. He had a prisoner with him.”

That wasn’t exactly a surprise. Revon Evershade had been a deadly and effective enforcer in his time, assuming the stories were true. She had no doubt that they were. Idabel braced herself for the worst.

Another unclaiming. “Do we know them?”

“No. It’s not anyone anybody would know,” Trebor said, meeting her gaze in the wavy reflection. “Sani said she was a free-mage, from the other side of the western mountains. Kol smelled it, too.”

A free-mage. That was as rare as rain in the desert and far more valuable, even without the point about her origin. That, too, was an intrigue. From the wilds.

“To Sani’s guess, he’s bringing her here.”

Now standing with her hands on her hips, Idabel caught her own, widened eyes in the mirror and forced herself to blink. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Trebor’s brows dropped. “Because I didn’t want word to get out before Kol could return to Orrendale,” he went on, pulling on a fresh shirt. “That kind of knowledge would endanger Sani, our people, our home. It should only be repeated preciously.”

In that moment, an old itch came creeping back. The itch to know things others shouldn’t, to hear the whispers spoken in corners, to find people overlooked by everyone else. It was the one thing Rhienne had been right about—Idabel had been exceptionally good at the game in her youth, and thank goodness. Without that fact, her family would have fallen into lasting ruin. Her father’s death would have merely left her mother, her sisters, and herself to scrape the bottom of the barrel for marriage prospects. They could have very easily become Counsel wards, serving breakfast to visiting lords and ladies, like the girl on the terrace at Dabdagan. The thought, even now, made her face warm with determination. Idabel had seen to it that that hadn’t happened.

She would see to it again. Hope sparked.

“We must use this to our advantage,” she murmured, turning to the open side of the room, which overlooked the river. “But not too soon, or they’ll know who brought the news. We’ll have to wait, until more people might know.”

Shirt now buttoned, Trebor said, “I like that.”

Idabel glanced back at him. “What? The plan? It hardly counts as—”

“Your devious look,” he interrupted, donning a long summer coat from the hanging rack. “We need as much of that as we can muster, my love.”

Before he went to the door, he came over to her and took her by the shoulders.

“Now, do me a favor, and design our daughter a dress that will dazzle,” he murmured, kissing her squarely on the forehead. “Can you do that?”

She kissed him in reply. She most certainly could.

“Good. I’ll see you tonight.”

Idabel had the design for Edrianne’s dress in hand the next morning, as she ventured several inlets over, to the same home where she had spent much of her childhood. It had fallen into a measure of disrepair in her aunt’s old age, but the golden memories would forever color it. The front atrium was flooded with fresh morning light, the same enormous bird cage fluttering with activity and chatter on one side. Aunt Loena received her as quickly as she could, her steps shorter and less steady than Idabel remembered. Had it been that long?

How things change in sixteen years.

“My sweet, sweet Ida,” the old woman cried, pulling her in with stiff, surprisingly strong hands. Idabel’s throat grew thick. She should have come sooner. “Tea?”

“Yes. And my daughter?”

“Waking. Slowly,” Aunt Loena clucked, leading her into a rounded sitting room overlooking a wide and busy water way. The guards who accompanied her made their way to the servants’ quarters, where they could dine freely. “Did you finish the dress?”

Idabel held up the drawing, tucked into a leather sleeve. “And come to get the final word,” she whispered, pulling off her coat. “I only hope she hasn’t been sulking about.”

Loena turned to face her niece, frowning slightly. “Her life is no longer what it was, Ida. Have a care—she’s being forced to grow up rather quickly.”

“As was I, once,” Idabel hissed, lowering her voice at the sound of footsteps. “We all must make do.”

“Yes, but you knew from a young age that you would have to make sacrifices,” her aunt went on, pulling the bell for a servant. “Until a few days ago, Edrianne was a country girl, in a country castle. Be patient and she may surprise you. She’s stronger than you think.”

I do hope so.

Edrianne entered a moment later, her brilliant red hair free and her morning dress loosely tied at the shoulders, covered by a light shawl. At the sight of her mother, she hesitated, but made her way over to the dormer side of the room and sat lightly. Edrianne really was one of the loveliest girls Idabel had ever seen. She held out the drawing, shaking it when her daughter merely stared, confused.

“The design for your dress.”

The girl took the leather sleeve and pulled out the first drawing. “It’s pretty.”

“You haven’t even looked,” Idabel replied. “Edrianne.”

With quiet defiance, the girl slid the drawing back inside the sleeve and held it out to her mother. “I’ve said it’s pretty and I will wear it.”

A pair of servants entered then, with a tray of piping hot tea and a number of breakfast dishes. Edrianne set the drawing on the cushion beside her. The three women fell silent until the servants left. Then Loena cleared her throat, pouring the tea slowly.

“You two had better have this out, before it goes too long. Ida?”

It had been twenty years since Aunt Loena had dared use that tone with Idabel, but the effect was immediate. Idabel shifted in her seat, accepting the first cup.

“This is not how I would have liked to introduce you to Esseti society, but I don’t have a choice. Your father and I are in a delicate position.”

“I know that,” Edrianne said, sweetly yet with an edge. She hadn’t yet tasted her tea. “But you could have asked.”

Idabel sipped the flowery drink lightly. “My dear, we would have liked to consult you but there is nothing to discuss. You have the gift of dreams,” she sighed. “And the Counsel requires that you train that skill, for a time at least.”

Grave disappointment was etched into her daughter’s face. “But father is one of the wealthiest and most respected lords in Arras,” she cried, her desperation finally coming through. “Surely, he wouldn’t be made to leave me here—if I am not inclined to stay.”

It was painful to discover that ones’ parents were mortals.

“The fact that he is wealthy and respected makes him less likely to protest,” Loena piped up. “Not only does he have more to lose but, when other people look to you, what you do is more important to those who govern, child.”

She was right. Idabel took a breath, realizing that her daughter had been trained for a country life and not a political one. She had brought Edrianne and Edric to Esset intending to introduce them to the capital, wear fine clothes, attend important functions, meet their counterparts from the far corners of the country, and return home with a taste for the city of her childhood. In her heart of hearts, Idabel never even imagined that either of them would be a contender for the throne—assuming that promise ever materialized. But, with the latest turn of events, Edrianne was about to endure a sharp reeducation.

“You know that houses are being unclaimed—large, powerful houses like Binashar. No one thought it could happen to them and it did,” she said firmly. “All eyes are on us. We must do our best to work with the Counsel.”

Edrianne’s shoulders drooped. She nodded, but her face glistened with tears. Loena gestured sharply to Idabel, and she set her tea cup down. Softness had never been her strongest suit. Softness had not served her. Ever.

“I just—” The girl sniffled, her voice trembling. “I don’t know how I can be here alone, without Edric and...I miss home. Already.”

Idabel went to sit by her daughter, pulling her close. “Edrianne! I had no intention of leaving you here.”

She sobbed wretchedly. “You didn’t?”

“The little ones are old enough to be without me for a while, and they’re safer where they are,” Idabel said, drawing back and pushing her daughter’s hair out of her face. She realized then what Edrianne must have been going through. “You really thought I was going to leave you here, with these people? Strangers?”

Edrianne nodded, burying her face in her mother’s shoulder. Idabel had already told Trebor she wasn’t leaving. But she meant it more now than ever.

“Never.”

They parted and Idabel picked up her tea again, ignoring Aunt Loena’s pleased expression. She gathered herself. If they were to survive this and somehow gain a measure of control, much less the upper hand, things would have to change.

“I see now that I have failed to prepare you for the complexity of capital life. Things will be expected of you, by peers and by family,” she began, her stomach turning as she accepted what she had to do. At her uncertain glance, Loena gave her an encouraging nod. She took a breath. “I suppose I should start by telling you of my own childhood.”

Her daughter’s eyes widened. She was listening. Idabel never spoke of those years.

“Then perhaps you will understand how things are to be from now on.”

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Up in the shoddy ravensward, Nightwing was less miserable than she had been when they were escaping Tareth, but not much less. Since they’d arrived in Orrendale, no one had been able to approach her, and it seemed that the presence of Sya’s raven, Hela, only highlighted her poor mood. She let out a frustrated screech when they reached the landing, snapping as an unfortunate servant leapt back from the pile of meat and bones he’d brought for her. Revon didn’t recognize the disheveled, wide-eyed mortal as he scurried away. He turned to Sani.

“Where is Kol?”

Sani looked sheepish. “Kol took your message to Esset. He’s faster than a rider.”

Revon wanted to say that he was surprised at her faith in a koza, but clearly his message had reached its intended recipient. So he merely noted the fact, wondering whether speed was the only reason she had chosen Kol. Besides, more important matters were at hand. Beneth had drawn close to Nightwing, who remembered him well from her first rendering, and had begun inspecting her weave-points. The maker’s growing indignation and shock were evident in his movements, as he looked over one of his greatest creations to date.

“What did this to her?”

“Will knowing change the solution?”

Beneth shook his head with a deep frown. “The damage is great, one way or another, but—”

“Then fix her,” Revon said. “And be done.”

The maker’s brow cleared and he bowed. He hadn’t lasted this long in Dabdagan by demanding answers. Sya moved towards Hela, clicking her tongue and cooing the way many riders did with their ravens. The way mortals did with their pets.

“The days are long but I’d rather get on with this,” Sya said, coaxing Hela downwards to make mounting easier. “The caves—you said they were southeast of here, in the hills?”

Sani nodded. “Northeast, actually. From the air, you won’t miss the pyre. The caves are a short walk further.”

Sya was already mounted and now Revon followed, listening as Hela’s distrusting warbles shook her sides and into his hands where he gripped her fur. Whereas Nightwing had the finishes of a hawk, Sya’s raven had those of an owl. And, like an owl, Hela was intensely loyal, broader in the body, and with sleeker feathers. Thanks to Beneth, she was accustomed to bearing a second rider and wore a dual mount, with the all-essential hasp on its pommel. As Hela lurched to her feet, the wooden platform creaking beneath them with every step, Revon lashed the leather fastener around his waist and hooked it in, gripping the pommel knobs. The drop was less extreme and the leveling off was smoother than what Revon was used to. When they began to soar, he leaned back.

“The Fleshseekers,” he said loudly, but not in a shout. There was no need, with Hela’s quiet wings. “Accident or planted?”

“Both,” Sya admitted absently, peering down at the terrain. “As you may know, the occasional ‘escape’ affords the Counsel a reason to visit more independent and influential region-leaders, if one hasn’t arisen in due course. But this case was not by design.”

He was not aware. But it was gratifying to know that some of his past suggestions had been taken seriously and codified. At last.

The air began to stink faintly of death and Hela began to circle downwards at a steady decline. Her broad wings prevented Revon from seeing whatever Sya was aiming for, but he imagined that the pyre Sani had mentioned was not far—given the smell. The landing was as easy as the flight. All around them were rocky, rolling hills, the small part of Orrendale’s territory that was useless in comparison to its fertile farmland.

“There,” Sya said, pointing. “Still smoking.”

The men of Orrendale had built the pyre on one of the larger hills, an impressive construction, a couple days old, but still smoldering. Blackened and even more deformed than it had been in life, the Fleshseeker’s corpse was nestled amongst the charred wood, its clawed and unevenly-fingered hands curled into grotesque shapes, its limbs as thin and bizarre as those of a desiccated spider. A wide mouth of monstrous, dark teeth gaped in an eyeless face, forever cast into a final scream. Revon noted that its longest teeth had been pulled from its mouth, as a trophy.

It would have been unnecessary for the men to light the wood—with the Fleshseeker chained to it, the fire from its reaction to sunlight would have set the pyre ablaze in moments. Even now, an inexplicable heat pulsed from the grim scene. Hela let out a quavering, discomfited sound and, even with the sun high overhead, Revon felt a shiver of concern. The fact that two others might be roaming freely was no small matter.

“Vile creature,” Sya murmured. “I wonder who its mother was.”

Revon examined the bizarre, overlong feet. “A fool for allowing it.”

“Perhaps she didn’t allow it. Even the most experienced matchmaker can err,” she said, anger seeping into her voice. “And they do.”

Yes, and the woman’s mistake was trusting a matchmaker with her life. All for a child.

“You said something about caves,” Revon recalled, uninterested in discussing the creature’s origins further. “East?”

Sya glanced up at the sun on instinct, checking its position in the sky. Revon, too, was keenly aware that, with Fleshseekers nearby, darkness was their greatest enemy this far beyond the keep walls. But the afternoon was yet young. She pulled out a crudely drawn map that Revon suspected belonged to Sani. Following the unimpressive but accurate depiction, they reached a series of narrow crevasses and rockier hills a short walk from the pyre itself. Hela kept at a close distance, watchful, her footsteps slow and methodical. A sigh of putrid air slithered between the hills.

The tracks of the hunting party that had apprehended the first Fleshseeker were particularly dense in front of one cave. Focusing there, Revon followed the tracks and stood before the gaping darkness at a cautious distance, waiting for what was sure to come. It shouldn’t take long for them to smell him.

A low, pulsing growl shivered through the air and something breathed deeply from the cave, hissing through its teeth. A slender, misshapen figure loomed forward from where the shadows were deepest, beyond what pinpricks of light had somehow squeezed between the largest stones near the mouth of the cave. The nails in its hands were like talons, its eyes were sunken pits, and its teeth were like those of a mountain cat, only black. Its naked form seemed almost skinless, the sinews and musculature torturously exposed to the elements. Even its lips were forever pulled back into a gruesome smile. Something slick and glistening ran down its arms and legs, and an overwhelming rot filled the air. Revon felt the totality of its intention resting on him.

“I have one here,” he said with a grimace.

“Just one?” Sya’s voice was farther away than he had expected and he looked over his shoulder. She had climbed a different rocky mound and was looking through a mortal spyglass, slowly sweeping it across the horizon. “Maybe it moved on.”

“Perhaps, but that still doesn’t explain how they got this far,” he replied, as a stronger gust of stinking air swept past him. He covered his nose. “They still would have had to know—”

Oh. Of course. A blatant oversight on his part.

“What,” Sya said, noting his sudden silence. “What is it?”

Revon backed away from the cave, seeing the situation in a fresh light. The air coming from underground had been the first clue. Then the stones at its entrance, and those scattered throughout the clearing, were too regular in size and shape to be natural. The hills themselves were too evenly spaced, and the entrances too closely mirroring north and south, east and west, to be coincidental. All four had the same, narrow door. All four were of similar height and construction. This wasn’t a group of mounds.

It was a crossing, for travelers taking the oldest road in Arras.

“Evershade,” Sya demanded, at his continued silence. “What is it?”

“They’re tunnels,” he said, then pointed at each of the mounds: “You’re standing over one of four entrances.”

“Tunnels?” Excitement seeped into her voice. “By the dead, I had thought those were all closed up before the last age.”

These four entrances were just a small piece of an ancient maze of passages, used by mortals when the world was younger and more dangerous. Sya would know very little about them. Revon technically shouldn’t know very much, either. He’d nearly forgotten they were there.

“That explains how they’ve gotten this far inland,” Sya pronounced, picking her way down the mound. “Only the dead know where they all go. I would bet the myriscrolls had the answers, if they hadn’t burned.”

Indeed. The sudden patter of receding footsteps and a gust of putrid air had him looking sharply back into the darkness. The Fleshseeker had disappeared.

“The light is fading beyond comfort,” Revon said. “We should go.”

Hela, Sya’s raven, was perched atop a nearby hill, cleaning her feathers. At her mistress’s call, she stood and shook out her wings, then leapt into the air. She landed in the middle of the ancient crossing, and dropped down to her knees to make mounting easier. But the shadows had shifted, lengthening towards the center of the clearing. Fast as snakes, two Fleshseekers left the protection of the cave that lay on the western side. Together, they took hold of Hela’s right wing and began to drag her further into the shadows and underground, the raven screeching as she struggled against their strength. Sya’s thirdhand burst forth, wild and panicked, chilling the air. Under the weight of her mind, the crown of the ancient mound began to buckle. The fleshseekers hissed, released their holds, and retreated into the blackness as the entrance collapsed. Revon had kept his own thirdhand ready for a second attack, watching the other three entrances.

“Vermin,” Sya huffed shakily then with disbelief: “I never knew that Fleshseekers craved raven meat. Did you?”

“They don’t,” he retorted, looking over his shoulder and quickly mapping out where the shadows had begun to encroach on the afternoon sunlight. “Their goal was to ground us.”

“By the dead.” Sya breathed, gently inspecting Hela’s wounds. The woman looked up in growing fear. “Call Nightwing.”

“It’s too far for that. In the meantime, we must get to high ground,” he said, releasing his thirdhand on the other three entrances. They shuddered, groaned and collapsed. Furious snarls could be heard, even through the rubble. “Can she fly at all?”

“I think so—but only for a short way.”

That would be enough. If it killed the beast, Revon would ensure she got them to Orrendale. “If Hela can get us out of these hills, we will be close enough for me to call Nightwing.”

Sya winced, turning to her raven. “Hela, can you?”

By the dead. Ravens were tools, not pets. Sya could have another one made and never know the difference. Only he and Sya herself were actually irreplaceable. They mounted Hela again, her right wing only partially extended. Her legs shook under them. He felt Sya silently coaxing the raven towards the sky. The beast crouched and abandoned several attempts, before Revon decided that he would force her to fly with his own thirdhand, whatever the consequences. He could hold Sya back, if she fought him. But he was interrupted.

“Your beast will not fly.”

The words were spoken in the unmistakable guttural tone of the south. It came from somewhere above them. Revon looked up and saw a tall, looming shape on the remains of one hill, and it wasn’t alone. There were others, some standing fearlessly in the shadows, others on higher ground. They all wore light cloth, cheaply dyed black. The apparent leader lifted his chin, to reveal a many-scarred face and sun-soaked skin.

“She will not get you to the sun in time. You will be trapped in the shadows with the skinless ones,” he sighed. “We will escort you back.”

“And who are you?”

He sniffed the air. “Hunters. Orrendale pays well for a pair of skinless fangs.”

Koza. Revon dismounted, disgusted by requiring a halfblood’s help but not too proud to admit the truth. They were in trouble.

“What are you doing?” Sya hissed.

“They’re halfbloods.”

She grimaced. “I can see that.”

“I imagine they’ll pay at least as much for two visiting Counselhands to be returned safely,” the leader went on, peering at Revon. “Won’t they?”

Revon nodded tightly. “Yes, I’m sure. Shall we? Sya, come down.”

“That’s good, because you’ve destroyed one method of catching them,” he said, gesturing at the ruined ancient crossing. “We got a few by blocking the entrances before they returned from a hunt, right at dawn. You corner them, the sun rises, and—” He snapped his fingers. “Your job is done. The other way isn’t quite as—well. Enough talk.”

He never finished his final thought and there was no point in trying to decipher it. The koza mind was as dirty and unkempt as its physical form. The party fell into line. Revon and Sya were jostled towards the front, with Hela bringing up the rear. There were more koza in this group than Revon had realized, at least ten. That was too many in one place beyond the Counsel’s walls.

“So you burned the skinless one—on the pyre,” Sya observed.

“Of course we did,” their leader said with disdain. “Did you think mortals coaxed it up there or that it climbed up itself?”

A round of low chuckles shivered through the air. The koza's arrogance in their own strength was never lacking. And yet, they had been servants to the Counsel for hundreds of years—once great kings, now slaves. The leader raised a fist and the company stopped. One of his men broke away and disappeared between the hills. Revon blinked. The speed of a koza at full pace never became less shocking. It was incredible. Dangerous.

“Why are we stopping?”

“Making sure we haven’t missed anything,” the leader said, clearing his throat and looking away. “Don’t want any surprises.”

The silence swelled. The sun crept lower. The scout was nowhere to be seen. Ahead, among the rolling, purply shadows of the western mountains, Revon could see the flickering of lights. The keep and the town weren’t far. And, if he could see it, the koza certainly did.

“Really, must we—” Sya piped up.

The scout was suddenly there again, cutting her complaint short. “The shadows are cast. Won’t be long now.”

At the cryptic statement, the leader turned. “We’ll wait here, take them head on.”

The band of hunters formed a circle around their charges, facing outwards. Sya took a breath to object but Revon grabbed her arm, silencing her. He reached for her with his thirdhand and found she was only too eager to speak mind to mind.

What in all hells!

We’re the bait, he explained. They need their pay.

Her jaw dropped slightly. They can’t do that! Don’t they know who we are?

We don’t have a choice. They’re our best chance of getting back.

Her hands curled into fists. He felt her rage and fear and humiliation.

The Counsel will hear of how many koza Orrendale keeps. A faintly cruel smile upturned her mouth. Her fists uncurled. They’ll pay.

The Fleshseekers didn’t try to hide their approach. Their bottomless hunger for mage-flesh drove them, frenzied and snarling, from between the hills. Revon counted two, then three—more than even Sani had expected. They ran on two feet at times, sometimes four, their long arms and clawed hands pulling them forward far faster than any man could run. It should have been the most gruesome death sentence. But the kozas’ need for money was just as strong.

The hunters worked in threes. One would intercept, engaging the Fleshseeker on its first charge, and another would take it by its neck, controlling its fanged mouth. These two roles incurred the greatest injuries and seemed generally to be performed by the larger members of the party. It was impressive, the number of wounds a koza could take. Once the mouth was under control, the second koza lifted the creature’s feet, so that it was parallel to the ground, but not on it. The third koza then whipped a heavy chain around the monster’s legs and a second chain around its flailing arms. Its head was covered in a weighty, leather sack, drawn tight around its neck.

It took all of ten minutes. As the chaos subsided, and it became clear that no more Fleshseekers would appear, the hunters began congratulating each other and tending to their wounds. Several had split away from the group and returned with armfuls of sticks and wood. Together, they built a roaring fire, much like the one from earlier that day. When the fire had become a blaze, they threw the bundled Fleshseekers onto the flames. The monsters’ screams rose into the dusky sky, a hideous serenade. The koza leader approached, his own eyes reflecting every fleck of light like a cat’s.

“When we catch them after dark, we have to burn them through the night, to keep them down,” he said, wiping his face on the back of one arm. The screams of the burning Fleshseekers echoed against the hills. “Only the sun can finish them off. We’ll be at it all night.”

With the danger gone, Hela stamped one foot with a tense cry.

“My raven needs tending,” Sya said. “Who will take us back?”

“Yes, yes—we will,” the leader said cheerfully, waving several of his men over to join him. “What a catch, though. What luck. Couldn’t pass it up, eh?”

“Of course,” Revon murmured calmly, belying the seething in his veins as they made their way towards the lights that they must have seen an hour ago. “And what will your payment be? From the Lord of Orrendale.”

Their leader spread his arms, at the world around them. “Land, of course. The very finest in Arras.”

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Revon was out of practice. And patience.

The art of ingress was simple but tedious. Much of the time was dedicated to preparation—searching out fertile memories in a subject’s mind then establishing ‘pegs’ within those memories. The greater the emotional intensity of a memory, the more effective and rooted the peg, allowing for later repeated use. In any other case, Revon would have engaged a professional coviner to establish the most common pegs—the death of a family member, an injury or severe illness, a moment of peril to a subject’s life, and other such harrowing events. But there was only one coviner Revon trusted to perform to his standards, and she was not in Orrendale.

Another mage might have said that there was no rush. After all, the maker he’d requested would arrive today and Nightwing would soon be able to fly again. They would reach Dabdagan in another day or so and, as long as Revon retethered Vara’s mind periodically, she would sustain no permanent damage from such a short dissolution period. In terms of preserving her utility, there was no hurry.

But Revon knew the Counsel and its members only too well.

When others learned that an unclaimed Evershade had been found, they would try to use her the way he intended to: To root out the inherited memories of the most famous elderblood mage in history, Isydenia Nossidar. From the coviners to the makers, every mage in Dabdagan would have their own questions and special interests. That included the office of the High Hand, a cadre of fools that technically outranked him. Revon’s claim over Vara’s mind had to be as unimpeachable as possible before she arrived in Esset—before any other mage knew she existed. That made every hour in Orrendale of great importance and every moment of resistance doubly irritating.

Leaving her untethered after their latest encounter, Revon took the cellar steps quickly and emerged into the bright hallway of Orrendale’s keep. A midday breeze fluttered the garish green and gold sigil flags overhead and a servant girl was walking past, carrying with her an armful of crisp, folded linens. She peered at him over the pile, through a pair of unusually thick spectacles, with a mixture of trepidation and curiosity. Revon locked the cellar door behind him, and slipped the key into an inner pocket.

“Where is the Counselhand?”

She hesitated, slowing to a stop. “Sani?”

He grimaced at the familiarity. “Yes.”

“Guests arrived from Esset.”

When she inexplicably offered nothing else, he said, “And where are they?”

“In the feast hall,” she finished, shying away as he stepped past her.

Revon walked until he reached a corridor that ran directly towards the center of the keep. As he crossed the unbearably bright yard to the main hall, he heard Nightwing’s chatter in the ravensward overhead. Another raven answered her.

A ravenrider. But which? No one had announced themselves.

The smell of freshly cooked meat and bread wafted towards him as he passed back inside, his eyes adjusting more easily to the darkness than to the day. Orrendale’s main hall, which would regularly be used for important feast days and public events, was one of the largest mortal halls he’d been in, so it took him a moment to find Sani. She was at the far end with two guests, just past a treacherously tall ladder. A wrinkled, wiry man was changing out candles in the candelabra overhead.

The near guest—eating, as always—was Beneth, the Esseti maker who had rendered Nightwing to perfection, but the other was positioned just so that Revon couldn’t quite see who it was. The back of Revon’s neck prickled and he quickly refastened any parts of his mind that might have been loosened by his efforts with Vara. When the woman leaned forward and he recognized her, he relaxed. But only slightly.

“Hand Evershade,” Sani offered, standing at his approach. “Beneth is here—”

“So I see.”

“And someone else you’d know.”

Sya stood and bowed, her expression pleased but distant, as though they were meeting for the first time in several years rather than days.

“My old lesser,” Revon said, offering his hand. She took it, warmly. “How are you?”

“Well. Very well,” she said in a vaguely political tone specific to Dabdagan and those that lived there. “Though the journey never gets shorter, I have to say.”

He released her hand, detesting the practiced falseness.

“And what brings you to Orrendale? Esset is busy this time of year, as I recall.”

Sya’s eyes glinted through her controlled mask. Revon knew the answer. She was here to learn what had happened on the other side of the mountains, with Tareth. Clearly, Sya had her eyes and ears around Esset and Dabdagan, and her sister Sani played a key role in that little web, otherwise she wouldn’t have known that Orrendale had requested the most expensive Esseti maker alive on an immediate basis. That would have tipped her off that Revon was somehow involved.

“I could use your help, actually,” Sya mused, straightening her belt. Her crimson hair was pulled back, her soul stones were fastened, and she was wearing sturdier clothes than she had been the last time they spoke, almost as if she expected to do some real work. “Creatures have been reported along the eastern border here and Cazagar sent me to investigate.”

Some kind of ruse, no doubt. One that made a visit to Orrendale both explainable and necessary. It was just that kind of maneuvering that had convinced Revon he could never live in Dabdagan. Watching his comrades engage in subversion was exhausting. They were mages, not mortals. They should do as they pleased.

“What kinds of creatures?”

Sani spoke up: “Fleshseekers.”

Beneth coughed, looking up from his meal in shock—his first display of interest in the conversation at hand. Defective mage-offspring, Fleshseekers burned and rotted under the open sky, making daytime movement all but impossible. So, when the rare escape did occur, it always took place in the dead of winter, when the days were short. But they were at the start of summer and the days were only growing steadily longer. Any Fleshseeker that did escape Dabdagan’s underground containment would have to hide in caves and gullies, or under houses, and would have to know where to find them. If even one of the ravenous monsters had made it this far inland, over a hundred miles of rolling grasslands, it wasn’t by accident. Revon looked at Sya.

“How many?” Under the right circumstances, even one was deadly.

“Two most certainly, but possibly a third.”

Beneth grunted, indignant. “And you didn’t think to say, before bringing me here?”

Sya narrowed her eyes. “There’s nothing to fear in the day and you’re perfectly safe in the castle at night,” she finished with mild disgust. “And Revon’s payment is good in either case.”

The maker glared. “I won’t be taking the road back.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” she replied, irritated.

Interesting. One escaped Fleshseeker amounted to a serious error and two were enough for an inquiry with the High Hand, but three escapes begged the question of whether they were ‘escapes’ at all. Revon’s thirdhand swirled at the back of his mind, agitated by his sudden suspicion.

He raised his voice over their ongoing bickering. “And you came alone?”

Sya looked over his face, trying to read it. Trying to decide whether he cared for her safety. Even after all these years. Pitiful.

“I don’t intend to engage them, only to assess how this might have happened.”

“In that case, a thorough remapping of Dabdagan’s crypts and undergrounds would be more apt,” Revon retorted. “Would it not?”

Sya took a breath. “That too, yes.”

“Your opinion would be greatly valued, Hand Evershade,” Sani interrupted. “I have been meaning to ask you, but what with the—” She started a little, catching herself before she mentioned Vara. “Well, there hasn’t been a good time.”

She had barely caught herself, and he could tell by Sya’s confusion that his former lesser had no idea what her sister might have said. But Sya’s curiosity was what had drawn him to her from the start, what had made her his best lesser to date. So whether she wheedled it out of her sister or figured it out by other means, Sya would eventually discover Vara and jeopardize his plans. He needed to keep her away from the castle.

“I haven’t been an active razi in decades,” he sighed, grimacing. “But very well.”

Sya’s jewel-blue eyes had narrowed but her expression cleared at his words. Sani looked pleased and a little relieved. Beneth stood, wiping his mouth of the greasy meal he had been eating, and gestured upwards, towards Orrendale’s ravensward.

“I will know within the hour what to do with Nightwing. After that, it shouldn’t take long to fix her,” he sniffed, waggling a finger at Sya, his napkin still in hand. “I’ll stay one night and not another more. Is that understood?”

She nodded, her jaw tight. He threw his crumpled napkin on the table.

“I became a maker to create monsters, not fight them,” he muttered, pushing past them towards the courtyard. “Damned backwater.”

I write for tips!

It had been a perfectly peaceful summer.

The spring melts were gone and the children would spend hours hunting for rocks and playing in The Flats, the shallowest and broadest part of the river. Flowers were blooming all across the slopes in great bursts of color—red, lavender, yellow. The villages were lively, the roads busy. Deer were plentiful and the wolves hadn’t come yet. No one knew how bad things were going to get.

In a sunny part of the forest, not far from the village of Tor, goats pawed the earth and carped, jostling one another in the sunlight. Just off the beaten path, Vara was sharpening her favorite knife and Haenor was watching the goats, swinging a stick here and there, to make sure the stupid little creatures didn’t wander off. Haenor had light hair, light eyes, and a good-natured face full of freckles. She normally wore dark green—her favorite color since childhood—but today she was in a pale shift dress. Vara reasoned that Haenor’s mother was probably mending her nicest green dress for the upcoming festivities.

Vara ran her sharpening stone along the length of her knife. The hiss of grating metal shivered through the air and the goats balked. She smirked, testing the blade against the hair on the back of one arm. It met no resistance.

“You look a little deadly there,” Haenor joked. “How were the hearings?”

“Tiresome.” Vara sheathed the blade and leaned back against the tree. “But Lord Yandric wants Yorian there from now on. He needs the practice.”

Haenor grinned. “The Hytes and Thorns were at it again, I’ll bet.”

“They’d kill each other over that muddy puddle they call a field,” Vara sighed, looking up at the blue sky through the leaves. “Even with the wedding so close.”

Haenor snorted, but Vara had to look over her shoulder. As a prominent servant of the Tors, it would be frowned upon to discuss matters of the people and, certainly, to mock them. Haenor leaned back against her own tree trunk and lifted her face to the bright sky.

“Evjen Thorn and Sarina Clovys—Sarina Thorn, now,” she mused, tossing a patch of moss at one of her herd. It squealed. “A shame he’s off market, but I do love a wedding. I can’t wait to dance.”

Vara smiled. She enjoyed a good party, too. Normally, weddings were celebrated together, at harvest-time, which was several moons away. But Evjen was one of Yorian’s oldest friends and Sarina was the eldest daughter of a northern lord, so this wedding would stand on its own. The village and fortress were stuffed with strange guests. It was exactly why Vara had come out this way—for some peace and quiet. Well, almost quiet.

“But, with Evjen gone, who are you going to dance with?”

Haenor turned to Vara and wiggled her eyebrows. “Osper.”

Vara wrinkled her nose. “Haenor.”

“What?” Haenor retorted. She tossed her copper-gold hair, turning dramatically so that Vara caught the profile of her slightly smashed nose. “He’s handsome.”

Vara didn’t deny it. “He’s bald.”

“Barely.”

“You can’t be barely bald!”

“Yes, you can! There’s the shiny kind of bald, that’s been there forever—” She waggled her finger and Vara snorted. “—and then there’s newly bald. Besides, all the better for seeing that face.”

Haenor wiggled her eyebrows, yet again. Vara couldn’t stop the laughter then. They dissolved into naughty, shameless giggles as they had many times.

“Besides, shouldn’t you be able to fix that?”

Vara took a breath. “What—his baldness?”

“Sure,” Haenor said, gesturing at Vara’s satchel of herbs and tinctures. “There must be something for it.”

“Oh Hands, no,” Vara laughed, patting the heavy leather bag. “It doesn’t work like that. And even if I could, the Seven don’t marry.”

“I hear that Osper is thinking of moving on,” came the smug reply and pursed lips.

Haenor wasn’t wrong. But Vara was no longer thinking about her friend’s lofty marriage aims or about Osper’s retirement. Raised voices were coming from the near side of the village, and they had the unmistakable tinge of fear. Haenor watched Vara, waiting for her to decide whether something bad was happening. When someone began screaming, Vara was on her feet and running, her satchel of herbs at her side. She wondered who had gotten hurt. It sounded serious. She only hoped that she wasn’t too late.

The wails intensified. Up ahead, she caught people running between the village shops then into the forest. She slipped down an alley, stepped into the sun, and was at once thrown onto her back foot by a runner—the black-bearded barkeeper, Sinjhin. Unused spear in hand, he fled with naked terror on his face. His eyes were still wide when an arrow struck him in the neck and laid him low. Vara scrambled backwards. She was still on the ground when a massive figure blocked the sun and cast its shadow over her.

Sharp hooves batted the air. A harsh, shrill cry filled her ears. The thick, braided mane shuddered before her like a whip. Vara cringed back, shielding herself. Horses—real horses—were uncommon in the mountains. She had only seen one or two in all her life, and their size was always a shock.

Far above her, the horseman cocked his head. She couldn’t see his eyes against the bright sky, but she felt them peering down at her. His stillness, in the midst of the chaos, sent an unforgettable shiver of fear through her legs and arms. She scrambled to her feet and turned to flee, but another man had appeared at the rear entry and he closed on her. She drew her knife. The horseman scoffed.

“I’ll be,” the man on foot muttered, lowering his hands. “It’s Tor’s healer girl.”

“Are you sure?”

The man on foot nodded. “I’ve seen her with Yorian.”

They know us. This was no roving gang, at least, but there was no way to tell whether that was a good thing or not yet. Her sense of relief came and went.

“Well,” the horseman said coolly, with a voice used to being obeyed. “Always good to have another.”

A familiar horn sounded out. Through the trees, the fortress of Torfell towered above them. The gates began to close. Her stomach twisted.

I hope Haenor didn’t follow. She didn’t dare glance over her shoulder, towards the forest. I hope she got inside.

“You’ll never take the fortress,” Vara blurted out, madly. “No one ever has.”

“I don’t need a fortress.” The horseman sniffed. “I don’t even want it.”

Vara’s heart pounded. Her knife felt truly pitiful in her trembling hand. She didn’t know how to wield it. She had only ever used it to strip medicinal bark.

“Then why—” Her voice caught. “Why are you here?”

“To encourage Yandric to return my brother,” he offered, eyes narrowed. “In words he understands.”

Vara blinked, thinking through Torfell’s most famous criminal prisoners. There was just one he could mean.

“Then—are you Melors Bune?”

“I am.”

Her eyes widened. “But your brother murdered Lord Thorn’s Righthand in cold—”

“My brother meted out justice to a man who fell upon his wife,” the southern warlord bit back, his voice low and fast and sharp. “That the bastard served one of Yandric’s flatterers is of no concern to me. My brother has wasted away in that dungeon long enough.”

The ground shook as the bulk of Bune’s men charged through the town, torches and shields in hand. Bune’s horse balked at the sudden chaos, shifting backwards and leaving the alley entrance open. Seeing her chance, Vara ducked through and, for the briefest moment, thought she had escaped. But a crack rang out and something gripped her right ankle, yanking it out from under her.

Winded from the landing and her own mounting fear, she grasped wildly at the trampled earth as something—or someone—dragged her backwards, undaunted. Steely hands made short work of her arms and bound her wrists behind her. Someone set her on her feet, turned her around, and her head snapped to the side. Her eyes smarted. The world shook. Burning pain spread from her jaw to the crown of her head. The foot soldier raised his hand again.

“That’s enough,” Bune ordered. “Enough.”

“You will be still, or you will be hurt,” the man from the alley stated plainly, holding her up. “Right then? Good.”

The village was now engulfed in flames, an acrid stench and heat billowing towards her from the north. A whistle and a whoop went up. As quickly as they had come, the attacking force turned and headed back south. They were dragging people along with them—men and women that Vara recognized, guests who were there for the wedding. Her knees buckled. Her ears rang.

“Here, give her to me,” the horseman ordered. Everything tilted again. She was on the horse now, facing southwards. The wrong way. “I’ll get her to Tareth.”

Tareth. Interesting.

The strange, commanding voice didn’t belong. It was too loud and somehow echoed, but not in Vara’s ears and certainly not as part of the memory. The shouting and movement and pungent smell of smoke from that day faded abruptly. Vara looked around, searching for who had spoken.

A slender man stood at the corner of the alleyway, wearing black from neck to foot. He had shocking white hair and a young sort of face. She knew him.

But wait. That wasn’t right. He hadn’t been there a moment ago.

No. He shouldn’t be there at all.

This was a memory.

Revon.

Indeed.

Realization—icy and unforgiving—washed over Vara then. The memory shuddered and blurred at her sudden distress, its clarity fading in the light of her understanding. And focus. Vara’s only goal was to shut him out and put as much space between them as possible. She began pulling away, pulling herself out of the memory, but Revon matched her. The weight on her increased, pushing her back downwards and in, hampering her movement. It was like trying to swim to the surface of a deep river with shoes, clothes, and an anchor tied around her waist. His sigh of disappointment was almost audible.

We had better just be done with this, don’t you think?

The village, the horseman, the battle were all gone now, replaced by colorless, writhing shapes and reaching shadows. The only clear thing was him. Revon.

I will outlast you.

Now, she remembered. He wanted something from her—something from her memories. He had been rifling through them, poring over them, sometimes over and over again. Every once in a while, she would awaken to a stone ceiling and stone floor. He would make her eat then send her back into the darkness. She had fought him every time. She would rather die than—

Everyone thinks that.

Vara gritted her teeth, hating that he observed her every thought. Hating that he had seen her memories with Haenor, that last memory of feeling truly safe.

Until the Vault.

The way he said it, with a strange sort of pleasure, made her sick with dread.

In the Vault, I will have you.

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Adevan didn’t know how much longer he lay in the icy stream, but he woke to the walls of a cave lit by the flickering of a fire. His clothing was still damp but not soaked through, so a respectable amount of time had passed. He sensed at once that he was deep underground, and far enough from an entrance that there was no way of knowing whether it was day or night. The cold around him felt old and undisturbed. He heard no insects or birds. He smelled damp stone and another halfblood. Someone breathed deeply, as if burdened.

“Aiel l’emaun a’Dabdaganem,” a young voice sighed. Adevan had never heard the language. It was gentler than the coarse halfblood tongue. “An dou aes perotha.”

“No,” the old woman replied, in the common language. “His beast is wounded, so he will have to stop long before then. And we have a Dragar. We can find him.”

“O’e, mea vondar t’elfe’mel?”

She did not immediately answer whatever question had just been asked. When the silence went on for longer than he would have anticipated, Adevan’s curiosity got the better of him and he turned his head slowly, towards the voices, only to find one silhouette already facing him. The old woman. Her watchful eyes glimmered blue against her shadowed face, picking up and reflecting every shred of light, brighter than any other halfblood eyes he had seen. Opposite the fire to her, sat a narrow, serious boy. The halfblood woman cleared her throat, speaking in their shared tongue.

“Well? Will you come?”

“Come where?”

“To find the she-mage taken today,” the boy across from her replied, as easily as if he had grown up among halfbloods. “The girl you tried to kill.”

Wiry and unassuming, the young man—Adevan could now see that his shoulders were too broad to belong to a boy—was dressed entirely in woolen clothing, including a thick hat that was pulled down around his ears. He seemed to carry no weapons, but a satchel lay on the cave floor beside him and from it rose a host of herbaceous scents. When the surprise wore off, Adevan scoffed and sat up, realizing for the first time that he wasn’t bound. They had no intention of trying to force him to do anything. The old halfblood woman had merely prevented him from throwing that rock at Evershade and his damned bird. His head still hurt from her savage blow, though he already felt that the wound had healed.

“There is no ‘finding’ her,” Adevan retorted in the common tongue, standing carefully and with one hand to the rough cave wall. “Once Evershade takes a mage, they are lost. It’s over. I’m sorry.”

“I care not that you are accustomed to failure,” the young man retorted. His accent was difficult to place. “You are bound to the Evershade blood and can find him. And you must.”

Adevan chuckled at the formal speech and misplaced confidence. To his eye, there was not a single person in this cave who could make him do anything.

“Must I? Really.”

“Yes.”

“Hah!” Adevan’s scorn echoed through the cave, which he now realized was actually a tunnel that went as far as he could hear in both directions. “Find Evershade? Why would I do such a stupid thing? Not really my bag of bones.”

The young man peered at him. The judgment was unmistakable when he said: “You fear him.”

“Of course I fear him,” Adevan clapped back. “Revon Evershade is the greatest dark mage to ever live. There’s no stopping him.”

The young man cocked his head. “Revon?”

“Revon Evershade. The ravenrider that took the girl,” Adevan explained sharply, confused. “He’s who you’re after, isn’t he?”

It was a moment before anyone moved. Then the young man let out a mirthless, breathing sort of laugh. He nodded, muttering to himself.

“Oh, but he has done well.”

“As have you,” the old woman insisted.

There was a deference in the way she spoke to him, as if she was speaking to someone older and more important than herself. Adevan peered at the young man, finally seeing what should have been clear the moment he saw him. To be fair, he had somehow masked the scent of his magic. This was no mortal youth. 

“You’re a mage.” These damn mountains were crawling with them.

“Not just any mage,” the old woman quipped.

“I assume he took that name to conceal his true nature,” the mage replied, ignoring them both. “But the mage you call Revon is truly Obric Evershade.”

Obric Evershade. Adevan had heard the name only a handful of times, and certainly never in reference to someone living. He glanced between the unlikely pair before him. Neither moved to correct what had been said.

“Obric,” Adevan repeated. Still, silence. “The ancient mage who oversaw the destruction of my ancestors and established the Counsel?”

“The very one. Though I would hardly call the end of the last age ‘ancient.’”

“Ah.” Adevan leaned against the wall now, wondering whether he had been picked up by madmen. He crossed his arms. “You believe a mage from the last age is still alive?”

“Yes.”

I don’t think that’s possible. “And who are you?”

“He is Tareth Persefydon,” the old woman announced too loudly, only too eager to do so. “Seventy-first elder son of his house and a keeper of the south sea, whose blindsight has cloaked this valley since the time of Althioc Dragar—your forebear.”

That was no commendation. Everything had gone to the dogs because of Althioc. The mage sighed, his round face drawn tight. Her words seemed to pain him.

“And you’re what—his servant?”

“I am Nysa, his watcher,” the woman snapped.

“Right, I see.” Adevan took a breath. Then, to the mage: “So, you’re an elderblood.”

“Da—yes, he is.”

Adevan looked between them. Again, neither moved to further explain.

“Too sane to be radges, so just a fine pair of grifters. The best I’ve ever seen, I’ll give you that,” he mused aloud. As he spoke, his anger returned along with his sense of physical strength. “But you’ve already prevented me from sparing everyone the misery of a second Evershade, so I have no more time to waste on you.”

He turned to face one dark tunnel and stopped, realizing even as he turned that he had no idea where he was going. He could probably smell his way back, but if the mage could mask the scent of his magic, he imagined that they hadn’t left much of a trail. He could already identify several different savors of air from that direction, meaning there were plenty of passages and plenty of places to get lost forever. The silence swelled.

“We’re too far down and too far in for guesswork,” the old woman said. “You could wander these tunnels a hundred years and never come close to seeing the sun again.”

Heat rose to Adevan’s face. He scowled back at her.

“That is the way we came. Walk straight for a day and you will come back out into the valley again,” the mage offered, gesturing in the direction Adevan had intended to go. The old woman grunted her disapproval. “But there is an outlet a day from here that will take you to surface on the eastern side of the range.”

Adevan cursed. “We’re already under the mountains.”

“About halfway across, so you will only be doubling back. Our path offers a much shorter route to the Bladmuir.”

Adevan stilled. The Bladmuir was a very, very old name for Blackmoor. A name few now living remembered. And the way he said it spoke for itself—no hesitation, no trickery.

“How did you know I’m headed that way?”

“The bit of allwood in your vest is freshly split,” Tareth said. “Only one allwood survived the fellendomor and it was deep in the Bladmuir.”

Survived. A fair portrayal of that unfortunate stump of a tree.

“If you do not believe that I am an elderblood by the time we reach that crossing, I am unworthy of the word and we can part ways without ill will,” Tareth offered. “If you do believe that I am elderblood by then, I would beseech you to join us in finding that girl. More is at stake than you now understand.”

What more could be at stake? Vara falling into the hands of Revon Evershade was a reversal of any good fortune that her very existence had seemed to prove, with effects that would ripple for generations. Once she took the Gaunt—which she surely would—and joined the ranks of dark mages, there was no telling what kind of horrors she would unleash as an Evershade. Revon’s recent dormancy had been a welcome reprieve and even that seemed at an end. So Tareth’s warning meant little to Adevan, and he would have disregarded it, but for the fact that he was a stranger to the maze of truly ancient tunnels that ran beneath Arras. He was already late in returning to Sisela. It was ever more imperative that he be by her side in the coming days. No time to waste, indeed.

His silence seemed a sufficient answer. Tareth nodded, sweeping up his satchel. Nysa pulled herself to her feet with her staff and a grunt.

“This will be much easier with you walking. I am weary of your weight.”

Adevan gave him a doubtful look. “You carried me this far?”

With a crooked smile, the mage reached out over the fire and, as Adevan watched, the flames crushed in on themselves, as though smothered by an invisible blanket. But the fire’s light did not dissipate or turn to embers. It shrank in size, yet not in brilliance, warping into a pinprick that glowed and shuddered like starlight. The powerful scent of true magic spread through the tunnel, a deep scent that reminded Adevan of a sea storm. Tareth calmly picked up the glowing orb with two fingers, and held it up, illuminating the tunnel ahead of him. Adevan didn’t move to follow. He was frozen where he stood.

He had seen mages turn men to ash, watched them fling fallen trees without touching them, and felt the cold weight of their cruel minds on his own. No Counsel mage would do what Tareth had just done—he wasn’t even sure they could. He had only ever seen them consume. Magic was a method of destruction, coercion, or artifice.

Nysa looked back at Adevan. He felt her self-satisfaction.

“Bet you’ve never seen that,” she hissed. 

He most certainly had not.

I write for tips!

Adevan knew that the mage would be gone.

Even so, he still made his way back to where he had seen her last. Her comrade was unconscious but alive, lying at the base of a tree, half covered in a gruesome hash of bodies and severed limbs. A quick but thorough look told him that she had climbed the tree but wasn’t hiding among the branches overhead. Adevan pulled the helpless warrior from the mire then continued on, searching for the mage’s footprints and finding none in the muddy, trampled earth. He couldn’t even catch her scent on the blood-spoiled breeze.

Why didn’t she just stay hidden?

Something screeched, far overhead. His blood ran cold as he looked up, knowing what he was going to see. Even from the forest floor, Adevan recognized the bone-white hair and glinting iron breastplate. On instinct, his feet pulled him into the nearest shadows he could find, among the feathered boughs of a great pine.

The graven beast screeched again, much closer this time. A pair of powerful, black wings cut the sky then disappeared beyond the treeline just south of him. The earth shook perceptibly as the creature landed. The wind brought with it the gagging stench of dark magic, overpowering even that of the blood below. Adevan held his breath, expecting to feel the irresistible pull of the dreaded bloodbond.

But it never came.

Mere moments later, the graven lifted once more into the sky with great effort, and began flying east into the dawn. Adevan couldn’t believe his luck. In fact, he didn’t. He could believe that Revon Evershade didn’t know he was here, but no ravenrider would risk flying during the day and certainly would never land unless they were after something they wanted, and had a good chance of getting it. This was doubly true of Revon, a mage known for his vigilance, who had not even left the fortress of Arysdur in decades. Between the rustling pine branches, Adevan peered at the shrinking graven until his keen eyes found their answer.

A woman, draped across the saddle, her arms swinging limply as the winged beast pulled higher into the sky.

Unruly black hair, a dark grey dress, leather plating.

The mage.

I write for tips!

Adevan released the trunk and crashed down through the tree limbs, running almost before he hit the ground. Already bathed in blood and gore from head to foot from the earlier fight, he tore through the remaining attackers at full speed, ripping the underbrush up at the root in some places, until he charged into a wide but shallow stream. The air still smelled strangely of light and dark magic.

Vara. She had been there. His stomach twisted sickly.

Adevan looked to the sky. The graven was not as far off as he would have expected—good. He took up the largest river stone he knew he could hurl with deadly speed and power. If he struck the graven at its current height and if his plan worked, the fall would certainly kill the girl. This was not how he had hoped things would go. He gritted his teeth against the weakness of his mortal flesh.

It had to be done. It had to be done.

Arras cannot afford another Evershade.

But the stone never left his hand. As he pulled back, something struck the back of his head with surprising force. He dropped the stone. His legs buckled. Vision swimming and ears ringing, he turned to see what—or who—had attacked him. Downwind of him, an old woman stood at a respectful distance, holding in her knotted hands a mighty staff. He fell to one knee. Then to the other. Her voice reached him, over the rush of the water.

“Nizhe basz le’epho, sar’ne?” Not very nice is it?

He was on the edge of darkness and had not heard it since childhood, but he still knew the halfblood tongue. He fell back into the stream then, probably not far from where Vara had just been. The old woman came to stand over him. Her peering eyes glinted as only a halfblood’s could.

“Sar’ne b’ya trebal dazhi mortov?” Aren’t you supposed to be dead?

Adevan scoffed. His tongue felt like paper, but he managed to speak.

“Do’je vogatho, dolazhi oth’zene kotha dje u’prafo pho’gsla da me’bithe—sar’ne?” That’s rich, coming from the woman who just tried to kill me—no?

She laughed at the bitter accusation, a fearless sound.

“Da’zham tre zjele mortov,” she quipped, waving a gnarled hand. “B’ya bje.”

If I had wanted you dead, you would be.

“Dragar’an.”

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“This is absurd. It has been eleven days.”

Althioc kept his grip on the mage’s arm light. He could snap it like a dry reed.

Her tone had grown steadily sharper since her arrival on Seraq and, today, it bordered on open impudence, but the facts remained. His father had only promised to consider her proposal. He had neither promised to make the alliance with her uncle nor given any indication as to when he would decide, one way or another. Not for the first time, Althioc had found her banging ineffectually on the King and Queen’s door, demanding an audience. And, once again, he found himself leading her away.

“Let me go,” she ordered coldly. “Now.”

“The King will give you an answer when he is ready,” Althioc said, finally releasing her. She spun to face him. “Agreeing to see you was honor enough.”

“Honor,” she repeated, incredulous. Her silver eyes glinted. “Our elderbloods are being killed, our children are being seized, and we have been forced to scratch out a pitiful existence in the harshest corner of the land. Certainly, I have no lack of honor.”

She said the last part a bit louder, in the general direction of the King. Althioc gave her a warning look. “Take yourself in hand, mage.”

But, in truth, he felt the same impatience. He could neither understand nor justify his father’s slowness of action, and was unsure how much longer even he could bear the indecision in silence. The mage Isydenia Nossidar had already proven to be a knowledgeable resource—she knew which elven and mortal houses were openly displeased with Deladari rule, which sea merchants would support them in a war, and which of both might be prevailed upon, once lines were drawn. She had presented her proposal the day she had arrived, and had been clear that her uncle’s stipulations—a mage kingdom, for one—were largely negotiable. The mages were desperate. Yet his father had not broached the topic again.

Eleven days.

“Not everyone has as much time as you do,” she went on bitterly but with more control. “Not everyone can wait.”

Thanks to Ayari’s questioning, Althioc already knew her situation.

“Your mortal husband will still be young when you meet again,” Althioc offered, walking past her at a normal pace. “Weathered, perhaps. But none the worse for wear.”

In the privacy of his mind, Althioc scoffed. As a mage, Isydenia’s lifespan was not without end, but it certainly exceeded that of a mortal. As such, marrying one made no sense whatsoever. It diluted the blood. The magic. And it invited just this sort of grief.

She chose this life.

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“You think me foolish for marrying a mortal. I know,” she observed, keeping in step. “But when your house was ousted and the Usurper first came to power, only mage-to-mage pairings were scrutinized. We never imagined that every marriage would be subject to the throne’s consent.”

Even so, she should have kept to her own. “And when do you expect to receive word on whether the throne has consented to your ‘marriage’?”

The mage shook her head, her lips pulled tight and thin across her face. “There are very few consents.”

As a prince, Althioc had interacted with mages only rarely when his family was in power. He knew just one thing for certain—they could not be trusted. While his people were as immovable as the earth itself, mages had always been as changeable and fleeting as their power, which seemingly came and went at its leisure. Yet he could not deny the acrid scent of pain on her. And longing. A longing as fierce as any he had ever known. That he understood very well.

“Where is he? Your husband.”

She hesitated. “I do not know. And I cannot find him the way I would find another mage—such as my brother, or my cousins. Somewhere in the south. With your people.”

“Not my people.”

She sighed. “With the other adevani. Or elves, rather.”

Elves. He still hadn’t gotten used to the name mainlanders had begun to call his kind, continually mispronouncing the ilfyc title granted to them by the isle folk. The merchants had taken the word back with them, on their many journeys across the strait, and it had taken on a life of its own. Unfortunately.

“When did you last see him?”

Isydenia blinked. “I think it must be fifteen years,” she finally admitted. “Yes. Fifteen years.”

While she remains unchanged. She would look no older than thirty long after her mortal husband was gone, and she had already been cheated of the little time they had. Althioc heard her breathing quicken, sensed a whisper of panic overcome her. It was the urge to do anything, if only to do something. He knew it well.

Below them, in the village of Gesu, the seraqis had lit several large bonfires, with meat cooking on the spits. It was some kind of yearly festival. Althioc had watched it from the cliffs many times in the twenty years he had lived on Seraq, but the sight of the increasing festivity seemed to affect Isydenia more. She stared down at the commotion, frowning deeply.

“I spent forty years on this earth without noting the passage of time and, now, all I see are the coming and going of the seasons,” she said, looking up from the crowd and towards the mainland. It would be invisible to her eyes. “Rolling by like a great, unstoppable wheel.”

Althioc could smell more than see the bottomless grief behind her strange, silver eyes. There was a sudden deadness to her gaze. The wind gusted, sending wisps of her ash-white hair across her pale face. Her breathing hitched.

“In another forty years, it will be as if he never was.”

Her shoulders buckled. Resignation had crept into her voice. That was dangerous, and something that he simply would not allow. He had fought the same despair too many times himself, and he would be damned if his father’s slowness cost him this alliance. Were she his sister, he would take her by the arm and shake her.

“You will see him again, long before then,” he declared. “When we reclaim my father’s throne.”

“When we reclaim it,” she bit out. “And when is that?”

At his silence, she brushed the stray tears that had fallen and began making her way down the hill, towards the village below.

“Perhaps my father—”

He stopped himself. At the uncharacteristic hesitation, Isydenia turned, but only halfway. Her cheeks were reddened by the cold and her own rough sleeves, her figure cutting a stubborn silhouette against the flaming ruby sky of sunset. She set her shoulders again, frowning back at him.

“Perhaps. Perhaps what?”

The mage searched his face, confused. But they were still too close to the King and Queen’s hut. Althioc gestured towards the village below, where the drums had begun. Understanding him, Isydenia followed him down the slope. Once they had reached the village itself, the celebratory dancing was at its height. Morie meat was being roasted and drinks were flowing. Torches had been lit and everyone’s spirits were high. Almost no one noticed them, tracing a path along the edge of the celebration. Althioc took a breath.

“Perhaps my father needs his own eyes in Karahas.”

It was a moment before she dared speak. “You mean yourself.”

“I do.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw her peering up at him. She was shocked.

“I can neither offer nor guarantee protection for someone of significance,” she murmured. “The journey will take us through territory friendly to the Usurper.”

“Then we will have to be quick and clever.”

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Beside him, her strides grew lighter. Her purpose had returned. Her voice was brighter when she asked, “And the King? What will you tell him?”

“The truth,” he said, sidestepping a drunk reveler. He raised his voice. “It will not serve our aim to hide it.”

Isydenia nodded. “I suppose you can call it a sort of investigative expedition.”

At the familiarity of the suggestion, he stopped walking. She looked up at him, expectant. The expression quickly wilted.

“Let me be clear,” he began. “Your people and mine share a common purpose. That is all. If I take this journey, I will not be yours to command—or cajole.”

Her silvery eyes glinted. “I see.”

“Speak with one of the captains in port now. There are several here for the festival,” he finished. “We must go before the seas are too rough for a safe return.”

Isydenia nodded curtly and they parted ways, the mage slipping into the jubilant crowd like a shadow. Althioc separated himself from the commotion, eager to be away from the din. As soon as he did, he heard familiar, quick footsteps. He sighed. He should have known.

“Ayari.”

“I wondered how long you would suffer my silence.”

Althioc’s heart shuddered at the unexpected voice. He turned to find not his sister but his father emerging from the shadows, with a woven crown on his head and his finest woolen cloak around his shoulders. The King had come from downwind, leveraged the noise of the festival as Althioc had, and intentionally—masterfully—mirrored his daughter’s footsteps, starkly reminding his son that he was not just a figurehead. In the near distance, the Queen watched them from among the revelers with an unreadable expression. Althioc wondered how long they had been stalking him, but of one truth he was certain: They had heard everything. He braced himself for a swift admonishment. None came.

“You may go to Karahas,” the King said, placing a heavy hand on Althioc’s shoulder. “Besides putting the idea of an alliance with the mages to rest, as I suspect it will, this journey will prevent a schism from forming within our family.”

Althioc gathered his thoughts. “A schism.”

“I know Ayari takes your side in this, and even Allar has begun to doubt my decision to wait,” he admitted. “But I have only now decided to permit it because you never intended to deceive me.”

Althioc thanked the gods that he had spoken as he did. But sharp disappointment bloomed and overpowered his relief. He steadied his voice before speaking.

“I would be very grateful to join Allar on the journey.”

“Allar is the eldest and heir to the throne, yes,” the King went on with a measure of resignation. He lowered his hand. “But it was not Allar who warned me about the Deladaris, years ago. Had I listened to you and Ayari then, our situation might be very different.”

Althioc’s stomach twisted, his throat too thick to speak.

“Do what you must but swear no oaths, in my name or your own,” the King murmured with sobering finality. “And remember that mages cannot be trusted.”

How could I forget. “I will. I do. Thank you, father.”

As the King left his side and rejoined the Queen, a chorus of excited cries went up among the revelers, but Althioc barely heard them. His mind and his intentions were already many miles away, on the shores of Karahas. He had been fighting to return for so long, that he half thought himself standing in one of the visions that mortals had when they slept—a world shadowed yet true. But this was no dream. He had been granted his wish. He was returning to Karahas.

My home. His family’s kingdom and birthright.

He found Ayari night-hunting prized fyerfish among the northern tide pools, and just as eager to return to Karahas as when the mage had first arrived. Her unbridled joy at their father’s concession mirrored what he ought to feel, but for a gnawing disquiet that he could not reason out. The remainder of the night passed in a sleepless, restless haze.

By dawn, Isydenia had secured passage for three on one of the merchant vessels that had made berth for the Seraqi festival, and by late morning they were crossing the western strait. As the craggy outline of Seraq began to soften on the eastern horizon, Ayari came to stand beside her brother at the stern. Together, they watched the isle shrink until the boat began to swing towards the northwest. Then they turned away. Ayari’s jewel-green eyes glistened.

“There is no going back,” she murmured. “You do know that.”

She did not mean that they would never return. She meant that what they were about to do would set things irreversibly in motion. He nodded.

“He is taking us to a sea village just south of Arysdur,” Isydenia announced, stumbling towards them from midship, where she had been speaking with the captain. “We will cut across country from there, and come to Bladmuir from the east. We make port sometime tomorrow night.”

Arysdur? Ayari mirrored his confused look. Althioc gestured north. “We should pass through the Shudderlands. It is the more direct path.”

Isydenia shook her head. “No one uses the northern road anymore, so no ships make port north of Farfal’s Gap.”

“Why?”

“Because it is impossible,” the mage insisted, gripping the starboard railing at an unexpected swell. “Creatures now roam the Shudderlands.”

Creatures.

Ayari cocked her head. “You mean the beasts that come from the other side of the mountains? Fenrir and—”

“And vilbjorn, yes.” Isydenia swayed, glancing between them with a frown. “I thought you knew. You had to have—”

“No,” Althioc gritted out. “We did not.”

His sister raised a hand. “How long has this been going on?”

“For the last few years. The fenrir came first,” the mage offered. “And now we see volmori and arctarth on the northern border of Bladmuir several times a month. Sometimes more.”

Silent rage and utter disbelief rose in Althioc. The Dragars had held the creatures from beyond the mountains at bay for generations, only for their efforts to now be destroyed by a single ruinous king in a mere twenty years. This one dereliction of duty might be enough to rally his father and his father’s allies to war, but he and Ayari would have to see it for themselves. Ayari nodded her blessing.

“Tell the captain to leave us at Farfal’s Gap. We are taking the northern road.”

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The great fortress of Dabdagan was so large and so enduring that Idabel had always given it the same, careless awareness that she would give to the northern mountains, or to any immovable landmark. Each stone, each rounded turret, even the arching halls and spiraling walkways, were so incalculably massive that it was almost impossible to observe them honestly. It was so large that a sizable grove of trees lay at the center of the fortress, hemmed by sprawling grounds—herbs, vegetables, and a cascading flower garden. One glistening arm of the Teverene River delta snaked its way through the greenery and, every time the breeze changed, a breath of crisp air wafted up to the dining pavilion, where Idabel had been sitting since dawn.

What a shame she couldn’t enjoy any of it.

Her stomach roiled as she flipped a coarse page in the spiralbound she held, not having read a word. Trying in vain to arrest the momentum of her careening thoughts, she methodically took a tasteless sip of now-tepid tea. Her fingers jerked as she set the cup down and its bottom met the plate a little too sharply. She glanced up, keeping her gaze light, to see if anyone had noticed. There were just a few people beneath the sweeping vined bower, scattered at different tables. Some sat alone, others in pairs, but they were all there for the same reason. Today, their children were being tested for dreams.

Idabel’s gaze met that of a woman several years her junior, a dark skinned beauty with thick, ribboning hair and large black eyes—hallmarks of the southern houses. An unassuming man sat beside her, holding her hand, his own face pale beneath the freckles. The fear Idabel felt was reflected in their faces. The young woman looked away blankly.

Those who sat alone were more relaxed. One father actually was reading a crinkled set of loose papers, while another mother had made significant progress on some kind of embroidery, to pass the time. Their smooth brows, quiet smiles and loose postures were a stark contrast to the visible strain and stress of those couples whose children might actually have the dreams.

Damn them. Damn all of them. Damn the calm ones for their peace and the others for the freedom to show their fear. Idabel had neither privilege.

As far as anyone knew, Edrianne and Edric were Trebor’s children, meaning the odds of them having the dreams would be—should be—incredibly low. Thus, by all appearances, Idabel had nothing to worry about. It was to maintain those appearances that she had kept Trebor from coming with her this morning. If Edrianne and Edric had been his children, he would have seen no need to attend. At least, she comforted herself, if they were fortunate and the twins failed the test, no one would suspect the truth.

It was a small sort of accomplishment.

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The dining pavilion was situated at the southernmost section of the gardens, with the most impressive view of the fortress itself. Idabel had already counted the conical turrets—there were 64—but the rising of the day’s sun meant that the inhabitants of Dabdagan had also begun to wake up, and that provided a more worthy distraction.

She didn’t know how many mages, mortals and halfbloods in service of the Counsel lived at Dabdagan on a permanent basis, but she imagined it numbered in the several thousands. Though it was still early morning, the packed gravel walkways and open-air stone halls had begun to teem with people. Some walked slowly, others quickly and with purpose. Many wore either the pale green robes of novices or the golden-yellow of entrants, those who were determining their life’s work. Beyond that, Idabel only knew that the rarest shade of robe was black, that the mages in crimson never spoke, and that mortals or halfbloods in the Counsel’s service were not given colored robes as a rule.

“Why, Idabel—it’s good to see you.”

Idabel started as a hand came to rest on her shoulder. She looked up and, for a moment, thought herself back in another time and place—with stormy skies overhead and shale mountains in the near distance. The face had aged, but Idabel couldn’t possibly forget it, though she had often tried. It felt as though she’d woken from one dream and stepped into another. Somewhere, a bell tolled dully.

“Rhienne.”

A cultured, unreadable smile. “May I join you?”

Idabel gestured at the seat across from her. “Of course. Please.”

The roiling in Idabel’s stomach was abruptly replaced by the more immediate and overwhelming sensation of a pounding heart. It had been fifteen years since they’d parted ways, and Idabel had decided long ago what she would do if they met again. But she couldn’t remember now. She was too stunned.

She looks so much like Edrianne. It was jarring. Disturbing.

Rhienne’s hair was a darker red and her eyes a sharper blue, but she shared Edrianne’s unmistakably rounded, open features and full cheeks. Edric had inherited Idabel’s sharp brows and jaw, but anyone who saw her daughter and Rhienne together would assume they were cousins at least. That simple fact made Idabel feel even more exposed. Rhienne settled into her chair and began waving down one of the tea bearers.

“Have you been enjoying your time in the capital?” There was a coolness to the her eyes that hadn’t always been there. “So far, I mean.”

Idabel calmly leafed her spiralbound shut and slid it onto another chair. At the other tables, the father looked up from his papers and the embroidering mother glanced their way with mild interest. The nervous parents sat as still as stone, waiting.

“There’s nothing like Esset,” Idabel offered in admission. “I missed it more than I knew I would.”

From the deeply-shaded kitchen terrace, overgrown with blue wisteria and silvery isydenias, its doorways guarded by gauze to keep out the stray fly, a young girl appeared, wearing a long, white shift and no shoes. She carried a steaming bowl in one hand, a towel on her other arm, and wove between the dining clusters with exceptional grace. Her long hair was free, save for two pins that kept it behind her ears, and it was golden, save for a surprising streak of grey that started at her left temple. It shone so brightly in the sun, Idabel almost didn’t catch the difference in color. She had wistful, green eyes, and smiled widely, her teeth over-large for her face. She couldn’t be a day older than seventeen. Idabel wouldn’t have cared, except she also reminded her of Edrianne. The sickness in her stomach rose again.

Gods forbid. The girl set the bowl down, lay the towel beside it then bowed.

“What can I fetch for you, my lady?”

“The full order,” Rhienne said. “And another flask of tea, thank you.”

“Honey or sap, and pulp or no pulp?”

Rhienne looked a little irritated. “Sap and pulp. As always.”

The girl flitted away. The bowl of water smelled of rosemary, lemongrass and a light oil, likely lyndees. Rhienne dipped her delicate, pale hands. Only when she had finished washing did the girl return, bringing with her a tray of different bowls and plates. Idabel caught the scent of onions, garlic, fig mash, and red beans even before she set the tray down.

“A stew of root and grains, cucumber and onion chop, mixed jam with flatbread, and a sap-flavored tea, with the pulp,” the child recited confidently, gesturing at the plates, each item more colorful than the last. “Will you need anything else?”

“No,” Rhienne sighed, waving a hand. “You may go.”

The girl swept the towel and washing bowl away and disappeared. Idabel poured herself more tea, the steam rising from her cup as she sipped. It was soothing and, most importantly, something to do. The way Rhienne moved and spoke, and the way the girl reacted to her, told Idabel that she had become important here.

Tread carefully. She forced her brow to smooth.

“I’m afraid you’ll find food here to be rather light,” Rhienne murmured, arranging the bowls to her liking. “You have to go as far as Mor-Garial to find meat like what we have in the north. Hungry?”

Idabel shook her head and smiled. “I did notice.”

Rhienne wiped a beet-red paste on a piece of flatbread. “It’s my one complaint.”

Her one complaint, really. “How long have you been in Esset? Or Dabdagan.”

The young woman sat up a little straighter and eyes wide. “Goodness, I suppose the crop-houses are as isolated as they say. At least one rumor is true,” she observed, almost to herself, then: “I’ve been here thirteen years.”

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Idabel could only stare as she began to eat. “Thirteen years? But…why?”

One of Rhienne’s brows arched. “True, a house like Vulfbane hasn’t historically been desirable to the Counsel—”

“You mistake my meaning,” Idabel offered.

“—but things can change,” Rhienne went on, ignoring the correction. “After Rogar’s death, our house would have collapsed but I was, thankfully, blessed with the gift of dreams. So I now work for the High Hand of Dabdagan, Cazagar, and we are in favor.”

A moment of silence. Rhienne chewed slowly, eyeing Idabel’s face.

“Your shock surprises me—I remember you having a talent for the game,” she mused blandly, swallowing. “My family certainly was granted first row to your performance.”

Oh gods. The regret had dulled with time but a blunt blade could still bruise.

“Rhienne,” Idabel said, suddenly and in a low voice. “I am sorry.”

The young woman looked up, blinking with apparently genuine shock.

“I am sorry for marrying so soon after Rogar’s death. I know it hurt you.”

Rhienne’s gaze narrowed slightly, her voice even when she spoke again. “My brother’s death has nothing to do with this. And your marriage is of no interest to me.”

“Perhaps not but even so—even if I had tried to explain, you couldn’t have really understood,” Idabel finished. “You were a child.”

Rhienne leaned back in her chair. “A child. Like Edrianne? Like Edric?”

Idabel’s fingers tightened around her cup. Rhienne’s eyes flicked down at the movement then up again. For a moment, the young woman seemed to consider her own thoughts, her chin cocked slightly. She took a sharp breath.

“But then, they’re older than I was,” she mused, leaning forward slowly. “How old are the twins?”

A wave of nausea almost threatened to undo Idabel just then. Her mouth had long since gone dry. Her thoughts were spinning. She swallowed.

“Thirteen.”

A cruel, cultured smile this time. “No.”

The pavilion had added to its numbers, as visitors and residents ate their breakfasts and chatted energetically about the day’s events. It suddenly felt like a chaotic, macabre festival with the wretched young woman across from her at its center. Idabel’s vision shook. If she could just stand up, she could leave and not listen to this horror anymore. But she couldn’t make herself move. She was frozen in fear.

“This is hardly the place to call an old friend a liar,” Rhienne offered lightly. No one who heard her tone would guess the seriousness of their conversation. “Frankly, I’m not supposed tell you before the trials are done, but the results are quite conclusive—and I thought you’d want to hear it from a familiar face.”

No. Please, gods no. This was why she had come. To destroy me.

“It is with both personal and professional delight that I can say Edrianne’s dreams show immense promise, and that we look forward to her development,” she finally announced, ending the needless stalemate. “Edric seems to lack them entirely, so you may take him back to Orrendale just as soon as you recover your ability to speak.”

Idabel set her shoulders, willing her voice to be level. It still trembled. “When my husband’s work here is done, my son and my daughter are going with us.”

Rhienne’s eyes sparkled vilely. “No. She’s not.”

It was her fears made real. It was the worst thing that could have happened. That Rogar’s sister was the one to do it only pushed the knife deeper. But Rhienne had to have known that. She had wanted to do it.

Breathe. If Idabel didn’t breathe she would faint.

“Smile, dear,” Rhienne said, standing. “I’ve already drummed up a fine explanation for this most interesting result. But you should know that I know the truth.”

She put a hand on Idabel’s shoulder and leaned close enough to whisper.

“I always did—child or not.”

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Nightwing screeched miserably as she crested the western mountains, flying into the dawn, towards the mainland of Arras. Her made-heart thundered against her ribs and her carefully woven sinews very nearly creaked under the burden of the entrenched blindsight that hid the valley below. Through Nightwing’s simple mind, Revon knew it felt like flying through honey. But he didn’t stop her. He merely yielded her more power and urged her onwards. She might kill herself.

So be it. Just as long as she got them over the mountains.

Nightwing was replaceable. The mage he had found most certainly was not.

Draped across and lashed to the graven’s rippling back, the black-haired young woman looked as good as dead. Only her shallow breathing suggested that she was, in fact, still alive. To simplify her capture, he had untethered her mind from the other six facets of her being—flesh, bone, blood, heart, soul and breath—and siphoned it into the milky hexstone on his breastplate. Just hours before, that same stone had been weighed down to the limit, each of its nearly four thousand facets occupied by one mortal will. The people of the hidden valley had been as easy to manage as any other group of mortals, but had proven themselves to be far more valuable in the end.

If he could thank them, he might.

It had been well over a hundred years since the last whisper of another Evershade, long quieting any sincere ambition to reclaim the bloodline’s inherited memories. That an entire branch of his house had been propagating, undetected, on the other side of the western mountains bordered on comedy. It had been right under his nose for centuries.

He had had his chances, of course, but he had squandered them. 

Uncharacteristically.

Not this time. Since his last failed attempt, Revon had meticulously studied the last living allwood—it remained standing for this purpose alone—and spent decades among the siphons. Every shred of knowledge pertaining to the allwoods and their function, every word on inherited memories and the art of siphoning, had passed through his hands. He would still need to plan and rehearse every move, yes, but he was more ready than he had ever been to do what no one had ever done.

And yet it must be done.

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A powerful shudder went through Nightwing and she released another agonized wail. He felt her beginning to tear asunder, to fray at her weakest points, where her different creature-types were bound together—particularly where her feathered neck met her chest and where her raven wings met her feline shoulders. Revon released more power from his meldstone into its other half, which had been sewn deep into Nightwing’s chest, and felt her bear up once again. She only needed to last a little longer.

Revon felt the resistance, too. At first, it had been a kind of weight on his head and shoulders, drawing them towards the ground. But, as Nightwing had flown east, the direction of the drag had shifted and begun to pull them backwards—no doubt, towards Tareth himself. Beyond the obvious inconvenience, there was something extremely irritating about their situation. It almost looked as if Revon was afraid to face an elder blood mage, which was absurd. He would not have fled under any other circumstances.

At his front, the mage’s breathing hitched. Her mind had been siphoned for only a short while, but he needed to keep a close watch if he wanted her to come out of the ordeal useful. In an abundance of caution, he would need to retether her mind soon.

Abruptly, and with perfect timing, Nightwing shook out her feathery crown. The strain of the blindsight eased then dissipated. Her wings arched and she began to glide through the cold air, using only updrafts to stay afloat. Freed from Tareth’s grip, they picked up speed and were soon soaring east over ribboning riverlands. He would return and deal with Tareth. Soon.

But, right now, Nightwing wouldn’t even get them to Dabdagan. The injuries she had sustained from the struggle with Tareth’s magic were deep and fundamental. And, now that they were over the mountains, Revon would preserve her if he could. They would need to stop at a mortal house between here and the capital, so he could make a full assessment of the damage.

They had reached the western border of crop country, and the rolling green hills had turned to a colorful patchwork of cultivated fields. Ox-drawn plows and their drivers peppered the landscape. Farm dogs barked and howled down below. Every so often, someone in a field would see Nightwing and stare in utter shock. It was unusual for a raven-rider to fly so low and during the day, when mortals could see them.

Revon was unconcerned with mortal history and, given the subjects’ foreshortened lifespans, land and keeps changed hands so often that it hardly made sense to memorize anything about them. But, looking further east as the sun brightened, even he recognized the glassy lake and bustling town that sprawled along its edges. An impressive, flaxen-colored castle was perched on a grassy hill to the north, and deep gold flags with indistinguishable green details fluttered from every visible railing.

Orrendale.

It was by far the largest and wealthiest crop house in Arras, friendly to the Counsel, by necessity, and in control of the thoroughfare that led directly to Dabdagan. He couldn’t remember the lord’s name, but Lady Idabel Orrendale (formerly of Dulac) had been the most beautiful and sought-after mortal woman in her youth, making her marriage to the second-son of Orrendale shocking to say the least. Things had worked out in her favor—his older brother had perished shortly after taking their father’s seat and her husband had shown remarkable industriousness in expanding his family’s holdings—but her choice had been whispered about from the Shudderlands to Surrat.

Even Revon had heard about it, and he cared nothing for the goings on of mortal houses. He had met her in her youth and his only thought was what a shame that something so exquisite had such limited utility. She lacked the gift of dreams and so did the Orrendales, which meant that her children would have no purpose, no real legacy. Here one day, then dust the next.

What a waste.

The castle loomed nearer, its southeastern face glowing gold in the sun. As required by Counsel law for every prominent mortal house, the family had built a ravensward at one corner. Unfortunately, it looked to be one of the more makeshift iterations. Revon brushed Nightwing’s mind with his own and instructed her to circle twice before landing, so as to give them time to prepare for his arrival. A house this large and wealthy would have its own Counselhand, a talented and pleasant mage that would make himself or herself useful to the family, while also maintaining an eye on the Counsel’s interests in the region. He wondered who it was.

I do hope it’s not some lesser. Experience would be appreciated at a moment like this.

As Nightwing circled, Revon extended his third-hand towards the keep, searching for another mage. Someone pressed him back, only briefly. His presence was known.

Nightwing’s landing shook the rickety, wooden platform of the Orrendale ravensward and the cross beams creaked. But it held long enough that Revon dismounted, swept his thick cloak aside, and took stock of their situation. Two stall-like wooden shelters had been built against the stone tower that acted as the platform’s main support. Both were large enough for Nightwing to use but were hardly the spacious quarters she’d grown accustomed to. There was no sign of a keeper, there was no water, there was no food. Nightwing warbled unhappily and collapsed onto her haunches.

Disgraceful.

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The tower door opened and a woman stepped out into the mid-morning light. She wore the gold and green of Orrendale, but blue sleeve cuffs to indicate that she served the High Hand. Three stones dangled carelessly on her necklace, swinging back and forth as she approached. As with most Counselhands, she was fair to look at but also forgettable, almost childlike and unremarkable with red-brown hair, brown eyes and skin that was both tanned and freckled. Counselhands were always unassuming in appearance, so as to avoid a sense of competition with their mortal lords and ladies. She smiled pleasantly and he caught a resemblance to someone else he knew.

“Sani, Counselhand to Orrendale. My younger sister was your lesser,” she began, shaking his hand quickly. She knew who he was. “Sya Vorana?”

Ah, of course. This was the less successful Vorana daughter. “I remember.”

“I apologize for the state of our ravensward—I’m having game and water brought up for your graven. How else can I be of service?”

Revon’s irritation eased. For all her mild manners, the mage seemed to have a handle on the place. They could discuss improvements later.

“I need a maker.”

Sani glanced at Nightwing, surprised. “We have none. Is she—”

“Then I need you to get word to Dabdagan, and have them send one,” he said, pulling off his gloves. “Does this keep have a dungeon?”

“Not anymore,” she replied, confused. “But there is a jail in town.”

“A cellar then?”

“Yes, we just expanded it.”

Good. Revon gestured at his unlikely prize. Only now realizing that there was a person draped across Nightwing’s back, the small Counselhand gasped softly and came around to look. The graven didn’t move but hissed and Sani backed up a couple steps once more.

“Who is she?”

“Whoever brings the water and game will take her down to the cellar,” Revon ordered, not bothering to address her question. “I want as few eyes on her as possible.”

Sani nodded, frowning in thought. “Of course, but there are a number of spare bedrooms. The lord and lady are gone but they would never object to—”

“No,” he declared. “The cellar.”

“I beg your pardon, but the kitchen hands use the cellar,” she offered—cautiously. “I’m not sure how we would—”

The same tower door slammed open again, this time revealing a broad man with unkempt pepper-black hair and plain clothing. Two deer were slung over one shoulder and two oversized buckets of water were grasped in the other hand. The weight of his cargo coupled with the stairs should have been enough to exhaust even the strongest mortal man, but he wasn’t even slightly winded. As he ventured towards the further of the two stalls, Revon brushed his mind. It was chaotic, illegible, muddy—as unkempt as his appearance. Revon retracted his third-hand the way one would drop a soiled cloth.

A halfblood.

“Kol will take her down,” Sani offered then, apologetically: “He is stronger than any of the keepers.”

Revon nodded, lips tight. “Koza have their uses.”

Sani’s eyes widened sharply at the archaic slur for the halfblooded—it was not a pleasant word. Unwilling to let him so close to Nightwing, Revon untied the unconscious mage himself and slid her down onto the wood. The graven shuddered, fluffed the feathers on her crest, and lifted herself to her feet with effort. Once she had begun tearing at the deer carcasses, the halfblood swept up the unconscious mage and went ahead of them down the stairs. He didn’t speak and he didn’t lift his gaze.

They reached the main floor of the castle quickly. The old structure had been expanded many times over the centuries, which lent a chaos to the internal architecture. Its one saving grace was that the stone all matched, more or less, having likely been cut from the same quarry. Enormous, richly colored tapestries lined the hall in both directions, and green or golden banners streamed from the dark wooden crossbeams overhead. Gauzy curtains fluttered in windows, and a center courtyard overgrown with fruit trees and flowers could be seen—and smelled—through the nearest doorway. Unseen yet heard, wind ornaments shimmered and a bird sang, as childish laughter and small, shoeless feet echoed through a nearby passage.

With the mage still over one shoulder, the halfblood yanked a door in the outer wall open and began to descend a set of stone stairs. The air rising up from the dark was cool and damp, and smelled of fresh dirt. At the base of the stairs, the halfblood’s boots went silent on packed earth. Sani had brought a lamp down with her, and their own figures cast long, shaking shadows against stacked barrels, racks of wine, bunches of herbs, and salted meats that hung from the ceiling. At the far end, there appeared to be a large swath of open room with a stone platform, as opposed to the dirt floor where they now stood. Revon caught the scent of lye, as if someone had been cleaning. He nearly took a breath to ask then realized—they had expanded the cellar into the dungeon. And, obviously, it had required cleaning.

“Put her where the old dungeon was,” he ordered. Only once the halfblood obeyed did he turn to Sani: “I hope not to be in Orrendale long, but she will need blankets and a cot of some kind in the meantime. Bring a small writing desk, paper, ink and pen—I have several messages to draft this morning.”

Sani nodded, eyelids fluttering as she took it all in. “And I suppose only Kol or myself will be allowed in here until you do leave?”

Kol had come to stand beside her. Revon realized that he still hadn’t spoken. That kind of silence had to be trained. Perhaps he’d been one of the redguard.

“Yes,” Revon replied, putting his curiosity aside. “And bring different foods, I suppose. When I retether her mind, she must be made to eat.”

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Vara awoke to an empty, treacherously angry stomach. She grimaced.

Eggs. She wanted eggs. And fresh milk.

Soon enough. It was still too early to venture into the mess hall—she could tell by the light behind her eyelids. If she didn’t think too hard or for too long, she could get a bit more sleep. Hands, but her legs were cold. She shifted, searching for a softer bit of bed, and reached for the blanket. Instead, her arm brushed something hard on her hip.

Her knife. Why would she be—

Her eyes flew open. They found not the stone ceiling of her bedroom at Torfell, but a leafy green canopy backed by sapphire sky. Her heart stuttered as the last two days—three days?—surged to the front of her mind. Half stunned, she blinked away the beautiful lie and recounted what had actually led up to this moment. Umber, wolves, river, Laregan. And now they were on their way home.

To Tor. To tell Osper and Yorian about Umber. Today.

The truth was so jarring that it took her a moment to notice the Stranger.

A lank, coarse figure, the disagreeable man was on his feet, staring at the forest to the west. At the sight of him, his brazen questions about her inability to heal—Why so long? How? How many? And since then? Is that true? Were they really accidents?—stung again, pricking like a reopened scab. The wash of fury was quick and intense, and she would have rolled away to put more distance between them, but something stopped her. It was still dark, yet not dark enough to hide the grim recognition in his eyes. He didn’t strike her as easily spooked, so as she watched him lower himself to the ground, a faint sense of dread overcame her. He was breathing heavily.

“Keep very still.”

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Vara swallowed, wide awake. “Wolves?”

He hesitated. “Worse.”

What could be worse? On the other side of the fire, Leith yawned raucously and started saying something about reaching Tor by midday. Vara sucked in a breath. The Stranger bounded over and clamped a hand firmly over his mouth. Leith struggled only briefly. The Stranger froze, waiting.

At first, nothing changed. The forest was as still as they were. Then came the steady, plodding steps of many feet. Underbrush crackled and hissed as bodies brushed past it, one after the other.

Umber. It had to be. They had seen the fire. They were coming for vengeance. That would certainly be worse than wolves. For me.

She rolled onto her stomach and took to all fours, ready to spring. She wanted to run. The Stranger shook his head and gestured sharply for her to stop. He was out of his mind. She wasn’t going to wait to die.

“I will lead them away,” he insisted, voice low. “When the way is clear, climb a tree. And, for the gods’ sake, stay there.”

He waited, staring at her. He wanted assurance that she would obey. Vara nodded once, if only to end the stalemate. But she would run if she had to.

The Stranger released Leith and unfolded to his full height, now in full view of whoever was approaching, then bounded out of sight. The speed and precision of his movements sent a belated jolt through her, head to toe. One moment, he was there—then he was simply gone. She looked over at Leith and saw her own wariness mirrored in his eyes.

No one can move that fast. Yet the Stranger had.

But there was no time to discuss the matter. The plodding footsteps at her back shifted into a run, and it required every drop of restraint she had earned over the years to stay flat on the ground, as the army of people charged past their small camp. She covered her head on instinct, but no arrows whistled overhead and no swords were even drawn. Besides the thunderous footsteps, the pursuers were strangely silent and, once those had faded, it almost felt as though she had imagined it all.

Leith cursed softly and Vara looked up. He was gripping his side where he lay, his face ashen. Somehow, between the river and now, he had gotten injured. He wasn’t one to complain, so she could trust that it was serious. It seemed the Stranger’s plan for them to hide in the trees was the only way. Vara hissed to get his attention and pointed upwards. He nodded with effort, and they converged towards the nearest tree with enough knots for climbing.

At its base, Vara’s nerve almost gave out. They'd be exposed for a moment, no matter what. They just had to hope that there wasn’t a second group of pursuers. Leith gestured for her to go first, still holding his side. As she clambered up, she saw more figures shrouded in the dawn fog. The cover of darkness was all but gone—they needed to be quick. Once in the tree, she straddled a branch and hooked one arm around a smaller limb for leverage. Hand shaking, she reached down.

“This side,” she mouthed, directing Leith. She looked to the west. The shapes were coming closer. “Quick, quick!”

He took her hand and started to climb, the pain plain on his fiercely freckled face. Hands, he was heavy. But she had him. She had him. And she didn’t think the others had seen them. They hadn’t started to run.

At that very moment, the smaller branch, in the crook of her other arm, snapped. She gasped and drove one foot into the trunk, stopping her own fall. But the violent motion broke their hold. Leith hit the ground, flat on his back, and lay still. Vara bit back her cry of shock.

Beyond the boughs and leaves of her tree, the nearest figures turned, all at once, and faced the commotion. A man with a shadowed face seemed to look right at Leith’s fallen form, but his dead gaze bounced away. Vara had begun to hope against reason that he hadn’t seen it—then something sparked in the man’s eyes, a flash of recognition so intense that it could not be his own. Almost at once, the same spark appeared in the other faces and the band of people charged as one, though no orders were given.

Terror and dread weighed heavy on her. She had never been so afraid—not before, during, or after the war. She wanted to stay in the tree and hide. She wanted to shut her eyes.

But, below her, Leith groaned.

No warrior of the Seven would abandon a comrade while he lived.

And his fall had been her fault.

She had taken the oath. 

All men die. We choose the time. We choose the place.

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Vara swung down, out of the tree, and landed as the first attacker arrived. He careened towards her from the dawn-lit fog, arms and legs jerking haphazardly. She unsheathed her long-knife and nearly severed his head in the same upwards stroke. A shower of blood hit her face and neck, strangely cool and gentle, like summer rain. He toppled. Another came at her, and another. They were disorganized, clumsy. None cried out or protested their own deaths in any way. She cut through them and their flailing limbs with little resistance. But they began to flank her, kept reaching towards her, stretching their hands out. They were trying to touch her.

Something darted between the trees on her left, fast as an arrow. Several of the attackers on that side fell. Another shadow, as quick as a striking snake, passed to the right. Again, several attackers on the right flank collapsed where they stood. But this time, she found the shape of a man in the shadow.

In her distraction, one of the attackers finally grabbed her wrist. The grip was so cold that it burned, and a terrible pain burst forth from where their skin touched. Vara screamed and tried to pull away, but she no longer knew where the agony was coming from. Piercing cold rippled up her arm in a single spasm and, when it reached the base of her skull, her vision went dark. Her thoughts caved in. All sound was sucked into a roaring, raging silence. She tried to reach for a handhold or wall, but there were none.

Something writhed and wheeled towards her in the blackness, reaching for her from the mire of another world. It latched onto an edge of her, as sticky as honey and overwhelming like thirst. She screamed again, but there was no sound—just cold and fear. Thorny darkness folded over her. It was squeezing her. Crushing her. It was impossibly strong. It would win out eventually.

Not it. He.

Unbidden, the Hunger at the back of her own head shrieked to life. It swelled to a monstrous size, overtaking her mind and pushing the intruder out with sheer force. The sharp blackish tendrils of the Other One pulled back and released her. The pressure eased.

She’d never known what freedom was until then.

The waking world clarified slowly, as if through a dark tunnel. She heard the soft gurgling of a very small stream. The sky overhead was now wide open, unbroken by trees, and she stared up at the spinning clouds, willing herself to stay conscious. A pitchy hum whistled in her ears. Heat dribbled down the side of her head. High above, a black bird circled and screeched.

She was lying on her back in a creek bed, her limbs thrown into twisted and unnatural positions. Rocks stuck into her every which way. She tasted blood, wiped her face with a trembling hand, and found that she was covered in mud. Bruising marks on her arms and scratches on her hands told the story of a struggle she didn’t remember. How had she gotten—

Sloshing, uneven footsteps approached, snapping her out of her thoughts. She’d finally lost her knife but picked up a stone. She got onto her side then onto her knees but could go no further. Blurry figures began emerging from the trees on all sides now, approaching with a kind of aimlessness that she didn’t understand. It made her stomach twist.

She could no longer hear Osper’s voice. She couldn't even remember it.

A bird screeched again, this time much, much closer. With a rush and a thrum, something of unspeakable weight landed behind her, splashing into the creek. The ground trembled. A gust of wind blew past her. Her would-be attackers stopped in their tracks, their unseeing eyes still fixed on her. A new set of soggy footsteps—decisive and unhurried—came from behind. Thick, black robes swept into view and hid the creek in front of her.

“You’re no Tareth,” said a pleasant, measured voice. “But far more interesting, I must say.”

Still struggling against a faint, Vara lifted her gaze with great effort. The newcomer was clad entirely in black, and had a shocking, snow-white head of close-cut hair. He took a knee, as if to see her better. He was wiry and lean, almost boyish, with a narrow face and a sharp nose. Any other day, she would have seen him as a child, but there was a cruelty behind his mouth and a coldness in his grey eyes—

His eyes.

Vara blinked, stunned. He had her eyes.

Quick as lightning, he caught her wrist, the same wrist that had been burned earlier. And in exactly the way that water flows along the same paths once they are found, the swirling darkness sped up her arm and back into her mind.

And now she understood. Her earlier escape hadn’t been due to some hidden strength within her. He had only happened upon her then. She had been merely lucky. This time, he knew exactly what he wanted. In a flurry of meticulous, methodical maneuvers, the Other One began picking her apart in a place she hadn’t known existed until just that moment. The tunnel of her mind began to close, folding in like the deep slumber of illness. It happened too quickly for her to react. And she wouldn’t have known what to do. She just held on for as long as she could, as the sound of the creek slipped away. The last thing she saw were his pitiless, ancient eyes. Her eyes.

Then, with one final rending, she tumbled into the black.

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Nights in Blackmoor had always been clear, far enough away from the farmlands and dust storms of the Shaandilar, but they were nothing to the sky that now arched overhead as Adevan moved quietly through the hidden valley. It first turned a pitchy purple, dusted by pale white stars and tattered clouds, then it darkened perceptibly to a bottomless onyx. The ghostly clouds were swept away by a high-flying wind, and the stars began to glint like polished metal. For the first time in his long life, he saw the true contours of the Gosway—the ancient, glimmering star-path that had led travelers across sea and land before all the maps and all the roads. Bats dove for moths and an owl swooped low. He heard the guttural chitter of a fox and the scuttle of a mouse. His eyes adjusted to the change in light easily and, at the darkest hour, when a mortal would only see blackness, Adevan’s eyes captured the rich hues of a world painted by night.

Adevan was no stranger to dark, solitary journeys. When the sky above the western range—which lay east of him—turned the color of wine, and the owls and foxes and little rodents stilled, he knew that dawn was near. Slowly peeling back the shadow of night, the sun arced over the mountains and etched their jagged outline into the face of the peaks across the valley. In the quiet glow of dawn, with the swell of birdsong around him, he found a narrow, winding road that kept in step with the river for as far as he could see to the south. He lengthened his stride but kept to a mortal pace, should he encounter another traveler. Yet by midmorning, he still hadn't crossed paths with anyone.

He was sitting against a tree, chewing on his dried rations under a high sun when he heard a distant howl. Then another. Shrieks and screams followed.

At once, the world around him came into blistering focus. He swung up into the straight-trunked tree at his back and pulled himself high among the boughs. From his new vantage point, he deepened his hearing and combed the forest with his far-reaching eyes. There was a road on the other side of the valley and across the river. It was wider than the one he had been traveling, more like a thoroughfare. As he watched, two figures sped across it, running in his direction, one right after the other. The first was a man and the second was a woman with inky hair. Neither were visible for long.

The howling had gone quiet but took up again. A few moments later, two wolves loped across the same road, noses to the ground. They were fenwolves, creatures of the old world—larger, faster, more intelligent, and far more vicious than their common counterparts. The two mortals were making an impressive effort, but there was no chance that they would reach the river gorge in time.

Unless. Unless something drew the wolves away. Even if only for a moment.

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Adevan cursed as he dropped out of the tree and began sprinting towards the river gorge. He was faster than a fenwolf and, on open terrain, they would never catch him. Without mortals to worry about, getting cornered was the only serious risk that he could recall from his fair share of wolfhunt.

He was at the gorge. He was leaping over it. He careened through the layer of branches on the other side, landed, and followed the sounds of the wolves. Monstrous flashes of grey and black, they charged through the forest, snapping at one another as they went. They were young and inexperienced, and when Adevan sped across their path, they were easily thrown off course. He heard them hard on his heels, faster than he had remembered fenwolves to be, and eager to flank him. They smelled of mortal blood, their maws glistening crimson. He drew them north, veered towards the gorge again, then leapt back across it.

Back on the eastern side of the river, Adevan spun to look at the treeline on the western rim. At first, he thought the wolves might have jumped after him and fallen into the water below. But then, one after the other, they emerged from the shadows. They were as large as he had ever seen, one grey like mountain stone with hackles the color of smoke, and the other black as midnight. Both had sharp, coppery eyes that reflected every fleck of light. They paced and sniffed at the edge of the drop off, as if judging the distance. Then the lighter one growled and snapped, turning back the way they had come. The other watched Adevan for a moment more then followed. They howled in quick succession and were gone.

But the fire in Adevan’s veins was slow to fade. He hadn’t tested his speed against a worthy opponent in years. Feeling oddly reckless, he bounded along his side of the river, peering down into the frothing water. The two runners were nowhere to be seen. They had jumped, clearly, but he wasn't sure they had survived. The river swelled and ribboned wildly its entire length, engorged by tree branches and logs, then turned into a series of waterfalls. Once over that first drop, they would almost certainly perish.

Wait. He slowed and stopped. Just before the first cascade of falls, two sets of soggy tracks led away from the river. The gorge was shallower here and, looking down, Adevan saw a stubborn tree jutting out of the stoney ravine. There were scrapes and bloody smudges on the ledge beside it—they had climbed out. Up top, their tracks were uneven and labored. Both told him that at least one of them had been badly injured. Strangely, the smaller tracks indicated greater injury at first, but abruptly regained their even pacing. The sudden shift seemed to take place beside a patch of pale earth.

Not earth. Ash.

Adevan knelt and held a hand out over the misplaced pile of dampened ashes. Far from being warm, they were colder than the air around them. He smelled no smoke or even traces of it. Frankly, there hadn’t been enough time for the two runners to have built a fire. They couldn’t be more than a short run in any given direction. He looked back at the ashes and, as he did, a memory rose to the surface.

Ashes without fire. He’d seen this before. Orzan.

The boy-mage had been a strange case, a failure Adevan would never forget. At sixteen, he was still the oldest free mage Adevan had ever found. By the time Sisela got word of his existence, he could already devour natural matter with a mere touch—trees, plants, animals, other mortals, if he wasn’t careful—and leave only ashes behind. Blackmoor’s hunters had hesitated to take him, afraid he would turn on them, and that hesitation had cost the boy his life.

Adevan unfolded and breathed deep. The river water dulled the scent of the runners but, now that he was looking for it, he picked out the faint whiff of shadowed magic. It was neither light nor dark just shadowed, like Orzan’s had been. Judging by the change in her prints, the woman was a mage and had consumed something to heal herself. Clearly she had not siphoned her companion, as his tracks led away from the river. That was promising. Once a mage tasted the power of mortal life, it was hard to resist.

And she has dark hair. As Iven’s drift had said.

Tracking them at speed, Adevan’s route bent east and the forest dropped away. Towering, crisscrossed hillocks rose on his left, peppered by shaggy goats and small, horned sheep grazing on time-worn paths. Outcroppings jutted out of the towering pastures, excellent places for shepherds to keep an eye on the flocks, except there were no shepherds. A drinking jug, a handful of daisies half-woven into a crown, and a staff had been haphazardly thrown on a flattish stone beside the road. The jug had been knocked over. There were signs of a brief struggle in the damp earth but no blood or torn clothes, and the long scrapes he would expect from a kidnapping were absent. It looked as though someone had been tackled, fought for a moment, then gotten up and joined a much larger group. The many footsteps belonged to men and women of varying ages and sizes, and shared one commonality: Their strides were almost randomly directed, as if they had all been drunk.

The mess of footprints flowed south, in the same direction he was going, and entirely obscured the tracks of the two runners. Fortunately, the scent of shadowed magic had deepened enough that Adevan proceeded, but he was now wholly dependent on his nose in his search for the mage. Seeing his own shadow outlined perfectly on the ground, he glanced up at the sky. It had been too long since he’d checked. No black wings.

The river curved away from the road now, and the forest began to feel unnaturally quiet. His footsteps were loud, no matter how softly he moved. The day had just started to feel warm but a southern breeze chilled him to the bone. When he rounded a corner to find a flock of sheep ambling across a narrow path with a village in the near distance, he knew that something was very wrong.

“Something isn’t right. It’s too quiet.”

That voice. He felt as if he’d heard it before. Beyond the sheep and the waist-high gate that led into the village, one of the two runners appeared. She was tall and narrow, with olive skin and black hair that hung loose around her face—the mage. Whatever she had consumed had healed her enough, but a paleness still lingered under her natural color. Her clothing was torn, bloodied in some places, and she wore a knife at her side.

“They haven’t been gone long,” a man replied then shouted: “Hello? Anyone here?”

Adevan wove between the sheep, making his way towards the village. The movement drew the mage’s attention. At first, she seemed unsure of what she was looking at, as though she might be seeing a ghost. Then recognition hardened her face, giving her a cold look. She slowly drew her knife.

Dark hair, a long knife, an empty village and one companion.

Iven’s mage. He had found her.

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“Leith,” she said, her voice sharp.

Her comrade appeared abruptly. He was a thick, reddish kind of a person with broad shoulders and a snarling mouth. He had no visible weapon but carried a lumpy satchel, and wore the thick clothing and leather plating of a warrior. His face certainly had the scars to prove it. Slowing his approach, Adevan raised his hands. The mage methodically slipped into the periphery and her companion stepped forward. They knew one another well.

“What do you want?”

“Just passing through. Looking for something to eat and a place to stay for the night,” Adevan answered, still advancing. “You, too, I take it?”

The young man nodded—halfheartedly. The satchel he carried swung awkwardly, revealing the truth. They hadn’t intended to stay the night.

“Where is everyone?”

The warrior shrugged. “Care to guess?”

Adevan dropped his hands and pushed through the village gate. The mage kept her distance, keenly aware of wherever he moved. She still hadn’t sheathed her knife.

“Is there a festival or some such?”

“No,” Leith said, glancing around. “We’d have heard about it.”

“So you’re from here, then?”

The mage interrupted: “No one passes through Laregan.”

This close to her, the heady scent of magic was impossible to mistake, though it had a changeable quality that he knew to expect from a mage like Orzan. She shook her hair out of her face, her gaze no longer shrouded. Beyond the naked distrust in her eyes, their color struck him, and not pleasantly. They were gray like the splintered shale of the mountains. Like shattered silver.

He scoffed a little. “I guess some of us do.”

“Then where did you come from?”

Adevan gestured up and backwards, at the northern pass. “The other side of the mountains. Everyone’s talking about the wool from this area,” he said. “Thought I’d come see for myself. Kyric’s a friend.”

Flashes of curiosity passed over their faces. The mage fell silent. “And where are you headed?”

“To Tor.”

“We’re on our way there,” Leith said, friendlier than he had been. “If you’re looking for wool, that’s where you’ll find it. The best.”

The mage looked displeased, her jaw stiff and her silvery eyes fixed on Adevan. Gods, he had seen those same eyes before. He couldn’t remember where or in whose face he had seen them, but was beginning to realize that it had been a bitter experience.

Leith was still talking. “...what d’you say? Three’s better than two, and you’re a stranger to our mountains.”

Adevan shrugged as if he didn’t care. He would have tracked them anyway.

“Fair enough—I’ll join you.”

“Good,” the man offered. “I’m Leith Borsbyn of Laregan”—he swept his free hand around at the empty town—“and this is Varitha Sabrynnac of Tor.”

“Just Vara,” the mage corrected, finally sheathing her knife.

Sabrynnac. It mirrored house names from the southern coast. In fact, she resembled people from that part of Arras. Probably the southern isles.

They watched him with a mixture of expectation and impatience. Waiting.

Ah, he still hadn’t told them his own name. One look at the mage and Adevan decided it would be stupid to lie where it wasn’t necessary. She would know it.

“Adevan.” Then, glancing over at her: “Just Adevan.”

She looked away pointedly.

“Right, well, the horses have scattered,” Leith observed. He gestured at a nearby pen—empty. “We’ll have to go on foot.”

They fell into an uneasy line with the man ahead, the mage just behind him, and Adevan bringing up the rear. She never looked back but maintained a hearty and constant distance between them. She was keenly aware of his presence, just as he was of hers. Once, when more than the usual distance separated them, she berated her companion.

“You shouldn’t have asked him to join us,” she hissed. “We don’t know him or why he’s really here. And I don’t think he’s here for wool.”

“Of course he isn’t,” he bit back. “All the same, I’d rather have him with us than behind us.”

“He is behind us,” she muttered bitterly.

“Don’t be stupid. You know what I mean,” he said. “We want him in sight and not lurking at a distance.”

The mage said no more but the exchange had told Adevan a great deal. Mind to mind conversation was a favorite and useful mage device, yet she had whispered to her companion as though that was her only option. That would suggest she really had no idea what she was. It also told Adevan that, whatever her reason for distrusting him, it wasn’t because he was a halfblood. She couldn’t know Adevan was a halfblood, or she wouldn’t have tried to whisper around him. It had no effect on whether he could hear her.

She didn’t know anything. Just like Orzan.

“You two look like you’ve been through something,” Adevan said, loud enough for them to hear. “What happened to you?”

“Wolves,” Leith shot back over his shoulder.

“Wolves,” he repeated. “How’d you get away?”

“Jumped into the river,” the young man finished. “Got lucky.”

Lucky indeed. Leith had slowed down to Adevan’s pace but the mage refused to join them. She ventured ahead, rather than be too close. Stubborn.

“Why are there just two of you?”

“We’re scouts. The larger company was to follow but things went bad.”

“Guess they did.”

“Leith,” the mage called, sounding apprehensive. “Come look at this.”

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Up ahead, the mage had stopped and was looking at something near the side of the road. Leith moved to join her, already grumbling, and Adevan wished to the gods that they would lower their voices. The forest was too quiet and too still, and a faint, dank stench had crept up on him. It was the smell of death. He had been so distracted by his fellow travelers—one in particular—that he had forgotten to take note of his surroundings for too long.

Adevan wasn’t surprised that she had discovered the body of an old man, pale as fog and lying just off the road. The claggy scent was stronger around him. Adevan knelt and extended his hand over the body. To a mortal, it would be cold, but he could still detect the faintest warmth. Beyond the obvious fact that he was dead, the man was certainly in no condition to be walking through the forest and probably hadn't been in such a condition in years. The skin and hands were frail, the eyes bleary, the legs almost entirely without muscle. He hadn’t been well for a long time.

“He hasn't left his hut my whole life, if he’s who I think,” Leith muttered, answering Adevan’s unasked question. “Why would he be out here?”

“And alone,” the mage added. 

“He wasn't alone. There are tracks everywhere.”

Yes, there were tracks. But Adevan was more interested in the fact that the old man was missing a shoe and had walked long enough that the ball of his foot was nearly raw. Even in old age, that much pain should have slowed him down.

He must not have felt it.

“I can see the tracks,” she said drily. “But I just don’t think someone would have left him where he fell.”

“And what do you think?”

“That he followed them, not that he was with them.”

“Oh, I see,” the young man said scornfully. “I didn’t realize it made a difference.”

She hesitated. “Well—maybe not a difference, but it’s a possibility.”

Adevan was about to stand, but a discoloration on one of the man’s wrists caught his eye. It was partially hidden by his sleeve and Adevan quickly pushed the cloth back, exposing all of the lower arm. The bickering stopped.

“What is…that?”

The mage was standing over him, the closest to Adevan she had yet been. He unfolded a little too quickly and she jumped back. Her hand flew to her knife hilt. It seemed to be a matter of comfort for her. Leith took a knee and began examining the old man’s arm.

“It almost looks like a hand.”

“It is a hand,” Adevan finished.

Leith frowned. “A hand that burns?”

“The mark is clear.”

“But,” the mage murmured, looking down at the body again. “What could dothat?”

Adevan had seen many things, but never this. The companions glanced between one another, each seeking clarity in the other’s eyes. But they were all equally puzzled and disturbed. She took a breath.

“We should bury him.”

Leith shook his head. “I’m not breaking my back for this.”

“Good grief,” she scoffed. “What if he was your grandfather?”

“And you’re sure he’s dead?” The silence swelled. “There’s nothing you can do?”

“No, he’s gone,” she managed to say. “Long gone.”

There it is. Adevan hummed, as if he was only surprised by and not keenly interested in the revelation that she had been a healer, or something akin to it. Every free mage he’d ever encountered or heard about had shown healing abilities. So far, Iven’s drift had been accurate. Now, it was Adevan’s turn to do his part. It had been a long time since he’d asked the litany of necessary questions, but they came rushing back.

“Are you a healer?”

The mage didn’t look up at him. “I was.”

“Oh,” he mused. “When was the last time you healed somebody?”

She didn’t answer as quickly this time, shifting on her feet. Leith was watching her. The rot of shame clouded the air between them.

“Over a year ago,” she said firmly.

“Why so long?”

Anger bloomed in her. An intense, burning scent. “It just stopped.”

“Why?”

Now, she met his eyes with growing defiance. “I don’t know.”

A lie.

“You do,” he replied, holding her gaze. “You know exactly why it happened.”

Her mouth quivered and her grey eyes went wide, glistening in the failing light of the day. Leith stood, dusting off his hands. Neither Adevan nor the mage were yelling, and Leith was no halfblood, but that made no difference. The air between them crackled with the force of her rage and shock. Even a mortal could feel that.

“What happened?”

Leith shook his head. “Stop.”

“I killed someone,” she bit out. It almost sounded like a confession.

“How?”

She held out her shaking hands, palms up.

“I was attacked. I touched them and they turned to ash,” she finished. “A just reward, I should think.”

But regret cut through her voice. “How many did you siphon?”

“What—three. What does it matter?”

“And how many since then?”

Her shoulders buckled a little. With too much force, as though she was trying to convince herself, she said: “Accidents. All accidents.”

She hadn’t answered the question.

“Is that true? Were they truly accidents?”

Leith held a hand out, as if to calm them. “That’s enough.”

“Yes, I swear,” she said, wincing. Her voice faltered. “At first, I thought the loss was temporary, so I tried to heal again—” She sucked in a breath, as if she could pull everything she had already said back into her mouth. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.”

“Vara, stop talking.” Leith turned on Adevan, his face red. “Who are you? Are you from Umber?”

Adevan pushed him to the side easily. “I can help you.”

The mage looked up at him. Naked hope flickered across her face. Then she scoffed, almost madly, and climbed back onto the main road.

“Enough!”

I write for tips

Leith’s chest was heaving from the irritation at being disregarded so easily. Adevan said no more. He knew what he needed to know.

“We might as well settle down for the night or risk falling into a ditch, walking in the dark,” Leith muttered, wiping his brow. “Bloody waste of time.”

They rejoined the road then followed it until the ground rose, and they found some open space on one side. Adevan would have rathered that Leith didn’t build a fire, but he had no good reason for it, so he said nothing. It was a sensible size. What rations the warrior had gathered in the empty village—some kind of root vegetables and salted meat—were split between them. The mage didn’t say a word. Her eyes had a far off, empty look.

She’s remembering.

“I’ll take first watch,” Adevan offered. Judging by their physical state, they’d be asleep in moments and, if he didn’t wake them, they’d slumber through the night. “Not as tired as either of you, from the looks of it.”

Leith thanked him reluctantly. Food untouched, the mage stretched out onto her side, facing away from them and the fire. Leith did the same and, as Adevan had predicted, their breathing was soon steady. He kept the fire low but going, so that it became hot embers. The forest was still too quiet and the scent of death yet lingered. They weren’t far from the old man’s body, but he still thought the smell would have faded more.

Five days.

He hadn’t seen Sisela for five days and it would be at least that many before he got back, making this the longest time they’d been apart in over twenty years. He had more than nothing to show for it, certainly, but the situation was increasingly complicated. Inconveniently, Iven’s drift had not detailed how he was to get the mage to come with him.

Unlike other mages he’d found, she wasn’t on the run from the Counsel and her family or house weren’t in danger. There was no clear and present reason for her to come with him. Adevan had seen the hope in her face, when he said he could help her, but she had also been quick to hide it.

Not promising. He would have to find a way to convince her and quickly.

As night began to slip away, he stood and stretched, sighing loudly enough that the mage stirred. She had rolled onto her back and her breath rose into the cold. He put another stick on the fire and stoked the embers until they caught again. The flames fluttered in a breeze from the west. He wrinkled his nose. The smell of death no longer hovered faintly in the air. It had somehow grown stronger. But it wasn’t coming from the direction where the old man’s body had fallen.

Strange.

It was almost dawn, and a low-hanging fog had rolled in. The swirling mantle spilled over gullies and floated among the trees, their dark trunks rising out of the billows like masts on sinking ships. Bushes and brambles dotted the landscape like misshapen islands in a pale sea. But as Adevan watched, he noticed that there were other shapes between the trees—silhouettes that turned his blood as cold as a mountain river.

Part of him realized that they had been there when it was dark, when he hadn’t thought to look for them. He was forced to accept that they had, in spite of his gifts, crept up on him. They stood, here and there, near and far, facing in varying directions. Every breath or so, one or two would turn and their eyes would scour the forest. They were looking for something.

No. Someone very powerful was using them to look for something.

Adevan sank slowly, first to one knee then flat to the ground. By then, the mage was wide awake and watching him from where she lay. He heard her heart pounding away in her chest. She understood that they were in trouble, but she couldn’t know just how true that was. Adevan knew of only one mage with the power to control this many people at once and the standing to do so. He hadn’t left Arysdur in years, but that didn’t matter.

It’s him.

He should have known.

She was like Orzan. She was like all of them. He was too late.

Vara trembled beside him, as if she felt his fear as her own. As soon as she saw what he saw, she would know it for herself. He almost choked on his own tongue when he finally spoke.

“Keep very still.”

I write for tips

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

Days like this dispelled any doubts Althioc had as to whether the sea was cursed.

It stretched out before him—furious, roiling, churning around the collection of isles that had become his unlikely home. The gale howled like a wolf at hunt, buffeted against him as if daring him to sway. From his vantage point, the white caps below seemed small but experience assured him that the waves licking the rocks were twice his own height, or taller. Not long ago, the strait had seemed a gift from the gods, a kind of protection that kept his family divided from their enemies. But many years had passed since lesser hands had seized power and forced the Dragars into cold exile. Many summers and winters, all sparse, all harsh, each turn of the season hardening then sharpening his rage into the plan that he now contemplated. For, as he looked across the grey sea from the highest point on Seraq, the largest of the islands that made up the archipelago, he understood what it had become.

The sea was a wall. A wall between him and his birthright.

On a day like this, even Althioc’s keen eyes were unable to find the dark strip of land that drew both gaze and soul westward. But it was there. At all times he felt its presence, an ever-growing awareness, an ever-deepening intention. He remembered the warmth of the summer breeze, the towering sandstone halls, the scent of herbs burning under the sun. He remembered the rich, dark earth soft under his feet, remembered running with his brothers through woods that knew and feared them. The memories, once sweet, now only served as easy kindling for a deep and abiding fury.

He turned from his westward watch and began making his way down what could barely be called a path. He took it in great leaps and abruptly dropped out of the screaming wind. It was no more than a rush by the time he set foot on flatter ground, its force blocked by the towering rock formations that jutted upward and had earned Seraq its name. For, in the first tongue, seraqmeant crown and, from the mainland, the island looked like a king’s ornament against the eastern horizon.

Impassable sheer cliffs hemmed in its sides, and its northern, southern, and westward points rose high above the sea, but the heart of Seraq was a basin where rain collected and created a freshwater lake. Along the edge of this lake lay Seraq’s one village, a collection of stone and mud houses and a great throne-hall that had taken too long to build. They called the place Gesu.

Althioc had never learned what the name meant. Nor did he care. As with everything here, Gesu paled in comparison to the beauty and grandeur of the true capital, with its architecture and agriculture, its music and sophistication. Gesu would be one of the most forgettable villages on the mainland. Yet it was where Gisgar, ruler of these islands, held court.

If it can be called that. Court, indeed. It was closer to a handful of bedraggled men whose ancestors had resisted the rule of Althioc’s own family and chosen exile. The irony of finding refuge with such people would have been amusing, if the situation wasn’t so dire.

Out of respect for his family’s hosts, he did not run past the herd of small, horned sheep that was grazing on one of the upper slopes. If he had, they might have scattered or run themselves off the cliff, as they had once already, when the Dragars had first arrived on Seraq. His pace—slower than was natural for him—did offer one benefit.

Time.

The plan to retake his father’s throne had been a seedling in his mind almost as soon as they had fled to the islands. The Usurper’s betrayal lay at the back of every thought, every dream, every memory. Even the rare moment of levity was stained by the unforgivable and faithless. Althioc would have gone mad without the hope of their return, but he still coveted these few moments before he revealed his intentions. They were possibly the last moments of peace he would have for a long time.

As eldest brother and heir to the throne, Allar would find every weakness with the idea, coming at it from every angle, exploiting every uncertainty—and there were many. He had been trained to rule as a king, not to rebel. And they were rebels, now. Ayari would find every reason to go through with it and Alphen would follow whichever two siblings joined arms, as he always had and always would. But their father and mother were another matter, much harder to predict and with opinions that carried ultimate weight. They had begun to build a life on these isles, the place of their exile and humiliation, and showed no signs of redressing their grievances.

This lack of protest disturbed him most of all.

Althioc often saw his father, the King, walking with Gisgar among the berry fields and sheep herds, or along the upper cliffs looking to the east. They had developed a genuine mutual respect—even a friendship—something Althioc would never understand. His mother, too, had made herself a part of the Seraqinas, attuning herself to their way of life and teaching their children long-forgotten histories. Wherever the King and Queen went, what few allies his family had brought with them followed suit. Those who had fled Karahas with them had long since moved between the different isles, settling into the seaward-life. It was as if they’d all forgotten this wasn’t their choice.

We have time, he’d heard some say. There is no reason for haste.

They lived many, many hundreds of years longer than the most long-lived mortal or mage. They could lie in wait for all time and return to Karahas when they sensed a weakness in their enemy. They would ask him—why now? Why not wait until the way is absolutely clear?

Because the longer we wait the deeper the roots.

Heartbeats quickened as he neared the town, drawing him out of his reverie and back to the present moment. Tawny-headed children scattered into the shadows of cured fish barrels, between rows of drying eight-legs that rattled in the wind, or behind the group of women that was butchering a recent catch of morfil’gweyln—a fatty, pale whale that sometimes beached itself on the rocky northern shore or got stranded in the ocean caverns, where schools of fish could hide but could also escape when the tide dropped.

Four of the mories had paid dearly for their greed. Their mistake would provide precious meat, fat, even oil for what lamps existed on Seraq. Their skin and blubber were also good for trading with the rogue merchants that dared cross the channel every few months, bringing with them things that were not native to the isles—soft cloth and clothing, spices, medicinal tinctures, sheep, goats, even dogs for pets. Southern sugar stalk was a great treat for the people here, whose tongues were accustomed to finding sweetness even in the bitter flesh of the bright red winterberries that clung to every crevice and protected nook.

The last merchant skiff had appeared in the isle’s only harbor two moons ago. The whales could not have made their fatal error at a better time. Seraq was due a visit. This fact, that they might need to barter at any moment, had made the women almost frenzied in their carving of the meat.

Their hands were slick with it, the fronts of their coarse dresses blackened by it, their weathered, honest faces flecked by it—it poured out of the dead whales and made gory rivulets through the grass and gravely earth. A couple of the women were half-singing, half-humming a familiar song in the same, ancient language that survived here, the same language that bore seraq and morfil’gweyln. Althioc barely heard them, tense and eager to be gone. His lungs burned and his insides stiffened at the scent of the blood as he passed.

They whispered amongst one another at his arrival. He only understood one word between them—ilfyc. It meant ‘hungry one’ in their tongue, the meaning and reality of which Althioc was intensely aware as he passed the carnage. The wind was blowing favorably, drawing the scent of the blood away from him, so it was only a few moments before he found relief on the northern side of the village. But the sound of sharpened knives slicking through skin and sinew followed him.

His family lived just outside the capital of Seraq, high up one side of the lake basin, in a house much larger than the rest by necessity, nestled among the rocks and bursts of bright red winterberries. From the vantage point, one could see the whole of the isle, far out to the sea in the east, and each of the other islands to the north and south. The only direction one could not easily see was westward, towards Karahas. It was half the reason Althioc refused to live with them. It was as if his father was intentionally forgetting the past.

As if to prove the point, Gisgar and King Alstior were sitting outside, their faces aglow from a fire in the deep pit his father had dug with his own hands. Even from here, he saw the smokey stain on their faces. The air smelled of salt and a foul burnt stench. Dried seaweed made for common kindling, along with the driftwood that found its way from the sea-side forests of the northern mainland and the blackish tar that oozed from many of Seraq’s crevasses. With the tar, the one thing the Seraqi could be sure of was fire.

Althioc approached the fire pit slowly. The King wore rough, sheepswool garments the women in the village had woven for him with great effort. From afar, and if he were not beside a much smaller mortal, his father would have looked like a common man. The sight made Althioc shudder.

They were deep in discussion. King Alstior was listening intently.

“Rwy’din vy mendi vrth i’mi dy fendi,” Gisgar recited, gesturing. “Di vrth i’mi vy mendi. That is our way.”

“You bless me as I bless you as you bless me—roughly,” Alstior mused aloud. “A recalling that we are treated as we treat, are given as we give.”

“Just so.”

The King waved Althioc over. “Come, sit.”

Althioc had no desire to sit with an irrelevant mortal. Gisgar looked uncomfortable at his arrival, sitting up a little straighter. Good.

“Tell me another,” Alstior demanded. “Your language is an interesting one.”

After another round of insistence, the man relented. “Fel y llyad, felly'r bywyth.”

Alstior frowned in thought. “As the mind…”

“Aye.”

“…so the life.”

The translation was accurate, apparently, because they chuckled together, seeming very pleased with themselves. Althioc waited what felt like a fair amount of time before clearing his throat. His efforts did not matter. Anything he did drew Gisgar’s instant attention. The people here feared Althioc the most of all his siblings. He had not yet taken the time to figure out why. In fact, he preferred it. Gisgar stood, correctly assessing that Althioc wanted him gone.

“My Seraqina will be about done with the mories,” he mused incorrectly. Althioc could see that the women below were still knee deep in blood and innards. “Will just see if she needs me.”

The King nodded. “Goodnight then.”

The two rulers said good night. Althioc turned to find his father’s jewel-green eyes fixed on him, in the unnerving way that only his could be. Normally, it was Althioc’s gaze that frightened. As always with his father, it was his turn.

“What brings you to the house?”

Neither of them were cold and the only mortal had gone, but Althioc threw a clump of dry moss onto the fire out of habit. He wanted something to do.

“Am I not welcome?”

“You ever expect my derision,” Alstior sighed. “I have begun to think it is your own mind that condemns you.”

His father had grown fond of platitudes.

“Perhaps that is why you do not come home often,” the King mused.

Home.

“This,” Althioc said pointedly, gesturing at the isle. “Is not our home.” 

He had enunciated every word so that his meaning was inescapable. He knew this had had the proper effect when his father stilled and his gaze darkened. But neither explanation nor agreement nor anger was forthcoming. The silence was enraging.

“You sit among rocks while a usurper sits on your throne,” Althioc finally gritted out. “You barter words with lesser men while he ravages our ancient lands. You care for the Seraqi more than you do for the honor of our people. Have you no shame?”

His voice had risen of its own accord, and he heard the swift footsteps of his mother from inside the great, stone house. She appeared at the doorway, dark hair braided intricately in the style of the Seraqina. Her bronze eyes glowed with a warning.

“Duty, yes. Shame, no.” His father’s words were plain, thoughtful. “Shame has no place in the mind of a king, nor in the mouth of his son.”

The air between them was tense. Were this any other moment, any other place in all the years they had known one another, Althioc would have apologized. But exile had changed him. He would not relent.

“You will beg your father’s forgiveness,” his mother said coolly. Her normally sweet voice had an edge. “Or you will never return.”

“Heretha.”

“He questioned your honor.”

“Will you now question me?” No answer came. “Leave us.”

She lifted her chin and went back inside, disappearing into the shadows beyond the doorway. But the scent of her anger lingered. She would be listening. When the silence settled, Alstior spoke again.

“Your brothers are on Klysmos,” he began, peering at his son. “Is that why you challenge me now?”

Althioc had waited for their absence, but not in the way his father imagined.

“I do not come to challenge you. I come because I can look away from Karahas no longer,” Althioc replied. “We must act.”

Alstior folded his hands between his knees. “With what army? Most of our allies turned to the Usurper and those that followed us here are no great force.”

“I propose an alliance.”

“With?”

And this was where Althioc’s courage nearly failed him. Say it, he ordered himself. If he could not say it to his father, he would have no hope to follow through on it.

“Bladmuir.”

The King’s face, normally so measured and unreadable contorted into an unmistakable expression of disturbed disbelief. The sense of incredulity at his son’s foolishness was palpable. But again, Althioc did not relent. He did not even move, waiting. His father’s voice had the tone of a teacher when he finally did respond. His gaze had darkened with anger and disappointment.

“Mages cannot be trusted,” he said. “You know this.”

“Perhaps not, but their motives can be.”

His father’s gaze narrowed. “Such words expose your ignorance.”

“Survival is their greatest object, as ours is for us,” Althioc finished. “If we offer them something more advantageous than their current circumstances, they might take our side.”

His words gave the King pause. “What could we offer them that would be more advantageous?”

“We would recognize the mage-king and Bladmuir as their land,” he explained. He had to speak quickly, or his words would fail him. “He would answer to you, but speak on their behalf. A kingdom within our own.”

His father said nothing but his eyes glinted. Althioc swallowed drily. He had only once or twice felt the burning need to flee, and both had been in the presence of his father. When angry, the King could be terrifying. Even so, Althioc managed to say one more thing.

“Would you rather dwell in exile?”

The King’s gaze softened, grew distant. Thoughtful. Althioc knew that to say more would do more harm than good. His father unfolded abruptly.

“The greatest challenge to your plan will be finding a mage that you can trust,” Alstior continued pointedly. “Only when you do, will we discuss this matter again.”

He peered into Althioc’s face for another moment then disappeared into the house, likely to seek the Queen’s counsel. He had not agreed, but he had not said no unequivocally. That was good enough for Althioc.

Althioc made his way back to his hut, a much smaller stone structure that faced directly west. The scent of blood reached him as he neared, and he found a chunk of morie meat on his doorstep. The lack of ceremony and the trace of bloody footsteps suggested it was the work of one of the women who had butchered the creatures—more an offering than a gift. 

His mouth began to water, primed by the carnage from earlier that day. He looked around, broadening his hearing until he was certain he was alone. Then he ate the offering raw, as his people could and preferred to do except when in the company of the Seraqi, who found the practice barbaric and frightening.

Ilfyc indeed. The isle-folk weren’t wrong. Hungry ones.

As Althioc looked out over the strait and ate his meal, hoping to glimpse a merchant’s ship, his satisfaction at having approached his father faded. His father had challenged him to find a mage of honor, but the work began with getting a message back to Karahas. The mages of Bladmuir were no enemy to the rogue sea merchants that defied the Usurper’s new government—he had smelled their magical wares on ships more than once—but Althioc’s message carried with it far greater consequences than that of any potion. And who could he trust to deliver it? As he wiped his bloody hands on a patch of moss and licked his lips, his next battle with the King became clear.

I should go. Alone, he could move freely and swiftly, ensuring delivery and giving the offer of an alliance more weight. I should go.

But his father would never allow it.

The next day, dawn broke with a whisper. The howling wind had stilled in the night, leaving the sea strangely calm and the sky perfectly clear. The sun rose and spilled over the eastern horizon, casting the isles’ shadows towards Karahas and lighting up the far line of cliffs. Leaning against the western side of his hut, Althioc heard the soft, quick beat of a runner approaching. It could only be one of his people—no one else could move that fast. But it was the scent that gave his sister away. There was no need to look over his shoulder. She came to a stop, not even winded. Althioc shook his head. The Seraqi knew what his family was and Althioc cared little for their comfort, but there was no point in spooking them at every turn. Their father had been clear on that.

“Is it early enough to be running at full pace? The fishermen have been up for hours.”

Ayari glanced ironically to the right then to the left, without a word, then bent down to dust off her bare ankles. She refused to wear shoes.

“Mother just told me about your aim to retake Karahas and I was hardly going to walk.”

His sister’s candor was one of her strong suits, but he did dread it at times.

“And?”

“I stand with you.”

She unfolded again, almost as tall as he was. She had taken to weaving sea-bird feathers in her hair with braids, as many of the younger Seraqinas did. But at least her spear-shaped ears—yet another sign of their true nature—remained unhidden.

“Indeed, sometimes I cannot believe how long it has taken us to act. And father is considering it, perhaps because he has been considering it for longer than we knew,” she mused, turning towards him. “But do you have an actual plan? One that is also political?”

Althioc scoffed, standing beside her. “Yes.”

“The mages,” she replied, waving away his testiness. “Why would they side with us? They have already withheld their support once before.”

He kept his gaze on the western sea, hoping to see a ship. He was not keen to tell Ayari the truth just yet. That the mages would have a king.

“They hate Deladari as much as we do.”

“Shared hatred makes for weak alliances. You know that,” Ayari said. Her voice was distant, as if she were talking to herself. She had been a great reader and writer when they lived at Dabdagan but, on Seraq, she had only her memories of the ancient scrolls and tablets. She blinked, returning to the present. “How do you really intend to inspire them?”

Ayari had so far been friendly towards his plans. But the next piece, a crucial one, might mean the end of her support entirely. She waited.

“With a chance at their own king and kingdom.”

Almost before he was done speaking, something like a snarl rose at the back of her throat. Althioc felt his own defenses rise at the display, another hallmark of their kind. It was why the gods had sent their ancestors to Karahas—to tame it. At this moment, Ayari looked every bit a creature, her dark eyes ablaze with rage and indignation, her overlong teeth visible, her head lowered. They faced one another, holding their ground.

“Ayari, calm down.”

“Calm.” She let out a scathing laugh. “You would split the kingdom?”

“Never.”

Her upper lip was still curled. “What then?”

“Their king would answer to ours,” Althioc snapped back, trying to reel in his own savage nature. “Besides, we have time. They do not.”

It was a moment before she understood him. She peered at him askance.

“Treachery then?”

He disliked the word, but yes.

“The mages have never been able to master themselves in the simplest of matters for long. A mage kingdom would collapse,” he quipped. “And we have thousands of years to undo whatever tangle they create.”

The strain between them had drifted away. Ayari looked out over the sea, deep in thought. She took a breath, seemingly calmed.

“It is different, certainly from what father taught us,” she offered. “Your plan also requires a great number of mages to pass through the white-tree and emerge with true magic. Most do not even deign to try. They fear it. Too many have gone and not returned.”

He knew this. “The Nossidar bloodline is promising. Uelas and Einfal were impressive in their own right as youths and they will be stronger now,” he said, remembering the mage-king and his two sons. “I believe they would prevail, if they took the chance.”

“Nossidar—Evershade. Powerful blood,” she admitted, using their common-name. “Though I always thought the other children were more impressive.”

He had no interest in which mages were more impressive to Ayari but, before he could say so, something flashed white in the distance. Althioc stepped forward, training his eyes on the speck. His sister followed his alert gaze. A lone merchant vessel was skuttling across the waves towards Seraq—the first to brave the crossing after the storm.

The path down to the island’s harbor was slippery and narrow, with an unforgiving slab of grey stone on one side and a sheer fall into churning waters on the other. It had claimed many a traveler and many a foolhardy youth in the years since he’d lived here. Not for reasons of safety, Althioc bypassed the treacherous path entirely, leapt from the cliff, and landed surefooted on the uneven jetty that made for an equally dangerous berth place. Ayari followed behind. It was harder to see the lone skiff that approached from where he now stood, nearly level with the sea. Only its spindly, bobbing mast was visible at times.

Overhead and at their backs, excited voices announced the merchant vessel’s long-awaited arrival to the rest of the island’s inhabitants, who only now could see it. Moments later, the smell of near-fresh morie meat wafted down to him. The women of the isles were ready for their long-awaited windfall, whether they sought herbs, or precious metals, or wine and spirits that were otherwise out of reach. The small boat was in full view now, its oars extended as the captain maneuvered through the narrow channel that led into the small, rounded bay. 

Althioc loped to the end of the jetty. The first sailor to see him needed no encouragement to throw him the mooring line, a grin on his young, round face. Althioc looped the rope over one shoulder, briskly drawing the skiff in one forearm length at a time. It was like pulling in a leaf boat. Althioc whipped the rope back to Ayari, who snatched the rippling line out of the air. She looped it around the mooring then joined him, shoulder to shoulder.

“Always glad for the hand at this spot,” called the sailor who had thrown him the line. He was young and buoyant, not unlike a piece of cork bobbing in the sea, and hopped onto the jetty as the small band of travelers began to unburden the boat. He straightened his woolly cap. “I swear this port is always tryin’ to kill ya.”

“You must have been caught in the storm,” Ayari said, surprised.

“Aye, full face to it,” the boy sniffed. Althioc and Ayari towered over him. “But good fortune herself was with us.”

The way he said the words and the way he looked back at the boat, alerted Althioc that something was amiss only a heartbeat before the scent of magic reached him. Powerful magic. His eyes were drawn to the doorway of the boat’s tiny cabin, where a head of ash-white hair appeared, framing the narrow, pale face of what looked to be a young mortal woman. At first, she saw the landing with relief. But just as quickly, and as if she knew just how much danger she was in, she froze—her eyes flicking between Althioc and Ayari. She stood there until someone pushed her aside.

“Dear gods,” Ayari muttered. “Fate has been hard at work.”

Indeed. Here before him, with frightfully perfect timing, was a possible answer to the questions he had been asking himself just last night. Yet, now that he was looking at her, he found himself unable to think of anything except the mages’ betrayal. If they had taken his family’s side twenty years ago, Deladari never would have prevailed and his father would still be seated on the throne. Ayari’s swift, unyielding grip on his arm was a needed warning. He uncurled his fists.

The slim she-mage made her way onto the dock, helped by the boy who had spoken to Althioc. She smelled faintly of seasickness, her hair badly matted. Her clothes seemed to have been worn for many days, soiled by food and drink and other, less pleasant stains. Yet she carried herself with pride, and made straight for Althioc and Ayari with measured steps. Once in front of them, she swept her dirty skirts aside and fell to one knee at their feet. Brother and sister shared a surprised look but, even then, neither of them spoke. After a moment, the traveler stood again with effort.

“To be plain, this is not how I had hoped to meet,” she began, head bowed. “I was to go to Klysmos and contact you from there, but the captain was unwilling to hold to his original course, given the storm.”

How she had ended up on one island versus another was irrelevant. “Why have you come at all?”

His question hung in the air, surrounded by the busyness of the dock as the islanders unloaded the merchant vessel. The mage seemed to weigh her options, glancing around, as if she wasn’t sure whether it was safe to speak. Althioc noted the strange, silvery color of her eyes. It was a color he had never personally seen. She lowered her voice to something just below a whisper, something only Althioc and Ayari could hear.

“My name is Isydenia,” the mage murmured, again so quietly that only they could hear over the din. “And I seek an audience with your father, the true King.”

“Why?”

“My uncle is preparing to make war against our shared enemy.”

Althioc scoffed. “And who is your uncle?”

“To some, he is a king.”

Nossidar. Fate had, indeed, been at work. Beside him, Ayari’s breath caught.

“I know of you. You and your brother—did you come alone?”

“Yes,” the she-mage said simply. “I would risk no other lives.”

One could call that bravery. But it might also be pure desperation. Althioc watched the she-mage closely, searching for falsehood in her face, her movement, even her heartbeat. He had not found any. Yet.

“Do you then speak only for yourself?”

At his question, the faintest frown gathered on her forehead, but her voice was even. “I speak for my uncle and for many.”

Distrust swelled up in him suddenly. The timing, the urgency, even the words she used felt entirely too coincidental. It could not be so simple.

“Why now?”

She turned her face towards him fully. “I have traveled long and far and there is much to tell. May I sit?”

“Sit there,” Althioc bit back, pointing at a barrel. “If you do not speak true, we will know it. And we will be as close to the King as you ever get.”

The deep breath, the way she held her head and set her shoulders as she slowly made her way to the barrel and sat—she was not used to being commanded. It was the first thing that convinced him she truly did speak on the mage-king’s behalf. That, and the fact that she had come alone. She must have great confidence in her magic.

“The Usurper has begun burning the white-trees,” she said, the pain clear in her voice. “There is one left in Bladmuir and one at Dabdagan. Young mages are escorted there by a great company, once a year, and few are permitted even to make the journey. They are discourage”

Ayari and Althioc shared a surprised look. Whatever the Dragars’ opinion of mages, their right to the allwood trees was considered as sacred as the borders of Karahas. It was a birthright so old that no one knew when it had begun. Without touching one of the white-trees and enduring whatever hidden trial lay in store, a mage would never be anything more than a healer. Their magic was earned, through light and fire.

“To sap your numbers,” Ayari concluded. “I assume?”

Isydenia nodded once. “Very soon, we will not have the strength to oppose him in any way. I cannot say for certain what will happen but mortals dreams have begun to show the mages’ destruction,” she went on. “Time is running short.”

Althioc smelled the acrid scent of true fear on her for the first time. He heard the sudden stutter in her heartbeat. There was no lie in her words. Ayari looked at him, mirroring his own belief. But she had a mercy that he lacked.

“If only you had taken our side in the war,” he mused. “None of this would have happened to your people.”

The mage’s silvery eyes flashed.

“Your father treated us as badly as any king before him. We had hope that it would be better under House Deladari,” she bit back. “How could we know that it would make no difference in the end? That he would treat us as traitors—that he would be worse?”

She suddenly looked out to sea. Her face had contorted into a kind of pained expression. He could not tell whether she was angry or sad or whether she was simply going to be sick. She had paled. Ayari gave him a stern look.

“We will find you a place to rest in the village,” his sister said. “Then we will take you to see our father.”

Isydenia stood, wobbled and gripped the barrel’s lip. “I would see him now.”

“No. You will need your strength,” Ayari said. “The King’s gaze is not for the faint of heart or flesh.”

The carriage stank of horses and dust and miserable, sticky travelers. Whenever the waxed curtains were drawn, they couldn’t breathe. Yet, as soon as they opened them, the dust came blowing in. Idabel was almost of a mind to walk the rest of the way to Esset, but they were still many miles out from the capital’s limits.

Patience, she told herself. You’ll be there soon.

Every spring since he’d become Lord of Orrendale, her husband had been invited to the Great Conclave. As lord of the largest crop-house in Arras, it was his chance to report on the state of farming and the management of their land, to address certain concerns, settle house-to-house disputes, and bring otherwise-unheard complaints from smaller crop-houses to the Counsel. She had never been but knew that meetings were conducted over extravagant meals, attendees were treated to the most fantastic entertainment, and the ten days culminated in a ball known as the Festival of Light. Having had very young children for most of her marriage, Idabel had always been relegated to the keep at Orrendale. But her youngest had turned seven last winter, and her oldest—the twins—were just fifteen. So this spring, after sixteen years, she was returning to the city of her youth.

“It’s so dry,” Edrianne murmured, one hand keeping her veil down. “Just golden hills and twirly oaks.”

Edric grunted. His eyes were closed, his head lolling as he half-napped. He’d long since lost interest in their surroundings. His distaste for the journey as a whole had been made known from the very beginning.

“What happens first? When we get there.”

Idabel smiled at her daughter’s furrowed brow, visible even under her veil. Edrianne was always thinking about what would come next. It was her way.

“A bath.”

Edrianne hummed thoughtfully, missing her mother’s humor. Edric grinned, his eyes still closed. In all honesty, Idabel didn’t know what would happen. Her husband had gone ahead, to prepare for their arrival and arrange a few business meetings. Every lord in Arras would be there. He would need to make the most of it and renew old friendships. Idabel herself had a list of people she hadn’t seen in a decade.

“I just wish the little ones could have come,” her daughter admitted. “It’s been so boring without them.”

“They’re better off at home, Edie,” Edric said, sitting up and stretching. “I rather wish I’d been left behind.”

Idabel had been content to let her children blabber but that was quite enough.

“I don’t think either of you appreciate how important this is.”

Her son looked away, suddenly interested in the world outside the carriage.

“But why did we have to come this year, mother? You couldn’t leave Sisi or Aleskar last season, but we’re old enough to care for them now.”

Edric watched his mother, waiting for her answer. His arms were crossed. His jaw was tense. His face gave little away. Edrianne looked between them.

“If Edric is to be lord one day, and I’m to have my own house, we ought to practice,” she finished, uncertain. “If you think about it.”

Her daughter had posed a good question, one that was difficult for Idabel to answer honestly. Even as far as Idabel herself was concerned, while she missed the capital’s bustling nature, the milder seas of the southern region, the food, the fashion, the sense of being at the center of everything, none of these reasons were why she had come. And they certainly weren’t why she—and many others, no doubt—were bringing their brightest children of betrothal age to the capital of Esset.

There were deepening rumors that the Counsel intended to reinstate the mortal throne, an institution that had been disbanded since before the current age. It was a political move, obviously. The recent banishment of house Binashar had been viewed by many as unnecessary and oppressive, considering that they had sworn ignorance about the halfbloods hiding in their caves and had never committed an infraction against the Counsel in the history of their house.

“Anyone could have made such a mistake,” her husband had said. “We’re spread too thinly to have such expectations.”

 The rumors of a mortal throne indicated that the Counsel had seemingly heard the growing discontent and was taking it seriously. No one knew when or to what degree a king—or queen—might rule, but every mortal house had begun positioning itself. Under Idabel’s careful eye, Orrendale would not be the last to do so.

“Your father and I wanted you to come. That is all you need to know,” she finally said, eyeing her children. “You will listen, learn and represent our house well. And be thankful, for goodness sake,” she finished. “This is a great honor.”

Neither of her beautiful children looked convinced. They’d grown up running through the fields and groves and vineyards of Orrendale, along the shores of Lachslo and through the friendly burgh of Lachslead. They were country children on their way to the largest city in the world. Sometimes, she forgot that they didn’t have her upbringing.

“Why do you love it so much?” Edric asked, honestly bewildered. “They can’t grow things. There’s no water. It’s grim.”

“This—” Idabel gestured at the rolling hills outside the carriage. “Is not Esset, dear. This is the midcountry.”

He sniffed. “Still.”

“I spent much of my childhood in Esset with my sisters and mother, after our father’s death. We bathed in the sea and spent hours in the great gardens,” she said, remembering those golden days but unable to call the right words to mind. “And anyways, it's of historical importance—the city has stood for a thousand years. It’s the one place where mages, half-bloods and mortals live together, in relative harmony.”

The sounds of the rumbling carriage filled the air again. After a moment, Edric shrugged and, once he’d drawn his mother’s gaze, gave her a faintly defiant look. Then he leaned his head back again, crossed his arms and shut his eyes.

“I’d still rather be hunting with Kol.”

Idabel was weary of chastising the boy for his endless well of defiance and such defiance would serve him well when he eventually took Trebor’s lordship, so she said nothing. The three of them dozed on and off for the remainder of the journey, until a new smell swept through the carriage—a tangy, damp scent that pulled Idabel out of her hazy daydreams. Her children, too, had noticed and awoke a moment after she did. Both scrambled to the eastern side of the carriage, to peer out at the new surroundings. While they’d slept, the road had turned sharply east, leaving the hills and fields of the midcountry, and heading almost straight for the sea. The fresh, salty air swept away the memory of the many miles between them and their inland home, almost like a perfume. A blackish, grey-blue line stretched out endlessly on their left, unbroken but for a distant, shrouded line of islands. Edric pointed.

“Is that the sea?”

“It is, indeed.” Idabel began fixing her dress, a spring gown of light, spun cloth that breathed well in the oft-oppressive heat of the capital. “When we’re closer I’ll—Edric!”

The boy had pushed the top half of the carriage door open, pulled himself up onto the roof and joined the driver. As if she’d been expecting it, Edrianne closed the carriage door behind him amiably, making sure it was secure. Sometimes, Idabel couldn’t understand how such different children could have shared the same womb.

“What were you saying, mother?”

She sighed. “That I’ll point out the more interesting landmarks as we get closer.”

Edrianne smiled, leaning her head to one side. “I’d like that.”

The capital of Esset could best be described as a collection of smaller cities that, over hundreds of years, had become one, eventually blanketing the sprawling Teverene River delta. Those different cities—Osna, Sarqen, Mor-Garial—had in turn become merely quarters within Esset, known for their variances in culture and food and marketable goods. When the tide was up, some of the inlets that snaked through the city were large enough for sea-faring ships to sail along. It was a puzzle of brackish water, bridges and ribboning land, trimmed on the ocean side by a protected harbor that was in turn hemmed in by a long, narrow peninsula. Even from this distance, Idabel could see the spire of the lighthouse. Every time it swung their way, a pinprick of light glimmered through the hazy air. Her daughter squinted at the ocean.

“What’s that bit of water, before the sea?”

“It’s the largest harbor in all of Arras. Ashraine’s Hithe,” Idabel offered. “It was a very popular name for girls, when I was your age.”

“Ashraine?”

Edrianne's eyes were wide. Idabel laughed at her daughter’s horror. The girl blinked and pursed her lips.

“Did you consider giving me that name?”

“We did. But it was going out of fashion by the time you and your brother were born,” Idabel mused. “And it doesn’t sound as pretty with Orrendale as Edrianne.”

Her daughter looked relieved. “I have to agree.”

Outside, their driver began to shout and the carriage lurched a little. The day of travel had overall been quiet, but being this close to Esset meant they now had to share the road. The many characters now making use of the thoroughfare—Shaandi boys with dark eyes and bright hats, fishermen selling dried wares, mule-drawn carts of colorful cloth that fluttered in the breeze, even some singers—made for a far more interesting sight than the distant ocean. Quite suddenly, a pair of curious, young faces popped up in the window, only their eyes and tousled hair visible. A grubby hand reached into the carriage. Edrianne gasped. Idabel hissed and batted it away, and the children melted back into the crowd. Her daughter looked on with shocked concern, now sitting squarely in the middle of her carriage seat, away from the windows.

“Esset is not always kind to the less fortunate,” Idabel offered, remembering her own childhood. “It’s always been that way.”

When they slowed nearly to a stop, Edric rejoined them, hardly looking like the disinterested boy from earlier. As he climbed back into the carriage, his eyes were bright and his nose was reddened from his brief time in the sun. They picked up speed again and bumped their way over the first bridge.

“What’s that smell?” Edrianne asked. “You’ve been eating something.”

Edric held a strip of meat out towards her. “It’s not bad.”

She took it delicately between two fingers and sniffed it.

“Starved,” he groaned, wiping his hands on his trousers. Then, to Idabel: “How far are we?”

“Another hour, I’d say. I see you’re finally enjoying yourself.”

Edric shrugged, taking a breath. “Very different to home. I saw a pair of fighters on the road—I think they’re halfbloods.”

“Oh!” Edrianne swallowed the bite of dried meat. “Like Kol.”

Idabel shook her head. “Kol is different. Here, halfbloods are first and foremost servants of the Counsel. They are safe, but not all are warm to mortals.”

For a second time, and likely not the last, her daughter looked troubled. Her face fell at her mother’s words.

“I’m not sure I like it here.”

Idabel pressed her daughter’s knee. “Wait until you see Dabdagan, before you pass judgment. The gardens there are enchanting.”

That seemed to ease the girl’s mind enough. They were in the thick of Esset now, passing through the city’s different quarters and over many bridges. The savors and scents of unfamiliar dishes wafted towards them on the evening air, along with the less pleasant smells that could only be found in a crowded city. Lanterns were lit, and rhythmic lilting music played. Taverns and eateries were filled to bursting. People tried to sell things to them, all in the common tongue but with unfamiliar accents. Some had the demanding sharpness of the north, while others sounded like home, and still others had the low and gentle lilt of those that lived at the edge of the Shaandilar.

The carriage stopped. Outside, two men spoke in hushed tones. Edric was moving for the carriage door when a familiar face poked in.

“Send these country bumpkins back to where they came from!”

Edrianne giggled and swept her veil over her head. “Father.”

The children bundled out of the carriage, accosting Trebor and being accosted in turn with hugs. As she climbed out and stretched to her full height for the first time since noontime, Idabel’s own relief surprised her. They had hardly been alone, of course—four riders and a driver had accompanied them from Orrendale to Esset—but she hadn’t realized how strained she’d felt until now. It wasn’t the same as having Trebor nearby.

“I’ve brought you city ponies,” her husband announced, sweeping one arm at four small horses. “They’ve been bred and trained for the steep city paths. And they’re said to be very clever.”

As Edrianne and Edric made their way towards their new pets, Trebor turned to Idabel and folded her into his side with a kiss. He held her there, for longer than she would have expected in public. He lowered his mouth to her ear.

“Ida, love,” he murmured. “Did you not receive my message to turn back?”

Her elation faded. She shook her head, once. She felt his angst as he sighed against her hair. He managed to retain a pleasant expression when they parted, but Idabel caught the tension in his eyes. The riders who’d accompanied them mirrored their lord’s unspoken disquiet, facing outwards, covering all angles. Trebor looked at each member of the group.

“We will make do.”

“With what, father?”

Edric was watching them from his pony’s saddle—it tossed its head, eager to be moving. Edrianne was still petting the other one, as it leaned into her hand gently. Somehow, they had gone to the right horses on their own.

“We’ll make do with what?”

“With you,” Trebor jested, checking the boy’s stirrups. “Come, let’s take you the pretty way to the house.”

“Can we go by the gardens?” He lifted Edrianne onto her saddle. “Mother says the gardens here are as beautiful as ours.”

Edric sat straight on his horse, looking towards the great fortress. “I overheard some people talking about match-day. What is that?”

As her children began demanding answers about this new city, Idabel could only think about what Trebor had whispered. Fear bloomed in her. She couldn’t imagine why he would send a messenger to tell them not to come to the capital, or why the messenger had failed to reach them in time. Trebor had never been one to panic, so whatever his reasoning, it would be rooted in the truth. Idabel swung up into the saddle of the last pony. Its head and ears twitched when she took the reins, sensing her unease.

Edric and Edrianne were lined up behind Trebor, the children eyeing her with a mixture of curiosity and confusion. Trebor’s expression was harder to read. They were in a quieter part of the city now, in the locale that preceded the more heavily guarded bridges, finer quarters and fortress itself. The carriage, with the bulk of their clothes and luggage, was already lumbering away. Their belongings would find them by another path. Up ahead, the conical fortress rose against the sunset sky—darker and more looming than Idabel remembered. She set her shoulders and held the reins steady.

Trebor nodded. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

Hemmed in by their guards, they trotted through the winding streets towards the fortress, with their backs mostly to the sea. Slowly, the bawdy music and raucous carrying-on faded entirely into the hushed tones of fountains and birds, and cultured laughter. In the shadow of the fortress, the air was cool and damp, rich with the scent of spring. Elaborate lanterns had already been lit, providing a diffused, dreamy light. Trimmed vines crept along walls and gates, flowers bloomed in protected coves, and the cobblestones turned to sandstone slabs. It became harder to tell which paths were public and which belonged to any one of the houses that lined the road, many of them shielded from view by rows of narrow trees.

“Cyfriss and junifer,” Edrianne noted, taking a deep breath. “And citrines?”

“Well spotted,” Trebor said, stopping in front of a heavy-looking, wooden gate. He dismounted and helped Idabel down first. “This is where we’ll be staying for our time in Esset. Go on, have a look.”

Edric pushed through the gate first and Edrianne followed, reaching for the plants around her, smelling the flowers and herbs. Servants appeared and took their horses away. They were in a rounded courtyard with a small pond, and a stone house at the opposite end. Pale curtains fluttered in every window, the fragrance of blue jasmian filled the air, and isydenias grew in shaded corners. It was both groomed yet wild, an ode to the flowers and greenery. A fresh breeze blew through the main room of the house as you entered, sweeping in rich, salty air and the crisp must of river water. Beyond that first room, the back of the house opened directly onto an arm of the Teverene River. Their path had taken so many twists and turns, that Idabel had lost track of it. When she realized where they were, she looked at Trebor. He shrugged.

“You always wanted to stay on River Row.”

Idabel shook her head, stunned.

“Look,” Edric shouted, already down by the river’s edge. “Our own boat!”

“Don’t touch the water,” Idabel ordered. “It’s filthy.”

Edrianne looked confused. “A boat? But what about the ponies?”

“Boats can be quicker than the ponies here,” Trebor explained. “If you know the right routes.”

Idabel hummed, feigning interest. She wanted the children gone, so she could ask the only question that mattered at this moment. With a sharp clap, she drew their attention. Edrianne was already picking river reeds, naturally.

“Go inside and wash up,” she said. “Then it’s supper and bed.” 

Trebor nodded. “Yes, we have an early start.”

There was no joy in his voice.

“You were right, mum,” Edrianne said as she passed with an armful of greenery.

“About what?”

“The bath. Being the first thing we’d do.”

Once the children had gone inside, Idabel turned to find Trebor facing eastward, his face distorted with concern. They looked out over the darkening sea together, the sun setting behind them. Many an evening they had stood together as night fell, but with a very different view. What she wouldn’t give to see the rolling hills and scattered vineyards, the narrow canals and bright green groves of Orrendale. 

“Everyone’s children are being tested for dreams.”

It was a moment before his words made any sense. Somewhere, a seagull screeched. The crash of distant waves traveled back to them on the breeze. Idabel kept her voice steady.

“They said nothing about this in the dispatch.”

“By design, I’m sure.”

Her heart stuttered. She suddenly wanted the twins with them again. She wanted to see them. They were arguing in the upper level of the house.

“We’ll leave. At dawn.”

“No.” He looked over his shoulder, voice low. “The chance to avoid it is past.”

Fury rose in her. “Trebor.”

“Think, Ida,” he said, his voice low and firm. “Fleeing would be an admission and a direct affront to the Counsel.”

As much as she hated to admit it, he was right. If only the letter had gotten to them. Why hadn’t the letter gotten to them in time? She would have taken the twins right back to Orrendale. She felt queasy.

“If they have the dreams, everyone will know that—”

“Don’t,” he said. “We swore we would never say it.”

She remembered. Their first promise to one another, made many months before they had promised their lives, had been to keep a secret. The House of Orrendale had not produced a Drifter for a hundred years and Idabel’s house, Dulac, had never had a Drifter in its entire history. Thus, by all accounts, neither Edric nor Edrianne should have the kinds of dreams that the Counsel prized so highly. Except Trebor wasn’t their father.

And how quickly it all came rushing back. Being a child, with child. Her betrothed dead. No way out. Then Trebor, a very instrument of the gods.

“What will we do?”

He shrugged. “Endure. If they laugh, they laugh.”

Trebor’s honor being questioned was bad enough but, with the Counsel on edge and houses being unnamed, the timing could not be more dreadful. And the mortal throne, while always a long shot for either of the twins, had just gotten farther away. To Idabel’s eye, the trip was all but lost.

“But at a time like this?” She whispered. “Awful.”

“We always knew this day might come,” he said, shaking his head. “We will bear up under what comes the same way we do the seasons.”

They hardly had another choice. She sighed, but nodded. He leaned over and kissed her again, this time more deeply. But they were still outside, for any curious passersby to see. Realizing this abruptly, she broke away.

“Dear gods,” she murmured, checking that her hair was still set. “Really.”

He had a treacherously knowing look. His gaze roved over her briefly. Idabel laughed and turned towards the house decidedly.

“You’re mad.”

Trebor’s eyes danced. “No. Just hungry. And,” he went on. “Given what might be revealed in the coming days, it can’t hurt for us to look—” He pursed his lips, pretending to search for the right word. “Devoted.”

“Indeed,” she quipped with amusement. “I suppose that’s something we’ll have to discuss.”

“See?” He came up beside her, tapping his head. “Strategy, Ida. All for strategy.”

She laughed. He always could make her laugh.

“Magic is, by nature, destructive.”

Pens scratched against parchment. The studious ones took notes. The less-so, the ones who would become watchers and lessers, did not. Revon walked towards the great open side of the room that overlooked the northern sea. In a rare display of truly warm weather, the water glittered under a noonday sun, oscillating flecks of diamond-bright light. He felt the refracted glare against the backs of his eyes and squinted. The distant growl of crashing waves rose with the breeze, little more than a whisper by the time it reached the rounded stone walls of the classroom. He turned once again to his students, their eyes following his every movement.

“And, as all of you discovered before coming to Arysdur—perhaps by way of a plant, or an animal, or a person—any mage can destroy,” he went on. “A good mage, the very best, destroys for the benefit of the Counsel,” Revon said, turning on his heel and looking over the handful of faces. “To which we owe our present peace.”

Most of the students bowed their heads deferentially. Others nodded.

“But you all have chosen, or been encouraged to consider, the path of the ravenrider,” he said. “Which means that you must be more than ‘good’—you must be great.”

He let his words hang in the air for a moment. Let the whisper of the ocean fill the space. He waited until the students began to shift in their seats.

“In five hundred years, there have only been forty-eight ravenriders,” he said. “As such, I don’t expect any of you to claim the title, but there is no shame in that. What you learn over the coming decades will make you formidable servants of our people, regardless.”

They were ready. They were chomping at the bit. Their power was baying for blood, their desire to prove themselves a great, unseen swell in the room. Now, he could teach them. Revon moved towards the door, opened it.

“Words will only teach so much. Follow me.”

Behind him, seven sets of feet eagerly scrambled into the hall and formed a haphazard line. Like all of the great fortresses, the castle where mages went to school was oversized—designed for creatures much larger than those that now lived there. Ceilings arched high overhead, each door wide enough to fit two or three horse drawn carts. It was a cavernous place, and much quieter than it had been in former days. Their path was a single, graded walkway that spiraled upwards to the right and downwards to the left. All other hallways and rooms in Arysdur were offshoots of this one, long path.

“Are we going to the Hollow?” A light voice piped up, excited. “I’ve never been in a Hollow.”

Someone else chimed in. “Don’t you have one, at your keep?”

“Not everyone comes from a keep-house,” another voice muttered.

A plump, flushed boy pushed in front of the others. “What kind of fell-beasts do we have here at Arysdur?”

We? Really. Revon glanced at him. His hair needed a good brush. “Every kind.”

A round of excited hums and quiet exclamations rippled through the group. By now, they had reached the level Revon wanted. He turned from the slightly graded walkway, towards the heart of the circular fortress. At its center lay the Hollow, a training ground of dust and stone, where mages were given free reign to practice their craft. While not impossible, even the most inexperienced generally found destroying its solid stone walls a challenge.

He led his students down several steps, into a kind of observation deck with a slim aperture that lay across its length, which provided a full but protected view of the Hollow. That protection would become very important very soon. A soft chorus of awed gasps shivered through the air as the size of the place dawned on them.

“It’s enormous,” one girl breathed. “The biggest Hollow I’ve ever seen.”

The boy with the messy hair leaned over to her, voice low. “It’s bested only by the Great Hollow at Dabdagan. So my father says.”

“Find a position along the window,” Revon quipped. “And be still.”

The students quieted, one half lining up on his left, and the other half on his right. Both rows of faces angled towards him, watching. But Revon wasn’t looking at them. He was peering into the hollow, at the four stone doors on the opposite end.

My little tip jar

They were too heavy for mortal machinery to move but a pleasant challenge for those practiced at using their third-hand. Revon’s third-hand lay patiently at the back of his mind, an ever-present companion in the darkest recesses of his thoughts. He preferred to keep it small and compact most of the time, well aware of how every weapon can be turned against its owner. He was old fashioned in that regard, living in an age when many mages leaned on their third-hand as a daily device. He’d always thought such practice was lazy.

At his release, the swirling blackness at the back of his mind abruptly swelled and burst from the confines of his practiced restraint, striking out like a desert snake. It couldn’t be seen by the untrained eye, but his students felt the threat at once. An uncontrolled third-hand, while having the harmless appearance of heated air, could actually cut a horse in half. He sensed them bury their own third-hands and protect their bodies by turning away. Such instincts would do them well in the years to come.

Revon’s third-hand coalesced and reached pointedly towards the northern door, spreading around its edges. The experience was different for every mage—some could hear whatever their third-hand touched, others could feel it in different parts of their body, and still others could see it as though whatever it touched was directly in front of their face. Right now, Revon tasted the dusty stone, the musty air squeezing from the darkness of the vaults beneath the fortress, and the filth of fell-beasts. Hands at his sides, he used his third-hand to push one stone door open very slowly. A moment later, three fenwolves leapt from the pitchy dark opening and into the enclosure. Curiosity renewed, his students leaned towards the narrow window. As the wolves accustomed themselves to their surroundings, he pressed the stone door closed again. They were trapped.

“Fenwolves,” he began, voice low. “Not the largest of the fell-beasts but prolific, and one of the fastest. At full speed, they can overtake a Zenhaqian race horse and are about as large as one, on average.”

The same, tousle-headed boy spoke up. “How’d we catch these?”

His use of the word ‘we’ was extremely irritating to Revon.

“They had already been injured and were caught by ravenriders at the edge of the northwestern range. We’ve been seeing more of that lately,” Revon admitted. “As Ravenriders, you will encounter such beasts and it’s important that you know how to destroy them. Injured or not.”

He glanced around, looking for the meekest student. There. A girl in grey,  standing at the opening but an arm’s length away, unlike her peers. She was a Yadirfan, one of the mage houses that ran a lesser fortress on the edge of the Shaandilar. He knew her to be intelligent but with a weak stomach.

“Yadirfan,” he said, drawing her attention. “What’s your given name?”

“Neela.”

“Neela.” She nodded, hesitant. He gestured at the wolves. “Provoke them.”

Her large, dark eyes widened. “Provoke them?”

He didn’t nod or repeat himself. It was important that these novices learn to act after the first order. Understanding his silence perfectly, Neela looked out over the Hollow. She cupped her hands at her mouth and shouted at the wolves. All three whipped their heads towards the viewing deck, noses lifted to the air. Their hackles rose and, even from here, everyone could see their snarling grimaces. They growled and snapped, padding slowly towards the class, searching for a way up. They weren’t starved or kept hungry—killing was in their nature.

“Why,” Neela mused, curious. “Why do they want to kill us?”

“Because we understand them. To understand is to dominate,” Revon replied. “If you don’t truly understand something—how it thinks, moves, acts—you can’t undo it. Now, tell me the seven elements of a living thing.”

Her clear, quiet voice broke the silence. “Flesh, bone, blood, mind, heart, soul, and breath.”

Good. “You will master all seven elements but, in war and moments of danger, speed is the key. Flesh and bone is where you start.”

The students glanced between each other. Revon chose the wolf on the left. It was black as night with glimmering green eyes. 

Flesh from bone.

As the students watched, Revon’s third-hand found the sweeping lines of the wolf’s bone structure, its joints, ligaments, marrow. The creature growled at the sensation then began to whimper as he tightened his grip. A few of the students looked down, shifting from foot to foot. They now understood what was happening.

“Look up,” he ordered. “This is what the Counsel requires of you.”

He had wrapped himself around every edge of the bones, had found every point where they were linked to the muscles. Then and only then did he begin to pull the bone through the sinews, imagining a clean separation in his mind: Flesh and bone, lying side by side. He heard the wolf’s wretched, twisted death cries and its pack’s fearful yowling; he sensed the pained turmoil of his students and smelled the acidity of vomit. But he experienced these things the way one would experience the gentle rustle of leaves outside a window. Background.

The Hollow fell silent. Where there had been a living wolf, there now lay a perfect, pale wolf’s skeleton and, opposite it, the deformed flesh it had once belonged to. Both were intact and the fell-beast was dead, its heart stopped cold from the impossible amount of pain.

A perfect disseverment. Unnecessary, but aiming for perfection kept his days interesting. Revon retracted his third-hand carefully and assessed the observation deck. One student was curled up in a dark corner, dry heaving. Based on the state of the floor, the girl’s stomach was already empty. Another was out cold, his fellow students trying to revive him. He appeared to have hit his head. Revon turned to Neela. He saw in her eyes that she had watched the whole thing. That she was forever changed but standing. She had taken an important first step.

“When they are able to walk on their own, escort them to the overseer.”

She swallowed, her mouth dry when she spoke. “Why?”

“We have no use for them and they should choose a new discipline,” he said simply. “You would be wise to remember this moment. And call the keepers for this mess.”

Neela bowed her head. A third student was sniffling. Whoever it was had stayed on their feet, so he would let the weakness of sentimentality go.

“You are all dismissed for the day,” he ordered, waving the shaken students out of the observation deck. “Remember to read scrolls 171 through 173. Be here at dawn, the five of you that remain. It will be a long day.”

They hurried out of the room, half dragging their weakling comrades, and left Revon in the silence. The surviving wolves were pressed against the stone door they had come out of, only too eager to return to the vault after what they had seen. He opened it and they slipped into the darkness. He closed it again then smothered his third-hand back into silence.

“I see your methods haven’t changed.”

He stiffened. Not many people could sneak up on him. But, of course, she had waited until he was focused elsewhere. That was a mage’s one vulnerability.

“What are you doing here,” he said, less a question. “Does Cazagar know?”

“I would never leave Dabdagan without his permission.”

True, but that didn’t quite answer the question. At the tactful evasion, Revon turned to assess his unexpected visitor. The woman wore blue, the color of the High Hand. Despite their history, the face itself he struggled to describe, a challenge for older mages in general. Her red-brown hair was caught up into a long braid, all but hidden behind her slender neck. As was the style for most she-mages in the field, she wore her soul stones woven into her hair like a crown. It was less utilitarian than a chest plate but more reasonable than a necklace. The crown of stones glinted even in the shadows, entirely made of the same striking bloodquartz. He had often suggested she get them anchored to the skull beneath the flesh, as many riders preferred, but that had been too brutal for her. She smelled of sage oil, as usual.

“Do you remember what it was like, to know you could be killed?” She took a breath and looked at him, her familiar proud expression slackening. “To know that you could die?”

That was a strange and foolish line of thought.

“No.”

She was staring down at the dead wolf. She seemed transfixed. Ravens and vultures had begun swirling down to gorge themselves on the carcass.

“Neither did I,” she murmured. “It’s been so long—forty years, maybe.”

He had seen her afraid but once. “I didn’t train and install you at Dabdagan so you could come back here whenever you pleased. It rather defeats the purpose,” he quipped. “What do you want?”

She met his gaze, sharp. “I was on the other side of the western mountains.”

“You don’t have leave for such a thing.”

“Cazagar sent me. Fell-beasts are appearing in increasing numbers, as you know, and I have been given the task of finding their entry point. It requires that I go where I normally wouldn’t,” she sighed, turning her back to the arena. She lifted a hand to her face, fingers tracing one brow. Pensive. “And I did find it.”

He was not particularly interested in fell-beasts. “Do I look like a siphon?”

Her eyes flashed. “There are people living on the other side of the western mountains. Thousands and thousands of lawless mortals.”

He was briefly surprised. Then his mind began to seek out the only possible explanation. No one had imagined the first of the banished mortal houses would survive the crossing. It was precisely why the Counsel had sent them into the untamed wilds of the western mountains. It was also why they hadn’t sent anyone there, since. Mortals had their uses.

Fascinating.

She tossed her head. “Is that worth a visit?”

“But that means—”

“There is a mage among them,” she interrupted.

No, not just any mage. Revon’s whole being was focused now, on a single point. 

“You felt it—male or female?”

“Male, I think. And, I don’t know how to say this,” she hissed, grimacing. “He is the most powerful lawless mage I have ever encountered. He has been blocking that entire valley for hundreds of years, with a blindsight.”

“Is he like us?” Revon already knew the answer.

“No.” She looked ill. “He burns like fire. Like the sun.”

Notwithstanding the theatrical overstatement of another mage’s magic, Revon hadn’t felt this much excitement in a hundred years. According to modern knowledge, only a handful of the elder-bloods were unaccounted for and, of those, only three really mattered: Tareth Persefydon, Isydenia Nossidar, and Amlis Antesar. With Amlis and Isydenia being female, that left but one option for this newcomer.

“Tareth Persefydon.”

Sya scoffed. “You cannot be serious.”

“Since the Counsel ascended, there has been a strict accounting of births. Besides, only an elder-blood would have the power to block an entire valley,” he retorted, irritated at her resistance to the only option. “You yourself said he was the most powerful mage you’d ever encountered.”

An old feeling of envy slithered through his veins. He had almost forgotten it.

Such natural power. The injustice was sickening.

“But we would have felt his magic before now, surely?”

“Not if it was in place before the Gaunt and if he was able to manage any bleed, as it seems he can. We wouldn’t notice it if it was always there,” he reasoned then, more gently: “You were right to come to me.”

Sya gave him a warning look. “I am no longer your lesser and I will go to Cazagar. I tell you this out of professional courtesy. You have questions. Perhaps you will get answers, after all.”

He smiled slowly and she looked away. Her loyalty to him was so total, she couldn’t fully see it. That had been the intent of his every action with her, since he’d found her as a child.

“But you also know I am the only one who could challenge an elder-blood and hope to win.”

And do so without begging permission.

Sya didn’t try to deny it. Once again, he saw a shade of fear pass over her face. Encountering an elder-blood had changed her. It had shown her something forgotten—her mortality—and, in her fear, she had come to him. There was a time when such a gesture would have been intoxicating. Even now, he felt a whisper of that same satisfaction. But it had been many, many years since another person could spark any kind of true feeling in Revon Evershade.

“Who felt the other first?”

“Can’t say. But he issued a very clear warning,” she admitted, lifting a hand to her crown of stones on instinct. “I don’t expect to receive another.”

Irritating. Their minds had met. That was dangerous. “Did you see anything? Anything from the past.”

Sya squinted, seemingly racking her mind. “No. I was eager to abandon the connection. As soon as he released me, I fled.”

Good. That would have been unfortunate for her.

“Go back to Dabdagan. Tell no one,” he instructed. “There are too many enemy eyes and ears in the Counsel’s halls now. This must be resolved quietly.”

She looked weary, looking up at him almost like a child. Revon raised a hand and traced one finger from the outer edge of her eyebrow, down her cheekbone, to her jaw the way one might paint the same. She held her breath. By the time he took her chin between his thumb and first finger, his mouth hovering above hers, she was frozen in confusion. But she didn’t pull away. She never had been able to. Revon held her gaze.

“You always were my favorite.”

She blinked but didn’t look away. “Once I make my report, a party of ravenriders, redguards and siphons will be sent out to deal with the fell-beasts.”

He hummed, letting his hand fall. “How long do I have?”

“A week. At most.”

“That’s plenty of time,” he murmured. He moved for the door. “Have you eaten?”

“No, but I don’t like northern food,” she replied. “And I have to get back before this visit becomes obvious.”

Once Sya left for the capital, Revon got to work, starting with detailed instructions for the master who would take his place with the new novice class. The institution overseer asked no questions about his departure. It was not the first time he had been called away and, as a ravenrider of his caliber, he answered to no one in Arysdur. They knew enough to think better of prying.

Night came quickly. At the ether-hour, when flying would draw the least notice, Revon slipped out of his rooms. The stone halls and chambers of the fortress lay almost perfectly quiet as he made his way to the ravensward tower, the tallest point of the fortress. The crashing of the sea sounded closer now, but he could no longer see it in the pitchy darkness. Thanks to the dusty winds of summer, the moon was barely more than an orangey sliver in the sky and would little disturb a covert flight.

Revon stepped out of the poor moonlight and into the cavernous darkness of the ravensward. At the moment, it housed only one beast. She hissed a little at Revon’s approach, lifting herself off her haunches to her standing height, her sheer mass unseen yet heavy before him. He heard and felt the rush of air as she stretched her wings and ruffled her feathers.

“Sya brought us news,” he murmured into the dark. “What do you say to that?”

The low warble of his graven, Nightwing, assured him that she might not be able to understand but that she was listening intently. He peered into her nook, where the black of her feathers blended imperceptibly into the deep shadows. As if aware that he wanted to see her, the creature stretched her avian neck and emerged from the curtain of darkness, each footstep sending the tiniest tremor through the stone floor. Her head alone was twice the size of a horse’s and bore a formidable, gleaming beak as long as Revon’s forearm. Her eyes were copper-red, the only color on her, and fixed on him. He lifted a hand and scratched under her chin, an act that would result in the loss of a hand for anyone else. Her feathers smoothed a little and she leaned some of her weight into him. She was happy. It had been a long time since they’d left Arysdur, and many years since they’d been active.

Revon remembered the first time he had seen a graven. He had been speechless, overcome by the sense of power in its form. He had never taken made-beasts seriously, had always thought them an absurd waste of magic, but the graven breed had changed his mind entirely. As with all made-beasts, their beauty varied depending on the skill of the maker, but they shared several key traits. Their essence and primary physical characteristics were ravenic—intelligent, loyal, and observant with beaks, wings and feathers covering most of their bodies. But efforts had been made to perfect the form, and their back legs and tails were those of a mountain cat, albeit with varying degrees of plumage on the very tip of the tail. The first attempts had been little more than oversized ravens, weak tools in ground-level battles. The newer iteration meant dominance over the skies and growing usefulness in ground work.

Nightwing was the only graven Revon knew that sported a hawk’s talons. It had been risky, of course, as some combinations simply would not take. But the look people always had, once they saw the impressive discrepancy, constantly assured him that he had made the right choice. And anyway Nightwing had settled beautifully, requiring less conjuring by the day. When made-beasts went wrong, the opposite was the case.

“Ab razid’yad u’tar,” he murmured in word’lure. A ravenrider again.

Earlier in the day, Revon had worn the plain, grey robes of an Institution master and the necklaced soul-stones of a sedentary, elder mage. Now, he wore the gleaming, black-iron breastplate of the ravenriders and was cloaked in velvety onyx garb from head to toe. While the color was less important, the extensive nature of the ensemble was a necessity in the cold, lofty air of the long flight before him. Naturally, it had the added effect of being menacing, especially so once he lifted the mask that would protect his face from the frigid winds. Looking down at his gloved hands, a strange sort of power went through Revon, and he briefly forgot why he had abandoned his previous career. By the dead, perhaps people had been right to be shocked at his retirement. There was nothing like being the darkness. Like being the shadow.

They stepped into the breathless night, onto a broad scarp. It resembled a balcony but had no rails or walls. Its purpose was not to prevent a fall but to allow one. Nightwing spread her wings and bent low, giving Revon the space he needed to mount. He did so and she stood once more, lurching a little under him.

Her enormous heart beat against the insides of his legs. Where she was a cat, hackles rose. Her talons grated against the stone with a mean hiss. Revon knew she had reached the edge of the scarp because a sudden and ferocious updraft blew his hair back from his face. At the edge of the platform, Nightwing stopped and tossed her head, eager to be gone. Revon cautiously drew his third-hand out, thins as a piece of yarn—Nightwing could handle no more than that—and brushed her simple mind with a feather touch. The brief bond showed her the northern line of western mountains. That was all she needed. Revon retracted his third-hand and smothered it into silence. 

Being an animal, Nightwing didn’t see the need for hesitation the way a mortal or even a mage might. The impending jump had no effect on her whatsoever. They hovered there only for as long as it took her to assess possible threats and for Revon to flatten himself against her back, gripping the tufts of hair where her front legs met her torso. Then she dove into the updraft.

The twist of his stomach before her wings sprung outwards and caught them. The weight on his head and shoulders as she banked sharply to the south and began to climb. The breathless cold.

They were the only things he never grew tired of.

My little tip jar

Ashes. Ashes everywhere.

It was Vara’s first thought every morning. Ashes under her fingernails, on her dress, in her hair, her mouth, even her lungs. She opened her eyes, fixing her gaze on the low, stone ceiling of the room where she’d slept all her life. Through the cracks in the heavy shutters on her left, she could see that it was still dark outside, but that the sky was the fleeting, deep blue that came just before dawn. Her breath rose into the cold. Her chamber fire had gone out again.

She rose, swiveling her legs off the bed and pressing her feet to the cold floor. In two short strides she was at the window, a simple, square empty space, where the builders of the keep hadn’t put any stone. She pushed the shutters outwards and leaned on the rough sill, looking out over the keep from the most protected position, the tower. It was also the oldest part of the keep, the first thing to have been built on the enormous riverrock that made the land and people of Tor famous and difficult to defeat.

The sun was rising earlier and earlier. There were already signs of life in the great yard, where the vegetable garden lay, its neat rows just now beginning to sprout and turn different shades of green and yellow, some crimson for the cabbage, purple for the roottops. On the other side of the yard, the garden-hands, boys and girls whose well-off parents wanted them to live in the keep, were stumbling about, shoving each other playfully and already doing almost no actual work. That would change once the garden master arose. Both the fowl pen and garden abutted a crude, rock wall, which had a single gate in it. Its purpose was twofold—to keep the birds from running off when the keep gate was open for visitors, and to provide another line of defense in the case of an attack.

The wall around the garden and fowl pen had been built many years after the main tower had been constructed and, some years after that, a second wall. It was not quite a circle within a circle, but close. The old and new wall met about where the fowl pen and garden lay, making for a moon-shaped gateyard. There was a crude barracks at the far end of that where warriors and archers slept, in fewer numbers at the moment, but by about a hundred in times of war. If one ran at full pace from the tower, past the inner wall and to the front gate, one would be completely winded by the end. That made Torfell by far the largest keep in the Fen.

Torfell also boasted one of the only caths in the north. It was a long, stone structure built around a tree, where their ancestors had worshiped gods whose names were long-forgotten. The cath had no manmade roof, but was sheltered entirely by the tree itself and old, gnarled vines as wide as her thigh at the root. Every year at harvest, the faithful came from far and wide to remember those who had come before and to offer prayers. Of course, most came for the accompanying revelry in the village. Harvest had also once been a time to celebrate the peace between north and south, but even that was no more. No one south of the river flats would come this year, and maybe never again. The war had truly ruined everything.

Careful. Those were dangerous thoughts. Vara turned away from the window and, with practiced effort, away from her memories. Sharp footsteps struck in the hall outside her door. The castle was waking up, and so should she be. There was work to be done.

Bypassing the cold hearth and crossing the small room in a few steps, Vara pushed a weighty curtain aside, revealing a row of heavily woven dresses, all a trusty, dark grey. She yanked her nightshift over her head, dropped it on a nearby wooden stool, and pulled on a pair of thin underclothes. They were the finest thing she owned and had been procured from the village on the other side of the mountains—a gift from someone she pushed from her thoughts, even as she slipped the delicate pieces over her legs and arms.

The dress followed—shorter than what would be considered proper for most women, with intentional slits down both thighs, and at the backs of her legs as well. Ties ran down each side of the bodice, where extra cloth allowed for shifts in size and weight, especially around the bust. Of course, Vara had little to boast in that area and preferred them as tight as possible. Another set of the same ties started halfway up the middle of her chest. She folded the extra cloth behind the edges and tied each small tie, until the neck of the dress was shut just under her chin. She drew on a pair of heavy, close-fitting pantaloons made of wool. By a simple drawstring, she tightened them about her waist, under the dress, then flicked the dress back over them. Now, her legs were covered. The wool was rough, but it didn’t itch. Nothing could be worse than goathair.

She sat on the wooden stool and proceeded to address her feet. Stockings and knee high, soft necked boots, with leather ties to keep them up, followed. She tied them behind each knee, then folded the top edge of the boot itself over the tie, to keep those in place. Vara stood and stretched a bit, testing the ties, making sure they wouldn’t become uncomfortable. Few things were more annoying than being halfway through some errand, or exercise, and having to retie anything. And her companions for the day would be less than forgiving for such a simple error.

Before donning her leather jerkin, Vara took advantage of her mobility to put her hair in order. It was long, dark and unruly. If Haenor were here, she wouldn’t leave the room before a maze of sophisticated, warrior-worthy braids decorated her head. But Haenor wasn’t here, and Vara couldn’t count on her to always be there. If she had her way, Vara would have chopped it to the shoulder at the start of spring, but it would have made Haenor furious and would have given people one more reason to stare. Today, she braided it into a four strand braid that brushed between her shoulder blades. The method shortened it, made it easier to move and not get caught on something. Or by someone. 

Someone screamed. She stiffened and dashed to the window. But it was just the garden-hands in the yard, laughing at the flightless fowls. Still, her heart was pounding. Her palms tingled. She shook herself and closed the shutters too loudly. Stupid.

The war is over.

Hands, had it almost been a year? It had. She’d just had her twenty-first winter, and it had all happened the spring before that. It didn’t feel like that much time had passed. The war had settled in the very heart of Tor, heavy as a stone.

Don’t. Vara pushed those thoughts away as well and surmised darkly that, soon, there would be nothing she could think about. She would have to attend to every waking moment with endless vigor, if she were to avoid memories of a troubled past.

With a sigh, she slipped into her supple, over-long jerkin, closing the vest over her front, and hooking the front pieces together with leather ties. Like the dress, it too had slits, to allow for running, but the slits had wisely been placed at intervals opposite to those of the dress, for any stray arrows. This was her heaviest piece of clothing, weighing as much as her light shortsword, which she now slung and belted around her waist.

She had packed her hunting bag the night before and swung it over one shoulder, securing the single strap across her body tightly. It held rations for a couple days, a light woven blanket, bandages, and her favorite longknife—among other small things.

Far from being a burden, the array settled onto Vara’s shoulders with a comforting weight. In anything less, she felt utterly naked. Exposed. She tapped her chest, the strikes barely registering to the skin beneath, protected by layers of material. Her shortsword swung at her side, ready. She took a full breath, to the bottom of her lungs, the first of the morning. It was going to be a long day.

In her haste to put on her boots, she’d sat on her nightshift and flattened it rather pathetically to the wooden stool. She balled up the fraying sleep dress and threw it onto her crumpled bed, which she ought to make. Unlatching the chamber door, she stepped into the shadowed corridor and headed down the hall to the spiral stairs. She passed a maid and one of Yorian’s guests as she went.

The maid recognized her and scurried past with lowered eyes. En route to the latrine, the guest nodded and said something forgettable about the day ahead. Vara nodded back, pleasantly. By the time he left Tor, he would know better than to talk to her. Then he would treat her as coolly as everyone else did. It was only a matter of time.

Outside, the air felt less cloistering but she knew she wouldn’t feel free to breathe, that her shoulders wouldn’t drop and her neck wouldn’t loosen, until she was beyond the walls, beyond the village, in the forest. As safe as Torfell was from an outside attack, it was the attack within that frightened her—the attack of memories and failures that could not be forgiven. Vara pushed through the garden gate, ignoring the curious, childish stares of the garden-hands. They meant nothing by it and she didn’t blame them.

“Fey,” someone cursed, loudly, as she approached the barracks. “Not you.”

A man outfitted for several days of travel and hunting—not unlike herself—leaned on the far corner of the barracks. He had a head of short, copper curls and, as usual, was smoking the large pipe that he’d carved himself. Also familiar was the expression of contempt shrouded in pale smoke. He was thick and sure-footed, a true man of the mountains. The youngest son of a middling stone mason from a small village, he had clawed his way to become one of the seven warriors tasked with personally protecting Yorian, leading his hunters on days such as this and being his hand in battle.

“Leith,” she said, ignoring his displeasure at her presence.

“It’s beyond me why Osper allows this,” he sneered. “You put us all at risk.”

Vara rubbed her arms against the cold, not bothering to answer the jibe. If it had been earlier in the spring, she might have worn a full coat, but by midday it would be warm, especially with what they were up to. Dangerous as it was, she wanted to get going.

Wolf hunting.

The enormous beasts had started coming up and over the northeastern rim a couple years back, in ones and twos. But the easy meat of the bloody war had drawn them like flies, and now they liked it in the valley. A pack had made its home a two day’s jaunt north of them and was terrorizing the shepherds and hog keepers of Umber. Apparently, they’d torn through an entire herd of sheep, meaning less milk this summer and no lambs the next. As the largest and best-manned keep in the northern Fen, it was Tor’s duty to deal with it. Leith muttered something about her being a fool.

“Why are you here—to prove something?” He demanded, spitting at the ground but a little too close for comfort. “You can’t heal anymore and you’re a middling fighter at best. No hunt will change that.”

She didn’t look at him. “Good thing I’m a tracker.”

“And you’re not even the best at that,” he muttered. “I am.”

Her neck felt hot. Her temper reared. If she was a man, she would have punched him square in the face. But she wasn’t a man. She said nothing. They both knew that if Yorian hadn’t advocated for it and if Osper hadn’t conceded, she wouldn’t be here.

“When I’m head of the Seven, there will be no more of this,” he concluded. “I don’t care what Yorian says.”

Vara held back a grimace, feigning indifference. He probably would be head of the Seven. Osper was not old by any means, but he wouldn’t wait for that to happen before he began preparing his replacement. He would choose his successor and gradually take a lesser position. Oblen, his father, had done the same for Osper, many years back. It was just the way things worked. Right now, Osper was choosing between Leith and Edyen. They had both distinguished themselves, in the war against the southern Fen and in smaller border skirmishes, but also in peace time.

“I’ll have to visit the cath more,” she murmured. “And pray that never happens.”

He scoffed. “I doubt the Hands will listen to you.”

Damn it all, but he was quick. The door to the barracks opened and Osper walked out. He was a plain man, with a shaven head, a hawkish nose, and a lank, unremarkable figure. He was far from handsome, especially next to the ruddy verve of Leith. But seeing him fight was a thing of awe and he was respected by every man Vara knew. Yorian’s father had found him during the First War and brought him back to the north. He was edging towards forty winters, but Vara had often thought that she might consider marrying him. But she wouldn’t be his first choice.

“I see you two are getting along, as ever,” he mused, not looking at either of them as he pulled on a pair of fingerless gloves. “Vara, bring a bow.”

She was disappointed. “I'd rather the sword.”

“You're better with the bow,” he said quickly, stepping past her. “Get one.”

Leith glowered. Other members of the Seven—Dalyn, Jash, Tryler—filed out of the barracks as well and joined Leith. They all had spears and swords. One carried a net. They gave her cursory glances, sharing irritated looks. Leith was not the only one to dislike her presence, he was just willing to say it.

Unhappy, but not wanting to cause a scene that would end with her being forced to concede, Vara turned to enter the barracks’ weapons room. She ran headlong into Edyen and it threw her back a bit. He caught her by the shoulders and moved her to the side, so he could pass. He winked a blue eye, his floppy gold-brown hair giving him an ever-playful look. As much as Vara liked him, his lightheartedness didn’t lend itself to the kind of leadership people found so comforting in Osper. But how she wanted him to be head of the Seven. She needed him to be.

Please, Hands above, she prayed silently, entering the weapons room. Let Edyen be head of the Seven.

She found her favorite bow, swept up a full quiver, and strode back out as quickly as she could. Outside, the men had left the keepyard and were already trekking down the steep switchbacks that led up to Torfell’s gate. She caught up and fell in line. At the front, Osper looked over his shoulder but only cursorily. He didn’t really want her here either. Edyen, at least, gave her a smile and walked with her at the back.

At the base of the steep incline lay a narrow bridge that spanned the deadly river rapids—Torfell’s primary line of defense. A team of experienced hunters and common fighters had gathered and met them on the village side. As Osper and his team passed, they took up the rear, falling in just behind Vara and Edyen. She squirmed inside under their silent glares.

She couldn’t remember the last time she felt comfortable around people. She almost couldn’t remember who she’d been before the war. Happier, maybe.

“What’s wrong with you,” Edyen hissed quietly. “You’re tight as a bowstring.”

Vara took a breath. “Sorry.”

He glanced down at her. “Still wearing your sword?”

“Osper said bring the bow, not leave the sword.” She glanced over at him. He grunted and saluted some villagers. “Why aren’t you at the front? You have the rank.”

He sniffed, shrugging. “Why are you on this hunt?”

I need you to be head of the Seven, she wanted to say. Please make an effort.

But, of course, she didn’t. Neither ventured an answer to the other’s question.

It wasn’t long before the party passed through the bulk of the village and held right along the main road, heading north. The valley rose up before them, the northern mountains looming larger than usual, and dark clouds gathered in the east. As the road sloped upwards, and the roar of the river faded, the party came to an abrupt halt. Edyen stretched his neck to see what was happening. Vara didn’t bother. Amongst other women, she was tall. Amongst these men, she was not.

“Vara!” It was Osper, calling from the front.

Me?

“That’s you,” Edyen quipped. “Go.”

She jogged forward. She felt the distrusting gazes, the contempt hot on the back of her head, but she kept her back straight. But, with the way Leith looked at her when she came into view, she wasn’t sure which was worse. Osper’s keen gaze fell on her sword then flicked to her bow. He said nothing but didn’t look pleased as he beckoned them forward, separating them from the rest of the group.

“You two will run by the Feachway and take lay of the land,” Osper said, gesturing at the narrow path that afforded a better view of the valley. It curved up and around the western face, then rejoined the main road about a day and a half north of them. “Lord Selwiv sent across his ideas, but I want an assessment of my own.”

Leith knelt to retie one boot. “Vara can stay back. She’s not needed.”

“She needs to improve her tracking,” Osper replied.

“That’s true for everything she does.”

There was a moment of silence, long enough that it meant something. When Leith unfolded and saw Osper’s face, he nodded. Vara swallowed.

“Both of you seem to think my orders are requests,” Osper said, his voice sharp with authority. His eyes flashed a warning. “They are not.”

Leith twitched irritably. His silence was the best Osper could hope for. As much as Leith respected Osper, he wasn’t afraid to disagree with him on some things. And he did—especially when it came to Vara herself. But commands were commands, and Osper had been clear.

“Learn from him, Vara,” Osper ordered. Then, with cautious regard: “And watch yourself. This is dangerous work.”

For the first time, she felt almost guilty for insisting on this. Osper was truly concerned, a rare state for him. But Yorian had bent so many rules to give her a place among these men. She couldn’t turn back now. She set her shoulders.

“I know.”

Before she’d finished speaking, Leith took off at a surprising pace, practically diving into the western forest. Vara was an excellent runner, in good physical condition and had earned her mountain-breath, but Leith was angry at having to bring her and determined to make her feel it. The Feachway was less traveled, with some frightfully narrow stretches that had nothing but sheer face on both sides. The rest of it was rough and unbroken, and they had to scramble over fallen trees more than once. Before long, her insides and throat were burning. Every once in a while, Leith would stop to survey the lower valley. But it wasn’t long before Vara didn’t care what he saw.

My little tip jar

She had thought today would be difficult, but it far exceeded her expectations. By the time the sun began to set—thank the Hands that made the mountains—she was nearly faint with exhaustion and her legs were going numb. In the gathering dark, she couldn’t keep her eyes on him and her eyes on the ground, so she chose the ground, leaping from one of his steps to the next. His strides were longer, so she had to take three for his two. She turned it into a kind of game, a way to distract herself from the pain. She was so focused that she ran into him the next time he stopped.

“Wake up, will you?” He let out an irritated breath. “We’ll sleep here and pick up at first light.”

Vara nodded, trying to pretend that she wasn’t utterly spent, and found a stone on one side of the tiny clearing Leith had chosen. They had reached one of the broader sections of the Feachway, where trees at least shielded them from the fall below. He built a low fire and they ate some of their rations by its light, in silence. It didn’t sate her. Even if she hadn’t just run all day and even if a veritable feast lay before her, it would do her no good. Everything tasted like ashes, now.

“So you do eat,” he muttered.

Vara looked up. Leith had pulled out his pipe. He tapped it against his knee.

“I’d have thought you didn’t need to anymore.”

Hands above, he won’t stop talking. She tucked the rest of her dried meat away and unrolled her blanket. She would get no peace. Sleep was the only answer.

“Why not just mop up a tree or two? It’s easier,” he went on. She smelled his pipe-leaf on the air. “Or better yet, why not me? I bet you’d like that.”

No one knew better than Vara how easy that would be. He smiled and Vara realized she’d been staring at him. She went back to bedding down, her mouth tight, her jaw clenched.

“That look—right there—is why I'll be keeping my knife ready,” he said, tapping his hilt. “You’ll not make ash of me.”

Hands, she had begun to hate him.

“You’re first watch,” she said, wrapping herself in her blanket and leaning back against the rock. She bowed her head and closed her eyes. “Because you won’t shut up.”

He didn’t answer.

Vara was awoken by the cold, to half frozen feet and ankles. Several hours had passed, based on the look of the stars. The fire had gone out and the moon had risen. Her breath rose, white and wispy. She blinked.

“Leith?”

A distant, keening howl rose over the trees. Her heart sputtered and began to race. Something moved in the shadows, from the corner of her eye, and her bowels nearly turned to water. But it was just Leith, with his back to her and his eyes on the valley below.

“They’re closer than I would have thought,” he admitted. “Towards the river.”

Neither Vara nor Leith slept the rest of the night, their eyes and ears peeled for any sign that they were in immediate danger. By the time the sky over the eastern mountains began to lighten, Vara was just happy to move. The first thing she did was to belt her longknife around her waist. The wind was unpredictable, but flurried east to west enough that Leith kept to their original course. When they passed a small mountain spring, he stopped and dug into the muddy earth. Vara stared, confused, as he began to smear mud on his clothes, skin, even in his hair.

“It will dull our scent, if the wind shifts,” he explained, shaking his head. “Have to wonder if you’ve ever really tracked.”

She had. Just not anything that could track her back.

Vara followed suit and eagerly added to her layer of mud whenever she came across soggy ground. They went at a slower pace compared to the day before, checking the valley below, and especially the bare hills or open fields. They never saw a wolf, but heard howls more than once and in different directions. As the Feachway veered east to rejoin the main road, frustration began to set in. They had still found no consistent wolf-sign. She knew this wasn’t normal when Leith began to mutter to himself.

Whenever he stopped, Vara would turn and look back the way they had come. There was never anything there, but she began to feel watched. It was after high-noon, when she turned forward again and found Leith kneeling in the middle of the path, crouched over a set of fresh tracks.

Vara came around and knelt across from him. They looked like the marks of a wolf, but something about them was wrong. She brushed her fingers along the indentations of one print and a twinge of warning shuddered through her. She’d been in enough peril over the last few years to know better than to ignore it. Without a word, she pulled her bow out and strung it quietly. Leith still hadn’t spoken. She glanced up to find him glaring warily at the tracks.

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything. If the wolf was running, the nail bits would be deeper—see? Wolves pull at the earth at speed,” Leith muttered, sniffing and looking around. He wiped his face on the back of his sleeved arm and stood. “But the tracks are too far apart for a walking gait.”

Leith ventured nothing else and slowly followed the prints forward, past her. He was right. The tracks were deep, too, like a great weight had been on them, yet not large enough to belong to a fenwolf. And the prints themselves should have been uneven, based on the changes in terrain. But they were all perfect indentations. Strangest of all, the tracks followed the path itself. No fenwolf needed to do that. Vara lashed her quiver of arrows to her hip.

The sound of Leith’s sword unsheathing startled her. She whirled to face the way he’d gone. Brush snapped nearby. They’d reached a part of the Feachway that widened into a flattish clearing, and Leith’s gaze was fixed on the forest beyond it. Before she could ask what he was doing, several figures emerged from the trees. Vara recognized the twisted vines embroidered into their vests and breathed a sigh of relief. They were from Umber. Leith sheathed his blade again and spread his hands. It was an unusual gesture for him.

“Selwiv. We didn’t realize you’d be joining us on our hunt.”

Vara was surprised by the tense formality in his voice. She looked over the men from Umber again and realized that they were fitted for war, not hunting. Her relief turned to confusion then discomfort as more of them emerged from the forest. There were nine in total.

A middle-aged man stepped forward. Miurmod Selwiv would have been no worse than plain, but he had spent so long scowling at the world around him that he had become ugly. The outer tips of his eyebrows were permanently up, angling like two diving hawks. His eyes glittered angrily in deep, darkened sockets. The corners of his mouth were downturned, to such a degree that he looked to have pockets of skin on either side, under the frown. It reminded Vara of the mudflows and rockslides that deposited at the feet of mountains. The man chewed something blackish very slowly, still not answering.

“It’s our land, after all,” he finally replied. Then, sharper: “Though I see we’re not even important enough for Yorian to send his best.”

Vara blinked. She’d always heard Selwiv was a hard, unpleasant man, but hadn’t expected outright disrespect. Leith cocked his head.

“Lord Yorian values Umber equally among the northern keeps. We rejoin the party the day after tomorrow.”

That was a lie. Osper and the rest were closer than that. Leith would only lie if he was concerned about Selwiv’s intentions. Vara’s chest tightened.

“Your lord,” Selwiv corrected, sharp. “Not mine.”

His words sent a flush of fury over Vara’s face. Leith, hotheaded as he was, didn’t attempt to dispel either the confusion or tension. There was, of course, no confusion at all. The random howls, the strange tracks—it all made sense. This was a trap. The men of Umber had been hoping to catch a different quarry, but had watched Vara and Leith long enough to realize that they would have to settle. Selwiv’s gaze swiveled towards Vara and his eyes narrowed. A strange series of expressions passed over his dreadful face—curiosity, disbelief, fury, hatred, then cold calculation. She stifled a shiver and widened her stance to hide her shaking.

“Is that the so-called healer?”

Leith looked down at Vara, unperturbed to the untrained eye. But his hand had moved to his sword hilt. He scoffed lightly.

“Haenor? She’s no healer. She’s a tracker. Trainee—not even very good.”

Hands of the maker. He had lied again. They were in trouble.

A slow, cruel smile lifted Selwiv’s upper lip into a sneer and the group of men quickly flanked them, fanning into a practiced formation. At once, Vara felt the cloistering discomfort that came from being outnumbered and having enemies at your back. Her brief time in the war came rushing back, rippling from her toes to her head then back again.

Speed and accuracy and cleverness, Osper had always told her. They’re your best hope.

She angled herself so she could see the men at her back. They stopped edging closer. The ones with swords were larger types, so they would move more slowly, if only a little. One spearman looked a little wide-eyed. He was large but young, probably no more than fourteen, with a face similar to that of Selwiv. The men on either side of him stood just in front of him, shielding him without realizing it. He’d been placed at the back of the group. He was important. A young relation, she reasoned. She would go for him as soon as she saw an opening.

The spearmen wouldn’t throw their weapons at first, as it was always better to have one in hand than in the hands of an enemy, should you miss. But they would be among the first she needed to dispose of, as their weapons had a greater reach. The men with knives were smaller, faster, and the greatest secondary threat. The swordsmen would come in third. It’s how she would try to do it, anyways. She had to make a choice and hope it was a good one, because she had three clean shots, at best, before the enemy was too close for the arrows to gather the necessary speed to kill them. She had thirteen arrows in the quiver. She was very glad she’d strung her bow.

Nine.

But Selwiv’s left hand is wrapped and his fingers are purple. Infected.

Eight.

Four swords, three spears, a few long knives, no bowmen.

Good.

“Tell me,” Leith said to Selwiv, stepping so he and Vara were back to back. He drew his sword decisively. “Who were you hoping would fall into your trap?”

“Osper, of course,” the man grunted. “But we’ll settle for his healer. I hear she’s favored, too.”

Leith didn’t move. “I don’t like her any more than you do—”

“Then hand her over.”

“—but she’s under Lord Yorian’s protection and I serve him. She is going back to Tor.”

Vara glanced at the traitorous man. Selwiv’s his upper lip quivered with the force of his scowl. He drew his crude blade and pointed it at her.

“I’ll send it back in pieces.”

Fighting was a strange thing. The moments before always felt like an eternity, and the moments during like a lifetime crammed into a breath—perhaps because entire lifetimes were ended in mere breaths. Vara heard Osper’s voice in her head.

“Breathe. If you don’t breathe, you can’t think. When you can think, don’t think too far ahead. Just this breath. Then the next. And the next.”

Vara breathed deep, quelling her nerves at the imminent chaos. Most of the eyes were on the greater apparent threat, Leith. That would give her a chance to move but she would have to take every opportunity. And quickly.

“All men die,” Leith murmured at her back. It was the chant of the Seven. “We choose the time. We choose the place.”

He moved first and she followed, freeing her bow and an arrow from her quiver at the same time. Of the three crucial shots she needed to make, she missed the first. But those on either side flinched, and their hesitation gave her enough time to hit a spearman in the eye on the second attempt. His head snapped back.

Breathe.

On instinct, Vara swiveled and aimed for the young spearman. A swordsman dove in front. Her arrow hit him squarely in his fighting shoulder. He went down, screaming.

Breathe.

One knife wielder had moved faster than she’d expected. He filled her vision. She ducked. His knife sang overhead. Now level with his groin, Vara swung up into his crotch with the butt of her bow, pushing with all the force in her legs. He crumpled. She smashed his face with the heel of her foot, unsheathed her knife and buried it in his chest to the hilt. He wouldn’t rise.

Breathe.

Leith roared. She felt a spray of warmth on the backs of her arms and turned, fearing the worst. One of Selwiv’s swordsmen was on his knees, gripping his own, half-severed neck. Leith’s sword flashed in the sunlight. Beyond him, the line had broken. There was an opening. No one would be able to catch her. Vara was light of foot and suited to peak running. She could flee, gain some distance then shoot from the trees. But that was four on Leith. He might not last that long. She hesitated.

That hesitation was her second and greatest mistake. Something slammed into her back with a crunching crack, knocking the wind out of her and sending her to the ground. Her knife and bow flew out of her hands. She lay there, gasping, her vision swirling. Someone kicked her over. She reached for her sword but it was gone. Selwiv’s hideous face rose above her, her blade held in his unbandaged fist. His eyes were lit by a dark fire.

Someone gripped her braid—stupid long hair—and jerked her head to the side so hard that something popped at the back of her neck. Stabbing pain flooded her awareness. A hand pried at her face. A putrid stench choked her. Fingers were in her mouth, trying to grip her tongue. Selwiv’s bad hand.

“Your lying tongue,” he snarled, his spittle hitting her face. “In exchange for my daughter’s life.”

Now, she didn’t hesitate. Vara bit down as hard and as fast as she could, until the back of her jaw popped and her vision was split by stars. Rot filled her mouth. Selwiv bellowed and drew back, half-skinning his own festered finger. Her sword dug into the earth, nicking her shoulder instead of plunging into her neck. She grabbed the wrist of his sword hand and pulled it towards her, so he couldn’t lift it to stab her again.

The moment her hands touched him, a frightful thing happened.

She’d begun to call it the Hunger, an unbearable, endless hunger that had haunted her since the war. The swirling, bottomless darkness that ever lay in wait at the back of her mind, that she’d managed to smother for many months, now awoke with a vengeance. Unseen, it rippled down her arms and found Selwiv through the palms of her hands. Like a leech, it began to consume him. Intoxicating strength surged through her.

“Hands above,” someone whispered. “Save us.”

The plea jarred her awake. Selwiv’s eyes had rolled back into his head. He had paled to a ghastly grey. His mouth gaped silently, as if still frozen in shock. On either side, his own men were afraid to help him. Revulsion filled her.

Ashes. Ashes everywhere. Not again.

Vara managed to pull one hand away from his wrist. A knife was on his hip. She freed it and slipped it between his ribs, twisting it to the side to open the wound. Slippery, pulsing heat spilled out around the hilt and down her arm. He fell forward, dead before his weight began to crush her. She knew he was dead, because the Hunger slid back into the recesses of her mind. Resentful.

“Grandfather, no!” The young spearman and his remaining guardian lunged forward. “Witch! I’ll kill you!”

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t—Vara screamed from the depths of her soul. It was useless, of course. No one would stop for a scream. But she was still alive when her breath ran out. She looked around frantically, shocked that she wasn’t dead. Everyone had stopped, the men peering this way and that with wide, frightened eyes and shared terror. A single, solitary note still pierced the chaos. At first, she thought it was an echo of her own screech. Then she realized that it was a howl.

Another howl rose, short and aggressive, from the opposite direction and far too close for comfort. Someone cursed and the fear in the voice was unmistakable. It seemed the men of Umber had gotten their wish. Selwiv’s grandson and his keeper stopped, facing towards the forest, their hands shaking around their spears. Others tried to cover their wounds. But it was all too late. Trained by the war, the sounds and scent of battle had drawn them.

A ghostly flash of pale grey bounded into the clearing, long and muscular, its only defining characteristic the knife-like teeth, gleaming in an open maw. That fenwolf chose the man to Leith’s right, flattened him to the earth and tore into him, unbothered by the flailing sword. Enormous blurs of grey and mottled brown burst out of the trees, attacking the group of men with vicious snarls and nightmarish ferocity. Blood spray, torn flesh and sickening wails rose into the air. A horn blew but was cut short. The fear began to stop up her body. Vara shook where she lay.

“Move. I don’t care how. Move.” Osper’s voice echoed in her head. “Move.”

She slithered out from under Selwiv, her sword still pinned under him. She grabbed her bloody knife from the churned earth, and scrambled into the nearest bushes. But Leith—she turned to see an Umber man’s arm in one of the wolves’ mouths. There was a gruesome snap and a blood-curdling shriek as the bone broke. A hand grabbed her by the collar, yanked her backwards and swung her to her feet. She let out a strangled cry, only for Leith to clap a hand over her mouth and stop her from stabbing him. He gave her a furious look then released her and began to run, off trail and downhill. She followed.

Vara more or less tumbled down the slope. Pain beat through her like a drum, pulsing through her teeth and head. Fear alone propelled her. She slapped branches and clumps of swinging vinemoss out of her way as she went, her ringing ears tuned to the terror at her back, her eyes fixed on what she could see of Leith up ahead. The forest and undergrowth disappeared for one disorienting moment as she crossed the main road. Then, just as quickly, she was pushing her way through the forest again.

Behind her, the screams of the men fell silent. The howls took up again then grew louder. They were coming.

Vara’s throat scratched, her back burned and her insides roiled. Her mouth still tasted of Selwiv’s rotten finger. She felt faint and the damned forest floorrefused to stay level—or was that just her? The air grew thick and damp and a low beat rumbled through the earth. Her footsteps turned slick, not to be trusted. The groan became a roar. She shoved through the last layer of undergrowth and stopped, swaying over the river gorge.

She looked over. Leith was holding his side. His head and shoulder were bleeding, but he would live. Just long enough to be eaten, it seemed.

A buffeting updraft blew their hair back as they looked down, past the ragged edge of the drop off. Mist hid the bottom. If there were rocks, jumping would kill them. Even if there were no rocks, it might be far enough for water to feel like stone, which would also kill them. Vara couldn’t remember the maps well enough to know for sure. The howls grew louder. Staying would most certainly kill them.

“We have to jump,” she shouted.

“I know,” Leith bit back. Then, shaking his head: “I’m not much of a swimmer.”

“Me neither.”

It was a strange moment for her to get the distinct impression that she’d been here before. Not in this place exactly, but at this moment of decision, with something terrible behind and something just as bad up ahead. She blinked, unsure whether it was a memory, yet searching it for an answer as to what she’d chosen. The incoming pack yowled eagerly. Whatever she’d done before, this time she jumped.

Vara’s last sense of control was soft moss, squelching under her toes. She fell into the pale, crashing unknown without a sound. White-capped furrows of black water appeared, sooner than she had anticipated. She shielded her face, just before her body slammed into the surface. There was no time to scream.

Darkness folded over her. Cold gripped her like a vice and stole her breath. The current pulled her every way, except to the surface. Flotsam pummeled her body. The light began to fade. The roar began to quiet. A slow undercurrent sucked her down, beneath the rush, into blessed silence.

Vara. Not Osper’s voice. You have to breathe.

She hadn’t breathed. She had to breathe. She searched for the bottom with her numbing legs, pushed off and breached just before she had nothing left. She gasped, choking on water and frigid air. She was alive—for now.

But the river was beginning to smooth out and grow slick. Vara wracked her addled mind, trying to gauge where she was. The only answer was the worst one. She had to be by The Lord’s Cloak, a series of merciless cascades that had been swollen by the spring melts. For all her good fortune today, that was certainly where it would end.

She pulled herself onto a half-rotted log bobbing beside her and hung onto it with all the strength she had left. Ahead, a stunted tree leaned over the river, with a tangle of exposed roots at its base. She kicked her legs and paddled with one arm, until she thought she might be able to reach it. So cold she almost couldn’t think, she let herself get caught by the roots, lodged every limb she could between them, and watched as the log she’d been riding was taken away on the swift current. A column of mist rose up ahead.

“Thank the Hands,” she rasped.

A voice lilted over the rush of the river. Leith’s. Craning her neck, she could just see him. He was closing fast and on the wrong side. There was little time for him to change course. But he was trying to.

Vara locked her legs and ankles around one thick root, hooked one elbow around another and dared to free her other hand, extending it towards the center of the river. Leith had gotten within reach. He bypassed her hand, took hold of her wrist, and swept past her, yanking her arm behind her with his full weight. Something stretched then twisted then snapped in her shoulder. A new pain bloomed. She gasped, unable to speak. Overwhelmed and just trying to hold onto consciousness. So far, she was winning.

“What are you doing? Climb up!”

Leith was crouched on the sliver of a ledge above her. He could reach down. But he was probably afraid to touch her again. A reasonable fear.

“I can’t,” she slurred. Her free arm hung limp in the water. “I can’t.”

Using the collar of her leather jerkin once again, he dragged her onto dry ground. That hurt, too. They lay there until their breathing calmed. Leith sat up first. Except for a few bruises and scratches, he was fine. Vara, on the other hand, had no intention of moving until she was forced to do so.

“Can you walk?”

No. Her heart labored in her chest. If she were to guess, something in her back was broken or crushed, and part of her inner shoulder was completely torn. And those were just the wounds she knew about. Only once the cold of the river dissipated would she feel them all.

“We can go,” she said, grimacing as she sat up. She cradled her bad arm. “We need to warn the others—about Umber and the wolves.”

Leith stood and helped her to her feet, careful not to touch her skin. “We're not covering three days of forest with no weapons or food.”

Weapons—she still had her longknife, at least. But he was right. They were on the eastern bank and the main road that led straight to Tor was on the western bank.

“What then?”

“We’ll stop in Laregan. It’s not far.”

Laregan. His hometown. “It’s in the opposite direction of the nearest bridge.”

“Yes, but we don’t want to cross the river that soon, given the fenwolves are this far south,” he retorted. “We'll stop in Laregan, find horses, and take the road on this side as far as we can. Then we cross back over.”

The road on this side made for a winding, narrow journey. “But that’s—it’ll add a day. Maybe more.”

He sighed, shaking his head once. “I don’t see a better way.”

There wasn’t one. Vara’s teeth began to clench. With every passing moment, the pain in her shoulder grew worse and would soon be uncontrollable. Her body was going into shock.

The gorge had widened and was almost level with the river itself now, so they were just a few feet down from the forest above. On any other day, Vara could have climbed it on her own, but by the time Leith helped her to the top, she'd broken into a sweat. Her thoughts swirled feverishly. He caught her by her vest. She’d swayed too close to the edge.

“Hands above, you’re half dead,” Leith muttered. “I’m not going back to Tor without you in hand, girl.”

He led her to a young tree and put her hand to the trunk. He stepped away sharply, whether from concern for his own safety or from disgust she wasn’t sure. She sensed the depth of life under the thin bark. If she wasn’t actually on the verge of collapse, she would go on without it. But she was on the verge of collapse. So she pressed her hand to the tree.

The Hunger was less enthusiastic about consuming a tree than it had been about Selwiv, but it made do. The bark became cold as ice while her hand and arm warmed with a rush of life, flooding her with relief. The leaves farthest from the trunk died first then fell around her, brushing her face and landing in her hair. The twigs then the branches groaned and cracked, and the next time the wind blew, they dropped to the forest floor almost without a sound. Even the trunk surrendered and crumbled under her fingers. In mere moments, the tree was gone. In its place, was a pile of ashes. The rush of the river swelled for a moment. Somewhere, a bird called. A mourning sound.

The Hunger folded back into the recesses of her mind again.

“You look better,” Leith said, arms crossed. “Was it enough?”

She nodded. Her shoulder was moving normally again, the pain in her neck had lessened, and her flesh wounds had faded to pale scars. But there were ashes under her fingernails, ashes in her hair, ashes in her lungs. Ashes everywhere. Her eyes smarted.

Just like the first time.

Vara wiped her hands on her sides. Leith didn’t look at her as he walked past and pushed into the eastern woods. He kept a respectful distance.

“Let’s go then.”

My little tip jar

“Adevan.”

The sharpness in Sisela’s voice brought Adevan back to where he stood. They were in a circular stone room with scrolls lining the walls in specially made shelves, similar to those that would hold wine jugs. A round table lay at its center, with rough-hewn wooden stools all around and a formidable antler candelabra overhead. A lone armchair made of interwoven wood slats and animal skins sat by the only window in the room. Beside it, half facing that window, stood a thin woman of average height, leaning on a walking stick, her grey hair pulled back, away from her face. Her eyes were shadowed but he could feel her peering at him.

“Did you hear what I said?”

Adevan took a breath, pulling his hearing back from afar, from the common argument he had been overhearing.

“Yes. I just cannot believe that you would try this. Again.”

There was a moment of burdened silence.

“Iven’s drifts have never been wrong,” she insisted, as if she was convincing herself. “And if there is a free mage on the other side of the mountains, you need to get there before anyone else does. It could change our position in this war.”

War? He almost laughed. There was no war. A war required two sides that were nearly matched, whether in numbers or strategy or conviction. Even if every mortal house banded together, and even if that alliance didn’t dissolve into the kinds of futile arguments he had just been overhearing, their enemy would still be superior in every way. The Rebellion had been born and doomed the moment her father, Ieturr Ezouari, fled here with a thousand men, sixty years ago.

“Your father never wanted a war. He knew it wouldn’t succeed,” Adevan recalled, shaking his head. “He wanted there to be one place where people could live free.”

“That, too, is at stake. A mage lay down whatever magic keeps us safe here,” she quipped. “How long do you think that will last? How long before the Counsel untangles whatever it is? We need a mage of our own.”

The fear and panic on her had a sour smell.

“Do you remember what has happened every time we’ve hunted a free mage?”

She stiffened. “Don’t patronize me. Of course I remember!”

“But you were never there. You never saw it,” he said, forcing his voice to be even and controlled. It was difficult. “Orzan. We lost eight good men and women bringing him back from Boughmark, and ravenriders killed him anyways, once they saw how close we were to Blackmoor.”

He would have recounted the name of everyone they had lost, but she wouldn’t remember them. In spite of himself and the many years that had passed, Adevan felt the rage stir. Of all their attempts at apprehending a free mage, Orzan had hurt the most. They had been so close and the boy’s death had surely been the worst. He had never even said it aloud. He took a breath.

“Then there were Jenessie and Cylis—we got to them and they didn’t even try to run. They both joined the Counsel to save their families,” he gritted out. “And the riders hunted us back to Blackmoor, picking us off as we went.” 

Sisela stamped her walking stick. “Stop.”

“There have been many rumors since then and you’ve known better,” he went on. He came around to face her, angling his head lower. “Why now? Why thisdrift?”

Her brown eyes, usually clear like dark tea, were clouded.

“I am dying.”

The last Ezouari looked out over the forest. The light from the window struck her face. Her cheeks were pale, almost sunken, the skin around her eyes thin and darkened. Ash grey wisps of hair trailed down her neck and fluttered in a cool breeze. Adevan remembered when those curls had been brown. A shiver went through him. He put distance between them again, as if he could distance himself from the truth.

Gods. They had been young together. His stomach knotted. He had been warned that this day would come but he hadn’t believed that either. Not already.

The strange, sickening sensation of grief overcame him. Sisela would be the first mortal he knew well that would die of natural causes. But she wouldn’t be the last.

“You seem surprised. But you must have known,” she said at his back. She sounded tired. “If you can smell joy and magic and battle, I know you can smell death.”

He could. Now that she had said it, it came off her in great, billowing wafts.

What she meant to him, her singular importance in his strange life, had blinded him to the faint scent of decay. Adevan remembered the first time he had smelled it. It had not been on a battlefield or in a physician’s tent or at a deathbed. It had come off a mortal’s hair as she passed, distinct and unmistakable. She’d been young, no more than thirty years, and quite lovely. The mixture had confused and disturbed him—the sight of something good and the scent of something so very bad. The mortal woman had died a few months later, too thin to recognize, eaten away by bone-fever. There had been many since then, but he still thought of her when the wind was warm. That he and Sisela were now having this conversation, with a gentle breeze swirling amongst the trees outside, did not escape his notice. The gods were ever cruel in their humor. He faced her again.

“You must be glad,” she grunted. Her eyes never left his face. “That we never married, seeing how old I’ve become.”

Adevan tensed. “I cannot wed. You know that.”

Yes, she knew. And while not marrying Sisela in their youth was one of the few things he had done right, it somehow still remained one of his greatest regrets. There was nothing else to say, nothing more to say than what had already been said many times over. He took a breath but she waved it away. They were lady and swordswear once more.

“I fear that Blackmoor will die with me,” she rasped—slurred, really. “Regardless of who I name as successor, the Binashars and Chazris will take control once I’m gone. And they are yielding men.”

Adevan knew what she meant. Not everyone in Blackmoor had the same feelings about the Counsel. Some would do a good deal to get back into their good graces.

“Blackmoor must be protected. To do that, we need a mage.”

Sisela made her way to the animal skin chair and sat slowly, all life seemingly drained from her movements. Were Adevan a more sentimental creature, he would say he couldn’t do her bidding because he didn’t want to risk her dying with him away. But he knew that would mean nothing to her. She had said how he could help her in her last days. He could either serve her or deny her, and he had only ever been able to do one of the two. Even so, he wondered if she’d forgotten his other, older problem.

“You are asking me to leave Blackmoor. You know what that means.”

She nodded, letting her head fall against the chair back. “I do.”

“If he catches me,” he said quietly, again unsure as to whether she was simply out of her mind. “My allegiance will be at risk.”

That wasn’t quite right. Adevan’s allegiance would change completely if the worst happened. Sisela winced, her eyelids drooping.

“I know. But none of the houses will risk their warriors. If anyone can get there and back, it’s you,” she murmured. “And you can’t stay here forever.”

Forever. What did she know of forever? He was going to live a long time, longer than everyone now alive in Blackmoor. Adevan was not immortal but close enough to know that he was ultimately alone. Everyone he had fought with in the early days of the Rebellion were dead. Sisela, too, would soon be dead. Sooner than even she likely realized.

Her head slumped against her chest and her breathing evened out. Her heartbeat quieted to the rhythm of one in sleep. Adevan stood there, listening as the transition took place, his feet rooted to the spot. He considered moving her but decided that rest was more important. He ducked out of the room and closed the door behind him without a sound, stooped as he made his way through halls her father had built with his own hands. As he passed one doorway, he nearly ran into one of Sisela’s servants. The child yelped in surprise, cringing back from his path.

“Sisela fell asleep in the scroll room,” he said over his shoulder. “She’ll need a blanket and to lay down when she wakes again.”

He pushed through the last door and out into the noonday sun. Deep in the heart of Blackmoor, the Ezouari stronghold occupied the highest knoll for miles and overlooked a scattered array of cottages. Most had their own gardens and stone walls and muddy paddocks with woolly ponies loitering about. Women were washing in the slow-moving river that snaked through the so-called village, their light voices carrying back to him easily. Children squealed and their small feet pounded the damp earth. The most able men were in the far fields to the south, collecting spring crops or sowing the next, or protecting those who did. The trees grew less densely and the earth was more hospitable there, but the risk of encountering the enemy was greater. Here, far from the edges of the forest, the people felt safe and protected. But it was an illusion.

My little tip jar

In the village below, a familiar group of young men sat around a low fire and shared a pipe, half-dressed for battle yet not looking particularly dangerous. He knew each face. It was always the same bunch that were left to protect the village. No one trusted them to be useful in a real fight, so they were left at the stronghold to smoke their days away. Adevan made his way down the knoll. As he passed through the cloud of heady pipe smoke, he caught the vacant, absent glaze over their eyes. They looked older than he remembered—no, they were older than he remembered. Their age had crept up on him the same way that Sisela’s had. He wondered how long he had been half-awake this time—weeks? No. Months.

Adevan heard someone shuffling towards him from behind. It was impossible to mistake the limping gait, the uneven tap of crutches, the laborious wheeze of someone trying to catch up to his long stride, and the determined grunt of the one person who would. Other living things were more wary of Adevan’s presence—the mother crossing the path with her child, hurrying the boy along when she caught sight of Adevan’s tall, lank form, or the cat whose ears flattened against its skull, whose teeth bared of their own accord. The ponies’ flanks shivered, and they scuttled to the farthest corners of their paddocks. Overhead, birds went silent or scattered into distant trees. The wilder the creature, the better it knew when it was outmatched. Adevan did not have that effect on Iven Binashar.

“My lord.”

“I’ve told you before,” Adevan bit out. “Don’t call me that.”

The stubborn boy came up beside him with great effort, his long standing injury not slowing him as much as it should. One leg was frozen in a half-bent position and the fingers on one hand were snarled into a mostly useless shape, both the result of a terrible childhood burn. Iven had dark hair, dark eyes and skin that turned golden with enough sun. He had grown up in the warmth of the south and was now constantly bundled up against the northern cold of Blackmoor. Thanks to the scarf his mother had wrapped around his neck, every time he turned his head, he had to turn his entire body. It always gave him a slightly comedic look.

“Where are you going?”

Adevan knew what he was really asking. “My home.”

“Oh.” Disappointment. “And then?”

Adevan came to a stop, giving the boy a chance to catch up. There were many names for what Iven was—a dwamish to halfbloods, a sandar to the people of the Shaandilar, a mesmera to the Counsel, a drifter to northern mortals, and still other names to other peoples. But they all meant the same thing. Iven could see bits and pieces about the future.

“Sisela told me about your drift.”

The boy’s eyes lit up. “She did! I knew she would, it’s—”

Adevan held out a hand to stop the boy, stretching his hearing to make sure they were alone. They were. The nearest heartbeat was too far for that person to hear what Iven was about to say, especially over the gurgle of the nearby river.

“Quietly,” Adevan hissed. “What exactly did you see?”

Iven wiped his nose in the crook of his elbow. “A woman.”

Adevan chuckled and started walking again, though more slowly. “A common dream among boys of your age, I should think.”

“She has black hair and light eyes, and she has this long knife,” Iven panted, swinging along beside him. “She lives in the valley, on the other side of the mountains.”

Adevan hummed. Iven was very young and, while his drifts had until now been good, this was the first time that Adevan would be following one of them blindly.

“What makes you think she is a mage?”

“I don’t know,” the boy admitted, seemingly ignorant as to how absurd the answer was. “She just is.”

Adevan wasn’t impressed. “You don’t know?”

“Well…” The boy stammered a little before trying again. “The mages I’ve seen have a darkness to them, a shadow that follows wherever they go. She has a shadow but it isn’t dark, exactly. It’s lighter,” he explained. “I saw this once, when I still lived at Ispralag. I was friends with a mage named Gar. I think he was a Tasseran, or Trajian maybe—”

“Iven.”

The boy cleared his throat. “Before Gar went to Institution, he looked the way this woman does in my dreams. He had a shadow that wasn’t dark,” Iven went on, breathing heavily even at the slower pace. “But when he came back to visit his family after a few months, his shadow had turned black.”

Iven fell silent, his brow furrowed. If not the exact steps, Adevan understood that mages passed a test prior to becoming members of mage society and that it changed them, unlocking the power that was characteristic to their kind. He wouldn’t be surprised if the change in Iven’s mage friend was related.

“How old is she? The girl in your dream.”

“Older. Twenty at least.”

Notwithstanding the fact that Iven thought twenty was “older,” this was still an important piece of information. The Counsel had mastered the art of finding mages early, so to find one that hadn’t passed the test at twenty was both rare and significant. Adevan felt an unfamiliar jolt of hope. If they hadn’t found her yet, it was possible they never would. Then, at least, he wouldn’t be racing to get to her first.

“I’ll need more than a physical description,” Adevan pressed. “Is there anything else? Any surroundings I can look for?”

Iven squinted. “I see her in a small village. It’s empty except for one companion—which is odd, but perhaps the drift is incomplete?”

Adevan checked again that no one was within earshot. “Who knows about this?”

“Just you and Sisela,” Iven admitted. “That seemed best.”

Adevan glanced over at the gangly boy, his mop of brown hair like a curtain around his ears and eyes. Iven’s older brother was one of the men Sisela detested, who would likely rule Blackmoor in the event of her death. He was part of the Counsel-favoring faction.

“But not your brother? He would find this interesting,” Adevan said. “I’m sure.”

“I trust Hokmir,” Iven explained a little sheepishly, answering Adevan’s unspoken question. “It’s who Hokmir trusts that I don’t. You know.”

Iven was young and over-eager, but he wasn’t stupid.

They had reached Adevan’s home, a small hut built into the side of a giant, white tree stump, mostly overgrown by vines and moss. The place was peaceful, far enough from the village that Adevan could sleep without hearing every snore, yet close enough that he could be at Sisela’s side in moments. The river was louder here than it was by the stronghold, ribboning over rocks and down narrow chutes. By it, brilliant white flowers with inky black centers cascaded over the damp earth and swung in the water.

“Gape, the isydenias grow well here,” Iven exclaimed. “I thought they’d all been harvested weeks ago. Mum loves using these.”

He dropped to his good knee and laid his crutches down, gathering what he could with his better hand. The flowers made tiny popping sounds as the boy tore them from their bases. It bothered Adevan but he couldn’t quite say why. He turned away and slipped his pack off his head, setting it by the door of his home.

“They’re no use to me and no one dares gather in my part of the forest,” he said, managing to unlock his teeth. “You can come back tomorrow when I’m gone, finish them off.”

Iven stopped picking. Adevan grimaced. Perhaps his irritation had gotten past his best efforts. But when Adevan looked back, the boy was staring into the distance at nothing in particular. Nothing anyone else could see, certainly.

“Be careful, Adevan.” The dire words sounded strange coming from such a young person, young even for a mortal. Iven blinked and his clear dark eyes fell on Adevan. “The world is becoming dangerous again.”

They regarded one another for a moment more before Iven stashed the flowers in his satchel, awkwardly got to his feet, and limped back towards the village. His somber departure left Adevan alone to think on what he would do and on what he had heard. Sisela’s impending death certainly proved the drifter’s point.

The world is becoming dangerous again.

Iven’s awareness that Blackmoor itself was no longer safe made Adevan wary of leaving Sisela at such a time. Discontented people were dangerous and people in Blackmoor, whatever promises they had made when they arrived, were very discontented. Many had once been counted among the greater houses of Arras but were now stripped of their titles by the Counsel—unnamed and shamed. In a single stroke, people like Iven’s house of Binashar had lost everything, and were then greeted by a chance to join a Rebellion that was little more than a collection of other rejected, destitute houses. More were now unnamed than there still were in favor. Such imbalance would not stand for long.

Adevan could only see one of two ends: Either the people of Blackmoor would negotiate their way back into Arrasian society, betraying all Ieturr Ezouari had tried to build, or they would make open war on the Counsel. It all depended on what kind of men would take command of the Rebellion’s forces in the coming months. Or weeks.

If those like Iven’s brother Hokmir took control, and there were plenty of them, Blackmoor would rejoin Arras and accept Counsel rule. This meant Sisela was already in danger. He needed to get to the western mountains, find the mage, and return as quickly as possible.

Adevan needed very little for any journey.

No horse would carry him and no companion could possibly keep up. He had never been cold, even in the deep northern snows, so clothing was more a formality than a necessity, a way to blend in with mortal kind at most. The rivers would provide the water he needed and hunting would be a welcome challenge. All he really required were items mortals might like, should he need to barter. Several bunches of dried feverspane, a powerful medicinal herb which didn’t grow well in the mountains, went in his satchel. The most valuable thing he could offer was the wood of the tree stump at the back of his hut. It was extremely hard, excellent material for knife handles once properly carved, and could burn much longer and far hotter than regular wood. He stepped outside to fetch this final form of currency.

The stump itself was larger than any other tree he had personally encountered, several horses across and almost perfectly round a few feet off the ground. Its bone-white roots stretched as far as the river, some of them as tall as his own waist, many partially cloaked in bright green moss or the medicinal isydenias that Iven had noticed. He wouldn’t pick those. He never had been able to. But he didn’t mind widening a particularly rough part of where the tree had been cleaved long ago. As he carved the intractable wood with his knife, he wondered as he often had how the tree had been felled. The cut was hardly clean, the jagged edge varying from as low as his shoulders to beyond his immediate reach.

He gripped the oversized splinter he had been loosening and pulled, as ever impressed by the tree’s resistance. It snapped loudly as it came free, nearly throwing him onto his back. He panted, his hand shaking from the unusual effort. He stored the wood in his vest, making sure the belt was tight—once he started to run, he couldn’t afford to lose anything he had brought. There was no time for error.

Six days. It would take a day or so to reach the last village before the western pass, maybe three to find Iven’s mage. That left him two days to get back to Blackmoor. Six days.

He started his journey at a steady jog, a pace that he could keep up for hours and one that wouldn’t startle any mortals he happened to encounter. Once he reached the westernmost parts of Blackmoor, beyond the last rebel settlements, he would be free to run at speed. That pace would get him to the village before the western pass in a day.

Overhead, the wind stirred the treetops with a musical shimmer. He looked up at the lacework of leaves and branches, swaying and weaving amongst one another—light green, dark green, and the deep wine hue of a daytime sky turning to nightfall. Very soon, the change of light would give him total freedom to move as he saw fit. Travel was easier at night when mortals were forced to sleep by their dull vision.

As night fell, Adevan aimed directly west, until he reached the border of Blackmoor. The wind was colder and harsher, sweeping across the barren foothills. He would only be cutting across the open terrain for a few hours. As only his kind could, he deepened his hearing, reached out far and wide, listening for any sign that someone was near. Satisfied with the lack of mortal effects—a clearing throat, shallow breaths, sniffles—he took off at the speed of a diving hawk, cutting through shrubs like a living knife. He wasn’t worried about leaving a trail. Anything stupid enough to hunt him would get what they deserved, assuming they ever caught up. There was only one creature in all of Arras that Adevan truly feared, and he wasn’t a tracker. In the traditional sense.

There had only ever been one village before the old western pass. It had gone by many names and he wasn’t sure what it was called now, but he knew where it lay and knew he was near because the land began to roll as he sped across it, and turned into foothills. By the time dawn rose at his back, the western peaks dominated his view of the skyline, aflame with golden light as the night sky rolled back. The pass came into view up ahead, a narrow gash between two of the lower peaks.

When Adevan finally slowed, his lungs were burning and he had begun to feel the exertion. It was the one flaw contributed by his mortal blood. The village wasn’t far and he quickly reached its edge, crouched just out of sight among the trees while he caught his breath. Like every other town, the people were chattering, gossiping, complaining, cracking jokes, dragging children where they didn’t want to go, eating, drinking. For some reason, after the night of solitude, it felt unbearably disordered.

Through the fray, he overheard someone call the town Dirth. Adevan couldn’t remember what it had been called when he was young, but it certainly wasn’t that. Again, and against his will, he was reminded that most of these people hadn’t even been born when he’d first learned of this village. And all of them would be dead in another hundred years. He thought of Sisela and his chest tightened.

Adevan breathed deep, taking in a string of various scents beyond the obvious smells of cooking meat and animal dung and dogs, of course. Goat’s milk near curdling, sloshing in buckets on a young boy’s shoulders. The hollow savor of cold, damp stone mixed with a pungent acidity—a jug of wine that had been spilled the night before, on the stone steps of a nearby shop. Wildflowers, their stems newly torn, bobbing by in the hand of a small child. Ground cloves and crushed grass coming off a young woman’s newly washed hair and hands as she wove between people, followed closely by a young man who smelled the same. Adevan shook his head. Mortals couldn’t hide much.

Finally, he caught a whiff of the scent he wanted—sharp lye and the tiny nick some poor fellow had gotten from a subpar barber. Barbers were the best place to start in any town. He unfolded, dusted himself off and looked at the sky overhead, checking. Always checking.

My little tip jar

He stepped into the stream of village traffic, heading in the opposite direction of the man with the cut on his throat. Adevan kept his head level, not down, as that betrayed a desire not to be seen, and moved as though he had somewhere to be. In a very real sense, he had one chance to do this; in his experience, a second pass always drew unwanted notice. But his luck held out, and he shortly rounded a corner to find three men in rickety chairs, another leaning back in an even more rickety contraption, and a grizzled man with shaking hands trying to give him a clean shave. Milky suds peppered the blackish earth around the owner of the establishment—if it could be called that—and Adevan caught sight of a couple rough towels piled on a nearby board, stained by blood flecks of varying age. Based on the color, the man currently in the chair had so far escaped the sacrifice required for a smooth chin.

“Can I help you,” came the question, like a statement. The barber glanced up at him and smiled crookedly. “Actually, I can’t. Come back when you’ve some on you, lowlander.”

The three mortal men laughed. One of them was drinking a peppery, tree-ish smelling liquid from a leather flask. Adevan wrinkled his nose, recognizing it as borogin, a northern drink made of junifer bulbs and other distasteful ingredients. The Rebels used to drink it between battles, when Sisela’s father had presided over Blackmoor’s better days. Damn it all, but the past was coming on strong today. They were all wearing a wool that smelled of a very different place, not like any place on this side of the mountains.

“I’m looking to get over the mountains,” Adevan said. “Wondering if any of you have done it. Or if someone knows the way.”

Silence fell. The man being shaved grew still and Adevan could tell he was terribly curious, but that he didn’t dare turn his head. The barber straightened and looked Adevan square in the face, silent. His blade still hovered over his lucky patron’s exposed throat.

“Be on your way, now. We don’t want trouble.”

Adevan turned to the man who had spoken. He wore a thickly knitted cap and his dark brows were lowered blackly. Adevan lifted his hands, placating. He had no desire to kill these men or draw additional attention to himself.

“I don’t want trouble either,” he insisted, gesturing at their clothes. “I want to buy wool.”

The man drinking borogin spat. “Damn you. And all lowlanders.”

“We’re not fond of the Counsel’s bedfellows,” the barber barked. He flicked some foam off his blade. “You follow?”

“I’m from Blackmoor. Sisela Ezouari sent me.”

The group of men blinked, glancing between one other dumbly.

They looked almost sheepish. These were the looks of men who had said they would do something when they were young, who had meant to do more for a cause but hadn’t gotten around to it. The borogin drinker’s head was bowed, his face twisted by regret and shame. Adevan waited.

“Never been over myself but there’s an old man who brings wool from the other side. Keep heading the same way, until you see a red cart,” the barber said quickly. “And luck to you.”

“Luck to all of Blackmoor,” slurred the drinker.

It had been a long time since common men had wished Blackmoor well, or bothered to care what happened to the Rebellion at all. The hatred for the Counsel was stronger than he had expected.

“Thank you,” he said with a nod. “Much obliged.”

Adevan broadened his sense of smell, scouring the air for cured wool and savors that didn’t quite match the surroundings. It didn’t take him long to find both. He followed the invisible trail to a rickety, hand-drawn cart painted a faded red and covered in undyed fleece. Women were gathered around the piles of dirty white and grey fluff, bartering and arguing and flirting in some cases with the man who owned it. He was a grizzled fellow with uneven shoulders, whose face had seen more than its fair share of weather and wear; he was missing an eye and his voice was soft, unassuming. Adevan didn’t have to see any more to know he was looking at an old hand, maybe a warrior who had fought in Sisela’s service many years ago.

Wait.

There was a scent about him. Adevan tried to see between the wrinkles, the scars, the occasional grimace of pain. It was the lopsided smile and head tilt as he took payment from one woman that gave Adevan’s suspicion feet. Disturbed, he turned away towards the down-mountain forest. He felt he was looking at something that he shouldn’t be, something private—the decline of a man who had once been a mortal of mortals, a warrior among warriors. Disgust for life itself surged through Adevan’s body, rising from the pit of his stomach and boiling up his throat like a raging blaze.

“Hallo,” came the man’s voice. Adevan had heard it many times before. “Can I be of service to you?”

Adevan struggled to keep himself from being pulled into the distant past. He was gripping a tree, half leaning on it for support, his back to the small clearing where the man was selling his wares. He turned with his head down, his hood shading most of his face. He wasn’t sure he wanted to show it, wasn’t sure that he wanted this man to see the truth: That Adevan had not been touched by the ravages of time and never would be in one short, mortal life. But they were beginning to draw some attention from the villagers. Adevan pushed his hood back and looked down at the man.

It took one agonizing moment for the recognition to bloom then for disbelief to wash over the aged features. The one good eye widened.

“A—Adevan Dragar?”

It was jarring to hear his full name. Few knew it.

“Kyric,” he replied, stepping past him. “It’s been a long time.”

Adevan gave the man as much privacy as he could manage. Even so, he heard Kyric’s heartbeat shudder and his breathing hitch. Billows of sharp, smoky anguish filled the clearing and went straight to a part of Adevan’s body that only his kind had or fully understood. It was the smell of a breaking heart.

“You—” Kyric swallowed, his voice cracking. “’Tis truly you.”

Gods, help me. There was still work to do. Kyric’s downcast face glistened with silently falling tears, his back more hunched than it had been only moments ago. Regret filled Adevan as he realized the depth of grief he had caused. At this age, sudden sadness could be life ending for a mortal. He should go.

“I am sorry for causing you pain. This will soon be a fleeting memory,” he assured his old battle-mate. “I’ve been told that you know the way to the far side of the mountains. Sisela sent me.”

Kyric lifted his face again and it was like the sun had broken upon it. A crooked grin lifted his wrinkled cheeks high, in spite of the ancient scar. His one good eye brightened.

“Sisela lives?”

Ah, yes. Kyric had been in love with her for the better part of his younger years. Adevan should have remembered that fact. Too late now, of course. The emotions would distract Kyric and slow Adevan’s progress. But at least the old man wasn’t crying anymore.

“She lives.” He did not include the bit about her dying.

Kyric raised a hand, beckoning him to follow. “Come, come—have something to eat. Gratify an old man.”

He hobbled past his cart and to a simple encampment at its back. A shabby grey hound lay by an open tent, makeshift firepit, and three-legged folding stool. At Adevan’s approach, the dog predictably lifted its head and growled, its hackles rising. A moment later, it realized its place in the order of things and lay its head back down. Adevan sat on a nearby log that had been hewn and was conveniently placed, watching as Kyric pulled out some dried meat and fruit skins. The old man handed him the meager fare.

“Tell me about Blackmoor,” he demanded, sitting with a noisy grunt. “And Sisela. Did she ever marry?”

Adevan chewed the dried meat slowly, wishing it was fresh. “No.”

“And the Rebellion?”

There was little to say. “The tide shifted years ago.”

Kyric sighed knowingly. “We all thought it would happen in our lifetimes—the Counsel’s downfall. But the years just kept going by,” he mused sadly. “I suppose you’re the only one who’s going to see it.”

If it ever happens. His own doubt surprised him. Adevan hadn’t realized until then that he’d long given up hope of bringing justice to Arras.

“I can see you aren’t going to say much,” Kyric finally grumbled. “So why don’t you tell me what exactly you’re this far west for? I know it’s not for wool.”

Adevan had to be careful. He set the strip of meat down. “Not exactly.”

“Ah,” Kyric hummed knowingly. “You can’t say.”

“Where do you get the wool?”

Now, it was the old man’s turn to hesitate. “You remember the stories of the Lost Houses?”

Adevan frowned, confused. It was an old legend. “I’ve heard the tales.”

“Tales?” Kyric chuckled. “Where do you think I found these?”

He flung a hand at the piles of valuable fare on his cart, a mass of wool and animal skins. Fair enough. Adevan wasn’t going to argue with him.

“How do I find them?”

Impatience had crept into his voice. He knew, because Kyric looked at him, examined his face for a moment. The old man leaned forward on his knees and shoved a stick into the fire, unhurried.

“They’re not hiding. Take the pass and follow the shale path southward. That will get you to one of the larger settlements. They call it Tor. Yorian and Osper run things there,” he explained. “But watch yourself—they’re private folk. Took me a long time to get into their good graces.”

That made sense. People in stark places weren’t given to friendliness and neither was Adevan. They understood each other.

“Before you go,” Kyric said, glancing around. “I did see a ravenrider flying high, on the other side of the mountains. Not three days ago.”

Adevan stiffened and his pulse quickened. As usual, the Counsel was several steps ahead. He swallowed, afraid to ask his next question.

“Could you see which rider it was?”

Kyric shook his head. “I’m an old man, with old eyes. But I think I saw blue.”

Blue. Mages that served the High Hand of Dabdagan wore blue.

Only half aware of what he was doing, Adevan suddenly stood, possessed by the need to flee.  To find shadows and hide in them. His own fear, though well-reasoned, disgusted him.

“You’re off then,” Kyric sighed. “All right.”

There was nothing else to say. He was halfway to the trees when Kyric called his name. Adevan turned, reluctantly.

“When you come back this way, visit again,” the old warrior said. “I might like to live in Blackmoor for my last days. Better than this.”

Kyric’s mutt barked softly behind its teeth, as if offended, and Adevan slipped back into the forest, making no promises. In spite of himself, he listened to Kyric’s gruff chatting with his companion pet and the shrill bartering that took up again once he went back to the front of his cart. Adevan made himself stop listening, pulling his hearing back to his immediate surroundings and to the task at hand.

The mountains were a sheer, shaley type but he decided that he wouldn’t use the main road until he was forced to. Once he stood at the mouth of the narrow crevasse that counted as a pass, he understood why so few had ever attempted to traverse it. Kyric’s cart would have just fit through. Moisture from the ever-present mountain mist dripped from above and a rockfall seemed likely at any moment; he heard the soft hiss of shifting gravel near and far, every few breaths. The fissure itself meandered so that the other end was not visible from the entry and the sunlight did not quite reach to the bottom. One could be buried in a collapse and never be found again. He wondered idly if that had ever happened. Adevan had never tested his strength fully against rock and stone, but he imagined that he could weasel his way out of death’s clutches if it came to it. He stepped inside and began weaving through the cavern, listening as the sounds of the outside world faded into the soft, dripping quiet.

A discomfort lay in the pit of his stomach, one that he had no choice now but to observe, and he realized that his unexpected encounter with Kyric had shaken him. He didn’t like meeting those who had known him in youth. Already, the long years stretched out before and behind him with exhausting finality. Any reminder was doubly painful. His thoughts were drawn back towards Sisela and Blackmoor, and her precarious position.

What little light peeked through the mountain fog then between broken rocks began to fade with the day. On the rare occasion that he could see a patch of sky, it had begun to turn the colors of nightfall. A low howl rose as a heavy wind began to squeeze in from the western end of the crevasse, pulling at Adevan’s clothes. Up ahead, the glow of the setting sun whispered against the gnarled sides of the crevasse, promising an exit. By the time he reached the mouth, his eyes had so acclimated to the semi-darkness, he was half blinded for a moment. Once he could see again, he froze in awe.

He was standing over a lush valley, guarded on all sides by unforgiving shale peaks that rose like sentinels, casting their shadows across the deep green forest. The sun was setting in a fiery torrent of crimson and gold and violet, slipping behind another row of western mountains that, in all honesty, Adevan hadn’t known existed. Beyond that line of peaks, the range extended farther than even his keen eyes could see. On his right, he could just make out the white froth of a high and thunderous waterfall, a gift from the highest part of the near range, its peaks shrouded by fog. The waterfall split and became a series of rivers, joined by other smaller tributaries, until they formed a distant lake to the south. Just below him, a formidable series of cascades ribboned across the landscape.

The wind was forceful and truly frigid, as if it were offended that he had stood so long and was testing its strength against him. His immediate surroundings were a testament to its harshness—bare rock and only the toughest, most twisted of trees. Suddenly aware of his exposure, Adevan found the only semblance of a path and began making his way down into the valley, eager for the cover of the dense forest below.

As night began to fall in earnest, he caught the glow of lanterns and smoke rising in the peaceful valley below. As he expected, they were gathered more densely in some areas and those were likely the settlements. When he reached a fork in the path, which had become more visible thanks to the undergrowth, he made for the nearest abundance of lights. While he did, he began to consider what Kyric’s discovery really meant.

Based on Iven’s drift, he had expected to find a few, tiny villages made up of goatherds and shepherds. He had not expected to find tens of thousands of mortals living beyond the Counsel’s knowledge, one the other side of a single mountain range. There were roads and bridges below, even a few fortresses if his eyes were true. This was far from a legend. These people had been here for hundreds of years.

But it seemed impossible that they should have evaded the Counsel’s knowledge. The mages either knew and didn’t care—which was unlikely—or they simply didn’t know. But how? With their ravenriders and drifters, he had come to believe that they could see almost everything. Yet he couldn’t deny what he was seeing.

And, if the Counsel was indeed ignorant, for how much longer could these people remain hidden? They had begun to trade with Dirth. It was only a matter of time before they were discovered. Then he remembered what Kyric had seen—a ravenrider, flying high, wearing the color of the High Hand.

It seemed he had arrived just in time.