HIDDEN WARRIOR

Book Two of the Tamír Triad

Lynn Flewelling

Copyright

Voyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

This edition published in 2003

Copyright © Lynn Flewelling 2003

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007113101

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780007401604

Version: 2016-03-14

Dedication

For my father

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

The Skalan Year

Maps

PART I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

PART II

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

PART III

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

PART IV

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Keep Reading

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by the Author

Praise for the BONE DOLL’S TWIN

About the Publisher

The Skalan Year

I. WINTER SOLSTICE—Mourning Night and Festival of Sakor; observance of the longest night and celebration of the lengthening of days to come.

1. Sarisin: Calving

2. Dostin: Hedges and ditches seen to. Peas and beans sown for cattle food.

3. Klesin: Sowing of oats, wheat, barley (for malting), rye. Beginning of fishing season. Open water sailing resumes.

II. VERNAL EQUINOX—Festival of the Flowers in Mycena. Preparation for planting, celebration of fertility.

4. Lithion: Butter and cheese making (sheep’s milk pref.) Hemp and flax sown.

5. Nythin: Fallow ground ploughed.

6. Gorathin: Corn weeded. Sheep washed and sheared.

III. SUMMER SOLSTICE

7. Shemin: Beginning of the month—hay mowing. End and into Lenthin—grain harvest in full swing.

8. Lenthin: Grain harvest.

9. Rhythin: Harvest brought in. Fields plowed and planted with winter wheat or rye.

IV. HARVEST HOME—finish of harvest, time of thankfulness.

10. Erasin: Pigs turned out into the woods to forage for acorns and beechnuts.

11. Kemmin: More plowing for spring. Oxen and other meat animals slaughtered and cured. End of the fishing season. Storms make open water sailing dangerous.

12. Cinrin: Indoor work, including threshing.

Maps

PART I

I ran away from Ero a frightened boy and returned knowing that I was a girl in a borrowed skin.

Brother’s skin.

After Lhel showed me the bits of bone inside my mother’s old cloth doll, and a glimpse of my true face, I wore my body like a mask. My true form stayed hidden beneath a thin veil of flesh.

What happened after that has never been clear in my mind. I remember reaching Lhel’s camp. I remember looking into her spring with Arkoniel and seeing that frightened girl looking back at us.

When I woke, feverish and aching, in my own room at the keep, I remembered only the tug of her silver needle in my skin and a few scattered fragments of a dream.

But I was glad still to have a boy’s shape. For a long time after I was grateful. Yet even then, when I was so young and unwilling to grasp the truth, I saw Brother’s face looking back at me from my mirror. Only my eyes were my own—and the wine-colored birthmark on my arm. By those I held the memory of the true face Lhel had shown me, reflected in the gently roiling surface of the spring—the face that I could not yet accept or reveal.

It was with this borrowed face that I would first greet the man who’d unwittingly determined my fate and Brother’s, Ki’s, even Arkoniel’s, long before any of us were born.

Chapter 1

Still caught at the edge of dark dreams, Tobin slowly became aware of the smell of beef broth and a soft, indistinct flow of voices nearby. They cut through the darkness like a beacon, drawing him awake. That was Nari’s voice. What was his nurse doing in Ero?

Tobin opened his eyes and saw with a mix of relief and confusion that he was in his old room at the keep. A brazier stood near the open window, casting a pattern of red light through its pierced brass lid. The little night lamp cast a brighter glow, making shadows dance around the rafters. The bed linens and his nightshirt smelled of lavender and fresh air. The door was closed, but he could still hear Nari talking quietly to someone outside.

Sleep-fuddled, he let his gaze wander around the room, content for the moment just to be home. A few of his wax sculptures stood on the windowsill, and the wooden practice swords leaned in the corner by the door. The spiders had been busy among the ceiling beams; cobwebs large and fine as a lady’s veil stirred gently in a current of air.

A bowl was on the table beside his bed, with a horn spoon laid out ready beside it. It was the spoon Nari had always fed him with when he was sick.

Am I sick?

Had Ero been nothing but a fever dream? he wondered drowsily. And his father’s death, and his mother’s, too? He ached a little, and the middle of his chest hurt, but he felt more hungry than ill. As he reached for the bowl, he caught sight of something that shattered his sleepy fantasies.

The ugly old rag doll lay in plain view on the clothes chest across the room. Even from here, he could make out the fresh white thread stitching up the doll’s dingy side.

Tobin clutched at the comforter as fragments of images flooded back. The last thing he remembered clearly was lying in Lhel’s oak tree house in the woods above the keep. The witch had cut the doll open and shown him bits of infant bones—Brother’s bones—hidden in the stuffing. Hidden by his mother when she’d made the thing. Using a fragment of bone instead of skin, Lhel had bound Brother’s soul to Tobin’s again.

Tobin reached into the neck of his nightshirt with trembling fingers and felt gingerly at the sore place on his chest. Yes, there it was; a narrow ridge of raised skin running down the center of his breastbone where Lhel had sewn him up like a torn shirt. He could feel the tiny ridges of the stitches, but no blood. The wound was nearly healed already, not raw like the one on Brother’s chest. Tobin prodded at it, finding the hard little lump the piece of bone made under his skin. He could wiggle it like a tiny loose tooth.

Skin strong, but bone stronger, Lhel had said.

Tucking his chin, Tobin looked down and saw that neither the bump nor the stitching was visible. Just like before, no one could see what she’d done to him.

A wave of dizziness rolled over him as he remembered how Brother had looked, floating facedown just above him while Lhel worked. The ghost’s face was twisted with pain; tears of blood fell from his black eyes and the unhealed wound on his breast.

Dead can’t be hurt, keesa, Lhel told him, but she was wrong.

Tobin curled up against the pillow and stared miserably at the doll. All those years of hiding it, all the fear and worry, and here it lay for anyone to see.

But how had it gotten here? He’d left it behind when he’d run away from the city.

Suddenly scared without knowing why, he almost cried out for Nari, but shame choked him. He was a Royal Companion, far too old to be needing a nurse.

And what would she say about the doll? Surely she’d seen it by now. Brother showed him a vision once of how people would react if they knew, their looks of disgust. Only girls wanted dolls …

Tears filled his eyes, transforming the lamp flame into a shifting yellow star. “I’m not a girl!” he whispered.

“Yes, you are.”

And there was Brother beside the bed, even though Tobin hadn’t spoken the summoning words. The ghost’s chill presence rolled over him in waves.

“No!” Tobin covered his ears. “I know who I am.”

“I’m the boy!” Brother hissed. Then, with a mean leer, “Sister.”

“No!” Tobin shuddered and buried his face in the pillow. “No no no no!”

Gentle hands lifted him. Nari held him tight, stroking his head. “What is it, pet? What’s wrong?” She was still dressed for the day, but her brown hair was unbound over her shoulders. Brother was still there, but she didn’t seem to notice him.

Tobin clung to her for a moment, hiding his face against her shoulder the way he used to, before pride made him pull back.

“You knew,” he whispered, remembering. “Lhel told me. You always knew! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I told her not to.” Iya stepped partway into the little circle of light. It left half her square, wrinkled face in shadow, but he knew her by her worn traveling gown and the thin, iron-grey braid that hung over one shoulder to her waist.

Brother knew her, too. He disappeared, but an instant later the doll flew off the chest and struck the old woman in the face. The wooden swords followed, clacking like a crane’s bill as she fended them off with an upraised hand. Then the heavy wardrobe began to shake ominously, grating across the floor in Iya’s direction.

“Stop it!” cried Tobin.

The wardrobe stopped moving and Brother reappeared by the bed, hatred crackling in the air around him as he glared at the old wizard. Iya flinched, but did not back away.

“You can see him?” asked Tobin.

“Yes. He’s been with you ever since Lhel completed the new binding.”

“Can you see him, Nari?”

She shivered. “No, thank the Light. But I can feel him.”

Tobin turned back to the wizard. “Lhel said you told her to do it! She said you wanted me to look like my brother.”

“I did what Illior required of me.” Iya settled at the foot of the bed. The light struck her full on now. She looked tired and old, yet there was hardness in her eyes that made him glad Nari was still beside him.

“It was Illior’s will,” Iya said again. “What was done was done for Skala’s sake, as much as for you. The day is coming when you must rule, Tobin, as your mother should have ruled.”

“I don’t want to!”

“I shouldn’t wonder, child.” Iya sighed and some of the hardness left her face. “You were never meant to find out the truth so young. It must have been a terrible shock, especially the way you found out.”

Tobin looked away, mortified. He’d thought the blood seeping between his legs had been the first sign of the plague. The truth had been worse.

“Even Lhel was taken by surprise. Arkoniel tells me she showed you your true face before she wove the new magic.”

“This is my true face!”

“My face!” Brother snarled.

Nari jumped and Tobin guessed even she’d heard that. He took a closer look at Brother; the ghost looked more solid than he had for a long time, almost real. It occurred to Tobin that he’d been hearing his twin’s voice out loud, too, not just a whisper in his mind like before.

“He’s rather distracting,” said Iya. “Could you send him away, please? And ask him not to make a fuss around the place this time?”

Tobin was tempted to refuse, but for Nari’s sake he whispered the words Lhel had taught him. “Blood, my blood. Flesh, my flesh. Bone, my bone.” Brother vanished like a snuffed candle and the room felt warmer.

“That’s better!” Taking up the bowl, Nari went to the brazier and dipped up the broth she had warming in a pot on the coals. “Here, get some of this into you. You’ve hardly eaten in days.”

Ignoring the spoon, Tobin took the bowl and drank from it. This was Cook’s special sickroom broth, rich with beef marrow, parsley, wine, and milk, along with the healing herbs.

He drained the bowl and Nari refilled it. Iya leaned over and retrieved the fallen doll. Propping it on her lap, she arranged its uneven arms and legs and looked down pensively at the crudely drawn face.

Tobin’s throat went tight and he lowered the bowl. How many times had he watched his mother sit just like that? Fresh tears filled his eyes. She’d made the doll to keep Brother’s spirit close to her. It had been Brother she’d seen when she looked at it, Brother she’d held and rocked and crooned to and carried with her everywhere until the day she threw herself out of the tower window.

Always Brother.

Never Tobin.

Was her angry ghost still up there?

Nari saw him shiver and hugged him close again. This time he let her.

“Illior really told you to do this to me?” he whispered.

Iya nodded sadly. “The Lightbearer spoke to me through the Oracle at Afra. You know what that is, don’t you?”

“The same Oracle that told King Thelátimos to make his daughter the first queen.”

“That’s right. And now Skala needs a queen again, one of the true blood to heal and defend the land. I promise you, one day you will understand all this.”

Nari hugged him and kissed the top of his head. “It was all to keep you safe, pet.”

The thought of her complicity stung him. Wiggling free, he scooted back against the bolsters on the far side of the bed and pulled his legs—long, sharp-shinned boy legs—up under his shirt. “But why?” He touched the scar, then broke off with a gasp of dismay. “Father’s seal and my mother’s ring! I had them on a chain …”

“I have them right here, pet. I kept them safe for you.” Nari took the chain from her apron pocket and held it out to him.

Tobin cradled the talismans in his hand. The seal, a black stone set high in a gold ring, bore the deep-carved oak tree insignia of Atyion, the great holding Tobin now owned but had never seen.

The other ring had been his mother’s bride gift from his father. The golden mounting was delicate, a circlet of tiny leaves holding an amethyst carved with a relief of his parents’ youthful profiles. He’d spent hours gazing at the portrait; he’d never seen his parents happy together, the way they looked here.

“Where did you find that?” the wizard asked softly.

“In a hole under a tree.”

“What tree?”

“A dead chestnut in the back courtyard of my mother’s house in Ero.” Tobin looked up to find her watching him closely. “The one near the summer kitchen.”

“Ah yes. That’s where Arkoniel buried your brother.”

And where my mother and Lhel dug him up again, he thought. Perhaps she lost the ring then. “Did my parents know what you did to me?”

He caught the quick, sharp look Iya shot at Nari before she answered. “Yes. They knew.”

Tobin’s heart sank. “They let you?”

“Before you were born, your father asked me to protect you. He understood the Oracle’s words and obeyed without question. I’m sure he taught you the prophecy the Oracle gave to King Thelátimos.”

“Yes.”

Iya was quiet for a moment. “It was different for your mother. She wasn’t a strong person and the birthing was very difficult. And she never got over your brother’s death.”

Tobin had to swallow hard before he could ask, “Is that why she hated me?”

“She never hated you, pet. Never!” Nari pressed a hand to her heart. “She wasn’t right in her mind, that’s all.”

“That’s enough for now,” said Iya. “Tobin, you’ve been very ill and slept the last two days away.”

“Two?” Tobin looked out the window. A slim crescent moon had guided him here; now it had waxed nearly to half. “What day is it?”

“The twenty-first of Erasin, pet. Your name day came and went while you slept,” said Nari. “I’ll tell Cook to make the honey cakes for tomorrow’s supper.”

Tobin shook his head in bewilderment, still staring at the moon. “I—I was in the forest. Who brought me to the house?”

“Tharin showed up out of nowhere with you in his arms, and Arkoniel behind him with poor Ki,” said Nari. “Scared me almost to death, just like that day your father brought your—”

“Ki?” Tobin’s head reeled as another memory struggled to the surface. In his fevered dreams Tobin had floated up into the air over Lhel’s oak and found himself looking down from a great height. He’d seen something in the woods just beyond the spring, lying on the dead leaves—“No, Ki’s safe in Ero. I was careful!”

But a cold knot of fear took root in his belly, pressing on his heart. In his dream it had been Ki lying on the ground, and Arkoniel was weeping beside him. “He brought the doll, didn’t he? That’s why he followed me.”

“Yes, pet.”

“Then it wasn’t a dream.” But why had Arkoniel been weeping?

It was a moment before he realized that people were still speaking to him. Nari was shaking him by the shoulder, looking alarmed. “Tobin, what is it? You’ve gone white!”

“Where’s Ki?” he whispered, gripping his knees hard as he braced for the answer.

“I was just telling you,” Nari said, her round face lined with new concern. “He’s asleep in your old toy room next door. With you so ill and thrashing about in your sleep, and him hurt so bad, I thought you’d rest easier apart.”

Tobin clambered across the bed, not waiting to hear more.

Iya caught him by the arm. “Wait. He’s still very ill, Tobin. He fell and hit his head. Arkoniel and Tharin have been tending him.”

He tried to pull free, but she held on. “Let him rest. Tharin has been frantic, going back and forth between your rooms like a sorrowful hound all this time. He was asleep by Ki’s bed when I passed.”

“Let me go. I promise I won’t wake them, but please, I have to see Ki!”

“Stay a moment and listen to me.” Iya was grave now. “Listen well, little prince, for what I tell you is worth your life, and theirs.”

Trembling, Tobin sank back on the edge of the bed.

Iya released him and folded her hands across the doll in her lap. “As I said, you were never meant to bear this burden so young, but here we are. Listen well and seal these words in your heart. Ki and Tharin don’t know, and they mustn’t know, about this secret of ours. Except for Arkoniel, only Lhel and Nari know the truth, and so it must remain until the time comes for you to claim your birthright.”

“Tharin doesn’t know?” Tobin’s first reaction was relief. It was Tharin, as much as his father, who’d taught him how to be a warrior.

“It was one of the great sorrows of your father’s life. He loved Tharin just as you love Ki. It broke his heart to keep such a secret from his friend, and it made the burden all that much harder to bear. But now you must do the same.”

“They’d never betray me.”

“Not willingly, of course. They’re both stubborn and stouthearted as Sakor’s bull. But wizards like your uncle’s man Niryn have ways of finding out things. Magical ways, Tobin. They don’t need torture to read a person’s innermost thoughts. If Niryn ever suspected who you really are, he’d know just whose heads to look into for the proof.”

Tobin went cold. “I think he did something like that to me the first time I met him.” He held out his left arm, showing her the birthmark. “He touched this and I got a bad, crawly feeling inside.”

Iya frowned. “Yes, that sounds right.”

“Then he knows!”

“No, Tobin, for you didn’t know yourself. Until a few days ago, all anyone would find inside your head were the thoughts of a young prince, concerned only with hawks and horses and swords. That was our intent from the start, to protect you.”

“But Brother. The doll. He would have seen that.”

“Lhel’s magic protects those thoughts. Niryn could only find them if he knew to look for them. So far, it would seem he doesn’t.”

“But now I do know. When I go back, what then?”

“You must make certain he finds no reason to touch your thoughts again. Keep the doll a secret, just as you have, and avoid Niryn as much as you can. Arkoniel and I will do whatever we can to protect you. In fact, I think it may be time for me to be seen with my patron’s son again.”

“You’ll come back to Ero with me?”

She smiled and patted his shoulder. “Yes. Now go see your friends.”

The corridor was cold but Tobin hardly noticed. Ki’s door stood slightly ajar, casting a thin sliver of light out across the rushes. Tobin slipped inside.

Ki was asleep in an old high-sided bed, tucked up to the chin with counterpanes and quilts. His eyes were closed and even in the warm glow of the night lamp, he looked very pale. There were dark circles around his eyes and a linen bandage wrapped around his head.

Tharin was asleep in an armchair beside the bed, wrapped in his long riding cloak. His long, grey-blond hair fell in untidy tangles over his shoulders and a week’s worth of stubble shadowed the hollows of his cheeks above his short beard. Just the sight of him made Tobin feel a little better; he always felt safer with Tharin nearby.

Hard on that thought, however, came the echo of Iya’s warning. Here were the two people he loved and trusted above all others, and now it lay with him to protect them. A wild, rebellious love welled up in his heart as he thought again of Niryn’s prying brown eyes. He’d kill the man himself if the wizard tried to hurt his friends.

Tobin tiptoed toward the bed as carefully as he could, but Tharin’s pale eyes snapped open before he reached it.

“Tobin? Thank the Light!” he exclaimed softly, pulling the boy into his lap and hugging him so hard it hurt. “By the Four, we’ve been so worried! You slept and slept. How are you, lad?”

“Better.” Embarrassed, Tobin gently freed himself and stood up.

Tharin’s smile faded. “Nari says you thought you’d caught the Red and Black Death. You should have come to me instead of running off like that! Anything could have happened to you boys alone on the road. The whole ride out here we expected to find your bodies in a ditch.”

“We? Who came with you?” For one awful moment Tobin feared that his guardian had come looking for him, too.

“Koni and the other guardsmen, of course. Don’t go trying to change the subject. It wasn’t much better finding the two of you like this.” He glanced at Ki, and Tobin knew he was still worried about him. “You should have stayed in the city. Poor Arkoniel and the others have had a time of it. They’re ready to drop in their tracks.” But there was no anger in his eyes as he gazed earnestly up at Tobin. “You gave us all a bad scare.”

Tobin’s chin quivered and he hung his head. “I’m sorry.”

Tharin gathered him in again, patting his shoulder. “Well, then,” he said, voice rough with emotion. “We’re all here now.”

“Ki’s going to be all right, isn’t he?” Tharin didn’t answer and Tobin saw tears glazing the warrior’s eyes. “Tharin, he will be well?”

The man nodded, but doubt was plain in his face. “Arkoniel says he’ll probably wake up soon.”

Tobin’s knees went wobbly and he sank down on the arm of Tharin’s chair. “Probably?”

“He must have caught the same fever you had, and with the knock in the head—” He reached to smooth Ki’s dark hair back from the bandage. A yellowish stain had seeped through. “That needs changing.”

“Iya said he fell.”

“Yes. Struck his head quite a blow, too. Arkoniel thinks—Well, it looks like that demon of yours might have had a hand in it.”

A shard of ice seemed to lodge itself in Tobin’s stomach. “Bro—The ghost hurt him?”

“He thinks it tricked Ki into carrying that doll of yours out here for it.”

Tobin’s breath hitched tight in his chest. If this were true, he’d never, ever call Brother again. Brother could starve, for all he cared.

“You—you saw it? The doll, I mean?”

“Yes.” Tharin gave him a puzzled look. “Your father thought it fell with your mother that day and got carried away by the river. He even sent some of the men out looking for it. But you had it all this time, didn’t you? What made you keep it hidden like that?”

Did Tharin know about Lhel, too? Unsure, Tobin could only offer a partial truth. “I thought you and Father would be ashamed of me. Dolls are for girls.”

Tharin let out a sad little laugh. “No one would have begrudged you that one. It’s a shame that’s the only one she left you. If you like, I could probably find you one of the pretty ones she made before her illness. Half the nobles in Ero have them.”

There had been a time when Tobin had wanted one so badly it hurt. But he’d wanted it from her hands, proof that she loved him, or at least acknowledged him as much as she did Brother. That had never happened. He shook his head. “No, I don’t want any others.”

Perhaps Tharin understood, for he said nothing more about it. They sat together for a while, watching Ki’s chest rise and fall beneath the quilts. Tobin yearned to crawl in beside him, but Ki looked so fragile and ill that he didn’t dare. Too miserable to sit still, he finally went back to his own room so Tharin could sleep. Iya and Nari were gone and he was glad; he didn’t want to talk to either of them just now.

The doll lay on the bed where the wizard had been sitting. As Tobin stared down at it, trying to take in what had happened, anger like nothing he’d ever felt gripped him, so strong he could hardly breathe.

I’ll never call him again. Never!

Snatching it up, he thrust the hated thing into the clothes chest and slammed the lid down. “You can stay here forever!”

He felt a little better after that. Let Brother haunt the keep if he wanted; he could have the place for all Tobin cared, but he wasn’t going back to Ero.

He found his clothes folded neatly on a shelf in the wardrobe. Little bags of dried lavender and mint fell out of the folds of his tunic when he picked it up. He pressed the wool to his face and inhaled, knowing that Nari had tucked the herbs there after she’d washed and mended his clothes. She’d probably sat by the bed as she worked, watching over him.

The thought dissolved his anger at her. No matter what she’d done all those years ago, he knew she loved him, and he still loved her. Dressing quickly, he made his way quietly upstairs.

A few lamps burned in niches along the third floor corridor, and moonlight streamed in at the rosette windows overhead, but the passage was still shadowy and cold. Arkoniel’s rooms lay at the far end and Tobin couldn’t help keeping one eye on the heavy locked door across from the workroom, the door to the tower.

If he went to it, he wondered, would he still feel his mother’s angry spirit there, just on the other side? He kept close to the right-hand wall.

There was no answer at Arkoniel’s bedchamber, but light showed underneath the workroom door next to it. Tobin lifted the latch and went in.

Lamps burned everywhere inside, banishing the shadows and filling the large chamber with light. Arkoniel was at the table under the windows, head propped on one hand as he studied a parchment. He started nervously as Tobin entered, then rose to greet him.

Tobin was surprised at how worn the young wizard looked. There were dark hollows under his cheekbones and his face had a pinched look, as if he’d been sick. His curly black hair, always unruly, stuck out in clumps about his head, and his tunic was rumpled and stained with dirt and ink.

“Awake at last,” he said, attempting to sound hearty and failing miserably. “Has Iya spoken with you yet?”

“Yes. She told me not to tell anyone about this.” Tobin touched his chest, unwilling to give voice to the hated secret.

Arkoniel sighed deeply and looked distractedly around the room. “It was a terrible way for you to find out, Tobin. By the Light, I’m sorry. None of us suspected, not even Lhel. I’m so very sorry …” He trailed off, still not looking at Tobin. “It shouldn’t have happened as it did. None of it.”

Tobin had never seen the young wizard look so dismayed. At least Arkoniel had tried to be his friend. Not like Iya, who only showed up when it suited her.

“Thank you for helping Ki,” he said, as the silence drew out uncomfortably between them.

Arkoniel jerked as if Tobin had slapped him, then let out a hollow laugh. “You’re most welcome, my prince. How could I do otherwise? Is there any change?”

“He’s still asleep.”

“Asleep.” Arkoniel wandered back to the table, touching things, picking them up and putting them down without looking at them.

Tobin’s fear crept back. “Will Ki be all right? There wasn’t really any fever. Why hasn’t he woken up yet?”

Arkoniel fiddled with a wooden rod. “It takes time, such a wound.”

“Tharin said you think Brother hurt him.”

“Brother was with him. Perhaps he knew we’d need the doll—I don’t know. He may have hurt Ki. I don’t know if he meant to.” He began picking at things on the table again, as if he’d forgotten that Tobin was still there. At last he took up the document he’d been reading, holding it up for Tobin to see. The seals and florid looping handwriting were unmistakable. It was the work of Lord Orun’s scribe.

“Iya thought I should be the one to tell you,” Arkoniel said despondently. “This arrived yesterday. You’re to go back to Ero as soon as you’re fit to travel. Orun is furious, of course. He’s threatening to write to the king again, demanding that you take a different squire.”

Tobin sank down on a stool by the table. Orun had been trying to replace Ki since their first day in Ero. “But why? It wasn’t Ki’s fault!”

“I’m sure he doesn’t care about that. He sees an opportunity to get what he’s always wanted—someone who’ll keep a closer eye on you.” Arkoniel rubbed at his eyes and ran his fingers back through his hair, leaving it more disheveled than ever. “Of one thing you can be certain. He’ll never let you run off like that again. You’re going to have to be terribly careful now. Never give Orun or Niryn or anyone else any reason to suspect you’re more than the king’s orphaned nephew.”

“Iya explained about that already. I don’t see much of Niryn anyway if I can help it. He scares me.”

“Me too,” Arkoniel admitted, but he looked a bit more like his old self. “Before you go back, there are a few things I can teach you, ways to shroud your thoughts.” He managed the ghost of a smile. “Don’t worry, it’s just a matter of concentration. I know you don’t care much for magic.”

Tobin shrugged. “I can’t seem to get away from it, though, can I?” He picked unhappily at a callus on his thumb. “Korin told me how I’m the next heir after him, until he has an heir of his own. Is that why Lord Orun wants to control me?”

“Ultimately, yes. But for now he has control of Atyion—in your name, of course, but control all the same. He’s an ambitious man, our Orun. If anything were to happen to Prince Korin before he marries …” He shook his head sharply. “We must keep a close eye on him. And don’t worry too much about Ki. Orun doesn’t have final say on that, no matter how much he blusters. Only the king can decide that. I’m sure it will all get sorted out when you get back.”

“Iya’s going to Ero with me. I wish you’d come, instead.”

Arkoniel smiled and this time it was his real smile, all kind and awkward and well-meaning. “I wish I could, but for now it’s best that I stay hidden here. The Harriers already know Iya, but not about me. Tharin will be with you, and Ki.”

Seeing Tobin’s crestfallen look, he knelt beside him and took him by the shoulders. “I’m not abandoning you, Tobin. I know it must feel that way, but I’m not. I never will. If ever you need me, you can be certain I’ll find my way to you. Once Orun calms down, perhaps you can convince him to let you visit here more often. I’m sure Prince Korin will take your side in that.”

That was little comfort to him now, but Tobin nodded. “I want to see Lhel. Will you take me? Nari will never let me go out alone and Tharin still doesn’t know about her, does he?”

“No, though I wish more than ever now that he did.” Arkoniel rose. “I’ll take you to her first thing tomorrow, all right?”

“But I want to go now.”

“Now?” Arkoniel glanced at the dark window. “It’s after midnight. You should go back to bed …”

“I’ve slept for days! I’m not tired.”

Arkoniel smiled again. “But I am, and Lhel will be sleeping, too. Tomorrow, all right? We can go as early as you like, as soon as it’s light. Come on, I’ll walk down with you and see how Ki’s doing.” He pointed to the lamps in turn, snuffing all but the one at his elbow. Then, to Tobin’s surprise, he shuddered and hugged himself. “It’s gloomy up here at night.”

Tobin couldn’t help glancing nervously toward the tower door as they went out, and was sure he saw the wizard do the same.

Chapter 2

Tobin woke up in the armchair with the sun in his face and Tharin’s cloak tucked around him. He stretched, then leaned forward to see if Ki looked any different.

His friend hadn’t moved, but Tobin thought there was more color in his cheeks than there had been the night before. He reached under the blankets and found Ki’s hand. It was warm, another encouraging sign.

“Can you hear me? Ki, you’ve been sleeping forever. It’s a good day for a ride. Wake up. Please?”

“Let him sleep, keesa.”

“Lhel?” Tobin turned, expecting to find the door open.

Instead, the witch floated just behind him in an oval of strange light. He could see trees around her, firs and bare oaks dusted with snow. As he watched, big lacy flakes fell, catching in her dark curls and on the rough fabric of her dress. It was like looking at her through a window. Just beyond the oval the room looked exactly as it should, but she seemed to be standing in her camp.

Amazed, Tobin reached out to her, but the strange apparition shrank back and in on itself until he could see nothing but her face.

“No! No touch,” she warned. “Arkoniel bring you. Let Ki rest.”

She vanished, and left Tobin gaping at the place she’d been. He didn’t understand what he’d just seen, but he took her at her word. “I’ll be back soon,” he told Ki and, on impulse, bent and kissed him lightly on his bandaged forehead. Blushing at his own foolishness, he hurried out and took the stairs to Arkoniel’s room two at a time.

In daylight the corridor looked safe and ordinary, and the tower door nothing but another door. The workroom door stood open and he could hear Iya and Arkoniel talking inside.

Arkoniel was weaving a pattern of light above the table as Tobin entered. Something struck the wall close to Tobin’s head and skittered across the floor. Startled, he looked down and saw it was only a speckled dry bean.

“And that’s as far as I’ve gotten with it,” said Arkoniel, sounding frustrated. He still looked tired and when he caught sight of Tobin the worry lines deepened around his mouth. “What is it? Is Ki—?”

“He’s asleep. I want to go see Lhel now. She said I should come. You said you’d take me.”

“She said—?” Arkoniel exchanged a look with Iya, then nodded. “Yes, I’ll take you.”

It was snowing outside, just as it had been in his vision of Lhel. The fat, wet flakes melted as they touched the ground, but they stayed on the tree boughs like sugar on a cake and he could see his breath on the air. The road behind the keep was covered with fallen leaves, a faded carpet of yellow and red that whispered under Gosi’s hooves. Ahead, the peaks glistened white against the dull grey sky.

He tried to explain the strange visitation to Arkoniel as they rode.

“Yes, she calls that her window spell,” said the wizard, not sounding the least surprised.

Before Tobin could question him further, the witch stepped from the trees to meet them. She always knew when they were coming.

Dirty and gap-toothed, dressed in a shapeless brown dress decorated with polished deer teeth, she looked more beggar than witch. Squinting up at them, she shook her head and grinned. “You keesas has no breakfast. Come, I feed you.”

As if it were just another day and nothing strange had ever happened between them, she turned and walked back into the trees. Tobin and Arkoniel tethered their horses and hurried after her on foot. Another of the witch’s peculiar magics guarded her camp. In all the time Tobin had known her, she had never used the same path twice, and he and Ki had never been able to find their way to her on their own. He wondered if Arkoniel knew how.

After many twists and turns, they came out in the clearing where her oak house stood. He’d forgotten how huge it was. Grandmother oak, Lhel called it. The trunk was as wide as a small cottage, and a natural split had hollowed a great space inside the trunk without killing it. A few leathery, copper-colored leaves still fluttered on the upper branches, and the ground around it was strewn with acorns. A fire crackled near the low opening that served as Lhel’s door. She disappeared inside for a moment, returning with a bowl of dried meat strips and a few wrinkled pippins.

Tobin wasn’t interested in food, but Lhel put the bowl in his hands and wouldn’t say another word until he and Arkoniel had done as they were told.

“You come now,” she said, going back to the oak. Arkoniel rose to follow, but she forestalled him with a look.

Inside, another small fire burned in a pit at the center of the packed-earth floor. Lhel pulled the deerskin door flap down and sat on the pelt-covered pallet beside the fire, patting the place beside her. When Tobin joined her, she turned his face to the light and studied him a moment, then opened the neck of his tunic to inspect the scar.

“Is good,” she said, then pointed down at his lap. “You see more blood?”

Tobin blushed and shook his head. “That won’t happen again, will it?”

“Someday later. But you may feel moontide in the belly.”

Tobin remembered the ache between his hipbones that had driven him here. “I don’t like that. It hurts.”

Lhel chuckled. “No girl like that.”

Tobin shivered at the word, but Lhel didn’t seem to notice. Reaching into the shadows behind her, she handed him a small pouch containing dried bluish green leaves. “Akosh. If pains come, you make tea with just this much, no more.” She showed him a generous pinch of leaves and mimed crumbling them into a cup.

Tobin stuck the bag inside his tunic, then stared down at his clasped hands. “I don’t want this, Lhel. I don’t want to be a girl. And I don’t want to be—queen.” He could hardly get the word out.

“You not change your fate, keesa.”

“Fate? You did this. You and the wizards!”

“Goddess Mother and your Lightbearer tell it must be so. That make fate.”

Tobin looked up to find her watching him with wise, sad eyes. She pointed skyward. “The gods be cruel, no? To you and Brother.”

“Brother! Did Arkoniel tell you what he did? I’m never going to call him again. Never! I’ll bring you the doll. You keep him.”

“No, you will. You must. Souls tied tight.” Lhel locked her hands together.

Tobin’s hands curled to white-knuckled fists on his knees. “I hate him!”

“You need him.” Lhel took his hands and spoke in his mind without words, the way she always did when she wanted to be clear. “You and he must be together for the magic to hold. He is cruel. What else could he be, angry and alone all the time and seeing you live the life denied him? Perhaps you can understand a little, now that you know the truth?”

Tobin didn’t want to understand, or to forgive but her words struck home all the same. “You hurt him, when you sewed the bone into my chest. He cried blood.”

Lhel grimaced. “He was not meant to be, child. I’ve done all I could for him, but he’s been the burden of my heart since you were born.”

“Your burden?” Tobin sputtered. “You weren’t there when he was hurting me, hurting my mother and father and driving servants away—And he almost killed Ki!” The fire blurred before him as tears welled up. “Have you seen Ki? He won’t wake up!”

“He will. And you will keep the doll and care for Brother.”

Tobin wiped angrily at his eyes. “It’s not fair!”

“Hush, keesa!” she snapped, pulling her hands away from his. “What gods care for ‘fair’? Fair I stay here, far from my people? Live in tree? For you, I do this. For you we all suffer.”

Tobin shrank back as if he’d been slapped. She’d never spoken to him like that; no one had.

“You be queen for Skala. That your fate! Would you abandon your people?” She stopped and shook her head, gentle again. “You young, keesa. Too young. This will end. When you take off Brother skin, you both be free then.”

“But when?”

“I no see. Illior tell you, maybe.” She stroked his cheek, then took his hand and pressed it to her right breast. It was soft and heavy under the coarse wool. “You will be a woman one day, keesa.” Her voice was a dark caress in his mind. “I see the fear in your heart, fear you’ll lose your power. Women have power, too. Why do you think your moon god made queens for Skala? They were all warriors, your ancestors. Never forget that. Women carry the moon in their blood tide, too, and in their heart blood.”

She touched the inside of her wrist where the fine blue veins showed through. A thin cresecent moon appeared there, etched in fine black lines. “That you now—sliver moon, most of you dark.” She moved her finger and a circle appeared, just touching the outer curve of the crescent. “But when you grown like belly moon, you will know your power.”

With the eye of an artist, Tobin knew there must be more to balance the design—a waning moon—but she didn’t show him or speak of it. Instead, she touched his flat belly. “Here you will make great queens.” Her eyes met his and Tobin saw respect there. “Teach them about my people, Tobin. Teach your wizards, too.”

“Iya and Arkoniel know. They went to you when they needed help.”

Lhel let out a snort and sat back. “Not many like them,” she said aloud. Drawing the silver knife from her belt, she pricked her left thumb and squeezed out a drop of blood. With it she drew a crescent on Tobin’s brow, then enclosed it in a circle. “Mother protect you, keesa.” She kissed the mark she’d made. “You go back now.”

As Tobin left the clearing with Arkoniel he paused at the spring, wanting to see what the blood mark looked like. There was no sign of it; perhaps it had vanished when she kissed him. He looked for that other face, too, and was glad when he saw only his own.

Tobin spent the rest of the day with Ki, watching Cook and Nari gently spooning broth between his lips and changing the thick woolen pads underneath him when he soiled himself. It hurt to see his friend so helpless. Ki was thirteen, and wouldn’t think much of being treated like a baby.

Tobin wanted nothing more than to be alone, but everyone seemed determined to look after him. Tharin brought modeling wax and sat with him. Sergeant Laris and some of the other men came up, too, offering to play bakshi and knucklebones, but Tobin didn’t want to. They all tried to cheer him up, joking and talking to Ki as if he could hear them, but that only made Tobin feel worse. He didn’t want to talk about horses or hunting, not even with Tharin. It seemed like lying, to speak of such ordinary things. Lhel’s words haunted him, making him feel like a stranger in his own skin. His new secrets lodged like caneberry seeds between his teeth, threatening to work loose and fly out at any moment if he wasn’t careful.

“Now look, you’ve tired poor Tobin out!” Nari exclaimed, coming in with a stack of fresh linen. “He’s only just up out of his own sickbed himself. Go on now and let him have some peace.”

She shooed the soldiers out, but Tharin hung back. “Would you like me to stay, Tobin?”

For once, he didn’t. “I’m sorry, I guess I’m just tired.”

“You should go back to bed,” said Nari. “I’ll fetch you some broth and a warm brick for the foot of your bed.”

“No, please. Just let me sit with him.”

“He can sleep here if he needs to. That chair is good for napping.” With a final wink over his shoulder at Tobin, Tharin gently guided Nari out of the room before she could fuss over Tobin any more.

Tobin curled up in the armchair and watched Ki’s chest rise and fall for a while. Then he stared at his friend’s closed lids, willing them to open. At last he gave that up and picked up the wax Tharin had brought. Breaking off a bit, he rolled it between his palms to soften it. The familiar feel and sweet smell calmed him as it always had and he began shaping a little horse for Ki; those were his favorites. Tobin had given him a little wooden horse charm soon after Ki came to the keep and he still wore it on a cord around his neck. Tobin’s skill had improved since then and he’d offered to make him a better one, but Ki wouldn’t hear of it.

Tobin had just finished marking the mane with his fingernail when he sensed someone in the doorway. Iya smiled at him when he looked up and he guessed she’d been standing there for some time.

“May I join you?”

Tobin shrugged. Taking that as an invitation, Iya drew up a stool and leaned in to see the horse. “You’re very good at that. Is it a votive?”

Tobin nodded; he should make an offering at the house shrine. The horse’s head was too long, though. Pinching off a bit of the nose, he reshaped it, but now it was too small. Giving up, he rolled the whole thing into a ball.

“I just want to stay as I am!” he whispered.

“And so you shall, for a good while longer.”

Tobin touched his face, tracing its familiar contours. The face Lhel had shown him was softer, rounder through the cheeks, as if a sculptor had added a little wax and smoothed it in with his thumbs. But the eyes—those had still been his own. And the crescent-shaped scar on his chin.

“Does it—can you see—her?” He couldn’t bring himself to say “me.” His fingers found the wax again and he pinched at it nervously.

Iya chuckled. “No, you’re quite safe.”

Tobin knew she meant safe from King Erius and his wizards, but they weren’t whom he meant. What would Korin and the other boys say if they found out? No girls were allowed to serve as Companions.

Iya rose to go, then stopped and looked down at the new horse taking shape in his hands. Reaching into a pouch at her belt, she took out a few soft buff-and-brown feathers and gave them to him.

“Owl,” said Tobin, recognizing the pattern. “A saw what.”

“Yes. For Illior. You might consider making offerings to the Lightbearer now and then. Just lay them on the fire.”

Tobin said nothing, but when she’d gone he went down to the hall, filled a small brass offering basin with embers from the main hearth, and set it on the shelf of the house shrine. Whispering a prayer to Sakor to make Ki strong again, he laid the wax horse on the embers and blew on them until the wax melted. Every bit of the little votive was consumed, a sign that the god had been listening. Taking out one of the owl feathers, he twirled it between his fingers, wondering what prayer was proper. He hadn’t thought to ask. Laying it on the coals, he whispered, “Lightbearer, help me! Help Ki, too.”

The feather smoldered for a second, sending up a thread of acrid smoke, then caught fire and disappeared in a flash of green flame. A sudden shiver seized Tobin, leaving his knees a little shaky. This was a more dramatic answer than Sakor had ever sent. More scared than reassured, Tobin dumped the coals back into the hearth and hurried upstairs.

The following day was much the same and passed even more slowly. Ki slept on, and to Tobin’s worried eye, he was looking paler even though Nari said otherwise. Tobin made twenty-three horses, watched from the window as Laris drilled the men in the barracks yard, dozed in the chair. He even played idly with the little boats and wooden people in the toy city, though he was much too old for it now and got up hurriedly whenever he heard anyone coming.

Tharin brought supper on a tray and stayed to eat with him. Tobin still didn’t feel much like talking but was glad for the company. After supper they played bakshi on the floor.

They were in the middle of a toss when the faint stir of bedclothes caught Tobin’s attention. Jumping to his feet, he bent over Ki and took his hand. “Are you awake, Ki? Can you hear me?”

His heart leaped when Ki’s dark lashes fluttered against his cheek. “Tob?”

“And me,” Tharin said, smoothing Ki’s hair back from his brow. His hand was shaking, but he was smiling.

Ki looked around blearily. “Master Porion … tell him … too tired to run today.”

“You’re at the keep, remember?” Tobin had to stop himself from squeezing Ki’s hand too tightly. “You followed me out here.”

“What? Why would …” He stirred against the pillow, struggling to stay awake. “Oh, yes. The doll.” His eyes widened. “Brother! Tobin, I saw him.”

“I know. I’m sorry he—” Tobin broke off. Tharin was right there, overhearing everything. How was he going to keep Ki from blurting out more?

But Ki was fading again. “What happened? Why—why does my head hurt?”

“You don’t remember?” asked Tharin.

“I the doll … I remember riding …” Ki trailed off again and for a moment Tobin thought he’d gone back to sleep. Then, eyes still closed, he whispered, “Did I find you, Tob? I don’t remember anything after I got to Alestun. Did you get the doll?”

Tharin pressed the back of his hand to Ki’s cheek and frowned. “He’s a bit warm.”

“Hungry,” Ki mumbled peevishly.

“Well, that’s a good sign.” Tharin straightened up. “I’ll fetch you some cider.”

“Meat.”

“We’ll start with cider and see how you do with it.”

“I’m sorry,” Ki rasped as soon as Tharin was gone. “I shouldn’t have said anything about—him.”

“It’s all right. Forget it.” Tobin sat on the edge of the bed and took Ki’s hand again. “Did Brother hurt you?”

Ki’s eyes went vague. “I—I don’t know. I don’t remember …” Then, abruptly, “How come you never told me?”

For one awful moment Tobin thought Ki had seen him with Lhel and Arkoniel, after all, and guessed his secret. He’d have blurted out the truth if Ki hadn’t spoken first.

“I wouldn’t have laughed, you know. I know it was your mother’s. But even if it was just some old doll, I’d never have laughed at you,” Ki whispered, eyes sad and full of questions.

Tobin stared down at their interlaced fingers. “The night Iya first brought you here, Brother showed me a vision. I saw the way people would look at me if they knew I had it.” He gestured helplessly. “I saw you and you—I was afraid you’d think badly of me if you knew.”

Ki let out a weak snort. “Don’t know that I’d believe anything he showed.” He looked around, as if fearing that Brother was listening, then whispered, “He’s a nasty thing, isn’t he? I mean, he’s your twin and all, but there’s something missing in him.” His fingers tightened on Tobin’s. “I didn’t understand why he wanted me to bring it before, but now—He thought it would make trouble between us, Tob. He’s always hated me.”

Tobin couldn’t deny that, especially after what had happened.

“I’d have come after you anyway, though,” Ki said, and a deep hurt crept into his voice. “Why’d you run off without me like that?”

Tobin clasped Ki’s hand with both of his. “It wasn’t like that! I thought I had plague. I was afraid I’d give it to you and Tharin and the others. All the way out here I was so scared it was already too late, that the deathbirds would nail you all up in the palace and—”

Tobin broke off in alarm as a tear trickled down Ki’s cheek.

“If you had been sick … If you’d gone off and died somewhere alone on the road … I couldn’t have stood it!” Ki whispered, voice quavering. “I’d just as soon die as live with the thought of it!” He clutched at Tobin’s hand. “Don’t you ever—Don’t!”

“I’m sorry, Ki. I won’t.”

“Swear it, Tob. Where you go, I go, no matter what. Swear it by the Four.”

Tobin shifted their right hands into the warrior’s clasp. “I swear it by the Four.”

Brother was wrong, he thought angrily. Or he lied to me, just for spite.

“Good. That’s settled.” Ki tried to turn his head and dry his cheek but couldn’t quite manage it. Tobin used the edge of the sheet to finish the job.

“Thanks,” Ki said, embarrassed. “So what did happen?”

Tobin told him what he could, though he had no idea how Ki had found his way to Lhel’s camp, and Ki still didn’t remember.

“Wonder what Old Slack Guts will have to say about all this?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll explain what happened. It wasn’t your fault.” Ki wasn’t strong enough yet to hear about the letter.

Satisfied for now, Ki closed his eyes. Tobin sat with him until he was certain his friend was asleep. When he tried to let go of his hand, however, Ki’s fingers closed tighter around his.

“I’d never a’made fun, Tob,” he mumbled, more asleep than awake. “Never would.” Another tear seeped out from under his lashes and trickled down toward his ear.

Tobin wiped it away with his finger. “I know.”

“Don’t feel so good. Cold … Climb in, would you?”

Tobin kicked off his shoes and climbed under the covers, trying not to jostle him. Ki muttered softly and turned his face Tobin’s way.

Tobin watched him sleep until his own eyes grew heavy. If Tharin did come back with the cider, Tobin didn’t hear him.

Arkoniel and Iya met Tharin in the hall and heard the good news. Arkoniel nearly wept with relief, both that Ki was awake at last and that he recalled nothing that would endanger his life. Whether that was thanks to Brother or Lhel, he didn’t care, so long as Ki was safe.

“I think I’ll sleep in Tobin’s bed tonight,” Tharin said, kneading his lower back ruefully. “I’ve had enough of chairs, and it’s certain Tobin won’t leave Ki.”

“You’ve earned a decent rest,” said Iya. “I believe I’ll do the same. Are you coming up, Arkoniel?”

“I’ll sit up awhile.”

“He’ll be fine,” she told him, giving him a reassuring smile. “Come up soon, won’t you?”

Tharin started after her toward the stairs, then turned to Arkoniel. “Do you know of anyone the boys call ‘Brother’?”

Arkoniel’s heart seemed to stop in his chest. “Where did you hear that name?”

“Just something Ki said as he came around. Something about someone’s brother giving him that doll. No?” He yawned mightily and ran his hand over his chin. “Well, he was still pretty groggy. His mind must have been wandering.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Iya said, slipping her arm through his and leading him to the stairs. “Or perhaps you heard wrong? Come along now, before we have to carry you up.”

Arkoniel waited until the household was asleep, then stole in to see the boys. Tobin had crawled into bed with Ki. Even asleep he looked sad and depleted, but Ki was smiling. As Arkoniel watched, Tobin stirred and groped for his friend’s shoulder, as if to assure himself that he was still there.

Arkoniel sank into the chair, not trusting his legs to hold him up. It was always worse at night, the memory of what he had done. And what he’d nearly done.

He’d relived that awful moment in the forest a hundred times over the past few days. Tossing on his bed at night, he saw Ki coming toward them through the trees, breaking into that ready smile of his as he caught sight of Tobin huddled over the spring, revealed in her true form. Ki raised his hand, waving to—who? Had he seen her, recognized her, or had it been Arkoniel he was greeting? Lhel had thrown a fur robe over Tobin, but had she been quick enough?

He’d clung to that crumb of doubt, even as he lifted his hand to keep the vow he’d made to Iya and Rhius the day they’d agreed to let another child come to the keep. He himself had told Iya the new companion should be a child no one would miss.

Yes, he’d meant to keep that vow and kill Ki, but his heart had betrayed him and marred the spell; he’d tried to change it to a blinding at the last moment and instead released an unfocused blast that had knocked Ki through the air as if he weighed no more than a handful of chaff. It would have killed him if Lhel hadn’t been there to coax his heart back to life. She’d claimed to take away whatever memories Ki might have had of seeing Tobin, too, weaving in their place vague memories of illness. If Arkoniel and Iya had only known such a thing were possible …

If only they hadn’t been too arrogant to ask.

Glad as he was that Ki lived, Arkoniel could not escape the truth; he’d failed in his duty by not killing Ki, just as he’d betrayed the boy by trying.

For years he’d told himself he was different than Iya and Lhel. Now it seemed his supposed compassion was instead simply weakness.

Ashamed, he slipped away to his lonely chamber, leaving the two innocents to a peace he might never know again.

Chapter 3

Ki was still too weak and dizzy to get up the next day, so Cook served Tobin’s belated name day cakes to them in the sickroom. Everyone crowded in and ate their portion standing. Nari presented Tobin with a new sweater and stockings she’d knitted, and Koni, their fletcher, gave him six fine new arrows. Laris had carved bone hunting whistles for him and Ki and Arkoniel shyly offered him a special pouch for carrying firechips.

“I’m afraid my gift for you is still in Ero,” Tharin told him.

“And mine,” said Ki around a mouthful of cake. His head was still mending but his appetite had recovered.

For the first time in a long time things began to feel safe and normal again. Tobin’s heart swelled as he looked around at the others laughing and talking. Except for Iya’s presence, it could have been any name day party he’d ever had.

By the next day Ki was well enough to be restless, but Nari wouldn’t hear of letting him out of the sickroom. He sulked and complained so much that she took his clothes away with her, just in case.

As soon as she was gone Ki climbed out of bed and wrapped himself in a blanket.

“There, at least I’m up,” he muttered. After a moment he began to feel sick again, but wouldn’t admit that Nari had been right. Fighting down nausea, he insisted on playing bakshi. After a few tosses, however, he began to see two of everything and let Tobin help him back into bed.

“Don’t tell her, will you?” he pleaded, closing his eyes. Trying to make the two Tobins frowning down at him join back into one made his head hurt.

“I won’t, but maybe you should listen to her.” Ki heard him settle in the chair by the bed. “You’re still looking peaked.”

“I’ll be all right tomorrow,” Ki said, willing it to be true.

The weather grew colder. Small sharp flakes drifted down from a hazy sky and the dead grass in the meadow sparkled with thick frost each morning.

Ki wolfed down all the broth and custard and baked apples Cook sent up, and was soon demanding meat. He continued to grumble at being shut in and made light of his condition, but Tobin knew he was far from his old self yet. He got tired suddenly, and his eyes still bothered him sometimes.

They grew bored with games long before Ki was strong enough to play at swords or go downstairs. Anxious to keep him quiet, Tobin arranged a nest of bolsters and blankets from him beside the toy city and they made a new game of tracing familiar routes through the city streets and trying to guess what the other Companions might be up to there.

Ki lifted off the roof of the box that served as the Old Palace and took the little golden tablet from its frame by the wood block throne. Tilting it to catch the light, he squinted at the tiny inscription there. “My eyes must be getting better. I can read this. ‘So long as a daughter of Thelátimos’ line defends and rules, Skala shall never be subjugated.’ You know, that’s the first time I’ve really looked at this since Arkoniel taught us to read.” His dark brows drew together as he frowned. “Did you ever think maybe it wouldn’t do you any good if your uncle knew about this? The one in the real throne room is gone, remember? My father claimed Erius melted it down when he destroyed all the stone copies that used to stand at crossroads.”

“You’re right.” In fact, Tobin had never considered the risk before; now the idea took on a more dire cast than it would have a month earlier. He looked around, wondering where he should put it for safekeeping. Dangerous it might be, but it was still a gift from his father.

And not just a gift, but a message. For the first time it occurred to him that the toy city had not been simply a child’s diversion; his father had been teaching him, readying him for the day—

“Tob, you all right?”

Tobin closed his hand around the tablet and stood up. “Yes, I was just thinking of my father.” He looked around again, then inspiration struck. “I know just the place.”

Ki followed him as he hurried back to his own room and threw open the clothes chest. He hadn’t touched the doll since he’d hidden it here, but fetched it out now and found a seam in its side with stitches long enough to slide the tiny tablet through. He pushed it in deep, then shook it to make certain it slipped down inside. When he’d finished he buried it again and grinned at Ki. “There. I’m used to hiding this already.”

The sound of hooves on the frozen Alestun road broke the winter quiet the following afternoon. Ki left off his bakshi toss and the boys hurried to the window.

“Another messenger from Lord Orun,” Tobin said, frowning at the yellow-liveried rider approaching the bridge. Sefus and Kadmen met him at the outer gate.

Ki turned to stare at him. “Another one? What did the last one want? Tobin?”

Tobin picked at a spot of lichen on the stone sill. “He wants me back in Ero, but Tharin sent word I was too sick to ride.”

“That’s all?”

“No,” Tobin admitted. “Orun said he was writing to the king again.”

“About me.”

Tobin nodded grimly.

Ki said nothing, just looked back out the window, but Tobin saw the worry in his eyes.

Tharin brought the news up to them. “The same as before. Your guardian is impatient for your return.”

“And to get rid of me,” said Ki.

“I’m afraid so.”

Ki hung his head. “This is my fault, isn’t it, Tharin? I gave him a reason. I should have gone to you as soon as I knew Tobin was missing. I don’t know why I listened—” He rubbed absently at the discolored lump on his forehead and gave Tobin a sorrowful look. “All I could think of was catching up with you. Now look what I’ve done!”

“I won’t let him send you away. What did this letter say, exactly?”

Tharin handed Tobin the folded parchment and he scanned it quickly. “He wants me to start back today! Ki can’t ride yet.”

Tharin gave him a humorless smile. “I doubt that’s of much concern to Lord Orun. Don’t worry, though. Nari’s down there explaining to the messenger how your fever is still too high for you to travel. You’d better keep to your room until he leaves. I wouldn’t put it past Orun to have sent us a spy.”

“Nor would I,” said Iya, looking in at the door. “Before you go into hiding, though, would you come upstairs? I’ve something to show you. Privately,” she added, as Ki started after him.

Tobin threw his friend an apologetic look as he followed her out.

“What is it?” he asked as soon as they were in the corridor.

“There are things we must speak of while there is still time.” She paused. “Bring the doll, please.”

Tobin did as she asked and they continued upstairs. Arkoniel met them in the workroom and to Tobin’s surprise, he was not alone. Lhel sat at the long table just behind him. Everyone looked very serious, but he was glad to see her, all the same.

“You have call Brother?” asked Lhel, and he guessed that she already knew the answer.

“No,” Tobin admitted.

“Call now.”

Tobin hesitated, then spoke the words in a nervous rush.

Brother appeared in the corner farthest from the door. He was thin and ragged, but Tobin could feel the cold power of his presence from across the room.

“Well, what do you think?” asked Iya.

Lhel squinted hard at Brother, then shrugged. “I tell you the binding stronger now. So he stronger, too.”

“I wonder if Ki is still able to see him?” murmured Arkoniel.

“I won’t have him around Ki.” Tobin turned angrily on the ghost. “I won’t call you at all, ever, unless you promise never to hurt him again! I don’t care what Lhel says!” He shook the doll at Brother. “Promise, or you can stay away and starve.”

Tobin saw a flicker of hatred in the ghost’s black eyes, but it was directed at the wizards, not at him.

“No one saw him in Tobin’s sickroom,” Iya was saying, as if she hadn’t noticed his outburst.

“Those have the eye see him more now,” said Lhel. “And he make others see when he wants.”

Tobin looked at Brother again, noting how the lamplight seemed to touch him the same way it did the rest of them; it never had before. “He looks more—real, somehow.”

“Be harder to put you apart, comes the time, but must be so.”

For a moment curiosity overcame his anger. “Come here,” he told the ghost. Tobin reached to touch him; but as always, his hand found only colder air. Brother grinned at him. He looked more like an animal baring its teeth.

“Go away!” Tobin ordered, and was relieved when the spiteful ghost obeyed. “Can I go now?”

“A moment more, if you please,” said Arkoniel. “You remember how I promised to teach you to guard your thoughts? It’s time we had that lesson.”

“But it’s not magic. You said so, remember?”

“Why do you fear magic so, Tobin?” asked Iya. “It’s protected you all these years. And wonderful things can be done with it! You’ve seen that for yourself. With a wave of my hand, I can make fire where there is no wood, or food in the wilderness. Why do you fear it?”

Because magic meant surprises and fear, sorrow and danger, Tobin thought. But he couldn’t tell them that; he didn’t want them to know what power they had over him. So he just shrugged.

“Many magics, keesa,” Lhel said softly, and he caught a flicker of the secret symbols on her cheeks. “You wise to be respecting. Some magic good, some evil. But we do no evil with you, keesa. Make you safe.”

“And this isn’t real magic, just a protection against it,” Arkoniel assured him. “All you have to do is imagine something very clearly, make a picture in your head. Can you imagine the sea for me?”

Tobin thought of the harbor at Ero at dawn, with the great trading ships riding at anchor and the small fishing boats bobbing around them like skimmer beetles.

He felt the briefest cool touch on his brow, but no one had moved.

Iya chuckled. “That was very good.”

“I tell you,” Lhel said.

Tobin opened his eyes. “That’s all?”

“That’s a beginning, and a very good one,” Arkoniel replied. “But you must practice as often as you can, and do it whenever Niryn or any of the Harriers notice you. The real trick is to not look like you’re thinking of something else.”

“Arkoniel used to screw his face up like he had a cramp,” Iya said, looking at him fondly, the way Nari looked at Tobin sometimes. “But you can’t always think of the same thing. It’s safest if you focus on something you’ve just been doing. For instance, if you’ve been hawking, think of jesses or wing markings, or the sound of the bells.”

Tobin tried again, thinking of the game he and Ki had been playing.

“Well done again!” Arkoniel said. “Just remember, though, that your best defense against Niryn and his kind lies in never giving them a reason to look into your head.”

Tobin’s apologies were carried back to Ero the following day. The boys watched from Ki’s window, sticking their tongues out at the retreating horseman.

Ki was finally well enough to escape Nari’s strictures and they spent the day wandering around the keep and visiting at the barracks. Ki wanted to visit Arkoniel, but the wizard didn’t answer his door.

Ki looked back over his shoulder as they walked away. The sight of that closed door left him oddly depressed. “Where do you suppose he could be?”

“He’s around,” Tobin said with a shrug. “What’s wrong? I just saw him yesterday.”

“I haven’t seen him since your name day party,” Ki reminded him. “I’m starting to think he’s avoiding me.”

Tobin punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Now why would he do that?”

Ki was surprised at how quickly his newfound energy deserted him. By midafternoon he was feeling weak again, and having spells of double vision. That frightened him, for Iya had assured him they would pass. The thought that she might be wrong was too frightening to contemplate. What good would a blind squire be to anyone?

As always, Tobin seemed to sense without being told how Ki felt and asked for an early supper upstairs.

That night they slept in Tobin’s room. Ki sighed happily as he sank back against the soft bolsters. Even if it was only for a few nights more, it was good to have things as they used to be. He hadn’t thought about Ero or his enemies among the Companions in days.

Tobin’s thoughts were running along similar lines as he watched the candle shadows dance overhead. Part of him missed Korin and the others, and the excitement of palace life. But Orun’s angry letters tainted all that. Not for the first time, he wished things were the way they used to be.

“This damn thing itches,” Ki grumbled, rubbing at his forehead. He turned his face for Tobin to see. “How does it look?”

Tobin pushed Ki’s soft brown hair back for a better look. A swollen, crusted gash two inches long still stood out over Ki’s right eye, just below the hairline. The lump was fading from purple to a nasty mottled green. “You must have hit a rock or something when you fell. Does it still hurt?”

Ki laughed up at him. “Don’t you start fussing over me! I’m worse off from being kept indoors so long. My old dad would never have stood for it, I can tell you.” He dropped back into the country accent he used to have. “ ’Less you got a broke leg or guts hanging out, you can damn well get out and tend to yer chores.”

“Do you still miss your family?”

Ki folded his hands across his chest. “Some of ’em, I guess. Ahra, and a couple brothers.”

“After we get things settled in Ero, we could go visit them,” Tobin offered. “I’d like to see where you come from.”

Ki glanced away. “No, you wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“You just wouldn’t.” He gave Tobin a quick grin. “Bilairy’s balls, I don’t want to go back there. Why would you?”

Tobin let it go; why shouldn’t Ki have a few secrets of his own and, anyway, that was all a long time ago. He pushed his fingers back through Ki’s hair, pretending to take a closer look at the wound. “Anyway, it should leave a good scar.”

“Not one to brag of, though,” Ki grumbled. “Think the girls would believe me if I said we met with Plenimaran raiders on the road, or bandits, maybe? I bet Una and Marilli would believe me.”

Tobin chuckled, but at the same time felt a familiar twinge of jealousy. He’d heard enough stories about his friend’s hot-blooded kin, and Ki already had an eye for anything in skirts.

Tobin’s own bashfulness in that regard had earned him his share of teasing among the Companions. Even Ki wasn’t above the occasional good-natured jibe. Everyone—including Tobin himself—had always put it down to his youth and natural shyness.

Until now.

Now, fingers still twined in Ki’s warm hair, Tobin had his first inkling of what that angry little knot in his belly might mean. He took his hand away and lay back, pulling the covers up under his chin.

I don’t like girls that way because I—

He threw an arm across his face to hide the rising blush burning his cheeks and used Arkoniel’s trick. He thought of Gosi’s rough winter coat, the feel of cold rain down his neck, the bite of his hawk’s talons on his fist—anything but the guilty heat coursing through him. Anything but the way his fingers remembered the weight of his friend’s soft hair.

I’m a boy! Ki would never—

Ki had gone quiet, and when Tobin dared lift his arm he found him frowning up at the rafters. After a moment he let out a long sigh.

“What about Orun? What if he does get your uncle to send me away this time?”

“I told you, I won’t let him.”

“Oh, I know.” Ki’s buck-toothed grin flashed as he caught Tobin’s hand in his, but he was worried. “I’ll tell you this, Tob; whatever happens, I’ll always stand by you, even if it’s only as a soldier in your guard.” He was dead serious now. “No matter what happens, Tobin, I’m your man.”

“I know that,” Tobin managed, caught between gratitude and guilt. “And I’m yours. Go to sleep now, before Nari comes in and makes you sleep next door.”

Orun countered with another messenger the next day and, without thinking, Tobin went to get the news. Tharin was with the man in the hall and looked up in surprise as Tobin clattered down the stairs. He was too distracted for the moment to register what that look meant.

Their visitor turned out to be a most unlikely courier. It was Orun’s own valet, Bisir. He was a meek, quiet fellow, pretty in the way that all the young men in Orun’s household were. With his big, dark eyes and soft, nervous hands, Bisir had always reminded Tobin of a hare. He was one of the few people in that household who was always pleasant to him and, more importantly, the only one who was polite to Ki.

“A letter for you from my lord Orun, Prince Tobin,” Bisir said, looking apologetic as he handed Tobin the sealed parchment. “And may I say, my prince, that it’s good to see you looking so well. Captain Tharin’s last letter gave my master to believe that your health might be in some danger.”

Too late Tobin realized his mistake. It would be no use writing back of ill health now. He opened the letter and saw it made no difference, anyway. Orun was threatening to bring him home by cart, if need be.

It’s all right,” Ki said, as Tobin fretted in their room. “I can ride now, really.”

Iya wasn’t so certain, however, and they went to bed that night in low spirits. Unable to sleep, Tobin sent up a half-formed plea to Sakor and Illior, then wondered if the gods ever heard a petition without the offering smoke to carry it.

When he woke the following morning the first thing he noticed was something white on the floor. It was snow. A shutter had come open and a little drift of it had piled on the rushes under the window. More was blowing in. Jumping out of bed, he dashed to the window and leaned out, laughing as the driven flakes peppered his cheeks.

The meadow was gone, lost behind thick, shifting curtains of white. He could just make out the angle of the barracks roof but the bridge was nothing but a dark blur beyond it.

He scooped up a handful of snow and tossed it at Ki to wake him. Evidently the gods had been feeling generous.

The blizzard lasted for three days, heaping snow halfway up the doorposts and trapping Bisir in with them. This presented certain complications. Iya had made herself known, but Arkoniel had to stay hidden upstairs in case Bisir decided to wander where he wasn’t wanted.

The young valet was awkward and ill at ease at first, clearly feeling out of place in this rude country household. There was nothing for him to do here, no one to serve. The women didn’t want him underfoot in the hall, so Koni and some of the younger guardsmen took charge of him and dragged him off to the barracks. Ki and Tobin watched from the top of the stairs as they all but carried him out. Surrounded by rough, coarse-spoken soldiers, Bisir looked like he was on his way to be hanged.

They didn’t see him again until breakfast the next day. Though uncharacteristically rumpled, he was actually laughing with Koni and the others, something Tobin had never seen the timid fellow do.

Even after the storm ended the roads were so choked with snow that for the present there was no question of travel. For three golden weeks they lived as if they’d never gone to Ero.

The snow kept them from riding, but they spent hours shooting, fighting snowball battles against the guardsmen, building whole squadrons of snowmen, and practicing their swordplay in the barracks. Koni somehow pulled Bisir into these pastimes, but the valet proved to be no warrior.

On those rare occasions when Ki and Tobin did manage to slip away unattended, they looked for Lhel at the edge of the forest, but the witch was either snowed in or refusing to show herself.

Ki grew strong again, but still had trouble seeing clearly sometimes when he was shooting. He thought about going to Tharin but instead ended up at Iya’s door one night after Tobin was asleep. Once there, fear made it hard to tell her what the matter was. Iya was kind, seating him by her fire and giving him spiced wine. When he finally blurted out what the matter was, she seemed relieved.

“You eyes, is it? Well, let’s see what I can do.” Iya bent over him and pressed a hand to his brow. She said nothing for a few minutes, just stood there with her eyes half-closed, as if she was listening inside his head. Ki felt a tingling coldness against his skin; it tickled a little, but it felt good, too.

“You never told me you were a healer.”

“Oh, I know a thing or two,” she murmured.

Whatever she was doing, she soon seemed satisfied. “I wouldn’t fret about it. That knock on the head is still mending. I’m sure this will pass.”

“I hope so. When we get back—”

“You’ll have to prove your worthiness all over again,” she guessed, wise as always. “Your worth is known to your friends, and you won’t change the minds of your enemies no matter what you do.”

“My friends,” Ki murmured, thinking of Arkoniel. No matter what Tobin or anyone else said, Arkoniel was avoiding him. He’d done no more than peek in at the doorway when Ki lay sick, and they’d hardly seen each other since. It hurt. Ki had always liked the wizard, even when he was forcing him to learn reading and writing. This sudden, unexplained coolness between them was hard to bear.

He had not dared ask Tharin about it, scared of what the answer might be. But now he couldn’t hold back any longer. Iya knew Arkoniel better than anyone else. “Is Arkoniel angry with me for letting Tobin run off?”

Iya arched an eyebrow at him. “Angry? Why would you think that? You know he can’t risk being seen by our houseguest.”

“He was avoiding me before Bisir got here.”

“He asks after you all the time.”

Ki blinked. “He does?”

“Certainly.”

“But I never see him.”

Iya smoothed her hands down the front of her robe. “He’s been busy with some spell he’s working on. That takes up much of his time.”

Ki sighed. That hadn’t stopped Arkoniel from sending for Tobin, just not for him.

Iya must have seen the doubt in his eyes, or maybe she touched his mind to read it, for she smiled. “Don’t worry about this, my dear. Your illness frightened him more than he likes to admit. Perhaps he has an odd way of showing it, but he cares for you a great deal. I’ll speak to him.”

Ki rose and gave her a grateful bow. He was still too much in awe of her to hug her. “Thank you, Mistress. I’d be awfully sad if he didn’t like me anymore.”

Iya surprised him with a soft touch on his cheek. “You mustn’t ever think that, child.”

Chapter 4

It amused Niryn greatly to watch Orun fume and fret over Prince Tobin’s absence. He’d suspected from the start that the Lord Chancellor had engineered the guardianship for himself, hoping to cement his connection to the royal family through Tobin. If the child had been a girl, no doubt he’d even have gone so far as to ask for a betrothal. He was powerful, it was true, and his oily loyalty to the king’s mother had gained him both wealth and status; Erius might have considered such a match.

Instead, here was this skinny, skittish little boy, heir to the richest estates in the land, and Orun held the purse strings. Niryn’s own hold on the king was secure enough, but it irked him to see such a plum fall into the lap of the most odious man in Ero. So he bided his time and kept spies in the house to see if Orun would trip himself up. Orun’s penchant for young boys was no secret, though he’d wisely limited himself to servants and whores who could be counted on not to tattle. But if he should forget himself with Tobin? Well, that would certainly be a bit of luck. The wizard had even considered helping the matter along.

It was all moot anyway, though. Anytime the king chose—and here Niryn did have some influence—Erius could with impunity seize Tobin’s estates, his lands, and treasuries. Tobin was young and virtually friendless among the nobles; with his parents dead, such a child was not worth anyone’s loyalty.

If Ariani’s daughter had lived, rather than this sprat, it would have been a different matter. As the plagues and droughts worsened and the peasants turned to Illior, it had not been terribly difficult to make the king see that any female of the blood posed a threat to his line. If the Illiorans had their way, any one of these pretenders could claim to be a “daughter of Thelátimos” and raise an army against him. The solution was the usual time-honored one.

Niryn had made a near-fatal error, however, when he pointed out obliquely that the king’s sister, Ariani, posed the greatest threat of all. Erius had very nearly ordered Niryn’s execution; that had been the first time Niryn used magic against the king.

The incident passed and Niryn was glad when it became apparent that the king’s forbearance did not extend to his sister’s children. They’d both taken it as an auspicious sign when Ariani’s daughter was stillborn. Later, the princess’ descent into madness had done Niryn’s work for him. Not even the most fanatical Illiorans would want another mad queen on the throne. No one would back Ariani, or her demon-cursed son.

Yet that still left others. A girl, any girl, who could claim even tangentially to be a “daughter of Thelátimos” might find that the Prophecy of Afra had not been forgotten, no matter how many priests and wizards the king burned. It was a fact Niryn counted on.

No one had noticed when Niryn began paying monthly visits to Ilear. He dressed as a wealthy merchant and added a spell to fuddle the minds of any who might recognize him. In this way he’d come and gone as he pleased all these years. Who would dare spy on the leader of the Harriers?

Riding into the market town that misty winter afternoon, he reveled as always in his anonymity. It was poulterers’ day, and the crowing, quacking, and honking of the birds in their pens echoed loudly inside the walled marketplace. Niryn smiled to himself as he guided his mount through the crowd. Who among them guessed that the horseman they jostled or muttered at or smiled upon had the power to end their lives with a word?

Leaving the markets behind, he rode up the hill to the most affluent neighborhood and the fine stone house he owned there. A young page answered, and Vena, the half-blind old nurse, met him in the hall.

“She’s been fretting at her window since morning, Master,” she scolded, taking his cloak.

“Is that him?” a girl called from upstairs.

“Yes, Nalia, my dear, it’s me!” Niryn replied.

Nalia hurried down the stairs and kissed him on both cheeks. “You’re a whole day late, you know!”

Niryn kissed her back, then held her at arm’s length to admire her. A year older than Prince Korin, she had her kinsman’s black hair and eyes, but none of his handsome looks. She was a homely girl, made homelier by a weak chin and the irregular pink birthmark that ran like spilled wine down her left cheek and shoulder. It made her shy, and she shunned society of any sort. This had served him well, making it a simple matter to keep her hidden away in this remote backwater town.

Her mother, a second cousin to the king on the matrilineal side, had been even uglier, but somehow managed to find a husband and whelp a pair of girls. Her good fortune had been Niryn’s. He’d seen to the murders himself, stopping the father’s heart as he opened the door to the wizard and killing the mother in the birthing bed. That had been in the early days of Erius’ massacres, when Niryn still saw to such things personally.

Nalia’s twin had been a pretty little thing, untouched by the unkind fate that had marred her mother and sister. She would have grown up a beauty, and beauty was hard to hide. Or control.

Niryn had meant to kill all of them, but as he’d lifted the second squalling infant from her dead mother’s side he’d had the vision—the one that had guided his every action since. From that moment on, he knew he was no longer merely the king’s coursing hound, but the master of Skala’s future.

Other wizards glimpsed her in their own visions, and some of the Illioran priests, too. Preying on the king’s fears for Korin, Niryn had wrested the power and the means to crush others before they could see clearly and reveal his sweet, tractable little Nalia. No one but he must bring this future queen forward when the time was right. No one but he must control her when she reached the throne.

He controlled Erius, but knew he would never be able to control headstrong young Korin. The boy had too much of his mother’s blood in him and no hint of madness. He would rule long, while plague and ill fortune grew on the land until Skala gave way to her enemies like a rotten beam.

Mad Agnalain and her brood had tainted the crown; no one would argue that. His Nalia could trace her lineage back to Thelátimos on both sides. Niryn could prove it, when the time came. He, and only he, would restore the Sword of Ghërilain to a woman’s hand when the Lightbearer gave the sign. In the meantime, she had grown up safely anonymous, unknown even to herself. She knew only that she was an orphan, and Niryn was her kindly benefactor and guardian. Allowed no other male companions, she doted on him and missed him terribly when he was away—as she believed—attending to his shipping business in the capital.

“It’s very cruel of you to make me wait so long,” she said, still chiding, though he saw the flush rising in her unblemished cheek as she drew him by the hand to his chair in the sitting room. Settling happily on his lap, she kissed him again and gave his beard a playful tug.

Despite her disfigured face, she’d grown into a shapely young woman. Niryn circled her slender waist with one arm and ran a hand lovingly over the generous swell of her breasts as he kissed her. At night in their unlit bedchamber, she was as beautiful as any mistress he’d ever taken, and the most abjectly devoted.

Let Orun have his little stick figure prince for now. Without Duke Rhius’ power behind him—and Niryn had helped that demise along, too—the son of Ariani was just another male usurper to the throne, and a cursed one at that. He’d be easy enough to deal with when the time came.

Chapter 5

A warm wind from the south ended Tobin’s exile in early Cinrin. Midwinter rains melted the drifts like sugar loaves. The snow forts crumbled and their army of snowmen lay like scattered pockmarked corpses, felled by the plague of mild weather.

Two days later a royal courier arrived with a letter from Korin and another sharp summons from Lord Orun.

“That’s it, then,” said Ki after Tobin read it out to Tharin and the others around the hearth fire.

Bisir had grown ruddy and rather cheerful during his unintended stay, but he had that frightened rabbit look again now. “Does he say anything about me?”

“Don’t worry about Orun,” said Tobin. “It wasn’t your fault you got snowed in. He can’t hold the weather against you.”

Bisir shook his head. “But he will.”

“We’ll head back at first light tomorrow,” said Tharin, looking no more pleased than the valet did. “Nari, see that their things are packed.”

“Of course I will!” Nari snapped, offended, but Tobin saw her dab at her eyes with a corner of her apron as she went up the stairs.

Cook prepared a fine farewell supper that night, but no one was very hungry.

“You are still coming with me, aren’t you, Iya?” Tobin asked, pushing a bit of lamb around his bowl.

“Maybe you could be Tobin’s court wizard,” Ki offered.

“I doubt the king would approve of that,” Iya replied. “But I’ll come for a little stay, just to see how the wind’s blowing.”

Tobin’s heart was heavy as he and Ki dressed by candlelight the next morning. He had no appetite for breakfast; there was a lump in his throat, and another heavy as a stone in his belly. Ki was quieter than usual, and made his good-byes hastily when the time came to leave. Bisir looked downright grim.

The day dawned rainy and cold as they passed through Alestun. The roads were churned to thick, sucking mud and made for slow riding. The rain came in squalls as they descended through the wooded hills to the rolling open country beyond. Dusk came on early so late in the year. They spent the night in a wayside inn and came in sight of the coast at noon the next day. The sky was the color of iron, the sea and the distant river black against the winter brown fields. Even Ero looked like a city of ash on her high hill.

They kicked their horses into a gallop over the last few miles and the sharp tang of the sea blew in to greet them. That and the excitement of galloping with his own men at his back lifted Tobin’s spirits a little. By the time they reached the broad stone span of Beggar’s Bridge, he felt ready to face his guardian. Even the slums between the bridge and the city wall did not dampen his spirits. He emptied his purse of coppers and silver, tossing the coins to the beggars who lined the way. Tobin and his warriors saluted the crescent and flame carved on the great stone arch of the south gate, touching hearts and hilts to honor the city’s patron deities. Tharin announced Tobin’s arrival and the pikemen bowed to him as he rode by. Iya reined aside to show the silver badge she wore and one of the guards marked something down on a wax tally board. The wizard’s lips were pressed in a hard angry line as she caught up with Tobin. Tobin knew about the badges the Harriers made the free wizards wear, had seen the one Iya wore. Only now did he begin to understand what they really meant.

The narrow streets seemed all the more dark and filthy to Tobin after weeks in the mountains. This was a poor quarter and the faces he saw peering out from windows and doorways were pinched and pale as ghosts.

“Stinking Ero,” he muttered, wrinkling his nose.

Iya gave him an odd look from under her hood, but said nothing.

“Guess we were gone long enough to get the smell out of our noses,” said Ki.

Urging their mounts on at a gallop, they clattered up the steep, twisting streets to the walled Palatine. The streets grew marginally cleaner in the upper precincts, and in some the woven ropes of evergreen boughs and wheat had already been hung over some doorways in preparation for the Festival of Sakor.

The captain of the Palatine Guard greeted Tharin at the gates. “Prince Korin left word for Prince Tobin, my lord,” he said, bowing low. “He bids his cousin come to the feasting hall as soon as he arrives.”

“Did Lord Orun leave any message?” asked Tobin.

“No, my prince.”

“That’s good, anyway,” muttered Ki.

Tobin turned reluctantly to Bisir. “I suppose you’d better take your master the news.”

The young man bowed in the saddle and rode on ahead without a word.

The branches of the ancient, winter-bare elms lining the avenue formed a netted tunnel over them as they cantered on.

Tobin paused by the Royal Tomb and saluted the remains of his parents, which lay in the catacombs below. Through the age-blackened wooden pillars that supported the flat tile roof, Tobin could see the light of the altar fire flickering over the faces of the queens’ effigies.

“Do you want to go in?” Tharin asked.

Tobin shook his head and rode on.

The New Palace gardens were a palette of grey and black. Lights twinkled from windows everywhere in the maze of fine houses that crowned Ero’s high hill, like a flock of fireflies in winter.

At the Old Palace Iya went on with Laris and the others to quarters at the villa that had been Ariani’s. Tharin stayed with the boys and accompanied them into the Companions’ wing. Uncertain of his welcome, Tobin was glad of his company and Ki’s as they made their way along the faded corridors.

The messroom was empty but sounds of merriment led them on to Korin’s feasting chamber. The double doors stood open and light and music spilled out to greet the prodigals. Hundreds of lamps lit the room and the chamber felt stifling after the day’s cold ride.

Korin and the other noble Companions sat at the high table, accompanied by a few select friends and favorite girls. The squires were busy serving. Garol stood ready with his wine pitcher behind Korin’s chair and Tanil was busy carving on his left. The only person who seemed to be missing from the usual gathering was Swordmaster Porion. He was nowhere to be seen. As much as Tobin liked the gruff old veteran, he was in no hurry to hear what the man had to say about his absence from training.

Scores of guests of every age sat at two long tables below. Looking around, Tobin saw the usual collection of entertainers, as well. At the moment, a company of Mycenian acrobats were throwing each other into the air.

Korin hadn’t noticed their arrival. Aliya was sitting on his lap, laughing and blushing over something he was whispering in her ear as he played with one of her braids. As Tobin approached the table, he saw with little surprise that his cousin was flushed with wine, despite the early hour.

Near the end of the table, Tobin’s friends Nikides and Lutha were talking with dark-haired Lady Una, though they looked more earnest than flirtatious.

Lutha was the first to notice them. His narrow face lit up as he elbowed Nikides, and shouted, “Look, Prince Korin, your wayward cousin is home at last!”

“Come here, coz!” Korin exclaimed, throwing his arms wide. “And you, too, Ki. So you finally dug yourselves out, did you? We’ve missed you. And missed your name day, as well.”

“I’ve had my old seat back for a while,” Caliel said, laughing. Giving up his place of honor at Korin’s right, he shouldered in next to red-bearded Zusthra.

Ki went to join the other squires serving at table. Tharin was given a seat of honor among Korin’s older friends at the right-hand table. Tobin looked around uneasily for his guardian; Orun inserted himself into Korin’s doings whenever he could manage it. But not this time, Tobin noted with relief.

Ki had seemed welcome enough, too. Perhaps Orun hadn’t done anything, after all. Down the table, however, he caught sight of their old nemesis, Moriel the Toad. The pale, sharp-faced boy was watching his rival with open dislike; if Orun had had his way, Tobin would be sharing chambers with him instead of Ki.

As he looked around to see if Ki had noticed, he was caught by a pair of dark eyes. Lady Una gave him a shy wave. Her open regard had always discomforted Tobin. Now, with his new secret lodged like a splinter in his heart, he had to look away quickly. How could he ever face her again?

“Ah, someone’s glad to see you home,” Caliel observed, misinterpreting Tobin’s sudden blush.

“Mazer, butler, a welcoming cup for my cousin!” Korin cried. Lynx brought Tobin a golden mazer and Garol, none too sober himself, slopped wine into it.

Korin leaned forward, peering into Tobin’s face. “You seem no worse for your illness. Thought you had plague, did you?”

Korin was drunker than he’d thought, and reeked of wine. All the same, the welcome was genuine, if a little slurred, and Tobin was glad of it.

“I didn’t want the deathbirds nailing up the palace,” he explained.

“Speaking of birds, your hawk’s been pining for you,” Arengil called down the table, his Aurënfaie accent giving the words a graceful lilt. “I’ve kept her in trim, but she misses her master.”

Tobin raised his cup to his friend.

Korin swayed to his feet and banged a spoon against a platter of goose bones. The minstrels ceased and the tumblers scurried away. When he had everyone’s attention, Korin raised his cup to Tobin. “Let us pour libations for my cousin, for his name day’s sake.” With an unsteady hand, he tipped half the contents onto the stained tablecloth, then downed the rest as the others sprinkled the required drops. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Korin proclaimed grandly, “Twelve years old, my cousin is, and twelve kisses he’ll get from every girl at the table to speed him on to manhood. And one extra, too, for the month that’s passed since. Aliya, you first.”

There was no point in arguing, for Korin would have his way. Tobin tried not to flinch as Aliya draped herself around him and delivered the required dozen all over his face. Korin was welcome to his opinion of her, but Tobin had always found her sharp-tongued and mean. For the last kiss, she pressed her mouth hard to his, then flounced away laughing. Half a dozen more girls crowded forward, probably more anxious for Korin’s approval than Tobin’s. When Una’s turn came, she shyly brushed his cheek, eyes squeezed shut. Over her shoulder, Tobin could see black-haired Alben laughing with Zusthra and Quirion, clearly relishing his embarrassment.

When the ordeal was over, Ki set a parsley bread trencher and a finger bowl down before him. Tobin saw that he was tight-lipped with anger.

“It’s just in fun,” Tobin whispered, but it wasn’t the kissing that had upset his friend.

Still glowering, Ki took the platter away. A moment later Tobin heard the clatter of dishes and Ki’s muffled curse. Turning, he saw Mago and Arius laughing as Ki scooped greasy scraps back onto the platter he’d dropped. From the look Ki shot them, Tobin guessed those two had lost no time resuming their old tricks.

Tobin hadn’t forgiven Mago for goading Ki into a fight that had gotten him a beating on the temple steps. He was halfway out of his chair when Korin’s squire, Tanil, stepped in beside him to place several cuts of roast lamb in his trencher.

“I’ll deal with them,” he murmured.

Tobin grudgingly settled back in his chair. As usual, Korin took no notice. “What will you have for a present, coz?” he demanded. “Name anything you like. A gold-chased corselet, perhaps, to replace that battered old turtle shell of yours? A peregrine or a fine new Aurënfaie horse? I know—a sword! There’s a new smith in Hammer Street, you’ve never seen the like—”

Tobin chewed slowly, considering the offer. He had no desire to replace his horse or his sword—both gifts from his father—and his old armor suited him just fine, though perhaps it was getting a little small. The fact was, he’d been given so many gifts since he’d come to court that he couldn’t think of a thing to ask for, except one. And he didn’t dare bring up Ki’s possible banishment here. He wasn’t even certain if it was in his cousin’s power to decide the matter and wouldn’t risk embarrassing Ki in front of the others.

“I can’t think of anything,” he admitted at last.

This was greeted with good-natured hoots and cat-calls, but he overheard Urmanis’ sister Lilyan whispering meanly to Aliya, “Always has to play the simple rustic lord, doesn’t he?”

“Perhaps the prince would rather have a different sort of gift,” Tharin suggested. “A journey, perhaps?”

Korin grinned. “A journey? Now there’s a gift we could all share in. Where would you like to go, Tobin? Afra, perhaps, or down to Erind. You won’t get better fried eels anywhere and the whores there are said to be the finest in Skala.”

Caliel threw an arm around his friend’s neck, trying to stem the drunken ramble. “He’s a little young for that, don’t you think?”

He gave Tobin a sympathetic wink over Korin’s shoulder. Caliel and Tanil were the only ones who could steer Korin when he was this deep in his cups.

Still at a loss, Tobin looked back at Tharin. The man smiled and raised a hand to his breast, almost as if he were pointing at something.

Tobin understood at once. Touching the lump his father’s seal ring made under his tunic, he said, “I’d like to see my estate at Atyion.”

“Only that far?” Korin regarded him with bleary disappointment.

“I’ve never seen it,” Tobin reminded him.

“Well then, to Atyion it is! I could use a new horse and the herds there are the best this side of the Osiat.”

Everyone cheered again. Warmed by his little triumph, Tobin allowed himself a deep swallow of wine. Lord Orun had always found some excuse for Tobin not to go. In this, at least, Korin had the final say.

Well, well. Look who’s back,” Mago sneered as Ki helped collect the scraps for Ruan’s alms basket.

“Yes, look who’s here,” Arius, Mago’s shadow and echo, chimed in, jostling Ki’s arm. “Our grass knight has come home. I hear Lord Orun’s been fuming mad at you, letting the prince run off like that.”

“Master Porion isn’t too happy with you, either,” Mago gloated. “How do you fancy kneeling on the temple steps again? How many lashes do you suppose he’ll have your prince give you this time?”

For an answer, Ki stuck his foot out and sent Mago sprawling with the platter of roast lamb he’d been carrying.

“Tripping over your own feet again, Mago?” Tanil chuckled as he passed. “You’d better get that cleaned up before Chylnir catches you.”

Mago scrambled to his feet, his fine tunic covered in grease. “Think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?” he spat at Ki. Then, to Tanil, “If I’m so clumsy, maybe Sir Kirothius here should finish the job by himself.” He stalked off toward the kitchen with the empty platter. Arius shot Ki a dangerous look as he trotted off after Mago.

“No need to get yourself in trouble over me,” Ki mumbled as he gathered the scraps. It embarrassed him that Tanil had heard the other boys’ taunts.

But the head squire’s eyes were bright with suppressed laughter. “Not your fault that he can’t keep his feet, now, is it? That was a nice little move. Will you teach me?”

It was after midnight when Tharin and Caliel accompanied the princes to their bedchambers. Korin was blind drunk, and after several attempts to fall on his nose, Tharin picked the prince up and carried him to his door.

“Good night, sweet coz. Sweet, sweet coz,” Korin warbled, as Tanil and Caliel took charge of him. “Sweet dreams to you and welcome home! Caliel, I think I’m going to puke.”

His friends hurried him inside, but from the sounds that followed, they weren’t quick enough getting him to a basin.

Tharin shook his head in disgust.

“He’s not always like that,” Tobin told him, always quick to defend his cousin.

“Too often for my taste, or his father’s, I’d say,” Tharin growled.

“Mine, too,” muttered Ki, lifting the latch at their door.

The door fetched against something as he tried to open it. There was a grunt of surprise from the other side, then their page, Baldus, swung it wide, grinning at Tobin with sleepy delight. “Welcome home, my prince! And Lord Tharin, it’s good to see you again.”

Tapers had been left burning and the room was sweet with the welcoming scents of beeswax and the pines outside the balcony.

Baldus hurried to pull back the heavy black-and-gold bed hangings and turn down the covers for them. “I’ll fetch a warming pan, my prince. Molay and I were so glad to hear you were coming back at last! Sir Ki, the baggage is in the dressing room. I’ve left it for you to unpack, like always.” He stifled a huge yawn. “Oh, and there’s a letter from your guardian, Prince Tobin. Molay left it there on the writing table, I think.”

So Old Slack Guts wasted no time, after all, thought Tobin, picking up the folded parchment. Judging by the way that Baldus was looking anywhere but at Ki, his squire’s precarious situation was no secret.

“Go sleep in the kitchen where it’s warmer,” Tobin told the boy, not wanting an audience. “And tell Molay I don’t require him tonight. I just want to go to sleep.”

Baldus bowed and dragged his pallet out with him.

Bracing himself, Tobin broke the seal and read the few brief lines.

“What does it say?” Ki demanded softly.

“Just that he’ll summon me tomorrow and I’m to come alone.”

Tharin read it for himself, scowling. “Alone, eh? Sounds like the Lord Chancellor needs reminding who he’s dealing with. I’ll have an honor guard waiting. Send word when you need us.” He clapped them both on the shoulder. “No long faces, boys. Worrying yourselves sick tonight won’t help. Get some sleep and whatever happens tomorrow, we’ll deal with it then.”

Tobin wanted to take Tharin’s advice, but neither he nor Ki could find much to say as they got ready for bed. They lay in silence for a long time, listening to the embers tinkling on the hearth as they cooled.

Finally, Ki nudged Tobin’s foot with his own and gave voice to both their fears. “This could be my last night here.”

“Hope not,” Tobin croaked, his throat tight.

It seemed like a long time before Ki fell asleep. Tobin lay still until he was certain, then slid out of bed and carried a candle into the dressing room.

Their traveling bundles were piled on the floor. Opening his he reached down to the bottom and pulled out the doll. He knew he didn’t need to touch it to cast the summons, but he distrusted Brother more than ever now and wasn’t taking any chances here.

Alone in the dark, he realized he was again afraid of the ghost, more than he had been since Lhel gave him the doll. But even that didn’t stop him from whispering the words; Brother sometimes knew the future, and Tobin couldn’t sleep until he’d at least asked.

When Brother appeared, bright as a flame in the dim little chamber, he still had that too-real look.

“Will Orun send Ki away tomorrow?” asked Tobin.

Brother just looked at him, still and silent as a painting.

“Tell me! You’ve told me other things.” Mean, hurtful things, and lies. “Tell me!”

“I can only tell what I can see,” Brother whispered at last. “I don’t see him.”

“See who? Orun or Ki?”

“They’re nothing to me.”

“Then you’re no good me!” Tobin shot back bitterly. “Go away.”

Brother obeyed and Tobin hurled the doll back into its old hiding place atop the dusty cupboard.

Returning to the bed, he climbed in and snuggled close to Ki. Rain was pattering on the roof and he listened to it, waiting in vain for sleep to take him.

Chapter 6

It was raining even harder the next morning. All around the Companions’ wing servants were setting out pails and basins to catch the water leaking through the ancient ceiling.

The weather had never made any difference to Master Porion. Tobin woke Ki as soon as he heard servants moving past in the corridor, and they made certain they were the first ones waiting for the swordmaster at the palace doors. Despite what Mago had said, the stocky old warrior seemed genuinely glad to have them back.

“All well, are you?” he asked, looking them over. “You don’t look much the worse for wear.”

“We’re fine, Master Porion,” Tobin assured him. “And we practiced while we were gone, too.”

That earned them a skeptical look. “We’ll see about that, won’t we?”

They had both mended. Even Ki, who’d been the sickest, kept up with the others as they set off on their morning run. Splashing though puddles and squelching through mud with their short cloaks flapping wetly against their thighs, the Companions ran the long circuit around the park, past the tomb and the drysian grove, around the reflecting pool and past the New Palace, and ending as they always did at the Temple of the Four at the center of the park.

The boys’ morning offerings were usually cursory affairs, but today Tobin spent several minutes at Sakor’s altar, whispering fervently over the little wax horse before casting it into the flames. Then, when he thought no one was looking, he sidled over to the white marble altar of Illior and cast one of Iya’s owl feathers onto the incense-laden coals.

Lord Orun’s summons came just as they were finishing their bread and milk in the messroom. Tharin must have been keeping watch, because he came in with the messenger. Dressed in a fine blue tunic, with every buckle and brooch polished, he cut an impressive figure. Korin gave Tobin an encouraging wink as he and Ki went out.

When they were out of earshot, Tharin dismissed the messenger and turned to Ki. “Wait for us at Tobin’s house, why don’t you? We’ll meet you there on our way back.”

Tobin and Ki exchanged grim, knowing looks; if the worst did come to pass, they wouldn’t risk shaming themselves in front of the other Companions.

Ki punched Tobin on the shoulder. “Stand your ground with him, Tob. Good luck.” With that he strode away.

“You’d better change out of those wet things,” said Tharin.

“I don’t give a damn what Orun thinks!” Tobin snapped. “I just want this over with.”

Tharin folded his arms and gave Tobin a stern look. “So you’re going to go before him dressed like a common soldier, muddy to the knees? Remember whose son you are.”

Those words again, and this time they stung. Tobin hurried back to his chamber, where Molay had a steaming basin and his best suit of clothes ready for him. Washed and changed, Tobin stood in front of the polished mirror and let the valet comb his black hair smooth. A grim, plain boy in velvet and linen scowled back at him, ready for battle. Tobin looked into his own reflected eyes, feeling for a moment as if he were sharing a secret with the stranger hidden behind his face.

Orun’s grand house stood in the maze of walled villas clustered on the New Palace grounds. Bisir met them at the door and ushered them into the reception hall.

“Good morning!” Tobin greeted him, glad to find one friendly face here. But Bisir hardly spoke and wouldn’t meet his eye. It was as if a single night back in his master’s house had undone all the good his time at the keep had accomplished. He looked as pale as ever, and Tobin saw new bruises on his wrists and neck.

Tharin had seen, too, and an angry flush came over his face. “He has no right—”

Bisir shook his head quickly, stealing a quick glance toward the stairs. “Don’t trouble yourself on my account, my lord,” he whispered, then, aloud, “My master is in his chamber. You may wait in the reception chamber, Sir Tharin. The Chancellor will speak with the prince alone.” He paused, clasping his hands nervously, and added, “Upstairs.”

For a moment Tobin thought Tharin was going to storm up with them. The man’s dislike of Orun was no secret, but Tobin had never seen him so angry.

Bisir stepped nearer to Tharin, and Tobin heard him whisper, “I’ll be close by.”

“See that you are,” Tharin muttered. “Don’t worry, Tobin. I’ll be right here.”

Tobin nodded, trying to feel brave; but as he followed Bisir upstairs, he drew out the ring and seal and kissed them for luck.

He’d never been upstairs before. As they continued down a long corridor toward the back of the house, Tobin was amazed at the opulence of the house. The carvings and tapestries were of the best quality and the furnishings rivaled anything in the New Palace. Young servant boys scattered out of their way as they passed. Bisir ignored them as if they didn’t exist.

He stopped at the last door and let Tobin into the enormous chamber beyond. “Remember, I’ll be right out here,” he whispered.

Trapped, Tobin looked around in surprise. He’d expected a private sitting room or salon, but this was a bedchamber. An enormous carved bedstead dominated the center of the room. Its hangings—thick yellow velvet edged with tiny golden bells—were still closed. So were the draperies at the windows. The paneled walls were hung with tapestries of green woodland scenes, but the room was as hot as a smithy and heavy with the aroma of cedar logs blazing and snapping on the enormous stone hearth.

Even Prince Korin’s room was not so lavish, Tobin thought, then started as bells on the bed hangings tinkled softly. A plump white hand emerged and drew back one of the heavy curtains.

“Ah, here is our little wanderer, returned at last,” Orun purred, waving Tobin closer. “Come, my dear, and let me see how you weathered your illness.”

Propped up against a mass of pillows, Lord Orun was wrapped in a yellow silk dressing gown; a large velvet bed cap of the same color covered his bald head. A crystal lamp hung from a chain, casting shadows that made his face seem more sallow than ever, his heavy flesh slacker on his bones. The counterpane was strewn with documents and the remains of a large breakfast lay on a tray beside him.

“Come closer,” Orun urged.

The edge of the mattress was nearly level with Tobin’s chest. Forced to look up at the man, Tobin could see the grey hairs in his guardian’s large nose.

“Do have a seat, my prince. There’s a stool just behind you.”

Tobin ignored it, letting his scorn show as he set his feet and clasped his hands behind his back so this man wouldn’t see them trembling. “You sent for me, Lord Orun, and I am here. What do you want?”

Orun favored him with an unpleasant smile. “I see your time away hasn’t improved your manners. You know why you’re here, Tobin. You’ve been a naughty boy and your uncle has heard all about your little escapade. I wrote him a long letter as soon as we discovered where you’d gone. Of course, I did my best to shield you from his displeasure. I put the blame where it belonged, on that ignorant peasant squire you’re lumbered with. Though perhaps we shouldn’t blame poor Kirothius too much. I daresay he suits you well enough out there in the wilds, but how could he be expected to keep proper watch over a princess’ son at court?”

“He serves me well here! Even Korin says so.”

“Oh, you’re all very fond of the boy, I know. And I’m sure we can find some suitable situation for him. In fact, in my letter I even offered to take him into my household. I can assure you, he’ll be properly educated here.”

Tobin clenched his fists, recalling the bruises on Bisir’s wrists.

“As to why you’re here, well, surely you wish to pay your respects to me after such long absence?” Orun paused. “No? Well, no matter. I’m expecting the king’s reply with this morning’s dispatches and thought it would be pleasant to read the good news together.”

This was far worse than anything Tobin had imagined. Orun was much too pleased with himself. He probably had spies among the king’s entourage and already knew the answer. Tobin’s heart sank even lower; Ki wouldn’t last two days in this household without getting into serious trouble.

Clucking his tongue in feigned concern, Orun lifted a delicate painted plate from the tray and held it out to him. “You’re looking very pale, dear boy. Have a bit of cake.”

Tobin fixed his gaze on the counterpane’s embroidered edge, resisting the urge to knock the plate across the room. Bed ropes creaked as Orun settled back, and Tobin heard his guardian’s satisfied chuckle. He wished now he’d accepted the stool but was too proud to move. How long until the dispatches arrived? Orun hadn’t said, and the heat was making Tobin dizzy. Sweat prickled across his upper lip and ran down between his shoulder blades. He could hear cold rain spattering against the shutters and wished he were outside again, running with his friends.

Orun said nothing, but Tobin knew he was being closely watched. “I won’t put Ki aside!” he gritted out, looking up defiantly.

Orun’s eyes had gone like black flints, though he was still smiling. “I sent the king a list of prospective replacements, young men of suitable background and breeding. But perhaps you’ve someone to add? I don’t wish to be unreasonable.”

No doubt Orun’s list had been a very short one, made up of favorites who would carry tales. Tobin knew who was at the head of it, judging by the Toad’s smug demeanor last night.

“Very well, then,” he said at last, glaring up at Orun. “I’ll have Lady Una.”

Orun laughed and clapped his soft hands, as if Tobin had made a particularly brilliant joke. “Most amusing, my prince! I must remember to tell your uncle that one. But seriously, young Moriel is more than willing, and the king did already approve him once—”

“Not him.”

“As your guardian—”

“No!” Tobin nearly stamped his foot. “Moriel will never serve me. Not if I have to go naked and alone into battle!”

Orun settled back against his cushions again and picked up a cup from the tray. “We’ll see about that.”

Despair crept over Tobin. For all his brave words to Ki and Tharin, he knew he was no match for the man.

Orun sipped softly at his tea for a moment. “I understand you wish to visit Atyion.”

So Moriel was already at work. Or perhaps it had been Alben. He’d heard Orun favored the dark, arrogant boy. “The estate is mine now. Why shouldn’t I go? Korin said I might.”

Orun smirked. “Assuming our dear prince recalls anything he said last night. But you’re not planning to go today, surely? Just listen to that rain. It’s certain to last for days this time of the year. I wouldn’t be surprised if it begins to freeze soon.”

“It’s only a day’s ride—”

“So soon after your illness, my dear?” Orun shook his head. “Most unwise. Besides, I should think you’ve had enough adventures for a while. When you’re stronger, perhaps. It’s a lovely place in the spring, Atyion.”

“The spring? It’s my father’s house. My house! I have a right to go there.”

Orun’s smile broadened. “Ah, but you see, dear boy, you have no rights at all just yet. You’re only a child, and in my charge. You must trust me to decide what is best for you. As your esteemed uncle would be sure to tell you, I have only your best interests at heart. You are the second heir, after all.” He returned to his breakfast. “For now.”

Tobin felt a chill in spite of the heat. Behind that smiling mask, Orun was still furious with him. This was the beginning of his punishment.

Too frightened and angry to speak, Tobin strode to the door, intending to leave no matter what Orun said. Just as he reached it, however, it swung open and he collided headlong with Bisir.

“Forgive me, my prince!” Tobin saw pity in the man’s eyes and steeled himself. The king’s messenger must have arrived.

Instead, it was Niryn who swept in.

Caught off guard, Tobin blinked up at the tall wizard, then quickly filled his mind with his anger at Orun, imagining it swirling through his head like smoke in a closed room.

Raindrops glistened in the wizard’s forked red beard as he bowed to Tobin. “Good morning, my prince! I’d hoped to find you here. How nice that you’ve returned in time for the Festival of Sakor. And I understand you’ve brought a wizard back with you, too?”

His words gave Tobin a nasty turn. Had Niryn looked into his head after all, or did he have spies of his own? “Mistress Iya was a friend of my father’s,” he replied.

“Yes, I remember,” Niryn murmured as if it didn’t interest him much. Arching an eyebrow, he turned to Orun. “Still abed at this hour, my lord? Are you ill?”

Heaving himself out of bed, Orun pulled his gown around him with imperious dignity. “I was not expecting official visitors, Lord Niryn. The prince has come to visit me after his absence.”

“Ah, yes, the mysterious illness. I trust you’re quite recovered, Your Highness?”

Tobin could have sworn the man winked at him. “I’m very well, thank you.” Tobin expected any moment to feel the wizard’s creeping touch in his mind but Niryn seemed far more interested in baiting Orun.

Eyeing his unexpected visitor suspiciously, Orun waved him and Tobin to seats by the fire. Both men waited until Tobin was seated before taking their own chairs.

The old hypocrite, Tobin thought. So long as there was anyone else around to see, Orun treated him with the proper courtesy.

“The prince and I are expecting a messenger from the king,” said Orun.

“And as it happens, it is in that capacity that I come to you today.” Niryn took a rolled parchment from one deep sleeve and smoothed it over his knee. The heavy royal seals dangled from silk ribbons at the bottom of it. “I received this early this morning. His Majesty asked that I deliver it to you personally.” Niryn glanced down at the document, but Tobin could tell he already knew the contents. “His Majesty begins by thanking you for your care of his royal nephew.” He looked up at Orun and smiled. “And he hereby relieves you of all further responsibility in that regard.”

“What?” Orun’s velvet cap slid askew as he lurched forward in his chair. “What—what does this mean? What are you saying?”

“It’s perfectly clear, Orun. You’re no longer Prince Tobin’s guardian.”

Orun gaped at him, then held out a shaking hand for the letter. Niryn relinquished it and watched with obvious satisfaction as the other man read it. By the time Orun had finished, the wax seals were clattering together on their ribbons. “He says nothing of why! Have I not discharged my duties faithfully?”

“I’m certain there’s no need for concern. He thanks you most graciously for your service.” Niryn leaned forward and pointed out a section. “Just there, you see?”

Niryn made no effort to hide how pleased he was with Orun’s reaction. “The duke’s death was so unexpected, and you were right there, offering your aid,” he went on smoothly. “But King Erius wishes to impose on you no longer, for fear you’ll be too distracted from your duties at the Treasury. He will appoint a new guardian when he returns.”

“But—but my understanding was that the position was permanent!”

Niryn rose and gave him a pitying look. “Surely you, of all people, are no stranger to the king’s whims.”

Tobin had sat transfixed through all this, but found his voice at last. “My—the king, he’s coming home?”

Niryn paused in the doorway. “Yes, my prince.”

“When?”

“I cannot say, my prince. Depending on the current negotiations with Plenimar, perhaps sometimes in the spring.”

“What does this mean?” Orun mumbled, still clutching the letter. “Niryn, you must know the king’s mind in this?”

“It is dangerous for anyone to presume to know King Erius’ mind these days. But if I may, my old friend, I would suggest that your reach has finally exceeded your grasp. I believe you know what I speak of. The blessings of the Four be with you both. Good day to you, my prince.”

He swept out and, for a moment, the only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the incessant patter of the rain. Orun’s lips moved silently as he stared into the flames.

The air felt charged, the way it did just before a storm. Tobin looked longingly at the closed door, anxious to get away. When Orun didn’t move, he rose slowly. “May—may I go?”

Orun looked up slowly and Tobin’s knees nearly gave way. Naked hatred twisted the man’s features. Lurching to his feet, he loomed over Tobin. “May you go? This is your doing, you ungrateful brat!”

Tobin took a step back but Orun followed. “With your smirking and your insults. Old Slack Guts, isn’t that what you and that country bastard call me behind my back? Laughing! At me, who has served two rulers? Oh, you think there’s anything that goes unheard, do you?” he snarled, though Tobin had said nothing. Grabbing him by the arm, Orun shook the king’s letter in his face. “This is your doing!”

“No, I swear!”

Orun tossed the letter aside and jerked Tobin closer. Spittle flew from the man’s lips as he snarled, “Writing to the king behind my back!”

“No!” Tobin was truly frightened now. Orun’s fingers dug into his arms like claws. “I wrote nothing, I swear—”

“Lies. Writing lies!” Orun clutched the neck of Tobin’s tunic and shook him. His fingers tangled in the chain and it dug painfully into Tobin’s neck.

“Turning him against me, his most faithful servant!” Orun’s eyes narrowed in their folds of fat. “Or was it that lackey of yours downstairs? Good Sir Tharin!” Sarcasm curdled the words. “So humble. So faithful. Always fawning on your father like some pathetic stray dog. And always turning up where he’s not wanted—” Tobin saw something new and dangerous come into Orun’s face. “What did he tell the king? What did he say?” he hissed, shaking Tobin so hard he had to grasp at Orun’s arms to stay on his feet.

Orun’s grip tightened, making it harder to breathe. “Nothing!” Tobin wheezed.

Orun was still ranting at him, still squeezing, but Tobin could hardly make out the words over the buzzing in his ears. Black spots swam before his eyes and Orun’s face looked as big as the moon. The room was spinning, going dim. His legs wouldn’t hold him.

“What did you say?” Orun screamed. “Tell me!”

Then Tobin was falling and something deathly cold passed over him. As his vision cleared he saw Orun backing away from him, hands thrown up in terror. But it wasn’t him Orun was looking at, Tobin realized, but a writhing mass of darkness taking shape between them.

Still sprawled where he’d fallen, Tobin watched numbly as the shape coalesced into a familiar, menacing form. He couldn’t see Brother’s face, but Orun’s expression was mirror enough.

“What sorcery is this?” the man whispered in horror. He looked uncomprehendingly from Tobin to the ghost as Brother glided closer. Orun tried to back away but fetched up against the wine table. It toppled over, blocking his escape.

Too dizzy to stand, Tobin watched in confusion as Brother raised one spectral hand. The ghost usually descended like a whirlwind, flinging furniture and striking out wildly. This slow, deliberate advance was worse. Tobin felt the rage and menace emanating from his twin; it sapped what little strength he had left. He tried to cry out, but his tongue wouldn’t work.

“No,” Orun whimpered. “How—how can this be?”

And still Brother did not attack. Instead, he simply reached out and touched the terrified man’s chest. Orun let out an agonized shriek and toppled backward over the fallen table as if he’d been thrown. Sparks flew up when one outstretched hand landed in the fire.

The last things Tobin remembered were Orun’s slippered feet twitching in the firelight and the smell of scorched flesh.

Chapter 7

Word had traveled quickly through the Old Palace. Mago and his cronies made faces at Ki during the morning run. At the temple Alben bumped into him, and whispered, “Farewell, grass knight!” too softly for anyone but Ki to hear.

As soon as Tobin and Tharin left, he’d taken Tharin’s advice. Slipping out through a servant’s passage, he hurried away to Tobin’s house. The steward answered his knock, looking as if he’d been expecting him. He took Ki’s wet cloak and set a chair for him by the hearth.

“The men are at practice in the back court and Mistress Iya is in the guest chamber. Should I inform them of your arrival, sir?”

“No, I’ll just sit here.” The steward bowed and left him.

Despite the fire on the hearth, the hall was cold and shadowy. Soft grey mist pressed at the windows and rain drummed on the roof above. Too miserable to sit still, Ki paced the room and fretted. How long would Tobin be? What if Orun found some reason to keep him there? Would Tharin come back to give him the news, or would he be stuck here forever with his belly in knots?

Looking up, he found himself at the bottom of the carved staircase. He’d only gone up there once, and that had been enough. Tobin’s father had abandoned that part of the house years ago; the rooms had been stripped of their furnishings and left to the mice. Ki was sure he’d felt ghosts there, leering at him from dark corners.

The duke had used the ground floor when he was in the city. Since his death, Tharin and the guard had been the only regular occupants. Tharin had a room just down the passage, and the men were quartered at the back of the house, but they kept the hall in use. It always had a homelike smell of house altar incense and embers on the hearth.

Leaving the hall, Ki wandered down the main passage. Iya’s door lay on the right, and it was closed. The duke’s old bedchamber, now Tobin’s and therefore Ki’s by default, lay to the left. He paused at the door, then went instead to the one beside it.

Tharin’s chamber was as spare and orderly as the man who lived there. His room at the keep barracks was just the same. Ki felt more at home here than anywhere else in Ero. He kindled a fire and sat down to await his fate.

But even here he couldn’t sit still, and soon he was pacing a furrow in Tharin’s carpet. The rain drummed against the windows and his thoughts raced: What will I do when Orun sends me away? Go back to Oakmount and herd pigs?

The idea of returning to his father in disgrace was unthinkable. No, he’d join Ahra’s regiment and patrol the coast, or go to the battlefields in Mycena and offer his sword as a common soldier.

Such thoughts gave no comfort. The only place he wanted to be was where he was, with Tobin.

He buried his face in his hands. This is my fault. I should never have left Tobin alone that day, knowing he was sick. A few weeks at court and I forgot everything Tharin taught me!

On the heels of that came the question he’d been trying not to ask himself ever since the night he’d followed Brother back to Alestun. What had made Tobin run all the way back there in the first place? It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Tobin’s explanation … He sighed. Well, he wanted to believe it, but something just didn’t ring true. And whatever had ailed Tobin that night, something was different between them now.

Or maybe, he thought guiltily, he felt something different from me.

The filthy accusations Mago and Arius had thrown at Ki that day in the stable, implying that he and Tobin did more than just sleep together, had cut deep. After that Ki had caught himself pulling away from Tobin sometimes. The hurt look on his friend’s face when he’d kept to his side of the bed at night came back to haunt him. Was that why Tobin had left him behind the day he ran off? I was a fool, listening to anything those lackwits had to say. In truth, with all the uproar of the past month, he’d all but forgotten it all until now. But had Tobin?

Guilt and uncertainty made his belly churn. “Well, whatever it is, he’ll tell me when he’s ready,” he muttered.

The air went cold behind him, and mean, whispery laugh raised gooseflesh on his arms. Ki spun around, reaching instinctively for the horse charm around his neck. Brother stood beside Tharin’s bed, watching him with hate-filled black eyes.

Ki’s heart knocked painfully against his ribs; the ghost looked more solid than he remembered, a starved, hollow-eyed parody of his friend. Ki thought he’d gotten used to Brother that night they’d traveled together, but all his fears came rushing back.

“Ask Arkoniel,” whispered Brother.

“Ask him what?”

Brother disappeared but his hissing laugh seemed to hang in the air where he’d been. Shaken, Ki pulled a chair closer to the fire and huddled there, feeling lonelier than ever.

Lost in his unhappy reverie, he was nearly dozing when the sound of shouting roused him. Flinging open the door, he nearly collided with Iya. They dashed to the hall and found Tharin there, holding Tobin’s limp body in his arms.

“What happened?” Iya demanded.

“His chamber, Ki,” Tharin ordered, ignoring her. “Open the door.”

“I have a fire lit in yours.” Ki ran ahead and turned down Tharin’s bed. Tharin laid Tobin down gently and began chafing his wrists. Tobin was breathing, but his face was drawn and beaded with sweat.

“What did Orun do to him?” Ki growled. “I’ll kill him. I don’t care if they burn me alive for it!”

“Mind your tongue, Ki.” Tharin turned to the servants and soldiers crowding in the doorway. “Koni, ride to the grove for a drysian. Don’t stand there staring, man, go! Laris, you set a guard on all doors. No one enters except members of the royal household. And fetch Bisir. I want him here now!”

The old sergeant saluted, fist to chest. “Right away, Captain.”

“Ulies, fetch a basin of water,” Iya said calmly. “The rest of you make yourselves useful or get out of the way.”

The others scattered and Tharin sank into a chair by the bed, cradling his head in his hands.

“Close the door, Ki.” Iya bent over Tharin and gripped his shoulder. “Tell us what happened.”

Tharin shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. Bisir took him upstairs, to Orun’s chamber. A while later Lord Niryn arrived with a message from the king. He soon came down again and I thought Tobin would follow. But he didn’t. Then I heard Bisir cry out. When I got upstairs, Orun was dead and Tobin was lying senseless on the floor. I couldn’t wake him, so I carried him back here.”

Iya undid the lacings of Tobin’s tunic and her face darkened ominously. “Look. These marks are fresh.”

She opened the linen shirt beneath, showing Tharin and Ki long red marks already darkening to bruises on Tobin’s throat. A thin abrasion on the left side of his neck was beaded with droplets of drying blood. “Did you notice any marks on Orun?”

“I didn’t stop to look.”

“We’ll find who did this,” Ki growled. “We’ll find him and we’ll kill him.”

Tharin gave him an unreadable look and Ki shut his mouth. If it hadn’t been for his foolishness, Tobin wouldn’t have been with Orun today at all.

Ulies returned with the basin, and Tharin took it from him. “Send someone for Chancellor Hylus and Lord Niryn.”

“No need for that.” The wizard stepped in and approached the bed with every appearance of concern. “A servant came after me with the news. How is the prince? He was perfectly well when I left them. They both were.”

Without thinking, Ki blocked his way before he could reach Tobin. Niryn’s eyes locked with his. Ki felt a nasty chill but he stood his ground.

“If you please, my lord, I’d rather we waited for the drysians before we disturb him,” Iya said, standing by Ki. She spoke respectfully, but Ki sensed it was not a request.

“Of course. Most wise.” Niryn took the chair by the hearth. Ki stationed himself at the foot of the bed, keeping a surreptitious eye on the wizard. Tobin had always been scared of Niryn, which was reason enough for Ki to distrust him. And now he was, by his own admission, the last person to see Orun and Tobin before they were struck down. Or so he claimed.

Niryn caught him looking and smiled. Another nasty, slithery feeling went through Ki and he hastily averted his eyes.

A moment later Tobin lurched up with a gasp. Ki clambered awkwardly onto the bed and grasped his hand. “Tob, you’re safe. I’m here, and Tharin and Iya.”

Tobin gripped his hand so hard it hurt. “How—how did I get here?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

“I brought you.” Tharin sat down on the edge of the bed and put an arm around him. “Seems I’m always carrying you somewhere these days. It’s all right now. Can you tell us who hurt you?”

Tobin’s hand flew to his throat. “Orun. He was so angry —He grabbed me and—” He caught sight of Niryn and froze. “It was Orun.”

The wizard rose and came closer. “He offered you violence?”

Tobin nodded. “The king’s message,” he whispered. “He grabbed me and—I must have fainted.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Iya. “It appears he tried to throttle you.”

Tobin nodded.

A brown-robed drysian arrived and ordered everyone but Iya and Niryn out of the room. Ki hovered in the doorway, watching anxiously as the woman examined Tobin. He crept back to the foot of the bed as she mixed a poultice for the bruises and she let him stay.

When she’d finished, she went out and spoke with Iya and Tharin for what seemed like a long time. Tharin came back in looking more concerned than ever.

“Lord Niryn, they’ve got Bisir in the hall and Chancellor Hylus just arrived.”

Tobin struggled up again. “Bisir didn’t do anything!”

“We just want to talk to him,” Tharin assured him. “You rest. Ki will keep you company.”

“Lord Niryn?” croaked Tobin.

The wizard paused in the doorway. “Yes, my prince?”

“That message you had from the king—I didn’t read it. Is Ki still my squire?”

“The king made no mention of the matter. For the time being, it seems your squire’s position is secure. See that you remain worthy of it, Sir Kirothius.”

“Yes, my lord.” Ki waited until the wizards and Tharin were gone, then shut the door and made a luck sign. “He looks like a snake when he smiles. But at least he brought some good news.” He sat down on the bed and tried to look into Tobin’s eyes, but his friend kept turning away. “How are you? Really?”

“I’m fine.” Tobin rubbed at the wet bandage around his neck. “This is helping.”

He was still hoarse, but Ki could hear the fear that Tobin was struggling to hide.

“So Orun finally laid hands on you?” Ki shook his head in wonder.

Tobin let out a shuddering sigh and his chin began to tremble.

Ki leaned closer and took his hand again. “There’s more to it than you let on, isn’t there?”

Tobin cast a frightened look at the door, then brought his lips to Ki’s ear. “It was Brother.”

Ki’s eyes widened. “But he was here. He came to me while you were gone.”

Tobin let out a startled gasp. “What did he do?”

“Nothing! I was in here waiting for you, and suddenly there he was.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Just that I should ask Arkoniel about—” Ki broke off.

“About what?”

Ki hesitated; he’d felt disloyal before, doubting Tobin, and it was worse now. “He wouldn’t say. Is he like that with you, too?”

“Sometimes.”

“But you say he came to Orun’s? Did you call him?”

Tobin shook his head vehemently. “No! No, I swear it by the Four, I didn’t!”

Alarmed, Ki searched his friend’s face. “I believe you, Tob. What’s the matter?”

Tobin gulped hard, then leaned in again. “Brother killed Orun.”

“But—how?”

“I don’t know. Orun was shaking me. Maybe he was going to kill me. I don’t know. Brother got between us and just—just touched him and Orun fell—” Tobin was shaking. Tears spilled down his cheeks. “I didn’t stop him, Ki! What if—What if somehow I did make him do it?”

Ki hugged him close. “You’d never do that. I know you wouldn’t.”

“I don’t remember doing it.” Tobin sobbed. “But I was so scared, and I hated Orun and he said bad things about you and—”

“Did you call for Brother?”

“Nuh—no!”

“Did you tell him to kill Orun?”

“No!”

“Of course you didn’t. So it’s not your fault. Brother was just protecting you.”

Tobin raised his tear-stained face and stared at him. “Do you think so?”

“Yes. He’s spiteful and all, but he is your brother and Orun was hurting you.” He paused, touching a thin, faded scar on his neck. “Remember when the catamount came after you that day? You said Brother got between you and it before I showed up, like he was going to protect you.”

“But it was Lhel who killed it.”

“Yes, but he came. And he came when Orun was hurting you. No one’s ever done that to you before, have they?”

Tobin wiped his face on his sleeve. “No one, except—”

“Who?” Ki demanded, wondering which of the Companions he’d have to deal with.

“My mother,” Tobin whispered. “She tried to kill me. Brother was there, then, too.”

Ki’s outrage drained away, leaving him speechless.

“You can’t tell anyone about this,” Tobin said, wiping his nose. “About Orun, I mean. No one can know about Brother.”

“Niryn himself couldn’t get it out of me. You know that.”

Tobin let out another shuddering sigh and rested his head on Ki’s shoulder. “If that letter said you had to go, I’d run away again.”

“Leaving me to catch up with you like last time?” Ki tried to make light of it, but his throat was suddenly tight. “Don’t even try it. I’m putting you on a tether rein.”

“I told you I won’t. We’d run away together.”

“That’s all right, then. You should rest now.”

Instead, Tobin threw off the blankets and wiggled past him off the bed. “I want to see Bisir. He didn’t have anything to do with this.”

Tobin was almost to the hall when a new thought momentarily blotted out all other concerns. What had Bisir seen? He cursed his own weakness, fainting like some lady in a ballad. Had Brother stayed with him after he killed Orun? If Orun could see the ghost, then surely anyone else could have. Steeling himself, he strode into the hall.

Bisir stood wringing his hands by the hearth, surrounded by Tharin and the others. Chancellor Hylus was the only person seated and he must have come straight from court, for he still wore his robe of state and the flat black velvet hat signifying his office.

“Here is the prince, and looking rather better than I expected, thank the Four!” he exclaimed. “Come sit by me, dear boy. This young man was just telling us of the abominable treatment you’ve suffered.”

“Go on, Bisir. Tell Prince Tobin what you told us,” said Iya.

Bisir gave Tobin an imploring look. “As I was saying to them, my prince, I saw nothing except the two of you lying on the floor when I came in.”

“But you were eavesdropping,” Niryn said sternly.

“No, my lord! That is, there is a chair for me by the door. I always stay there, in case Lord Orun calls for me.”

Hylus raised a frail, age-mottled hand. “Calm yourself, young man. You are not accused of any crime.” He motioned to Ulies to bring the frightened valet a mazer of wine.

“Thank you, my lord.” Bisir took a sip and some color returned to his thin cheeks.

“Surely you must have heard something?” the old man prompted.

“Yes, Lord Chancellor. I heard my master speaking angrily to the prince. It was wrong of him, speaking to Prince Tobin like that.” He paused and gulped nervously. “Forgive me, my lords. I know I shouldn’t speak ill of my master, but—”

“It’s of no consequence,” Iya said impatiently. “So you heard Orun shouting. Then what?”

“Then came that terrible cry! I ran in at once and found them senseless on the carpet. At least I thought—When I saw my master’s face—” His gaze flickered to Tobin again, and this time there was no mistaking the fact that Bisir was scared. “Lord Orun’s eyes were open, but—By the Four, I’ll never forget the way he looked, with his eyes bulging and his face gone all black—”

“It’s as he says,” Tharin concurred. “I hardly recognized him. It looked like an apoplexy to me.”

“Then Sir Tharin burst in and carried the prince away before I could tell if he—I feared he was dead, too!” He gave Tobin a bobbing bow. “Thank the Four you are well.”

“If I may, my lord?” said Niryn.

Hylus nodded and the wizard approached the quaking man. “Give me your hand, Bisir.”

Niryn seemed to grow larger and the air darkened around him. It made every hair on the back of Tobin’s neck stand up. Ki stepped closer and his hand brushed Tobin’s.

Bisir let out a hiss of pain and sank to his knees, his hand locked in Niryn’s. When Niryn released him at last, Bisir cowered where he was, cradling his hand against his chest as if it had been burned.

Niryn shrugged and sat down on the hearth bench. “He speaks the truth as he knows it. It would seem the only person who knows what really happened in that room is Prince Tobin.”

For one awful moment, Tobin thought the wizard meant to put him to the same test, but Niryn simply stared at him with hard red-brown eyes. Tobin felt no strange sensations this time, but summoned the mind trick Arkoniel had taught him just in case.

“He grabbed me roughly, accused me of trying to turn the king against him—”

“And did you?” Niryn asked.

“What? No! I never wrote anything to my uncle.”

Niryn gave him a sly smile. “Never tried to exercise any influence with him at all? It was no secret that you despised Orun. Not that I blame you in that, of course.”

“I—I don’t have any influence with the king,” Tobin whispered. Was Niryn growing larger again? Was the air growing dark and thick around him?

“It would never have occurred to the prince,” Tharin interjected, and Tobin saw that once again he was holding his anger in check. “He’s only a child. He knows nothing of court ways.”

“Forgive me, I was only thinking how far a noble heart will go for love for a worthy friend.” Niryn glanced at Ki as he bowed to Tobin. “Please accept my most humble apology, my prince, if I in any way gave offense.” His hard gaze slewed back to Tharin. “Perhaps others took it upon themselves to plead the prince’s case?”

Tharin shrugged. “For what reason? Rhius chose Ki as his son’s squire. The king understands that bond.”

Niryn turned to Ki again. “And what about you, Squire Kirothius? Where were you while Prince Tobin was with his guardian?”

“Here, my lord. The steward can vouch for me.”

“No need for that. I was only curious. Well, it seems there’s nothing more to be learned here.”

Lord Hylus nodded gravely. “No doubt your guess is right, Tharin. Strong emotion is a dangerous thing in an old man. I believe it is safe to assume that Lord Orun was the author of his own destruction and brought on a fit of apoplexy.”

“Unless it was some dark magic.”

Everyone stared at Niryn.

“There are spells that could bring on such a death. The man certainly had enemies and there are wizards who can be bought. Don’t you agree, Mistress Iya?”

Iya held out her hand. “If you are accusing me, my lord, by all means put me to the test. I have nothing to fear from you.”

“I assure you, Mistress, if it had been you, I would already know it.”

Tharin cleared his throat. “With all respect, my lords, Prince Tobin has had a difficult day. If there is no more to be learned, perhaps we should give him some peace?”

Hylus rose and patted Tobin on the back. “You are a brave boy, my dear prince; but I think your friend is right. Rest now, and put this unpleasantness behind you. I shall act as your guardian until your uncle declares another, if you have no objection.”

“I’d like that very much!”

“What’s to become of Lord Orun’s household, Lord Hylus?” Bisir asked softly, still crouched on the rushes.

“On your feet, lad. Go home and tell the steward that the house and staff are to be maintained until the estate is settled. Hurry along now, before everyone bolts with the silver!”

“Come along, Prince Tobin. Let’s get you settled,” Iya said, just as if she were Nari.

“Couldn’t Bisir come live here?” he whispered, letting her and Ki lead him away to his own room.

But Iya shook her head. “Forget him. Light a fire, Ki.”

Tobin bridled. “How can you say that? You saw how he was at the keep all those weeks. And he did try to help me today. Ask Tharin—”

“I know. But appearances are very important here and it wouldn’t do.” When Tobin stood his ground she relented a little. “I’ll keep an eye on him for you, then.”

Tobin gave a grudging nod, his old distrust for her resurfacing. He wouldn’t have had to argue with Arkoniel this way.

Chapter 8

Returning to the Companions the following morning, Tobin and Ki found themselves the center of much unwanted attention. Korin and the others would have had the tale told three times over during the morning run if Master Porion hadn’t finally threatened to make them muck out the stables if they didn’t leave Tobin alone.

As the day went on, however, even his threats weren’t enough to stop the whispers and wide-eyed questions. As they stood blowing on their fingers in the archery lists, everyone wanted to know what Orun looked like when he died. What sort of sounds did he make? Was there any blood? Tobin told them what he could and was glad when Ki finally threatened to knock down the next person who pestered him.

Word traveled quickly around the Palatine. For the next few days courtiers and servants alike stared at Tobin, whispering to each other behind raised hands as he passed. He and Ki kept to their rooms as much as possible or retreated to Tobin’s house.

As with most gossip, however, the story was soon sucked dry and within the week the curious had moved on to other scandals. When Caliel challenged him to a game of bakshi at dinner one night, Tobin left Ki to his duties with the other ushers and went to fetch the gaming stones from his room.

He was almost to his door when Lady Una stepped out from the shadows of an empty room across the corridor. Surprise gave way to outright shock when the normally shy girl took him by the hand and pulled him into his chamber. Molay and Baldus were off having their dinner in the kitchen. Tobin was alone with her.

Pushing the door closed, she gazed at him for a moment in silence, brown eyes shining.

“What is it?” he asked, utterly perplexed.

“Is it true?” she demanded.

“Is—is what true?”

“There’s a rumor going around that before he died, Lord Orun tried to make you choose another squire, and that—well—” She blushed furiously, but looked him squarely in the eye. “People are saying that you named me!”

Tobin blinked. He’d only said it to anger Orun, then forgotten all about it. Bisir must have overheard and carried the tale.

He wanted to sink through the floor as she clasped his hand again, pressing his knuckles to her bodice. “Is it true, Prince Tobin? Did you put me forward for the Companions?”

When he managed a nod she clutched his hand even tighter, looking hard into his face. “Did you mean it?”

“Well …” Tobin hesitated, not liking to lie to her. “I think you’d make a fine squire,” he managed, settling for a half-truth. He wished she’d let go of his hand. “If girls could be squires, you’d be a good one.”

“It’s so unfair!” she cried, eyes flashing with a passion he’d never seen before. “Women have always been warriors in Skala! Ki told me all about his sister. Ahra really is a proper warrior like he says, isn’t she?”

“Oh yes!” Tobin had only met Ahra once, but she’d shown him a thing or two about grappling in a fight. He’d back her against most men in a duel.

“It’s just so unfair!” Releasing his hand, she folded her arms and frowned. “If I wasn’t a noble, I could join the ranks like she did. My grandmother was a general, you know. She died gallantly in battle, defending the queen. And I’ll tell you a secret,” she confided, leaning alarmingly close again. “She comes to me in my dreams sometimes, on a great white charger. I have her sword, too. Mother gave it to me. Father won’t let me train with a proper arms master, though. Not even at light fencing. But one day, if only I could learn …” She broke off, giving him an embarrassed little smile. “I’m sorry. I’m being silly, aren’t I?”

“No! I’ve seen you shooting in the lists. You’re as good as any of us with the bow. And you ride like a soldier. Even Master Porion said so.”

“He did?” Una positively glowed. “But it’s no good unless you can use a sword. I have to make do with treatises and what I can pick up watching you boys train. I get so jealous sometimes. I should have been born a boy instead!”

The words struck Tobin in a way he didn’t fully understand, and without thinking he blurted out, “I could teach you.”

“Really? You’re not just being charming, or teasing me like the other boys do?”

Tobin wanted to take the words back as soon as he’d said them, but he couldn’t, not with her looking at him like that. “No, I’ll teach you. Ki, too. Just so long as no one finds out.”

Without warning Una leaned forward and kissed him square on the mouth. It was an awkward kiss, bruising Tobin’s lip against his teeth. She fled before he could recover, leaving him agape and blushing beside the open door.

“Bilairy’s balls!” Tobin muttered, tasting blood on his lip. “What did I do that for?”

As bad luck would have it, Alben and Quirion happened to be passing just then. That figures, thought Tobin; Quirion stuck to the older boy like dog shit on a shoe.

“What’s the matter? Did she bite you?” Alben drawled.

Tobin shouldered angrily past them, bakshi stones forgotten.

“What’s the matter?” Quirion called after him. “Don’t you like being kissed by girls?”

Whirling to make some retort, Tobin tripped over his own feet and fell against one of the ancient tapestries that lined the corridor. The hanging pole snapped and the whole dusty mess came down on him like a collapsed tent. The other boys howled with laughter.

“Blood, my blood. Flesh, my—” Tobin whispered, then clamped a hand over his mouth. Their laughter faded away down the corridor, but Tobin stayed where he was, horrified at what he’d almost done. Hugging himself in the musty darkness, he searched his memory again, wondering if he’d somehow summoned Brother against Orun, after all.

He confided the encounter with Una to Ki and Tharin the next day as they sat by the fire in Tharin’s room, but leaving out the unpleasant aftermath with Alben. He was none too pleased when his friends burst into laughter.

“Tob, you bump brain!” Ki exclaimed. “Una’s had her cap set for you since we got to Ero.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You mean to say you haven’t noticed how she’s always watching you?”

“I’ve thought so, myself,” Tharin said, still chuckling. “But she’s a—just a girl!”

“Well, you do fancy girls, don’t you?” Ki laughed, unwittingly echoing Quirion’s taunt.

Tobin scowled down at his boots. “I don’t fancy anyone.”

“Let him be, Ki,” said Tharin. “Tobin’s young yet, and not used to court. I was the same myself, at his age. As for this sword-training business, though.” His expression turned serious. “She said it herself; her father doesn’t hold to the old ways, and Duke Sarvoi’s not a man to cross. She’ll do better to stick with her shooting and riding.”

Tobin nodded, though a disapproving father scared him a great deal less than the girl’s regard. His lip still hurt where she’d kissed him.

“All the same, you may feel differently in a year or two,” said Tharin. “She’s a fine girl from a powerful family. A pretty little thing, too.”

“I’ll say!” Ki put in warmly. “If I thought she’d look twice at a lowly squire, I’d be happy to stand in your shoes.”

The sudden warmth in Ki’s voice and his wistful smile made Tobin’s belly tighten, as if he’d eaten something bitter.

Why should I care if Ki fancies her? But he did. “Well, I only told her that to be kind, anyway,” he grumbled. “She’s probably forgotten all about it.”

“Not that one,” said Ki. “I’ve seen the way she watches us.”

Tharin nodded. “What she told you about her grandmother is true. General Elthia was the equal of any man in the field, and a cagey strategist, too. Your father thought very highly of her. Yes, I can see a bit of the old warrior in young Una. That’s the trouble with these new ways. There are too many girls with the blood of heroes in their veins and the stories still green in their hearts, kept in skirts by the fire.”

“No wonder she’s jealous of a common soldier like Ahra,” said Ki.

“I don’t imagine Erius will let that go on much longer, either. And then where will they all go?”

“You mean there are lots of them? Women warriors?” asked Tobin.

“Yes. Just think of old Cook—or Sergeant Catilan, as she was known before—working away in your father’s kitchen all these years. Erius forced out a lot of the older ones. She was too loyal to argue, but it hurts her pride still. There are hundreds more like her, scattered about the land. Maybe more.”

Tobin stared into the fire, imagining a whole army of dispossessed women warriors, riding like ghosts into an unknown distance. The thought sent a shiver up his spine.

Chapter 9

Arkoniel stretched the stiffness from his shoulders and went to the workroom window. Unfolding the letters Koni had brought that morning, he slowly reread them.

Outside, the afternoon was quickly waning. The tower shadow stretched like a crooked finger across the new snow blanketing the meadow. Except for the churned-up trail left by Koni’s horse, it was smooth and white as a new bed sheet: no snow forts beyond the barracks house, no foot trails snaking away to the river or woods.

And no echoing laughter outside his door, Arkoniel thought glumly. He’d never been lonelier. Only Nari and Cook remained now; the three of them rattled about the place like dice in a cup.

He sighed and turned back to the letters. His presence here remained a secret, so they were ostensibly addressed to Nari. Arkoniel smoothed the first parchment against the windowsill, rubbing his thumb idly over the broken seal. Both boys had written to him of Orun’s death. Iya had sent word earlier, but he was most interested in their versions.

Tobin’s was brief: Orun had had some sort of fit, brought on by bad news. Ki’s was the more useful, though he’d not been with Tobin when it happened. Arkoniel smiled as he unfolded the double sheet. Despite Ki’s initial resistance to writing, and a less-than-beautiful hand, words seemed to flow as easily from the boy’s pen as they did from his lips. His letters were always the more detailed. He told of the bruises on Tobin’s neck and the fact that he’d been carried home unconscious. Strangest of all, he’d closed with the line: Tobin still feels awful bad about it. Iya had made no mention of any regrets in her letter, but Arkoniel guessed that this was no idle platitude. Ki knew Tobin better than anyone, and had shared his friend’s loathing for their guardian. Why would Tobin feel badly about the man’s passing?

Arkoniel folded Tobin’s letter into his sleeve to return to Nari, but added Ki’s to the neat stack on his writing table.

I nearly killed him, but I did not, he reminded himself, as he did each time he placed a new letter on that pile. He wasn’t sure why he kept them, perhaps as proof against the nightmares that still haunted him, dreams in which he did not hesitate and Ki did not wake up ever again.

Arkoniel pushed the memory away and glanced at the window to check the sun’s progress. Yesterday he’d stayed too late.

When he’d first come here, the keep had been a tomb haunted by both the living and the dead. He and Iya had cajoled the duke into restoring it to a proper home for his child, and for a time it had been. It had become Arkoniel’s home, too, the first he’d known since leaving his father’s house.

The place was falling back to rot and ruin now. The new tapestries and painted plaster already looked faded. The plate in the hall was tarnished with disuse, and spiders had reclaimed their kingdom in the rafters of the great hall. Without regular fires in most of the rooms, the whole place was once more damp and cold and dim. It was as if the boys had taken the very life from the place with them.

He turned back to the desk with a sigh to complete the day’s notes. When the journal was safely locked away, he cleared up the wreckage of his latest failed efforts.

He was nearly finished when something brushed softly past the door, no louder than a mouse’s whisker. Arkoniel caught his breath. The glass rod he’d been cleaning slipped from his fingers and shattered at his feet.

Just a rat. It’s too early. Golden light still lingered in the eastern sky. She never comes down this early.

Gooseflesh prickled his arms as he lit a candle and walked slowly to the door. His hand trembled and a rivulet of hot wax ran down over his fingers.

Nothing there. Nothing there, he repeated, like a child in the dark.

As long as Tobin and the others had been downstairs, he’d managed to hold his fear at bay, even when Bisir’s unexpected stay had trapped him up here for days on end. With others in the house, he didn’t mind so much the half-heard whispers in the corridor.

Now that the second floor lay empty, however, his rooms were suddenly much too far from Cook’s warm kitchen and much too close to the tower door. That door had been locked since Ariani’s death, but that didn’t stop her restless spirit from wandering out.

Arkoniel had climbed the tower stairs only twice since his first encounter with her angry ghost. Driven by curiosity and guilt, he’d gone up the day after Tobin left for Ero that first time, but felt nothing. Relieved but unsatisfied, he’d worked up the courage to return at midnight—the same hour Tobin had taken him there—and this time he’d heard Ariani weeping as clearly as if she were just behind him. Torn between fear and anguish, he fled and slept in the kitchen with the tower key clutched in his hand like a talisman. The next morning he threw it in the river and moved his bedchamber to the toy room downstairs. He would have shifted his workroom, too, but the furnishings were too heavy and it would have taken him the rest of the winter to carry down all the books and instruments he’d amassed. Instead, he resigned himself to keeping daylight hours.

But today he’d lingered in the workroom too long. Taking a deep breath, Arkoniel gripped the latch and opened the door.

Ariani stood at the end of the corridor, tears streaming down her bloody face, her lips moving. Frozen in the doorway, Arkoniel strained to hear, but she made no sound. She’d attacked him the first time they met after her death, but still he waited, wanting desperately to hear her words, to give some answer. But then she took a step toward him, face shifting to an angry mask, and his courage failed.

The candle cast antic shadows around him as he bolted, then it went out. Squinting in the sudden darkness, he went down the stairs two at a time and missed his footing before his eyes could adjust. He trod air for an instant, then fell heavily, tumbling down the last few steps into the welcome lamplight of the second floor corridor. Resisting the impulse to look back, he limped quickly toward the stairs to the hall.

One of these days he was going to make a ghost of himself.

Chapter 10

Lord Orun had left no heir. That being the case, his property went to the Crown, absorbed into the very Treasury he’d so ably administered. It had been, in Niryn’s estimation, the only good work the man had ever done. Orun’s exacting honesty when it came to his official duties had always amazed the wizard.

The house and its furnishings were soon disposed of, and the new Treasury Chancellor installed. That left only Orun’s household servants to be dealt with, and few on the Palatine would have taken the gift of them.

The more notorious spies were quietly put out of the way by those they’d helped compromise. Orun had had a passion for blackmail. Not for money—he had wealth enough of that sort—but for the sadistic love of control over others. Given that, together with his other unpleasant pastimes, none but a select few mourned his passing.

And so his spies were poisoned or garroted in alleys, the prettier catamites whisked quietly away into certain other households, and the rest sent from the city with good references and gold enough to keep them away.

Niryn followed these proceedings closely and had made a point of attending Orun’s burning. It was there that a young man standing among the few mourners caught his eye.

His face was familiar and after a moment Niryn recognized him as a minor noble named Moriel, whom Orun had tried to force on the prince as a squire. Orun had left the fellow a small bequest in his will, no doubt for services rendered. He looked to be fourteen or fifteen, with a pale, bitter face and sharp, intelligent eyes. Curious, Niryn brushed the boy’s mind as they stood by the pyre and was pleasantly unsurprised at what he found there.

The following day he sent the promising young fellow an invitation to dine with him, if his grief allowed. The messenger soon returned with the expected reply, written in the same purple ink his late protector had favored: Young Moriel would be delighted to dine with the king’s wizard.

Chapter 11

Iya was not sorry to see Orun out of the way, and had shared Tobin’s obvious relief when Chancellor Hylus appointed himself temporary guardian. She hoped Erius would leave the good old fellow in charge. Hylus was a decent man, a relic of the old times before Erius and his mad mother had tarnished the crown. As long as Erius still valued his counsel, perhaps Niryn’s sort would not triumph.

She clung to that hope as she fastened the hated Harrier brooch to her cloak each day in Ero.

She had to pass the Harriers’ headquarters when she left the Palatine. White-robed wizards and their grey-uniformed guard were always about in the yards around the old stone inn. It reminded her of a hornet’s nest and she treated it as such, passing on the far side of the street. She’d been inside only once, when they numbered her in their black ledger. She’d seen enough during that visit to know that a second visit would probably prove fatal.

So she kept her distance and was circumspect in seeking out others like herself, ordinary wizards forced to wear the shameful numbered badge. There were far fewer in Ero these days and most of them were too frightened or suspicious to speak to her. Of all the taverns once patronized by their kind, only the Golden Chain was still open and it was full of Harriers. Wizards she’d known for a lifetime greeted her with suspicion and few offered her hospitality. It was a frightening change in the city that had once most honored the free wizards.

She was wandering disconsolately through the half-deserted market in Dolphin Court one evening when she was suddenly engulfed by a searing blast of pain. Struck blind, she couldn’t hear or cry out.

They have me! she thought in mute agony. What will become of Tobin?

Then, as in a vision, she saw a face framed in white fire, but it wasn’t Tobin’s. Stretched with agony surpassing her own, the man seemed to stare straight into her eyes as the flesh shrank and sizzled on his skull. She knew that face. It was a wizard from the south named Skorus. She’d given him one of her tokens years ago and not thought of him since.

The tortured face disappeared and she found herself sprawled facedown on the dirty cobbles, gasping for air.

He must have had the talisman with him when they burned him, she thought, too overcome to move. But what did this mean? The little pebbles were minor charms, containing the tiniest spark of magic to find and draw the loyal ones when the time came. She’d never imagined they could also act as a conduit back to her. But this one had, and through it she’d experienced a fraction of the agony he’d felt as he died. Dozens of wizards had been burned, perhaps scores, but he must be the first of her chosen to be caught. She was amazed at how quickly the pain passed. She’d expected to find her own skin blistered, but fortunately the charm had channeled only the dying wizard’s last feelings, not the magic that killed him.

“Old mother, are you ill?” someone asked.

“Drunk, more like it,” another passerby laughed. “Get up, you old hag!”

Gentle hands helped her to her knees. “Kiriar!” she gasped, recognizing the young man. “Are you still with Dylias?”

“Yes, Mistress.” He’d been an apprentice the last time they’d met. He had a proper beard now and a few lines on his face, but his clothes were as ragged as a beggar’s. Only the Harrier badge at his throat marked him for what he was. His number was ninety-three.

He was looking at hers, as well. “Two hundred and twenty-two? It took them longer to find you, I see.” He gave her a rueful look. “It’s something we notice nowadays, sad to say. Are you feeling better? What happened?”

Iya shook her head as he helped her to her feet. Kiriar and his master Dylias had always struck her as good sorts, but she was still too badly shaken to judge or trust. “It’s a hard business, getting old,” she said, making light of it. “I could do with a drink, and a bite to eat.”

“I know a good house, Mistress. Let me stand you a hot dinner for old times’ sake. It’s not far and the company’s good.”

Still wary, but intrigued, Iya leaned on his arm and let him lead her out of Dolphin Court.

She felt a moment’s alarm when Kiriar turned his steps back toward the Palatine. Was he a clever betrayer after all, luring her to the Harrier stronghold?

A few streets later, however, he turned aside into one of the goldsmith’s markets. Hard times had struck here as well, she noted; many of the shops were deserted. She’d passed half a dozen before it struck her that most of them had belonged to Aurënfaie artisans.

“Gone home, a lot of them,” Kiriar explained. “The ’faie don’t hold with the new ways, as you can well imagine, and it’s growing clear that the Harriers don’t trust them. Now, if you’ll just stop a moment.”

He disappeared into a darkened stable. A moment later he returned and led her through a lane behind it. This in turn led to a narrow alley, overhung by sagging balconies and the strange, spicy aromas of ’faie cookery.

Narrow side ways branched off among the buildings here and there. Reaching one such juncture, her guide stopped again. “Before we go any farther, Mistress, I must ask you this. What do you swear by?”

“By my hands and heart and eyes,” she answered, catching sight of a crescent moon scrawled on the wall just above his shoulder. The telltale shimmer of a blast aura flickered around it as she spoke. “And by the Lightbearer’s true name,” she added for good measure.

“She may pass,” someone whispered from the shadows to their right, as if that wasn’t already evidenced by the fact that the blast aura had not struck her down. Iya looked at her ragged companion with new interest. He hadn’t left that powerful spell there, or his master; she could count on one hand the wizards she knew who could have.

Kiriar gave her an apologetic shrug. “We have to ask. Come, it’s just down here.”

He led her into the dirtiest side street she’d yet seen. The smell of piss and decay was strong. Skinny, notch-eared cats slunk past in shadows, or hunched watching for rats in the garbage piled along the wall. The buildings on either side nearly touched overhead, shutting out the waning winter light.

Three cloaked figures emerged from the murk just ahead. Another appeared from a doorway behind them as they passed. They looked like footpads, but all four bowed to her, touching their hearts and brows.

“This way.” Kiriar pointed her down a set of steep, crumbling cellar stairs. The door at the bottom looked ordinary enough, but magic of some sort tingled pleasantly through her fingertips as she lifted the rusty latch.

To an ordinary person, the blackness beyond would have been impenetrable, but Iya easily made out the long blades protruding from the walls at various heights along the subterranean passage. Anyone blundering blindly here would soon come to harm.

At the far end she opened another magically warded door and found herself blinking in the cheerful firelight of a tavern. A dozen or so wizards turned to see the newcomer and she was delighted to find familiar faces among them. Here was Kiriar’s master, stooped old Dylias, and beside him a pretty sorceress from Almak named Elisera, who’d turned Arkoniel’s head one summer. She didn’t know the others, but one of them was Aurënfaie, and wore the red-and-black sen’gai and facial tattoos of the Khatme clan. The blast aura was probably her work, thought Iya.

“Welcome to the Wormhole, my friend!” Dylias cried, coming to greet her. “Not the most elegant establishment in Ero, but surely the safest. I hope Kiriar and his friends didn’t give you too much of a turn.”

“Not at all!” Iya looked around in delight. The paneled oak walls gave back a cozy golden glow from the brazier flickering at the center of the room. She recognized bits and pieces from many of their old haunts—statues, hangings, even the golden brandywine distillers and water pipes that had been the pride of the now deserted Mermaid Inn. There was no menu board, but she smelled meat roasting. Someone put a silver mazer of excellent wine in her hand.

She sipped it gratefully, then raised an eyebrow at her guide. “I’m beginning to suspect you didn’t just happen upon me today.”

“No, we’ve watched you since—” Kiriar began.

Dylias silenced him with a sharp look under his beetling white brows, then turned to Iya and laid a finger to the side of his nose. “Less known, the better kept, eh? Suffice it to say the Harriers aren’t the only ones who keep an eye out for wizards in Ero. It’s been years! How are you, my dear?”

“Not well when I found her,” Kiriar told him. “What happened, Iya? I thought your heart had failed.”

“A momentary weakness,” Iya replied, not yet daring to say more. “I’m fine now, and better for being here with all of you! Still, isn’t it risky, gathering like this?”

“Those are ’faie-built houses over our heads,” the Aurënfaie woman told Iya. “It would take an army of those paltry Harriers to even find all the magics here, and another army to break through them.”

“Bravely stated, Saruel, and we all pray your trust is well-founded,” said Dylias. “All the same, we are cautious. We have a number of guests who depend upon it. Come, Iya. We’ll show you.”

Dylias and Saruel led Iya through a series of cramped cellar rooms beyond the tavern where more wizards were living.

“For some of us, this stronghold is a prison, as well,” Dylias said sadly, pointing out a hollow-eyed old man asleep on a pallet. “It would be worth Master Lyman’s life to show his face in the city. Once you’re on the Harriers’ hunting roster, there’s little chance of escape.”

“Twenty-eight have been burned on Traitor’s Hill since the madness started,” Saruel said bitterly. “And that’s not counting the priests murdered with them. It’s hideous, how they kill the Lightbearer’s servants.”

“Yes, I have seen it.” Iya now knew better than most what a death that was.

“But is it any worse than being buried alive here?” Dylias murmured, closing the sleeping man’s door.

Returning to the tavern, Iya sat with the others and listened to their stories. Most were still at large in the city, carefully pretending loyalty and earning their living in the small ways the king’s ordinances still allowed. They could make useful items and cast helpful household spells for pay. The greater magics were reserved for the Harriers. The mere charming of a horse was a capital offense now.

“They’ve made tinkers of us!” an elderly wizard named Orgeus sputtered.

“Has anyone tried to resist?” Iya asked.

“You haven’t heard about the Maker’s Day riots?” a man named Zagur asked. “Nine young hotheads barricaded themselves in the temple on Flatfish Street, trying to protect two others who were marked for execution. Have you been by the place?”

“No.”

“Well, it isn’t there anymore. Thirty Harriers appeared out of nowhere, and two hundred grey-backs with them. They didn’t last an hour.”

“Did they use any magic against the Harriers?”

“A few tried, but they were mostly charm makers and weather tellers,” Dylias replied. “What chance did they have against those monsters? How many in this room could strike back? That’s not what the Orëska teaches.”

“Perhaps not your half-blooded Second Orëska,” Saruel said disdainfully. “In Aurënen there are wizards who can level a house if they choose, or summon a hurricane down on their enemies.”

“No wizard has that kind of power!” a Skalan woman scoffed.

“Do you think the Harriers would let one of us live if they thought so?” someone else said.

The Aurënfaie retorted angrily in her own language and more joined in.

Dismayed, Iya thought again of Skorus, dying alone in agony.

It is time, she thought. She held up a hand for silence.

“There are Skalans who know such magics,” Iya said. “And it can be taught to others who have the talent for it.” Rising, she downed the last of her wine and placed the silver cup on the stone floor. She could feel the others watching her as she spread her hands above it. Chanting softly, she drew the power down and focused it on the cup.

The rush came more quickly than it normally did. It was always so in company, though it took no power away from the others.

The air around the cup shimmered for a moment, then the rim began to melt, slumping in on itself like a waxwork on a hot summer’s day. She broke the spell before the cup collapsed completely and cooled it with a breath. Prying it loose from the flagstones, she handed it to Dylias.

“It can be taught,” she said again, watching the faces of the others as they passed it from hand to hand.

Before she left the Wormhole that night, every wizard in the room—even proud Saruel—had accepted one of her little stones.

Chapter 12

Tobin had only just gotten used to having Iya at the house when she announced that she was leaving. He and Ki watched glumly as she packed her few belongings.

“But the Festival of Sakor is only a few days away!” exclaimed Ki. “You want to stay for that, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t,” Iya muttered, stuffing a shawl into her bag.

Tobin knew something was troubling her. She’d spent a great deal of time down in the city and didn’t appear to approve of what she found there. Tobin knew it had something to do with the Harriers, but she wouldn’t even let him speak the word aloud anymore.

“Stay away from them,” she warned, reading his thoughts or his face. “Don’t think of them. Don’t speak of them. That goes for you, too, Kirothius. Even the magpie chatter of little boys doesn’t go unnoticed these days.”

“Little boys?” Ki sputtered.

Iya paused in her packing and gave him a fond look. “Perhaps you have grown just a bit since I found you. All the same, the pair of you added together are nothing but a blink of a wizard’s eye.”

“Are you going back to the keep?” asked Tobin.

“No.”

“Where, then?”

Her faded lips quirked into a strange little smile as she laid a finger to the side of her nose. “Less known, the better kept.”

She wouldn’t say more than that. They rode with her to the south gate and the last they saw of her was that thin braid bouncing against her back as she cantered into the crowd on Beggar’s Bridge.

The Festival of Sakor was celebrated with great fanfare, though everyone said that the king’s absence and the rumors of ill luck brought back by returning veterans put a damper on the usual glory of the three-day celebration. But to Tobin, who knew only the rude country observances in Alestun, it was impossibly grand and magical.

On Mourning Night the Companions and principal nobles of Ero stood with Korin in the city’s largest Sakor Temple, just down the hill from the Palatine gate. The square outside was jammed with people. Everyone cheered as Korin, standing in his father’s place, killed the Sakor bull with a single stroke. The priests frowned over the entrails and said little, but the people cheered again when the young prince raised his sword and pledged his family to the defense of Skala. The priests presented him with the sacred firepot, the temple horns sounded, and the city began to go dark, as if by magic. Beyond the walls, in the harbor and distant steadings, it was the same. On this longest night of the year, every flame in Skala was extinguished to symbolize the yearly death of Old Sakor.

The Companions stood the vigil with Korin all through that long, cold night and at dawn they helped carry the year’s new fire back to the city.

The next two days were a blur of balls and rides and midnight parties. Korin was the most sought-after guest in the city; Chancellor Hylus and his scribes had prepared a list of homes, temples, and guildhouses he and the Companions must appear at, many only long enough to pour the new year’s libation.

True winter soon set in after that. Rain turned to sleet, and the sleet to wet, heavy snow. Clouds sealed the sky from the sea to the mountains and soon Tobin felt like he’d never see the sun again.

Master Porion kept up with their mounted battle practice and the morning temple run, regardless of the weather, but sword fighting and archery were moved indoors. Their feasting hall was cleared and the bare floor chalked with archery lists and fighting circles. The clash of steel was deafening at times, and everyone had to be careful not to walk between archers and their targets, but otherwise it was not unpleasant. The other young bloods and girls of the court hung about as always, watching the Companions and sparring among themselves.

Una was there most days and Tobin noted with a guilty pang how she followed him with her eyes. His duties had kept him too busy to make good on his promise, or so he told himself. Every time he looked at her, he seemed to feel her lips on his again.

Ki twitted him about it and asked more than once if he was going to keep his word.

“I will,” Tobin always retorted. “I just haven’t found the time yet.”

Winter brought other changes in their daily routine. During the cold months all the noble boys had lessons with General Marnaryl, an elderly warrior who’d served King Erius and the two queens before him. His hoarse, croaking voice—the result of a blow to the throat in battle—had earned him the nickname “the Raven,” but it was said with great respect.

He taught by recounting famous battles, many of which he’d fought in himself. Despite his age, the Raven was a lively teacher and salted his stories with amusing asides about the habits and peculiarities of the people he’d fought with and against.

He also illustrated his lectures in a manner Tobin admired. When describing a battle, he would get down on the floor and sketch out the battleground with chalk, then use painted pebbles and bits of wood to represent the different forces, pushing them about with the ivory tip of his walking stick.

Some of the boys squirmed and yawned through these lessons, but Tobin enjoyed them. They reminded him of the hours he and his father had spent with the model of Ero. He also took secret delight whenever Raven talked of famous women generals and warriors. The old man made no distinction and had only cutting looks for those who snickered.

Tobin’s friend Arengil was among the noble youths who joined the Companions for lessons and his friendship with Tobin and Ki soon deepened. Quick-witted and humorous, the Aurënfaie had a great talent for acting and could mimic anyone at court. Gathered with the younger Companions in Tobin’s room at night, he’d reduce them all to helpless laughter with his haughty, mincing impression of Alben, then seem to transform into another body as he became hulking, sullen Zusthra or stooped old Raven.

Korin and Caliel sometimes joined them, but more often now the older boys slipped out on their own to the lower city. The morning after such excursions they’d turn up for the temple run with bloodshot eyes and superior smirks, and regaled the younger boys with their exploits when they thought Porion wasn’t listening.

The others listened with a mix of admiration and envy, but Ki soon grew concerned for Lynx. Everyone knew he was hopelessly smitten with Orneus, but his lord now thought of nothing but keeping up with the prince in drinking and carousing, something Orneus was remarkably ill suited for.

“I don’t know what poor Lynx sees in that wastrel anyway,” Ki would grumble, watching the sad-eyed squire clean up his friend’s sour vomit, or carrying Orneus back to their room when he was too drunk to walk.

“He wasn’t like that when they first came here,” Ruan confided as they sat toasting lumps of hard cheese over the hearth at Tobin’s house one night. Snow was falling and everyone was feeling cozy and grown-up without the older boys around.

“You’re right about that,” Lutha agreed around a mouthful of cheese. “My father’s estate is near his and we saw each other often at festivals and parties before we came to the Companions. He and Lynx were like brothers, but then—” He shrugged, blushing. “Well, you know how it goes with some. Anyway, Orneus is a good enough fellow, but I think the only reason he got chosen as a Companion was on account of his father’s influence at court. Duke Orneus the Elder has a holding almost as big as yours at Atyion.”

“If I’m ever allowed to go there, I’ll see what you mean,” Tobin grumbled. Even with Orun out of the way, bad weather had put an end to their travel plans for now and Korin seemed to have forgotten his promise.

“That’s how it goes,” Nikides said. “It’s not like I’d be sitting here if I wasn’t the Lord Chancellor’s only grandson.”

“But what you lack in fight, you make up for in brains,” Lutha replied, always quick to bolster his friend. “When the rest of us are getting bravely hacked to pieces on some battlefield, you’ll be here with your grandfather’s velvet ashcake on your head, running the country for Korin.”

“And poor Lynx will probably still be tying Orneus into the stirrups because he’s too drunk to ride,” Ki added with a laugh.

“It’s Lynx who should be the lord,” Barieus piped up hotly. “Orneus isn’t worthy to do up his boots.” When everyone turned to stare at him, he hastily busied himself with a toasting fork. The swarthy little squire usually said very little about anyone, and never against a Companion.

Ki shook his head. “For hell’s sake, doesn’t anyone like girls but me?”

Tobin kept quiet during Raven’s lessons for some weeks. He didn’t always understand what the old man was talking about, but listened intently and questioned the other boys afterward. He always made certain to ask Korin, but quickly discovered that Caliel and Nikides were more knowledgeable. Caliel, the son of a general, had a good mind for strategy. Nikides had the best head for history and had read more books than the rest of them put together. When Tobin and Ki both showed a genuine interest in the old stories, it was Nikides who introduced them to the royal library, located in the same wing as the abandoned throne room.

In fact, it took up nearly that entire wing, room upon room overlooking the eastern gardens. At first Tobin and Ki felt lost among the endless towering racks of scrolls and tomes, but Nik and the black-robed librarians showed them how to read the faded labels on each rack, and soon they were delving into treatises on arms and battle, as well as colorful books of poetry and stories.

Tobin soon learned his way around and discovered a whole room devoted to the history of his family. He asked the librarian about Queen Tamír, but there were only a few dusty scrolls, dry records of the few laws and taxes she’d passed. There was no history of her brief life or reign and the librarian knew of no other sources.

Tobin recalled Niryn’s strange reaction, that day at the Royal Tomb, when Tobin had mentioned what he’d been taught of her murder. The wizard had vehemently denied it, though both his father and Arkoniel had told him the same story. Her brother had killed her, and ruled briefly in her place before coming to a bad end himself.

Disappointed, Tobin slipped away from his friends and walked down to the sealed doors of the old throne room. Pressing his palms to the carved panels, he waited, hoping to feel the murdered queen’s spirit through the wood the way he’d sometimes felt his mother’s ghost at the tower door. The Old Palace was supposed to be haunted by all sorts of spirits. Everyone said so. According to Korin, their own grandmother’s bloody specter still wandered these halls on a regular basis; that was why his father had built the New Palace.

It seemed every chambermaid and door warder had some ghost story to tell, yet except for one glimpse of Tamír inside the throne room, Tobin had never seen anything. He supposed he shouldn’t complain—he’d had enough of ghosts already—but sometimes he wished Tamír would come back and make herself clearer. Given what he now knew about himself, he was certain she’d been trying to tell him something important when she’d offered him her sword. But Korin and the others had distracted him, and before he could speak to her, she’d vanished.

Was she trapped inside, unable to come out? he wondered.

Returning to the library, he found an unoccupied chamber not far from the throne room. Unlatching one of the windows, he pushed it open and climbed out onto the wide stone ledge that ran along the walls just below. Snow filled his shoes as he inched along to the broken window they’d entered by the night Korin and the others had played at being ghosts.

It had been too dark to see much then. Tobin squeezed through and found himself standing at one side of a huge, shadowy hall. Pale winter light filtered dimly through cracks in the tall, shuttered windows.

The worn marble floor still showed the marks where benches and fountains had been. Tobin got his bearings and hurried toward the center of the room, where the massive marble throne still stood on its raised dais.

He’d been too scared to examine it closely last time, but saw now that it was beautiful. The arms were carved like cresting waves, and symbols of the Four were inlaid in bands of red, black, and gold across the high back. There must have been cushions, but they were gone and mice had built a nest in one corner of the broad seat.

The chamber had a sad, neglected air about it. Sitting down on the throne, Tobin rested his hands on the carved armrests and looked around, imagining his ancestors hearing petitions and greeting dignitaries from far-off lands. He could feel the weight of years. The edges of the dais steps were worn smooth in places, where hundreds of people had knelt before the queens.

Just then he heard a sigh, so close to his ear it made him jump up and look around.

“Hello?” He should have been afraid, but he wasn’t. “Queen Tamír?”

He thought he felt the cool brush of fingertips against his cheek, though it could have been nothing more than an errant stir of breeze through one of the broken windows. He heard another sigh, clearer this time, and just off to his right.

Following the sound with his eyes, he noticed a long, rectangular stain on the floor beside the dais. It was about three feet long, and no wider than his palm. The rusted stumps of iron bolts and a few bits of broken stonework still marked where something had stood.

Something. Tobin’s heart leaped.

Restore …

The voice was faint but he could feel her now.

Feel them, he amended, for other voices joined in. Women’s voices. “Restore … Restore …” Sad and faint as the rustle of wind through distant leaves.

Even now Tobin wasn’t frightened. This felt nothing like Brother or his mother. He felt welcome here.

Kneeling, he touched the place where the golden tablet of the Oracle had stood.

So long as a daughter of Thelátimos—

From Ghërilain’s time, through all those years and queens, the tablet’s carved words had proclaimed to all who approached this throne that the woman who sat upon it did so by Illior’s will.

Restore.

“I don’t know how,” he whispered. “I know I’m supposed to, but I don’t know what to do. Help me!”

The ghostly hand caressed his cheek again, tender and unmistakable. “I’ll try, I promise. Somehow. I swear it by the Sword.”

Tobin said nothing of the experience to anyone, but spent more time that winter reading in the library. The history Arkoniel and his father had labored to teach him came to life as he read firsthand accounts of events written by the queens and warriors who’d lived them. Ki caught his enthusiasm and they sat up late into the night, taking turns reading aloud by candlelight.

Raven’s chalk drawing battlefields took on new meaning as well. Watching the old general push his pebble cavalry and wood chip archers about, Tobin began to see the logic of the formations. At times he could imagine the scenes as clearly as if he were reading Queen Ghërilain’s account, or the histories of General Mylia.

“Come on now, someone must have an opinion!” the old man snapped one day, tapping his stick impatiently on the diagram in question. It showed a large open field flanked on either side by curving belts of trees.

Without thinking, Tobin stood up to answer. Before he could change his mind everyone was looking at him.

“You have a strategy, Your Highness?” Raven asked, raising a bushy eyebrow doubtfully.

“I—I think I’d hide my horsemen in the grove of trees on the east flank under cover of night—”

“Yes? What else?” His wrinkled face gave nothing away.

Tobin pressed on. “And half or more of my archers over here in woods on the other side.” He paused, thinking of a battle he’d read about a few days earlier. “I’d have the rest set stakes here, with the men-at-arms in ranks behind them.” Warming to his subject, he squatted and pointed to the narrow strip of open ground between the copses, at the Skalan-held end of the field. “It would look like a thin front from the enemy’s side. I’d have my horsemen keep their mounts quiet, so the enemy would think it was only foot soldiers they were facing. They’d probably make the first charge at dawn. As soon as their horsemen were committed, I’d send mine out to cut them off and have the hidden archers shoot at the enemy’s foot soldiers to panic them.”

The general tugged thoughtfully at his beard, then rasped, “Divide their forces, eh? That’s your plan?”

Someone snickered, but Tobin nodded. “Yes, General Marnaryl, that’s what I’d do.”

“Well, as it happens, that’s very much like what your great-grandmother did at the Second Battle of Isil and it worked rather well.”

“Well done, Tobin!” Caliel cried.

“He’s my blood, isn’t he?” said Korin proudly. “I’ll be glad to have him as my general when I’m king, I can tell you.”

Tobin’s pleasure dissolved to panic at the words and he took his seat quickly, hardly able to breathe. For the rest of the day, his cousin’s praise haunted him.

When I’m king.

Skala could have only one ruler, and even Tobin couldn’t imagine his cousin simply stepping aside. When Ki was asleep that night, he rose and burned an owl feather in the night lamp flame, but he didn’t know what prayer to send with it. As he struggled for some words to say, all he could think of was his cousin’s smiling face.

Chapter 13

A cold draft across his bare shoulders woke Arkoniel.

Shivering, he fumbled in the darkness and pulled Lhel’s bearskin robe up to his chin. She’d let him spend the night with her more often since midwinter and he was grateful, both for the companionship and the chance to escape the haunted corridors of the keep.

The bracken-stuffed pallet crackled as he burrowed deeper under the covers. The bed smelled good: sex and balsam and smoky hides. But he was still cold. He groped for Lhel, but found only a patch of fading warmth where she’d been.

“Armra dukath?” he called softly. He was learning her language quickly and always spoke it here though she teased him, claiming his accent was thicker than cold mutton stew. He’d learned the true name of her people, as well. They called themselves the Retha’noi, “people of wisdom.”

There was no answer, only the clacking of the bare oak branches overhead. Assuming she’d gone out to relieve herself, he settled back, longing for her naked heat against his back. But he couldn’t get back to sleep, and Lhel didn’t return.

More curious than worried, he wrapped himself in the fur robe and felt his way to the small, leather-curtained doorway. Pushing it aside, he looked out. In the two weeks since Sakor-tide it had snowed less than it usually did here; the drifts surrounding the oak were only shin deep in most places.

The sky was clear, though. The full moon hung like a new coin against the stars, so bright on the sparkling snow that he could make out the fine whorls on his fingertips by its light. Lhel said a full moon stole the heat of the day to be so bright, and Arkoniel could well believe it. Each breath showed silver white for an instant, then fell away in tiny crystals.

Small footprints led in the direction of the spring. Shivering, Arkoniel found his boots and followed.

Lhel was squatting at the water’s edge, staring intently at the little circle of roiling open water at its center. Wrapped to the chin in the new cloak Arkoniel had given her, she held her left hand over the water. Her fingers were crooked to summon the scrying spell and Arkoniel stopped a few yards away, not wanting to disturb her. The spell could take some time, depending on how far she was trying to see. He saw only undulating silver ripples across the spring’s black surface, but Lhel’s eyes glinted like a cat’s as she watched whatever it was that she’d summoned. Shadow filled the lines around her eyes and mouth, showing her years in a way the sun never did. Lhel claimed not to know her age. She said her people reckoned a woman’s age not by years, but by the seasons of her womb: child, child bearer, elder. She still bled with the waning moon, but she was not young.

Presently she lifted her head and glanced at him with no apparent surprise.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I had a dream,” she replied, kneading the stiffness from her back as she stretched. “Someone is coming, but I couldn’t see who, so I came out here.”

“Did you see in water?”

She nodded and took his hand, leading him back to the tree. “Wizards.”

“Harriers?”

“No, Iya and another I couldn’t see. There’s a cloud around that one. But they’re coming to see you.”

“Should I go back to the keep?”

Smiling, she stroked his cheek. “No, there’s time, and I’m too cold to sleep alone.” The years fled her face again as she reached under his robe and stroked a chilly hand down his belly. “You stay and warm me.”

Arkoniel returned to the keep the next morning, expecting to find lathered horses in the courtyard. But Iya did not come that day, or the next. Puzzled, he rode up the mountain track in search of Lhel, but the witch did not show herself.

Most of a week passed before her vision proved true. He was at work on a transmutation spell when he heard the sound of sleigh bells on the river road. Recognizing the high-pitched tinkling, he went on with his work. It was only the miller’s girl, making the monthly delivery to the kitchen.

He was still engrossed in the complexities of transforming a chestnut into a letter knife when the rattle of the door latch startled him. No one disturbed him here this time of the day.

“You’d better come down, Arkoniel,” said Nari. Her normally placid face was troubled and her hands were balled in her apron. “Mistress Iya is here.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked, hurrying to follow her downstairs. “Is she hurt?”

“Oh, no, she’s well enough. I’m not so sure about the woman she brought with her, though.”

Iya was sitting on the hearth bench in the hall, supporting a hunched, bundled figure. The stranger was closely wrapped but he could see the edge of a dark veil visible just below the deep hood.

“Who’s this?” he asked.

“I think you remember our guest,” Iya said quietly.

The other woman lifted her veil with a gloved hand and Nari let out a faint gasp.

“Mistress Ranai?” It was an effort not to recoil. “You’re—you’re a long way from home.”

He’d met the elderly wizard only once before, but hers was a face not easily forgotten. The ruined half was turned toward him, the scarred flesh standing out in waxy ridges. She shifted to see him with her remaining eye and smiled. The undamaged side of her face was soft and kind as a grandmother’s.

“I am glad to meet you again, though I regret the circumstance that brings me to you,” she replied in a hoarse, whispery voice. Her gnarled hands trembled as she laid her veil aside.

Centuries ago, during the Great War, this woman had fought beside Iya’s master, Agazhar. A necromancer’s demon had raked her face into this lopsided mask and crippled her left leg. She was much frailer than he recalled, and he could see the reddened weal of a recent burn on her right cheek.

The first time they’d met, he’d felt her power like a cloud of lightning so strong it raised the hair on the back of his arms. Now he could scarcely feel it.

“What’s happened to you, Mistress?” Remembering his manners he took her hand and silently offered her his own strength. He felt a slight flutter in his stomach as she accepted the gift.

“They burned me out,” she wheezed. “My own neighbors!”

“They got wind of a Harrier patrol on the way to Ylani and went mad,” Iya explained. “Word’s been put round that any town that shelters a dissenting wizard will be put to the torch.”

“Two centuries I lived among them!” Ranai gripped Arkoniel’s hand harder. “I healed their children, sweetened their wells, brought them rain. If Iya hadn’t been with me that night—” A coughing fit choked off her words.

Iya gently patted her back. “I’d just reached Ylani and saw the Harrier banner in the harbor. I guessed what that meant in time, but even so, I was nearly too late. The cottage was burning down around her and she was caught under a beam.”

“Harrier wizards stood outside and held the doors shut!” Ranai croaked. “I must be old indeed if a pack of young scoundrels like that can best me! But oh, how their spells hurt. It felt like they were driving spikes into my eyes. I was blind—” She trailed off querulously and seemed to shrink even smaller as Arkoniel watched.

“Thank the Light she was strong enough to hold off the worst of the flames, but as you can see, the ordeal took its toll. We’ve been nearly two weeks getting here. We rode the last bit in a miller’s sledge.”

He brushed at a streak of flour on Iya’s skirt. “So I see.”

Nari had disappeared at some point, but she and Cook returned with hot tea and food for the travelers.

Ranai accepted a mug with a murmur of thanks, but was too weak to lift it. Iya helped the old woman raise it to her lips. Ranai managed a slurping sip before another rattling cough took her. Iya held her as the spasm shook her wizened frame.

“Fetch a firepot,” Nari said to Cook. “I’ll make up the duke’s room for her.”

Iya helped the old woman take another sip. “She’s not the only one driven out. You remember Virishan?”

“That hedge wizard who takes in wizard-born orphans?”

“Yes. Do you recall the young mind clouder she had with her?”

“Eyoli?”

“Yes. I met him on the road a few months back and he told me she and her brood had fled into the mountains north of Ilear.”

“It’s that monster’s doing,” Ranai whispered vehemently. “That viper in white!”

“Lord Niryn.”

“Lord?” The old woman mustered the strength to spit into the fire. The flames flared a livid blue. “The son of a tanner, he was, and a middling mage at best, last I knew. But the whelp knows how to drip poison in the royal ear. He’s turned the whole country on us, his own kind!”

“Is it so bad already?” asked Arkoniel.

“It’s still just in pockets in the outlying towns, but the madness is spreading,” said Iya.

“The visions—” Ranai began.

“Not here,” Iya whispered. “Arkoniel, help Nari get her to bed.”

Ranai was too weak to climb the stairs, so Arkoniel carried her. She was as light and brittle in his arms as a bundle of dry sticks. Nari and Cook had made the musty, long-empty room as comfortable as they could. Two firepots stood beside the bed and someone had laid life’s breath leaves on the coals to ease Ranai’s cough. The pungent smell filled the room.

As the women undressed Ranai to her ragged shift and tucked her into bed, Arkoniel caught a glimpse of the old scars and new burns that covered her withered arms and shoulders. Bad as they were, he found them less worrisome than the strange ebb in her power.

When Ranai was settled, Iya sent the others out and pulled a chair close to the bed. “Are you comfortable now?” Ranai whispered something Arkoniel could not catch. Iya frowned, then nodded. “Very well. Arkoniel, fetch the bag, please.”

“It’s there beside you.” Iya’s traveling pack lay in plain sight by his mistress’s chair.

“No, the bag I left with you.”

Arkoniel blinked, realizing which one she meant.

“Fetch it, Arkoniel. Ranai told me something quite surprising the other day.” She looked down at the dozing wizard, then snapped, “Quickly now!” as if he were still a clumsy young apprentice.

Arkoniel took the stairs two at a time and pulled the dusty bag from under the workroom table. Inside, shrouded in spells and mystery lay the clay bowl she had charged him never to show to anyone except his own successor. It had been Iya’s burden for as long as he’d known her, a trust passed with the darkest oaths from wizard to wizard since the days of the Great War.

The war! he thought, seeing the first inkling of a connection.

Iya saw Ranai’s eyes widen when Arkoniel returned with the battered old leather bag.

“Shroud the room, Iya,” she murmured.

Iya cast a spell, sealing the room from prying eyes and ears, then took the bag from Arkoniel. Undoing the knotted thongs, she eased out the mass of silk wrappings and slowly undid them. Wards and incantations winked and crackled in the lamplight.

As the last of the silk fell away Iya caught her breath. No matter how often she held this plain, crude thing, the malevolent emanations always rocked her. To one not wizard-born, this was nothing but a crude beggar’s bowl, unglazed and poorly fired. But her master Agazhar had felt nausea when he touched it. Arkoniel suffered a searing headache and feverish pain through his body in its presence. Iya experienced it as a miasma like fumes from a rotting, ruptured corpse.

She glanced at Ranai with concern, fearing the effect it would have on her in her weakened state.

But instead the old woman seemed to find new strength. Lifting her hand, she sketched a spell of protection on the air, then reached out hesitantly, as if to take the bowl.

“Yes, there’s no mistaking it,” she rasped, withdrawing her hand.

“How do you know of it?” Arkoniel asked.

“I was a Guardian myself, one of the original six … I’ve seen enough, Iya. Put it away.” She lay back and sighed deeply, not speaking until the cursed thing was safely wrapped again.

“You understood the Oracle’s meaning all too well, even without the knowledge lost when your master died,” she told Iya.

“I don’t understand,” said Arkoniel. “I never heard of other Guardians. Who are the six?”

Ranai closed her eyes. “They’re all dead, except for me. I’d never have revealed myself to your mistress, but when I saw that she no longer had the bag with her, I feared the worst. You must forgive an old woman’s weakness. Perhaps if I’d spoken when you came to Ylani a few years back—”

Iya took the clawed left hand in hers. “Never mind that. I know the oaths you swore. But we’re here now and you’ve seen it. What is it you have to tell us?”

Ranai looked up then. “There can be only one Guardian for each secret, Iya. You’ve passed the burden to this boy. What I have to say, only he can hear.”

“No, she only left it with me for safekeeping. Iya’s the true Guardian,” Arkoniel told her.

“No. She passed it down.”

“Then I give it back!”

“You can’t. The Lightbearer guided her hand, whether she knew it or not. You are Guardian now, Arkoniel, and what I have to say can only be said to you.”

Iya recalled the Afran Oracle’s cryptic words: This is a seed that must be watered with blood. But you see too far. And she thought of the vision she’d had that day, of a grand white palace filled with wizards, but seen from a distance, with Arkoniel looking out at her from a tower window.

“She’s right, Arkoniel. You stay.” Unable to look at either of them, she hurried out.

Sealed out by her own magic, she sagged against the wall and covered her face, letting the bitter tears come. Only then did the demon child’s cryptic words come back to haunt her.

You shall not enter.

Arkoniel stared after Iya in disbelief, then turned back to the ruined creature in the bed. The revulsion he’d felt the first time he’d seen her rushed back now.

“Sit, please,” Ranai whispered. “What I tell you now is what was lost with Agazhar’s death. Iya has acted in ignorance. No fault of hers, but it must be made right. Swear to me, Arkoniel, as all Guardians before you have sworn, by hands, heart, and eyes, by the Light of Illior, and by the blood of Aura that runs in your veins, that you will take on the full mantle of guardianship, and that as Guardian, you will lock all I tell you away in your heart until you pass the burden to your successor. Protect these secrets with your life and allow no one who discovers them to live. No one, you understand me? Not friend or foe, wizard or plain-born, man, woman, or child. Give me your hands and swear. I’ll know if you lie.”

“Secrecy and death. Is that all the Lightbearer will ever ask of me?”

“Many things will be asked of you, Arkoniel, but none more sacred than this. Iya will understand your silence.”

He’d seen the grief in Iya’s face and knew Ranai spoke the truth. “Very well.” He grasped Ranai’s hands and bowed his head. “I do swear, by hands, heart, and eyes, by the Light of Illior and by the blood of Aura in my veins, to carry out whatever duty is required of me as Guardian, and to reveal the secrets you give me to no one but my successor.”

A blast of raw energy shot through him from their clasped hands, engulfing him. It was like being struck by lightning. It seemed impossible that Ranai’s wasted body could still contain such power, but when it passed, it left them both gasping.

Ranai regarded him solemnly. “You are truly the Guardian now, more so than your mistress was, or even her master. You are the last of the six to carry that which must be hidden. All the rest have failed or laid their burden down.”

“And you?”

She raised a hand to her scarred cheek and grimaced. “This was the price I paid for my failure. But let me speak, for my strength is going.

“The greatest wizard of the Second Orëska was Master Reynes of Wyvernus. It was he who rallied the wizards of Skala to fight under Queen Ghërilain’s banner, and he who led those who finally defeated the Vatharna. You understand the word?”

Arkoniel nodded. “It’s Plenimaran for ‘the chosen one.’”

“The chosen one.” The old woman’s eyes were closed now, and Arkoniel had to lean closer to hear her. “The Vatharna was a great general, chosen by the necromancers to take on the form of Seriamaius.”

She still held his right hand, but he made a warding sign with his left. Even priests hesitated to speak the name of the necromancer’s god aloud. “How could such a thing be done?”

“They forged a helm and the one who wore it, the Vatharna, became an earthly vessel for the god. It did not happen at once, thank the Four, but gradually, though even the initial guise was terrible enough.

“The helm was completed and their general put it on. Reynes found him only just in time. Hundreds of wizards and warriors were killed in that battle, but the helm was captured. Reynes and the most powerful wizards still alive dismantled it somehow. But before they could do more, the Plenimarans attacked again. Only Reynes escaped, and with only six of the pieces. He never revealed how many there were in all. He put a glamour on those he had, wrapped them as yours is wrapped, and placed them in a darkened tent. Then he chose six of us—wizards who’d taken no part in the other ceremonies—and sent us in one at a time. We were to take the first bundle our hand found in the darkness, then depart alone, unseen. No matter what the cost, the pieces were to be scattered and hidden. Not even Reynes would know where they were.”

She coughed weakly and Arkoniel held a cup of water to her lips. “So they couldn’t put it back together?”

“Yes. Reynes was very careful, not trusting even himself to know the full truth. None of us had witnessed the ritual of dissolution, or the true form of what we carried. None of us knew what the others had, or where they went.”

“So Agazhar was one of the original Guardians?”

“No. He wasn’t powerful enough to be considered. Hyradin was the first of your line. He and Agazhar came to be friends later on, but Agazhar knew nothing of the burden he carried. It was only by chance that he was with Hyradin when the Plenimarans found him. Mortally wounded, Hyradin gave Agazhar the bundle and held off the enemy long enough for him to escape. Years later when he and I met again, I saw what he carried and knew Hyradin must be dead.”

“And all the other pieces were lost?”

“Mine was, and two others that I know of. Hyradin’s you carry. But one of us returned, saying she’d accomplished her purpose. The sixth was never heard of again. As far as I know, I’m the only one who failed and lived. It was years before I healed, and longer before I learned of Hyradin’s fate. By rights Agazhar should have killed me and I told him so, but he wouldn’t, saying I was a Guardian still. As far as I know, yours is the only fragment yet in Skala. I told Agazhar it should be hidden somewhere secure, but he thought he could better protect it by keeping it with him.” She fixed Arkoniel with her good eye. “He was wrong. It must

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