The Shining Court

By

Michelle West

(The Sun Sword Book Three)

Contents

Dedication:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Annagarian Ranks

PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Copyright © 1999 by Michelle Sagara. All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Jody Lee.

For color prints of Jody Lee's paintings, please contact: The Cerridwen Enterprise

P.O.Box 10161 Kansas City, MO 64111 Phone: 1-800-825-1281

DAW Book Collectors No. 1127,

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

First Printing, August, 1999 5 6 7 8 9

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PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

Dedication:

This is for Daniel and Ross and their father,

the three men I'm looking forward to sharing the rest of my life with.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Almost too many to go into, and the karmic burden will haunt me for lifetimes, I'm certain.

My mother and my father, my husband and my oldest son, were all particularly forgiving in the last eight weeks of the book's harried life when I didn't join them for lunch or dinner and turned the entire household schedule upside down.

My son's godfather, John Chew—also one of my closest friends—who picked my son up every day after school while I worked on this book, thereby earning me the envy of almost every mother in the neighborhood, and with just cause. He also ran interference by telling the rest of our friends that, in fact, I was completely psychotic with stress and should not be disturbed if one valued life, which I suppose was one way of putting it… but I hope not an entirely accurate one…

And last, thanks to the usual suspects at DAW: Sheila Gilbert and Debra Euler who are busy trying to keep a business based on art and artistic temperament running smoothly, with the usual frenetic results one would expect.

I have no idea who the guys in the production department are, but if I ever see them, I imagine I owe them a whole lot more than just a round of drinks.

Annagarian Ranks

Tyr'agar Ruler of the Dominion

Tyr'agnate Ruler of one of the five Terreans of the Dominion

Tyr The Tyr'agar or one of the four Tyr'agnate

Tyran Personal bodyguard (oathguard) of a Tyr

Tor'agar A noble in service to a Tyr

Tor'agnate A noble in service to a Tor'agar; least of noble ranks

Tor A Tor'agar or Tor'agnate

Toran Personal bodyguard (oathguard) of a Tor

Ser A clansman

Serra The primary wife and legitimate daughters of a clansman

kai The holder or first in line to the clan title

par The brother of the first in line; the direct son of the title holder

Dramatis Personae - The Voyani

In the Voyani clans, the men will often use their name and their clan's name as identifiers (i.e. Nicu would be Nicu of the Arkosan Voyani or Nicu Arkosa.)

ARKOSA

Evallen of the Arkosa Voyani—The woman who ruled the Voyani clan. She is/was seerborn. Dark-haired, dark-eyed; dies at Diora's hand, a mercy killing.

Margret of the Arkosa Voyani—The new, untested Matriarch of the Arkosan Voyani. Dark haired and dark eyed like her mother; she is not seerborn.

Adam—Evallen's boy, the light of her life, and much indulged.Charming, easily charmed, he is also very perceptive, very sharp of wit; he keeps it to himself, for the most part.

Nicu—Bearded, broad-shouldered; cousin in his early twenties. Son of Evallen's cousin. Looks older. Carmello—darker in coloring than Nicu, dark-haired, dark-eyed, one year his senior. They're friends, sword-mates.

Andreas—Shorter than either Nicu or Carmello, but dark as the Voyani are dark; stocky and barrel-chested; one of Carmello's and Nicu's supporters. Donatella—Nicu's mother. Evallen's cousin once removed; Margret (and Elena's) second cousin.

Stavos—Margret's uncle, much loved and crusty; gray beard, broad belly, laughs like a bear.

Caitla—Stavos' wife. Wide as well, but hardened by the sun and wind. Hair gray and long, eyes cutting and dark.

Elena—Margret's cousin; the heir to the Matriarchy should Margret perish without a daughter. They are both close and rivals, Margret and Elena, and it is Elena that Nicu loves. Elena is a firebrand in most senses of the word; her hair is auburn-red, her skin sun-bronzed, her eyes brown with green highlights.

Tamara—Margret's aunt. Bent at the back, older in appearance than her older (and now dead) sister, she is Margret's support and strength, although she nags rather a lot. Closer than kin. She is Elena's mother.

HAVALLA

Yollana of the Havalla Voyani—peppered, dark curls, almost black eyes. She is in her forties, healthy, wiry.

CORRONA

Elsarre of the Corrona Voyani—long, straight hair, dark with streaks of white. She was, until the death of Evallen, the youngest of the matriarchs at the age of 36.

Dani—Slender, of medium height. His hair is long, thick and is always pulled back in a single braid. His beard is small, his face long, his eyes (as most Voyani eyes) are dark. He is Elsarre's Shadow; Elsarre has no brothers, and no cousins she chooses to trust with her life.

LYSERRA

Maria of the Lyserra Voyani—hair white as northern snow, eyes blue as Lord's sky, she is slender and silent much of the time. She has the grace of gesture Serra Teresa possesses, and for this reason is less trusted than the other Matriarchs. Her husband is the kai of the clan Jedera; Ser Tallos kai di'Jedera. They have four children:

Mika—Mika is broad-shouldered, dark-haired, dark-eyed as all clansmen; clean-shaven, as the Voyani are not.

Jonni—Jonni is quiet; large-eyed, clear-skinned; he wears a beard.

Aviana—The Matriarch's heir; she shelters with, and lives with, her mother's kin in preparation for her eventual role. She loves her brothers fiercely, even if they are of the clans.

Lorra—The family baby. Beautiful, but fair-skinned, she lives with her sister, and her mother's people.

PROLOGUE

15th of Lattan, 415 AA

Terrean of Raverra

The Serra Teresa di'Marano did not travel quickly. No Serra did, whose husband, or if unmarried, kai could afford to grant her the dignity of his rank—and his wealth. She had been ordered to the Terrean of Mancorvo, there to seek her kai, Adano kai di'Marano; the Widan Sendari par di'Marano had delivered into her keeping a message of urgency.

She was also, if she was permitted, to seek audience with the wife of the Tyr'agnate himself, the demure and silent Serra Donna en'Lamberto. Between women, or so it was thought by foolish men, there was ease, and much information might be exchanged. Thus did her brother, Sendari, hope to gain knowledge about the Serra Donna's husband. Tyr'agnate Mareo kai di'Lamberto. The man whose brother had, in the single space of less than an hour, so damaged the hopes and the plans laid out by Sendari, Cortano, and the General—no, the Tyr'agar—Alesso kai di'Alesso.

Serra Teresa herself was not married, had never been married, and would never be married; the dreams of that union, and what it might bring her, lay buried, seeking life when the skies were at their brightest, and the hand of the Lord at its height.

In the North, the darkest of dreams were night dreams, and in the South, it is said that men were also weakened by the Lady's thoughts—but the Serra Teresa di'Marano knew the touch of the sun to be the precursor to madness, ruin, loss; she did not meet the Lord's face.

There were no desert sands on the road she took, but the heat this summer had been scorching, and the grasses and wildness that often encumbered the road with their wealth of scents and hidden insects were a pale gold, dry and almost dusty. The Lady's rains had not been permitted to fall.

Upon the road there was talk, of course; in all things, speech. The Serra was a Serra, but she was only a woman, and the cerdan— free men all and of the clan's distant branches—made freer with their words when their superiors were not present. Her own cerdan knew better, of course; they were of a better breed. She had chosen them herself, although Adano's approval—a formality which no clans woman had any choice but to seek—was necessary.

As much as she could trust any man whose sword served the Lord, she trusted them. As much as.

The tents had been erected, and the palanquin laid aside. It was hot for travel, and the midday rest had been decreed by the master of the caravan—not, of course, by its mistress. Sweet water was offered, and such food as might survive the heat of such a journey unruined; she partook of the first, and gave her gracious blessing to the men, who were given the rest.

Two days, and she would cross the Mancorvan border.

Three more, with some speed, and she might see home—if such a mythical place existed, ever, in the heart of a woman who was sent from brother to brother and place to place at the whim of others.

And today?

She did not touch the samisen case, but instead reached for the lute, with its rounded curves, its musical tradition a thing not created by, or for, the Lord of the Sun. In the heat, she began to play.

When swords left their sheaths, she was not surprised at the sound, although it seemed sudden. Music often carried her to a place that could not be attacked because it could not be felt by any who did not possess her gift. Her gift, yes, and her curse, both.

But swords being drawn brought her back, as most sounds of war did. She carefully placed the lute in its case as Ramdan lifted the flap of her tent, offering his obeisance in such a way that it made the dirt and the dryness seem a gift as it clung to his knees, the palms of his hands.

"Serra," he said.

"Are we under attack?"

"No, Serra."

She closed the case with care, and rose with as much grace as Ramdan had bowed. "There is another traveler, then."

"Yes."

He did not offer what she did not ask for; there was that still-ness, that perfect composure, about him. In all things, he took her lead; he was, of the serafs she owned, the finest.

Treat them well, she heard her mother say, at the remove of years, and they'll be more trustworthy than blood kin. It would have been a scandalous thing to say where other ears could hear it; it was said at the harem's heart, where only these two women dwelled: Serra Teresa and her mother.

They will certainly, her mother had added, bring you more solace if you train and choose them well.

Truer thing had possibly been said in time, but not by her mother. She waited for Ramdan to lift the tent's flaps, and she noticed, as she always did, how ageless he seemed, how perfectly unbowed by the labor of years.

For the first time, before she left the safety of shadow, the Serra Teresa di'Marano wondered if he was truly ageless, or if her eyes were deceived by some strange desire of the heart; Ramdan had been with her for all of her adult life, and she did not wish age or its foibles to force her to part from him, to force her to elevate any other to the position that he now held.

As she entered the domain of the Lord of the Sun, she raised her fan and opened it, shielding her eyes from the glint of new metal. Swords, helms. A Serra, after all, did not squint publicly.

Karras di'Marano bowed, and she returned this respect with respect of her own. He was older than she, and not so fast with a sword as he had once been, but wisdom and experience gave him an edge that no grindstone could. "Serra Teresa," he said.

"Is there a disturbance, Ser Karras?"

"A minor one, Serra, and if you wish not to be disturbed, you might choose to continue your vigil."

"Swords ofttimes disturb me."

He had known that would be her answer, of course; they were old friends, old almost-allies. "Very well. It appears, from what we can see down the rise of the hillock, that there are wagons encamped."

"Wagons?"

"We believe that they belong to the Voyani." He paused. "The Arkosa Voyani, if their flags are not false."

"Surely we are in no danger, Ser Karras."

"They travel in greater number than I have seen," he said. She waited for him to qualify the statement, to finish it, but it hung between them stubbornly.

At last she nodded. "It is the Matriarch, then."

"I believe so." His gaze was given to the ground. "But 1 have seen the Matriarch's van, Serra; there-is something about this gathering that feels wrong." His shrug was eloquent; a way of saying that he could not say more than that, but that he would not be judged ignorant for instinct's sake.

They both knew, because it was a truth as old as the Voyani's homeless wandering, that the Voyani preyed upon lesser clansmen, and smaller caravans.

"If I may be bold, Ser Karras," she replied, "I would tell your young cerdan that this is not the place to earn—or to attempt to earn—the Lord's respect."

His smile was a thin-edged flash of teeth, gone at once; she felt the respect offered in the salute that he almost, but did not quite, give.

She liked Karras, and hoped that he followed her advice, for no cerdan would be likely to escape the wrath of the Arkosa Voyani who traveled in such great numbers should they attempt to exert their authority.

Margret, she thought, staring into the open sky.

Knowing that she had news to offer that would cause a far greater wound to the young Voyani woman than any cerdan's sword. And knowing, after that wound, she must then ask a favor that she could not afford to have refused.

Margret of the Arkosa Voyani was not a woman like her mother. She was a little too young, and the edges about her were sharper, harsher; it was just such a woman who made the greatest—or the worst—of rulers. To come to the clan as Matriarch, unblemished by the winds, unblunted and unscarred, physically, by the test of the sands, was an omen, and it was considered as such by both the Serra Teresa and the Arkosa Voyani.

Or it would be. It would be soon.

She did not wait upon the appointed hour; she did not need to. There was too much steel gathered here, beneath the Lord's sight, for the van to ignore. The Voyani did not often use horses as beasts for single riders; it was an expensive proposition, and one much resented by those who could not afford the luxury. They had, these wanderers, their pride, and much of their pride was a ferocity of fellow feeling with those they claimed as kin. In this case, the Arkosa Voyani. But a rider came out, on horse. The horse was Lambertan-bred; she wondered how dearly they had paid.

She thought the beast fine, and was certain that it would be kept only until a likely buyer was found for it.

Her cerdan stepped forward at the command of Karras di'Marano, barring the rider's way. He stopped short of them—just— and in a way that showed that he ill-loved riding as a form of approaching an uncertain situation. The horse, of course, could sense this, and she could tell by the tensing line of the shoulders of her guards that they could sense it as well. Young horse, and too newly broken to take kindly to the scent of any rider's fear.

Or too poorly broken, which was perhaps the reason he was let go at all. The Voyani rider stopped the horse, but at a lesser distance than any of them, save perhaps the horse, would have liked. A poor start.

Poorer still, he did not dismount, although privately the Serra thought it wise.

"Ho, travelers!" he said, lifting his voice. A normal greeting would have involved the lifting of an arm, a hand, some gesture that touched the open sky. A toss of the head was offered in its place; both hands gripped and held the reins a little too tightly. She wondered if the horse would throw the boy.

For she could tell, from the timbre of his voice, if not his build, that he was a boy. On the edge of manhood, to be sure, and with only a little time needed to push him over, but nonetheless, a boy.

It explained much.

Serra Teresa and Ser Karras exchanged a brief glance.

Karras stepped forward. "We are passing through Raverra to Mancorvo."

"You fly the colors of the clan Marano."

The cerdan nodded, neither well-pleased nor ill, although the Voyani did not always attend to the colors of the clans well enough to know them. Certainly not the Arkosans. The Havallans, perhaps.

"My sister sent me to offer you the hospitality of our wagons and our family," the boy continued.

Serra Teresa froze a moment as she studied the lines of the boy's face, seeing them as if for the first time, although she missed little.

"Your sister is?"

"Margret," the boy replied, with just a touch of pride. "Margret, daughter of Evallen, Matriarch of Arkosa."

Teresa closed her eyes then; it was a momentary reflex, and the pain passed quickly beneath the heat of the Lord's regard. Ser Karras, however, had turned to seek her permission, whether desirous of acceptance or flat refusal, she could not—quite— tell; she met his eyes as hers blinked open.

"Tell your sister Margret that the Serra Teresa di'Marano would indeed be honored to accept the offered hospitality. Tell her—tell her that the Serra is well aware of the honor offered."

He brightened, this boy, and she added—because she could not help but add it, "And who is her brother?"

His cheeks shifted slightly in color, although with the Voyani's sun-harsh skin it was often hard to tell, and he smiled; his face lit, side to side, with the undamaged and unfettered charm of a child who has not yet been broken or yoked. "I'm Adam," he said. "Adam, Evallen's son."

She bowed—it was acceptable etiquette when the only mats beneath her were formed of earth and dust—and then nodded to the captain.

It was clear that he did not trust the Voyani; he was not paid, after all, to trust. He chose three men—more than that, and the lack of trust would be an open insult—and accompanied them himself.

Serra Teresa began the descent from the roadside to the small curve of grass that a desert dweller would call a valley and an Averdan would hardly deign to notice. Where the land lay lowest, there was some hesitant greenery; if the rains came, she thought the golden dryness of the sun's reign would be cast off by undergrowth like so much ceremonial clothing.

She admired the Voyani their ability to maneuver, and keep, their wagons, and as she approached the wagon ring, she saw, standing above them as if it were a palace at the heart of a wheeled city, a wagon that she knew, if not well, then well enough to never mistake.

This was no merchant wagon, no van meant to carry creature comforts from one end of the Dominion to the other; it was a home, or as much of a home as the Voyani were allowed to make. Canvas was supported in two places by carved lintels that were oiled and tended; the canvas itself was not the only protection the wagon dweller was offered, for the sides of the wagon were built up with a fine wood, and broken on either side by panes of clear, thick glass, and bars of lead. Cloth twined and fell to either side, ribbons of decorative color, and the wheels themselves were jointed in such a way that they absorbed some of the rigors of wagon travel well.

Many a merchant would have paid the Voyani for the secret of this construction, but the Voyani and the merchants were not often friendly; death and time had given suspicion a hold that goodwill did not dissolve. And that, she thought grimly, was for the best, for goodwill rarely stood the test of the wind.

The Voyani had no manners, or so it was said, and for the most part, it was true. They were a lazy people with regard to the niceties of formal interaction. As if to prove her thoughts true, several of the older men who attended the Matriarch appeared to either side of the Matriarch's large wagon; they took up their places by crossing their arms in front of their chests and lounging against the wagon's side, staring at the cerdan who accompanied the Serra, measuring them.

Sunlight aged them, as did the wind. They wore no armor, or little of it, and three of the eight carried swords; they all carried daggers, and Serra Teresa was certain that half of them were of the throwing variety; the Voyani did not often like to close in a fight with strangers, although amongst themselves the thrown dagger was considered an act of cowardice that stained the honor of the family.

Such as it was.

Some of the men shaved, although they retained either beard or mustache; a smooth face was considered a boy's face by Voyani men. Serra Teresa did not understand the rank that Voyani men actually held, and wasn't certain if she wanted to dignify Voyani pecking order with the word. It was the women she came to, after all, and the women who entertained outsiders such as she stood apart from their kin, if not above.

Margret of the Arkosa Voyani had not yet reached the age where she knew how to maintain that distance. She did not understand the use of mystery, the use of silence, the use of sparing truths. But she understood death; they all did, clansmen and Wanderers alike. These were the Lord's lands, and the Lady's, and perhaps life was not such a mercy that it should be mandated, and guaranteed.

Serra Teresa waited outside the large wagon for a full five minutes before she realized that Evallen would not emerge to greet her. Oh, she'd known it, of course; it was partly to convey word of that woman's death that she had come into this dell. But knowledge of death and acceptance of it are often separated by time and experience, and she had had little time since the death itself had become known to her.

She lifted her head slightly.

"The Matriarch?"

"Is not with the caravan, as you should well know," a clear, strong voice said.

The Serra Teresa froze. And then, without another word, she turned. "Captain," she said quietly.

"No."

"Ser Karras—"

"I will not leave you with these," he replied, his tone low, his meaning unmistakable.

She hesitated a moment, afraid for him and now, because of this single sentence spoken by a woman who was always a little bit too obviously angry, afraid of him. But she did not choose to use the voice upon him, to force him away.

"Margret," she said softly, and she bowed her head.

The young, dark-haired woman paused, her mouth already half open as if to speak. It was grudging, this pause, a thing that the Serra Teresa was certain she had struggled for. "Come with me."

Karras was not pleased by the tone Margret took; he bristled, but not obviously—he was too well-trained to embarrass or endanger her that way. Although they were better armed than the Voyani, they were also outnumbered, and there was no question of surviving a fight started here, among these people.

He escorted Serra Teresa to the wagon in which Margret and her brother lived. Margret mounted steps whose upper hinge creaked with either age or want of oil, or perhaps both, and then flung open the small, perfect door. Inside, it was both shadowed and empty; the windows that graced the mother's wagon graced the child's as well, but they were smaller and allowed for less light.

"In here," Margret said curtly, "we can speak."

Such rudeness as this, Serra Teresa had witnessed once before in her life, from the mother. For a moment daughter and mother looked so alike that she felt, that she could feel, young again herself, on the brink of a mystery that she didn't—quite—believe in, and a mystery, herself, that Evallen couldn't quite believe in.

Perhaps, she thought, as she saw Ser Karras' small frown, you will do well enough.

* * *

Shadows provided mercy, of a type. Light was often harsh when sorrow intruded; it allowed for no privacy, no illusion of the strength of expression that dignifies either a man or a woman who understands that life ends, that death is inevitable.

"Where is my mother?" Margret said, as she found a seat in the high wagon, and offered the Serra her choice of worn but sturdy pillows.

The Serra was silent.

"She was to leave before the Festival's end, Serra. She was to meet us in Mancorvo."

"She—she told you this?"

It was the Voyani's turn to fall silent. When she spoke, her voice was flat, as inflectionless as the Serra might have preferred. "She told you different."

"Margret, your mother and I knew each other—"

"For longer than I've existed, yes, I've heard it before. But I'm her kin." She stood, and the flatness left her voice and her expression.

Evallen, Teresa thought, I warned you against this: you have raised a wildness in your family.

"What, exactly, did she tell you?"

"None of your secrets," Teresa said softly, folding her hands in her lap, taking up a posture that she was certain would both impress and offend the younger woman. "She told me nothing, Margret, that did not pertain to what little privacy a Matriarch is granted."

"What did she tell you?"

Serra Teresa turned her face to the window, lifted the fan that was wrapped, by a golden chain, around her wrist, protection against loss on the road. "She told me," the Serra said, pitching her voice as carefully as she could, "that she had come to the Tor Leonne to die."

The silence, as always, was terrible.

"She—she—" The attempt to speak was worse.

For Serra Teresa di'Marano was gifted and cursed, and where she could lend dignity to another by somehow refusing to see the weakness they could not help but show, she could not refuse to hear it. The voice conveyed a complexity of emotion that a word did not, no matter how good the speaker was at dissembling, at hiding emotion. Margret was not such a one, and oddly enough, that made it easier; she was not the eavesdropper, or worse, the soul's voyeur, she was the bearer of bad tidings to a woman barely more than girl and not schooled enough to hide what she felt.

"I wish you were someone else," Margret said, and it surprised the Serra.

"Why?"

"Because if you were, I'd accuse you of lying." The voice broke three times, as if the words were rocks it could not pass over, but must flow round. Bitterness, there. And beneath it, certainty.

"You suspected."

"Yes." She was tired, was Margret, and angry. "But I didn't have—what my mother did. I couldn't be certain." She began to pace the confines of the wagon, her long stride making it seem small indeed to the woman who was trapped there with her.

At last, she stopped. "How?"

This was harder. "I was not there, Margret."

"Was anyone?"

"Yes."

She fell silent again. "Who—who found the body?"

Teresa closed her eyes. "You are asking me if someone removed something from your mother's corpse. I can answer that question: If they did, it was not a thing of value. She knew, Margret; she knew what she must do."

"Then you have brought her home," Margret said formally, the words strange to the Serra's ears.

Teresa looked away again, wondering when the woman's voice had drawn her eyes from the Lord's light. "No," she said at last, knowing from the tone of the words, rather than from their content, that the younger woman spoke not of a corpse. "I have not."

"But—" For the first time, there was a fear about her voice, a loss of certainty. "You must have—have done what she asked."

"She did not ask it of me," Serra Teresa replied, coming at last to the second part of her duty. "She asked it of a young woman whom she met in the Tor Leonne. The young woman who—who witnessed her death, who was the only witness."

"You're lying."

She did not smile when she said, "You accuse me of something that you have just said—"

"This is your way, isn't it? This is your way of drawing us into your intrigues and your stupid battles. I told her—I told her not to listen to you—"

I know, Teresa thought. You are much like your mother at this age; any plagues or curses we must suffer are our own, and we

are welcome—at your pleasure—to suffer them with neither cease nor your aid. But she did not say it.

"What is it, Teresa? What do you want from us? You've taken Evallen—and I have no way of knowing whether or not anything you've told me is true."

"You have the same method your mother had," was Serra Teresa's reply. She was curious, and she was not, for although she had always suspected that the pendant that Diora now held in her possession was a thing of more than just monetary value to the Arkosa Voyani, she also knew the price of sharing their secrets. There were places one did not, one could not, pry.

"Where is this—this other woman?"

"In the Tor Leonne. She cannot travel; even the freedom of daylight is almost prohibited her."

"But you travel. You could have—"

"I could not ask her to break her oath to Evallen of the Arkosa Voyani."

Truth, in that. Margret's sullen silence was acknowledgment enough. "What do you want of us, Teresa?"

"The young woman that she gave this great task to was the Consort of the Lord of the Sun."

"So?"

"Perhaps I betray myself; the court is my home, and has always been. You knew her, I think even you must have known her, by the name she once held: Serra Diora Maria en'Leonne."

Margret sat down, hard.

Into the silence, the sun fell, its shadows lengthening as its rays were broken by objects; tin cups, candle holders, lamps red-brown with rust around handle and base. Margret was white with the things she must leave unsaid; they were many.

Teresa made to rise, and the young woman stirred, restless as a caged beast—and as dangerous, Teresa thought, to a woman who had made the choice to enter its cage. She sat again, unmindful— if a Serra of her stature could be—of the darkness, the meager-ness—of her surroundings. She felt oddly hollow as she watched this child pace; Margret was older than Diora in all things but experience, and loss.

Even this loss.

She had not thought to feel it, because she had felt it so little in the confines of the Tor Leonne, during the heat and the danger of the Festival Sun. She had seen the body; they all had; it was displayed prominently, and over the course of two days, it caught the wind unkindly, gave it the scent of early decay, of blood. They had taken it down as an offense to the grandeur of the grounds on the third day, but she did not know where it was buried; she was certain that no ceremony had attended the corpse.

She knew, as well, that the Voyani did not put much stock in the proper burial rites; bury the dead, by all means, but don't worship the corpse; the spirit, after all, had been freed from the burden of constant wandering, a homelessness decreed by fate, upheld by even the laws of nature.

Evallen.

But she had not thought, after seeing that body, to sit in this wagon, of all wagons. The grand wagon, that she could have brushed aside as easily, as nonchalantly, as serafs did the summer flies. But not here; it was in this wagon that she and Evallen had first met, when Evallen's mother, Violla, had been the Matriarch.

The circle closes. Yes. Around them all, an ambush.

"Teresa?"

She was embarrassed to be caught out, to be caught with no control, momentarily, of her expression. She knew the lines of her face were neutral because no loss could destroy that mask; it was part of everything she had been raised to be. But she also knew that it was vacant, that expression; she had gone, for a moment, into a past that contained Evallen and Teresa, a young woman who would rule the Arkosa Voyani as mother of them all, and a young woman who would never be a mother, no matter that either woman desired a different destiny.

She had seen the end of so many lives, but she felt, suddenly, the Lady's Night was falling, finally; that there would come a night so black that the inevitability of dawn could be struck forever from human memory.

And then she knew why, for she was not a woman given to the darker fancy of the Night's thoughts, especially not during the Lord's tenure. She heard it in a voice.

"I believe," she said, her own voice smooth as the silk that she wore, "you have a visitor, Margret. Or rather, your van does."

Margret turned at once, as if glad of the opportunity for action, or reaction.

Pitching her voice in the manner that she had been taught so long ago by a bard-born man, she said, "Margret—please."

The younger woman turned.

"Caution. Make no promises to him, give him no hint of your intent or your secrets."

"As if," Margret said, with a faint bitterness and angry but muted contempt, "we ever give outsiders anything of ourselves."

It was meant as a blow, and because it was meant that way, the Serra found it difficult to be offended. A difference, she mused, between the ghost of her younger self and the woman that she was now. So many differences—surely not all the product of age—but she knew how to do one thing well, at that age, at this one.

She knew how to listen.

In the artificial darkness of the wagon's confines, alone for the first time since the Festival of the Sun itself—for Ramdan's invisible presence was a presence, a comfort and a responsibility both—she closed her eyes and let the line of her shoulders dip, ever so slightly, groundward.

She shut out color and shadow and edges of light; shut out, as she could, the scents confined within the still cabin, and listened.

"I have come," this stranger's voice said, "to speak with Evallen, who protects the Arkosa Voyani on their voyage." Inflected slightly, the address was archaic and stilted—but there was, in the words, a respect that was truer than they were.

"She's not here." Margret's voice was thin and reedy when compared with the richness and the depths of this stranger's. Teresa could not help but compare the voices; indeed, the differences seemed to demand no less.

Grandeur, there. Power. Not Margret's.

If, Serra Teresa thought, folding her fan in the stillness by playing with its familiar edges, you were a woman, you might even present a small threat. But the Voyani men don't follow men.

"I… see. I am, perhaps, mistaken about the color of the flag that you fly. I was given to understand that such a flag was flown only in the camp of the Matriarch."

She heard the play of unruly hair against cloth that was the Voyani shrug.

"I assure you that Evallen would find it most—advantageous to speak with me; I do not seek to sell her anything—as you can see, I come with little. But I have word for her, of something she values, perhaps above all else."

"And if she were here, I'm sure she'd be happy," the Voyani daughter replied, in a tone of aggravated boredom; whatever this stranger looked like, it was clear that he had done two things by that appearance: He had impressed Margret with his bearing and confidence, and he radiated a certain authority.

Better to come as a man of earth instead, sweat-stained by labor, but built by it as well. Better to come as a sick man, or a father in fear of the loss of children, better to come as one fleeing from the unjust claims of the Dominion—for it was rumored, and the Serra was only barely able to remain uncertain about the truth of those rumors, that the serafs who fled sometimes found the Voyani before they found death—better, in fact, to come as anything other than a man of power.

For a man of authority and power could only be one thing: of the clans, and important to them. As if to prove the point she had not made, he was silent a long time. But to the surprise of the Serra, his tone, when he spoke, held none of the anger that she felt certain she would hear there. It held, oddly, a dark amusement, a certainty that this was both inevitable and unimportant.

"Tell her only this, then. We have the keys to Arkosa, and we are willing to grant them to its rightful owners."

She rose then, swiftly, urgently—rose with the grace of a lifetime of graceful movement, but without care for it, thought for it—and reached the window in time to see the cloaked hue of a stranger's back.

"Hey, Margret," one of the young men said, "should we stop him?"

She saw the young woman shake her head.

"But what's he mean? Is he threatening Evallen?"

She shook her head again; her hair was a cascade of darkness that still caught and reflected light.

"Why did he say—"

"I don't know, Nicu, but if you don't shut up, the answer won't matter to you." To punctuate the sentence, Margret drew a dagger that was slender enough to disappear as she turned it on its edge.

He shrugged, shoved his hands in the sash across his midriff, leaned back against the wagon. The Serra Teresa would never become accustomed to this; the man honestly did not take offense at the threat. None of the men would, with the exception of her brother, and indeed, had this Nicu—a fine young man with broad shoulders and sun-browned skin—drawn knife in return, the others would have made him regret it. Whether or not he survived that regret was entirely a matter of their affections—or hers—although in truth it was rare that the Voyani killed each other.

Usually, when they did, it was in a fine and black temper, and the memory of it lingered. There was, however, no love lost whatever between the clans; of the four, two were currently involved in almost open warfare. As long as that war did not spread into the villages owned by the Tyrs and the Tors, it was overlooked with some malice.

The young woman came back to her wagon, and as she turned, she shoved the dagger, with more force than such an obviously well-crafted weapon deserved, into its sheath.

But it was her face that told much; the expression on it heightened by a lack of color, a forced neutrality that must be hard indeed for a woman of her temperament to achieve.

The Serra was standing. "I will leave you, Margret. I am sorry to deliver so little news, and all of it bad."

The younger woman's anger was a guttered flame; gone. She looked across at Teresa as if desperate for guidance, even if it was not, and never to be again, her mother's. "Do you know what he said?"

"What who said?"

"That man—"

"Who was the man?"

"I—" She stopped. Flushed. "I didn't ask."

"Was he a clansman?"

"I'm certain of it." Then she stopped again. "I was certain of it. Teresa—you—"

"She cannot help you, Margret. But will you speak to an outsider of affairs of the Arkosa? If you will, speak to me, and only to me."

They turned at once at an unfamiliar, a new, voice. The wagon's flap lay almost shut and no one—save Adam, whose home it also was, or Evallen herself—disturbed Margret when those flaps were shut. Not if they didn't want a sound beating.

But Margret of the Arkosa Voyani—Margret, now protector of, and mother to, her clan—drew back as if she saw an apparition. "You," she said softly.

"You remember me."

Margret's face had lost the last of the color that was not granted her by the grace of the sun's harsh touch. "It was you," she whispered, the three words raw. "You. My mother—"

"I am not responsible for Evallen's choice," the woman in midnight blue replied. And Serra Teresa di'Marano heard the alloyed uneasiness in her voice that spoke of both truth and lie. "Nor am I responsible for her death. She accepted the responsibility of Arkosa."

"You took her away."

"She asked it, Margret. She asked me for vision."

"It's not your right—it wasn't your right—"

"She had the Sight, but not the clear ability to See."

"And you showed her her death, didn't you?"

"I? No. But I will not lie to you because we will speak again, often, you and I: she saw it."

The Serra wished to leave, because she had never heard a person speak who so clearly spoke with the wind's voice as this stranger did. This woman, this intruder—her voice was the voice of one who has seen enough horror to go completely mad—but who, somehow, barely has the strength to remain true in the face of the incomprehensible.

But the woman who wore a length of midnight blue that went from head to toe, turned at that moment and bowed to her in the Northern fashion. "Serra Teresa," she said.

"You speak," Teresa replied, "with the voice of the winds."

"Yes." Ferocity, in that single word; bitterness. Triumph perhaps, but one so tired there was no joy in it. She returned her attention to the younger woman. "You know what that… man meant to offer."

Margret said, "You will not speak of this in front of the Serra, or I will be forced to kill her."

"Kill her, and your mother will never return to you. Accept it, Margret. You are not a fool. Your mother knew what she was doing, and knows it still. She has given you the guiding hand."

"I never took her charity." Margret dragged the back of her hand across her eyes. "I never asked to be guided."

"No. Perhaps not. But this is not a matter of charity. This is a matter of the Arkosans, of Arkosa, and if your own jealousy prevents you from seeing it, if your own pride prevents you from acting, you will have doomed your mother to a pointless death. It is, of course, your choice; only the living can give a death purpose."

It was a Voyani saying.

Margret was sullen, and she was fearful, and she was hesitant, and all of these things were in her voice when she turned stiffly and spoke—to Teresa. "What must I do to bring my mother home?"

"I do not know."

"You know where this—this Serra is."

"I do know where she is kept, yes. Under guard, by the Tyran of the newly anointed Tyr'agar, in the Tor Leonne."

"And how are we to send word to her?"

"I will carry word, if I am able."

"You could have carried the—" She stopped; brought hand to eyes again, rubbing hard against the skin there.

"I am not granted free passage; I am only a Serra." She was silent, carefully weighing the words that she meant to speak. "I am certain," she said at last, "that your mother's death was indirectly ordered by the Tyr'agar, in ignorance of her identity. I am watched, Margret, but I am—barely—trusted. She is not. If I were to take anything from her, especially now, it might doom us all. It would certainly draw attention to—to things that are best left in the harem of an unmarried girl's father."

"Teresa—"

"I believe that war is coming. It was not announced after the Lord's Festival; it is likely, therefore, that it will be announced after the Lady's." She knelt into the faded cushions at her feet. "That will be our last night, I think, of freedom."

"We're not waiting until the Festival of the Moon!"

"I would prefer that you did not," Teresa replied. "For that is nearly six months away, and the armies that will gather in that time should never have been called to gather."

"What do you mean?"

"Night is falling, Margret, protector of Arkosa. I do not pretend to understand what links you to your mother, and Evallen to her mother before her. But Evallen came because she understood this, and this alone: That the Lord of Night has been awakened."

Margret was as silent as stone, and of the same shade, although her hair was still dark, and her eyes even darker. The eyes she closed; she drew breath as if breathing caused her pain, and then spit, once, to the side. When she opened her eyes, Teresa thought she had aged years; whether or not they were enough, the Serra could not be certain; only action would decide that, and action lay in the future.

"You are… brave, Serra," the stranger said.

"It is one of the many things one might forge out of desperation and fear," the Serra replied gravely, in the face of this stranger's boldness.

"We will meet again, I think." The stranger bowed. "I am Evayne a'Nolan, and in this, I serve the Lady's cause." Again, there was a strong thread of truth, of lie, woven into a single fabric: her voice.

"If you serve the Lady's cause," the Serra replied, "I have no doubt of that at all."

"Margret," Evayne a'Nolan said. "I will return as I am able."

"Don't bother," Margret replied tonelessly. Forcelessly. She didn't look as Evayne walked out of the wagon, to disappear before the window framed her back in open sunlight.

They were silent, Teresa and Margret. Silent, bereft a moment of the buffer the stranger had provided. It was, of course, the Serra Teresa who spoke first; she was trained to be, in all things, graceful.

"Margret, I do not know for certain if I will be able to return to you, or if you will be able to return to me; I am sent on the road as messenger for my brothers. Therefore, I bid you accept this, and accept it as a token."

"Of what?"

The Serra's smile was thin. "Of your will, and the truth of the offer you make, if you choose to make it at all." Her right hand covered her left for a moment, and when it withdrew, it held a single ring. Gold encircled emerald, and the emerald was a very fine one. Of such things had oaths been made.

She held it out to the young Voyani woman. "Have this delivered to my niece, and she will know that your summons is genuine."

"And if I sell it?"

"Then she will not know, and will make her decision based upon her need and her instinct."

"Just like that, eh? Are you made of stone, Teresa? Have you a heart of steel and harsh light, like all of your men do? Do you love nothing living that doesn't tread on four legs?"

"Would it matter to you," the Serra asked softly, her voice as calm and placid as it usually was, "if I had a heart as true as your own, but better hidden? Would anything suffice to prove its existence to you but gaudy display?"

"Maybe," Margret said grudgingly. "Maybe not. Did you plan it? Did you know I'd say yes?"

"Yes," Teresa replied. "When you knew who your enemy was— who our enemy was—I knew it. What other answer could you offer?"

Margret held out an open palm, and Teresa laid in it the only object that she valued, the only tie that bound her, personally, to the past, and to past deaths. Oh, there was the daughter, her niece—-but she had not been a gift of oath and binding, not a gift to Teresa of love, although she had grown to love her.

Alora. She bowed, both as a gesture of respect and a way of hiding her face for a moment. The path ring was gone. It was done.

Margret held herself in until the flaps swung open; until they swung shut; until they ceased to swing at all at the passing of perhaps the finest Serra in all the Dominion of Annagar. And then she turned in a rage to the low, flat table.

It had been her way, since the days of her childhood, to vent her anger on things that did not vent back—and it had been beaten into her early that those things best served her that also could not fight back. Because other children could hit and bite and scratch as they liked—they would not be the protector of the Voyani. Only she, if she was responsible enough to survive it.

Evallen had never been particularly kind to her daughter. Her son, Adam, she adored, and openly. Margret had thought to hate him forever when he first came into her life. She succeeded in hating him until he was two, and at two the fact that he adored her had thawed the ice of her anger in a way that her mother's remonstrations had—and would always—fail to do.

Still, if he came upon her now, she'd probably slap him, and he hated it when she was angry; he was always so proud of her. Aie, but his pride was already a heavy chain around her neck; it prickled her. She hated the responsibility of living up to it, but she loved the glow of it. Brothers. Kin.

In her hand, the ring was warm. She started to slide it on to her finger, and then noted ruefully that it would at best slide over the knuckle of her extra fingers—the small ones on the end. If that. She was tempted not to try because Teresa already made her feel old and ugly, and she was half the Serra's age or less. Spitting, she pulled out one of the several strands of gold that hung round her neck. She unclasped it and added the ring to its weight before letting it fall beneath the folds of her shirt.

This was her personal treasure; if the wagons met flood or fire or worse, she could flee and still be certain of survival in the Dominion. She knew its byways well enough. They all knew how to survive on nothing.

Nothing, they had a lot of.

More of, now that her mother was gone.

She sank to the floor, her hands in curled fists upon the scored flat of the table. She couldn't cry; not yet. She couldn't link the death to the Serra, the Serra to the death. Oh, Adam might suspect—he was so sweet, it was easy to think him stupid as well, and he wasn't—but no one else should; she'd have trouble enough when the word got out.

But she'd also have people to mourn with, to grieve with.

The clans—they were cold and hard and alone. They paid fealty to blood ties without understanding the strength of them, the fire that forged. She wondered—for the first time, for the only time— if this was how Teresa felt, for this was the first time that she had had to hide word so large from her kin. She wanted to speak it now; she wanted to dissolve the lump of it from her throat with word and song and the comfort of the arms of her kin; her uncle, her aunt, her cousins. She wanted her mother to be respected, to be mourned, to be avenged. And more. Much more.

The Lord of Night.

Ah, Lady, Lady—not now. Not on her head. Not on hers. What did she know? She was not Evallen; she did not have the pendant, and until she did, she was not truly Matriarch.

But to get that pendant, she must risk more than her mother risked: the Arkosa Voyani in the Tor Leonne itself. She must make the decisions that a Matriarch would make without the power that had sustained the Matriarchs before her: the legacy of the line that went, unbroken, from mother to daughter, mother to daughter.

Oh, she'd have to marry, too. Marry one or another of her cousins or second cousins; she needed daughters now; at least one, although most Voyani women had at least two for security's sake. The thought made her grind her teeth, but it was easier than thinking of death, of her mother's death, of the terrible need to hide it versus the terrible need to speak it and have done.

They must move; they must plan. A month, she thought, and her mother's death could be somehow discovered. No, two, to be certain that the Serra passed above it.

Because Margret was not the only one to hate the clansmen, and she could not add her mother's death to their list of crimes; not now, not when they were necessary.

She wept, and she found that lonely tears satisfied none of the ache.

Do you cry? she wondered, as she rose heavily. Do you cry, Serra ? Do you only cry alone ?

Yes. Yet it had been to the Serra that her mother had spoken the truth. And it was the daughter who needed it who would have to do without. Anger was an important weapon in Margret's life; she used it now.

Wished she could use it against someone beside herself.

CHAPTER ONE

14th of Maran, 427 AA

Terafin Manse, Averalaan

She woke screaming.

It was nothing new. They'd been half expecting it, her bleary-eyed compatriots; she'd woken them, screaming, every night for the past eight days, and she'd remembered so little of the dreams that had sent her back to the waking world in such terror that she'd probably had no choice but to do it all over again.

Teller, Finch, Carver, and Angel—they were used to this. They'd lived with it for many years, first in the twenty-fifth holding and then as part of House Terafin, although it had seldom been this bad as she'd grown into her talent. Daine—given leave by a testy Alowan to sleep outside of the healerie—found it more trying.

"It's not the screaming," he said, as he joined the weary procession in the hall that led to Jewel's room. "It's the frenzy. It sounds as if she's going mad with helplessness."

"Unlike the rest of us, who are just going mad with lack of sleep." Light glinted off the surface of an expensive dagger. Shadows hugged the undersides of Carver's eyes.

"Hey, you know what they say," Finch told him, shoving a very stubborn swathe of hair out of her eyes for the fifth time.

"No. At this hour of night I barely know what I say, never mind anyone else. What do they say?"

"No one has a right to sleep. It's a privilege."

Daine snorted. "Sounds like you've been talking to midwives."

"Yeah, well. The cook's wife just gave birth to her first child, and the midwife gave a long lecture the entire time she was birthing." Finch snorted. Angel stepped around her with practiced ease, and pushed the door to Jewel's room open. "I'd've decked her, myself. Hold that thing steady. She'll want the light."

"She already has light," Jewel said, interrupting their conversation.

Of course. Avandar stood in her room, unwavering shadow that he was. His fist was glowing, or rather, the rock that sat cradled in the curve of his palm was. The shadows beneath his eyes made Carver's look handsome.

"You look like crap," Finch said sweetly.

He gave her the frown she more or less expected.

They'd grown around him, the way vines do around rocks, but they'd never managed to make him one of their own. Daine had already been swallowed whole. Of course, that might have more to do with the fact that he'd had to call Jay back from the brink of death, holding her soul inside his as he walked her back into the land of the living. .

Which, she thought, only barely described the den this particular evening.

"Get anything this time?" Teller asked hopefully. What he meant, what he wouldn't expose her by saying, was, Are you willing to talk about it yet?

She shook her head. Stopped. Nodded.

The door to her room was open; she could see them so clearly in the lamp-dimmed dark, she wondered if her vision weren't augmented somehow. If it was her gift, it was a bad sign.

But the clearest face, pressed as it was between the shoulders of Angel and Carver—who would never lose the habit of drawing their weapons, even if the weapons drawn had changed, when they heard that cry—was Teller's.

"Jay," he said. Quietly.

Teller, to whom she could never lie. At least not successfully.

Avandar was in the habit of correcting her den when they questioned her too commonly; he was not in the habit of interrupting them when their questions—or accusations, in this case—were contained beneath the surface of a single inquisitive word.

Her shoulders slumped; she slouched into her height.

"Jay?"

"Kitchen," she whispered.

She dropped into her chair, sliding it against the rugless kitchen floor with a satisfying squeak. Her feet were bare. Everyone got to see them; she propped them up on the table's edge and leaned back on two of the chair's four legs. It was warm enough that slippers made her feet sweat, and she hated sweating.

Angel dropped the lamp at its place by her side, or in this case, by her feet. Teller took a seat, quill in hand, inkstand long and shadowed by the flickering of burning oil. His hands were steady. Hers, oddly enough, were not; she kept them in her lap. They all knew that as a bad sign.

"You should be practicing," Avandar said quietly. "Whatever it is you've seen, it should be coming to you in your waking hours, and at your command. You are the seer; your visions are subject to your will."

"Avandar—"

"Or they should be."

"We've had this argument before."

"It is not an argument, Jewel. I merely state fact."

"I like your jaw enough to ask you to stop stating fact, okay?"

It wasn't entirely impossible that she'd lose her temper and slug him, although she almost never did anymore. House training had taken her temper away from her in bits and pieces and forced her to hide it in the strangest places.

"Very well," Avandar said, not at all bothered by the threat. "Your dream."

"It involves you, so pay attention."

That got their attention. She didn't really want it. "I've been having the dreams again."

Carver snorted. "So tell us something we couldn't guess."

"You know the drill. Three dreams. Three nights."

"You've had 'em longer than three nights, Jay. It's been— what—at least a week. I think tonight's the eighth night. If it's the same dream, that's some wyrd, all right."

"It's the same dream."

"What is it?" from Teller.

"I'm alone. I'm traveling alone. I think I'm the scout at the head of an army, but whenever I turn around, there's only one man behind me."

"Who?"

She raised her head. "He's wearing armor. But it's so bloody it looks like red steel. He's carrying a sword that's jagged and curved, a great sword—but he holds it in one hand. I know that I wouldn't even be able to lift it. A great helm hides his face, but not his eyes—his eyes—"

She could hear the scritch of Teller's quill against paper as she paused to draw breath.

"In his wake, as if he's a tide, there are just so many dead. I can only see them truly in the shadow he casts, but everything is there. It's as if he's just walked through all of history leaving a corpse behind for every year that's passed. Children. Women. Men in the strangest armor I've ever seen.

"He—"

Silence. They were waiting. She hated that they were waiting, but she appreciated that they could. "I've never done anything really important without you," she said quietly. Her voice was the dream's voice, but her words were her own. She saw Carver and Angel glance side to side; saw Finch frown. Arann wasn't with them; Daine looked—because he was smart—to Teller.

Teller continued to write.

"I realize that he only walks when I walk. That if I stand in place, his shadow doesn't grow any longer. So I stop."

"Then," she said softly, "I hear horses. Or something that sounds like horses. They come from where I've been heading. I look up, and I see her."

Silence. Edged now, sharp with things unsaid.

They waited while the oil burned.

"She is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life. Her skin is fair and unblemished, her hair is long and pale and fine."

Teller frowned. "Long and pale and fine, like a blade's edge, she pierced their hearts and led them, led them all, the fine chase, the dark road."

They all turned, even Jewel.

"It's the poem. Shurtlev's 'Winter Hunt.' You remember it."

"I… remember it." Jewel closed her eyes. "But this… woman… She is mounted on—on a creature that was once human. At least I assume it was; it has a human face." Her eyes almost snapped open; she was denying the clarity of vision; replacing it with the familiarity of friendship.

"I want to run. But she's already seen me. She knows who I am. She knew who I was, even though I've said nothing. She lifts a horn to her lips and blows it; they appear at her side."

"They?"

"Her host."

"Jewel."

She turned to look at Avandar, who had only barely learned not to interrupt her.

"When you say host, what do you mean? This… hunt… Teller is correct. It is described in Shurtlev's 'Winter Hunt,' and it may be—"

"Thousands."

"Pardon?"

"Thousands. She's emptied her court."

"How do you know this?"

"It's my damn dream," she snapped back irritably. "How the Hells do I know anything in a dream?" But she choked back the rest of what was only hysteria trying to find expression. "She—gods, she was so beautiful—she says, 'We've come for the Hunt; the hunting has never been so good.' And then she calls my name.

"I know I'm dead. She's just so compelling, I'm not sure I care. But then he speaks, I mean, the man who's been following me. He says, 'Only give me the word, and I will save you.'

"He steps forward. And as he does, the dead pile up at his back. Only this time, I can hear them screaming; I can see them falling; I can see the shadows swallowing them whole. It makes him stronger. It feeds him.

"I tell him to stop. I tell him to stop. And she—she rides in." The lamplight flickered. She stared at it, into its heart. "The bodies appear to either side of her, as if they're some sort of afterthought, as if they're just dust from the road.

"And then he says, 'Do not challenge me.'

"She says, 'I have her name.'

"He says, 'The name gives you the right to combat, but it is power that decides her fate.'

"And she waves her hand, her unmailed, pale hand, and the land to either side of the road we're standing on is suddenly turned to desert; it falls away. Behind her, behind the body of her host, is a lake that glitters like diamond; cold, beautiful. She says, 'These lands were my lands, and I mark them still. What was given was given, and thanks are offered and my ceremonies performed, however weak those have become.'

"And he says, 'I will pass through, and I will take what I have claimed.' "

"Jay?"

"He lifts his helm then."

She turned in her chair.

1

Her domicis stiffened in the silent kitchen.

"Avandar?"

"Yes."

"It was you."

He nodded. Stepped back.

It was Teller who said quietly, "It isn't finished yet."

The domicis lifted a dark brow.

"No," Jewel said softly. "It isn't. He takes two steps forward. More dead. I tell him to stop. She stops as well. There's movement from the North—and as they look North, their faces are lit with a sudden light; red light, bright light. It seems to go on forever.

"A voice speaks out of that light.

"It says, 'This world is mine, and all deaths serve my purpose.'

"And then," she said softly, no longer looking at domicis or lamplight—or anything at all—"the killing starts.

"I'm in the middle of it; it's suddenly real. There are faceless people running around screaming in terror; there are dying children, dying women, dying men. They become dead so quickly they slip through my fingers, but if I don't sift through the dying, I won't find them in time.

"And that's why I'm there. To find them."

"To find who?"

"I don't know. I don't know. I've ridden this dream out to its end eight times, and I don't know what it is I'm supposed to know. I only know that I can't fail, or we all—"

Teller put the quill down. Rose. "Jay?" he asked quietly.

She looked across the table at him. Reached out with a shaking hand. "No."

"But we—"

"No."

"What's going on?" Carver's voice. Strained.

"She's leaving," Teller said quietly. "And she doesn't intend on taking any of us with her when she goes."

Moonlight. Darklight, nadir at its strength.

Why was it that she always came to be here when the darkness was strongest? She knelt. She was too weak to stand. The truth. The dead weren't faceless.

Teller knew. She was certain that no one else did.

"I can't do this," she said into the night, into the clarity of emptiness. Avandar had not even contested her desire to visit the shrine without him; although he hovered in the distance, he had chosen to retreat into a privacy as solid as any she could impose upon herself.

But that was acceptable to her. She knew that he understood her dream far better than he wanted to. Knew it. Did not choose to question him. She had her own ghosts, her own demons, her own guilty secrets.

"I can't do this," she said again.

"Then why," he replied, answering at last, "does Teller know that you're leaving?"

She turned, putting the altar firmly behind her.

In the moonlight, pale and thin though it was, she recognized the face he had chosen to wear. Teller's.

"I wish you wouldn't do that."

His eyes were like moonlight. "Why have you come, ATerafin? This is the altar upon which service is pledged. To my House. To me."

"I can't do what you ask of me."

"You have already decided to go."

She looked away. Cursed, not bothering to restrain herself. The night heard the words, and the dead. Neither of them were moved. "Years of dealing with merchants," she told him softly, "and I still can't bluff my way through a negotiation."

A brow rose.

"Yes. This is a negotiation. It just doesn't sound much like one 'cause it's late, I've had no sleep for a week, and I'm always at a disadvantage when dealing with the dead."

"A negotiation occurs when there is something to be negotiated. I fail to see that here."

"Yeah, well. Being dead probably doesn't help much." She tried for flippant. Got most of the way there. But her heart wasn't in it.

There was only one thing her heart was in. "I want you to take care of them."

"Jewel."

"Not the Terafin. I know it doesn't work that way. But them. My den. I want you to protect Teller. And Finch. I need you to watch over them."

"If I could, Jewel Markess, I would watch over all members of my House."

"There must be something you can do. You speak to me."

"Yes, I do," he said softly. "Just as I speak to The Terafin. You understand this, Jewel." He paused. His mannerisms were nothing at all like those of the man whose face he wore, and she wondered why he'd chosen Teller. "Why don't you take them with you?"

"You know why."

"Do I?"

"I don't know if anything is going to survive where I'm going."

"But you know there's no safety here. The truth, Jewel."

She knew why he wore Teller's face, then. Teller was the only one of her den she couldn't lie to. Or rather, the only one who knew when she was lying, and who seemed—by the complicity of silence—to understand why.

"If they're not here, the House falls."

"Yes."

"And if I'm not there, the House falls."

"Yes."

"Gods, I hate this." She spun to the altar and back. Once. Twice. Three times.

"And I," he said softly. "But I will tell you this: they must stand in your stead. Trust them."

She was stony faced. She'd never understood that expression before.

"They offered me their service. I accepted it." The night began to dissolve him. "It may surprise you, but you are not the only ATerafin of import; not the only ATerafin whose service the House depends on. You have surrounded yourself with people you trust. This is not uncommon.

"What is uncommon is that they are—all of them—worthy of that trust. You see clearly. You chose well.

"If I had any choice, I would keep you here. But it comes. Remember this: I left my House to ride with the sons of Veralaan."

"What am I going to tell The Terafin?"

"The truth," he said softly, his voice now as thin as the facade he wore. "She will accept it."

The Terafin sat across the length of the familiar, spotless table. Nothing adorned it; no books, no paperwork, no inkstands or quill, no lamp. But the lights that ringed the edge of the open glasswork above it cast soft reflections. Hers. Jewel ATerafin's.

She had chosen to forgo the domicis; Morretz, seldom excluded, had made his feelings plain by a slight compression of lips even as he bowed. Avandar, on the other hand, had darkened. Had, in fact, turned from The Terafin to Jewel, forcing them both to acknowledge that Jewel was his chosen master, no matter whose gold had paid for—and continued to pay for—the contract.

Jewel, however, was more politic.

Or perhaps more stubborn.

The two women sat in the room, experience, as always, the thing that separated them. But not, The Terafin reflected, as much as it once had. They were older. Wiser, perhaps.

Alone.

She waited for the younger woman to speak first.

Jewel acknowledged the right rank gave her; she spoke. "I'm going South ahead of the armies."

Amarais inclined her head. "I suspected you might. Commander Allen will not, I think, be pleased."

"He might be."

"Oh?"

"If I don't go South, he loses the war. If I go, he has a small chance of winning it."

The Terafin smiled at that. Commander Allen was not an obviously proud man, and he had never been boastful; his way, rather, was to let louder men underestimate him until they had no choice but to acknowledge his superiority. He was not, however, a man to accept that he had either a slender chance of winning or that his chance amounted to a single woman with no knowledge whatever of the strategies or tactics of war.

"And besides, it means I won't have to deal with the Hawk and the Kestrel, and I can tell you, he wasn't looking forward to that."

The Terafin's smile was the only natural thing about the moment, and it faded. They sat alone as if they had always been two solitudes.

"Avandar, of course, will go with you."

"Of course."

Silence.

"Will you take care of my den?"

"Your den, Jewel, are as capable of taking care of themselves as my Chosen."

Silence.

It was awkward. It could hardly be anything but awkward. There was an unspoken assumption that neither woman wished to touch, but that had to be touched upon. The Terafin bowed her head. Took a deep breath. Smiled, the smile itself more of a wince than an expression of happiness or mirth.

"I do not think that I will be here to greet you upon your return."

Jewel had been fidgeting, her eyes drawn from one side of the library's expanse to the other, flicking here and there off book and shelf and table surface. It hadn't been obvious to The Terafin until the moment her words were exposed to the silence— because at that moment, Jewel became part of the silence.

She broke the stillness by rising.

"Isn't that why you came?" The Terafin said, pressing her, rising in turn. "To say good-bye?"

The younger woman's face lost all color, all movement; became a mask, but at that a poor one—one that was translucent, transparent, one that could so easily be seen through. If it weren't for its stiffness, it might have been no mask at all. There were tears.

She did not shed them. At least she had that much control.

"Yes. Yes, Terafin, I came to say good-bye."

"Without actually saying those words?"

The younger ATerafin looked away. "Without actually saying those words."

"Ah."

"You know."

"We know, but Morretz has difficulty acknowledging the eventual end of his service. It is why neither he nor Avandar is present."

Jewel sat.

The Terafin did not; she did not need to. "Have you no comfort to offer me?"

"I'm not much for comfort. Ask Angel. Or Carver."

"Or Teller? Or Daine?"

Jewel flinched. "I'm not much for offering comfort when there's no comfort to be offered. You don't want it. You don't need it."

"Oh, Jewel," The Terafin said softly, "you see, and you do not see. You're wrong. Tonight, in this room, between the two of us, I need comfort.

"I have looked; I have looked as clearly, as harshly, as I dare. I know the end is coming. Your dreams. The House's. My death is not natural. It is not accidental. One of my own will betray me, and if I could see clearly which one, I wouldn't be facing certain death. I see a war beyond the stretch and reach of my life that would have required all of my cunning and all of my experience to survive.

"This House—it is not me. But while I live, it is mine. I have been told by others with the particular experience I lack that my feelings are not unlike a parent's ferocity of affection for her child." She looked up; the stained glass was dark in the quiet night. From this vantage, the heavens weren't unreachable; they simply ceased to exist.

And it was not from the gods that she would make the only demand that would ease her.

"I had hoped that you would come to me. And you have." She looked across the table at the stricken younger woman.

"Terafin—"

"You know what I ask of you."

Jewel's mouth opened. Closed. She nodded.

"Offer me farewells, if that will ease you. But offer me something that will ease me. I have never asked it, Jewel. But this is the point of no return. When you leave, when you walk through the gates with your domicis, the ties between us are sundered although no one else will know it. I have given you all that I can give, and I have been pleased, even proud of what you have achieved.

"But what you have achieved pales against what you must achieve.

"This House—"

Jewel backed away from the table.

The Terafin thought she would flee. Was surprised at how much it cut when she did, in fact, walk quickly and stiffly toward the doors.

Was surprised at how much it meant when she stopped there, her hands on either side of the crack between them, her forehead pressed against the heavy wood. She lifted her head. Turned.

Her cheeks were wet with tears.

This, this, was why she had demanded, and received, privacy. Because The Terafin could not be seen to be weak, no matter how unnatural such a facade was.

She said, "I don't want you to die."

The Terafin said nothing.

"I don't want to accept what you offer because accepting— accepting it means that I've accepted your death."

"It is not an offer, Jewel. Make no mistake. It is a plea. It is a command. It is a responsibility. But an offer? No. Nothing so simple."

"Terafin—"

"No."

"Amarais."

The Terafin bowed. "Yes. Here, in this room, between us, that is all I am. I have no idea how I will die; I accept that I will, in your absence. It pains me. I confess a certain fear, a morbid curiosity, an unsettling anger. I will, of course, fight it. That is my nature. But I will have your word, here, or I will have your name."

It took a moment for the threat to sink in. She was patient. Wished that she could be more patient—but the time for waiting had passed. I had hoped, she thought, staring at this woman who, born into power, might have been her younger self, that you would come to me on your own.

Ah, well.

"This House means many things to me. But it stands for something. The Sword is Justice, and it is the House Sword."

"What do you want from me?"

"Everything. Protect Alowan. Preserve my Chosen, if they will it. Preserve my House from the war that will divide it if they do not. Become Terafin, Jewel. Become The Terafin."

"You're The Terafin. I know no other."

It was spoken so quietly The Terafin could have chosen not to hear the tremor in the voice, the break, subtle and slight, between syllables.

"You will know no other while I live," she said quietly, stating the obvious because Jewel ATerafin needed to hear it. "Isn't that what this is about? In you, tonight, I see my death. I hate it." The vehemence of the word surprised her. She swallowed. Looked away. Looked back; she owed Jewel that much. "But I also see life, of a sort. The life of my House. You are not who I am. But we value the same things. You will never destroy what I have built."

The younger woman was weeping now, silent and open-eyed. It was painful to watch. She watched, however; those tears were both for her and cried in her stead.

"Jewel Markess ATerafin, I name you my heir. You will serve the House and you will serve the Sword, and if the gods will it, they will serve you."

The tears were slow to stop, but they stopped.

"I will make no announcement. The House is already divided; the war is already in motion. But my death will deliver the news to the four least likely to accept it."

"To the five," Jewel said faintly, attempting to smile. The humor did not fall flat; Amarais accepted it for what it was. "Avandar will be so pleased."

"Yes."

"Morretz?"

She looked away. "He is not what you require. He will not, I think, serve another. Not for years, if at all. The option is open to teach, and many men who choose a life of service, rather than the contracts that are more common, often retire to teach others when the life of their chosen master is abruptly ended.

"Jewel."

The moment stretched out until it was so thin something had to break.

Jewel ATerafin slid, by painful inches, to one knee. "I give you my word," she said softly. "The House will be Terafin, and I—" silence.

Amarais waited.

The tears stopped completely, although their tracks lit her face in wide lines.

"And I will rule- it."

Avandar was waiting for Jewel. The doors to the hall outside of this library had never seemed so heavy, and flight from them so necessary, in all of her years of service. From the first day, struggling for the perfect control that would give her the key to the House if she impressed the cold, forbidding woman on the other side of the table, to the weekly meeting called among the quiet walls of books, this had been the private recess of The Terafin, the place of judgment, the citadel of strength.

Gone, of course.

She wished, desperately wished, that The Terafin had chosen any other room in which to give her orders. In which to make her pleas.

"Jewel."

She'd been avoiding his gaze.

His gaze, she could. He served her, after all. She shook her head, looking at the floor as it passed beneath her moving feet.

But dammit, she was angry, and there was no one else to take it out on. She wheeled on him, disappointed for once that he'd kept his distance. "You wanted to serve a person of power," she said, surprised she could force the words from between her teeth, "so you'd better bloody well be up to it."

His gaze was cool. Condescending, in fact.

Just in case she missed this—and to give him his due, she often did—he said, "Are you finished yet?"

She almost slapped him.

"If I am to serve a person of power, Jewel, you had better be prepared to become one. This… display… is unbecoming, even in a person of the rank you have now."

She was silent because he was right. She'd even forgive him for it someday, although the aggregate of his offenses had piled up enough over the years that it didn't have to be any time soon.

"Let's go," she snapped, turning on her heel. "If we're leaving tomorrow, we've got a lot to do before we go."

"We do." He was quiet a moment. "I must speak with Morretz before we leave."

"Morretz?"

"I believe that's what I said."

"Why?"

Avandar didn't answer. He wasn't going to. He never answered questions about his past. But the futility of asking seemed comfortably familiar. She asked.

His silence, stony and completely impenetrable, made his annoyance plain. She shrugged. "Fine. Go talk with Morretz. I'm going back to the den."

To tell them what?

She froze a moment, hovering between choices that all seemed bad.

And because she froze, she was close enough to hear him.

"Jewel," he said softly, "I am sorry."

Torvan ATerafin came to her.

She had requested his company because she hadn't the right to command. Not yet.

But he came as if the request was a command, damn him.

"Jewel?" he said, as he came to a stop in the narrow doorway of her kitchen. A lamp was burning, even though the day was bright through the windows.

"Don't tell me. I look awful."

"Awful wasn't the word I was going to use."

"Oh?"

"It's politer." He frowned. At the lamp. Gods, he didn't miss a damn thing.

"Yes," she said, because she knew he wouldn't ask. "It's magicked. Avandar's little gift. What I have to say to you I can't afford to have anyone else hear."

"Where is Avandar?"

She was silent.

He matched her silence with a frown. "I heard that you went to speak to The Terafin."

"I did."

"I heard that you'd argued."

"Good."

"She hasn't revoked your name."

"No."

"Or your crest."

"No."

"Jewel?"

"Yes?"

"You didn't argue."

"We did, but it wasn't much of one. She has all the cards. I don't even have enough left over to make a bet."

"Why did you want to speak with me?"

"Because," she said, rising, "I'm leaving. Tomorrow."

His brows furrowed in confusion; she might have been speaking Torra. She could.

"We'll save the fond farewells," she said, after five minutes had elapsed and the oil had noticeably diminished. "I was to go South with the armies."

"I'd heard that. I hadn't heard they were moving."

"Well, now I'm going as… advance scout."

"There's a reason most scouts are well-paid and highly pensioned."

She laughed bitterly. "I'll be highly paid, all right."

"Jewel—"

"You're captain."

"Pardon?"

"You're captain. You're my captain. When the Chosen lose their leader, make them follow you."

She saw his eyes narrow. Blade's edge now; all frivolity, all humor, gone. "You're speaking about the death of The Terafin."

Gods, the words were cold. She wanted to cry again, standing here, in front of the man who had opened the House to her. Instead, she drew her shoulders back, achieving her full height. That brought her up to his shoulder. Almost.

"What," she said softly, "do you think we were arguing about? You knew what she wanted from me." It was an accusation, and it was the truth. It was also a surprise; a touch of gift that she hadn't even been reaching for.

He was very, very stiff.

"I haven't slept for nine days. I am so tired of this. If I had known what I know now when I first came to your gates—"

"You would have let Arann die?"

She looked at him, hating him for just that moment. "Gods, are you all sons of bitches?"

He surprised her. "Yes." There was something in his expression that she couldn't quite define to her satisfaction, but it replaced the cold anger that had framed the words that included Terafin and death. That had to be an improvement. "Answer the question."

She started to answer, to say something flippant, but the words got mangled by the emotion she was so bad at suppressing.

"Isn't that what I'm risking anyway?"

"Is it?"

"I'm leaving them behind." She looked at light's unnecessary reflection against the surface of the table. Easier than meeting his eyes.

He wasn't one of hers; he didn't touch her. He waited more or less patiently until she looked up again. "I'm leaving you behind."

Waited. Grim now.

"I'm deserting her."

"She can take care of herself."

His turn to flinch. She shook her head. She said, "You're the captain." Past caring now. "You're the only one who'll have prior knowledge. Start preparing." Her hands were fists. She didn't notice until she lifted them and forced them to unfurl; her fingers were literally shaking.

"Torvan—"

"Yes?"

"Protect my den."

She stood, ending the interview.

He said formally, "ATerafin."

"What?"

"Who will she leave this information with?"

"Damned if I know. That's one of the few things that isn't my problem."

"You've never been involved in a House War," he replied softly. "If it's not secure information, it will be far more your problem than any other worry you have now."

"Me."

"As interested party, your word will count for less than nothing."

"Torvan," she said, her voice as quiet as it had been all morning, "don't take this personally, but get out."

He shut up. He left.

And one of the few good things she was certain about as she watched his back disappear was that he wouldn't take it personally.

One more. Only one more to go.

16th of Maran, 427 AA

Avantari, Averalaan Aramarelas

"Wait outside."

Avandar frowned. "Jewel—"

"This won't take long. I won't be in danger. And as far as I can tell—for the usual reasons—the Astari hate you."

"The usual reasons being no reason at all, I assume."

"Right the first time." Although to be fair—which she wasn't going to be—they seemed to hate everyone who had displayed even a trace of magic, and Avandar had certainly done that.

"Jewel—"

"It's only Devon," she said, before she had to hear the rest of the lecture.

"You don't seem to understand, all protestations and anger aside, that he serves another master."

"Oh, I understand it, all right."

"Jewel—"

"But maybe he serves another master just as obediently as you serve me."

That shut him up for the ten seconds she needed. She slid past him and into the office of Patris Larkasir's adjutant.

He rose at once, his eyes widening ever so slightly. That was Devon's version of unguarded surprise.

"Jewel?"

"ATerafin," she replied, setting the tone of their meeting with the formality of his title. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything important."

"It depends on who you ask. Patris Larkasir would consider these important." His hand touched a large pile of officially sealed documents.

"I'd like to speak to you in private for a moment."

"George. Please leave us."

The young man who was Devon's only obvious assistant bowed at once. Jewel privately thought he was one of the Astari, but she' d never asked. It didn't really matter. He left them alone, and that was all she wanted from him at the moment.

He waited until the door had closed, although from the way his eyes flickered over the frame, Avandar was practically standing in it.

"Why have you come?"

"To deliver a message."

"From The Terafin?"

"Sort of."

He waited. She was silent.

"Jewel, it's not like you to play waiting games."

"It's not a game."

"What is it?"

"Loss of words. I don't know what to say. No, not true. I don't know how to say it."

He waited.

She said, "I'm leaving."

"Pardon?"

"I'm leaving to go South."

"I'm aware of that. Unless," he added quietly, "you don't mean with the army."

"No, I don't mean with the army."

"What's happened?"

"It's not what has happened, it's what will happen. It's always what will happen with me. Birth defect."

"What will happen?"

She laughed, looking away.

He didn't.

"Jewel."

"End of the world. That sort of thing."

"You'll pardon me if the humor falls a little flat."

"Probably."

"Jewel, why did you come here?"

"Gods alone know. I want you to do me a favor."

"Have we had this discussion before?"

"Not exactly the same one, no."

"But this is House business."

Damn him. "What else?"

He leaned casually against the edge of his desk. Any other man would have hit the pile of Larkasir's documentation—it was close enough to the edge—but Devon knew exactly where to sit. She longed, just once, to see him clumsy. Gods knew he'd seen her trip over nothing more than her own two feet on several occasions.

"I'm going South. I'll join the army later."

His smile was thin and dangerous. "You aren't going South with the permission of the Kings' armies."

Devon, you are such a bastard. She smiled. "It's confidential; I prefer not to discuss it."

"I'm sorry, ATerafin. That wasn't a question."

Of course not.

She trusted this man. She knew it not because of the safety she felt when she was with him—it had been years since he'd offered her shelter that she could accept—but because of the anger.

Her smile didn't happen. She got it halfway up her mouth and let it drop. "Don't play stupid games with me, Devon."

He said nothing.

"Does The Terafin know that you spy on the House? Does she know that you—"

"Of course she knows it," he said, the snap in his words as obvious a sign of either anger or weariness as he had ever shown. "She's not a child."

"And I am?"

Again, he retreated to the sting of silence.

When he took up his words again, they were measured. Careful. He was, of course, no less angry. "The Terafin knows I spy on the House. It's one of the ways in which she proves her loyalty to the Crowns. Make no mistake, ATerafin. This is my calling. I am Astari. She could have released me from her service and taken back my name; it would have damaged my ability to hold visible royal office, and it would have changed the role of my life outside of the Astari, but it would not have changed my decision."

She was shocked into silence of her own, which had happened just enough recently that she almost instantly resented it. She worked off the discomfort her anger produced by walking across the room and yanking the curtains shut. The light that filtered through them anyway was muted, reddened; the material in her hand was stubbled like raw silk. She pried her fingers loose.

"You've never said that to The Terafin." The words, like the light just beyond her hands, were muted.

"The Terafin," he replied coolly, "is far too politic to ask. What do you think I am, Jewel? I am her peace offering; I am her pledge of allegiance. I am her willingness—in tangible form—to cooperate with the man whose life is the protection of the Kings.

"And in return for this, she partakes of the information I receive as a member of the Astari."

"You tell her nothing."

"I tell her nothing, but she is not naive enough to believe that the value of my service is dependent on open words. Can you separate your knowledge, your experience, from yourself in any meaningful way? Can you act upon things that you know as if you don't know them, and never have?"

The silence lasted a full thirty seconds before she realized it was a question he meant her to answer.

It lasted a little bit longer before he accepted the fact that she wouldn't.

"No," he replied. "You can't. No more can I. You can, if you desire, lie about your knowledge."

Her lips thinned.

"The Terafin was always wise enough not to put me in the position of having to lie; she understands the politics of what she does—and doesn't—choose to do." He turned. "And perhaps that's not true. She has forced the issue once or twice in my tenure as part of Terafin. And each time I've managed to balance. The House is of value to me. The Terafin is a woman I admire, and she acts, in as much as any ranking member of the patriciate can, with conscience. Perhaps more so than Duvari." He shrugged. "Is this what you came for?"

Silent, she shook her head.

"So. You will go South without the army. But you will not go without the permission of The Terafin."

"No."

"And you will not take your den."

"No."

"Jewel, I fail to see—"

"I came to tell you that what one woman accepts with ease, another might reject."

"Were we speaking of women?"

His smile slid off the mirthless ice of her expression. "Here's something you can give to that bastard."

He knew she meant Duvari.

"You don't have to thank me. I imagine you'd find out anyway, in time. Does he have members of other Houses doing the same dance?"

"Of course. I am the only open member; the only ranking member. And to be honest, he does not put much of his effort into the Houses. They war amongst each other, but they have never had any pretensions to either of the thrones."

"True enough."

"Your information?"

"I know who The Terafin will make her heir."

"I hope she doesn't intend to announce that information prematurely; it certainly didn't extend the life of the previous heir."

Her laugh was an angry laugh, ugly with harshness, something that shouldn't have been able to go on as long as it did, it sounded so forced. She shoved her hair out of her eyes, catching strands of it in her House ring. Hurt, as she pulled them out. "The life of the heir is almost never at risk. Not this heir."

He was absolutely silent then.

"That's right," she said softly. "It's just me, Jewel the power monger. I guess I've gotten what I wanted."

"Jewel—"

"And what I want, what I want from you, patris of the fence-sitters, is commitment."

"Then ask," he said, and she thought he was paler although it was hard to tell, "when you take the title."

She hadn't thought she'd continue. Would have been smartest not to. But her words were tumbling faster than she could catch 'em; she couldn't shut up.

"I won't be here to ask. I'll be in the South, searching among the slaughtered for gods only know what. And you know what? It'll make what we found in Cordufar look pretty. It'll be—"

He caught her. Shook her. She didn't fight.

But she didn't stop. Flow broken, the words took a moment to reassert themselves. "Gods, worse; I can hear it now, and I'm not even on the road. And while I'm not here—while I'm not here, everyone will come this close to death—but I can't see who will cross over. I can't see whose bodies are lying in the wake of the Terafin War. And I want—I don't want—I can't save—"

"Jewel."

"I'm sorry, Devon," she said, her voice breaking, growing quieter and smaller in the wake of the command he had made of her name. "But I don't want her to die. And I can't stop it."

He said, "She knows." It was a question; he so seldom asked them it took her a moment.

She nodded.

"She knows." He stood, his arms on her shoulders, his face perfectly still. And then he said, "I'll do what I can to protect them."

"And if it's not in the best interests of the Astari?"

"Let your den know. Tell them that when I send word—or bring it—they're to follow that word to the letter."

"Devon—"

"Don't say it. Don't ask it." He turned to look out the window she had covered with fabric. Stopped. "We had better win this war," he said softly at last, "and it had better be worth the cost."

CHAPTER TWO

5th of Scaral, 427 AA

Tor Leonne, Terrean of Raverra

The most beautiful woman in the Dominion of Annagar faced her interrogators in a silence that they would have thought defiant had she not been so exquisitely deferential, so perfect in manner and grace. Had they not seen her make a weapon of herself—and she, a mere woman, unmarried and inconsequential—at the Festival of the Sun.

Yet in this room of Southern finery, she, visitor, ostensible prisoner, a woman, was the centerpiece, the thing to which all eyes were drawn.

They would have said, the four men in the room, that they would never underestimate her again; that once cut by her concealed edge, they would scar, and that edge would be the only thing they would see. And for one man in the room, that was true.

Cortano di'Alexes simmered as the questions asked by the other three—Sendari par di'Marano, her father but also the canniest of the Widan save himself, Alesso par di'Marente, the newly proclaimed lord of the Dominion of Annagar, and the man who laid claim to the lake of the Tor Leonne, and the Radann Peder kai el'Sol—lost focus, lost sharpness, lost the edge that the Serra herself, Lord scorch her and winds destroy her, had not once lost in the months of her captivity.

She sat, her hands in her lap, her hair a straight cascade of perfect black across her back and shoulders. Those shoulders were straight, her head slightly bowed, her lips and skin uncolored by the vanities of harem women.

Which was as it should be; she was, after all, not wife but daughter, and at that, a daughter returned to the father's fold by the death of a husband whose end was known from one edge of the Dominion to the other.

She should not have been beautiful. She should not have had that power, or any other power. She was dressed like a seraf, allowed no jewelry, no combs, no fragrances. Her father had barely given her leave to speak, but her silence, her modest evasiveness, her momentary pauses—these were parries, weapons, affects. He knew it. Her father must know it; the man was no fool.

But in the end, having answered all their questions in her own deceptive fashion, she had been dismissed, and Cortano was almost certain that the expression that passed from father to daughter was one of regret. Had he been certain, he might have actually given vent to his growing anger; he was not. And this was not the time.

But, Lord of Night, his jaw locked when Alesso di'Marente bowed and stared at her retreating back until the screen doors, rolled open by no hand but hers, as if she were no better than humble seraf—and closed the same way—banished all vision of her. Men could be such fools. Fathers. Lovers. Warriors.

Idiots. They were almost always one and the same.

To complicate matters, the Tyr'agnate of Oerta, Eduardo di'Garrardi—the biggest fool of them all, and certainly the least cautious—was threatening the alliance they had built. Over her. He refused to understand—and at his level of power, his lack of comprehension could only be refusal, it could not be actual ignorance—that she had made herself a symbol of the Tyr'agar.

Alesso di'Marente—Alesso di'Alesso—had given Eduardo di'Garrardi his word that, upon taking the Sword and laying claim to Diora, he would grant her, as promised, to the Tyr'agnate. Had it not been for Cortano's presence, had it not been for the calming influence of Jarrani di'Lorenza, Tyr'agnate of Sorgassa, Eduardo would not have accepted Alesso's word; would not have allowed himself to be mollified. Another gift from the very fine Serra Diora di'Marano: their alliance had almost splintered.

Eduardo di'Garrardi did nothing with patience. Having declared himself, it was weakness to recant, weakness to behave in any way with dignity and self-denial. Over a horse, it had been almost contemptible. But over a woman ?

No, Cortano di'Alexes was not pleased.

She was sent from the room, and they, four powerful men, gathered, waiting upon a fifth. Not one of them was accustomed to be kept waiting, and in this case it wore on them all, adding to their irritation, their private thoughts, their differences and not the commonality which brought them here, to a place where the Sword of Knowledge could control all witnesses, could prevent all eavesdropping.

He had not told them.

He had almost done so; in the days after the Festival of the Sun, in the days after the word of her actions had swept across the dry nation like brushfire, his anger had been sharp enough, hot enough, a thing that consumed.

But there was so little to consume; it burned in a flash, and because the court of the Tor Leonne was what it was, it was gone by the time he could seek the counsel of the new Tyr'agar.

What might he have said?

My daughter was born with a curse. Or, better yet, my daughter's voice can command a man against his will. Her death, certainly. He had wanted it—just for that moment; death and peace. But it was more than her death; it was Teresa's death—and that, too, Lady knew he had desired from time to time—and it would mean questions about his own knowledge, his own use of such a gift in the service of Marano. In the service of Marente's finest son.

Sendari par di'Marano sat upon cushions that were finer than even the Tyr'agar boasted; he sat beside waters that could have only come from the lake itself—with the inevitable grant of permission levered from the ruling Tyr—and wine that was both sweet and light. That fragrance, for he did not choose to imbibe, twisted 'round the scent of jasmine and spice, the scent of fruits cut and displayed in the cool night air, in such perfect proportion it could only have been planned. Opulence here, for those who knew how to appreciate it.

He did, and could, but distantly. Everything was at a distance now because things that were not were… costly. Cortano watched like a starving carrion creature.

Yet if there were only Cortano to be wary of, he might be more at ease.

"Forgive me, gentlemen."

Sendari rose at once; they all did.

"Lord Isladar," the Sword's Edge said, his voice thin but otherwise perfect. He inclined his head as if dealing with an equal, and not a ruling servant of the Lord of Night. "I will not take the trouble of offering you water; you never drink it."

"As you wish, Cortano, although you must know that I find these customs vaguely enticing. They linger at the edge of my mind the way all ceremony does: As a thing I might once have witnessed, might once have been drawn into or made captive by."

Just as, the Widan thought sourly, we are now, of course. Captives to flesh. Victims of mortality.

Ser Cortano di'Alexes stiffened slightly, but Alesso and the Radann kai el'Sol seemed to take the comment in stride. They did not, not quite, see Lord Isladar as an equal; he was a creature, a thing of the night, a thing to be feared, certainly, in the right measure, but not to converse with, man to man. Not to take personally, although both men would have died before they trivialized either his danger or his importance.

Not to envy for his knowledge and his power and his eternity— merely a thing to be used, as any weapon can be that has sharp edges.

Much, Sendari thought again, like either he or Cortano. In the eyes of most there was no distinction between unknown and unknowable; it mattered that they could be pointed, that was all. Enough to make a Widan weep with frustration or sneer with disdain—and either, here, would be a costly mistake.

"There has been," Lord Isladar said quietly, "news from the North. And my Lord requests… a change in plan."

The festivities that heralded the Festival of the Moon had not yet begun, and the preparations for even their beginning were sadly lacking. It was said that in truth this was due to the lack of any wife, any harem, on Alesso di'Marente's—Alesso di'Alesso's—part, for it was always the women who were responsible for the court finery; the women who felt it necessary to insure, by seraf death if need be, that the preparations for the Festival of the Moon met clan expectations of a husband's rank.

And what rank was superior to Tyr'agar, first among Tyrs?

She wondered, idly, who his wife would be. It surprised her; the question itself would have been distasteful in every conceivable way had she actually cared about the answer.

The door slid open at her back; she stiffened into perfection— always perfection here—and watchful grace. This was her lot; this had been her choice. She was Diora di'Marano, and if she had hoped, half a year away, that the quiet torture of waiting was beyond her, she was still capable of, still expert at, the art of biding time.

But very few people were granted access to her private rooms, and when she heard the first footfall cross the wooden beam into which the sliding screens were set, some of that tension ebbed.

"Na'dio," a familiar voice said. It was shaded with concern; she could hear it in the timbre of the single word. Question. Fear.

She turned to see the oldest of her father's wives: Alana en'Marano. At her back, a beautiful shadow, the youngest, Illana en'Marano. Illana gently nudged her elder into the room and then slid the door firmly, quietly, shut at their backs. As if she had spent a lifetime doing no less.

They were, of course, allowed the freedom of the harem, but they were cautious; they rarely chose to exercise the freedom granted. They understood, as well as she, that her privacy was an exile, and that that exile was precarious.

Not even a fool could miss the malice with which the Sword's Edge spoke of Serra Diora—and none of Sendari's wives, with perhaps the exception of the Serra Fiona herself, were fools. How could they be? They had been chosen by the Serra Teresa di'Marano. Still, they were here.

She rose. "Alana," she said softly. "Illana." She kissed the cheeks they offered, and held their hands a moment longer than necessity or manners dictated.

The two women exchanged a glance. It was the younger who said, "I brought you a gift."

"Illana—I am in no position to repay you in kind, and I desire no difficulty for you. The Serra Fiona watches us all."

"Yes," Alana said coolly, "she does. But less so now. Part of the responsibility for the Festival of the Moon has fallen upon her shoulders—just as the responsibility for the Festival of the Sun did. And she is—"

The pause told Diora much. That was her gift, and her curse: To hear what the voice contained, when the words themselves could not or did not. She had learned, over the years, to hide such knowledge. She waited.

"She is almost beside herself," Illana continued smoothly.

That was surprising. There was no love lost between Sendari's only daughter and the mother of his only son, but Diora knew Fiona well enough to know that no little nicety would escape her, no attention to proper detail. "What has happened?"

"She has become sufficiently distracted by events that she… has less interest in watching us."

"That will not greatly please the Widan Cortano."

"No."

Silence again. Then, "She is not a friend, Alana. We both know this."

"Yes."

The youngest member of Sendari's harem—Diora herself, now an unmarried daughter—reached out and gripped the shaking hands of the oldest. They stood a moment in silence. "Alana," Diora said at last. "Tell me."

"This year—this year," the old woman said, looking her age, "there will be change in the Festival of the Moon."

She did not stiffen. Did not frown or offer this almost mother any cause to think she was concerned. The hands that she held, she held gently and firmly, as if she were the one who were offering support, rather than receiving it. "Yes?"

"They—there—" She turned to Illana, seeking help. It was almost hard, to watch Alana at a loss for words.

"They have decided that this year, for the first year, there will be a… Consort to the Lady."

"A Consort?"

"Yes. An… equivalent to the Lord's Consort during the Festival of the Sun."

It was a position she had held herself. While she could stop herself from trembling or stiffening, Diora di'Marano was not— quite—well-versed enough to stop her color from vanishing completely. In a Serra of her station, there was little enough of the Lord's color to begin with; the highborn were guarded from the Lord's vision—for the Lord was a man.

"They will call the Consort…" and here, Illana's voice dipped and almost failed her, but she was not Alana, and after a moment, she continued, "the Lord of Night."

Diora's hands froze; they lost warmth; they lost the strength that had sustained her. Alana bowed her head. "You see," she said softly.

"Yes."

"Do you know if—"

"No. My father will not summon the Serra Teresa. They have not spoken pleasant words—any words at all that I am aware of—since the end of the Festival of the Sun; she is with Adano this Moon's turning, and I think she will remain there."

"Diora—"

"Illana, Alana, I thank you for the information that you've brought me. I must ask—I must ask you to leave me a moment. It is warm, this day, and I have spent hours in the presence of the… Tyr'agar and his counselors. I am weary."

"Shall we send you water?"

"Sweet water," Diora replied absently. Automatically. "Yes, that would be very fine."

She waited until they had left before turning to face the wall. Before kneeling into the flat, sturdy mats upon which she had lived out most of the last half year. Had she expected more? Had she expected, for some reason, that the Festival of the Moon would be allowed her? The laws of the land had already changed the moment the Leonne clan was assassinated. What the Moon meant, what the Lady's wrath entailed, to the men who now made the Tor Leonne and its Lake their Dominion, was to be lost to her. To be lost entirely.

It had been a long time since she'd felt foolish. She felt it now, and it was surprisingly bitter.

This was her home. This place, these walls that opened into no courtyard, no sunlight, no glimpse of open air or night sky or star.

She would be lowered into the sheets and the pillows, and then raised like a crown for all to see, all to acknowledge. A plan that she had been the architect of, in the end. An end of her own making.

She could not keep the bitterness from her face; the mask slipped for a moment as she faced a wall whose every flaw she had become familiar with over time. There were few indeed.

Across the breadth of the lesser Tor, Margret of the Arkosa Voyani shared the same expression. Years divided their faces; the sun-lines and wind-lines that a life of travel under the open skies forced upon the Voyani, generation after generation, made a mark upon the older woman's face that the younger's had never felt.

"Margret?"

The bitterness fell into a familiar grimace, easing and changing the lines of her face. "'Lena."

Her cousin slid into view—and slid was the right word. She moved, had always moved, like a particularly beautiful cat. Long and sleek in line, she picked her way through the Voyani as if they were mice, playing as she chose and quitting just as abruptly. In everything she did, there was such a lovely mix of danger and attraction that one couldn't help but love her—and feel stupid about it.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Aren't you going to ask me what I'm doing in your wagon?"

Margret rolled her eyes. "If you want to tell me, I'll find out."

Elena made a playful face and swatted her cousin just that little bit shy of too hard. "Nicu," she said dramatically. "I'm avoiding him."

"You're too hard on him, 'Lena."

"Don't get motherly; it doesn't suit you. Besides, he's hardly a boy. He's past twenty this year."

"You were hard on him when he'd no underarm hair to speak of."

Elena shrugged. "Well," she said. As if that explained anything. Sauntering over to the window—for it was as fine a wagon as that—she pulled the drapes shut, plunging them into what passed for darkness here, at sun's height. When she turned, the playfulness had left her face entirely; she was all shadow, thin and straight as the blade Margret carried beneath her shirt.

"Tell me," Margret said, folding her legs as she unconsciously took shelter on the flat of the bench beneath which so many of her mother's heirlooms lay locked.

"You're not going to like it."

Elena never prefaced a report with those words unless they were an understatement.

" 'Lena."

"Festival of the Moon this year."

"That's what we're here for."

"There are changes."

"What changes?"

"First: All merchants must register with the correct official in the Tor Leonne proper."

Margret was quiet for a long moment. "Merchants?"

"All merchants."

"Unusual."

"Worse."

" 'Lena." Warning in those two syllables.

"Some of the merchants have been detained after making their reports. Their caravans have been either searched or seized—or both."

"Fair enough. We're carrying nothing contraband; we've picked up no runaway serafs, and obviously we're not going to this year." She shrugged; politics and expedience had always denied safety to one or two of the merchant clansmen. Not often during the Lady's Festival, though.

"You would think that would guarantee our safety, wouldn't you?"

Elena Tamaraan was the cousin to whom Margret was closest, but on days like this, the urge to throttle her was so strong it was profound.

"Elena," she said, and her cousin smiled. Even in the darkest of times, actually forcing Margret to acknowledge all three syllables of her name was considered a small triumph. It was a joke they shared.

When Margret was predisposed to have a sense of humor.

"There have been three caravans taken so far."

"Three?"

"Yes. More significant: They are all Voyani."

"Any Arkosans?"

"No. Two Havallan caravans. One Lyserran."

"Matriarchs present?"

Elena was silent for a long, long time. At last she turned to face the curtains that hid them from the light of day. Her voice was so quiet, Margret could hardly hear it. But she already knew the answer, even though the question itself had been perfunctory.

"Yes."

"At the Festival of the Moon?" Margret drove herself up from her seat with the force of her full weight against the ground; she lunged around the darkened caravan like an injured beast. That was her way; it had been her mother's way before her. "They wouldn't dare!"

"Do you want the rest?"

"No, of course I don't want the rest!"

"It's Yollanna."

Silence. The beast was stilled. "Tell them," Margret said at last. "Find Adam—he's at the Eastern Fount of Contemplation; tell Nicu."

Elena frowned sourly. "I was trying to avoid him, Margret. That part wasn't a lie."

"I don't give a damn, 'Lena. This isn't the time for it. Tell them."

"I'm not sure they'll let us pull the caravan back."

"We're going to try."

* * *

Although the Serra Diora was under the guard of walls and silence and near-isolation, she was still considered a part of the harem of a now-powerful man; she was no seraf, to be forced to tend to her own needs or the needs of others. Minutes might pass before she was allowed company; if her father's mood was darker, hours.

But serafs were never deemed company; they came and they went, delivering water, fans, food, changing pillows and sheets, sweeping floors that were already spotless lengths of wood grain, dark and light.

So it was that Alaya, the Serra Fiona's favorite seraf, came in through the one entrance to Diora's two rooms. She bowed before she crossed the line that the screens marked, kneeling until her forehead touched wood, and then, when Diora returned a silent nod for the gesture, rose, stepped over that line, and bowed again. Her hair was perfectly black, a sweep of knotted braids that were tied at the ends by flower and ribbon; the mark of a young girl. Fiona's work, Diora thought, with a mildly critical eye.

Just as her aunt would have done, had she seen Alaya. Alaya had been, indirectly, a gift from the Serra Teresa.

The girl rose, reached over the grooved lip which held the screens, and lifted a lacquered tray, bringing it very correctly into view for the first time. She placed this in the room, and then closed the door—silently, perfectly. She was so well-trained, Diora wondered that Fiona could not see the Serra Teresa's hand in her.

But Serra Fiona often saw only what she wished to see, and she wished to see her own power, her own ownership.

Alaya set out the water; it was soothing to watch her work. Soothing until Diora saw that her hands were trembling.

In a voice that only Alaya could hear—the voice that was Diora's birthright and birthcurse—she said, "Alaya, do you bring me news?"

And Alaya, born under no such shadow, and aware of the fact that the screens were thin and the walls had ears, nodded. She lifted a pale face, and Diora saw that its pleasing whiteness was underlined everywhere by gray.

"Did the Serra Teresa send you?"

She shook her head now in the opposite direction: No. Then she spoke. "The Serra Fiona has sent you wine, Serra Diora; the day, she says, has been long, and if you would grace her with your acceptance, she would be pleased."

Fiona. Fiona had sent her?

"The Serra Fiona is gracious," Diora replied, letting the voice lapse a moment, so that others might hear. "Please. Tell her I am both… surprised and honored by her attention."

Alaya poured the wine. It had a pungent smell, at this distance. I have not eaten, Diora thought. Alaya passed her the goblet in a shaking hand, and where their hands overlapped, skin and paper mingled. Paper. Fiona had written.

It did not escape her notice: the goblets were Fiona's finest ware; the carafe in which the wine was contained, its deep, rich red glinting off silvered surface, one of the most expensive serving pieces her father's wife owned.

"If you desire it, she will send food as well; it has not escaped her notice that your interview deprived you of a meal."

"I—would be honored. I find I am hungrier than I thought I would be. Tell her—tell her that she has my gratitude."

Alaya bowed, ashen. But she bowed perfectly; the tremble, now that there was no weight against her arms or palms, had vanished.

Only when she was gone—had been gone for the space of at least five carefully counted minutes—did Diora look down at the paper in her hand. It was thin and fine, and traced with the delicate spiral of Fiona's unmistakable calligraphy.

The words, such as they were, made no sense at first; they were a fog of skillful, pretty lines. They reminded the younger Serra of her own days spent under the tutelage of Ona Teresa, learning the art of a pleasing hand, that she might one day return the letters of a suitable Tyr or Tor; that she might communicate perfectly with the wives of such powerful men; that she might impress, upon all, the gifts of the daughters of Marano.

But the daughters of Marano did not write letters in secrecy to disgraced members of the clan—disgraced and disliked rivals, if she were truthful.

Fiona now pitied her, where once she had resented, but pity alone was not enough to make Fiona risk not only the wrath of husband, but also of new Tyr, of the Sword's Edge.

The paper made a slight noise as she unfurled it further, willing the words to make sense. They did, but they were devoid of the prettiness that she had come to expect; they offered no greeting, no apology for inadequacy, no news of the trivialities of daily life; no joy, and no spite, no affection, and no rivalries.

There is no time. If you have not heard, this Festival of the Moon, there will be a Lord of Night to preside the Lady's temples. There will be a change in celebration; the masks that are worn at the Festival will be of a handful of prescribed faces.

More, there has been difficulty.

The Tor Leonne proper is now the… guesthouse… of Yollanna of the Havalla Voyani. She is alive, at the moment. She is not unharmed.

1 have sent word to the Serra Teresa di'Marano, but 1 fear it will arrive late.

That was all.

It was enough.

Serra Diora di'Marano sat in the empty room and very slowly slid paper between skin and silk, so as not to make noise. Let it absorb sweat and moisture; let it remain hidden, although in fact the truth would be carried by wind and word across the breadth of the Tor Leonne by morning.

She was silent for a time; the dead were with her, although the sun was high.

So, she thought, the windowless world becoming both larger and smaller around her, it comes. The Lord of Night. General, Sword's Edge, you have played this Festival poorly.

And she smiled, although it was a smile edged with fear and uncertainty.

Now Serra Teresa would come.

And before the Serra Teresa, her task was clear.

The Voyani were the sworn enemies of the Lord of Night and Yollana of the Havalla Voyani the most famous of the four Matriarchs. How to plan?

In silence. While waiting.

She bowed her head, and when she lifted it, the lines of her face were unblemished by worry or fear.

This wagon had been in her family for four generations. The wheels had been changed more times than she thought she could count, and the walls had been replaced or repaired at least once during living memory, but the glass in the windows had been passed from one set of repairs to another—an heirloom and a statement.

"Margret."

She turned at the sound of her aunt's voice. "Ona Tamara," she said quietly.

The older woman wrapped a protective arm around the younger woman's shoulder. "We've had… word."

"I know. I know it. Elena told me—"

"No. We've had word about Evallen."

Ah. Here, now, the truth could no longer be veiled. No longer had to be veiled. She was numb with it; had become numb with the hiding of it, the inability to seek solace or comfort. A new experience, for her. Probably one she should get used to.

Margret thought a moment, wondering what her mother would say or do now. Her mother was Evallen of the Arkosa Voyani, and needed no one. But she, she was only Margret. A Matriarch without the Matriarch's Heart: the stone. The line of blood.

"Tamara," she said at last, "come." She pulled away from her aunt and led her up the steps into the wagon, not certain how much longer she would be able to do even that. The wagon—it was the most distinctive of the Arkosan vehicles. It would half-kill her to leave it behind—and she wouldn't consider it at all if she wasn't certain that it would kill her to take it.

But Ona Tamara understood what it meant, this journey into darkness, and as Margret turned to face her in the covered room, the first thing she felt was the sting of open palm against exposed cheek: Her aunt's palm, her own cheek.

"You knew." Her aunt's accusation held a fury that a simple slap wouldn't dissipate. Margret took a step back, but made no move to defend herself. How could she? Had she been her aunt— her trusted, her valued aunt—she would have been furious. Might have pulled dagger where dagger would have helped nothing.

Ona Tamara was known throughout the caravan for her gentle temper. She left her weapons sheathed. "Margret. Look at me."

Margret looked. Looked at her aunt as she had never just looked at her mother, her bitter, her temperamental, her often angry mother. Their eyes, dark and dark, so similar in shape and size, met.

"How?" And then, after the silence had lengthened, Tamara said, "That clanswoman."

She wanted to let her aunt go on; her aunt, who had the freedom to express what she herself had struggled so hard to hide. But she heard herself, her voice dulled and weak even to her own ears, say, "No, Ona Tamara. No. It was—my mother."

"Tell me."

"I didn't understand it, not then—but she knew. My mother knew what she was doing. What she was going to."

"And she would leave you with the care of the clan—" Silence. Again silence. Tamara was known for her quiet temper, but she was also known for the sharp edge of her observation. She was no one's fool. Aye, the Lord had stained her, and the winds had made furrows in her flesh that grew deeper and more distinct with time—but nothing could reach the wit that lay hidden beneath simple flesh.

In the darkness, her aunt paled.

"The heart—"

"Yes," Margret said grimly. "You understand. You understand why I could not speak of it."

"Where is the heart?"

"It is—it is safe, I think." She paused. "That is what the clans-woman came to tell me. Where it is, and that it is safe. But I don't think even she knew what would happen this Moonlight."

She had turned from her aunt, in the darkness; turned to the wall and the window. The familiar arms of the older woman enfolded her shoulders again.

"Margret," she said quietly. "You are free now."

"Free?" Bitter word; it choked her, to say it. "Free in the Tor, when the clansmen have started to hunt us? Free in the Tor, when the Lord of Night has finally shown his hand again? I have no heart, Tamara."

"You have your own," her aunt said gently, "and it has borne the weight of grief far too long in silence. Grief drives a man mad," she added quietly, "when it is contained. It must be shared. It must be spread. It must be carried by the family. Grief is our measure, it is our strength, it is our community." She pulled her niece to her, and Margret resisted for a fraction of a second, no more.

"But she's dead. Grief won't change that. I have the responsibility—"

"Not even Evallen would have taken that responsibility. Come. She was your mother, but she was our Matriarch. We have the right, and you—"

Margret began to weep. She turned, blind, seeking comfort, and she found it. Only later would she remember that she had offered none in return to her mother's sister, her mother's much loved, and much loving, younger sister. Tamara offered, and Margret took what she could, although it wasn't quite all that she needed.

"We will have our vengeance," Tamara said, over the storm. "Remember, chia, remember what is said: Only the living can give meaning to a death. We will give this death meaning, all right. They will pay."

The Widan Sendari di'Marano felt the chill of wind in the stillness of a room that might have been at home in the iciest remove of the Northern Wastes. Twice now he had gone to the wastes, and he had discovered this about himself: that he would rather face the heat and the parched, dry death of desert sand than the ice and the wind of the North.

But these two men, his mentors in endeavors of power, felt otherwise. He watched them uneasily; the man who now ruled the Dominion and the man who ruled the much less wieldy Sword of Knowledge. The sun had darkened Alesso's skin, but the wind had not worn it much; he was unbowed in line by the burden he had chosen to heft. Shoulders straight from right to left, he stood, his hands behind his back—and as far away from the exposed hilts of his swords as they could go. He was not given to finery on occasions of war—and he wore no finery here; a statement.

A statement that was not lost upon the Sword's Edge. Cortano di'Alexes wore robes that were deceptively simple; they were expensive indeed if one knew how to look for the signs, but they did not draw the eye to their wearer. Dark and gray, with hints of gold that somehow never quite came to light, they draped from shoulder to foot. Evening wear.

Not for the first time, Sendari found much about these two men that was similar.

"I tell you now," Alesso was saying for the third time, "the kai el'Sol will not cooperate. Whatever has led you to believe otherwise is illusory."

The words were not heated; they were cool. But they were incautious enough to hint at the depths of Alesso's anger.

Unfortunately, they were spoken to the Sword's Edge, a man known for the implacability of both his temper and his pride. Cortano's pale hands stroked his beard rhythmically, as if it were an instrument. There was a faint crackle of magic around the edge of his fingertips; Sendari suspected that it was not entirely a conscious use of the power that the Sword's Edge commanded. That would be a challenge too great for Alesso to ignore.

"He has cooperated with us in the past, Tyr'agar," the Widan replied mildly.

"Indeed. But we have never used the phrase 'Lord of Night' in our public dealings. I tell you, Cortano, it is too soon."

"And will you then return to Lord Isladar and Lord Ishavriel and tell them of our change in plan? Will you face the Shining Court? Will you face the Lord of Night?"

Alesso shrugged expansively. "If they wish to succeed, they will accede. If they wish to fail…" He shrugged. "Let them find another pawn."

"And the Voyani?"

"They have caused us trouble in their time," Alesso replied, speaking slowly. "But I foresee a greater difficulty. I had hoped to make use of them in the war against the Northerners; they bear them no great love."

"They bear us less."

Alesso shrugged again. "Yes. I will give the kin the Voyani if they so desire them. But the Consort must wait."

Evening.

Diora did not often pray; not to anyone. No sane woman prayed to the Lord, but even the Lady's face was often wreathed in darkness; no boon there, no comfort. When she had been younger, she wondered what it would be like to live in the North; to have the comfort of Northern gods; to be able to choose, among them all, a god to pray to.

Because she was only taken from her rooms twice a week, she seldom felt the wind; seldom saw the moon; seldom spent time beneath either the Lord or the Lady's face. Tonight would not be such a night; her father was absent.

Her father.

As a young woman in his harem, on a night such as this, she had often been seized by restlessness. It was the plague upon women; men were free—if'they were freeborn—to excise it in a variety of ways, most of them energetic, none of them graceful or feminine.

Diora had been different: she had been gifted with a talent for music, and she would hold the wildness and the hunger—rare though either might be—in until her hands touched the strings, Northern or Southern, and her voice was given permission to accompany them. Then, oh, then, she might briefly experience freedom, under the watchful eyes of either Lord or Lady.

Her father had destroyed both the samisen that had been her mother's and the lute. He had forbidden her song, and she had acquiesced, thinking only that he was a fool for not forbidding her breath or life instead.

Thinking it, knowing it, knowing that had she, in fact, been the Serra Fiona, Diora di'Marano would be dead. She had wanted that death. It still lingered, like a vision of peace and a return to the warmth of the only home she had ever made for herself. But before that, the penance, the only act that might explain, might excuse, the fact that of all the women she had loved, she alone still lived.

Diora di'Marano did not pray because she did not know how. She did not play the instruments that she had been raised to because they had been taken from her. She did not speak in the darkness of a night that was supposed to—somehow—contain her sleep.

But she sang.

Softly, softly, her voice by some miracle not cracking as she forced it back into her throat so that it might be otherwise inaudible. Her father watched her closely, even when he was not present; he would know.

The silence her voice broke was broken.

"Diora," the voice said. "Where are you?"

She froze a moment, losing her voice as she recognized the distant tones that hinted at a power she had only once seen in full display: the voice of Kallandras of Senniel College.

The winds from the North had unexpectedly swept in beneath the night sky, blending with death and the threat of death and the Lady's neutrality.

She was speechless.

"I am in the Tor Leonne—the city, not the palace proper. If the Serra Teresa is here, she makes no reply. Things are more complicated than I had foreseen. Are you well?"

His Torra was perfect. She wondered what he would look like this time.

"I am well," she said, speaking as he had taught her to speak, unaccountably happy that walls and screens and distance aside, there was no way to separate her from his company, should he choose to offer it.

"There have been rumors that you are not free to travel."

"Rumors often have a grain of truth; this is rare. It is true."

She heard his laughter; her own lips turned up in something so foreign she realized it was a smile. How long had it been? Too long, and it would be longer still.

"Ona Teresa is not in the Tor. My father did not see fit to send for her. She attends the Serra Donna en'Lamberto for the Festival celebrations in Amar." She paused. "I believe that she has been summoned, but only recently. I do not know if she will arrive in time for the Festival of the Moon.

"But, Kallandras of Senniel, the situation here is not what it was—and I would advise you strongly against attempting to offer your services to the Tyr'agar."

"Understood," he replied, his voice shifting strangely. "I have come on the winds of war, Diora. I will be honest. You have made yourself so much a part of the war you must know that this is no social visit."

"I do know it," she replied, because she did, and because she did not wish to let either Kallandras or the use of the voice slide away from her. "But I do not much care. Listen. Let me be the wind's voice, if it is war you have come seeking.

"I do not know if rumor has yet reached the street. There has been a change in the celebration of the Festival—or rather, a change has been planned. The Lady's Festival does not have the significance of the Lord's, but it is Her Festival.

"First, the masks worn will be masks decreed by the new Tyr. Second, there will be a Consort to the Lady of the Moon. Third, and most important: Yollana of the Havalla Voyani has been taken captive in the Tor Leonne proper; where, I do not yet know."

"And is the third most important?" he asked softly.

"I—" she remembered the ruined, tortured face of Evallen of the Arkosa Voyani, and for a moment, a pendant invisible to the eye— to even the practiced Widan eyes of her father and the Sword's Edge—gained weight and warmth as it hung heavily round her neck. Remembered the servant of the Lord of Night who had looked, first through her, and then at her. He would never forget her; she was certain of it. Just as certain as she was that she would never forget him.

"Yes," she said, speaking as softly as he.

"Odd."

"Odd?"

"I would have said, of the three, that the most disturbing thing you have yet told me is the first: the masks. Diora, I am no mage. But I have had experience with the magi. My instincts bid me warn you: beware of the masks."

Silence.

She waited as her heart beat out three minutes.

"Kallandras?"

But if he could hear her at all, he did not answer.

CHAPTER THREE

6th of Scaral, 427 AA

The Shining City, The Northern Wastes

The Kialli understood power, and they understood it well. When they had walked the face of this world last, they had served the Lord of Shadows in all his glory; he alone had had the strength to defy the greater gods combined. But they had been born, then; it was in rebirth, in the Hells of Allasakar, that they had been freed from all the folly that came with a life of earth and water and sky and flesh.

The fires burned it away, renewing them.

Garrak remembered the burning, and he shuddered, his body rippling beneath him as if it were an unknown and roughly made piece of clothing. He listened, waiting for the peace that often came with stillness; he stood, testing the charnel winds, trembling a moment with a desire that spoke of his long choice.

Emptiness.

He would not, he thought, become accustomed to the accursed silence of this place.

For in the Hells, it was not silence that reigned; the screams of Those Who Have Chosen were the winds' roar and whisper, the chill edge of morn and the arid heat of midday, the rush of the blood rivers and the ripple of the still ponds. When the Lord called forth more of his host, an echo of the damned touched the ears of all who listened—and Garrak had been one of the first summoned; he listened well indeed. It was his only thirst.

There were those among the Kialli who found their return to this place of blue sky and gray rock and white, snow-capped crest of mountain fascinating. He was willing to watch them in their folly; if it weakened them, they would be his, and he would rule.

That was the law of the Hells. That, and the guardianship of the souls of those who had fully, and finally, earned the judgment of Mandaros through their many, many lives.

When, the kin said, in sullen, muted whispers, can we hunt? And the Lord said, Wait.

He slid between the towering pillars that carried a great, curved ceiling the long-dead giants of the Northern realm—the Northern Wastes, in this diminished land—would have been dwarfed by. He paused a moment, but only a moment, before the guardians of the halls in which the human Lords lived. Their attention flickered off his ebon skin, measuring and dismissing the threat he might present.

Against these two, he would not test his power, not yet. But sooner or later, in the stretch of endless time, he would measure it against all of his brothers and sisters; measure and be victorious.

That, too, was the law of the Hells.

"Garrak ad'Ishavriel."

He paused and then nodded, bowing low enough to show his respect for a foreign Lord's power, but not so low that it embarrassed the Lord he served. The Lord he served, after all, was among the Five that the Lord of Night had chosen to serve Him personally upon the field of battle. Of battle. "Lord Lissar."

"It amuses me to tell you that the young human woman, Anya a'Cooper, is alone in her room. The Lord Ishavriel has been summoned to a meeting of the Lord's Fist."

Garrak smiled, but the smile was a cool one. Anya a'Cooper was the lone human who did not choose to dwell in the human Court. "You know much of my Lord's activities."

"Indeed. But you will forgive us if we watch closely a Lord of the Hells who chooses to elevate a mere human over one of the kin."

It was meant as an insult; it was received as an insult. Thus did the strong treat the weaker.

It was the law.

And the weaker bided their time, waiting. Centuries could pass before the result of such an exchange might, at last, become final in one manner or another.

That, too, was the law.

Anya a'Cooper sat upon the throne she had carved out of the mountain's ancient rock. The act had shaken the Northern wall

of the Shining Palace, which happened to be that rock; had, in fact, shaken the twin towers in which the Lord of the Shining Palace, and his daughter, singly dwelled. Here and there, in the surface of the stone beneath her feet, she could, should she so choose, see the welter of tiny fractures that spoke of the casting.

The Lord had been less than well-pleased.

She had thought the Lord might kill her then and undo all her plans, all those things that burned inside her, hot as molten rock, or hotter still, but hidden from sight. It had been interesting to see Him cloaked in all His power, the edges of his wrath shining like the deep shadow from which there was no return.

More interesting still was the effect he had upon the Kialli; they dropped to the ground like imps, cowering in absolute silence. Even Ishavriel. Even her master.

She was careful, now, not to speak His name, but his voice returned to her, carried in the shadows which pooled at her feet like a familiar—an overfamiliar—cat.

His voice, she thought, was deeper and more sudden than the voice of the thunder itself; certainly as beautiful, in its wild, unconquered way. Even in anger, especially in anger. She loved the taste and she loved the sound of it, for it had depths of strength and power that the Kialli—that she herself—could only dream of, if her imagination was rich and dark and deep enough.

She thought it was. And besides, she wanted a big chair of her own.

She had carved here, taking care not to heat the interior of the rock so quickly that it shattered the whole. She wasn't certain why, but she knew that heat, applied too unevenly to rock—and marble, come to think of it—often had that effect.

And she had so wanted her own throne she chose to be careful. Her arms and her throat were scored with the shining white lines that spoke of her first attempt to melt rock. Lord Ishavriel had protected her from the worst of the scattering—but he was, and had been, slow to call his power. Slower than Anya, his pupil.

You know no fear, little Anya; you have no caution. Her parents had once said just that to her, but without her Lord's pleasure and irritation.

Thinking of her parents always brought back the edges of wildness, of anger—because to think of them was to think of him. And to think of him was like fire itself.

No one had ever betrayed her as he had done, and he had promised everything.

You're known by your word, Anya a'Cooper, and when you give it, you make certain there's no call, ever, to break it. You break a part of yourself when you do, child. Mind me.

Her father's voice. Father's truth, in a world so different from this one, it might have been nightmare. She could smell his voice, now; see the color of it, the richness of brown and green.

But her father had been wrong. He was wrong about a lot of things.

After all, how had he been broken? He ran; she suffered. But he was alive; she was certain that he was alive, although he had never once attempted to come to her. He was burning the insides of her; his memory was blue and purple and red, red rage, and since she had given him her heart, since she had told him that he was the only reason it still beat, she was certain she would know if he died.

No one had learned to live without a heart yet, or so she'd been told. She'd experimented on the odd animal she could catch, but there were so very few in the Northern Wastes, she'd never managed to prove her master wrong.

The Lord Ishavriel disliked it when she thought of him. It angered and displeased the only friend that she had in this world, but even so, what of it? The throne had angered him, and she'd wanted it a hundred times more weakly than she wanted this: Justice.

Without a word, the heavily warded doors to her throne room flew open, winged by her power and her devouring, her just, anger. Anya a'Cooper was angry and bored.

She was tired of caution, and tired of remaining in the darkness, waiting on her master. If he was too busy in his councils, why should it be left to her to suffer? And what were his councils about, anyway?

A stupid boy, raised half-slave and freed only to be tossed away—or so Cortano said, and she probably ought not to believe him as he wasn't a very friendly man except for his beard, which spoke to her sometimes in a glint of color and light—a stupid boy, one that Etridian had tried, and failed, to kill.

Now she remembered what she'd been about: She wanted answers, and the Lords would give her none. None. As if their answers were too precious to part with. They were all powerful, and she understood that well enough; she didn't particularly want them to overpower and hurt her. That had happened before, just the once, but the scars there were deep enough that she could still close her eyes and feel the getting of them, over and over. She did not relinquish them, and would not until he was dead.

In anger, she blazed a little trail of fire into the floor, melting it. She thought of killing the imps, but they were suddenly gone, absorbed by the lightless shadows in all directions. Imps.

But the imps had never hurt her, had rarely even tried. No, no—it wouldn't do. She was very angry. It had to be something bigger.

And what else but the demons themselves? They thought they were so very powerful. They thought that, if she turned her back on them, they might catch her. And hurt her. She'd been hurt before.

This was why she didn't choose to live in the middle of the human Court. None of the demons dared to attack her there, and if they didn't attack her first, Lord Ishavriel was always angry when she destroyed them. He was one of her only friends, and she didn't like it when he was angry.

She frowned. He had told her not to kill any more of his followers—not that she could really tell the difference between the demons that followed one finger of the Lord's Fist and the demons that followed another—and that was a little more tricky.

But he always told her she could defend herself. Yes, of course. And he said it was good to learn things. So she would go and try to learn something new, and defend herself when the stupid demon didn't want to tell her what she wanted to know.

She laughed.

The colors of laughter, that day, were a brilliant blue, a brilliant orange, and a streak of rippling red.

The Widan Cortano di'Alexes was not amused. He had used his personal power to traverse the distance between the lands of desert sand and the lands of desert ice. It was a power he was not comfortable expending before he reached the Court, but he had little choice; he was not expected to entertain the council with his wisdom for at least another three days, and the summoning spell that would draw upon the Lord's power, and not his own, could therefore not be invoked.

The use of his power, however, did not bow him; he was not so foolish as that. Not here.

But he did not maintain personal quarters within the Palace. His early arrival meant that no rooms had been readied for his use. There was, therefore, no opportunity to recover. It irritated him, but much about the Court did; the Northerners were more firmly entrenched in the Lord's favor than the Southerners. That would change, with time, and with the coming war.

"Is that Cortano?" a familiar voice asked softly.

"It is indeed, Lady Sariyel," he said, bowing in the Northern style, his robes somewhat ungainly for such a maneuver. She offered him her hand, and he accepted it, bringing the pale line of her knuckles to his lips. It was not an art he was comfortable with, but she did him the courtesy of not turning her full attention upon him; if she had a natural prey among the human Court, it was Alesso di'Marente, a man who was both amused by and immune to her charms.

They were not inconsiderable; she was not old, but she had a power about her that would one day rival his own—if she survived that long. Her hair was still untarnished by time, her skin untouched by sun; her eyes were a blue that was pale enough to be as cold as Northern skies.

She had been brought to the Court as both apprentice and paramour, and her Lord had died early in her tenure; by attaching herself—momentarily and conveniently—to another, she had purchased her survival. Many of the lovers who had made their way—willing or no—to the Shining Palace found their way in the end to the sections of tower that only the demons called home. Not Lady Sariyel. Privately, Cortano wondered how she would have measured up against one of the Hells spawn—but very privately. Her temper was like the Northern wind.

She had been, and was, voracious; a student that he might have been proud of had he not found the prospect of teaching a young woman to behave like a man so disgusting.

And why, he mused, do we waste power so conveniently? How many wars might we have won, how many lands might we have conquered, had we chosen to follow the Northern course?

Then, because he was not Northern, he added, And how many women might have brought down whole Tors in the wake of their duplicity and vengeance? Better as it is.

"We were not informed that you would be summoned today."

"An oversight, Lady Sariyel; I am sure that you might confer with Lord Ishavriel if such an omission is of concern." Woman or no, Cortano did not play by the rules of the Hells; he hid his power, always, behind beard and mask, unveiling it to his advantage. Even here, certain that she was aware that the art of distance-traveling was his, he could not bring himself to share that knowledge. He bowed again.

"Enchanted as I am by your company, Lady, I fear that my summons here is of a nature that will not wait."

"No, indeed," she said, her dark, hard lips curving a moment in what might have been a smile had she been a cat, "one does not dare the wrath of the Fist of the Lord. But, Cortano," she added, as he turned, "you might give my regards to the General; he has been away from Court far too long."

"Indeed, as you say."

He left; he did not bother to cloak his exit in magics. She would trace them, and find him, with ease should she so desire.

Still, he hoped that she was bored enough that she did not desire to follow him, for he sought not Ishavriel, but Isladar; not the Lord's Fist, but the shadow beside His throne.

Finding him proved simpler than it often did: Isladar had taken up residence, temporary residence, within the human Court. It was not unheard of; as far as Cortano was capable of understanding, humanity was his study, his speciality. Had he been human, he would have been Widan—which would have made him more of a danger to Cortano than he was now.

"Widan," the Kialli said, voice deceptively soft.

The chambers were completely darkened; shadow lingered at the edge of Cortano's magical vision, pulling away from the touch of his fire. This shadow devoured light where it could, and all magic, as life, was light. Where it could not devour, it seemed to bide its time—and that, too, was very much like its summoner. Isladar.

"Lord Isladar."

"You were not summoned."

"No. May I enter?"

A dry chuckle. "Indeed. Enter. But leave the lights… dim."

Cortano returned a smile for the chuckle. He stepped into the room and closed the door firmly at his back, sealing it with a hand's gesture. He chose a simple spell for the sake of expedience; the travel here had been costly.

Of the Kialli, he was comfortable locking himself in a room with only one: this one. It made him more of a threat, and not less; comfort itself encouraged lack of caution. He was no fool; he had made a study of the lost arts, and he knew that there was not a Kialli in existence that deserved that level of trust.

"You look well," Isladar said, as the lights slowly rose in a beaded mist around the periphery of the room.

"And you."

The Kialli smiled. "You lie well, for a human. My residence here is… a matter of more than curiosity at the moment."

Cortano was absolutely silent. The shadows that he had long since learned were a signature of power in the Hells were tattered; cloth, and rent cloth, rather than the armor that so often obscured the Court's least obvious Lord. He thought he saw—although in the dim lights he could not be certain—actual wounds in the flesh that Lord Isladar wore.

"You are, of course, curious. It is your nature. I have miscalculated," Lord Isladar said. "At an unfortunate time. Lord Ishavriel will press his advantage."

"Has he that?"

"The advantage? At the moment, yes. I will seek to separate him from the source of his power—but I am not in… condition at the moment." Isladar did not rise; he rarely condescended to take a seat, and Cortano was certain that he would continue his quiet disdain were that seat the throne of the Hells.

Isladar was a curiosity, a thing beyond comprehension, but not beyond its edge. A puzzle.

"You did not come here to ask after my health." Not a question.

"No."

"Speak, then; speak quickly. There is to be a council meeting, of a sort, in a few hours."

"Very well. Alesso di'Marente—Alesso di'Alesso—has chosen, wisely in my opinion, to reverse the decision to name a Consort for the Lady at this particular Festival of the Moon.

"In all other ways, he is willing to consider favorably the suggestions the Shining Court has made to him."

"They were not," Lord Isladar said softly, "suggestions."

"They were orders?" The light in the room grew brighter; the shadows darker.

"They were… requests. Lord Ishavriel's."

"Has Lord Ishavriel not learned from Lord Assarak's presump-tion? The Tor Leonne is the General's. He will not be ruled in it, not by Northern hands."

"Or wise ones."

Cortano shrugged. "We have begun our inspection of the Voyani caravans, and believe that we will soon have in our possession one of the four Matriarchs." It was a lie; Cortano half-expected that Isladar knew that she was already their prisoner. "If we are able to detain her, she will be offered to the Court, as Lord Ishavriel requested.

"But we will make no such offer, and take no such politically difficult prisoner, if we are forced to accept a Consort at a time when it would be… unwise."

"I can guarantee nothing," Isladar said softly. "In this, I am a spokesperson for the Fist of the Lord, a lesser messenger. It appears," he added, with just a hint of dryness, something so mild it might have been imagination, "that many of the messengers the Lords send fall foul of the men to whom they deliver their messages, and they are loath to risk more of their lieutenants." He shrugged. "If you desire it, I will present your case."

"I will also attend."

"I will forward your… request."

Cortano stood in front of the door for a moment, his hand on its protected surface. Magic twisted beneath his palm, the feel of it frustrating—almost, but not quite, familiar. Old knowledge here, and none of it his.

He tried to remember how important that desire for old knowledge was; how important it had been when he had first been approached by Lord Isladar of the Shining Court. Immortality, he thought, as he stood in the shadows.

But not—never—an immortality lived upon his knees. He straightened his shoulders and looked back.

"It was not a request, Lord Isladar."

Across the length of demon shadows and human light, Lord Isladar gazed. And then he smiled faintly and bowed. Cortano thought there was an edge of fang, a glint of light off perfect, slender teeth; hard to see. "Very well, Widan Cortano di'Alexes. We meet in the Shattered Hall upon the morrow. I will have rooms prepared for your stay, and I will deliver your message."

The Shattered Hall was of a piece of great, carved stone; a single piece. Tables, chairs, floors; it was, as the Shining Palace itself, the heart of a mountain exposed by the hand of a god. It was meant to impress, and it did; from height to ground, it dwarfed the occupants with its majesty. No gold here; no jewels—none needed. They were, the room implied, the measure of man, and the works of men were as nothing compared to this.

It was true; truth was something the Widan accepted.

But he wondered, idly, if it had always been true. The interest that the Voyani provoked in the Kialli was of sufficient curiosity to Cortano that he had taken it upon himself to ask his own questions. To date, the answers he had received were unsatisfactory; the holding of the Voyani prisoners therefore served a joint purpose.

And, he acknowledged, a singular risk.

Lord Ishavriel raised a brow as he entered the room; no more. Etridian deigned to notice him; Assarak did not. Alcrax kept his own counsel. Nugratz was actively irritated, which pleased Cortano; he was the least powerful of the Kialli who formed the Lord's Fist. Lord Isladar offered a graceful—a human—shrug.

Shadows filled the hall; shadows blanketed the corners of the room, rounding them and filling them until they lost all definition. He wondered if the Hells had rooms. If they had any solidity at all. It was one of the few questions that he was not in a hurry to have a definitive answer to.

"Generals," he said quietly. "I have been sent to convey a message."

"Take a chair, then, if it pleases you. It is your custom."

"I see that this is not a session of the full Court."

"What we discuss today is not of interest to the mortals," Nugratz replied, his voice a high fluting sound that should have been either irritating or comical, but which was, in fact, neither. "Had it been, we would have presided over the meeting in the Great Hall." He turned his head, narrow and birdlike, in Cortano's direction.

"Come, Nugratz," Lord Ishavriel said softly. "It is of interest to our allies, and the Widan is chief among them." He lifted a hand in the room of shadows, and the shadows responded, carving themselves into a chair that was almost as grand as a throne beside the wide stone table. "I will avail myself of a chair." He gestured again; a second chair formed. "Sword's Edge?"

"Lord Ishavriel," Lord Isladar said, before Cortano could reply, "How… courteous of you. A reminder, perhaps, of older times."

"Or," Assarak added, "a certain sign that the influence of your human pet is growing."

It was always cold in the Shattered Hall. The sunlight that entered the room—and there was sun, scant, cool light that came in through the pillars that rose from mountain's foot to the palace's lesser height—was never warm. The chill, however, had little to do with the weather; it settled about the Lord's Fist like a cloak of nettles.

Cortano broke it only slightly; he accepted the offered chair. "Gentlemen," he said softly, stroking his beard a moment as if in thought, although the words themselves were in no way spontaneous, "We have a minor problem."

He waited; Lord Ishavriel obliged. "What problem would that be?"

"After lengthy discussion with our allies in the Dominion, we feel it unwise to proceed with the crowning of a Consort to the Lady."

"Wise indeed," Assarak said. "I assume this means you intend to dispense with the pretense of the Lady altogether?"

This was expected; Cortano offered a brittle smile. "Assumptions, as often, play you false." The smile shattered; he thought he understood why the hall had been named as it had. "We agreed to your timetable under the assumption that the boy—the kai Leonne—would be dead at the end of the so-called Kings' Challenge. That did not come to pass."

"You do not- seek to threaten us," Lord Assarak replied. He had taken no chair, and could not gain height by rising; it was the one advantage that a human chair sometimes offered. But his shadows deepened, darkening the cast of his complexion.

"No," Cortano replied mildly. He had discovered over time that a mild response—one verging on nonchalance—was an effective way of dealing with Kialli temper. It did not suit his temperament, but very little about dealing with the Kialli did; he was a man used to dispensing arrogance, not receiving it.

Lord Ishavriel did not rise, but it was close. "Widan," he said softly, "it was agreed upon after the Festival of the Sun."

The Widan shrugged. That was more of a risk. "It was agreed," he said softly, "but it was also agreed that the war would be called, and the Kialli joined—in subtlety—to the ranks of our armies. None of what we have agreed to, save aid in the assassination of the Leonne clan—an assassination that required no aid, in our opinion—has yet come to pass.

"There will be other festivals, Generals."

"It is after the Festival of the Moon that you will have your aid," Lord Assarak said, speaking before Ishavriel could.

"And it is after the Festival of the Moon that you will have your title," Cortano replied. "The Voyani, we are willing to cede you, provided they are not too costly."

"You are willing?" The great table bore the full weight of the furious Kialli claws; he could not be certain that the stone itself was not scored by the momentary rage.

"If we follow your course of action, we will lose the Radann," the Widan said softly, "before it is wise. We will lose some of the clans. We will lose the advantage of deploying the Voyani against the Voyani during the war with the Northern Terreans. Had we gained the death of the kai Leonne in the Empire, had we amassed our armies and taken the Terreans in question— As we agreed upon—we would not now face any danger by granting the title of Consort for the Lady's Festival. But now… what do you offer us in return?"

"Your lives."

It came to this often with Lord Assarak and Lord Etridian. Embers glowed in the skein of magic that Cortano knew was visible to the Kialli Lords. His personal power was not negligible; not even here. To demand his death was easy; to cause it, costly.

He had no doubt whatever that they could, should they so choose, cause it—but the death that one Lord offered, the other opposed, seeking advantage. That he understood well, and not from observation of the Kialli and their lesser kin.

Lord Isladar rose. "Those lives," he said softly, bowing his head slightly to Lord Assarak, "are not yet yours to grant. The Lord will decide."

"Isladar—"

"And if I am not mistaken," he added, raising a brow and turning toward the doors that stretched from floor to ceiling in a long, flat sweep of something that might once have been wood before the hand of the Lord transformed it, "we are about to have a visitor."

The doors to the council chamber flew open, scattering the shadows of Kialli conceit in their wake. No simple doors, these; they were not of a piece with the Shattered Hall, but they were formed by the same maker's hand. When closed by the will of the Lord, they were impenetrable; when opened by His hand, they were unstoppable.

The Lord's hand had not closed these doors; nor did he open them now; Cortano would have felt his coming long before the doors announced his presence. He had had reason to greet the Lord of Shadows once, twice, and a third time; it chilled him to the bone; made him long for the desert; made him desire to offer nothing but obedience, and that, quickly.

But if the Lord was not present, the doors themselves contained an echo of His grandeur; they were an announcement, both closing and opening, that it was almost impossible to ignore.

He was grateful for the interruption. Even when the cause became clear.

One of the kin fell at once groundward, cringing in a bow that should have been impossible, as half his back had been- seared away by fire, and smoked still. "My Lord," he said.

Lord Ishavriel rose at once. "What is this, Garrak?"

"The mage," Garrak ad'Ishavriel replied, bleeding shadows into stone formed by it. "She wants—information."

"And that?"

"To know what occurred when Lord Etridian failed his mark."

Lord Etridian rose as well, grim now, furious at the reminder of his failure. He was probably, in Cortano's estimation, wondering if the interruption was Ishavriel's attempt to humiliate or discredit him; Cortano thought otherwise, because he knew who the mage was.

"Did she gain it?"

"No, my Lord. But she is—"

"I'm here," the voice of that mage now said, her words floating above the noisy wheeze of the injured demon's voice.

"Go, Garrak," Ishavriel said. "I am pleased; if you survive, you shall be noted." He gestured, and his servitor looked briefly surprised before the Lord's magic carried him to sanctuary.

Such sanctuary as existed in the Shining City.

Cortano knew the spell; he had seen it cast several times during the visits to the Court, and he envied the ease of its casting, the lack of apparent cost. He was also keenly curious to know whether or not it could be cast upon one merely mortal without cost to the recipient; he was not, however, foolish enough to volunteer merely to satisfy his own curiosity.

But if there was ever a time when he might relent to such folly, it was now, for Anya a'Cooper was, in his considered opinion, completely and utterly mad; there was no sense about her, nothing at all save a bitter rage and a child's destructive glee and acquisitiveness. She had twice killed human members of the Court, and for this crime there was no recompense, no recourse offered. The kin were destroyed should they breach the laws which allowed the humans and the Kialli to coexist in uneasy peace—but Anya a'Cooper was useful enough, and wild enough, that she could not be contained by those laws; she exposed their frailty.

She was also the only human he knew of to openly insult Nugratz, Alcrax, Etridian, and Assarak in the same breath and survive; the only one foolish enough to attack Lord Etridian without paying with her life. A close thing, and for what? She thought he had insulted the color of her words. She could not be controlled.

Only destroyed, and Lord Ishavriel—indeed, the Fist itself— was unwilling to see that happen. Cortano understood why, but he would not have exposed himself to the risk she represented; indeed, he wished to absent himself, but did not desire his movements to catch her attention.

The Kialli concerned themselves with power.

Anya a'Cooper was, in his opinion, the most powerful mage who had ever worn mortal guise beneath the Lord's gaze. Obscene, to waste so much in the form of a woman whose mind was—had been—fragility defined. But obscenity existed. And it had its uses. Her power was, he thought, in no small measure responsible for the speed with which the gate between this world and the Hells had been opened, and if the gate was small and unpredictable, it was growing daily through her efforts. Hers, and the Lord who commanded her.

If anyone did.

"Anya," Lord Ishavriel said.

She paused a moment, her expression openly shifting between glee and suspicion. At last, she said, "You can't hide him from me, Lord. I know where you sent him."

"Impossible," Assarak said flatly.

"That's what you always say, Assarak. That's what you said before I took the spell from your hands and sent—what was his name again?—something-or-other ad'Assarak into the cliff face to join with the rock." She laughed as she said it, and sauntered over to the table.

Lord Assarak stiffened.

Lord Isladar rose as well; Cortano did not. "Anya," Isladar said quietly, "if you wish information, you must join us at the table. It is," he added quietly, "quite black, but there are hints throughout of gold and blue. Come, you may have my seat, in return for which I ask only that you listen quietly."

She wavered a moment, half-suspicious. But there was about Isladar some quietness of manner that often lulled her tempers; he, of all the Kialli, had never fueled her sudden rage, piqued her angry curiosity. "I get your seat?"

"My seat," he said, nodding. "Come. I will remake it for you, if you so desire."

It was customary to add, with your permission, Lord Ishavriel, for Anya was clearly Lord Ishavriel's keep, but custom was often set aside when dealing with Anya. The great beasts that slumbered beneath the height of the Lord's spires were treated with less uncertainty than she.

"If you insist. You aren't talking about that boring boy again?"

"Which boy is that?" Isladar said, deftly and silently reforming the chair's back so that Anya might be seated in a throne of delicate beauty that better conformed to her diminutive size.

"You know the one—that half-slave that everyone goes on about."

"Ah. His name, Anya, is Valedan kai di'Leonne, and yes, I'm afraid we were speaking of him."

"But why?" She frowned. "I don't want to talk about a stupid boy. If he were here, I'd just kill him myself, and then there wouldn't be much reason to talk, would there?"

"He's not so easy to kill," Lord Assarak replied coldly.

"Oh, well, not for you. But I wouldn't have any problem I'm sure."

"But you might like him, Anya," Isladar said unexpectedly.

"I hardly think so. I am a mage, and he is a nothing."

"Ah. But he has declared himself a King."

"Well, maybe. But only of the Southern Barbarians, and they're all so stupid they don't even know about the real gods."

Cortano said nothing; she favored him with a side-glance that let him know how intentional the slight was. One day, Lord willing—which Lord, he didn't particularly care—he would see her dead.

"As you say. But he is… a danger to us."

"Etridian was supposed to kill him. I knew it! He failed again!"

One day, Lord willing, Cortano thought, they would all find the desire to cooperate for long enough to kill her.

"Yes," Isladar said, "and no."

"Which is it?"

"The boy lives."

"Then he failed."

"But apparently the boy has attracted the attention of a friend of yours."

"I don't have any—" Her eyes widened, and her lips lifted in what looked to be, inasmuch as she could have one, a genuine smile. Her face softened with a pleasure that had no malice and no triumph in it. She was lovely, in a vulnerable, happy way, for as long, Cortano thought bitterly, as it lasted. "Kiriel!"

"Indeed."

"But I haven't seen Kiriel for months!" Her eyes narrowed. "Lord Isladar, you aren't lying to me, are you?"

"No indeed, Anya. I see no need to lie. Kiriel di'Ashaf has found a home for herself in the heart of Averalaan." He paused, and looked out through the columns that defined the Shattered Hall's outer edge. "She will be traveling South," he said quietly. "To the Dominion. To serve the boy."

"But are you saying that she likes this boy?"

"I am saying only what we know, Anya. She either likes the boy, or she dislikes Etridian enough to interfere with his kill."

"She's done that before."

"I wouldn't know."

"You should. She has. I can't believe it! Kiriel! Isladar, this is the best news I've had since she left." A frown creased her loveliness, destroying it in an instant. "You don't think she likes this boy better than me, do you?"

"Anya, how could she?"

Again, her eyes narrowed, cat's eyes, crazed eyes. But Isladar's face was clear of malice, of amusement, of anything but truth. Is this how you handle the darkness-born? Cortano thought, not for the first time.

"When can we see her?"

"See her?"

"Of course. She's not as boring as the humans, and not as stupid as the demons. I miss her."

"Then we will make our plans, Anya, and perhaps we will indeed find her. I do not think it is time for her to return just yet."

"Why did she leave?"

"You will have to ask her, and I imagine that you will when we meet. Perhaps you should think about what you might want to do when you first see her."

She clapped, like a girl not yet burdened by age or responsibility, and bounced out of the chambers, wrath forgotten for a moment.

"Deftly done," Lord Ishavriel said, with a slight nod to Isladar. Allies a moment, Isladar nodded.

Then, as one, they turned to Cortano, the lone human in the cavernous, perfect hall. "You will tell your General," Lord Ishavriel said softly, "that his Kialli will begin to arrive during the Festival of the Moon; as he has requested, only those who bear human form will be sent.

"Tell him also that, should he choose to ignore our request, and our admittedly interrupted agreement, those Kialli will choose a different way of pleasing the demands of our Lord." He bowed.

When he rose, his face was a mask of slate and steel.

"I will tell him," Cortano said quietly. "And as you have not summoned the Lord and the Lord's wrath, Lord Ishavriel, understand that those Kialli will be destroyed if they attempt to hunt in the city in a way that does not please the ruler of the Dominion."

They did not choose to rise with him, and he stiffened. But only for a moment. Although he knew a dismissal when he heard one, wisdom argued against a confrontation with the Lord's Fist over something as simple as pride. He chose to ignore the slight. It was mild, a man other than he might have missed it entirely. A man like Sendari.

He left without looking back.

Lord Isladar chose to take the seat he had offered Anya. She had deserted it, but the lines, delicate and flowery to excess, remained, cast in stone. He was aware that the juxtaposition between his own power and hers was accentuated by his place upon the throne of madness. He did very little unawares.

Cortano's exit had left them with very few words.

Lord Ishavriel was first to rise; Lord Isladar second. Nugratz, third, was by far the most majestic; he took to the air, lending credence to the illusion of height in the arches above.

Lord Etridian, Lord Alcrax, and Lord Assarak rose slowly.

"The day will come," Assarak said at last, "when we are not required to bend to the whim of mortals."

"They serve their purpose," Lord Isladar said.

"Spoken by the Kialli who raises humans in his spare time."

It was, of course, an insult. Etridian's smile was sharply edged.

However, Isladar did not bridle; nor did any obvious sign of anger disturb the neutrality of his expression. He lifted a hand; the gesture, modified somewhat by a flash of blue light that hinted at a power he did not, immediately, possess, called all of their attention.

Which he held for another ten seconds at most.

One of the lesser kin appeared in a burst of gray-limned shadow, two feet above the table. He collapsed there, falling face first into stone with a force greater than gravity or weakness: fear.

His body was pointed in a straight line like a spear or an arrow; he abased himself in Etridian's shadow. That shadow moved, claiming him, name and all.

"Lord," the creature said.

"You interrupt me."

Self-evident; the lesser kin did not choose to speak.

"This is, of course, important."

Perhaps because he could not. Isladar wondered idly whose power had brought the creature here. Etridian's,' in all probability. Or one of his lieutenants'. A moment passed. The shadow in Etridian's hands grew darker and more complex.

Sensing this, the kin struggled to raise its nameless face. "We've found him," he said.

Five Lords turned to face Etridian.

"Where?"

"In Averalaan, Lord."

"Impossible. I searched there myself after the death of Karathis. We all did."

"Accept my apologies for the intrusion," Isladar said softly, offering what only he could. "But who has been found?"

Grateful for the interruption, the creature nonetheless faced his master when he spoke, and he spoke only after Lord Etridian nodded.

"The Warlord," he said.

"And?"

"We… attempted to approach him. We are not certain what occurred during the watch of Lord Karathis."

"And?"

The sound of the creature convulsively swallowing was answer enough.

For everyone but his Lord.

"And?"

"He… was not interested in offering us his service."

"Difficult. But he has on occasion proved himself to be neutral."

"Lord." The creature hesitated.

Fire engulfed the flat surface of the wide stone table, surrounding him. Etridian had run out of patience.

"He was with a… human. A woman."

"And she?"

"She—wore a ring. They call it a House ring. It is… of import to the humans in the city."

Isladar rose, leaving Anya's throne to his shadows. "Which House?" he asked softly.

"Errador ad'Etridian said it was House Terafin."

"And it was gold? Platinum?"

"It was human," the creature snarled.

"We were once smiths," Lord Isladar said, "and of those things you deem merely human we created works of art and power that have not been rivaled since. And you cannot tell the difference?"

The creature's contempt was second only to its ignorance; they were interested now because Isladar rarely showed such a display of annoyance. It did not, however, last. He fell silent, and Etridian turned back to the creature who had shown himself to be of lesser value and power by his lack of memory.

"The woman. Was she tall? Short? Young? Did he ever speak her name?"

"Lord Isladar," Etridian said, "you question my servant too closely."

"My apologies, Lord Etridian. The Warlord, of course, was your watch. But the questions I ask are relevant to the responsibility our Lord gave to you."

"Very well. Answer him."

"Yes. Yes, he spoke her name—but we only recognized it as a name when she responded."

"That name?"

"Jewel," the creature said. "Shouted in warning."

"Then, kinlords," Lord Isladar said, "we have a problem."

"Speak, Isladar."

"The Warlord is not neutral in this battle. He will stand at the side of our enemies." Silence.

Etridian and Assarak: exchanged a glance. "He will not stand for long," Etridian said at last.

CHAPTER FOUR

6th of Scaral, 427 AA

Averalaan

The dust was still in the air. It mingled with the stunned silence of the crowded city street. Silence, that is, if you didn't count the panicked nickering of horses and the screech of penned-up fowl ten yards away. The people farthest from that swirl of dust had already run as fast as their feet would take them, shouting and cursing as they sought out the magisterial guards who were supposed to protect them from one of the least legal things in the Empire: illegal public displays of magic.

Jewel had seen silences like this before; they would pass into gossip and heresay as shock and fear gave way to the demands of day-to-day life. Unfortunately, it would only pass that way once she and Avandar disappeared.

Which they were doing by two expedient means, the first being magic—his—and the second being a good, swift pair of legs. Well, two. She hated running when she was, to the eyes of the casual observer, invisible.

This was not an auspicious start to a journey.

Hells, it wasn't an auspicious start to just about anything. She had never gotten the hang of disappearing in this fashion and rammed into the elbows, backs, and legs of a dozen unsuspecting pedestrians before she at last stopped dead and called a halt to their flight.

Avandar's face was about as pleasant as the sky during a thunderstorm when he turned; she had the certain knowledge that hers was worse by his reaction. He opened his mouth to speak and when no words came out, closed it with an almost audible snap, as if he were biting silence.

Great.

They appeared more or less instantly, but no one seemed to really notice, and given that this had occurred in the streets of the Common, Jewel's frown was deep enough it threatened to become permanent. She had always known he was a mage, of course. But any display of his power annoyed her.

She was past annoyed now.

Avandar Gallais, her domicis, and a man hired for life by The Terafin herself, had killed a man in the streets of the city. Killed him pretty much instantly, and in front of more witnesses than she could count. She knew; she'd started.

"What exactly was that about?"

He was silent. But he offered her a shrug as he readjusted the heavy pack whose straps cut into his shoulders. "You will expect," he said, the words suspiciously like an order, "minor difficulties on the road we're traveling."

"Minor difficulties?" She turned in the direction they'd come from. People were now moving out of their way, which meant they could at least be seen; they were not, however listening, which meant they couldn't be heard. She could live with that. "I don't normally call a small speech in a completely foreign—and unpleasant, by the sound of it—tongue, followed by whatever-the-Hells you call that burst of fire, to be minor. I don't call loud, piercing screams, followed by complete and utter destruction, to be minor. Please correct the parts of these sentences you disagree with."

"You are aware that this is a war?"

"I'm aware that we're about to be involved on the periphery of one, yes."

"Well," he said, speaking slowly and carefully, "that was one of the bad guys."

Had he been one of her den, she'd have slapped him. It wasn't perfect behavior, but it was an old habit, and at times like this, old habits reasserted themselves the minute she forgot to pay attention.

"I haven't been a child for thirty years."

"No? Your pardon, ATerafin."

"What was that about?"

"Did you recognize him?"

"I don't know. There was something odd about him—and if I'd had more than a second before he turned into a human torch, I might have been able to place it."

He caught her hand, pulling her gently out of the way of a rolling wagon. No horses, not this far into the narrow paths of the Common, but wagons were still pulled by the next best thing: young boys and girls. From the looks of them, hungry as she'd once been. At least their labor was honest.

He pulled her into the stand of trees that was closest; she leaned against bark so broad it was easy to imagine the curve of the trunk went on forever. These were the Common's trees, and they were the one thing about the Common that still had the power to move her, no matter what her mood.

"He was a demon," Avandar said.

She knew, the moment the words left his lips, that he was right. Had known it on some level the minute he'd approached Avandar. He'd been perfectly attired for a patrician; his clothing fine, and enough in style that he was obviously a social creature; his eyes were dark, his hair darker still, and the line of his jaw was perfect and unbroken by years on the streets.

Just the type of man she couldn't stand, but he'd held her attention, made her uneasy. Hells, she was still uneasy.

"Jewel?"

"It wasn't him," she said at last.

"What wasn't?"

"It wasn't his death that bothers me. It wasn't the fact that you killed him without once referring to me that bothers me. I think— even if things did move damn quickly—that you saved my life back there. Thanks."

"But."

"But," she said, irritated to be so obvious, especially to a man like Avandar, "something does bother me."

"Or we'd be on our way to safety. Jewel, we must—"

Six inches from where her hand lay, palm against the rough grain of perfect tree bark, wood splintered as if struck by lighting.

Funny thing that. It was.

Avandar cursed; Jewel was already halfway into the head-and-shoulder roll that stopped the next bolt from demonstrating the effect of lightning a little more personally than she'd have liked.

She saw fire. She had only rarely seen fire quite so strong, and she had seen a lot of magic in her tenure at Terafin—a lot more than anyone should have, who still called themselves sane. She shouted his name; it was all of the warning she had time for. Steel bit her where lightning had missed, shearing cloth—and some skin—from her shoulder.

It shouldn't have hit her. She'd had enough warning. Bleeding, she drew a dagger of her own and turned to face her attacker.

It was sort of like having a sword while standing on the ridge facing the advancing army. Even if that army was an army of one.

Not only was he not human, but a chorus of screams at his back made it clear he wasn't her imagination either. She'd thought to face a creature that used a knife; instead, she faced one that wore them over every square inch of his body.

"Please," he said, in a voice that sounded like the clash and scrape of steel being sharpened, "don't take this personally." If she hadn't already pegged him as demon, she would've then: his voice was, clash and clatter or no, a thing of beauty, a thing sensuous and powerful. With anticipation. With pleasure. "You attend the Warlord. There is always a price to be paid for that service."

"Warlord?" She slipped out of the path of his arm; his blades gouged the side of the tree as he brushed past. Centuries-old wood gave before he did. Bad sign. Between lightning and blade, she thought, the tree that she had so admired was already dead. Couldn't be certain, but it angered her in the way that the helpless are often angered.

"The Warlord. The man to whom you were speaking before this… interruption."

Fire lit the demon's face in a glow that came from behind her. She didn't bother to look to find its source; she knew.

"You've got it wrong," she said, her legs tensing, her back bending slightly as the grip on her dagger shifted. "I don't serve him. He serves me."

The creature laughed. "Is that what he told you? He serves no one but himself, and he has a particular penchant for being the only man to leave the field of battle—any battle he joins—alive. Allow me to demonstrate."

"By dying?"

"You really are a clever creature; it must amuse him to have you."

She watched his face expand in a sudden stretch of thinning flesh across widening eyes, widening mouth, a visage of fear, of realization, of—surprise. Watched this expansion as if it were a natural growth, a natural outcome. It was. She knew the sight when it hit her, borrowing her eyes, subverting her vision from the here-and-now to the there-and-will-be. Unaware of this, his mouth kept moving, his arm swung back, his eyes narrowed in a way that only demon eyes can narrow.

She had time to return the cruelty of his smile with a demonic smile all her own. She didn't even bother to move out of his way. That caught him by surprise; he hesitated.

Even had he not, it wouldn't have saved him.

Fire ate him from the inside out.

His ashes hung a moment, bearing the form and shape he had occupied, before gravity and wind blew them away. The silence beyond the stand of trees was deafening. Satisfying, for just a moment.

The screams that followed it, breaking it, twisting it, were not.

She looked out; the city streets were, literally, broken; cracks had not only split the stones upon which much of the Common stood, but had uprooted them. And between these stones, above them, below them, trapped between living and dying, were the people who had been examining merchants' wares minutes ago.

She started forward.

A hand on her wrist stopped her. "I am sorry, Jewel."

"Sorry?" The word made no sense.

Avandar stood beside the scored trunk of one of the trees the Common was so famous for. A branch had snapped; hand-shaped, delicate leaves were caught in the lap of the fire he'd summoned.

But not, she noted, devoured by it. She wondered how he'd managed that. Wondered if it had to do with power. Wondered why she'd so carefully never asked him about his power before.

Framed, the flowers were lovely.

"These creatures are… past enemies. They occasionally appear to make life difficult. But," he said, turning to scan what was left of a crowd that was as broken as the ground beneath their feet, "I fear they wish more than mere difficulty."

"Then we'd better get the magi—"

The words left her as the shadows surrounded what was left of the crowd. "Avandar!"

He pulled her into the circle his robes made across the burning ground. "I'm sorry," he said again, bending his head, tucking hers under his chin.

The light shifted.

Jewel ATerafin screamed.

And then, there was nothing.

6th of Scaral, 427 AA

The Tor Leonne, Terrean of Raverra

You may have pride, or you may have brotherhood: decide.

In the streets of the Tor Leonne, old voices were far clearer than they had been for decades. Senniel College, the home of his adult, Northern life, was far away, by the shores of a sea that the Tor Leonne would never know. There, gulls and morning mist drew the mind and memory, made of dawn and dusk a song that had slowly—when?—taken root. He was not—had proved, although the voices of his brothers were still the strongest voices he heard, that even he was not—made of stone. Things grew within him, things changed.

He had taken great pains to straighten his hair; to alter its color and its length; to change the lines of his face. These were automatic precautions, and even the Astari would have thought of them. He had also changed his girth, added a few years to his age, pounds of appearance to his weight. Again, simple precautions; the cautions of a life that had almost—and had never— passed him by.

But Kallandras of Senniel had other gifts; the most striking change of pace was his movement. Catlike and graceful by turns, he had exchanged his gait for something slower and stodgier, something that weight or posture had broken.

You—you look like—

He had raised a brow at Solran Marten's total loss of words; it was rare indeed that a bard had nothing to say, and rarer still when that bard was the bardmaster herself. The expression brought her some comfort; it was his.

But if he could bring himself to change everything about his exterior life, he could not quite bring himself to leave behind the only possession he valued, and Salla, the lute that had been Sioban Glassen's gift, was tucked in the pack tossed over his shoulder. It was a risk; he acknowledged it. It was a foolish risk, a stupid one. It was, as his former masters might have said, prideful. Sentimental. Which of these was worse had yet to be determined. He had been both in life, and so far neither had killed him.

But death only happened once.

He thought, inexplicably, of Evayne a'Nolan. Of the young Evayne, striking in the narrow breadth of her white cheeks, her raven hair, her violet eyes. Those eyes, wide with horror or narrow with self-pity, would develop an underlying cast of steel as she aged, until the girl herself was buried beneath experience and expedience.

He had hated her when he was a young man. A boy. He had hated her more as an adult, first taking steps in the real world, and deprived of the only brothers to whom he wished to turn, to praise, to receive praise from. He was not that boy now, nor that man; and often, when she came to him as a young girl, he could not hate her. Could not clearly see the confusion that was now so obvious without feeling an almost protective twinge.

So much for vendetta.

She had come to him last night, her hands sticky with blood, her eyes wide and dark. The cloak that was her father's gift was already cleaning itself with an ease that profoundly disturbed her. It was not the first death she had seen, and it would certainly not be the last, but it was death, and she was tired of it.

Her hand clutched the lily that was her single adornment: a gift, a sixteenth birthday gift, from a friend in Callenton, the Freetown that had been her only home. He pried her fingers loose and found that she had cut them on petals and stem.

And she had watched him, as if he were a stranger that she hadn't the strength to stop. Looked at the blood pooling in her palms as if either all of it were her own, or none of it were. "Are you Kallandras?" she'd asked, and he realized that he was a merchant, with a merchant's clumsy gait and a merchant's Southern accent, heavy Torra.

"Yes," he told her quietly. "I am. You are safe. You are safe here, Evayne."

She did not pull her hand free, but she stared up into his face, hearing the truth he put into the bardic voice. Older and she could chastise him for its use on her. Much older, and she wouldn't even notice its effect. But last night, she hadn't chosen to speak at all about his gift or his talent. Instead, she'd said, "But you hate me."

And wept.

Funny, that the path would bring her to him here, now; strange that, as he got older, he saw more of her youth. Have I gentled so much ?

Yes, perhaps. Truth. He accepted it as he had accepted all truths about his life save one: That, in the end, he had chosen to break his training and betray the Lady's command. It had taken him years to swallow the words, to practice them, to even think them clearly. Easier, much easier, to blame her.

She was so unlike Diora di'Marano; so unlike, and yet of an age. In the one, Evayne, the trick was discovering the steel and honing it, bringing it to light. And in the other, in the other he thought, hearing her speak now, it would be a miracle to find anything but steel. He was bardic, and his hand had gone into fashioning her voice; she kept much hidden now. From a master.

"Hey, Matteo!"

"A man can't piss in peace," he replied loudly, turning in the direction of the voice.

It was Benito the merchant. "Up here, you fool, no one pisses at all. This is where the high clans live." He slapped Kallandras on the back with a broad, sun-wizened hand and mimed a man in obvious discomfort. "We're up, after Benazir's useless lot. I want you with me."

Kallandras shrugged. "It's bad this year."

"I guess the new Tyr isn't comfortable." But Benito shrugged, rolling his hand in a warding gesture that identified him as a follower—such as they were—of the Lady. "But as you say, bad. Bad. It's not the Lord's time; it's the Lady's—and this is the Festival of the Moon."

"We'll see."

"Matteo, you worry me."

They walked together back to the huddle of men whom Benito had brought for his own comfort; the wagons had been impounded. Kallandras had considered remaining with them, but he wished to see for himself the new lay of the Tor Leonne's famed lands. To see if there were compounds or outbuildings into which one might easily place a woman of Yollana's stature. To see, in a sweeping glance, how one might enter, unseen, and how one might leave.

Things changed, even here.

The Tor Leonne had been built in such a way that the parts were hidden from the view of the whole; that a man and his companions might walk into the forested, landscaped paradise and disappear, each into his own world.

But the pathways had been changed, the view widened, the leaves and their arbors making way for the sight of the Lord of the Sun, or the man who wished to take the mantle of his most powerful servant.

The mission's no different than Sioban would have given you, Solran said ominously. You're not to interfere; you're to observe and report. We need the information.

War was coming.

Breeze stirred in the cooling air; it would be evening soon, and if the Tor Leonne was no desert city, it was a city not far from the memory of sand and sun. No sea lessened its heat or its chill. He returned to the shelter of the awnings set up by the men with whom he'd traveled.

No Voyani caravan this; that choice, at least, had been a wise one. No, it was a merchant caravan from a minor Southern clan— a clan whose leadership was in dispute, and whose leader had come seeking redress. The man who ruled the caravan was Benito di'Covello, and his ire was so much drama and so much noise that he drew and held the attention. He invited mockery by such attention, but no matter; his existence served Kallandras' purpose.

Benito's wagons and been impounded and presumably thoroughly searched. Benito had been ordered to present himself to representatives of the Tyr'agar to explain his manifests—such as they were, as Southern merchants were less prone to keep records than their more bureaucracy mired Northern counterparts—to the Tyr's officials.

Kallandras watched, wondering. He listened.

The officials, as quickly bored by Benito's tale of outrage as any sane man would be, released the caravan with the usual warnings: Benito himself would be responsible for any murders committed by his men, or any damage done by them if they chose to partake of too much drink during the Lady's nights. Benito gave the usual replies: that his men were certainly well trained and better behaved than the cerdan of the high nobility themselves.

The low and high nobility here were a marked contrast in behavior. The comparison drew the expected, though silent, sneer.

"We will, of course, take your name, your clan's name, and your cut."

"My what?"

"You recognize this, yes?" The tall, well-uniformed man who had failed to offer the courtesy of a family name—or a personal name, for that matter—opened a large bag and set a wooden medallion upon the table that protected him from Benito's more forceful ranting.

Benito sputtered. "Of course I do! But I—"

"We require your oath of allegiance and your pledge to conform to the Festival rules. This," the man added slowly, as if speaking to an enfeebled man, "is the Tyr's mark. It is raised in the wood, but room has been left for your clan's mark beside it. I have taken the liberty, Ser Benito, of having a rudimentary representation of your crest drawn up, and a suitable block will be here shortly. I require your witnessed oath, and the proof of it, here.

"Masks, such as they are, will be provided you through the generosity of the Tyr'agar. It is his gift to loyalty, and we expect to see that gift appreciated. Do I make myself clear?"

"Eminently."

"Good. It has been a long day for both of us, but your day will end with the crosscutting of the medallion; mine will continue well into the night." He paused. "This is my way of saying," he added, as Benito opened his mouth, "that I have no more time for your explanations or indignation." He gestured, and a man came from the tents at his back; three men in fact. "Your sword?"

Benito di'Covello unsheathed his sword less clumsily than he did anything but ride. The official drew his a good deal more gracefully, and cut first. The cuts formed a cross; a Southern bond.

"Your manifests—such as they are—have been approved; your wagons are awaiting you, and you will find they have been both undamaged and unplundered. I expect no difficulty, but if there has been, you will report to the proper authorities in the city, not upon the plateau. Is that understood?"

Before Benito could reply, the man turned and nodded; a name was called out. Loudly. From behind the di'Covello caravan, an equally surly group of merchants and their retainers pushed past the heavily-robed Benito, seeking their audience and demanding their due.

Benito blubbered silently like a water-hungry fish. Then he snapped at his milling men and made his way down the single road the merchants had been allowed to either see or use.

"We're to wear their masks? We're to swear their oaths? What Festival do they think this is?"

Kallandras had turned a moment to the wind.

"Yollana," he said, "It is Kallandras. Evayne a'Nolan bids me tell you that she has sent me to your aid. I am coming."

7th of Scaral, 427 AA.

Tor Leonne, Dominion of Annagar

The Widan Sendari di'Sendari—who, to his great and bitter amusement, had to work hard to remember to use the name he had struggled to achieve for himself—sat in an uncomfortable silence; a silence made stony not by the disagreement between two powerful men, although Alesso di'Marente—he grimaced again, and corrected himself—Alesso di'Alesso and the Sword's Edge were often involved in such disagreements, but rather a silence made uncomfortable by a sense of helplessness. Two such men as these were not used to feeling the sting of another's will or power, especially not when it was used so gracelessly as the Shining Court chose to use it.

The sheathed sword was always better displayed than the unsheathed sword when dealing with men of pride—but the Kialli Lords seemed truly ignorant of even this most simple of graces. He wondered, idly, who would pay.

Sendari waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And then he realized that although the obvious was in the air like a sand-laden storm, it had yet to be spoken; had yet to be delivered into words that could be dealt with. Pride, here. Cortano's. Alesso's. His own—but his had been tempered by the loss of a foolishly loved wife, and the betrayal of an equally foolishly loved daughter. Tempered? He allowed himself a bitter smile.

And spoke. "It appears," he said, his voice as soft as Cortano's when the Sword's Edge was at his sharpest, "that we are at an impasse.

"We cannot allow the imposition of a Consort at this time; almost certainly our enemies will make much of the title Lord of Night, and it will hurt us.

"But we cannot allow the Kialli free reign in the city during the Festival of the Moon; their activities will announce the presence of the Consort we have refused them more forcefully than the ceremonial title would. It will be said that the fall of Leonne presages the return of the demons in force—and it will be remembered that there is a boy who acquitted himself with strength and honor, taking the service of Ser Anton di'Guivera under the bastard banner of Leonne.

"Clearly the Shining Court feels that they have the upper hand in this, and they mean to enforce their will in the Tor Leonne, having failed to do so during the Festival of the Sun."

Both men were silent; he expected no less. He rose from the hard mats; left behind the sweet water and the fruit that had been so artfully arranged by none other than his loving wife. His hands fell behind his back; he clasped them loosely and began to walk in a track that was decreed by thought alone.

"If the Kialli were unbeatable, they would have no use for us. They wouldn't tolerate the existence of the human portion of the Shining Court. Therefore they need us. But they now feel that they can dictate terms.

"We have offered them two things: the masks—which I will once again say I feel is unwise—and the Voyani. Of these two, I would say the Voyani have significance. Ah, forgive me for my sloppiness; we have offered them a third thing; in time: the Radann."

"And has your questioning," Alesso said abruptly, turning from Sendari to Cortano, "procured answers?"

"If you refer to my time with the Voyani woman, no. None. She is Voyani, and difficult."

"The Kialli come in forms that we cannot recognize easily— but there are ways. The Voyani have them, and carefully handled, we might have asked their aid. I believe we have lost some of that advantage," Sendari continued as if he had not been interrupted. "If not all.

"Certainly with the Havallans. There are rivalries within the Four Families which we may be able to exploit if we immediately cease impounding and imprisoning the remaining Voyani caravans. But we would have to go delicately, and I believe it would be in our best interests to… rid ourselves… of the liability of the Voyani woman we've already taken."

The Tyr'agar weighed the advice impersonally. His expression was completely impassive; Sendari guessed that he would discard it, but only because of the many, many years he had spent at Alesso di'Marente's side.

"And if not the Voyani?"

Sendari shrugged. "I do not know, Alesso, and I am sorry to have failed you. There are followers of the Lady who might be able to aid us—but which of the three of us, and which among our closest advisers or followers, would have the contacts necessary to bring those followers here? They will not trust us, and with reason; they are not the Lord's men."

Alesso rose. "They will not beard me in my own den. If they wish to take the Tor, they may take it in name or not at all."

"Alesso—"

The Tyr'agar raised a clenched fist and slowly relaxed it into an open palm; the gesture itself received the silence it had called for immediately. "Bring me my second sword," he said quietly.

Sendari nodded, although Sendari was a man of power and authority in his own right, and no seraf to be ordered to such menial tasks. Thus was their friendship observed.

"Tyr'agar," the Sword's Edge said, more formally.

"If it will not trouble you, Sword's Edge, I need more information."

"Information is our speciality. The Kialli?"

"I need to be able to detect them. They can take any form?"

"They can, I believe, take a human form. To take an existing form is far more difficult to achieve."

"But possible?"

"Possible, yes."

"Memories?"

"In theory. It is one of the magics that we hoped to make use of in the war against the North."

"One battle at a time, Widan. I need to be able to detect their interference. I don't care how it's done as long as it's swift and easily used."

Sendari and Cortano exchanged a momentary wry glance.

"Second: the masks."

Cortano nodded quietly.

"They are not ours; make them ours."

Another exchange of glances. Magic and miracles were never far apart in the minds of men—powerful or no—who had no practice in the former.

"And third: Summon the Radann Peder kai el'Sol." Alesso turned to look out toward the sunlight on the Lake. It was so bright it brought water to the eyes—and blindness. A sign, that. "He has been watched?"

"He has been watched. And aware of it at every moment."

"A pity. He is far more adroit than the previous kai el'Sol."

"And he has caused us far less damage. I will summon him, Alesso," Sendari said. "But I urge you to caution. The Radann—"

"Are the Lord's men," Alesso said, and he suddenly offered them the desert's smile: A glint of white, stark light in a harsh expression.

"Nicu, we are not having this discussion. Not now." Elena stopped short, pulled handfuls of thick, auburn hair out of her eyes, and rolled it all back into the kerchief that perched so precariously on her head. She rarely wore pins and nets—those were too severe for her, too restrictive—and suffered in the heat for the lack.

The heat today was combined with the job of carrying items of family value—and merchant curiosity—to safety. Their train had been noted; neither she nor Margret had any doubt of it. They had to move quickly.

And quickly didn't allow her the luxury of dealing well with anyone's ego. Not that it was one of her strong points to begin with.

"You had time to flirt with Peter and Adam—"

"Lady's blood, Nicu—Adam is a boy!" A wiser man than Nicu of the Arkosan Voyani would have seen the flush in Elena's cheeks for exactly what it was. She turned her glare a moment in his direction, and saw him: Handsome, in a pretty way, with wide, dark eyes, high cheekbones, a face neither too squat nor too thin. Unfortunately, handsome and petulant mixed poorly for a woman of Elena's temperament. She wanted to smack him.

Instead, gritting her teeth, she walked past him, her arms barely containing a bundle of silk cloth that was just that little bit too valuable to easily leave behind. White, with gold thread embroidery, and edged on either side by the deepest of blue.

Nicu grabbed her arm.

She gave him a face full of bolt for his trouble, and if the silk was soft, the weight of the whole was not.

He scrambled to his feet, his eyes wide. "Elena, I'm sorry—I just want you to listen to me for five minutes—I didn't mean—"

But the color had reached the height of her forehead. "How dare you?"

No rule stronger than this: You don't touch a Voyani woman without her leave. Not unless she's got no relatives, no temper, and no ability to defend herself if she's annoyed.

None of which applied to Elena.

"Elena, don't you understand? Can't you understand? I'm half-crazy about you, you know that. I only want to be able to tell you—"

"Nicu, not now." Fortunately for Nicu, he was one of those relatives; a cousin. And Elena was fond enough of his mother— her mother's cousin—not to want to kill him or humiliate him publicly. She was certain, given the wide-eyed prurience of the Voyani, that this… altercation… would make its way back to Donatella, his mother, before he'd managed to finish rubbing his cheek.

And then he'd pay.

"Not now, not now, not now! It's always not now!"

"We're in the middle of moving what's left of the caravan, Nicu," Elena said, forcing a softness she didn't feel at all into her words, "And that takes precedence over everything else. It's easy enough to flirt with Peter. It takes two seconds, and there's nothing at all to it. But the discussion you want is bigger, longer, more serious. Let it go. We'll get there when we're safe. Yes?"

He was not mollified. But he was no longer mortified.

"Didn't Margret give you the task of guarding the periphery?"

"There are lots of guards."

She wanted to smack him again. But she was afraid she wouldn't stop. "And none of them are as closely related to Margret as you are. You're needed out there. I'm needed in here. Later, all right? Nicu, later?"

"Later, then." He stalked off, his face set in petulant agony.

She was going to have to talk with Margret about him. Either that or kill him and put them both out of his misery.

The worst part was this: In this mood, Nicu was a terrible guard; he took everything personally and was therefore likely to start a fight only his wounded ego could believe he'd win. They'd lost men before to just such a fight.

But Nicu was popular among the men; well-liked, well-supported. He had about him Margret's look, Margret's dark attractiveness—things, in fact, that Elena didn't like to think of at all. And, damn him, she was.

He watched. Unnamed, unnoticed, his arms folded casually across his chest in a mimicry of humanity that was completely unnecessary, he watched.

The Shining Palace was his home, but it was not the only home he craved; the world was larger than he remembered, but becoming smaller. Here, in this city that men deemed ancient, he might at last flex his muscles; here he might move small hills with the force of his Lord's gathering magic. Ah, the gathering was slow, but it was inevitable, and time had no meaning at all to the Kialli.

Power, as always, was the constant.

Lord Ishavriel watched quietly as the young man strode out of the busy encampment, seeking danger, nursing anger and pride. He was, as far as humans go, handsome in his fashion, burning with the pride and the folly, the light and the exuberance, of a youth he would never appreciate fully. Not as the Kialli might once have, in a different time.

That one, he thought, would do. They had waited upon Lord Isladar's efforts with the Voyani—and nothing at all had come to light. Not surprising; Isladar was a Lord even the cleverest among them did not quite understand. He exposed very little of his power, survived everything, and stood by his Lord's side almost as a monument, a thing that the Kialli drive for power and the wrath of God could not combine to destroy.

But his influence had become weaker once the little half-god Kiriel had disappeared. It had become weaker still when she had arrived in force upon the side of their enemies, although in truth her attacks seemed aimed at Etridian, perhaps Isladar himself, and not the Lord of Night.

No matter. It was weakness.

Weakness was there for only one reason: Exploitation.

Ah, did they notice the sun, these little mortals? Did they feel its heat, and the luster it added to the beads of sweat on their aging, dying skin? Did they feel the dry, dry breeze? Did they understand how close to death they stood?

Not yet. Not yet. He lifted a hand—and the woman to whom his chosen vessel had spoken glanced up suddenly at the shadows that surrounded him. Her eyes narrowed into green-flecked brown, and the sun brought out fire in the brown of her hair. She stood straight as steel, strong as it, as unlike the man as day from night. How appropriate, here.

But her blood, he thought, was weak; all of their blood was weak. Only the so-called Matriarchs were a threat, and Lord Ishavriel knew well how to deal with them: Was this not, after all, the Dominion of Annagar? Was this not the land where women ruled nothing? Only the Voyani chose a different course.

Lord Ishavriel had once possessed the power to move rivers in their beds. His smile was a thing of perfect beauty and grace, where none at all might witness it.

The woman shivered, made a shaking sign with her hands, and moved away, shouldering her burden.

The Radann kai el'Sol had heard the news. It was clear from his expression—cautious, neutral, even friendly—that word had already traveled. Alesso di'Marente was beyond wondering how. The Voyani might have heard it, the serafs, the wives of Sendari— whom he could not quite bring himself to dispose of, for reasons of old friendship—and any of these would have carried word, eventually, to the Radann, or to those who served him.

No serafs among the Radann, of course. The Lord did not accept the service of men who lived on their knees. But the Lord also rewarded power, no matter what title it took.

Peder kai el'Sol had reached the pinnacle of his power; from here, it was only a matter of time until the next rival, the next ally, was cunning enough to take his place. But Alesso had been carefully observing the Hand of God, and it was clear that this particular formation was allied not against Peder, but against the coming night in the Tor Leonne.

He counted on it. It had been a dangerous play, all the way through, and the demons made it harder and harder to move. But he was—had been—the best of the Generals the Tor Leonne had produced in generations; he thought it without pride but with certain knowledge. He understood strategy, and he stared in the face of one of the most dangerous of his divisions.

Hard to utilize it now; he had hoped to hold it until the timing was more appropriate. But he now had the choice of putting it into play or losing it entirely. He was not a man to take a loss where the chance of a victory existed.

The serafs he dismissed the moment the kai el'Sol crossed the threshold. They were well-trained; well enough trained that he thought he detected the hand of Marano in their grace and movement. They had already brought the waters of the Tor Leonne itself, and had gracefully arranged those fruits which were in perfect season for the repose of their master and his guest. They left strategic fans, large and in keeping with the sparse decor of the General's preferred rooms, and they made certain the cushions against the hard mats were artfully arranged.

But they left when he ordered it, although the order was the merest gesture.

Which left the room to two powerful men, the two who best served the interests of the Lord, the two who were allowed the full sun in ascendance as personal crest.

"Tyr'agar," the kai el'Sol said, bowing.

"Kai el'Sol." He returned the bow, giving it the weight of his respect. "I have taken the precaution of insuring that these rooms will keep a conversation private. If you wish to have your own people inspect them, I will understand."

That caught the Radann kai el'Sol off guard; it was as open an admission of magic's use—and of the fact that the Tyr'agar also assumed the use of magic on the part of the Radann—as Alesso had ever made in his dealing with the former par el'Sol.

"I am confident," Peder kai el'Sol replied, "that what you say is true. You summoned me in haste, and I came in haste; I will not waste your time by returning for an aide."

"My time or your own?"

At that, the kai el'Sol did smile.

"Be seated; it is my belief that we will be here several hours. Take your ease, and if it pleases you, take the waters of the Tor Leonne and drink them. I find they ease me in times of darkness."

Peder frowned slightly, as if listening to the echo of the Tyr'agar's words. After a moment, he spoke. "We are being watched, but not listened to?"

"That is my suspicion, yes. I do not have time to have it confirmed."

The Radann bowed again; the bow was deep. When he rose, his face was a constructed mask of geniality and ease, even of self-indulgence. It was an unusual expression on the face of the Radann, although Alesso saw it often on the faces of lesser men.

He sat, taking characteristic care to arrange his swords. Alesso joined him.

"We have," he said softly, "been betrayed."

The Radann kai el'Sol did not waiver; he reached for the goblet that held the waters of the Tor Leonne. They were a miracle, one of the few that the Tor Leonne consistently boasted: they had healing properties, and they were always sparkling, even given the absence of direct sunlight, and always cool; they quenched a thirst no matter how fierce, and calmed hunger. Even madness was put at bay for hours at a time—or so it was said; the last had not been tested in years.

"Continue."

Alesso was struck by the composure of the man; struck and momentarily annoyed. But he had called for it. He accepted it with as much grace as he accepted anything that did not please him in time of war: as part of the terrain.

"Our allies have decided to impose on us a set of tasks and a set of creatures that we cannot accept."

Silence.

"We will not, of course, accede to the demands that they've made."

He watched; the lines of the kai el'Sol's face hardened slightly. Hardened and relaxed, as if at one and the same time the man were becoming the Sword of God and dispensing with pretense that would have irked the man who last held the title. "There were rumors," Peder kai el'Sol said, neutrally.

"As many rumors, they bear some grain of truth, no more."

"Why have you summoned me, Tyr'agar? Why have you not summoned the Sword of Knowledge? They seem to hold more of your regard and your favor than the Radann."

"A good question," Alesso replied, taking up his own goblet having made his opening move. "The answer is simple: If we do not accede to the demand for a Consort to sit by the Lady's side—as if a Lord could sit by the Lady's side and not rule—they will send the Greater Servants of the Lord of Night into the streets of the Tor Leonne."

"I see." The Radann kai el'Sol was pale now, bleached of the sun's harsh touch. "It was to be expected."

"Perhaps. It is not the ideal situation, however; I thought to have more time in which to plan."

Silence. "You would have us deal with this threat?"

"Yes. I would have Radann deal with it—in a manner that befits both themselves and the Lord of the Sun."

"And the new Tyr'agar."

"Of course. I will be judged by the theater that unfolds in the city below. If the Lord of Night returns to the Festival of the Moon, if the worship of Lady is lost due to the fear of the death he brings, they will think, they will speak, only of Leonne."

"The Tyr Leonne could have no more handled such an invasion than you."

It was flattering, and Alesso di'Alesso had no time for flattery. "You do not say all that you think, and I choose not to hear what you are wise enough not to say." He rose, although it was unwise, and took the water with him. "But I will say it, kai el'Sol: that Markaso kai di'Leonne, weak and incapable though he was, had the single advantage in a night such as the coming night that I do not possess.

"The Sun Sword."

Peder kai el'Sol bowed his head.

"The Radann were chosen the Hand of God. I am no servitor— no servant of anyone but my own interests, as men of the Lord must be. But even I have heard that the Hand of God was granted, in lesser measure, some of the gift Leonne was granted in greater. You have the five swords," he said quietly. "And the vision with which to use them.

"We have not always seen with the same eyes, and we will not; that is the way of men with power. But in this, I believe our needs and our goals coincide, and to that end, I will direct all aid and obedience to you."

"I am to be given privacy."

"I am not in control of everything the Sword's Edge does, but I believe that privacy can be arranged."

"Then let us eat, Tyr'agar, let us drink. The night of the Festival Moon is not yet upon us."

In the pale light of moonless night, it glowed.

Set in its cradle, perched atop the steep stairs upon which incense braziers were set to burn in its honor, protected by the Swordhaven that was famed throughout the Dominion, the curved crescent of flawless steel spoke in a ringing voice that none could hear: Demon. Kialli. Kin.

7th of Scaral, 427 AA

Evereve

Nothing was an easy thing to be.

Nowhere, just as easy a place. Safe. Quiet. Devoid of the things that she'd last seen: the dead, the dying, the creatures that made them from the living like sculptors or mad artists, in their frenzied rush to stop Avandar from making his escape. From making their escape.

So she kept her eyes closed when she heard her name. This had the added advantage of keeping the world where it should be: at a distance, and stationary. Seen through the crack of a barely open eye, it spun in a disconcerting blur of light that immediately reached for the contents of her stomach.

Which she had no intention of letting go.

"Jewel."

The voice was louder.

But that wasn't what made her open her eyes. At a distance, at a remove, the voice itself had been what she expected: male. Worried. Quiet.

Now it was simply disturbing. She didn't recognize the speaker, but there was something distorted about her name as he spoke it, something cumbersome, uncomfortable. She forced herself to look. Saw ceiling, sort of. At least that's what she assumed it was, as she was pretty certain she was flat out on her back. If I

ever own this much gold, she thought irritably, I'm not going to waste it on interior decorating. Or at least not on ugly interior decorating. Gold, in sculptured leaf, lay everywhere that wasn't surfaced by dark blue-green opal. The combination of colors was striking; unfortunately there was so much floral work in the patterns those colors were put to use creating, the effect was cloying. The possible exception to this gaudy rule was the central pattern in the ceiling's peak, of a distinct and powerful sun, which offered striking simplicity of line and theme when compared with the cacophony of the rest of the crammed images. All of which had nothing to do with the stranger's voice, but she found to her dismay that she almost couldn't turn her head.

"Jewel," the man said again.

She embarrassed herself by attempting to speak. Frogs sounded better.

"Avandar?"

"The master sleeps," the stranger replied. As if aware of her discomfort and her inability to easily turn her head a few inches to the right, he leaned over to offer her the comfort of vision.

She closed her eyes.

But not before she had clearly seen that the lines of his face were pale alabaster, shot through with smoky gray and blue; that his lips, full and soft in appearance were as perfect and uncreased as the stone they had been carved from.

"My apologies," he said quietly, and the stiffness of stone suddenly informed the tone of his words, "if I cause you discomfort. That was not my intent. I am here—at the master's orders—to serve any need you might have."

"I'm… fine," she managed to say.

He disappeared from her field of vision, which was so narrow it didn't take much work. She heard footsteps; expected them to be heavy. What else would stonefall sound like?

But they weren't, of course; they were light enough that she had to really listen to catch them. She closed her eyes, shutting out the gleam of gold in the curve of ceiling above. It was fairly easy; lids fell, gold, like magelight in a closing hand, turned off. But what she could not shut out—because it was already part of memory and her memory was such a badgering pest—was the expression on the face of the stone man.

He was upset; possibly angry, possibly hurt. Hard to tell; he was gone before she had the time to understand what the turn of lips and corners of eyes meant in this strange mimicry of a human face.

Briefly, she wondered if she'd managed to fall and really bang her head. And then she didn't wonder much anymore.

"Jewel."

That voice, she recognized. Out of habit, she scrunched her lids tightly shut and turned over, pulling the blankets up and around the swell of her shoulder. But the feel of the blankets in her hands stopped her in mid-motion. They were so soft that if it weren't for their weight she'd have wondered if they existed at all. She didn't deal in textiles—that was Ruby ATerafin, and both she and Ruby, for sad and obvious reasons, were often confused although they were different in every possible way if you didn't count the fact that they were both women—but she knew quality when she touched it. She opened her eyes. Stared at the light that lay against the surface of cloth as if it were trying to cling there.

"Jewel."

Warily, she turned.

Avandar stood an unusual distance from her bed. About thirty feet, in fact. It took her a moment to realize that he stood where he always stood—in relation to the wall. The wall that was only marginally more tasteful than the ceiling when it came to the use of gold. Someone had too much money and too little taste.

That wasn't the only problem.

Whoever had decorated this room had also apparently crept in and decorated her domicis. He was covered head to toe in some bright red robe that used gold the way fire uses orange light. His hair looked darker, his eyes brighter, his shoulders broader. He wore a crown, and beneath that jewel-encrusted circlet—which was, after all, no more tasteful than anything else she'd seen in the room so far—his expression was as grim and forbidding as any she'd ever seen grace his face.

"Great," she said, to no one in particular, "I've died and gone straight to the Hells."

His expression shifted like the light the silks threw off.

She had trouble standing, and realized that she, too, had been transformed into some nightmare of garish proportion: she wore blue silks, studded with uncomfortably bumpy little jewels which she tried to pretend weren't diamond or opal. It would have helped a lot if expensive frivolities like special rocks hadn't been part of her purview in The Terafin's merchant lines.

Standing wasn't really worth the trouble, but it reasserted old habits, and besides, she felt acutely uncomfortable enmeshed in silk. Her head hurt.

She reached up to rub her forehead, and her hand scraped something that was definitely not skin. "Let me guess," she said, looking across the room to a domicis who had not uttered a syllable that didn't contribute to her name. "This is a crown."

He said nothing.

She wondered if she was dreaming. This had that very strong blend of real and unreal which marked the dreams she had come to understand, in her youth, were prophetic. But, damn it, she knew she was awake.

"Avandar, what in the Hells is going on?"

There was something about his expression that she didn't like. All right, there was almost always something about his expression she didn't like—but this, this surfaced from an unseen place. She was not used to being surprised, not like this.

She'd known Avandar for half her life.

And wondered, as she took an involuntary—and creaky—step backward, what that meant. This man, this man was a stranger.

He stepped forward. She stepped back, into the bed.

He stopped. She reached for her dagger.

It was gone.

Think. Think, damn it. "Avandar." She kept her voice low. Formal. "You—you probably saved my life. Again. Where are we?"

She didn't feel threatened, not precisely, but the unease was so strong the only response she could give it was fear. She hated fear. Fought with it. This man was her domicis.

And what, exactly, does a domicis do with more gold than the merchants guild makes in a year plastered all over the walls and furniture of a single ugly room?

She really hated common sense at times like this.

Without speaking, she took the crown off and dropped it on the bed. It was very, very heavy. She'd've taken the dress off as well, but there was a lack of anything to replace it with—and although he'd seen her dress and undress more times than either of them could count, had, in fact, dressed her for every significant political occasion she'd been forced to attend, she suddenly didn't want to be naked while he was there.

"Where are we?" she asked again. The weight was off her forehead; she felt more like herself.

"We are," he replied, remote and cool, "in Evereve."

"Evereve?"

"My home." . She was absolutely silent.

"I apologize for your manner of dress. I hadn't realized how… ill it would suit you. I also apologize for your slow recovery. This… place… was meant to house only two living people. Myself and my—" He did not turn away; did not move. The words simply ceased.

That man had seen death, and he witnessed it again as he stood in front of her. She knew what memory looked like when it played across another's face.

She just didn't know what the memories were. Wasn't certain it mattered anymore. Pain was pain.

She waited.

"I—it took some work to stop Evereve from destroying you."

She sat.

"The compromise was your… current attire. I will have something more appropriate brought."

"Why exactly are we here?"

"Ah." His smile was his own, and familiar to her. Unfortunately it was also one of the expressions that she least liked. Not that she liked many of them.

"You are sensitive to the destruction done to your city and its people."

"Yes."

"To conclude our battle would have destroyed the Common— more of the Common," he added quickly, as her mouth opened and words almost spilled out. "I have no doubt you would have survived if it were, in fact, possible."

"And those demons?"

"Not friends."

She snorted. Shoved her hair out of her eyes.

"My clothing?"

"It—did not survive the transfer."

"And yours?"

He shrugged.

"Okay. One more question. The creature that looked like a walking blacksmith's reject. Why did he call you Warlord?"

"I was not aware that any of the demons did. Perhaps he mistook me for someone else."

Which was his way of saying he wasn't going to answer the question.

"There is food—or there will be—in the hall of welcome."

"You have a hall of welcome here."

"Yes."

"And this place, whatever it is, only lets two people enter it alive?"

"Yes."

"What if I told you I wasn't hungry?"

His frown was the most natural thing she had seen so far, although it wasn't at odds with the crown that split his brow. "I would hesitate a moment before I called you a liar, and I would have the food brought here."

"I'm not hungry."

He did, in fact, hesitate a minute. She counted. He turned and left.

Only then did she sink back into the comfort of a gaudy bed. Wondering who had last occupied it before her. Wondering— for there was no question whatever in her mind that it had happened—how that occupant had died.

CHAPTER FIVE

7th of Scaral, 427 AA

Tor Leonne, Dominion of Annagar

The masks had not been made by the servants of the Tyr'agar; they had been crafted—with care and attention to detail—by other hands, and delivered in a wagon, much like any merchant wagon, that had been detained for inspection, as agreed upon. What happened to the merchants who were responsible for their delivery, no one knew; they came to the Tor Leonne, and they vanished from it, melting into heat and sun and crowd, or perhaps into night's shadow: the nights were longest at this time of year. No matter; the masks arrived as planned.

Thus they came easily into the hands of the men meant to use them.

There were four faces.

The first was a study in elegant simplicity: A face, unremarkable in every way. Slightly narrowed circles for eyes, a nose that was neither too long nor too short, too wide nor too pointed, but that still somehow suggested imperfection. Cheekbones that were a little too high under the ridge of eyes, a width and a roundness that was perhaps a little too full for the whole, but that would guarantee accommodation of almost any real face beneath the facade. There was about the mask some of the softness that might be associated with a woman, and some of the edge that would definitely be associated with a man; it was a thing to hide behind. What made it interesting was that the mask itself was made partly of clay, smoothed into a fine, white layer and baked under a hot, hot sun.

The second face was smaller; the eye holes rounder, the features more delicate. It, too, seemed made of thin clay, and when placed against the brow and cheek was marvelously cool to the touch. Unlike the first mask, it covered the whole of the face, leaving room for the mouth. The forehead was high, the cheekbones less pronounced. Yet, Sendari thought, as he held the mask, feeling it almost as a lack of weight rather than as a substantial artifact, it suggested the delicate.

What it did not suggest, again, was the solely feminine. There was something about its line that hinted at steel, at something that women only possessed who—

No. He set the mask aside, but he had already seen, for a moment, the eyes of his most loved, and most hated, child staring back at him through holes that were meant for the moon in fullness, and not the day's height. Ah, accusation. Anger. Not now, Lady, not now; we two are doing your work; judge later, if at all.

A prayer.

He set the mask aside.

Reached down to the low, flat table; spoke a word, and then another, the Widan's gestures of protection.

The third face was a broad face; exaggerated in detail. The forehead, in particular, was pronounced, and this mask—alone among the three—was adorned with a fringe of hair, or feathers, or silk, a flash and flare of color that made of each something unique, although it took little time to discern the sameness of face beneath the coloring. It was larger, wilder, a stronger mask. Not made of clay, but made of something more supple: leather, molded and hardened. The particular face that he now lifted had been painted with a thin sheen of bronze; it glittered in the daylight.

"Not," he heard Cortano say, "an inexpensive gift."

"No."

Sendari set it aside.

The fourth mask waited.

To call it fourth was not entirely accurate. The first three masks so exposed to scrutiny had been made from the same molds, and likely by the same set of craftsmen; they were finely done, not of the highest quality, but certainly better than the average Festival mask that one would see worn at the height of the Lady's Night. Poorer clansmen, offended by the edict and the gift, would nonetheless be drawn to the masks themselves for that very reason.

But the fourth face was not an identical face worked over with hair or feather, silk or lace. Each mask was subtly different; each face looked as if it had been made of clay in the same vein but set to dry in different conditions; humidity, little sun, light rain.

Storm. The face itself, Sendari thought, might have been a bird's face to start with; sharp and long-beaked, with a ruffled fringe carved or worked into the material that went into its making. He was partial to birds, for it was often birds that Na'dio had chosen to reveal herself in.

Yet there was about this bird a ferocity that he thought his daughter—his young daughter, of course—would have shied away from. He set it aside, and looked at what had rested on the table beneath it, something that in the North might be called dragon; the beak elongated, widened, the lower beak stretched thin and given not just tongue but sharpened teeth. Yet the size of the mask, and the general shape of it, was consistent.

In some, the beak was smaller; a nose, perhaps, or a ferret's jaw; in some, it was softer but still pronounced.

None of the faces were human, and in fact, he would have classified them as individual masks had it not been for the fact that they were made in similar style and of the same material.

They were also made of the most expensive external components: indeed the most gaudy boasted gems that to Sendari's admittedly less than well-trained eye were genuine.' Paint had been used, sparingly and elegantly in some cases, wildly in others, and all to splendid effect: These were, of the four styles, the true Festival masks.

Yet they were in number evenly divided: One quarter for the blandest face, one quarter for the most delicate, one quarter for the smiling mask, and one quarter for the others.

He set the dragon's face aside almost with regret. "These last," he said softly, "are very fine."

"No doubt," Cortano said softly. "It is the last, of course, that most resemble the Festival masks of the Tyrs or the Tors." Sendari glanced back at the Sword's Edge; saw only the steel that spoke of the search for answers. He nodded and took to the edge himself. Of that, at least, he was capable; he was Widan, after all.

"Why four?" Sendari's question.

Cortano shrugged. "The elemental significance?" It was a desultory attempt at an answer; noise, meant to fill a silence of thought and deliberation. In and of themselves, nothing about the masks spoke of the elements—which were, in their way, Northern symbols of knowledge, not Southern ones.

So far, few spells had been cast, little magic spent in scrutiny; they examined by both jeweler's glass and naked eye the craftsman-ship that had gone into the masks' construction. They had come with no instructions; women or men were allowed to choose the mask they wore, and no mask suggested simple masculinity or femininity to the two Widan who studied them.

But of the magic that had been cast, all spells were sophisticated and of a type that the Widan used automatically: a measure of protection or defense, of detection or information gathering on a minimal level. Greater magics than that, if these masks were indeed to be feared, would be too easily detected; Cortano was unwilling, without a clearer sense of the masks' purpose, to antagonize Lord Ishavriel further.

"This is your field of expertise," Sendari said at last, "but if you are willing, Sword's Edge—"

"Yes?"

Sendari fell silent at the edge in Cortano's voice. He flexed his hands, a reminder of old scars. Stood a moment in the scant light. "Mikalis," he said at last, deciding. "Mikalis di'Arretta would be of aid to us if any man could be."

"And the risk?"

Sendari shrugged. "Weigh the risk of failure against the risk of discovery. You are the Sword's Edge; the decision must be yours. I will, of course, abide by your decision."

Cortano's eyes narrowed beneath the frosted tuft of thick brow. But he was silent as he considered the matter of Mikalis di'Arretta. A Widan, a man as loyal as any seeker of power or knowledge could be; his was the study of antiquities. Sendari, too, had bent his considerable intellect to such studies—but Sendari was not a friendly man, and in the end, such studies required the ability to blend and mingle with the common man, the common seraf, or the common Voyani.

Cortano himself had studied objects, but never—not even in his questioning of the Voyani women—the Voyani at work. Only Mikalis had, and very, very rarely.

"You are certain that this is Voyani magic?"

Sendari shook his head. "No more certain than you. But we have detected no obvious magery, no understood art, within the confines of the crafting, and these must contain some elements of power, else why use them at all? It bears the hallmark of Voyani magic."

"But the Kialli are not Voyani."

"No, but the two things they fear are the Voyani and the Imperial half-gods."

Cortano's smile was small and chilly. "They are fools, then. And that is to our advantage." He turned toward the screens that, light and easily moved as they seemed, were still almost unbreachable when the proper words were spoken. "Very well. Mikalis."

She was fire and wind, sand and wind, sun and wind—but she was also the oasis and the coolness of dusk or dawn. Her hair was like sunset seen through a thin, brown silk, and her eyes, brown like most Voyani eyes, were flecked with green: life, there. Life, and he wanted so desperately to be a part of it he could almost taste it.

He had done everything he could to attract her attention; everything. It had been easy when they'd been children together. She, he, Margret—they were almost equals in the eyes of the clans. But Margret was Evallen's daughter, and destined to be the Matriarch of the clan. If death took her, than her aunt's daughter, Elena, would take the title and responsibility.

But he, Nicu, stronger and smarter and less quick to anger than either of the two women, would always be passed over. Because he was a man. Because he could not bear life. His mother, Donatella, much favored by Evallen and Tamara, would likewise be passed over.

He had never thought much about it as a child.

He thought about little else now that he had the full growth of his hair—although he kept the beard tightly cropped because Elena didn't care for length in a man's beard. Not, of course, that she noticed, that she ever noticed.

"Hey, Nicu!"

He looked up from the dirt in which he'd been absently cutting lines with the tip of his curved blade. Frowned at Carmello—his second cousin, father's side. Carmello was a year old than Nicu, and at one time—a long time ago—that had mattered. Not now; Carmello had stayed the same, and Nicu had grown up.

"What?"

"Heads up—to the East!"

Nicu swore. There were four men—clan crested, but not easy to tell which clan at this distance—approaching the loosely formed caravans. They walked with an easy gait, two abreast. Sheathed swords. He cursed himself, and Elena for good measure, and then took to the rim of the nearest wagon, using its frame to lend himself about four feet of immediate height.

He swore again.

Carmello's turn to frown and look up. "What's wrong?"

"West—farther down the road—and Southwest. Four men from each direction. I'd bet the Lord's balls we've got 'em coming in from the Southeast as well. Hey, Adam!"

Margret's younger brother suddenly appeared between the flaps of one of the exterior wagons; he was carrying two glass lamps on poles that were probably older than Carmello, Nicu, and Adam combined. "What?"

"Go tell Margret we've got trouble. Hey, Uncle Stavos!" Before Adam could ask a question—and Adam usually did, and usually from underfoot, Nicu was in action, swinging down from the wagon's height and into the thick of his men. If this wind didn't smell of fire and blood in less than an hour, the Lord was napping.

They had almost everything they needed. A wagon or two on the outskirts of the city—left there, for just such an emergency, because you could never trust the hospitality of the clans— would have to house the most precious of the caravan's possessions; the men and the women would walk, and could walk. Lady knew, they'd done it before.

She didn't speak of her mother; no one asked. The assumption that she was dead had spread through her people like wafting smoke in a strong breeze—but Margret had put them all into action immediately, and they knew they had no time. No time.

Questions later. She couldn't stop them from being asked.

This wagon was the hardest to leave: Her mother's wagon. Her family home. Everything she had ever loved that wasn't flesh and blood was here, and the shadows, mingling with sunlight, were an accusation of neglect and flight.

There, when her father had been alive before a Lyserran raid, she would sit in the older man's lap, her brother in hers, her mother on the bench beside them all, knitting or working thread. She couldn't sit still; not Evallen. But her children could, for him, for the father she remembered so clearly and Adam remembered so poorly.

He told them stories of the old days while her mother snorted. Told them about a time when the Voyani—when all of the people of the Dominion—had existed by the Lady's grace, not the whim of the jealous Lord. They had had a home, and hard work to be sure, but it was theirs.

"Alexi," her mother would say, mock-stern. "You fill up their heads with stupid stories."

"I," her father would reply, puffing his chest forward in mock willful pride, "fill their heads up with pride for their roots, and hope for their future, you foolish woman."

"Aye, well," Evallen of Arkosa would respond after a moment, "and maybe that's what men do. But I'll thank you not to spoil the daughter who has to carry all of Arkosa on her back—or her lap, some days—when she gets older. Let the little one dream."

He would whisper into her ear, "You dream, Margret. Without dreams, we're a small, bitter people who eat dust and get worn by the wind well before our time. Adam is a boy, with a boy's heart, but you're almost a woman, and women have always carried the Arkosans. They've carried the Voyani. Carry us somewhere grand."

He was gone now.

She hardly ever thought of him. Funny, that losing the wagon would bring back so much of his pipe-scented, wine-sweet breath, and so little of her mother.

"Margret?"

She half-turned, clutching the last small box that she would take from this wagon with her. Wanting that bench, where her father's ghost was still warm, wanting that flat, wide chest over which she'd slept for years, cushions, pillows, and Adam by her side. Wanting the world to go back to what it had been when the decisions were easy because they'd belonged to someone else.

Lady, she was spineless today.

"What is it, Tamara?"

"Adam came."

The box pressed into her arms as her grip tightened involuntarily. "Trouble?"

"Nicu sent him."

"What word?"

"Sixteen men, at least." Tamara drew breath. "But I think there's probably more."

"Armed?"

"Armed."

"Tyrian?"

Tamara did not answer. Answer enough, from her aunt.

"Shit. Get Elena. Tell them—tell them all not to stand against the clansmen for the sake of pride and a bunch of empty wagons.

"If we've got something to lose, we can fight for it. But we've got a fight already, and it's a big one. I'm going to need all the men I have here, and more, before it's over. You tell them. Make sure Elena tells them."

"Margret, I think you should tell them."

Margret cursed. Reached for her belt and grabbed the hilt of her mother's best sword. Tamara was right, of course. The box faltered in her arms. "I'll tell 'em. You take this, and you don't let it be seen."

"Margret—"

"I'll follow my own advice. I swear it by—" By what? By the heart of Arkosa? She didn't have it. Some clanswoman trapped on the plateau did, and for how long—for how long—Margret didn't know. Wasn't dark enough to pray; she didn't bother. The Voyani learned early that cursing was a lot more fun, and just as effective.

She was the Matriarch now, and no one really knew it. Worse, she had no way to prove it; no heart to unlock. The pendant was more than her history, it was her crown, her staff, her rod—it was the only symbol of office that counted. Because she could make it do things that no one else could make it do. Eldest daughter. Arkosa bloodline.

It gave her pause for a moment, because it made her nervous. Men with swords had always made her mother tense, and her mother didn't get tense without good reason. So much pride here, and most of it for good reason. She'd felt it herself, time and again: They were better than the clans. They were the true survivors.

But she didn't particularly feel the need to prove it by burying her short sword into the chest of one; she'd seen her share of fighting, and she knew that the only rules between the clansmen and the Voyani were ones that ended in death.

Couldn't afford that, not here, not now. She thought that maybe one or two of the men could be winnowed here—they were trouble, and looked likely to get worse before they got better. But they were distant kind and that kind of attitude, before the fact, was exactly the type of thing that the clansmen had. Better to wait. Better to let the crime be committed for all to see.

Her hands shook. She didn't have the Arkosan heart, she didn't have her mother, and there were probably thirty armed men preparing a descent on the caravan as she wasted time striding from the remains of her home to the edge of their circle.

She saw Adam first. His eyes were wide, his sword was out, he was glancing from side to side as if in search of a commander. Of all the men in the caravan, he was her favorite—but sitting in her lap from the time you could sit probably gave a boy an unfair advantage. Sweet-faced, round-eyed, he came flying into her shadow, a frightened man-boy. A proud one.

One day, he'd have to be more than that. Probably soon.

"What are we going to do?"

"What wax does, when we have it. Melt."

"But Nicu says—"

"I know, and this is his watch. But this is bigger than this fight, and bigger than this caravan. I need you all, and I need you to do what we're best at. Survive." Her voice rose on the last word, because she knew the minute she started to speak that an audience had gathered. Waiting on her.

Aye, now was the time, and it wasn't the time. This was her first big choice. She weighed it.

And as she did, Nicu stepped forward.

Nicu, the cousin she'd grown up closest to. "We can take them," he said, his knuckles white around the grip of his sword. "We've got the wagon advantage, height where they don't expect it, crossbows—they're not carrying them—and the edge time buys us."

She nodded. "We can," she said. "We'd injure them. But we'd have to flee, and we'd lose men in the process."

"Margret—"

"I know it's your job, Nicu, and I know if anyone can pull it off, you can."

"Then let me pull it off. Let me prove it."

Behind him, her Uncle Stavos was standing, his expression almost completely neutral. But his arms were crossed over his chest; he looked bearlike, grizzled, his dark eyes giving no light. She hated that look. He was measuring her and her worth, and he was withholding his judgment—because this was a test, damn him, and the judgment might be some sort of clue.

Lady, they had no time. She rose as Carmello took his place beside—and slightly behind—Nicu, his face devoid of Stavos' neutrality. Another man, Andreas, joined Nicu, taking his left where Carmello took his right. Choosing, she thought. Choosing Nicu, making his stand. Andreas, short, stocky, dependable in a fight—but only just.

She put her hand on her hip—some unconscious mimicry of older Voyani women through the four clans—and said, "So this is it? This is your choice?"

No preamble; she was angry.

"Margret—" Nicu began.

She cut him off with the chop of a hand. "You think 1 like to run from the clansmen? From them? Is that what you think? You think I don't think we can win a fight? Is that what you're saying? You think I give you orders and you have to pull off your privates and sling 'em into little bags so you can run, tail between your legs, like some beaten dog?

"Is that what you think I'm leading you to? "

Nicu took a step back; Carmello and Andreas had already taken two. Adam, wide-eyed and pretty-faced, stood at her back, unmoving. She'd remember that later. Was vaguely grateful for it now. Her sword hand came up; steel flashed as she jabbed it into the empty air two feet away from Nicu's chest.

"Does this mean we fight?" he questioned, defiant.

"No, it means we do what I say."

"You aren't the Matriarch, Margret, not yet. And Evallen's—"

"Evallen's dead." She spit the two words out as if they were burning the insides of her mouth. As if they were burning her. She was dry-eyed now. "And the clansmen—or whoever it is who wants us to celebrate the Lady's Festival by their rules— also have Yollana. Do you understand what this means?"

But her first two words were a slap in the face.

Evallen. Dead.

She hadn't meant to say it, and having said it, she could not withdraw it. The Arkosan heart would have to be recaptured, and soon, or she'd lose control. But the heart had a way of coming back to its keeper; it had been lost once or twice before. The Lady made a path for it.

That was the story. She willed herself to believe it. Needed to.

"They killed the Matriarch?" Uncle Stavos' voice.

She met his eyes, the paleness of his skin unmistakable. "Yes," she said softly. "And I want them to pay. But they won't pay if we don't survive.

"Survival is what we do. It's what we are. We've lived with the desert for all of existence because we know when to stand against it and when to let it roar. You think I don't want their blood? You think my blood is that thin?" The sword came up, cutting a swathe through empty air. She was angry. "You think that, Nicu?"

He had been her favorite male cousin when they were growing up and the responsibility of the clan had rested—forever—on her mother's unbreakable shoulders. She met his eyes then, her face falling into an expression that spoke of that kinship, that special relationship, that history.

"If you think it, say it. Say it, and we'll have it out here, where it will cost us the most."

"You want us to run."

"I want us to vanish like shadow under bright light. We're not the Lord's; never have been. We're the Lady's. But we can find what we need in the sunlight, if we have to. I need you all. You're the men of the Matriarch's caravan. We're going to have to be here, and there—" she pointed up, and up again, to the plateau where the Lake lay nestled, "before this is over. Don't make me do this without you. Don't throw away lives we can't afford to lose."

He was silent. Shocked by her announcement. They all were. "And if we can't afford to let them take what we're leaving with?"

Her smile was the Lady's darkest smile. "Then fight, and with my blessing. And remember, while you're doing it: They're no blood of ours."

He took a breath. Then he tucked his sword into his sash. Shook his head, as if to clear it. "Margret—"

"You're my closest cousin," she said, relenting. Taking the free hand off the hip, where it was bunched more as fist than anything, she slapped his shoulder soundly. "My closest kin next to Adam, or you wouldn't have the important job. I trust you. Do it."

Then she lifted her hand to her face.

"We'll mourn," she said softly. "We'll all get our chance to mourn."

And they looked at her; she felt their eyes on the momentary shield of her hand. She was the Matriarch, for just that moment; she was what Evallen had been.

But it didn't make her feel any stronger; if anything, she felt weaker for it. She had used her grief, or the excuse for grief, to manipulate them all to do what she wanted them to damn well do. What kind of a daughter did that with her own mother's death? It made her soul shrivel in the heat of the Lord's merciless light.

"Margret," Uncle Stavos said, coming out from Nicu's shadow, his sword over his shoulder, "They'll be here soon, and they're probably coming for you, Matriarch."

She looked up at his face, at his sun-worn, care-lined face, and she saw neither shock nor grief. It came to her that he was one of the ones who already knew about Evallen's death. That he knew, that he accepted it, that she had somehow passed whatever test it was he had set for her.

"Uncle," she said.

He put his hand on the ball of her shoulder. "Margret," he replied softly, giving her, in a quick squeeze, all of his strength. "Trust yourself. You are your mother's daughter—and we need you to be that. To be worse, to be more, than that." He looked over his shoulder. "They're young," he said quietly. "And I'm needed. Take your own advice, Matriarch. You are Arkosa, heart exposed or no."

Things would have been different if he hadn't seen Elena. Her sword was out and her hair, as usual, had escaped the binding knot it was so artlessly shoved into. Her cheeks were flushed, skin glowing faintly with sweat and heat. She was laughing. In all of this, laughing.

Oh, not at him; she would never laugh at him at a time like this. But she was the Matriarch's cousin, and until such time as someone was stupid enough to marry Margret—or until Margret found a husband she thought worthy of the clan, Elena was the heir.

They'd given her the children; Adam was by her side and she'd looped an arm over his still-slim shoulders. He was too stupid to know what she offered. Boy.

"Nicu," Stavos said. "Come. They'll be here in ten minutes; less if the crowd keeps thinning. The Matriarch—"

He pulled himself free. Stood there, his jaw clamped. "I'd give her anything she wanted," he said at last, the words rushing together. Uncle Stavos was no idiot; he looked past Nicu's shoulder to Elena of Arkosa.

"Aye," he said, "and if it weren't for your Aunt Ellia, I'd join you in mourning." He winced, that mocking half laugh of his finishing the words. "Nicu, come."

"What do I have to do?" Nicu continued, allowing himself to be led. "What do I have to do to even get her attention?"

"Nicu, women are strange creatures. We men, we know what's best in men—but women, they know nothing. My Ellia," he said, "she spent two years mooning after Pieter of the Havallans."

That stopped Nicu short. "Pieter? "

"Exactly. Told me he had poetry in his heart. Didn't matter whether or not his feet were on the road; he knew how to make a home of the Voyanne." The Voyanne: the homeless road. "I tell you now, I was almost ready to carry her off myself—but I liked living. Those two years were the hardest two years of my life. And," the big man said, laughing from the center of his chest, "I got what I wanted." He mimed a smack across the side of the head. "You be careful of what you want."

"How did you get her in the end? Why did she come to you, if she wanted him?"

"Lady knows," Stavos said. "If I knew, I'd tell you. Come on, Nicu."

Nicu followed his uncle.

But Elena was there with the children. "We should—we should help her."

Stavos actually frowned. A frown across his usually friendly face was very, very rare. "You want her because she can't take care of herself or her duties?" he asked, his voice thick with sarcasm. "Nicu, you have your duties. You choose between duty and desire."

"I won't leave the women and children alone," Nicu replied stubbornly.

"You sound like a clansman," Stavos said. He lifted an arm. "Do what you have to, Nicu, Donatella-son."

Nicu stepped toward where Elena and the children had last been spotted. The conversation with Stavos, curse him, had done its work; they were nowhere to be found. He ground his teeth— something Elena disliked intensely, and turned to catch up with his uncle. Maybe, he thought, this is the Lady's sign. The twist of anger in the center of his chest began to unknot. Stavos was right; he was being foolish. Elena had been given children as last duty, and she would see them safely through the streets if anyone could. Lady knew, she was good at slipping between clenched fingers as if she didn't even notice the grip. He reached up, grabbed the outer hood of a wagon that he knew he wouldn't see again, and took a deep breath.

"Nicu, Donatella's son. I have been waiting to speak with you."

His sword was out at once, twisting in air so that its curved edge was ready for a solid swing. Nicu was one of the best Arkosan swordsmen; he was proud of the fact. It was one of the few things he was certain of.

But the man who stood before him, in robes as rich as the Matriarch's ceremonial dress, did not flinch or move. He bore no clan markings, wore no armor, carried no sword. In the far, far North, merchants did that: wore no armor, carried no sword. But not here, not in the Tor.

Nicu could take a glance to the side without moving his head; his eyes darted to the almost deserted compound grounds. He'd be one of the last to leave. Last, if the stranger didn't leave.

"I apologize for my untimely intrusion," the man said, bowing gracefully. "But I believe that you will find it of benefit, and the result of our discussion here will be proved there." He lifted a hand, waved it to the street through which the first of the Tyrian cerdan were approaching.

"I don't have time—"

"You do. I shall speak quickly, and perhaps too freely. Some months ago, an associate of mine came forward to speak with your Matriarch." He shrugged, silk rippling in sunlight almost sinfully smoothly. "He offered her something that the Voyani have long sought: an end to the curse of the Voyanne."

Nicu's eyes narrowed. "And you could promise that?" He spit to the side, tightening his grip on his sword and looking, nervous now but battle-ready, for the sign of the Sword of Knowledge across the overly-fine silk breast. Nothing.

"I can," he said. "But I know better than to approach the Matriarch. Think: When the homeland was open, who ruled it?"

"If it weren't for the Matriarch," Nicu shot back, "there wouldn't be Voyani clans. We would have perished with the cities."

"This is the Dominion, Nicu of Arkosa."

Hearing his name fall off this stranger's lips made him crackle with a type of suspended energy. He wasn't certain why, but he knew, right at that moment, that he shouldn't listen to the stranger.

Knew, as well, that he would.

"In the Dominion, where else do women rule? Do serafs rule their lords? Do clansmen rule the Tors, the Tors the Tyrs?" The stranger's smile was slight. "No. Only the Voyani are ruled by the weaker sex. Do you think that the women want to go back to their so-called home? Do you think that they want to give up power, any more than the Tyrs do?

"Think: In the cities of Arkosa, of Havalla, of Lyserra and Corrona, did women rule? No. Men ruled. Women married, they were fierce in their marriages, and they were loyal."

"We don't like our women weak," Nicu said, thinking of Elena, his Elena.

"No," the stranger replied. "And in that, there is much to admire; a weak woman does not make a strong son. But leadership? Rulership in time of war? In a fight, you could best your cousin. I have seen that much, and I have been watching for some time, waiting for a worthy man to finally present himself from Arkosa.

"That man is you; you are now old enough, now skilled enough, now wise enough, to know what it is that you want. I cannot immediately prove to you the value of my claim, but think carefully, and while you think, I will gift you with some portion of my power if you will receive it."

Instant suspicion, there. Nicu's sword, which had been slowly falling groundward, came up at once. "What gift? I will not have you touch me."

"No, indeed. The gift I grant you is a sword, no more, no less. It is almost exactly like the one you wield; you need explain it, and its existence, to no one should you choose to carry it."

"And what will it do?" Nicu said, his eyes almost as narrow as the edge of his blade.

"It will aid you in a fight. You are faster than most of the men here, but not all; with this sword, you will be undisputed." He lifted the folds of his cloak. "I ask only that you consider what I have said, and what I have offered. I cannot give you the city itself, of course; the city is not here, and we are not before its hidden gates. I do not know where the city lies: only the Matriarch and her heir do.

"But if the sword is what I have promised, and if you are willing to serve your people as ruler and leader—as the man who will bring them home, we will speak again, you and I."

His robes billowed in a clean, fresh wind. Nicu, spellbound, waited a moment. The wind took the stranger, the man who bore no sign of the Sword of Knowledge, no sign of the arms and armor that mark a man in the Lord's eyes. But at his feet, where his robes had brushed the compacted dirt, was a scabbard.

In truth, it was not fine; it was as he had promised: much like the sword Nicu had owned for all of his adult life. As if that sword—the namesword, the sword by which he had taken his adult vows—now burned him, he removed it, touching it carefully, removing it from its easy and familiar place at his left hip.

It was something he did every night; no reason to feel so naked in the doing. But he felt it: naked. He hovered a moment, between desire and desire.

And then Nicu of the Arkosa Voyani straightened out his shoulders. He was a man, not a boy. He was not afraid of a sword. Bending at the knees, so as not to look subservient in the Lord's eyes, Nicu retrieved the sword the stranger had left, like a harbinger of either war or glory, where his feet had been.

He girded himself with it slowly, half-expected a trap of some sort: fire, wind, something that would burn or scour. Nothing happened. He gripped the hilt; felt the leather, cool and new, in the palm of his sweating hands. He murmured a prayer, indistinct and inaudible, for the Lady's Mercy.

Then, taking care to be as silent as possible—as if noise itself would draw attention he did not desire—Nicu of the Arkosa Voyani, Nicu, the Matriarch's cousin, drew the crescent sword.

It was… a sword.

Perhaps more, certainly not less. It gleamed in the sunlight, and its blade was a bit too pristine, untested, unnotched. His kinsmen would know, if they saw it. They would know it had been unblooded.

Nicu did not carry an unblooded blade.

He smiled for perhaps the first time that day. Opportunity was here, in plenty; if he carried the stigma of an unblooded blade, he would carry it in private, and he would not carry it long: there were enemies about, and none of them were his kin, however distant.

7th of Scaral, 427 AA

Evereve

She was reminded of old children's tales as she wandered the cavernous halls of the great, empty manse. But it wasn't the splendor of those halls that filled her with that unnamed childhood awe, although they were indeed splendid in their gaudy, gilded way. The heights the ceilings reached rivaled—or exceeded—those permitted the Mother, Cormaris, and Reymaris upon the Holy Isle, and contained by the larger surface of such walls, the gold that had seemed almost ugly and tawdry in the confines of an admittedly large bedchamber almost looked tasteful.

Well, perhaps tasteful was going too far. But the silvered glass the hall boasted, end to end, was larger than any she had ever seen and it distorted no part of her image; the crystals suspended from the ceilings above on chains of gold or brass and silver were of different colors that caught light and held it at their hearts, transparent magelights. There were paintings, tucked into frames of gold as if to give the wall continuity and color, that were so perfect they caught her attention and held it for long enough that she could forget where she was, what she was wearing, who she was with. A sure sign of a maker's hand.

And there were the statues.

It was the statues that reminded her of the stories she had heard while she sat in her grandmother's lap, probably from before the time she could speak, the safety of the old woman's arms not yet compromised in her young mind with the encroaching age that would take her away so completely, so devastatingly.

They were here; men, a youth or two. They stood upon pedestals around which were carved runes she didn't recognize. Age, august and profound, was implied everywhere and visible nowhere in the unblemished stone faces; the hand—or hands—that had birthed them from their encasement in quarried blocks had chosen to be both truthful and kind. She wondered, briefly, what Meralonne could tell her of what was written beneath their feet.

Might have wondered longer, but she recognized one of those statues, and she stopped in front of it.

Marbled alabaster, white eyes, full lips, clothed in smoothly chiseled stone, he stood two feet above her looking not down but up, as if he could see beyond the confines of the vaulted ceiling. Or as if he hoped to one day be able to.

He looked no more lively than the rest of the procession he stood in the middle of; no more lovely, in truth, but no less perfect. The expression that had accompanied his parting words was nowhere to be seen. She reached out; her hand hovered above his chest as she hesitated, searching still features for some sign of life.

At last she touched him; the folds of his shirt—embroidered by a thin set of grooves that made a pattern—were as hard as Arann's armor.

But hard or no, they rippled beneath her fingers as his arms bent at the elbow and his hand trapped hers. "You are not Elyssandra," he said, and she understood then why the statues felt old to her.

She had heard one speak, had found his voice strange, had not immediately understood why. She understood now, standing this close; they had the weight of earth in their voice; the weight of earth's bones.

She pulled her hand back; the surface of smooth rock abraded the skin, although he made no move to tighten his grip. "No. Not usually."

"I have slept long indeed," he replied, his eyes unblinking, his irises alabaster and disconcertingly large, "if there has been such a changing of the guard."

He fell silent; it became clear to her that he was waiting for her, either to speak or to leave. His expression was completely devoid of so animated a thing as emotion.

"Who are you?"

A brow went up, changing the lines of his face but leaving them, somehow, a statue's. "An odd question."

"I was going to tell you who I am," she replied, cocking her head to one side and then pushing the resultant locks of unruly hair out of her eyes, "but you're the host; you can go first."

"You were going to tell me who you are? Or simply what you are called?" But his lips curved oddly as he said it.

Great. A philosopher. "What I'm called. I'm not sure my version of who I am would mean anything to you, although come to think of it, the name pretty much says it all."

"Oh?"

"I'm Jewel ATerafin. And I'm stupid. I wanted your name first." Against her will, or rather, against her intent, she smiled. There was something about this statue that she liked.

"My name, I fear, will tell you less than your name tells me."

"Try me."

"I… am Aristos Concaella. I was… Regent in my time."

"Here?"

He laughed. It wasn't a pleasant sound; too much like the fall of one stone against another. "Not here. There are no Regents here. There is nothing to preside over in the absence of my master."

"Were you—were you ever—mortal?"

"Was I a man?" He laughed again, and this time she understood why the sound was unpleasant—a rock slide started that way before it buried whole caravans. "I was a fool. Does that count? It was many years ago."

She knew the answer to the question she asked next, but she had to ask it; she had to hear the truth cast in words, because otherwise it would be too easy to slip out from under it. "How did you become a… statue?"

"The Warlord," he replied quietly.

"And the Warlord is Avandar?"

His frown was lovely. "I do not know the name; he had none by the time I was chosen to serve him."

"He was—he wears the crown here."

"Yes. The Warlord is your master."

She snorted. "My master?" As his expression shifted, the contours of his face gradually taking on a line that she couldn't quite name and didn't at all like, the laughter that almost escaped her subsided.

"I don't mean to offend," she said softly, "but I've known Avandar Gallais for half my life, and it is most decidedly not as his servant. He serves me."

"Oh?"

"Trust me. He may not serve me well; he may serve within the letter of the law and not at all within its spirit, but he does serve me."

He reached out for her hand.

She was not normally a person who liked to be touched—not by her own, and definitely not by strangers—but he moved so quickly, her right wrist was in his palm before she had even realized he intended to grab it.

He caught the edge of one of the fine, gaudy sleeves she wore between his forefinger and thumb and, scattering the edging of pearl and diamond to the floor below where they tinkled and rolled into silence, he yanked the sleeve up to her elbow.

There, two inches above her wrist on the inner part of her arm was a stylized backward S, bisected in two places with small v's. The S was red, the first v gold, the second silver. She ran her fingers over the mark as if expecting the paint to come off.

It didn't.

She rubbed harder.

The mark was as fresh and as unperturbed as the face of a great lady just after she leaves her morning rooms.

"What—what is this?"

The hall was quiet enough that the grinding of teeth could be heard.

"You do not recognize it?" He was silent a moment.

"If I recognized it, I wouldn't be asking."

"Can it be that you don't read?"

The accusation—of stupidity or the poverty that enforced it— had always riled, perhaps because it had come so close to being true.

"I. Read. Quite. Well."

"Ah. My apologies. My master… made me… to be the best of all possible servants. I hear all language as if it were my own. This," he said quietly, gesturing to the wrist she now cradled, "is the oldest word in our written vocabulary.

"It is the master's name," Aristos added softly.

"You—you have this?"

"I? No. Not that mark." He glanced down to the flow of stone over his forearms. "And the mark that I was given before I was given the responsibility of this domain is, I fear, long since made inaccessible."

"But you've seen this mark before."

"Oh, yes," he said, and there was suddenly something in his voice, like a second presence; something that struck her as lightning struck the storm-heavy sky: there, blinding, gone in an instant.

She didn't ask him. She reached up for the sleeve of her dress— her ridiculous, much despised dress—and yanked it firmly down over the offending arm, the offending sigil.

But perhaps the discussion had gone far enough.

Or perhaps it had not gone as far as he desired.

He said, "I have seen it once before, on the arm of the Warlord's wife."

CHAPTER SIX

It should have been easy to talk to him.

Or rather, it should have been easy to turn on her heel and walk down the great hall, each step alleviating some of her anger. She started, but the voice of a man trapped in stone—of it now, in this hidden place—stopped her.

As did the weight of his hand on her shoulder.

She wondered how little effort it would take for him to crush that shoulder—not a pleasant thought.

But he offered her words instead of violence. "Jewel ATerafin." The whole tone of his voice, the demeanor of his carriage, had changed subtly—if stone could be subtle.

She turned; he lifted his fingers, breaking all physical contact. "What?"

"I do not… understand… your reaction. It is clear you are angry."

"That would be an understatement, but, yes, I'm angry."

"Why?"

"He is not my master, for one. He has no right to turn you into stone and keep you locked up on a pedestal until he decides you should be serving someone, for two—I'll have him serve me himself first. And three? We've got a very important mission and stopping off in this… in this whatever it is…" She felt as if she had been absorbing the silence of the rest of the hall, as if she could no longer speak in the face of it.

"Do not," he said, "risk yourself for the sake of your pity. I am not worth it, and it is I who will suffer for it should you choose to speak."

Luckily, silence, no matter how heavy, never lasted in the face of her curiosity. She tried not to remember curiosity's natural reward in her grandmother's stories. "And he could do something worse than he's already done?"

"I have seen far, far worse," was his soft reply.

She didn't ask. Change the subject, Jewel. "Where are we?"

"You are in Evereve, his home."

"Yes, well. What I meant was where is Evereve?"

"None of us are completely certain."

"None of us?"

"Yes."

"Forgive me, Aristos, but I must leave. I'll return."

"Jewel," he said, his voice the low rumble of distant, moving stone, "if you are not careful, you will return in a fashion you will not like."

It took her a moment to realize what he was saying.

"I'll worry about me, all right? You take care of yourself."

She found Avandar almost as soon as the great hall released her. And it was a release; until the moment she stepped from beneath its vaulted ceilings, its magelights, its statues—which had started, in her mind, as an homage to life and had ended as worse than mockery—she had not realized how much like a prison it had felt.

She might have taken a moment to appreciate freedom; to be glad of the fact that her feet were not attached to a pedestal, her life not burdened by that involuntary service. But she saw him instead, and the sense of exultation vanished.

In its place something uncomplicated enough—but barely—to be called anger.

He stood, vivid in blue and gold, the crown a mark across his brow, one that caught light and returned it. At his back, the mercifully less golden, gently curving wall that marked the boundary of the room she had entered. To either side, doors that led into a distance that hinted at visual splendor by casting it into half shadow.

She raised her arm as if it were a weapon. The sleeve—jeweled edges torn now—fell to her elbow and rested there like a gaudy flag.

Between them, the mark in red and gold and silver.

"You'd better have an explanation for this," she said, her voice so quiet any of her den would have ducked for cover. "And you'd better get it off."

He was not, had never been, part of her den; she now understood why in a way that she'd never put into words. He wasn't a servant. He didn't need her, not the way a servant needed a master. And more, buried beneath the half lifetime they'd spent together, the most important of the little truths: She didn't trust him.

She was certain, now, the mark twining like a serpent on the pale inside of her arm, she never would.

The rest of her den weren't servants, not like the dozens of men and women who swept and cleaned and stabled and cooked for the great House Terafin. But they served her. The understanding itself was as much a surprise as the mark.

It wasn't that they did what she said—they did, if you didn't count Carver's incessant need to sleep with anything that moved and spoke half-intelligibly—it was that they did so because they understood what the stakes were, and why the choices were made.

They stood at her back or at her side, depending on what she needed. They let her take care of the big things, and they filled in the cracks between one crisis and the next, waiting with the patience of—well, maybe that was stretching it. But they were patient.

They were hers.

Teller. He'd known. What it would cost. What she was leaving them to. He had never once questioned her. He had never once confronted her about the choices she'd made. The accusation, you're leaving us could sting and cut and bite because it was true—but only Jewel herself had ever made it, and only at night when sleep refused to alleviate her guilt and anxiety.

Ellerson had been like them. They'd all known it, pretty much the minute he'd corrected their poor manners and forced them to take a bath before they gathered round the dining table. There was a safety about him that in simpler times meant he was trustworthy.

In complex times? Trustworthy as well.

Morretz was.

Avandar was not.

As if he could hear her thoughts—and perhaps he could; it had always been rumored that some mages had that capability, although the Magisterium itself had dryly and precisely denied the accusation time and again—he spoke.

She didn't understand the language, and she recognized at least five, spoke two fluently.

She waited.

He spoke again, and again the language made no sense; it was an ugly complex of snarls and clicks. But she was certain it con-tained meaning. He lifted a hand. Pointed; she saw a light take the outline of his finger as if he were oil and it, fire.

Unfortunately, he was pointing at her.

She knew he wouldn't harm her. If it weren't for that instinct, the one that overrode every lesson and every experience that together comprised the wisdom she'd managed to attain, she would have leaped to the side to escape what left his hand: fire. Light.

Instead, she waited as it touched her skin. Was surprised at how warm it was, how mild and pervasive its heat.

"Jewel," he said.

She wore no crown. If it hadn't meant parading around the halls almost entirely naked, she wouldn't have worn the dress either. But the halls were cool, and the shifts and undercoat meant to be hidden between skin and jewel-stubbled silk were not proof against the temperature. She almost always chose practicality over pride.

"You didn't have any problem saying that before."

"Before?"

"When I—when I woke up. In my—in your—in that room."

"Ah. No."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Does it matter? I have no problem now."

"If that was a spell you just cast, and I was the recipient, then yes, it does matter."

He turned away from her by the simple expedient of shifting his gaze. "This is my home," he told her softly, his words strangely slow. "But it was built by many hands, and some of them belonged to very talented men whom I found intriguing, and whom you, I fear, would find mad. They created works I had barely dreamed of, and even the dreams were the type that linger in shadow at the first edge of morning." His gaze rose as he spoke, eyes tracking the vault of the ceiling. "I gave them freer rein than I had realized. I set few conditions on their work.

"But understand," he said softly, "that I desired privacy above all else; a place hidden from all of the visions that even the gods possessed. To enter is… never easy. I find these visits disorienting, but I generally recover."

"Oh, good. I suppose that's more than you could say about Aristos."

He hadn't been smiling, and given the sudden narrowing of his eyes, there wasn't a chance in the hells he'd start now. "Do not meddle in what does not concern you."

"You sent him to me."

"I? Alas, I—previous commandments ruled his presence in your chamber. My apologies for the discomfort he may have caused."

"Discomfort?"

"Jewel."

"No, don't take that tone with me—what do you mean discomfort? As far as I can tell, he's a living man and someone's done something—you've done something—to turn him into a convenient block of stone!"

He did smile then. It wasn't pretty.

What he spoke next was not Weston; was so far from being Weston she didn't recognize it immediately as the language he had first spoken when she slid out of the great hall and into his vision. "It was not for my convenience that I so chose," he said, and the language hurt. But she understood it.

She stepped back. She knew it was the wrong thing to do, but there was suddenly something about him that spoke of death. Hers. Everyone's. She stopped before she could take the next step, and took a deep breath instead.

"It was," he said softly, "for the convenience of my faithless, cunning wife. A reminder." He turned. Turned back. "If you follow the gold-encased lights, you will find dinner served."

"I won't—"

"I suggest you eat. You will find that you are much closer to starvation than your body thinks you are." He left her standing there, clenching her fists, surrounded by tapestries in an anteroom that obviously led to the lord of the manor.

Later she would look at them; she promised herself that. She would look at them, try to glean some hint of the future from the obvious past the tapestries were made to commemorate.

7th of Scaral, 427 AA 

Tor Leonne, Annagar

"There's trouble," Benito said, nodding casually toward the gently sloping streets that led up to one of about six merchant compounds.

"What trouble?" Kallandras replied, moving heavily in the heat of the afternoon sun. Feeling the extra "weight" that he had adopted, like so much personality, as he made his way home at Benito's side. He waited; Benito, as usual, was expansive. The loud, half-friendly chatter of the merchant demanded no response. Better, it allowed for none.

"Those four men, you see 'em?"

He did, of course. "No. Wait—those ones?"

"No, those ones. Armored, with drawn swords. Over there!"

One of the four men looked up; Benito's words, spoken against the wind, were easily loud enough to carry. It was one of the traits that would have endeared him to many of the Northerners he knew—none of whom would be in attendance at the Tor Leonne during the Festival of the Moon.

Kallandras recognized both the man's interest—unfriendly— and the crest he wore: Tyrian cerdan. He spared him a glance, no more; spared his companions less. They were exactly what they appeared to be: Men sent, judging by their direction, to weed out the Voyani among the merchants and bring them up to the plateau for questioning.

"Benito," he said, huffing and puffing with the exertion of movement, his thoughts as far from his facade as they could be, "I think we want to be somewhere else."

"Where else, eh? You think there's so much room in the Tor Leonne at Festival time?" The merchant swatted him heavily across the arm. "Use your head!"

But he could see, beyond the obvious four, another four men, and he knew as he watched them that they were far too confident in their numbers to be just eight. The clansmen and the Voyani clashed frequently on both the edges of wilderness the Terreans boasted and in society itself, and they had only one rule when facing each other: No quarter. None given, none asked.

Among their own, the Voyani infighting was fierce, but unless an actual clan war had been declared—and it had happened twice in his lifetime—there were niceties and rules that were observed most of the time. Not here. Not among these.

He guessed that the Voyani had had word from the plateau. Guessed that they were scattering even as the merchant, Benito, continued to drone on and on to his left, a sort of toneless, heavy chatter that might have become musical if uttered by a different voice. Benito's daughter's, perhaps. Or his son, a lad as sharp as Imperial steel, but hotter in temperament.

"You, you two!" The Tyrian cerdan whose gaze had passed over them shouted.

Benito froze. "Us?"

"You! Come here!"

Kallandras shrugged; he waited for Benito to move, and then, when the merchant finally found his feet, followed to his right and behind.

"Who are you with?"

"With?"

"Whose caravan?"

Red rose in the merchant's cheek. "My own." he said, his chest inflating with a bit too much air. "I am Benito di'Covello, and I—"

"Have you been to the plateau?"

"Yes. We just—"

"Do you carry the medallion?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said, do you carry the medallion? You were required to make an oath," he added, speaking as if to a simpleton or a fool. "And that oath was made over a medallion of the Tyr'agar's manufacture."

"I am not used to discussing the oaths I make," the merchant replied, heat giving way to Northern ice. "Oaths are between men. You have an oath you wish to force on me, then try."

The cerdan stared at him for a long time. Kallandras was mildly surprised when the armed and armored man looked away. Nodded. "We've had complaints," he said, "about Voyani thievery. This Festival is important to our Tyr, and we're about to end the offending behavior. I suggest you mind your manners and remain close to your personal caravan for the next several hours."

Before Benito could reply, one of the cerdan lifted his voice.

"Attelo!"

The man turned. "You see them?"

"Some. There!"

"Men?"

"No—it's the women."

The line of the cerdan's jaw compressed into square disgust. "My apologies," he said to Benito. It surprised Kallandras. "It's hard on a man, to be sent hunting women." He lifted his sword. "Don't stand there gaping, stop them!"

They were almost out. Elena had seven of the children under her wing—and her wing was expansive. They were young, these; not a one had seen more than five Festival Moons, and two at least had seen far less than that. She carried one bundled under her arm; her mother, Tamara, carried the other.

This was her most important duty, to get the children to safety— or as much safety as the streets allowed for. And she knew her ability to handle duty was about to be sorely tested.

Fail this, and every other success meant nothing; she knew, had known as a child, that the children were the only real future the Voyani had.

Donatella was with her. "Dona," she said, handing the wine-sleepy child to her aunt. "I've work here."

Donatella nodded grimly. She was older now, although no Voyani woman was so old that she couldn't fight. "The streets here twist; we'll find our way out."

"I'll join you. Mother—"

"I'm staying."

"You're going."

"Elena—"

"That's not a request." Her sword, shorter than Nicu's, but sharper and lighter, came out of the scabbard that rested easily across hip and thigh. "Ilia!"

The other woman her own age nodded grimly. Drew sword as well. "Over there, Elena."

"Shit."

The children said nothing. But they knew how to count; they'd have to, if they were old enough to beg or steal, and most of them were.

Four men. Four armed men. Swords. "Mama, now."

Her mother took a breath. Elena wanted to smack her. Not now, she thought. You hold the future, right behind your skirts. You protect it, damn you. There were no wagons to hide behind; no stalls; they were exposed. "RUN!"

Tamara of the Arkosans hesitated. Past her prime, she had never been one to run from a fight, and she left behind her her child—adult or no, still her child—facing four armed cerdan. But she knew Elena was right. Knew what she herself would have said to her own mother, had her mother dawdled like a sentimental idiot and somehow failed in the duty—the foremost duty, the important duty—of protecting the future of the family. The children.

She swallowed. Two to one.

No joy there.

"Mikala," she said, to the child who had almost crossed the boundary of five, "I need all your help now, with the rest of the children."

"I'm not a children," Polio said; it was the phrase he used most often this particular month. It was also said quietly and without vehemence. His mother was gone; gone with the men and the women whose duty it was to carry the few items they valued to safety. He was alone with Ona Tamara, and Ona Tamara was frightened.

Mikala, bless her, grabbed his hand. Tamara shifted an infant in her arm, picked up the second. Took two steps.

And a man she had never seen before in her life, a man who wore no armor, and whose hair was the color of Northern demons, stepped into the cobbled roadway. "There is… no one to bar your way, Tamara of the Arkosans. The road to the East is clear from here to the Easternmost Fount of Contemplation. It will be clear for perhaps half an hour.

"If you are concerned with the well-being of the children, I suggest you move quickly."

She was stunned a moment. "Who are you?" she asked, sharply and quickly.

"I? I serve the Lady," he replied, speaking in Torra as if Torra were something that, like the finest and softest of silks, could be donned. He turned to look down the street, to look beyond Tamara's bent back. Paused. Knelt. "You are Mikala?" he said, to the five-year-old Voyani girl.

She nodded, unafraid, the suspicion that was completely automatic for Tamara waived in the case of this stranger.

"You are a brave girl," he said. "You will grow up to be part of the Voyani pride." He smiled. Lifted his head, so that he could see all of the children. "Listen well to Ona Tamara. Do as she tells you until she tells you you are safe."

They nodded, all seriousness, the youngest child barely walking, the oldest nervously glancing at the men who were drawing closer, closer still. He rose then. "I regret," he told Tamara softly, "that I cannot accompany you. But my skill is better used."

"We'll be in your debt," the older woman said gruffly. Wondering, as words laden with personal meaning and fraught with difficulty escaped her lips, if she was the older of the two. "They don't—they don't usually hunt the children. If we'd known, we would never have sent the others away. The children—"

"They are not hunting children," he replied, turning toward the causeway where her daughter and Ilia now hid in what little cover there was, swords drawn. "But women."

Donatella, silent until that moment, reached down and picked up one of the children whose feet had given out on him. "Tamara," she said softly. "It is time."

"They don't usually hunt women; they aren't that smart."

"No." The stranger shrugged. "But the Voyani—especially the Arkosans and the Havallans in this generation—usually know better than to take the Tyrians on in a street fight. They melt into the shadows they can find—and they can almost always find the Lady's shadow, even in the brightest of the Lord's light.

"Today, a handful have sought the Lord's light, and there is blood in the streets; the cerdan have called for reinforcements, and the men are out in greater numbers."

"Who would be such a fool—"

The words froze in Tamara's throat.

Her best friend, her closest cousin, bent her head. "Dona—"

"Enough, Tamara. The children."

Tamara nodded. Who was she to criticize one of their own in the presence of a stranger? Especially when that one, as she suspected, was the son of her good friend?

But she whispered a benediction to the Lady as she began to lead the children down the gently sloped road.

Their advantage was a simple one, but it had two faces. The clansmen didn't like to fight women. The first type of clansmen would happily kill them in village slaughters, rape them, enslave them, sell them—but fight them, that was beneath their station as men of the Lord. The second type of clansmen looked at fighting women in the same way the Voyani women themselves looked at fighting their children in earnest: It was killing the weaker, the helpless, the people in life who must be protected.

She couldn't tell, looking down the road, which face the four men wore; most likely it was some sort of combination. But they didn't look gleeful, hunting the Voyani—and their children, Lady's blood—and that was something.

Ilia cursed quietly. It was hot; the leather and cotton grips that kept a sword safely in hand weren't proof against a profusion of nervous sweat. Elena looked across the road, willing the men to stop where they were. A handful of minutes, and it wouldn't matter.

But when the men did stop, she cursed.

The foremost among them drew his sword. It was clear that he had been marching in armor; it was the first time that day that she'd wished it were summer's height and not the Lady's season.

"Surrender," he said, his voice a boom across streets that were emptying quickly at the sight of the unsheathed sword. "We have no wish to harm you; we only wish to enforce the Tyr'agar's lawful edict!"

Ilia met her gaze; held it a moment. Shook her head.

"By what law," Elena said, "does the Tyr'agar hold the Voyani at the Lady's Festival?"

"The Lord's law!" A second man replied. She couldn't tell, although the distance was not a great one, whether or not the first man was irritated at the interruption. She would have been, but she wasn't cerdan.

"You waste our time," the first man said; the second was silent again. "And your lives. So be it." He nodded; the three men who obviously followed his orders came toward them bearing naked blades.

"This," Elena said, through gritted teeth, "is not going to be fun."

Ilia laughed. Unfortunately, she laughed the way she always did when Elena stooped to understatement: nervously. It was only in the most dire of circumstances—sarcasm aside—that Elena ever bothered to understate anything.

She took a breath; held it. Expelled it. Took another breath, a deeper one. Brought her sword forward; grabbed it in both hands. She'd never learned the art of fighting sword and dagger, although she could fight with two daggers at close quarters better than anyone but Margret and Evallen.

Evallen, who was dead. Dead at the hands of men like these.

That gave her some fire; it burned briefly where she needed it to burn. Elena of the Arkosan Voyani said, loudly enough for Ilia to hear it. "For Evallen."

And then, before she could move, the three men approaching her staggered like a row of tall grass being trampled, slowly, by a sauntering horse.

Kallandras came out of the shadows.

The men who fell were not, he thought, dead—although he was slower than he had been at the peak of his agility, and there was some possibility that he had mistimed his throws. He meant what he'd said: the Voyani did best when they sought the shadows and left the fighting to the clansmen. They were used to Voyani who ran in the face of greater numbers, and in the history of the Tor Leonne, there had been no open fighting between the Voyani and the ruling clansmen. The lay of the wild land was different; there, the Voyani ruled in their wheeled strongholds.

The man who had ordered the cerdan forward froze; he looked around from side to side, and then, in a moment of foolish bravery, dashed forward through the street. He had not seemed young to Kallandras until that moment. Watching from shadows that were better chosen by far than either of the two Voyani women's had been, he saw the man kneel into the cobbled stones. Touch the bodies of his fallen comrades, looking for some sign of weaponry: bolt, quarrel, arrow. Something.

He would find it eventually, but by that time they would be gone.

Or so Kallandras had hoped.

But the woman with a blaze of fire in her otherwise dark hair chose that moment to step forward. Her face, sun-bitten and wind-carved, was both lovely and hard. These odds, he thought, these odds she favored, and she meant to take advantage of them.

The stories about Voyani savagery were based, as most stories were, in fact, and if the clansmen distorted that fact for their own purposes, that fact remained.

He almost stepped aside. Here, in the Tor Leonne, there was no crime in such a decision. In the lands to the far North, the laws of the Empire and his own position there—master bard, unofficial servant to the Kings and the Queens of the land—would have forced his hand. But here power ruled, and the women, these two Voyani women, now held its balance on the edge of their short, curved swords. It was not Kallandras' duty to intervene should he choose to turn a blind eye.

We are all changed by the facades we have chosen.

Hearing them, the lone Tyrian cerdan looked up. His eyes widened; his sword, slack by his side, came up at once. He found his feet, and he moved—but he did not move away from them; rather he moved to stand before the bodies of his fallen comrades. They were alive, then.

The red-haired woman reached him first; she swung easily, swung low, feinting. He was off-balance; a man who, in Kallandras' opinion, had never been properly trained to fight the fight he was handed; he was cerdan of the city, and the high clans, and the high clans did not fight women. Her second swing drove him back a step; her third swing did not. Behind him, unconscious, his men hovered, and if they were intemperate, if they interrupted him, if they did not—quite—follow the orders that he had set them, they were his men. That much was obvious from his actions alone.

Loyalty. Ah.

Over time, loyalty had become a trait that Kallandras could not quite ignore. This was not his fight, but he had already intervened, albeit for his own purposes.

He stepped into the roadway now, his hands empty.

"Elena," he said.

She heard him; she stepped back a moment, sword still at play. Her companion chose to join her, changing the odds. Two to one.

The man looked toward Kallandras as well, his sword, as theirs, unbloodied.

"Elena, this man, his life is not worth your anger. You have won the victory you desire. The children are safe; you will be expected to join them."

Her eyes were brown-green, flashing with sunlight, anger, the last vestiges of fear as she faced him, her gaze flickering between him and the cerdan who stood so close to death. The sun was high, harsh; it cast her shadow down in a squat mockery of natural grace.

"Who are you to tell me what to do?"

"I? I am a friend," Kallandras replied, "and I have walked the Voyanne in my own way these many years. Slaughter him, and what will you achieve? His concern was for his fallen—as yours would be. Look at him."

"And if I want his death?" she replied, her knuckles ivory beneath the sun's bronze, her cheeks flushed.

Beside her, the other Voyani woman waited.

"If you want it, Elena of Arkosa, you will have it. But in the end, if the Dominion is to stand against the Lord of Night, the Tyrians and the Voyani who are, at heart, loyal or honorable men will be needed." He shrugged. "The three who lie felled are not dead. There are other ways."

"And you, so-called friend of the Voyani, what will you do if I choose to take his life? We are owed a life, at least that!"

"Make your decision," he replied, folding his arms almost casually beneath the fullness of the sun. "And I, too, will make mine. We live by our judgments, Elena, and we live, at times, to regret them."

The sword shook. Oh, the sword shook.

Had this… man… been Annagarian, had he been clan, she would have ignored him; he carried no sword. But his hair was golden, and his eyes were pale, and his skin was like nothing she had seen in her life. Tall, too slender to be a warrior, he seemed a thing of night at the height of day. A whisper of conscience, a messenger of the Lady.

Night pooled in her heart.

She met the eyes of the cerdan. "You were hunting our children," she said softly, her voice as sharp as her sword.

"We were hunting only the women," he replied.

"You take our children as serafs where you can find them."

"You take our children as serafs where you can find them."

Stung, she started to reply; her sword shifted.

"Truth," the stranger said to them both. "But this battle is over. You have defended your children, and you," he said, turning slightly so that he might fully face the cerdan, "have defended your men. The Lord has judged you. It is not the province of a warrior to seek the helpless to prove his strength against."

He bridled like a high-spirited horse.

But his sword came down.

"Elena," the soft-spoken stranger said quietly.

She did not sheathe her sword. Did not take her eyes off the clansmen, and that was wise. The clans were steeped in treachery and deceit from birth.

"Elena?" Ilia's voice.

She badly wanted Ilia's advice; the women often turned to each other for consensus. But not here, not now; such indecision was just another weakness she couldn't afford. Aiee, Margret—how have you lived like this for all of your life? It was possibly the first time she hadn't envied her cousin her position as heir to the Matriarch.

"Leave him," she said curtly. Her face hardened. "And you?" she said to the stranger.

"I will follow, with your permission; without it, I will return to my work."

She snorted; tossed her hair back because she'd forgotten it was pulled so tightly off her face. "I'd give Voyani song to know just what that work is."

His smile was light, mysterious, dark. "I'd listen," he said softly.

She turned, and then she heard it: the shout.

"OVER THERE!"

The sun was so damned hot and bright she could hope, for just a minute, that she was befuddled enough to mistake the voice. Teeth that she thought couldn't be clamped any tighter almost drove themselves through the opposite jaw as she gripped her sword and turned.

Beyond her, beyond the sole standing cerdan and the three men over whom he kept watch, she saw something that made her jaw slacken.

A man red with blood, slick with it, face and hands and chest splattered with things that were far too solid. Behind him, behind him others, five, six, seven—all cut and bleeding in the same way. Her face paled.

And the stranger said quietly—so quietly that for the first time she wondered how it was his voice actually carried—"It is not his blood."

Nicu of the Arkosa Voyani came down the street at a wild run, bucking like a mad stallion, his sword the only thing about him more obviously bloody than he.

"We've come to rescue you, Elena!" he shouted. "Stand aside!" His sword came up in a terrible arc.

"Nicu, no!" she cried back, lifting both empty hand and sword hand in denial. For it seemed to her, suddenly, that a cloud had caught the sun, banishing its harsh glare; seemed to her that she could see—just for a second—clearly. And she knew, she knew that what he was about to do was not only wrong, but dangerous. To him. To them all.

"NICU, NO!"

CHAPTER SEVEN

He stopped in the street; the men at his heels ran into him. Were it not for the fact they were sticky with blood—and their blood at least had been shed in the shedding of their enemy's blood—it would have seemed a comic thing, an act to make small children laugh. They were gleeful in the manner that small children sometimes are, and such a glee, in such guise, was hideous and wrong.

But it was fact; the bard did not argue with fact.

Nor did he argue with what he heard at the heart of Elena of Arkosa's voice. He knew who she was, of course, although the knowledge was recent. He knew what her position in the line Arkosa must be. And he knew that the Arkosans, the Havallans, the Lyserrans, and the Corronans all boasted their share of the seer's taint.

He carried no sword; it was true.

But he carried his weapons.

Left hand, then right, he touched their hilts, waiting.

The man called Nicu frowned.

"By what right do you tell me to stop? These men are hunting my kin during the Lady's Festival. They hunt my women, my children."

"Your women? Your children?" Her sword was a flash, much like her eyes. She was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

And she was correcting him again, in front of the men he had led to victory through the streets of the Tor Leonne. The anger warred with desire, but it was not such an even battle as all that; with Elena, desire was a part of his growing anger.

"I am the leader of the protectors; I was appointed by the Matriarch. The decision is mine, Elena!"

He heard the decision in Nicu's raw voice. Heard more, besides. But he was not ready to be the Wind's Voice; not yet. He made a noisy display of pulling his weapons out of their hidden sheaths. There were two. Glinting in the sunlight, they caught all eyes, even Nicu's. Even Elena's.

In the North, they were considered extremely unusual weapons. Very, very few were trained in their use. They had, of course, short blades, and the Northerners preferred the straight reach of the long double edge. But it was not the blades that made them unique. It was the guard; for each side of the guard came up almost two thirds of the length of the blade itself, and each tip was pointed. Honed.

In the North, brows would have been raised. And magisterial guards called, in loud and echoing voices, as they were often called when weapons were drawn.

In the South, brows were raised, but voices stilled.

These weapons were the Lady's weapons. The weapons of her dark face.

If he could have ordered the cerdan to flee, he would have, but he knew that the man would run no more than half the length of road before the duty to his companions drew him, shuddering, back.

"This fight," he said, his voice as reasonable, as soft as it had been when it reached Elena through her anger, "is unnecessary. It is not an act of the Lord—your numbers are too great to make it anything but a slaughter—and it is not an act of the Lady's, who seeks no open battle."

"These men," Nicu said, his voice shaking with anger and righteousness, "will serve the Lord of Night! Who are you to tell us how to—"

"Mete out death in the Lady's service?"

The silence was the silence of the sun's height. Kallandras stepped forward, moving silently, slowly, a single man in the sun. He was slender, not overly tall; were it not for the weapons he carried, his demeanor would have robbed him of all threat.

But threat or no, his intent was fulfilled; he came to stand between Nicu of the Arkosans and the lone Tyrian cerdan. Thinking it strange, after all these years, to interfere in such a basic way. To save the children had been easy; to save the women, simple. But to save the man was fraught with difficulty. Kallandras was of the brotherhood of the Lady, and there were no shadows here.

"Nicu," Elena said, her voice softening. "Please. They will send others—"

"Not a single one of these," Nicu said, pitching his words so they traveled beyond the stranger who stood in his way, "has been capable of stopping us. Not today!"

Elena's voice was not a voice which took to softness well. "And because of your slaughter, they've started to hunt us in earnest. Because you have tried to play Tyrian games, they enmesh us in Tyrian tactics!"

"Then let them! Are we to spend our lives running like beaten dogs? We are Voyani! We are Arkosans!"

The men behind him took up the last word like a cheer.

"You, stranger, get out of the way. This isn't your fight."

"Nicu, he saved the children while you were out killing!"

"Then I'll do my best not to kill him if he gets out of the way."

Kallandras heard the death in the words. Softly, much more gently than Elena was capable of speaking, he said, "This man will face you to protect his fallen. It is an act of honor. I ask you to treat it with honor; this is the Lady's Festival, and mercy is often granted when the Lady holds sway."

"We will treat him with as much mercy," Nicu replied, his voice as bright as his sword, "as they have ever shown us." He lifted his sword. "This is your last warning."

Kallandras shrugged.

The man named Nicu charged.

And behind him, slower to follow, came the rest of the Arkosans. It would be a difficult fight, if he did not wish to kill them—and he did not.

But he did not count on aid, and aid came; Elena of the Arkosans and Ilia of the Arkosans came to stand, blades drawn, on either side of him.

The cerdan stood behind them all, almost forgotten, but he, too, wielded naked sword—and well enough, by the look of him.

Nicu stopped ten feet from Kallandras, his jaw unhinged in angry shock. "You cannot mean to do this, Elena!"

She said nothing, which in Kallandras' opinion was wise.

"Ilia, you cannot mean to stand by the side of a known enemy!"

"I stand," Ilia said, from between clenched teeth, "by the side of the Matriarch's heir. She has chosen, Nicu. She would have died saving our future; if she feels this fight is as important as that one, I'll fight it."

Nicu took a step forward. But his men—his men did not. They were suddenly completely ill at ease. He knew it. He started to bark an order; stopped. In this mood, Elena was not one to offer mercy—and there was no way to fight her without some quarter offered. She was deadly. They'd all seen her in action.

And she was as close to the Matriarch and the Matriarch's will as any of them got.

"Nicu," Elena said. "The children are safe. The Arkosans wait. Let us forget this and go back."

"So they can continue to hunt us?"

Ilia spit. "They'll hunt us now," she said, her sharp gaze grazing their bloodied armor. "They'll hunt us all for sure."

"Andreas!" Elena said, her voice a heavy bark.

Almost shamefacedly, all battle lust misplaced, Andreas of the Arkosans stepped forward. "Elena," he said.

"Put up your sword. Come. We've yet to find our shadows and make our way back to our own. Carmello?"

"Nicu led us to victory," he said.

"And I will lead you only back to the Voyanne," Elena replied. "Are you coming?"

He glanced at Nicu's back. Nicu had not moved.

"Nicu?" Carmello stared at his leader's back, trying to get something like an answer from its rigid line.

She called them one by one. With the exception of Carmello, they put up their swords, or sheathed them, the exultancy of their mood broken by hers. In the bright, bright street, only Nicu and Carmello stood apart; the Arkosans came together behind Elena's back—and well away from the Tyrian cerdan. She'd seen to that without being too obvious about it; Kallandras was impressed. Women of her temperament were often devoid of subtlety.

That left only Nicu.

Nicu stepped forward.

For just a moment, Kallandras heard Elena's soft breath at his back; heard, in the voice that carried that sigh, relief.

But he saw nothing at all in the face of Nicu of the Arkosa that didn't speak of anger or death; when the Arkosan sword swung out in a sudden thrust to the side, Kallandras was prepared for the movement.

Prepared for everything but the strength of it.

He parried, dancing forward, his blade the shield behind which the surprised Tyrian cerdan might momentarily find shelter.

The blade snapped. The guard did not.

But he felt it, as their blades met: a ringing dissonance. He brought his second weapon up, and for the first time in the city streets, began to fight in earnest.

So, too, did Nicu.

There were cries; there was anger; there was fear; words rushed around them, an audience of a type familiar to Kallandras and ignored by Nicu. But the fight contained them; the imminence of death spurred them on.

Kallandras had been trained to the kill. Nicu of the Arkosans had not. But Nicu wanted it; even—and this was an obvious truth— enjoyed it; he derived strength from it, where Kallandras had been trained to derive purpose.

Steel clashed, rang, sang in the open streets while the Lord looked on. Two men, reach extended by steel, sought an opening, a weakness, an exposure. They used the ground they were given to advantage; they moved, feet as precise as blades, eyes almost unblinking, backs exposed to friend and foe, friend and foe, in a twist that was not unlike a dance.

The Lord watched.

These were men, these two; they fought for his benediction, because like it or not, all fights between men who would claim power in the Dominion of Annagar were fights offered to the Lord, if they were given like this: beneath the open sky, the unfettered sun.

The Arkosans were Voyani; they knew the dangers the sun presaged; they sought shadow. And the Brotherhood served the Lady; they understood the demands of the Lord, but they preferred the subtleties and the intricacies of the Lady's dance; they, too, sought shadow.

But it was the Lord who watched.

The Lord who judged.

Nicu fought with heat, with ire, with an anger whose growth should have hindered him. Kallandras fought coolly, precisely; his senses came into a sharp, sharp focus as he found the five points of his personal style, and leaped lightly from one to the other.

There was, in this fight, nothing that should have reminded him of his youth—but he had not been tested like this since the days of his training. Nicu was good. And Nicu was not of the brotherhood; he was like a boy half formed but skilled.

Or so it seemed to Kallandras.

But there was a rhythm to the fight itself that was awkward, ungainly; it was almost as if Nicu's desire to place his feet in one position was overruled by the whim of the blade he carried; he would set a foot down, or almost, and then lurch to left or right, forward or back. Not capering, not quite; not visibly hesitating. Visibly overbalancing to Kallandras' sensitive eyes.

He did not know, could not be certain, that he was correct— but the Kovaschaü were trained to prize instinct.

Kallandras, born Kallatin, trained by the brotherhood and refined by Senniel College, changed his tactics. He moved in, moved quickly, and shifted the emphasis of his weapon hand randomly, seeking not his enemy but the weapon his enemy wielded.

A different fight. A fight that was taught to the older students, those skilled in seeking a death.

The Lord's gaze was hot; it did not waver.

Neither did Nicu's blade.

As if it were intelligent, as if it could somehow divine Kallandras' intent, it avoided a certain type of parry, a thrust that led too far.

Kallandras began to fight more conservatively; to draw the battle out; to force Nicu to dance, or perhaps to add steps to the dance that had already begun. Nicu was trained to the sun and the road—and the shadows. He had fought in the streets of the Tor Leonne's city, and he had run. To Kallandras' eye, he was tiring, and if the sword itself could aid him in a combat, there was a price to be paid for its weight, its heft, its frenzy.

A price that Kallandras of Senniel knew how to pay.

He heard Elena's voice. He heard Ilia's. He heard the man Elena had called Carmello. Around their cacophony of words, he heard Nicu's breath lose its smoothness; take on the ragged edge of effort.

Soon. Soon. He danced.

Sweat graced them both; sweat, the Lady's blessing at the height of Lord's heat. Words fell away; silence reigned, broken by metal against metal, foot against ground, breath, heavy and light. Soon.

He watched the blade, not the man. The blade rose. The blade caught sunlight as if the light were a weapon it could use—and it was, but not against an assassin of Kallandras' calliber—and the blade fell, but it was met by either the resistance of weapon or the emptiness of air.

Now.

He moved, opening himself up to the weapon's thrust. It was a subtle motion, a misstep, a heartbeat's poor timing. A brother would not have been drawn in by the display of vulnerability, any more than he would willingly have been drawn by a weapon's feint. ,

But Nicu's blade was.

It extended itself for the same amount of time that Kallandras' chest was exposed; pulled itself slightly out of the sure grip of the man who wielded it.

The assassin did the rest, catching it, blade and guard, guard and guard, both pulling and throwing it free in a continuous arc of motion.

Nicu cried out in pain and surprise; Elena cried out in denial.

But Kallandras' weapons, so effortless in their motion, were also effortless in their lack; they stopped, blade casting a thin shadow against the bloodied, sweat-stained fabric of Nicu's shirt.

"Elena," Kallandras said quietly.

She walked, a bit too' quickly, to stand at Nicu's side. "He's my kin." Her voice held multiple things: disgust, relief, anger, shame. Affection. Worry. Protectiveness. It was the last that was strongest.

"He is," Kallandras replied. "And I return him to you. But in return I must ask you two things."

"They are?"

"First: remove the sheath that your—cousin?—" when she nodded, he continued, "is wearing."

"Done." She bent a moment; Nicu slammed into her, knocking her off her feet.

When she rose, her face was red with something other than careless exposure to sun. Her knuckles were white, as white as Lord's light on water; they balled into fists and then into open, stiff palms. Without another word, she slapped Nicu. Hard.

The sound carried. Ilia looked away; the men looked to Elena. When she bent to remove the girded, empty sheath, Nicu was still—but her anger had traveled the length and breadth of her palm to his face, and he seemed to have subsumed it; he was shaking.

She rose.

"Thank you. Now, retrieve the blade that Nicu used, but do not touch blade or guard. Use cloth, use silk."

"You want his weapon?"

"No, Elena of the Arkosa. It may well be his weapon. But this is the favor I ask of you: keep this weapon until the Matriarch returns. It is said that it is difficult to fool Voyani eyes."

"Yes." She paled. He knew, from her sudden sideways glance, that she knew the rest of the saying well. She lifted her hand, as if to ward off the words, but they had been heard.

Ilia said clearly, "But the Voyani heart, never."

"Yes." The bard's voice was almost gentle. "I am a stranger," he said. "I am not kin. But if you would allow it, I would be honored to walk some part of the road in the company of those who know it best."

Elena nodded. Then, unwrapping silken kerchief—blazing red, a thing that was a poor match for her hair, and an even match for her temper—she walked to where the sword had fallen. Bent. Wrapped her hand in the softness of fabric, and still hesitated a moment.

"It is not… stained," she said quietly. Softly.

He did not answer.

She raised the blade, taking its weight as if it were twice what it had been in Nicu's hands. He heard her speak, softly, a benediction and a prayer. The blade made no reply, and as if that were enough, her shoulders took on a straight, even line. She sheathed the sword.

But he noticed that she did not, not even for the sake of convenience, choose to wear what she had recovered.

He turned, then, to the lone Tyrian cerdan who still stood in the city streets. "These men," he said, speaking in the most stilted, the most formal, of Torra's dialects, "will waken soon. They are the Lord's men."

The cerdan said nothing; his face had shuttered, just as a courtesan's does behind the perfection of smile and grace.

"Be aware," the bard continued quietly, "that to serve the Lord of Night—in any guise—is to forsake the Lord."

"You have never served the Lord," the man replied.

"No?" Kallandras looked up into the sun's height. "Perhaps not. But I serve Him now, in a fashion. Remember my words."

The night sky was just that: lit by star and a moon that was nearing its fullness. The Lady's time was coming, and with it the shadows, the length of her sojourn. Outside of the Tor Leonne, the Raverran night was cool, and the insects that occupied the fertile lands that conversely reminded Margret of the desert were louder than she thought she had ever heard them.

The children had come with Tamara and Donatella; they were safe, and for that, for that single thing, Margret was grateful. She said her prayers, and she said them politely; said them with heat and fire, with passion and belief. That much, that much, she owed the Lady.

But she said other things with more heat and more fire, for the children were not the only people to arrive. In ones and twos, in threes and fours, carrying sometimes a thing of value or history and sometimes less than a whole life, her people returned to the wagons that were always kept outside of a clansman's city in case of an emergency like this one.

And they carried word.

Cerdan had been engaged, and the clansmen had died. She'd somehow managed to avoid losing any of her own—how, she wasn't certain, but there was some old Voyani phrase about the Lady's partiality to fools that came fiercely to mind—but the toll taken by clansmen was high. Some of the men came back jubilant, and some of the women took up their high, high spirits.

But Margret knew, instantly knew, what it would mean to her: they would be hunted, now, and thoroughly—while the heart of the Arkosans lay hidden—at best—against the skin of a foreign clanswoman with no ties, no loyalty, and no damned power to protect it until it could find its way home.

Ah.

She said her prayers again, her thanks, her anger, mingling like fire and oil, fire and wood. She poured wine from the skin that she habitually wore at her waist, invoking the Maiden Moon, invoking the wise darkness, and invoking, steadily, the brightness, the Mother Moon, the Lady in Her Power.

Because she needed these things to calm her.

She was going to kill her cousin.

"Margret."

She knew her aunt's voice in any of its multiple guises; recognized this one immediately. It was soft, neutral in a way that Tamara only ever managed when there were strangers about.

She took a deep breath. Looked up at the veil that draped itself lazily across the clarity of the sky above. Lady's veil, lacy stars, open moon. She bowed stiffly; anger made her stiff and graceless, as it did so many of her women.

"Ona Tamara."

"Elena has returned."

She met her aunt's eyes; the tinge and cast of skin beneath precious oil lamp seemed pale. Hard to tell. "Not alone."

"No." Tamara drew a breath. "Nicu and his closest men are with her. Ilia as well. And the stranger I told you about."

"The one who cleared the streets of the eight cerdan—without killing a single one of them?"

She nodded quietly.

"Who is he, Tamara?"

"I think—" she started to answer. Stopped. "I think you'd best talk with Elena."

"I will speak with Elena," Margret replied evenly. "But deal with the stranger until we're finished. He knows where we are," she added.

"He is not a threat to us, Margret."

"Anyone who isn't kin is a threat to us right now."

Tamara's lips compressed into a sharp, thin line. "He saved our future," she pointed out, the words as sharp as the line of her mouth. "We owe him."

Margret shrugged.

Elena stepped out of the shadows at the back of the wagon.

"Were you followed?"

"Hard to say." Elena shrugged. "But Kallandras said no, and I'd trust him to notice."

"Kallandras? He's the kinless one?"

Elena nodded.

"Would you trust him with anything else?"

"Like, say, our location?" Elena's smile was as sharp as her mother's frown had been, but infinitely more attractive. She shrugged. "Yes, but I'm biased."

Which meant at the very least the stranger was pretty. "What's that?"

Elena's face lost its attractive smile; lost, in fact, most of the play around its edges. She glanced up to the Lady's face, down to the grass the wheels had compressed. "It's a sword," she said at last.

Margret snorted. Waited. Waited another minute. "I can see it's a sword. Why are you bringing it to me?"

"It's the sword Nicu was wielding when he—when he was fighting the cerdan in the streets of the Tor Leonne." She paused. "When he was killing them. You have to see his clothing, Margret."

" 'Lena—"

"You didn't see his face. I did. I've seen men burn with the Lord's light, but I've never seen the light look so much like darkness."

"And you think it's this sword?"

"I don't know, I don't know," Elena replied. "But he—the stranger—he told me, he asked me, to bring it to the Matriarch. He said—he said 'it is said that it is difficult to fool Voyani eyes.' "

"But the Voyani heart, never." She was quiet a long, long time. "You haven't drawn the sword."

"No. Not after that."

"Nicu?"

"Angry, but—but he's grown more subdued. He—" She bit her lip. "He disobeyed my order; he tried to kill another clansman in the open street. The stranger stopped him." She took a deep breath.

"You might as well tell me the rest, Elena. How much worse could things be?"

"The stranger was fighting with the Lady's weapons." She paused. "And I think—although only the heart would expose him for certain—that he bears the Lady's marks. The night marks," she added, although it wasn't necessary. She walked over to Margret and placed the sword at her feet. "I'm sorry, Margret."

"You realize," Margret said softly, "what he's done?"

"Nicu? Yes," her cousin replied grimly. "If the heart is in the city, the chance that we will ever find it now has all but vanished.

"But think, Cousin, think: someone placed that weapon in Nicu's hands. Did they know? Did they know that the heart has no body?"

Margret looked up the gentle slopes of a city that led, on all sides, to the plateau and the Lake. "I don't know. I don't know that they care. They have Yollana," she added. "And although I would never have said this to my mother—to any of the Voyani Matriarchs—Yollana, of the four, was the most powerful, the most dangerous."

Elena came to stand beside her cousin; she looped an arm over her shoulder and drew her close. "That," she whispered for her cousin's ears alone, "is why you are Matriarch, Margret, and why I am 'Lena. Because when you say it, just so, I know it for truth, but I would never have placed her above any of my kin."

"Ai, well," her cousin replied, staring into the night sky above the cityscape, wondering if the smell of burning wood and incense, the hushed prayers, the mix of boiling potions and thick unguents that would be used, eventually, to treat the wounded, would be carried by wind to an unseen enemy. "Truth hurts, or it isn't truth."

7th of Scaral, 427 AA

Evereve

She came to the dining hall by following the trail of the lights that were, as Avandar had said, encased in gold. Not encircled by it, but truly encased; the light and the gold had somehow been blended together, and each gave luster and luminosity to the other. In shape, they were simple enough: quartered, flat circles. Along the lines that quartered them, light welled alone.

As Jewel approached, the few nearest her would blaze like a natural fire, passing on the intensity of their brilliance just ahead of where she walked.

She tried, twice, to get lost; the effect was a gradual darkness. The lights simply faded the farther she walked from the path that he had commanded her to take, until she was surrounded by something that felt like night. Like night in the gardens of Terafin.

She wondered how much darker it would get, and wondered, too, if it would make much of a difference. Remembered the talking, moving statues and the old stories her grandmother had told her about wizards who lived in—well, wherever it was this was—and their penchant for preying on the young and the helpless.

Neither of which she was.

Gods, she hated this clothing.

She hated these halls. She hated these lights.

She hated the lack of light.

Following halls lit by light and gold, she realized that she hadn't once seen a window, and she knew, then, exactly how dark it could get. She'd been underground before when the lights were nonexistent. The memory drove her to the light, and the light drove her forward.

The food was not simple.

She was used to simplicity when she dined in her own wing; fancy food, with its complicated courses and the etiquette that governed which men and women of which rank ate which of the dinners—early or late—and how, was a political statement. Eating fancy food was therefore a political act.

Facing Avandar across the length of a table so fine she was almost afraid to pick up the strange utensils that framed her plate for fear of scratching its perfect surface, she didn't wish to descend to politics. Not yet.

She waited.

He waited.

After a moment she realized that this was the act of a host; he couldn't—if he had manners—begin to eat until she had. So much for the crown and the jewel-studded silks; so much for the gold leaf and the gold lights and the platinum inlay across doors so gaudy with artwork and filigree they seemed to be made of something other than wood. She sat back in her chair.

He looked across the table as if he could see through her, and his eyes, darkened by semicircles that spoke of sleep's lack, were a black that absorbed light, that denied it.

He spoke a single word in a language she didn't recognize. Spoke again. Again.

The fourth time, he shook himself. "Jewel," he said quietly.

She picked up the sticks by her plate; they were longer than the ones she had often used at her grandmother's home; they were finer, lacquered black and gold—it was a theme—with a very sharp end. There was no point in refusing the political when you were eating with a man who seemed on the edge of collapse.

Or madness, and she preferred collapse.

He watched her eat.

Minutes passed in a silence that teetered precariously, as if it were some precious object that was almost certain to break.

At last she saw something shift in the lines around his mouth; saw a few familiar lines suddenly wedge themselves into the space between eyebrows and hair.

"That," he said, in his most irritatingly superior domicis voice, "is a complete disgrace."

All hesitation, all foreign syllable, was washed away by his familiar disdain. "What are you talking about?"

He rose at once, walking with that stiff elegance that she so hated it usually made her grind her teeth. The crown was on his brow and the robes that looked so out of place—no, admit it, the problem was that they looked perfect for him, she was the one who was out of place—became, for a moment, simple accoutrement, a statement not of power but of fashion.

He rarely touched her. In fact, he had only really touched her for two reasons in their sixteen years together. First, for safety's sake: he never trusted her not to do something stupid—and when she was in danger, he somehow felt that his title and his position gave him the right, no worse, the duty, to interfere. And second, for etiquette's sake, when he was at the end of his tether and had neither the patience nor the time to explain in small words—and words got smaller and more cutting as he got more annoyed, a habit of speech she detested.

He caught her hands as she stared up at him in very real confusion, met her eyes and rolled his. "This is simple enough," he said, in the clenched jaw sort of way that always made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, "that most children past five of the Lady's Summers can manage with grace." And he grabbed the utensils from her hands and began to demonstrate their proper use.

"I've been using these since I was past those five summers, thank you very much."

"You've been using them barbarically. You'll be in the South and you can't afford to offend—" His voice trailed off. His brow furrowed. Almost as an afterthought, he set the slender sticks down beside her plate.

And he looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time.

"Avandar?"

Looked through her.

"Forgive me, Lady," he said quietly, and turned, and left the room.

The food was awfully cold by the time she got around to eating it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Evening of the 7th of Scaral, 427 AA

Tor Leonne

Yollana of the Havalla Voyani sat in a darkness stripped of light, of the ability to bring light. She was not young, not by any stretch of the imagination, but until the moment she first met the Widan Cortano di'Alexes, she had not felt her age; it settled around her now, an ailment and an affliction that she feared—in this night, unblessed by the Lady's radiance—she would never be healed of.

Her daughters were far, far away. She was glad of it, although they had argued bitterly. Still, she had no intention of ending her days in the Lord's citadel, this clansmen's home of wood and rock and prettified dirt. The Voyanne awaited her even now; it called to her, with its treacherous runnels, its open stretch of exposed twists, its heat, its rain, its terrible, terrible wind. -

That was her home. The only home she had ever known, and the home she desired fiercely. Because, of course, in the wilds there was freedom.

What price, Lady? she thought, staring at the ceiling in the darkness. What price will you exact?

For she had heard hope; it was carried by windless air, through closed screens and walls and doors, into what she suspected was a room dug out of the earth itself, it smelled so much like the grave. And that hope was a voice, the voice a man's. She recognized it; it was not a voice she might forget, having heard it once.

Evayne's servant.

Evayne, called a'Nolan, called a'Neamis; the Lady's enigmatic face.

In the darkness, the thought conjured light, but it was an odd light: a thing of fear and mystery. Evayne a'Nolan carried with her, for all to see who knew how to look, the heart exposed: the crystal formed of soul and pain and a vision that cannot be denied.

There was only one way to expose a heart in such a fashion: only one road to walk. And none, not even Yollana herself who was counted wise by the ancient Voyani standards, had dared to look for more than the footpaths to that winding road.

Evayne, she thought, the word a prayer, what have you sent me, and what price will I be forced to pay this time?

The Lake at night was a thing of beauty, and there was so little beauty in his life that he forced himself to appreciate it.

Carefully crafted globes, things of glass settled into bronze and gold and silver, fanned all of the water's edges that were visible from the platform of the Lady's Moon. There were other platforms, of course; some grander, some wider, some more brilliantly lit; listen, and one could hear the mournful play of samisen across the silence of night sky: The Tyr'agar was in session beneath the Lady's open face.

But the Widan Sendari—born par di'Marano and elevated into the rootless, history-less di'Sendari—chose to take his ease, if such a pained and dark contemplation could be called ease, in isolation. And because he was the Tyr'agar's closest adviser, his request was granted quietly and without comment from any man save Cortano di'Alexes. The Sword's Edge drove them all, and the days had sharpened, not blunted, his tongue.

The masks of the Shining Court remained a mystery, impenetrable and foreign. Mikalis di'Arretta had been introduced to the masks, but he had been forbidden to ask questions of their origin. Cortano merely said, "We wish your studies to be uninfluenced by our own work to date." It was, as far as areas of magical study went, the most appropriate course of action, and Mikalis di'Arretta did not blink twice. He accepted Cortano's edict as both the compliment and the precaution they would have otherwise been.

But the man was no fool.

It was Cortano's weakness and his strength: he could not abide fools. Sendari himself was far, far more tolerant—but Sendari had no desire to be the Sword's Edge, no desire to wield it. He gathered those young men who sought knowledge and answers that were not in and of themselves a road to power, and he protected them as he could from the scouring of the desert winds Cortano used to temper them.

"Who made these masks, Sendari?"

The question hung in the air, above the cool lap of water against artful stone, as if they were a companion. He desired privacy.

"I do not know." It had the advantage of being the truth, this profession of ignorance.

Mikalis took his silence, wrapped himself in it, and stared at the masks that had been laid out in the most private of Cortano's work spaces. "Does the Sword's Edge?"

"No. Do you—do you know what they are meant to do?"

"I? No." Mikalis' answer was not devoid of frustrated pride. Sendari was almost unique in that. His desire to know, and his pride in knowledge, were separate strands of the whole cloth; one or the other could be picked up or set aside as occasion demanded. "But I fear that you—or the Sword's Edge—have information that, far from influencing results, will give them."

Silence, then.

"Cortano will tell me nothing."

"It is Cortano's… assignment. I am, in this task—"

"As in all tasks, Sendari?"

"In this task," Sendari had continued smoothly and without pause, "his Designate."

"Why did he choose me to second you?"

"He did not choose you to second me. He chose you—"

"It was your idea, wasn't it?"

Lord's sight, the man was no fool.

"These masks—are they Voyani?"

"I have said, and if you desire it, you may ascertain the truth of the words in an appropriate manner, that I do not know their manufacture. I am ill-used to being called a liar, no matter how delicate the accusation."

Mikalis was powerful, but his power was in his knowledge; he had mastered fire, and some movement of air, but his strength was the deep earth, and the earth calling was a slow, steady magic. He bowed. "I… apologize for my intemperate remark." It galled him to say it.

"No apology is necessary," Sendari had replied. "The remark itself was not intemperate. And my offer stands."

"It is thoughtful, but I believe you. You do not know." He lifted a mask. "Nor do I. But I will say this, and I will say it to you, because you are adept with words, Sendari, and I am not. Under no circumstance are these masks to be worn on the night of the Festival Moon."

Quickening, then, of heart, of breath. "You know their purpose."

"No. And," Mikalis added, offering a rare smile, "I grant you the same permission that you grant me: You may ascertain the truth of the words I speak in an appropriate fashion if you so desire.

"I do not know their purpose. But bound into it is something of a night that is not the Lady's. I fear it, and I fear very little that I do not understand."

He had stiffened; he stiffened now. The wind was brisk and chill, as cold as wind ever got when it touched these waters. "You sense night in them? I have sensed nothing, Mikalis; I have studied ancient arts, and I am as familiar as any of the Sword but yourself with the undertakings of the Voyani craft. If there is magic there, it does not, it cannot speak to me." His frustration showed; he could not contain it, and did not try. Mikalis would understand it.

Mikalis was quiet; Sendari knew him well enough to understand the expression. He was weighing words, weighting them, attempting to understand the role of the man who would hear whatever it was he chose to speak—and more, would hear what he did not.

"Sendari," he said at last, "I do not know what game is being played, and if I knew it—if I knew it—I might have a better answer to give you. But it is clear to me now that knowledge is not an advantage in this particular game. The Sword's Edge has been sharpened almost to killing these past days, and once or twice I have heard rumors of Widan who do not survive seconding his knowledge when the knowledge itself serves a… political purpose."

He had bowed then.

Sendari had returned the bow.

"I will continue my studies for at least three days," Mikalis continued, neutrality seeping into his voice. "Three days, and then I will tender my report to the Sword's Edge. I would appreciate it if—"

"Of course. This is a discussion between colleagues; it serves the purpose of honing and sharpening thought, no more. I look forward to your report, Mikalis."

That, of course, they both knew was a lie. They had bowed, parted as peers, and the day had dwindled into the unease of nightfall. In fifteen days, the Lady's Moon would shine upon them all. She was not as harsh a judge as the Lord, but She was subtle, and no man, not even those counted wise, could tell you what Her judgment might be.

Her judgment. The judgment of women.

He had not wanted to think of his conversation with Mikalis di'Arretta, but he desired such solace now, because those words held a certain safety compared to the others that came, on the lap of waves, in the dark of the Lady's hours. He attempted to hold onto the day's unease, the fear of the plans of the Shining Court— a Court that frightened him and angered him, that intrigued him and captivated him, by turns.

But the Court was so far away to the North it might have been a child's story, replete with demons and evil magi in a world of cold, cold white that simply had no purchase in the South, and Mikalis slipped from him, washed away in the scent of night water, night plants, night air. The Festival of the Moon supplanted them both.

Because Sendari di'Marano—ah, Lord scorch it, di'Sendari— knew what he wished to say on the night of the Festival Moon.

Knew whom he wished to say it to.

Diora.

What he did not know, what he could not know, was what he hoped to hear in return: He could think of nothing that would, in the end, dim the pain of her betrayal.

Across the lake, Alesso di'Alesso watched the same waters and heard the same music. He was almost moved to silence the players, but he had his guests and he did not wish to join them in the discourse that was almost certain to begin once the music's final notes had cleared the air.

He had had scant word from Cortano, which ill-pleased him. There was pressure upon him to choose at least two Generals, and that pressure was slowly building.

"You will declare war," the Tyr'agnate of Sorgassa had said, almost upon his arrival that morn. "Unless the circumstances have greatly changed. I have heard rumors that the Festival of the Moon itself is… to be different." A question, there.

He looked up, met the friendly, convivial mask that Ser Jarrani kai di'Lorenza never removed, and nodded. The Tyr'agnate returned his nod.

Alesso had been able to quietly put him off; the day's final ride had been a long one, and there had been some minor difficulty with the caravan the Lorenzan Tyr had traveled with; a difficulty that had resolved itself with the death of an overly zealous official and three of Alesso's cerdan. The loss did not upset him. The necessity of the loss—the embarrassment and loss of face that accrued to him personally—enraged him, but the point had been made.

He knew what Jarrani wanted: Alef, his par, as General. And Alef was not a poor choice—but his loyalty was, and would always be, to his kai. Jarrani had seen to that.

He deflected the request, as he deflected much else, by speaking with Ser Hectare's sharp-eyed, sharp-witted wife. Hectore was Jarrani's kai, the heir to the lands of Sorgassa, a man Alesso's junior, but not by much. He was as arrogant as the kin, dangerous; a man who would be a worthy foe.

She, fan in hand, her posture perfect, had blushed and folded slightly like the silk and wood she carried. Pleasing, that.

But not so pleasing as the posture, as the perfection, of the single woman he desired: Serra Diora di'Marano. The woman who had, by lilt of voice and perfect—yes, perfect—timing, caused him so very much damage.

With such a wife, with a woman of that caliber by his side what could he not do? He smiled as he thought of her. It would take time to bring her to hand, and during that time he would have to survive her.

The reverie itself was pleasant; the music and the Lake, the silence of his guests, the sense of the power behind the crown and the sword—these combined to give him a sense of peace.

But it was night peace, illusive, a thing that changed shape and color in an attempt to evade the grasp. He looked up, although he could not have said why, and he saw, silhouetted by lamplight and the manifestations of the Sword of Knowledge, a single man.

The kai el'Sol.

Such a sight would not have been remarkable, except for this: he walked with a naked blade to the edge of the platform, and then knelt there, waiting, his head bowed. He did not sheathe his sword; it glistened, flat and new in seeming, in the moon's light.

And in the moon's light, Alesso could see the darkening shadows of blood. He thought it new, but could not be certain.

The young women who played their skillful duet in samisen did not pause, but by a gentle tilt of head, a movement of braided, beaded hair, they asked him their question. He was pleased, indeed, with the subtlety of it, and knew from this that they, too, must have been the choice of the Serra Teresa di'Marano, although they came from Sendari's harem. Her hand marked her brother's life.

Alesso nodded, and the older of the two began to sing. Her voice was delicate and lovely; it did not have the power of the Serra Diora's, and for that he was both grateful and regretful. He rose.

The kai el'Sol rose to greet him, holding his bow to offer respect and an unspoken apology for the naked blade. It was long enough. Alesso did not bid him rise; they were, Peder and Alesso, the only two men in the Dominion of Annagar who could, by Lord's law, bear the sun in full ascendance as their banner, and one did not cast aspersion on the insignia, no matter which head bore the crown.

"I would speak with you," the Radann kai el'Sol said, as Alesso approached.

Alesso nodded.

The kai el'Sol turned, and Alesso followed; the paths of the Tor Leonne, clipped and tended, unraveled before their feet, widening into something less private and less hidden than the previous Tyr'agar's home had been. Alesso wanted no hidden ways, no unseen avenues of attack. Not yet. Not now.

When the Tor Leonne was secure, and the Lake indisputably his, he would repent, and return the trees and flowers to the care of keepers who better understood their art. Here and now, he was General.

As General, he was surprised when the kai el'Sol led him directly to the Swordhaven. The Radann paused outside of the heavy doors that had been built into the stone monument; he bowed there, and then, with some effort, opened them. He did not speak; had not spoken a word since they had met at the Lake's edge.

Alesso was, on occasion, good at waiting, although it did not come naturally to him. He entered the haven just slightly ahead of the kai el'Sol, and stopped there, transfixed in the open frame, the wait rewarded, in a fashion. Peder kai el'Sol gave him a moment's grace, no more; he then stepped in and began to secure the doors at their back.

"You see," he said softly, softly, as Alesso di'Alesso stepped forward into the haven's heart.

"Yes."

The sword was glowing. It had taken, or so it seemed, the raiment of moonlight and starlight; had given them the sun's edge, the sun's harsh strength.

"You have been searching." It was not a question.

"Yes."

"And?"

"Tyr'agar," the kai el'Sol said quietly, "when the Sun Sword speaks in so loud a voice, the Lord's enemies are close."

"How close, kai el'Sol?"

"Within the Tor Leonne."

"The city?"

"And the plateau."

He saw them enter the Swordhaven, of course. Half his time was spent here, in the Tor Leonne, by the twin discomforts of the Lake and the haven itself. But the open night sky held its almost hypnotic beauty, so dissimilar was it from the frozen wastes of the North.

Lord Ishavriel, born of an age that had been buried beneath all but the memories of the Kialli and the gods they had either fought or served, watched. Waited. It amused him, and he had not thought to be amused by the endeavors of humans. It almost—almost— gave him a glimmer of insight into Lord Isladar's odd fascination with, and about, humanity.

They could surprise one. They often did, in the brief span before their lives ended. But frequently that surprise was one of disappointment; they were frail and changeable, and they did not understand the consequence of their mortality well enough to serve as the imps did: with absolute obedience. Still, their defiance, sometimes subtle and sometimes overt, made them vastly more… entertaining.

Failure, however, would make them more entertaining still.

The wind changed slightly; he felt it brush against his skin, carrying the moisture of the Lake. It caused discomfort, and if he remained long in its path, would actually cause pain. Such an enemy as this he had no patience for, nor had he ever had patience for it; there was no battle, after all, no satisfying death to end the annoyance it caused.

There was only destruction.

He smiled in the darkness, and the smile was almost affectionate.

There would be destruction.

The man, the Radann, was clever. He did not understand the roots of his power—no one in the Tor Leonne did—but he understood some of its effects. There was no place, unless it be within the waters of the Lake itself, that was proof against the magics of the Kialli, save the Swordhaven.

Let them speak.

They played at their games, and if they did not play carefully— and who did in the end when compared with the Lord Ishavriel?— they would fail. In one week's time, less perhaps, they would see the cost of their failure in the city streets below, an orchestration of violence and release that had been promised to kin grown half-mad at the absence of the abyss.

For just a moment, he wondered what the General would do: appease the Kialli or stand against them in the face of the slaughter. It seemed unthinkable that he would choose to appease them—which suited Ishavriel's purpose, although he had plans for every contingency—but the humans often chose to weaken their political stand for reasons that the Kialli found incomprehensible.

He watched, and watched, and watched; shifting so that the Lake might pass beyond him. But an hour passed, and the two men, protected—for now—by the Sun Sword's glow, did not emerge.

Kallandras did.

He moved in silence, certain of the shadows now that evening had fallen. Certain of the breeze, and the direction the breeze chose to take as he passed. It carried no noise to his enemies, unless his enemies were airborne. And if they were, and they revealed themselves, they would not remain enemies for long.

He paused a moment as he descended, sliding between the hedge of trees that surrounded the plateau to the North. Here, guards were sparse; the Lake was in the East, with the palace itself, the sun's rise and fall. But sparse and nonexistent were two different things, and Alesso di'Marente was a man newly come—and insecurely at that—to power.

There was no immediate sound of footsteps.

In the darkness, he lifted a hand, beckoning both breeze and the gift that he had been born to—as if the two had always been intertwined; as if they had become inseparable. They were not; he was not so dependent on the power of a ring given late in his youth. But he felt its edges, its demands, its voice, an echo of what the wind desired.

They argued a moment; it tired him. But it was a niggling thing, this exchange of wills, this little testing, and when it had passed, the breeze swept out in a natural series of circles that touched the whole of the plateau, carrying with it the sounds of movement, near and far, the sounds of voices raised or lowered, the sounds of armor, swords, the movement of the men he must avoid. His own skill took what the wind had given him, sifted it, categorized it, let it fall to a level of thought that was almost beneath thought, it had become so instinctive with the passage of time.

Thank you.

It had become his custom to offer that benediction; the wind was graceless, as always, in its reply.

"Yollana," he said quietly. The wind had not carried her voice; she raised no cry, offered no pain, no anger, indeed no comment at all. But he knew that she could hear his voice, where hers might not penetrate the prison they held her in.

"The moon's face is not yet full; the Havallans have withdrawn; they have need of your guidance, as do we. I am in the Tor proper; I am searching for you."

He moved like a shadow, with the shadows, grateful that he had not chosen to bring Margret. He would probably pay for that later.

He spoke again.

She had been waiting for his voice.

Until she heard it, however, until it woke her from the light and restless slumber that had been her only sleep since the death of the Radann kai el'Sol in the Lake of the Tor Leonne, she had not known it.

But before her eyes were fully open, before she sat up in the windowless room, she knew what had awakened her. Waited, breath held, until it came again.

"Diora."

"Kallandras." She wrapped herself tightly in nightclothes, although she heard no promise of freedom in his voice. "Where are you?"

"I am… in the Tor Leonne," he said, and the pause spoke; it spoke loudly. "I have come seeking a woman who is held captive. But not, not at this point, the Flower of the Dominion. I am sorry."

Is it so clear to you? Is it so clear in my voice? Do I give so much away? She drew breath; held it a moment. Gathered the daylight about her, although the moon was high, and its face bright and compelling. She was Serra Diora di'Marano, and she did not plead.

There was only one thing, one life, for which she might have broken that edict—and herself—but it was gone now; nothing remained but the purpose to which she had devoted what was left her: Justice. Vengeance.

"I need you," he continued, "in the Tor. You are safe, or as safe as you can be, while you reside within those walls—and if we take you now, there will be no safety in the Tor, or beyond it, for as far as these words will carry."

She did not desire his pity. "Why," she said, as coolly as she could, as neutrally, "have you come?"

"To find Yollana of the Havalla Voyani," he replied without hesitation. She felt the wind in the words, although there was no way for the wind to reach her. A hint of freedom; of night air, of the Lady's Mercy and the Lady's cruelty.

"She is here," Diora said at last, with misgivings. "But she is in the private quarters of the Sword's Edge. I would not dare them—"

"The Sword's Edge is occupied for the moment with the politics of the realm. Diora—watch. Listen for me."

She nodded, knowing that he could not see it, could not hear it. She wanted to speak; to speak to him because there were so few people she could speak to.

She had not thought captivity of this nature would be so very difficult. But she did not speak; her face shuttered; her expression became, even in darkness, even unseen, her own: steel and cool water and pale, pale moon's light.

There was a smell to magic, a taste, a sensation; something as strong as the little details that followed an act of intimacy. But it was subtle, caught only if one knew the act itself.

Yollana both did and did not. Magic had defined her existence. It had placed blocks in the road; pits, spikes; it had forced detours upon her trek down the Voyanne that she would never have willingly taken otherwise. So had she been taught: the magic of the clans is the thing we fight against, not the thing we fight for.

And how, she had said, to her own gray-haired, sharp-tongued mother—a mother she had promised herself she would never grow up to become, and of course, had followed in the footsteps of almost exactly—are we to be judged if we choose to take up the power offered us ?

Her mother, grim-faced, thin-lipped, angry, had said, had always said, The blood knows. She had thought it foolish then. They exchanged words, heated with anger and impatience—the one for the conservatism of age, the other for the inexperience of youth—and, again as always, her mother had won the argument.

Her mother, after all, had been Matriarch. The Mother.

And what would you say to me now? she thought. But the earth divided them. The Lady had taken her mother years ago, far too many of them now for Yollana's liking. Aie, she shook herself. She knew the answer; there would be more anger, and probably— although she'd long passed the age for it—the five white marks of her mother's fingers stretched out around the imprint of her palm; her mother had not been above the openhanded slap for which the Voyani women were so often known.

You have risked our entire clan—on the word of an outsider; what else did you expect? You've exposed us all!

Truth, every word of it.

It had seemed a thing of choice, a lack of choice, at the time. The risk, the highest she had ever taken—that any Matriarch had ever taken—the possible reward, slim indeed.

But without the risk…

The chains rattled against her wrists and ankles, a reminder that the cage was more than earthen, more than gravelike. Evening; she was sure of it. They would come soon. They would come again.

Her hands had been injured, and her feet, the flesh along her calves badly scored; if she was freed, she would lope like a cripple. But her eyes, at least, although they had stooped to threaten, they had not yet destroyed. Dark, here, the steel across her wrists far harder than the gold that they had stripped her of. She wondered, idly, if they kept it because they were rapacious, or if they kept it because they suspected it had magical properties.

It did, of course, but it was a magic that was blood-bound, and she would never release that into the hands of clansmen.

Aie, the steel weighed her down. The darkness. The earth-encrusted air. Lady, Lady, this is as close to your time as we come. Help me. Help me. Pleading did not demean her. It did not weaken her. Weakness was only weak when it was exposed for the inspection of others, and there were no others to hear what she did not put into words.

But the Lady heard her.

Magic had its own smell, its own taste, its own lingering malice. She felt it, sudden and startling, as the door slid open in a silence so complete she wondered if she had somehow been deafened.

He stood there, in the flat, rough entrance, like a shadow, the essence of shadow; no light cast him.

"Yollana." He was there in an instant; by her side, his slender fingers roughened in places by work, and in others by nothing. He reached for her feet, seeing in the darkness as if darkness were no impediment. Truly, she thought, the Lady's servant. The chains came up with her ankles, but fell without them: a blessing, a benediction.

And, as always, Yollana was gracious when gifted with such a thing.

"You'd best hurry," she said, lifting her hands, creating more noise than her words did as the chain links rattled against each other. "They know you're here now."

In the darkness, she thought she saw the faint edge of a smile.

Cortano stood at once, stiffening. Alesso had not returned from his discussion with the Radann kai el'Sol, and the Sword's Edge had been left, in some fashion, to hold his own in the presence of Tyr'agnate Jarrani kai di'Lorenza and his overly-sharp son, Hectore.

"I would, of course, support such a suggestion to the best of my ability," he said, bowing. "But you must forgive me. I am… called away." His gaze turned North and East a moment.

"Surely the two men who are responsible for—"

"There is only one man," the Sword's Edge replied coolly, for even in times of necessity, he was a political man, "who is responsible for the Crown and the Sword, and he is otherwise occupied with the Radann kai el'Sol." But he bowed again, acutely aware that a second such interruption in an evening was unlikely to endear either himself or Alesso to the Tyr'agnate, a man they could not afford to annoy.

He would deal with ruffled pride later; they all would. But now the magehaven called him, and he repaired to it in a haste that would—just barely—not call the attention of the entire assemblage toward his parting.

As he stepped away from the Lake, he let his power build, calling it quietly as if it were an intelligent servant and not merely the manifestation of his will. Very few were the men who had seen such a display who lived to tell of it; each member of the Sword of Knowledge chose his own way of calling—and arming—himself, of focusing, of channeling.

Eyes attuned to it could see the colors that edged his skin, the line of his body, the folds of a fabric that had been woven, thread for thread, under his supervision. Orange, of course, because no man approached a combat unarmored. But above that glimmer of pale fire, a redder light, a darker one: Fire.

He had protected the spaces that he had claimed from unwanted intrusion. But it was easiest, when protecting his space from the distance-walking that could bring a man from one edge of the continent to another—had he the power—to protect it entirely; to leave no door to enter by. That he had left a door to leave by had been costly enough.

He did not choose to breach the spell he had laid into place; too costly, especially given that he did not know the nature of his enemy. But he suspected, and he was displeased. He was not a young man, to run from the Lake's edge to his haven.

He ran.

She watched him kill.

Around her, against the background of the finery so coveted and despised by the Voyani, the men circled; their hands formed a pattern of light across the air, intertwined like a fine, fine net, crackling with Lord's light, blue fire. From such an attack, such a threat, she had no immediate safety; all that she had worn had been stripped or shorn from her. They had not left her her hair, and she accepted its loss with poor grace; the man, the Sword's Edge, had been thorough in his fear.

But no power that she had invested herself with would have let her walk unscathed through that complicated spell. None whatever would have let her walk, with perfect, catlike grace, above it. He walked in air as if the air itself were his platform and his home.

They were stunned by it; they froze for an eye blink.

She would have done the same.

Paid the same price for the minute hesitation.

She watched him, her body as still as the shadows that hid her, her thoughts turned inward when she could tear her eyes away from the terrible flash of his blades in the poor light.

They screamed, one or two of them; cried out in a fear that was almost too slow in coming.

Almost, in light such as this, he seemed inhuman, a thing of night, of the Lady's. Or the Lord's. But she had heard the whisper of his distant voice; heard it still, requesting movement to the right or the left, words that seemed to come from a different chest, a different throat, interrupting nothing.

She had never seen him fight.

She had known that he could, of course; he was marked in a way that could only rarely be hidden from one who had the blood, however dilute that blood was. Could never be hidden from one who wore the heart of the Havallans. But knowing it and witnessing it were two different things, and the latter made her uneasy.

What price, Lady?

The Widan fought with spell, when they chose to fight at all; he walked above or beyond the reach of fire, the earth's grip, the water—and there were few indeed who could call water in the Dominion. Five men died in a handful of minutes, and they died quickly; so quickly that their blood, when it left them in a spray of red, almost seemed to be moving, to be alive.

"Yollana," he said, and she stiffened. "This is the last. The worst will follow, and we must be done. Can you run?"

She grimaced. Tested her feet against the hard ground. Shook her head: Yes. Knew that he would take her at her word; that her word, once given, would bind her. Knew that she would stumble; that her muscles—those muscles not sliced or cut, would somehow, somehow hold her weight.

She had the blood, and with the blood came vision. She knew. It should have offered her comfort.

He separated head from shoulders, but not cleanly. Then, while the bodies of the fallen were still twitching, he added to their wounds, tearing their flesh with the tips and the guards of his blade. It was quick work, but bloody, and the only thing that kept her eyes upon it—besides the sheer stubbornness that was her most famous quality—was the cool stillness of his face. He did not smile; did not blanch; did not otherwise seem to react to the work he had chosen.

"Now," he said, his back speaking. He turned, then; held out a hand.

Wincing, she took it. Her own hands, she feared, would never be what they had been without a healer's touch—and they had few enough of those in easy reach. Aye, she'd lost two fingers, and the ones she'd kept had been broken. As if broken fingers would give the servants of the Lord of Night the answers they sought.

As if anything would, from Yollana.

She had made her oath; the oath, she kept. Even with the heart exposed, and gone from her these many years. Gone. She was not a young woman, but she could not afford to make Evallen's mistake: She could not afford to die and leave behind daughters bereft of power and guidance at a time when power and guidance were the only crutches daughters could rely on to walk the distance the coming war demanded of them all.

All.

He took her hand; she tried to accept his offer of strength. And she did run, as she had seen, her gait uneven but unbroken in its awkward stride. He adjusted to it, moving to her rhythm, leading her into the shadows she knew best, the evening's strengths. She added to the shadows as she could, whispering her own benedictions—if they could be called that—and blending in with the trees, the grass, the living things that were part of the Voyani hidden ways.

But his hand was slick with blood, and although she had shed blood in her life, there was something about its warmth and his coolness that jarred her. Distracted her.

Yollana, who had not been led since before her mother had raised her up from the waters of the riverbeds and proclaimed her the Matriarch-in-waiting, the Lady's choice, was led now, and she followed a man whose hair was pale silver in the moonlight, whose body was shadow defined, whose death—whose death was the Lady's coldest death, her darkest offering.

The Widan Cortano di'Alexes did not rage. Rage, in its most primal colors, its loudest expression, was the signal gesture of weakness a man of power might otherwise show: not only was it a severe loss of control, but it also implied the end of a battle, and that battle's loss.

The Sword's Edge did not lose.

But here, the facts were incontrovertible.

The five men he had personally chosen were dead; there, a limb, beside it a severed head, the flesh on the youngest scored in multiple places as if—as if he had been picked up, like so much limp refuse, and mauled by large claws, by inhuman teeth.

The heads that had been detached were not cleanly removed, and at least one appeared—for the moment—to be missing. But the bodies themselves had not yet begun to stiffen; the deaths were new.

Hands shaking, lips so thinned they should have prevented any sound from escaping, the Widan Cortano di'Alexes made his way through the wide hall to the door that led into his personal chambers. Here, the effects were different; fire had scoured the room, scorching fans and low tables, cushions and mats, into a blackened curl. They had been finely made, chosen for the perfection of their matching colors, their contrasting textures.

He recognized the fires as his own; recognized little else as such. He cast; he cast quickly, the words a bark, the edge of an angered roar. No footsteps had crossed these floors. None; not even hers.

But the woman—and her things—were gone.

He spoke; spoke again; drew his sigils in the air.

What he found there brought silence. He stood, at the threshold of his quarters, casting a shadow in the dim light.

At last he moved forward, moved on, his gait stiff, the anger sublimated beneath an envy, a desire for knowledge, that had defined half his life.

It did not surprise him when, after he had completed his descent into earthen darkness, he found only empty chains; did not surprise him that there had been so little sign of struggle. He might have cast again, but his thoughts were now upon the first of the rooms, the deaths, the quickness of the theft.

In silence, he returned to the room that his own fires had blackened and scorched. He touched walls, his palms flat and wide, the bodies of the men who had served him stiffening into the rictus of death and neglect. Let them wait. He would attend to them later, when he attempted to discern what had killed them— and what had not.

Minutes passed. Possibly an hour; he was Widan for a moment; the Sword's Edge turned inward, rather than outward. He wondered, briefly, where Sendari was; considered calling for him. Decided against it; he did not wish to interrupt the reverie that had taken him.

It was thus that Alesso di'Alesso, the Tyr'agar himself, found the Sword's Edge: kneeling in ash, his hands black with it, the remnants of finery scattered and inconsequential.

Evening of the 7th of Scaral, 427 AA

Evereve

"This is the first time since the death of his wife that he has come to Evereve with a visitor."

She turned at the sound of the voice, wary now with isolation. Jewel valued privacy; she always had. But there was a difference between the privacy you took in the cracks between contact with your family and the privacy that an underground castle, in which you seemed to be the only living thing—Avandar not excepted because, although she'd been searching for the better part of an hour, she couldn't find him—afforded.

She had gone up the scale from anger to worry, and it was when she was worried that she tended to see most clearly. Had to. Avandar had never asked her pardon for anything in their life together, and he'd done a damn sight worse than forcefully correct her table manners. So something was wrong—and it wasn't the crown on his head or the stupid clothing that, much as she hated to admit it, suited him far better than anything he'd worn in her service.

"Aristos," she replied, using his name because names could be neutral.

She hadn't expected to see him, not here; although she knew it was cowardly, she'd avoided what she now thought of as the Hall of Statues That Were Probably Once People.

"Lady," he replied, bowing so smoothly it seemed impossible that he could be made of stone at all. Even his garments, gray and marbled in their oddly Southern folds, rippled with the movement he offered her. It was not an obeisance.

She was silent; awkwardly silent.

"Are you searching for something?"

"Not—not something in particular, no. I'm—I probably won't get to see something as big and strange as this again," if I'm lucky, "and I thought I'd—I'd just explore it."

"And would you mind company?"

It came to her then that she didn't want his company. Why? Because the fact that he existed at all said things about Avandar Gallais that she really didn't want to know? She examined that thought for five seconds—give or take a few—and tossed it aside. She didn't want his company because there was something about him, stone or no, that she didn't trust. A pity, because she liked him.

And she trusted Avandar?

If any of her den had been there, she'd have probably snapped at them in frustration. She was good at it; it came easily. Too damn easily.

"I think I need some time to adjust," she said, putting as much of a breathless and harmless cadence into the words as her voice allowed. Truth to tell, it wasn't much. Even at sixteen she'd've had trouble manufacturing it.

Aristos stiffened—he was stone, so it should have been hard to notice—and she felt that pang again; Guilt. "As you wish, Lady. I have, of course, been given no purpose other than to serve, and should you require me, you will find me in the Hall of Conjunction."

She should have shut up. That would have been the smart thing to do. But she hated to feel guilty for no good reason. "Aristos?" she said, as he turned away.

He turned back at once, pivoting as if stone had no weight. "Yes?"

"Is it true that you slept with his wife?"

A stone brow rose. Fell. "He told you that?"

"Someone did."

The smile on his face was as far from the expression of hurt that had stopped her dead as an expression can get. She didn't bother to take a step back, although when she was younger she would have. "Oh, my dear, you are so different from Elyssandra. I had hoped to make better use of you in time, but I see that you are…" his expression was almost a sneer, "rather common. Rather simple. Far, far too uncomplicated. I can see that the only weapon you will make is a blunt one. Very well.

"In a manner of speaking, yes. She was a very proud, very powerful woman in her own right; he has never been interested in anyone who isn't."

"A manner of speaking?"

"She did not see fit to explain the circumstances to him, which was indeed as I expected. The liaison was not to her liking, my dear; it was not, in fact, her choice." His smile was soft with memory. It was a memory that Jewel never wanted to be a part of. "I might never have been so… ensorcelled… had I not become careless. I never marked her; I never bruised her; I never destroyed an item of clothing, a strand of jewelry; I did not so much as remove—by hand—the clasp that held her hair."

"I'm not sure I want to hear much more of this," she said, lifting a hand. "No, strike that. I'm certain I don't want to hear any more of it. We can leave it as a conversation topic for another century. Or rather, you can. I don't plan on being around that long."

He stepped forward.

"I wouldn't, if I were you."

"You wouldn't what?"

"I wouldn't try anything stupid. Stupider."

"And what can be done that hasn't been done? I live encased in stone; I serve his whim. He offered me as a gift to her; he thought to wound her. She was grateful; spiteful, even. I do not think it impressed him overmuch, to know that she could so casually turn against a lover she had taken.

"But she was proud. She never chose to explain her humiliation. And it was, indeed, quite exquisite."

"Well, plan on not repeating it," Jewel replied. "For one, I think your build would make it generally uncomfortable, if it were possible at all."

"Ah. Well, if that were a fear, you need not fear it; as you suspect, it was not an ability that was left me." He stepped toward her. She stood her ground.

Or she would have, if instinct hadn't suddenly kicked the edge of her spine with a resounding thud that made her legs move.

"But he was no fool." Stone hands, shot through with lovely, smoky marble, were raised in the well-lit hall. Fingers curled into fists, and with a casual gesture, Aristos smashed the brightest of the magelights into fine, thin leaf over shards of crystal. The light went out. "He did not assume that my time in captivity would sit well with me." He took another step; she took another. His eyes did not leave her face as he extinguished another light, following the trail the lamps made as they followed her. "He therefore bound my behavior in regard to his wife quite, quite thoroughly. I might speak freely—speech, after all, was acceptable, and any accusation, any lover's quarrel, any pleas, were all to his amusement."

Crash.

"But I literally could not act against her, or any item of value that she owned. I could not crush the stem of a leaf; I could not bruise the petal of a flower. I could not drop a stray dish when I stood by her and she ate from it."

Crash.

"I have had a long time to become used to this form of captivity. She took great pleasure in it. He, on the other hand, the author of my misfortune, took none. At least that satisfaction was mine."

Crash.

She had a sudden, very bad feeling that she was running out of hall. It wasn't a guess. It was a certainty. Enough of one that she didn't waste much time looking over her shoulder.

"As far as breaking things go, you, ummm, don't seem to have that problem at the moment."

"No, oddly enough. I don't. It's been a long time since I've bothered to test it, my dear, because it's been a very long time since I've been awakened. That was his one act of kindness. Theophan has been aware for every year of his entrapment; he is quite, quite mad."

You aren't winning any sanity prizes, she thought, but she didn't bother to say it. Two stone fists beat zero weapons any time. She wondered how much being made of stone would slow him down if she broke into an out-and-out run.

"You are obviously part of the enchantment that allowed her to be sent here and live."

"She didn't always live here?"

Crash.

He smiled lazily, and she knew he knew she was buying time. But clearly the company—any company—was worth prolonging. Gods, if she got out of this in one uncrushed piece, she was going to kill Avandar.

"My dear, no one lived here. He built it as his personal citadel, a way of defending those he cared for. His own life has never been in danger—but the life of his wife, and his children, should there have been any—a different story entirely.

"Those born here might enter and leave freely. Those who bore the mark of his consort: the Serpent mark. His oldest name. You bear that mark, but it is clear you have neither his blood nor his blessing. I… was not a man of little power. I had more than a passing acquaintance with the magical arts, and I had his trust, for what it was worth, for some time. But had I not been entirely enslaved as a magical construct, I would never have survived transit to Evereve. No one would. That was the entire purpose."

Crash.

"But here you are. You are obviously not dead; I may be stone, but I am still a purveyor of the flesh. And to accomplish that he must have unraveled a great deal of what was wrought."

Crash. Crash. Two, for punctuation.

"And now, my dear, I am going to draw this little encounter to an unfortunate close. I am going to defile you, eunuch fashion, since the other is beyond me, and then am I going to kill you."

Theophan, whoever he was, wasn't the only one who was mad. Stone or no, Aristos' face had taken on an ugly rictus that defied any connection with sanity.

"You don't expect me to stand still for any of that, do you?"

"Not at all."

"Good."

The hall opened into a huge gallery of some sort; she knew there was a round wall twenty feet from her back that it would be very, very bad to get caught by. The dress was awkward—another thing she'd kill Avandar for later—but she was familiar enough with skirts that she managed to roll while Aristos' fist was flattening thick gold into thin leaf. Very thin leaf.

She was worried.

Not terrified; not that. There was no one else in the hall but her. No one to protect—and worse, much worse, no one to fail. This was survival made as clean and as tidy as it could be. She could see, on a level that the word "sight" was too simple to encompass, where he would go, where he would strike, what he would attempt, and she reacted fifteen seconds ahead of each action.

Of course she did wonder about the structural integrity of the hall itself when she saw the first fissure snake its way from mid-wall to ceiling. She also wondered how well he could see; his casual destruction of the lamps he could reach had plunged the hall into twilight.

And what followed twilight?

He was heavy. She was light on her feet.

But he was not, as she had so dearly hoped, slow.

"I was made for many things," he said, no break for breath in the smooth flow of the words, "among them defense. If I tire at all, it is not in a way that will help you."

She saved her breath; cursing worked just as well when she didn't let it out.

It was when she took the right turn into the Hall of Statues that she said a single word. Kalliaris.

They were waiting for her.

CHAPTER NINE

They were waiting for her.

Those forms that had been carved into perfect stone, alabaster, marbled smoky quartz, something green and heavy and shot through with veins of gold, those statues that had their places on pedestals over inscriptions she had no hope of being able to read, now gathered 'round the doors in a half circle.

Unlike Aristos, they were silent; it was not a mercy. She had ten seconds of lead time, and the momentary pause to stare at the faces, mute but no longer expressionless, of the men and women that she imagined had somehow managed to piss Avandar off cost her.

She ran into their midst; stopped ten feet away from the one that stood farthest from the swinging door. Not a good idea to let him touch her, if she could avoid it. That was the problem with having an imagination; she could imagine just how well she'd fare beneath those fists, given what one blow had done to gold.

Cormaris, she thought, don't let me snivel. Not that she had much in the way of dignity, but what she did have was important.

"You must be the young lady that Aristos spoke of," the statue said. It had a voice like thunder's rumble: Heavy and unpleasantly grating. It—he—also looked nothing like Aristos; there was no refinement at all in his features. Heavy cheeks, heavy chin, beard that, even carved in stone, didn't look like it would pass Imperial muster. He was also about twice the width of the more pretty Aristos, and very little of that was fat.

Well, okay, none of it was fat. But in real life—wherever it had managed to run off to, very little of it would have been.

"Well," she said, looking over her shoulder, "I'm the only new person here that I know of, although 'young' or 'lady' is probably stretching it."

Aristos stepped into the room. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. They didn't come down when he smiled. She hated people who used smiles that particular way. Not that her hatred ever made much difference.

She turned back to Big and Burly.

The statue standing in front of her frowned slightly. "True," he said. "The dress doesn't suit you, either."

"Well, thanks. I suppose I won't return the favor and criticize what you're wearing, seeing as you don't have many alternatives."

He laughed, then, and Aristos slowed down. "Sanjos," he said softly. "You've found something of mine. I'm… surprised to see you awake."

"Oh? The way you've been babbling? You talk so much Aristos, if most of it weren't boring, you'd wake the dead."

"Do not interfere in what does not concern you."

"Or you'll turn me to stone?" The larger man's smile was very similar to Aristos' but it wasn't aimed at her.

"We have very little time. Let me finish what I started, and you may do as you please with what remains."

"Judging from your expression, that won't be much."

"Sanjos." His expression stilled, the lines of it smoothing out into something better expressed by stone. "I will already suffer for what has transpired. I have no wish to suffer without due cause."

The larger man shrugged. "Not my problem, really. Come here," he added to Jewel.

She started to obey, but her feet stopped in place. She was too tired to think, but not too tired to react; her feet understood what she knew before it reached the rest of her body. Like, for instance, her brain. Instinct. No safety there, then. No safety anywhere.

"Girl," the second statue said, some of the rumble in his voice turning to jagged edge, "I said, come here."

"Funny thing about life," she replied, standing where she was as Aristos—and the line of statues to either side of the one called Sanjos—drew closer. "Even when there's only seconds left of it, no one rushes to throw it away."

Sanjos frowned and stepped forward just as quickly as Aristos had done.

"'Funny thing,'" a familiar voice said, softly enough that she had to strain to catch it, "if I were to illustrate that truth by example, you would not be the person I would choose as its proof."

The light came down from the ceiling like rain and even the statues flinched at its coming.

In a brightness that the height of day couldn't match—except for those rare moments when the sea was still enough that it reflected sun in white, rhythmic stretches—stood Avandar Gallais, shorn of crown, shorn of jeweled silk. But it was his voice that was the greatest of comforts: because it was his voice. There was no struggle with dialect, no speaking in tongues—as it were—no dull confusion; for the first time, he was completely himself.

She had never thought to be so happy to see him.

Aristos howled in fury; it was all he could do. He lunged for her and his body froze that way, as if a sculptor had taken a fancy to a man in a frenzy, and chiseled him perfectly to reflect that moment of his life and no other. Sanjos did not make the attempt; indeed, the statues that surrounded her became just that: statues. Immobile stone.

"You are," he said softly, "such a foolish girl. What did you think you were doing?"

She stood in their center, almost unwilling to move; they had come close enough to her that she'd have to squeeze between the columns their bodies formed, and she didn't want to touch them, to gift them with the intimacy of either her escape or her relief.

"I was—exploring. This place—"

"It is my home."

"Well, that would explain a lot."

"Jewel—"

"Could you learn how to use gold in a less tasteful fashion? Could you learn how to cram so many paintings onto a wall they all look cheap and insignificant?"

"Jewel—"

"Could you choose a site farther underground? Could you live in a place that denies light more than this?"

"Jewel—"

"And these?" she added, waving her hand in a ragged circle, "could you keep anything less safe just wandering around like a rabid dog or ten?"

He reached the farthest of these human columns, the first statue, a woman. His hands were pale in the falling light as he lifted them, as he stroked the underside of her chin. Illusion or no, the face seemed to rise a finger's breadth, the stone shifting in acknowledgment. His lips moved. Gray light flared around the woman's perfect form as he spoke a single word in a language Jewel didn't understand. She thought it was a name. The statue that had been so touched vanished.

He made his way to her side by repeating that gesture and adding different syllables beside every statue he reached.

"Did your grandmother tell you nothing of the dangers of exploring a wizard's home?" he asked, his expression perfectly balanced between annoyance and amusement.

In reply, she slapped him.

Later, she would understand that he allowed this, because she'd tried it a dozen times—two—in the years that she'd been forced to suffer his company and she'd never once come close to succeeding.

But he only allowed it once; the second time she raised her hand, he caught her wrist. Fabric fell along the torn seam of sleeve; the backward S, the serpent mark, caught gold and silver light. His gaze glanced off it and rose to her face. "I will take the punishment I am due, but not more. Come. I have arranged for… suitable attire. The dress is worse than wasted on you; it is actually unattractive. As well as inappropriate."

He started to move; she didn't. She might have been one of the statues that cursed these halls.

"Jewel?"

"Let them go," she said softly.

"Pardon?"

"These. Let them go."

His brows, dark and perfect, did the scrunch and dip that spoke of annoyance. It looked mild, but any expression that actually reached his face wasn't. "Jewel, did you not hear a word Aristos actually said?"

"You mean you did?"

He nodded grimly.

She hit him. Not a slap, not exactly, and not with anything that could be considered warning. A test of reflexes that; he caught her hand with the flat of palm and actually took a step back.

"You bastard," she said.

"This may come as a surprise to you, but I arrived as quickly as I could once I understood where you were and what was actually occurring."

She struggled for control of her wrist, but this time he didn't choose to return it.

"You haven't answered my question," he said coolly.

"Yes."

"Yes?"

"I heard every word he said. I could probably repeat them, but they'd be so laced with my swearing, they'd lose some of their effect."

"And you want me to, as you say, let him go?"

She was silent for a long time. Surrounded by the statues that he hadn't sent wherever to get through to her, she looked up— she had to—and said, "Yes."

His expression was not so much one of disbelief—although that was definitely there—but exasperation. "I will never understand the North," he said at last. "I will never understand how so insipid and so weak a culture can produce such strength that the Empire has managed to stand against its enemies every single time it has been under siege save perhaps one." He caught her by the arms and lifted her so that her toes were the only thing that anchored her to ground. "These men and women wronged me or failed me. And perhaps," he added, "caused me to fail mine. It was an illuminating discussion, and I thank you for your part in it. We were never so close again, Elyssandra and I, and perhaps that was just. Perhaps she resented my inability to protect her from what I had brought into her home. You did not know her— she was not a weak woman. She would never willingly have asked for anyone's help; it would have demeaned her or broken her. She was… very unlike you." His glance, lost a moment to the statue, made Jewel flinch. "He would have killed you, brutally and inefficiently. Why do you desire his freedom?" With every word, he shook her slightly.

"It's not his freedom I desire," she said, speaking through clenched teeth to stop the words from wavering. "Just his death."

"Do not play games with me, Jewel ATerafin. I know you well. You know that for this statue—for all of them—there is only one freedom. You do know that, don't you?"

She started to lie, and gave up before the words reached her lips. "I suspected."

"Then why?"

She took a deep breath and exhaled it, letting go the last of her strength. Aware, as she did, that she was giving herself over to Avandar; aware, as she did, that in some ways she had done no less in the last decade. "I understand the desire to kill someone. I've done it, once or twice, a long time ago. I've done it for vengeance. I've done it for safety. I was younger. I didn't under-stand, then, that the deaths didn't just reflect the dead, they reflected me. Pretty harsh reflection, years later.

"The fact that they're still trapped here says nothing at all about them, to me; it says everything about you."

"And what does it say?" he asked her, in a tone of voice that was unusually distant, even for Avandar.

She looked past him. "I don't know," she said at last.

"Come, Jewel. You disappoint me. I hear the judgment in your voice; it is, as usual, quite distinct. I assure you my ego is not delicate. I have survived much worse than your poor opinion."

"Avandar," she said softly, "these people are dressed in a style I've never seen, and I'm willing to bet money that the language they're speaking and the words I'm hearing aren't connected by anything but magic. So I can't know who they are. I don't know what you think they did. But—"

"Yes?"

"But I think they've been here for long enough."

He surprised her. He laughed. "They have been here for a fraction of the time I have been here," he said.

"I know," she replied, turning away from him as much as she could considering the death grip on both of her arms.

"Jewel—"

"I don't want to know any more."

He stiffened. "That is… unlike you."

"Not really. I… don't particularly like you, Avandar. I never really have, you've always been such an arrogant bastard." As it was something she said once every two months, and usually with more vehemence, she didn't expect him to be terribly impressed. "But this—this is worse."

"How?" His voice was never this casual.

She hesitated because of it.

"Because I hate power," she said at last, "and I should have known, if I could actually dislike you for this long, that you've got way too much of it."

"What," he said softly, "is power?"

"I'm not up for philosophy right now. I'd like my old clothing, and I'd like my old life. I'll live with the lack of ignorance."

"And you won't demand further answers?"

Her face was shadowed a moment by his height. "No," she said at last, "not here. Because it would only be in jest, and I'm not—I can't—" she looked at the stone faces of the men and women who formed his bizarre and subservient court, and she shook her head; brown curls fell into her eyes as they always did, but this time—this time she couldn't easily push them away.

"They should have been dead. That would have been cleanest. They linger here like old wounds, and you let them, you keep them. You don't understand that if you don't let go of them, they don't let go of you." Her eyes were unfocused a moment. "I've heard a lot of people say that hate and love are flip sides of the same coin. I've never believed it. But then again, I've never called love that stupid fanciful obsession that eats away at your insides like Bleaker's worst ale. They wronged you. Maybe that gave you the right to kill them—I don't know. It wouldn't have, back home."

"No; back 'home,' as you call it, I would be the criminal by my just and justified actions here."

"You would both be criminals. That's the point. In order to punish them for their crimes against you, you have to be at least as bad as they are—maybe worse." There was a sudden stab of an ugly fear that choked her words.

"You were," she said, to her great surprise and to her regret. "You were worse then they were." She saw, reflected in the gold and diamonds that were scattered so deliberately—and so unaesthetically—across his chest, the face of a screaming woman, young, and in her features a hint of Aristos' features. A family resemblance. Daughter. She thought it. Knew it for truth.

"His daughter never did anything to harm you. If you had to rape anyone in revenge, why didn't you just rape him?"

He dropped her then, as if the words were so contemptible he could no longer bear to hold on to their speaker.

"There's no point, if it's just about power," she continued. "If all power is is something to be gathered, hoarded and abused, you could be just anyone. Just any mindless, petty—"

For the first time in all of their years together, Avandar Gallais, the domicis chosen by both The Terafin and Ellerson to serve and protect her, stopped the flow of her words by striking her.

Her lip split; the single blow was harsh and effective. Without another word he walked away, if anything that fast could be called a walk. By the tingling that crept from elbow to finger, she realized how tight his grip had been.

They watched her, made of stone and impervious to something as simple as movement. He had not released them; he would not. She knew it. He would not give them leave to speak or attempt to touch her again.

But she thought she saw, mirrored in the faces that had been turned toward her, the same contempt that Avandar had shown.

Evening of the 7th of Scaral, 427 AA

Outskirts of the Tor Leonne

Kallandras waited in silence.

Margret had vanished the moment he had crossed the periphery that marked her personal space in this emergency encampment. She returned scant minutes later, her gaze dark and unblinking. It never fell on him; not from the moment that he had laid his burden down upon the night-damp grass.

Yollana was not accustomed to being anyone's burden, and showed the poor grace that accompanied such a privilege; he had weathered worse in his time, and merely smiled while her complaints grew louder. And they did grow in volume with every mile that separated them from the plateau of the Tor Leonne.

The woman who came in Margret's wake was a woman Kallandras vaguely recognized; it took him a moment, no more, to place name to face. Donatella, one of the elders—and one of the women who had accompanied the children who had been his first concern. He had grown sentimental with age and time.

The smile that he cast in upon himself was bitter and merciless. He had grown no such thing, although the temptation to believe it had become more fierce with time. He had rescued the children because in rescuing Voyani children, one incurred the greatest debt, and he would have need of their indebtedness before his sojourn here was done.

No matter. Donatella brought cloth and water—or something that looked like water at a distance. Upon closer inspection it was slightly thicker, its clarity marred by some sort of leaves, some ground powders, which had sunk to the bottom of the stoppered bottle.

They were, theoretically, two outsiders, Yollana and he, but Kallandras left theory to the dominion of the magi; he knew there was only one outsider within the inner circle of this encampment, and he, Kallandras of Senniel College. Kallandras of the Lady's brotherhood. He glanced away from where Yollana sat huddled with the other women. Reached down, unsheathed his weapons. They were not the blades he had trained with; nor indeed the blades that he had broken in the streets of the city scant hours ago.

But they were the blades he had killed with upon the plateau.

These had been a gift, one of the few he had ever deigned to accept for his services, and they were special to him for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the giver: Meralonne APhaniel, member of the Order of Knowledge, magi, one of the wise.

Where wise, of course, meant something more rarefied and distant than it did in most other venues.

"You mean to go South," the mage had said.

Kallandras had said very little in reply, but that was his way; words were his power, and he used that power sparingly when there was little point. He had no need to be politic in the company of Meralonne, no need to impress; he had no need to influence— and, more to the point, little ability; the member of the Order was strong-willed.

"Who sends you, Kallandras? Solran? Sioban?"

Sioban, as Meralonne well knew, was no longer the bardmaster of Senniel. But Kallandras' lips curved up in a smile, a slight one; the moonlight shadowed and illuminated the curves of his face. "Both," he said quietly. "Although it was, quite properly, Solran's dictate."

"The face of the South is not what it was."

"That is what I am being sent to determine."

Silence. Then, "Has… she… come to visit you?"

She. Evayne a'Nolan. Meralonne's former student, Kallandras' former master in a fashion. She was a wall between them, a mystery; they each guarded their knowledge of her, although neither man loved her well.

He weighed his words. Shrugged. "Yes."

"You will find the Kialli there." Not a question.

"Yes."

"And you will not take me."

At that, for the first time, the bard's voice broke in a small swell of laughter; it was light and quick, a thing to ease the ear and heart. "I would take you in an instant, and you know it. But will you leave? Will you leave a half-god on the verge of collapse, a seer with no knowledge of the South and no defense against the Kialli but the strength of her instinct and her inability to ignore it? Will you trust your enemies not to take advantage of the weaknesses that we both see, continually, when we look upon the massing armies?"

The mage's response was typical of him: He snorted and lit his pipe. Embers curled, orange warmth in the darkness that was already a bit too hot. Smoke wafted up in a breeze that neither man thought to control—but that both men could, should they so choose.

They had that in common.

"No," the mage said at last, ringing the air with smoke, with rings that hovered in the serenity of stillness. "You are too clever by half, Kallandras, that's your problem."

"I thought," the bard replied, with exaggerated politeness, "my problem was that I was far too talkative?"

"Well, that, too. In fact, at the wrong times you are far too quiet." The pipe's glow lit the underside of a perfectly smooth chin; Meralonne was one of the few male members of the magi who chose to go beardless, although his hair was long and fine, the envy of young women who rarely had a chance to meet the mage face-to-face, and probably with good reason.

"You did not call me here to tell me what was wrong with me? I assure you, Sioban would be somewhat annoyed to see you poaching in her preserve." Wry grin there.

"No," the mage said, his smile lost to the stem of pipe, and then to the night itself. "I did not call you for that."

There was something in his voice that caught Kallandras' attention. It was meant to; Meralonne was among the most careful of men, and he could hide behind the mask of words more easily than most could hide behind impenetrable fortress walls.

"You think you have something that presents a danger."

"Very good, bard. Master bard. Yes, I do."

"And you wish me to defuse it?"

"In a manner of speaking." He rose, cast a stray glance to the full moon, the high moon, and then Said simply, "Follow."

It was a request, of sorts, but one did not lightly ignore the request of the magi, and besides, Kallandras was stirred with a rare curiosity.

Beneath skies so Southern even the breeze felt foreign, free a moment from the memory of the mage's familiar tower, he stared at the blades, wondering about them, about their use, about their manufacture. Wondering just how much Meralonne knew, and how much of that knowledge he had chosen to disclose.

"You will never be fool enough or young enough again to enter the Kings' Challenge," the mage said, "and I will not warn you not to carry these weapons there because I see no need to insult your intelligence."

"That," Kallandras had replied gravely, "has never stopped a member of the magi in the history of the Order that I'm aware of."

Meralonne lifted his lamp. It was odd; a man of his power could light a room without thinking and keep it lit without noticing the strain. But in this tower, in these rooms—or perhaps only for this particular visitor—Meralonne APhaniel chose older, quieter ways. The oil lamp, glassed in and darkened with use. The shadows it cast shifted slightly as the mage said, "Take the daggers."

They lay, simply made, simply sharpened, in a black box.

But the box, which he would have said was ebony at a distance, was something far harder than that; obsidian, cold and heavy as a rich child's casket. He approached the box, and stepped back, almost in a single motion.

"Interesting," the mage said.

"Meralonne, I am not your experiment."

"Not as such, no." The mage shrugged.

"What are these?"

"They are daggers. For the moment. They are weapons."

"And their manufacture?"

"Old," he replied. "The actual forging of the blades themselves is something that has not been attempted since the last of the mad Artisans passed—quite thankfully—from our world."

"These are Artisan's work?"

"They are," Meralonne replied, in a voice with the consistency of steel, "the work of the man who once called himself Magellus." He snorted. "Magellus."

"It is not so ridiculous a name as all that."

"Not if you're a small child, it's not." He lowered the lamp.

Kallandras shrugged. "He was an old Artisan."

They both knew the fate of the Artisans. "Yes. And I will warn you that he made these at the zenith, not the nadir, of his power."

"They look very… plain."

"They do."

"Have you handled them?"

"I? Yes. I have." He was quiet a moment, weighing the words that would follow. "I created the box that contains them now. But it is not a safe containment."

"And I am?"

"Strange though it seems, Kallandras, I would trust the blades in your sheaths far more than I would trust them in my tower— and I have had in them in my tower since before I could legally claim it as my own."

"You've never thought to give them to me before."

"No. And I would not—but you go South, and I stay North, and I fear that we will not have this chance again."

"Her words?"

The pronoun, said with just the right emphasis, belonged to Evayne a'Nolan, even in this tower. Especially in this tower. There was a long pause, a thoughtful one.

"No; I rarely take advice from my students, regardless of how well they've learned." His gaze was curiously intent; his eyes, silver-gray, flickered with orange lamplight, much as the surface of the blades did. "I will not press them upon you if you've the wisdom to avoid them."

"You make me curious."

"I? No. That is a function of the weapons."

Kallandras reached out then.

Reached out. Touched them. They were cool, steel and leather. "Be ready," he said, although he couldn't have said why.

"I am," the mage replied softly.

He gripped the daggers, left- and right-handed, and pulled them from their resting place.

They shifted, writhing in his hands like solid snakes. His grip tightened, where another man might have let go in surprise or shock. There was a battle here, a fight, a contest.

Steel bent itself up in twin arcs, reaching for the backs of his hands. He could not contain them, but he did not cry out; he stared at their bending curves, seeing in them liquid, gold, an iridescence and a magic that were at once familiar and chill. Darkness here; darkness beneath the surface of reflected light.

But he had faced darkness before, and this darkness was contained, girdled somehow by form, by function. The blades edged up, and up again; the tips bent down.

He was surprised when they touched his skin; more surprised when they breached its surface. But he held, and he held calmly, waiting.

They went no farther.

"Meralonne," he said, "these are—"

"Not yet finished," the mage replied. "Watch."

As if he could choose to do anything else. The blades shifted again, undulating and twisting, growing. Fascinated by it, awed by it in some fashion, Kallandras watched the conception of a crazed maker as it began its first work in centuries: the fashioning of a weapon. Of two.

Steel melted, but without the heat that would scald or cripple a man fool enough to hold it; leather vanished, absorbed by form. The daggers did what they could not do: they grew in size, in weight, they changed in essential shape, blades lengthening, guards lengthening, handles growing.

He recognized the weapons.

How could he not? They were the brotherhood's weapons of choice when they faced each other, or when the weapons to be used were not prescribed by the men and women who offered the target.

Meralonne said nothing for a long moment. Kallandras stared at his gift. "I… see. Kallandras, these present a danger. The magi have not seen them and they will not, I think, approve. Sigurne knows."

"They are?"

"Magellus, as far as we are able to discern, thought he might make use of demons." He offered no more.

Kallandras said quietly, "and will these weapons fight me in a fight?"

"Magellus was an Artisan, not a mad mage. They will serve their function."

Kallandras bowed. "I will think long on accepting your gift, Meralonne."

"You will not think at all. You have already accepted the gift, or the weapons would not have changed." The magi bowed. The pipe's embers guttered in a wind that was felt, but never seen. "And now, I am tired, and I have work to do. Take them South with you; you're inventive. You'll know when to use them—and why."

Truth, there.

He had known when to use them. And why.

Yollana was injured. Margret saw it from a distance; the old witch would have to be injured to allow some man—some strange man, mind, not kin—to carry her into the encampment of a rival family. She was a Matriarch, after all, and she had her pride.

But she was also known for pragmatism, and if she had never been loved for it—what Matriarch was, after all?—she was admired for it, and followed.

Margret left, and returned with Donatella, and when Donatella had finished tending to Yollana's hands and legs—and her legs were a ruin that made the younger woman flinch, first with that momentary pang of recognized pain, and then with anger and a desire for vengeance—she sent Donatella away.

"Matriarch," Yollana said quietly.

"You've heard," was Margret's stark reply. Yollana knew that her mother was dead. It shouldn't have surprised her; it did. But worse, it shamed her. Yollana was Matriarch, yes, but she was Havallan, and she should not have known first what most of the Arkosans barely knew. Their Matriarch was dead.

She bowed, half to cover the shame that stung her cheeks, and half because this was Yollana of the Havallans.

Of the Voyani Matriarchs, Yollana was the oldest, and the one most feared. Margret was now the youngest; they were theoretically equals, but they did not meet as equals, not here. Although it was Margret's encampment, and although it was Margret's directive that had saved the Arkosans the fate of the Havallan Matriarch, Yollana was a breed apart, and she had come to Evallen on the morn of Margret's birth; had aided in it, as she had known she would have to.

Evallen had some part of the gift, but it was weak; Yollana's was strong enough to need no embellishment. But the two older women had forged a bond that Margret felt, meeting the dark, inscrutable eyes of her elder, she and Yollana never would.

Still, she nodded. "My wagon," she said quietly. "And my tent. Both are yours while you choose to stay with us."

"I want more than that, Matriarch."

"What did you have in mind?"

"Privacy; the Lady's privacy. You can grant it, if you choose— this is your ground, and yours alone."

"You want—"

"I want the heart's circle," Yollana said starkly.

Margret paled. "I—"

"You were trained by Evallen of the Arkosans." Yollana's tone was a slap, stinging and sharp. "You were raised to be Matriarch. You are the heart of your people. Falter, for whatever reason, and they will pay the price." She drew a deep breath. "I ask you again, Matriarch: draw the heart's circle. We have seen enough this night to know that it is necessary."

"You ask for this in front of a stranger?" Margret replied, changing tactics, attempting to buy herself time.

"This stranger has already seen it; he has already been part of it; I myself cut and carried the blessed wood and drew the sigils. Will you do less?"

"This is not Havalla."

"You're stalling."

Oh, the old woman could be a bitch. She wanted to tell her the truth, then: that she didn't have the heart of the Arkosans—that it was hidden in the keep of some highborn clanswoman, given to her by Evallen for reasons that Margret could not begin to understand. But she could not tell her that—not standing outside of the heart's circle. The words would carry on the night breeze, and they would reach every nook and cranny of every wagon before dawn's full light, weakening her.

Just as the angry admission would weaken her. The Matriarchs were responsible for their own, after all—and family wars were not uncommon.

After Nicu's poor display in the streets of the city, she knew that she could not afford to be seen as weak in any way. Ona Tamara knew the truth. Elena knew it as well.

"I'll burn the circle's periphery," she said, struggling to keep the bitterness out of her words, "with heart's fire."

"Good."

CHAPTER TEN

She found wood easily enough; trees lived and died without falling, and the sun turned them into dried husks of former life, meant for burning and not much else. She carried her ax into a night brightened by a nearly full moon; the cutting of wood, time-consuming and menial, was hers. Had to be hers, if the circle was to be hers.

Thus, her mother taught her, and she'd learned.

This is the simplest of our magics, but it's the most valuable one you'll have, day to day. It proves your power, without actually costing much. You'll need it, if I die young.

Only the good, she'd told her mother.

The ax shook in her hands.

She buried it in the fork of the fallen tree's branch. The wood was cut in fury because fury was the only comfort she would allow herself to take; she put her heart into the task, pausing only to set the lamp down on the ground so that her feet didn't become victims of her aim.

Wood splintered cleanly; the ax was sharp, her aim true. This close to the moon's height, the wood had its own power—or so her mother had said—but she knew that without the heart in her hands, wood's power was dim and almost impossible to reach. Wood cut during the phases of the Festival Moon always held the strongest essence, the easiest to touch and invoke; they were the longest nights of the year—for the Matriarch—with good reason. Voyani wisdom.

She gathered the fallen wood, dumped it in the cloth sack, bundled it tightly. The stars watched; she hoped no one else did. The cursing that accompanied the lifting robbed the moment of all dignity.

Made her feel a bit better, though.

In moonlight, she made the trek back from the forest, although forest was a poor choice of word for something so thin. The Arkosans traveled the heartland's ring; their road crossed the verdant plains of Mancorvo, the dimpling valleys of Averda where forests were so deep and thick they bruised the leg and scratched the face of men made careless by an evening's drink. She missed those forests now; it was there that she had first cut the wood by her mother's side.

Her mother's side, while her mother's hands curled 'round the haft of an ax that had been passed, mother to daughter, since the beginning of time—or so Margret had believed then. The haft itself was plain, dark wood, and it had been replaced several times; it was the wedge of metal, something that never lost an edge and wouldn't condescend to bear a notch, no matter what wood it was set against, that was the heirloom.

That ax had seemed so very much a part of Evallen that night. Everything had: the starlight, the full moon, the night's landscape, the trees themselves. In the darkness you could best make out the living from the dead, the wet from the dry, by smell, by touch. True then, true now. She'd peeled away bark, under her mother's watchful shadow, listening to her mother's sharp criticism and, more rare, her bare, stark praise—the rhythms of a speech that Margret had never thought she'd miss.

She missed it now; missed the nervousness and the wonder of that first night. It had been important to please the Matriarch, more so for the girl who would become the clan's leader than for any other Arkosan, and she'd offered her hands to splinters and calluses, swallowing pain and failure in the search for success.

She swallowed now.

Because at the end of the first gathering, her mother had drawn the heart of the Arkosans out of the folds of her shirt. No one who did not bear Arkosan blood in their veins could see the heart if Evallen chose to conceal it, but even Arkosans could be shunted aside when the Matriarch chose to practice her power in privacy.

That night was one of the few nights that Margret had been granted more than a passing glimpse of the source of her mother's power. People want other people's power if it's under their noses, Evallen would tell her. They can't think of a single good reason why you've got it and they don't. And frankly, most days neither can I. Don't lord it over your own with anything but force of personality unless you have no other choice. She'd pause, then. And any daughter of mine had better have enough force of personality that it isn't a problem.

Wasn't a problem, now. She didn't have the heart to expose.

She took the wood to the edge of the small brook that had been the deciding factor in the location of their encampment. Here, she gathered water in a bowl that she had fashioned out of clay with her own hands, had decorated with gold leaf, had painted with dyes that had been one of her mother's more practical secrets. She took a second and a third such bowl out of the folds of her shirt, unwrapping each carefully and setting it down in the clearing, beneath the open face of the Lady's Moon, three points of a triangle, or perhaps three points along the edge of a circle. Into the second bowl, she poured wine, the harvest of vine; into the third, she poured rice wine, the harvest of grain. She dedicated these to the Lady whose Moon lit her way, speaking slowly, trying to put the same passionate plea into the words that her mother had always managed.

It wasn't there. She knew it; the heart that defined the Matriarch lay in the grasp of a clanswoman. How was she to continue without it?

Yollana was cruel—but that was part of her character that was known by and to all. It would not be beyond her to set Margret a task that would end in failure because she'd decided that dealing with failure was also a test that needed passing.

Was that what this was?

Maybe.

Margret's mother had laid the heart in the center of the three bowls, and it flashed a moment as it lay against earth, the Lady's element, drawing power and granting it. She spoke in a language that was Arkosan to the core—ancient and hidden and shadowed— before she touched forehead to earth. It was the first thing she'd done all evening that had shocked Margret because it looked so much like abasement, and the Matriarch was the source of all power.

Her mother ignored her stiff-jawed open mouth. Lifting the heart, Evallen of the Arkosa Voyani placed the wood where the heartlight still burned the vision. Her prayers lapsed into silence, then, but they continued.

Silence, Margret could manage—although it would have surprised most of the Arkosans who knew her.

I have no heart, she thought, and for just a moment it meant something other than the Matriarch's stone. She did not know as much of the old tongue as her mother had; her mother's learning had been courtesy of Yollana of the Havallans, and it had come in bits and pieces when the Matriarchs met at Moon's height in the Tor Leonne.

I have accepted all responsibility, and I have already begun to fail it. But I will not let that failure break me, Lady. We are not always lucky. The winds howl. The sun burns the shadows into last night's pleasant dream. The clans hunt us, the families war with us. We lost children to the harems and the houses of the powerful, and we endure. We lose our parents long before they've had the time to pass on the truth and experience of their lives, and we endure. We lose our loves, our lovers, our partners, and we endure.

But we die before we abandon the oaths we make with our blood.

I have no heart to bespeak you, Lady, no power to be certain I have your attention. But I have this: and it is of me, part of all that I am, and that my mother was, and that my daughter, when she is born, will be.

I vow, tonight, that we will endure.

Margret of the Arkosa Voyani reached a shaking hand to the side of her hip and unsheathed her dagger. She ran it along the fleshy part of her palm, biting carefully enough to draw blood that would run without injuring muscle or reaching bone.

The blood, she offered to earth, at the exact center of the triangle made by the spirits of the Lady's night.

She'd hoped for some flash of light, some recognition of her offer. There was nothing but night and shadow, starlight and moonlight.

Her hand stung as she lifted the wood, block by block, and placed it where her blood had been spilled.

Her head began the long descent to earth, and when it reached the cool, moist dirt of evening forest, she inhaled deeply. Abasement.

Yes, but more: Here, she could smell the dampness and the greenness of the forest floor, the sweet sharpness of wine, the fullness of cut wood, as if they were a part of her. Almost against her will, her back relaxed, and her arms; she fell into the posture of supplicant, completely devoid of the usual powerlessness it implied.

And then, when she had swallowed the whole scent of a forest's peace and the Lady's libations, she emptied the three bowls carefully, taking a sip of each for herself, and offering the rest to the wood.

"All right," she said. She was startled into silence at the sound of her own voice. She slung the wood over her shoulder; it settled there, a comfortable burden—for at least thirty yards. It was a lot longer than that to reach Yollana of the Havalla Voyani.

The peace of the forest hadn't quite left her by the time she reached the wagons and found Yollana and the stranger waiting for her. She nodded to the stranger, and forced herself to bow— wood still slung over her shoulder—to the woman who sat on the ground.

"The circle," Yollana said sharply.

Just as, Margret thought, her mother would have, had her mother been alive.

The last part of the heart's circle was the easiest. She built a fire of normal wood by her own hand; no one offered to help— and she would have been honor bound to refuse any such offer. The fire started quickly enough—a child could start a fire with relative ease, given the right wood—and once she'd built it, she turned to Yollana. "Matriarch," she said, "I offer you the safety and the protection of the Arkosans. Join me by the fire that I have built for your comfort and your safety."

"I accept," the older woman replied gravely, "what only you can offer, Margret of Arkosa." Yollana shifted her weight as if to rise; her face froze completely. That was the Havallan Matriarch through and through; she never shared her pain when it was something as trivial as broken limbs.

Kallandras was by her side in an instant, offering aid without ever giving her a chance to refuse—and she would have, as pride demanded. He carried her into the circle that Margret had offered.

The eyes of the Matriarchs met.

"You, stranger," Margret said, her throat tightening, her body tensing with the wrongness of the words to follow, "we owe the debt of future to. I offer you the safety and the protection of Arkosa. Join me by the fire that I have built for your comfort and your safety."

"I am honored by your offer," he replied gravely, speaking as if he truly understood the honor she conveyed. "And I accept it for the moment."

They took their places by the fire; Margret held back a moment longer, wondering if the circle she'd offered was as much a fraud as she felt herself to be.

* * *

"Your hospitality," Yollana said, "makes you one with the Havallans, Matriarch." She did not speak quietly; indeed, she spoke loudly enough that any casual eavesdropper might hear the words. And if they did, it proved that Margret could not even draw the Arkosan circle. Margret wanted to warn her, to caution her to silence, but she could not quite bring herself to expose her own weakness. "And I am in your debt." Ritual, ritual that. But it eased Margret to hear the formality of the tone. Made her feel less the impostor.

"The debt," Margret said, her voice lower, the word less prone to be carried by wind's caprice, "is not mine to accept." She turned, then, to where the stranger stood leaning against her wagon, his profile lit by the orange of a fire that was not quite bright enough to illuminate his expression. "Kallandras of Senniel College brought you to us. He intervened to send our children to safety, and he brought my heir home."

"That much help from strangers," Yollana said wryly, "is too much help. And it's costly. I would far rather you held the debt, my dear."

"The Arkosans are less of a threat than a stranger with a pretty face and hair a Serra would kill for?" There was a touch of levity in the words.

"The debt of the Arkosans is a debt I understand," Yollana replied gravely. "And that one—he serves the Lady, and he serves the blue witch who comes like a nightmare and a doom." All humor fled her voice; she stared at Margret intently, searching for the jump, the stiffening of features, that spoke of recognition.

Only when she saw them did she continue. "The time is coming," she said quietly, "when all debts are due. Your mother understood this, and she paid the price."

"My mother—" Margret let the silence fold in around her. "Yollana, what is happening on the plateau? What is happening in the city? Have the clansmen gone mad?"

"Worse," Yollana said softly, "and your mother knew the truth of that. They have fostered an alliance that should have become impossible with the birth of the clan Leonne."

"The clan Leonne is dead."

"It is not," Kallandras said, speaking for the first time, "dead. There is a single survivor."

"We've heard of him," Yollana replied, careful now, her voice as neutral as Margret had ever heard it. "And I will say to you that if the rumors that have carried this far to the South are true, he is more than we expected him to be."

"But not," Margret added, following Yollana's studied neutrality as closely as she could, "impressive enough, in the opinion of the Arkosans, to carry the war."

"He is served," Kallandras said softly, "by Ser Anton di'Guivera."

"So," Yollana replied—Margret having temporarily lost her voice—"that rumor is true. Is it true that he has fought the creatures of the Lord of Night?"

"You know the answer to that, Yollana, and I will not be trapped in your testing games for another moment."

She smiled. "So be it, then. Yes, I know it for truth. But the Voyani take no sides in the war of one clan against another."

"No," Kallandras said softly, "they don't. But you know, you must know, that this war is not that war. I will not lecture you, Yollana, but I have stood at the side of the blue-robed witch, as you call her, and I know as much of your ancient histories as it is safe for one who is not controlled by the Voyanne to know. Your captivity must tell you that you are already at war."

"It must, must it?" But she folded her arms across her chest. "Tell me, then, Northern bard. Tell me what is happening in the city."

"Margret, with your permission?"

She started like a wild creature, and then blushed; that made her angry. Shoving her hair out of her face, she almost said, "You need my permission to speak?" But she stopped herself, because it was her circle, and she was the Matriarch, and technically, as a man who had no blood ties to either of the women sitting in that circle's ring, he was required to ask her permission.

She nodded; it was graceless, but it was enough.

Kallandras began to speak, quickly, of the masks of the Festival of the Moon.

She was silent a long time; first, while she listened. Second, after she asked him for details. As if silence were contagious, he caught hers a moment, transforming it by expression and stillness. After he'd accomplished this, he turned to Margret and spoke a word or two. She raised a brow, and then nodded, and he vanished into the cover of starlit night.

"Who is he, Yollana?"

"He is as cursed as any of us. I was… intemperate. He serves Evayne a'Neamis, but he serves her as any of us do: by seeing the death that she stands in the gateway of, by helping her, in any possible way, to be the mortar that seals that death out."

"Pretty words," Margret said.

"They are, aren't they? And they impress, where they must. But they also have the benefit of being the truth. I am not sure that I like him—"

"You do."

Yollana's smile was a rare, rare gleam of teeth. "Very well, then, I am sure that I like him, but I am also certain it is not the wise choice. I trust him in this battle, and this battle will devour my life. It devoured your mother's, and it will work its way through the older generation of the Voyani before it is at last laid to rest. But your generation? Yours, I cannot see. He moves at the bidding of the only woman I have ever met who has found her way to the first road, and beyond it, to the first seer. Imagine," Yollana added softly, reflectively, "being asked to slowly cut off your own hand, and then use it, always, as your most effective weapon.

"She has been asked; she has accepted the price. But she is less whole than I am, than Evallen was, than Kallandras is. I try to remember that, when I think of what she has cost me. Sometimes it helps."

"It doesn't help me."

"No. I suspect it won't help my daughter either. But there are choices we make that drive us because they are the only choice we can make. We—ah, never mind. He returns."

He carried with him four masks. Four finished Festival masks. Margret noted that his hands were gloved, and that he did not choose to set those masks upon a single blade of grass; instead he arranged them upon a silk that would separate their clay from the earth beneath it.

Yollana's frosted brow went up in the darkness; her gaze leaped from masks to mask—the former, the craft of an unknown worker, the latter, the completely neutral expression the foreigner wore. "You are versed," she said quietly.

"I have traveled with the Voyani before," he replied, and if his face was neutral, it was nothing compared to his voice.

"We do not give our secrets away so lightly."

He shrugged. "Knowledge," he said, "is often a thing that slips between closed fingers. It is more like water than gold; it cannot be held."

Yollana laughed; Margret was shocked. It was a Voyani saying. "And will I say, in return, that only a fool displays his riches in two cupped palms?"

"Indeed." This unknown Kallandras relented, offering a smile to the oldest of the Voyani Matriarchs. "But will you pardon me if I do not then fall into a discourse about the nature—and the power—of the fool?"

"I will pardon you," Yollana replied, "and challenge you, Northern wise man. When the time comes, and we can sit in a circle wider and deeper than this, you will sing your discourse and I will speak mine, and we will have witnesses who will decide which of us—you or I—better evokes the Lady's truth."

"I will accept that offer, Yollana, if Only because I know how stubborn you are: Once you've offered a challenge, nothing will stop you from taking it up—not even the threat of death."

Her smile was fond, a momentary self-indulgence as she met the smoother face, the prettier eyes. "You go straight to my head."

But they both saw the steel beneath her smile; they judged for themselves the truth of her words.

"The masks, Matriarch."

"Indeed."

She reached for the first of the masks that Kallandras had so carefully arranged. Her hands hovered above it, fingers delving into the eyeholes, the places where breath passed mouth and nose. Her palms passed above the swell of simple cheek, pausing a moment over the tip of chin, the anonymity of nondescript forehead, a nose that could have been anyone's nose, and yet had its own distinct shape. Delicate in seeming, it seemed to draw the hand.

She did not touch it.

The second mask was a half-mask, a thing that covered eyes and forehead and nose. Like the first, it suggested anonymity; it blended elements of the first mask, but made them somehow more workaday. She paused. "Are they evenly distributed?"

Margret frowned. "Pardon?"

The Matriarch's gaze slid past her to Kallandras.

"I do not know," was his quiet reply, but he drew breath, and he continued, "but I believe they are indeed evenly distributed."

She frowned.

"You would have guessed otherwise?"

But she had gone back to her work; the dance of hands in the air above the clay masks changed in tone and texture as she reached the gaudily colored leather hide. The movements became jerkier, lost all echo of caress, of fascination.

She worked in silence. She asked no questions. But her hands lingered longest over the third mask, and when they left, it seemed to Margret that she had to tear them away.

The fourth mask, then: the gaudiest, the richest, the most unusual. It was shaped of clay, as the first two had been, but it was not shaped with a human face as a model; it was almost birdlike in its extension—but its ferocity was its own. Clansmen wore masks such as these. Rich ones, or powerful ones.

Even at the height of the Lady's Moon, Margret could feel power.

"Yes," Yollana said faintly.

"Do you know what they are, Yollana?"

"Masks," she said at last.

Margret grimaced. "Thank you. I meant—"

"Will they be worn?"

"That is the edict and the intent," the Northern bard replied. His gaze was leveled at her as if it were a crossbow.

"No," she said softly. "It is not Voyani magic, if that's what you've been hoping to hear."

"I hope for very little, Yollana. Information, however, would be valuable."

"As in, whose magic?"

"As in," he nodded gravely.

Thought had taken her where healing could not; she started to stand, to pace the periphery of the fire's circle, to cast her shadows back. But her legs had been scored and injured, and were it not for the interference of the bard—again—she would have fallen.

She said, at last, "I don't know."

He heard it: In the voice, in the tremor beneath the surface of the words itself. He couldn't see beyond it; couldn't catch the current. Yollana was canny; she was as aware of his power as one not schooled in the North could be, and she could deflect it.

But twisted 'round the three words she had spoken were words that she could speak and preferred not to, and they held knowledge. Not certainty—that, he would have heard—but fear.

She was afraid that she knew the answer to his question.

Unblinking, her eyes met his in the darkness.

"You will take word," she said, "to my people. They are camped—much as the Arkosans are camped—outside of the city. If they weren't fools." The momentary irritation promised dire consequences if they were, and given her shifting mood, he almost pitied them.

"I will carry word for you, if that is your desire." He paused delicately, considering his next words, his next offer. "I will carry you, if you will permit it."

"They'll be skittish enough, thank you. They won't want to see their Matriarch in the arms of a pretty foreigner." She laughed. "All except the young girls and boys; they'll think it's romantic. Even at my age."

Margret snorted. "You aren't old enough to play the age card, Yollana."

"Aye, maybe not. But I like to try it every once in a while. No, Kallandras of the North, I ask you to carry word—and I will give you the signs by which my word will be known—but with the permission of the Matriarch, I will stay with the Arkosans for a time." She paused. "I intend," she added softly, "to send the Havallans back to my daughters."

"But—" Margret bit back the words.

Kallandras was no fool; he saw the significance of the gaze that passed between them.

"I—we—would be honored."

He almost laughed then, but it was not his way; he did chuckle.

The two women turned to stare at him at the same moment, the gesture almost identical. "You must forgive me," he said quietly. "I have traveled, as I said, with the Voyani—and I cannot think of many who would willingly journey at the side of not one but two Matriarchs." He laughed. "There is a phrase about two Matriarchs and a war—"

"There is also," Yollana said, with a chill that only the far North could embody, "a phrase about the wisdom of offending a Matriarch."

"Ah." He bowed, the smile firmly attached to his face. "But there is also the truth of expedience, and I have not yet delivered your message."

Margret laughed. "But you deliver no message for me."

"No, Matriarch," he said, and the smile did slip away from his face as he turned toward the plateau. "But I know where your heart lies."

Silence then. The crackle of fire and snapping log, the breeze of a cool, cool night.

Mikalis di'Arretta rose. The Widan Sendari di'Sendari and the Sword's Edge were waiting in the open courtyard before which lay the bodies of the fallen, and beside them, stiller than the corpses of the dead, the man who had taken the crown for himself, and now waited to lay claim to the Sun Sword: Alesso di'Alesso, the Tyr'agar.

But beyond them, beyond the confines of the building which housed the Sword's Edge and the studies of the Sword's Edge— the shadows were strong. He was frightened, and he had walked the long and the deadly road to become Widan so that he might also become a man of power and escape fear's grip. A fool's dream; he realized it the day he was elevated to Widan after years of struggle—and hours of it.

But he had not understood then that his struggles would bring him to the heart of his fears, and expose him in a way that not even the Lady's harshest nightmares could. He had thought to learn ancient ways, to walk ancient roads, to better understand the whole of the Dominion's ancient history. That had been his moonlight prayer from his earliest memory to his latest.

But this, this was too much knowledge.

"Mikalis?"

He bowed at once, gravely. "Sword's Edge." Bowed again, no less gravely. "Tyr'agar." By small gestures, he made it clear that he was not comfortable in the presence of such illustrious men, and by small gestures, they accepted that lack of comfort as their natural due.

Only Sendari watched with narrowed eyes.

"Tell us."

"I… am not certain. I cannot be certain, you understand this? The magic here is not my magic, it is not a thing of my making, a thing I could imitate." The frustration in his voice was genuine.

"I doubt," Cortano said quietly, "that it is a magic that any of us could imitate. I accept this; you are not being tested by the steel, Mikalis. You are here for your opinion and the intuition that you may have developed in your travels with the Wanderers."

Mikalis bowed again. When he straightened out, he left hesitancy behind. "The magic that destroyed the inner and outer room was—and of this I am certain—Widan's magic. I would say it bears your mark, Cortano."

"Oh?"

"It is too powerful and too sudden to be almost anyone else's, and it is of the fires. These are also known to be your personal chambers; I doubt the Sword of Knowledge combined could lay such a spell in your domain without your instant knowledge."

The Sword's Edge nodded. "Continue."

"These," he said quietly, turning to look at the fallen, "were not the work of your magic. And here," he continued, turning away from the corpses as if the sight of them burned—and it did—"in the outer chamber, there is a hint of a magic that almost feels like our magic but… isn't."

Two sets of eyes narrowed immediately. Sendari and Cortano exchanged a glance. The silk of Sendari's simple, fine robe rippled as his shoulder rose and fell in a shrug. "I told you," he said quietly, "I am not as sensitive. I know the Voyani artifacts— such as they are—and their uses, if I have seen them before. But this—this is not my dominion."

Cortano nodded; it was what he expected to hear. "What would you say it is, or was?"

"I would say," he said quietly, "that it was the element freed from the magic that binds it." His hands moved across the air in an elegant gesture that seemed to take in that air itself, to mold it, to call it. "Here," he said softly.

"Yes." Cortano's single word was succinct. "You've seen as I've seen; the air is… unsettled." His pause was loud because it was almost hesitant. Almost. "Can you tell me what the air did?"

"Not with certainty." The scored and scorched wood grain beneath his feet—wood that had once been perfectly chosen, perfectly stained, perfectly polished and tended—held more of his interest as he made his admission of ignorance than floors generally did for Widan. "But I would say it carried at least one, and possibly as many as four, through the fires of your own power."

"Unscathed."

"It would appear so." He knew what Cortano would ask for next, and he strongly desired to avoid it. So strongly that he turned without permission to see the open skies beyond the personal chambers of the Sword's Edge. To seek the Lady's Moon, her face still shadowed and veiled, her power coming into its zenith as she approached the Festival that, in the Dominion of Annagar, signaled the one night of true freedom any man knew.

But that was Festival Night; this was a night, like and unlike any other; power dictated, less power obeyed.

"The bodies, Mikalis?"

He could not avoid them, then.

No spell of preservation had been placed upon them; the Sword's Edge desired—rightly and intelligently—to contaminate them with no foreign magic. Not until they had been thoroughly studied, thoroughly examined. But although the Lady's Festival occurred at the coolest time of year, it was never that cool in the Tor Leonne; the bodies had stiffened and then relaxed, and those parts of them that had been laid open with such casual violence—for it seemed, to Mikalis, that they had had little time to prepare for defense, let alone defend themselves, against whatever force had chosen to attack them—had already begun to decline.

He recognized two of the men. No, he recognized all of them, but two he had considered—inasmuch as any Widan considers another Widan to be so—friends. Men whose search was similar enough to his own that he might be unguarded in his zeal and his enthusiasm from time to time. They were, neither of them, from the High Court; nor was he. The manners of the Court confounded them all, embarrassed them at times, made them aware of their deficiencies. Magic was easy; politics was death. How many times had they said that, and laughed or smiled bitterly?

He had not counted. It was over, that easy camaraderie. He was left with death, and the order of the Sword's Edge. It made him wish—Lady knew it, even if he would never utter the words where she might hear them—that he had never set foot upon the Voyanne, for the dust of that bloodstained road now carried the name Mikalis di'Arretta, and he knew what his duties were.

He knelt, not beside a friend, but beside a headless corpse. He had studied the dead many times, and as he stilled his breath, he found his center, found the distance that had always served him well in the past. He placed his hand on the ruined, clawed chest. Closed his eyes.

Lady, he thought. Lady, guide me. Give me a sign. Grant me your wisdom.

His hands burst into flame.

Had he been any other man, he would have cried out at the shock of it, but he had faced flame before and emerged—as they all must, who have been tested by the Wind and the Wind's guardian—Widan. He held his tongue, held his shock, let that shock turn into something else in the temper of the fire: determination. Knowledge.

The fires did not burn him; after the shock of first heat, he spoke the words of the triad and they melted to either side of his skin as if the skin of a man who could speak the three were anathema.

He rose. Cortano's eyes were as black as the night sky that knows no dawn. No one asked him what he had found; he circumnavigated their perfectly still forms as if they were statues, some perfectly chiseled, well-placed stones around which he must pass to find truth. To find their truth.

The next man, then.

The next.

The next.

All burned at the touch of his hands, the taint of his magic. For he, Mikalis di'Arretta, had indeed walked the Voyanne, and he had seen the shadows that waited by road's edge. They taught him of those, when they would teach him nothing else, because the shadows were the enemy of all men, and not merely the Voyani. No private quarrels existed when the Lord of Night rose.

Was it true?

In the eyes of the Lord, private quarrels were all that existed, and strength was the test of the Lord's favor. Lose or win; that was his judgment. Day, Night—did it make a difference? Men with power fueled men with less power; the weak died, in either case.

Ah. The last body. The last.

He hovered a moment above it, knowing that once he had finished here he would face the men who ruled the realm. He had no desire to do so; no way of avoiding the task. Power had been granted him in his life, but it was never enough power.

In the search for enough, a man might do many, many things. He bent; his robes brushed dried blood and rent skin; his hand hovered a moment above gaping throat, wide, sightless eyes. It was almost a matter of compulsion with him, to leave those eyes open. As if the dead could bear witness to the crimes of the living.

The fires came. He expected no less.

They came in a pillar, in a column that spoke of blistering heat and scorched earth, of death as the only rightful dominion of the element.

They had been taught thus: let the elements take control and death is their only dominion. Fire will scorch you and water will drown you; earth will suffocate you and air—ah, air was the wind itself, and no one who lived in the Dominion of Annagar could doubt the howling fury of the winds. Even when they were gentle—even then—a wise man questioned the seedlings that they brought as gifts for another season.

"Sword's Edge," he said, his living eyes trapped a moment in the thrall of dead ones.

"Widan."

"My examination is complete."

"Are you prepared to discuss your findings, or is there work to be done before the results are clear?" Ritual, that. Performance.

"I am prepared to discuss the preliminary magics I believe to be at work—pending, of course, the results of subsequent study and possible correction." He did not want to rise; he did not want to remove his hand from the skin of a dead man. The dead, for a moment, were an anchor, and once he left them behind, he would drift away. Into the shadows, where men waited.

But the shadows, men or no, also waited; the Lady watched. He had trained all his life to uncover the knowledge that granted him power, and with that power came, if not notoriety, than at least reputation; he could not step past the name he had with such cursed pride made for himself. He rose, lifting his hand. Letting the dead go.

Lord knew there would be more of them, and in far greater numbers; after all, rumor had it that the new Tyr'agar would finally declare his war against the North at the Festival's height. It was not that war which concerned him, although it intrigued him because it so obviously involved the Sword's Edge, a man seldom given to the intricacies of the realm political when magic itself was not involved.

It was this war. These dead. This Festival. Those masks.

He bowed to the Tyr'agar, and then, as deeply but not more so, to the Sword's Edge. "These men," he said softly to the man who ruled his Order, wielding it as if it were the weapon after which he was named, "were not killed by a magic that you or I are capable of wielding. Here, and here," he added, bending at the knee without actually kneeling, "are the killing blows, and the killing blows themselves bear the taint of—"

"Yes, Mikalis?"

"Of the creatures that we would best know as demons." He had been about to call them something else: Leonne's Wyrd. He hoped that his lapse had in no way been obvious; it was a mis-take that a lesser man would pay for with his life. He did not dare a glance at the Tyr'agar.

"And you say this because?"

"You know well why I say it," he replied, his voice as sharp as the Sword's Edge. "You summoned me for the knowledge that I might have gleaned in my passage through the Dominion at the side of the Voyani. This—this rudimentary spell—is one of the few they would willingly teach me; it is a spell that they teach to anyone who has the capability of learning it. Simple detection."

"And you are certain that you are detecting what they've chosen to tell you you're detecting?"

Cortano was silent. Sendari, silent as well, had the grace to wince as the man he served, both as adviser and ally, waited for the answer to a question that no Widan would ever ask. Significant, to Mikalis, that neither man moved to enlighten the Tyr'agar; significant as well that the Tyr'agar did not know enough of magic's practice to render the question meaningless.

He blunted the edge in his voice. Bowed, letting his knee hit the ground as his chin clipped his chest. "Tyr'agar," he said, the title heavier for the respect with which he chose to burden those three syllables. "No Widan—not especially one who has studied under this particular Sword's Edge—is capable of casting a spell whose nature he does not clearly understand. Our magic is a magic of precision."

"Granted," the Tyr'agar replied, unfazed. "But the Voyani magic is said to be," and he paused to take in the breadth and the rich, quiet darkness of the clear night sky above them all, "a thing of night and shadow, a gift of the Lady's, a power of intuition."

"The Voyani are also said to be able to see the future, and they fleece the young and the old alike on the strength of that belief when they travel through our cities." Thankfully, it was Sendari who replied. Sendari, whose voice was as dry as desert night, but less chill.

Of the three men gathered, he understood Sendari best and least. A ripple creased the former General's brow; it left the shadow of displeasure across the whole of his face, although Mikalis would have been hard pressed to say why; this Tyr'agar was a more cunning man than the last one had been; he gave nothing away.

"Very well. The Voyani magic, then, has much in common with the Sword's?"

"It has enough in common that we can learn much of what they teach, and they, much of what we do."

"And did you trade our knowledge for theirs, Widan?" Now he spoke with an edge in his voice to rival Cortano's. Mikalis stiffened, glad for a moment to be on his knees: it made taking a step back impossible, and the step back would have been the greater gaffe.

"I traded my knowledge, Tyr'agar, and at that, the knowledge was not magical in nature."

"Oh?"

"I aided them in a matter of folklore, an area of study which has often led me to discoveries more germane to the Sword of Knowledge, and the Sword's Edge, than a more direct approach would." He stood slowly, unbending at knee and neck. "And, in turn, they offered me two spells." His glance grazed Sendari's; their eyes met. Between Widan it was understood that no man of power ever exposed the full extent of his knowledge; secrecy preserved power. He wondered if the Tyr'agar would view the… omission… should it come to light, as a lie. Wondered what kind death he would be granted, if that were so. "Two. One, they said, was a minor protection against their ancient enemy, and the other, a detection of that enemy's residual magic. The latter spell can be used as I have used it, but I believe that it is more commonly used to cleanse the corpse of taint than it is to determine the nature of the creature that caused the death. In fact, I would hazard a guess that the Voyani would not think of using the spell as a confirmation of a suspicion, or as a tool of detection; they would feel no such need because—"

The Tyr'agar raised a hand. The gesture stemmed the flow of words that might otherwise have continued for at least the quarter hour, and it evoked the evening's first smile across the face of the Lord of the Dominion. "You are, indeed, one of the Widan," he said softly. "And I have never been a man with enough patience to listen to the minutiae that rules the Widan's life. This spell is a spell to cleanse a corpse."

"Or an object, yes—although that object must be an object that has been casually handled or affected by the creature in question; it cannot be one of the creature's manufacture—such a spell as I have worked tonight would not be up to the greater task."

"What, exactly, does it cleanse the… object… of?"

He froze a moment. Took a deep breath, tasted the night air as it passed his lips.

"The demon darkness," he said at last. "The shadows of the Lord of Night."

Mikalis was certain, as he watched a different darkness settle into the harsh contours of the Tyr'agar's face, that there were shadows just as unpleasant, and just as deadly, as the shadows that had killed the men whose bodies he studied.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Alesso did not ask for confirmation of Mikalis' information. He did not, in fact, ask any further questions. Sendari counted to himself beneath the silence of a quiet sky. When he reached a full twenty, the Tyr'agar bowed to both the Sword's Edge and the Widan who had given them all information of value.

He nodded to Sendari.

A world separated the formal bow and the casual nod; Sendari had been, by that simple gesture, summoned; Cortano and Mikalis, by full bow, dismissed. The Sword's Edge did not appear to find the gesture offensive; he, too, had the look of barely hooded anger about the cast of his features.

They repaired to the Lake for which the Tor Leonne was so justly famous, standing not upon one of the many platforms that had been built for the pleasure and privilege of viewing the moon—or the waters—at night, but rather to the edge of the water itself, on the eastern side of the Lake, where rushes were allowed to grow so that they might catch lilies and make a statement about cultivated wilderness that Sendari and Alesso understood well.

Their lives were here. On a night like this one, they had crossed the boundaries that separated the clansmen from the rulers, and they had stood, two men without attendants, by waters that lapped reeds and shore, speaking of death, of the will to kill, of the desire for power that did not demand the clan-crime of murdering their respective kai.

They had come far, these two.

Sendari bowed to the face of the Festival Moon. He did so automatically, the bend of body in a gesture of respect as natural as breath. Alesso, as always, waited; he was not a man who had ever granted the Lady her due, and as such, his respect was not expected, its lack no slight to her.

After the silks had stopped swaying in an echo of his motion, the Widan cast, speaking to wind, to water, to earth, and to fires that burned upon a distant pavilion. He trapped his own words in an envelope of magic that separated his friend and himself from the rest of the Tor; tested the casement that held them. After a moment, poised just so, he nodded.

"Well?" Alesso said quietly, aware of what that barely conscious nod meant.

"I am not the politician," Sendari replied. "That has always been your role, and Cortano's."

Alesso laughed. "So you claim. So you consistently claim. But you are Sendari di'Sendari, and he is as he has always been. Come, Counselor. I am in need of your advice."

Sendari might have snorted, but the deaths of the Widan cast long, dark shadows, and he had no desire to dishonor their new memory when their spirits—or so it was commonly held—hovered in breeze and wind, seeking, seeing, listening to voices that distance and wall and earth kept from their living bodies. "Will you take any advice that you ask for?"

"I will, as always," his friend replied, in a tone heavy with irony, "consider and weigh each precious word carefully."

"And singly, thus depriving them of their aggregate meaning, no doubt."

He was rewarded by laughter, although it was brief. It made him wonder how often he had heard the laughter of the previous man who had worn both Crown and Sword by the edge of the Lady's Lake. The dead kai Leonne had been a cruel and dour man.

"As you say, old friend."

"It is a moon night."

"The Lord has ruled my life; it is not my way or my whim to beg for the favor of a woman who might just as easily smile as frown; might just as easily grant me my desire and drown me in the waters that bear Her name. The Lord, a man understands. But women?" He laughed; the laughter was as sharp as the edge of his blade. "I will not ask the Lady for Her intervention."

"You will pardon me if I am not so… proud."

"I will, indeed, pardon you for any perceived plea you might make. But you are who you are and I, I am Alesso." His smile stripped the years from his face, or rather, it made the years ineffectual; it was the same smile, the same expression, that had so often attracted men and women alike, from the day that Sendari— no Widan then, but merely a seeker of knowledge and truth—and Alesso had first met. Sendari had not been proof against it; was not proof against it now; there was an easy power there, if one knew power on sight. An easy power, and more: loyalty. To invoke it, on the other hand, was as easy as gaining the ear of the Lady; Sendari had it, but could not clearly say why.

It was the gift of Alesso's presence that the Widan never questioned that loyalty, or the friendship that had been tested by winds and fire over the years. Never questioned, no—but he had tested it, and Alesso had replied in kind. What they had built endured.

"What advice would you have me give?"

"What game, Sendari? What game are they playing?"

The Widan shrugged. "It is to discover the answer to that question that we have been working these past weeks."

"No, you have been working to discover how they will play their hand, if they choose to play it. The masks are weapons, no more, no less. I want you to turn your mind to the game itself."

"They play at games of power, Alesso. You are the Lord's man. What power will they gain by turning against us? Perhaps they have managed to damage the Northern Imperials in such a way that they no longer need to wage a good war."

"And they turn to us?"

Sendari shrugged. "The Widan were killed protecting one of the Voyani. She is gone—and the spells Cortano used to track her presence have been shattered like Northern glass. They were costly spells," he added, almost as an afterthought.

"And the Kialli chose this night to take the Voyani out of the custody of the Sword's Edge?" His eyes were the sword's edge, narrowed to death's sharpness. "And they gain from this how?"

"I do not know. I confess I find the maneuver surprising." He shrugged. Fell into silence for a moment, as if silence were a lake, and Alesso's questions the sun's height. At last, he said, "Or perhaps they do not realize that we are able to ascertain the extent of their involvement."

Alesso froze. Sendari watched his face; saw the lines of it shift and alter. "If they gain power here," he said, "what will they do with it? Will they grant the Dominion to another man?"

Rhetorical question; he knew it by the tone and texture of the words conveyed. He did not reply.

"Cortano?"

"It was not Cortano's work; if I can be certain of anything, I am certain of that. The Sword's Edge is adept at both the Widan's art and political machination—but he does not easily cast aside his own. Had the dead men been of less value, and less proven loyalty, I would concede the possibility."

"Good."

Silence, broken rhythmically by the lapping of water against reed stalk and lily. At last, Sendari said a single word.

"Kinlord."

And Alesso nodded. "But which one? Which one? They can wear the Crown—but they cannot claim either Lake or Sword." He grimaced. "They are here, of course. We are probably observed."

"We are observed," Sendari agreed casually. "At a distance of perhaps fifty yards, perhaps a hundred; there is a magic at work that is at the edge of my ability to detect, but only barely. Whoever observes us is clever and well-trained."

"Cortano's?"

"I do not think so; there is a taint to the magic that I have seen only in the Shining Court."

"Only there?"

His brow creased, folding into the familiar lines that more than age and wind had worn there. "There and perhaps in one other place: The artifacts of the Voyani. The vest that was the gifting of Baredan di'Navarre."

"It comes back to the Voyani. Men and women who have barely been considered more valuable than bandits suddenly become the focal point of far too much interest."

"I want answers, Sendari."

The Widan raised a single, frosted brow.

It was when she saw the sword that her expression folded in on itself, swallowing darkness; becoming, for a moment, a mask that Margret herself stepped back from. Almost, but not quite, breaking the circle she'd called for. She was well enough taught to freeze in mid-stride, to plant her foot solidly back on safe ground, to draw sigil in air laden with the smoke of blessed wood. But that was all she offered, that and silence.

Kallandras the stranger—she would always think of him that way, and he would give, in the end, new meaning to the word stranger; she knew it, then, but did not know how—said nothing, returning silence for silence, and in the same measure. He waited; he was, she thought, good at waiting.

"Where," Yollana said at last, "did this sword come from?"

"It came," Kallandras replied, as her midnight eyes met his and granted him—indeed demanded—speech, "from the hands of one of the Arkosan Voyani."

"Not possible."

Margret flinched. "Matriarch—" she began, but Yollana lifted a hand, imperiously demanding silence.

"It is truth," Kallandras replied evenly. "And I would not so easily dismiss any claim to the contrary. The Matriarch's heir," and he placed a distinct emphasis—not a comforting one—on the word Matriarch, "was present; it was her hand that lifted the fallen blade and prevented its return to the man who wielded it. No," he added, as Yollana's expression shifted and fell, "she did not touch the blade or the hilt with exposed skin; she took care. She is no fool."

Yollana closed her eyes, cutting off all conversation. "We should have had this conversation under the open sky," she said, when her lids lifted again.

"Or not at all." He nodded quietly. "What will you do with it?"

"I? It is not in my keeping; it is not my responsibility."

He lifted a golden brow—although the shadows and the fires robbed it of color, or lent it a false one; hard to say which was truth. "No? And you have sent your people to your daughters for some other reason?"

"Clever man." Her smile was thin. "Very well; I do not know what you know, Kallandras of Senniel, but I know that you know too much. It is a dangerous combination; it makes me careless."

His smile was as brief and sharp as her own. "Yollana, you will forgive me if I doubt—and strongly—that you understand what the word careless means."

She shrugged. "/ was the one in captivity, stranger."

"Granted." He bowed. "If the Matriarch consents, I will break her circle; I will leave you to your conversation and your privacy."

"And you won't listen in?"

He met her gaze full on, which said more about him than almost anything else Margret had yet seen; most of the Voyani would have shunted their gaze left or right after half a second. Yollana's eyes were sharp and harsh, something best not confronted. She saw far too deeply, far too quickly; she took, when she looked at you like that, and you gave—whether or not you wanted to.

But Yollana had called him Evayne's servant—or pawn—and a man who served that one had probably given more than any of the Voyani who fell under Yollana's sight and stayed pinned there. He didn't flinch.

"No, Yollana of the Havallan Voyani, I will not listen in. You have my word, but if my word is not enough—and it should not be, in these troubled times, let me offer you another truth: The circle itself has been drawn with real power this night." He bowed to Margret. "You have the heart of the Voyani, and if it is distant, it is still yours. Release me, and I will return to the night."

Margret heard his words. Between pleasure and sudden terror, her face remained as masklike as his own. She had performed the ritual that she'd learned at the side of the only woman—in her opinion—fit to rule Arkosans; she was Matriarch; the Lady had heard her pleas and filled the hollow gesture with the water of life: heart's blood.

But this stranger, this Kallandras, also spoke openly of the loss of the Arkosan heart, and if he spoke his words of muted praise to her, he spoke them in front of Yollana as well. Words seldom failed her; they failed her now. Her mother had always said that the texture of a silence was significant.

Still, she wasn't her mother; she'd turned to look at Yollana's face before she could stop herself. Some people's mouths ran away with them; with Margret it was always her actions.

Yollana met her gaze without flinching; without blinking. But she waited until Kallandras of the North had stepped carefully across the threshold of Margret's circle before speaking. Voyani moonlight in her eyes, and shadows cast by Margret's fire, made of her face a foreign landscape; she looked old, some edifice hollowed by wind and sand until it was thin and worn. Wisdom and experience had always been the cards granted for the youth taken away; the Matriarchs had been living proof of that for all of Margret's life.

All of her young life, and she recognized that truth for the first time, staring at Yollana's bleak face.

"Aye," the older woman said, "I know, Matriarch. That's why I'm staying. And he knows, or she'd never have sent him to you."

Margret returned silence. She turned away. "Did my mother tell you?" she asked, striving to keep the bitterness from her voice. Failing. "Did she tell everyone but me?"

"Does it matter?" Yollana's sharp voice. "She's dead. She paid the price. Or did you have another one in mind?"

That stung. "I'd forgotten you could be such a bitch."

"Your problem." Yollana's voice was mild; there was no anger or censure in it. "Think outside of yourself for a minute, Margret. I've faced what you've faced. We all have, sooner or later. We've just been lucky enough not to have to face it on the eve of—" The words stopped; the wall of Yollana's lips broke them. "You've proved yourself here, with the fire.

"Never think that the obvious power is the only power, Matriarch. You have your aunts and your heir; you have your uncles. You have your cousins, their children, their parents. They are Arkosa. Are you afraid you'll fail them? Good fear. Worthy fear.

"Learn to live with it.

"You'll defend your family with your life—with more than your life, with resources that you won't know you've got until they're standing with someone else's dagger at their throats. That's all that's asked of you, that and that you bear daughters that will take the name and the duty when you've passed on.

"She was proud of you. Proud enough, certain enough, that she took the risk of leaving you in shadow while she stepped into the Lord's light."

Margret turned slowly to face her, to face this woman who gave a grandmother's advice. "Matriarch," she said at last, her anger muted. "If she trusted me so well, why did she tell you? She must have hoped you would watch out for me, and step in when I faltered."

"Would you have me betray her confidence?"

"Yes."

Yollana chuckled. "Spoken," she said wryly, "like a daughter."

"You aren't going to tell me." It wasn't a question.

"No. Because while she would forgive me the betrayal, in the end, I would not. She is dead; respect is the only thing she has now." The smile was there in the lines that framed her eyes and lips, even when it left her face. "But we have things to discuss before the fires burn low enough that others might hear us.

"The sword, Margret."

"It is—"

"Yes."

Her power was so impressive. She had not pulled the pendant from the chain or otherwise called its power and knowledge, and

she knew the sword. Margret herself felt uneasy when the weapon cast shadow over her hands, but Yollana's shadows were the darkness of knowledge.

"Yollana?"

"I have seen such a sword as this," Yollana said, bitterly. "I have touched it, with these hands. It burned, and I bear the scars." Her eyes were darker than the paling night sky. "You are Matriarch in title, and it is your blood-right and your responsibility, Margret. I diminish none of that when I say this: You are not Matriarch in fact until you have crossed the sands as the heart of Arkosa. There are things that I cannot speak of with you until you are tested."

"Tested?" She bridled. "By whom? You? The other Matriarchs?" Her voice rose; it grated as it climbed and she forced it down as if it were Ona Donatella's worst healing brew.

"By Arkosa," Yollana said softly. "But it is my personal experiences that I cannot yet speak of; I am old and I wander."

Margret snorted, but she could no longer deny Yollana- her right to claim age as a refuge.

"The sword was not fashioned by smiths; it was fashioned by magic, in forges that were old when the cities were built, and older still when they fell. It is said that they grant the gift of ability to a warrior, but never without cost. They were a gift to such warriors in times past."

"They are… demonic?"

"No. They were meant to be wielded by men."

"Yollana—"

"You will know it all, Margret. All."

"But not now."

"Now," she said softly, "we have a larger problem. There is only one place that I have ever seen such a sword; only one place where you will, in your time. Not a single one of those swords have been taken from either Havalla or Arkosa—I would bet my family's life, and yours, on it.

"That leaves us with a problem. Either Corrona or Lyserra have weakened, which is problematic at best, or—" and she turned her eyes to the fire's heart as she spoke, "the time has come when the forges that first created the ancient weapons have been refired, and we will see war."

"I'm about ready to see war," Margret said grimly.

"That," Yollana replied, "is because you have never crossed the desert as Matriarch." She lifted a hand to forestall Margret's reply. "Yes, you've crossed the desert, but you've crossed it as her daughter. The secrets that we can teach our own, we teach. This is not one of them.

"Keep the sword, Matriarch. Keep it in the hands of either yourself or your heir. And be aware that the hand that has held the blade and blooded it is a hand that will seek the weapon."

/ gave him an order, Margret thought; she said nothing. Because she couldn't be certain that that order meant anything to the Arkosan cousin of whom she was so fond.

"What do you do," she asked quietly, "when your kin won't follow your orders?"

"When the orders are serious?"

Margret raised a brow. "All of my mother's orders were serious; she didn't waste breath otherwise."

"Fair enough; I natter when I'm thinking; I order them about. Soothes my nerves. Of course, some of them are stupid enough to listen to every word I say when I'm nattering. But that's their problem, and it's an easy question. The most important thing to the family is the family. The Matriarch embodies that."

"Yes, but I—"

"I kill them."

It would have helped Margret if she could have believed—for even a moment—that Yollana of the Havalla Voyani was lying.

As if she could hear that thought, the older woman said, bleakly, "It's a test we all face, daughter of a Matriarch. And we pass it, or our daughters or sisters rule in our stead. Do you understand?"

But she couldn't answer, not easily; she was caught on the edge of a childhood's slender memory, and it cut.

Yollana faded into a grim silence; their eyes met.

"Evallen trained you well, but you're still very young, Margret. And now, right now, youth will kill you. Do you understand that? It will kill you, and expose the heart of Arkosa to anyone who seeks to injure it."

She nodded.

"You're thinking of your first death."

"An uncle," she said quietly. "Just that. An uncle. I don't remember him well." A lie. She remembered three things clearly: first, that he had stolen fragments of the festive cake for her four-year-old mouth, although it had been strictly forbidden, and had perched her on his lap while she babbled with pleasure at the gift. Second, that he had struggled and screamed and pleaded six months later, two days after her fifth birthday, when the Matriarch's men had come to take him away. He had run for her, his face wild and white and his eyes wider than any adult eyes she had. ever seen that had still had lids.

Oh, that had angered Uncle Stavos. One of her mother's men. One of her most trusted cousins. Who had she been, at five? Someone who could believe that her Uncle Rogos, favored uncle with the handsome face, all his teeth, and the most generous satchel in the entire Arkosan caravan, could run for her, run at her, and mean her no harm, although the threat of death hung over him like a rare, heavy cloud.

Uncle Stavos tackled him; they fell together in a tangle of heavy arms and legs, three inches short of her feet. The shadows of the night were brighter somehow than the shadows Uncle Stavos cast over Uncle Rogos' heaving back.

"Don't let them do this, don't let them do this, child. Tell your mother—ask your mother—not to do this. Please. Please." The last word, spoken in the valley his body made of wild grass and tall, flowering weed, still had the power to immobilize her. She stood, the heart's fire dying in front of her eyes, the third memory at the edge of her vision.

"First death," she whispered.

They both meant more than just death, of course: Margret had seen many before she was five; too many to count. But the deaths that scarred were always the ones that happened between family. Arkosans killed other Voyani when the families went to war; they killed clansmen; rarely, although it had happened, they killed serafs. But each other? Almost never.

"How old were you?"

"Five," Margret said, although she seldom spoke of it. "Five years old and two days. It was the first time I realized that there were things I couldn't ask of my mother."

"She spoiled you, then." Not a question.

Margret remained unruffled. "Yes. In her fashion. I felt the back of her hand more often than most of the kids my age." She shrugged. "But she was smaller than most of their mothers."

Yollana grinned.

"No. That day was different. I think it was the first time I'd ever hurt her, and I didn't know it, then. I barely understand it now. She had cause to kill—to execute—one of my favorite uncles. Uncle Rogos. I thought if I asked her for his life, she'd change her mind. I thought if she knew what it would mean to me—"

"And you asked her this when?"

Margret laughed, but the laugh was just this side of a cry. "When the blade was in her hand, Matriarch. When it was in her perfectly steady hand."

"You were her only daughter, obviously."

The humor helped. "I want to kill them, sometimes. I want that. But to actually do it—"

"Breaks a family, or it can. That's why it's in the hands of the Matriarch. And those hands are always steady." Yollana looked down at her own, weathered and wrinkled by sun's poor grace. "I'm old, Margret. Old and feeble. I need my rest."

But they both looked, as one, to the Tor Leonne upon the high plateau, and Margret knew that neither of them would sleep much before the dawn.

He planned ahead.

The sun's heat could not be denied, but it could be lessened. A breeze could be called. Water brought. Fans hefted by serafs. Should one desire privacy, an awning might be constructed, poles wedged into dirt that was, at the height of the moon's season, soft enough to accept them. He made the latter choice, instructing the serafs to build and then leave.

The free seldom disobeyed his commands; the serafs, never. He contemplated their work and wondered why it was that they, with so little to lose, could work so quietly and so well; they were like shadows, cast but not noticed. Much like his own shadow would be in a scant few hours. The sun had not yet fully risen. If there was work to be done, it was best done now.

Even bereft as he was, he was not without wisdom.

Cortano di'Alexes was not a sentimental man. He was, however, a powerful man, and the combination of these two traits meant that he had few friends, and the trusted ones were always those whose associations he had made in his youth.

With a single exception, they lay dead, their bodies arranged in a semblance of peace. What could not be gathered easily— blood and blackened ash—now adorned the floor and beams of the room in which they had made their helpless final stand. Magic still lingered; he could sense it, and could name at least three of the casters. It was the last thing they would share: Power and the knowledge of it, ineffectual though it had been.

One of the Widan had been dispatched to carry word to the families.

The Sword's Edge himself saw to the bodies.

He accepted no Widan's aid; no serafs presence. Here, stripped of the need to be the Sword's Edge for the benefit of spectators, he labored as a man labors who has lost something of value: in anger, in pain, in privacy.

No wine, here, not in the growing light. No tears offered to the Lady—or to the Lord. Behind the sliding screens, both Lady and Lord were divested like so much jewelry; there was, after all, so little proof of Their existence they were obviously the province of the sentimental.

Not so the Lord of Night.

In his darker moments, Cortano wondered if the Lord's worship was not descended from the Lord of Night's, for they had this in common: the powerful ruled the less powerful. But such a descent could not have occurred within Leonne's time. Men changed, and their worship altered; this much, study had shown. But they did not change so quickly and leave so little trace.

The history lay somewhere, its answers waiting to be found. By the Widan. By the seekers of knowledge.

By the man who lay dead beneath his hands, his face bisected, his arm missing. Habit kept the anger from his face; habit so strong he could surrender to it and trust his reputation should any fool dare to break his edict by interrupting his work upon the shaded ground.

"My apologies," such a fool said, and the Sword's Edge froze in mid-motion, dirt on his hands, "if I interrupt a ceremony of importance."

"Apologies? How unlike you, Lord Isladar." He rose at once. The dirt on his hands was moist and not easily removed, although that would change with the sun's passage across the open sky. His robes were not fine.

Nor were Isladar's.

All of the Kialli were threats, but of them, only Isladar was worthy of Cortano's curiosity. Curiosity was, in and of itself, such a dangerous trait.

"This is not the appointed hour. Am I summoned to the Shining Palace?"

"No." The kinlord looked down upon the shade-covered grass, the shallow rift in the ground, and the bodies that would help to heal it.

"You do not seem surprised."

"I am… not entirely surprised. Word of the evening's events have traveled. The Widan, of course, were not of concern. The loss of the. Voyani woman was." His shrug was slight, but obvious. "Should an event of import occur in the Shining City, I assume word would travel just as quickly."

He assumed, Cortano was certain, no such thing; the advantage was all theirs in this particular case. For their part, the Southern Court's sole advantage seemed to come from the fact that the Kialli truly had no understanding of their enemies or their enemies' motivation.

Except, perhaps, for this one. Not for the first time, Cortano di'Alexes wondered if he possessed the power needed to destroy Isladar. He had never doubted that it would be necessary.

"The loss of the Voyani woman?" Cortano said bitterly, the anger near the surface of his words as it so seldom was. His was a cold anger, after all; a thing that bided its time. "You claim no responsibility for her?"

The kinlord did not answer; not directly. That was not his way.

"You are aware," Lord Isladar said softly, "that the Fist of Allasakar does not favor this alliance—or any alliance—with humans."

"Indeed."

"You are also aware, no doubt, that among them, one Lord has chosen to intervene, weaving our Lord's goal and his own so that they are inseparable in execution."

"No, of that we were not aware."

"Be aware, then. I bring you information and warning, although you need neither. Lord Ishavriel is the most subtle of the five, and it is his game you play. Come the night of the Festival Moon, the nature of the Tor Leonne will be unalterably changed. Be prepared."

He turned to leave.

Cortano lifted a hand, and fire enclosed him in a thin, but beautiful, circle. "Lord Isladar, a moment more of your time."

"You have it," the kinlord said, tolerating the fire whose sole purpose was to gain his attention.

"You are not at Court."

"No. I have been sent here for a different purpose."

"You will not divulge it."

"No. But I will say this, Widan Cortano di'Alexes: I am intrigued by mortality. The Kialli make no friends, and their allies and alliances are often short-lived, although perhaps not by mortal standards; I will therefore not insult your intelligence by offering friendship where none is possible.

"But if we cannot share friendship, we share enemies, another time-honored Kialli tradition. Where I can, I will aid you and give you information.

"I have watched; I am aware that the masks are a problem."

"Are you aware of their nature?"

"I am aware of the purpose to which they must be put—but were you to gain that information with no other obvious source, it would be my destruction. I have lived longer than any who has served the Lord so closely; I have learned what may, and what may not, be offered in the games between His lieges." He bowed, and then of all things, smiled. "There will be an interruption, I believe, in the Shining City; it will delay those who seek to control the events of the Tor more closely."

"And that interruption?"

"Rest assured, Widan. Your curiosity will be satisfied. Now I must go."

He vanished almost at once, with an ease that spoke of power. Power that Cortano himself barely possessed. What is your game, Lord Isladar? He wanted to ask the question, but knew it was pointless. A better question would be, And will we survive playing it?

Deprived of powders and oils, of creams and the heavy black kohl that was only slowly falling out of favor in the Imperial court, forbidden the adornment of Lake's jewels, the lilies that had been her preferred flower, the Serra Diora should have been just another woman, one of the countless number who came and went, in the moment of youth's zenith, through the gates of the Tor Leonne. But her skin was naturally pale, her hair thick and long, her eyes wide and round and dark in a way age would not diminish. And the grace that she exhibited in all things was a grace that only death or crippling would deprive her of.

Serra Fiona en'Marano acknowledged all this with private pain, for the Serra Diora had been—perhaps still was, it was so hard to tell—the chief rival for her husband's affection. His favored daughter. The only woman alive who, having publicly humiliated Sendari, could nonetheless be guaranteed survival.

She was clever.

Serra Fiona envied that, and feared it. But there were things she feared more, much more.

Sendari, she thought, as she offered his daughter the most graceful of all possible obeisances, you have driven us to this. The shade cast by a bower of almost unnatural leaves protected them both from the sun; nothing at all protected them from the prying ears of the Widan, and the Serra Fiona was certain that the Widan would listen: she spoke with the Serra Diora.

Diora, whom Alesso di'Marente now called the most dangerous woman in the Dominion. And still desired.

And would I? Would I desire you if I were a man? The wind brought the question, laughing as it left the words to abrade her peace. In an anger that she was not quite controlled enough to school, but intelligent enough to hide, she turned to the seraf she had chosen—in pettiness, she now acknowledged—to bring.

"Bring sweet water. And another fan."

He bowed effortlessly, his body bending at knee and waist as if his joints were liquid. She did not immediately recognize him, but his manner of movement, his perfect silence, his immediate attentiveness—these spoke of Teresa's hand. No seraf in the Dominion could measure up to the best of the Serra Teresa's, and more than once, Marano had made a gift of serafs to the harems and the high pavilions of the Tyr'agar, at the request of the Tyr's wife. Serafs—their purchase and their training—were far beneath the concerns of men. But the men knew value and quality when they saw it, and by look or gesture might indicate success or failure.

Diora, of course, had been granted no serafs in the harshness of her captivity; had indeed been forced to dress herself with her own hands, a reminder of how little power and how little dignity any woman truly had when she did not find favor—or worse, lost it—with the man who ruled her life. Fiona had promised herself she would never be so disgraced. It was a fear of hers, loss of the little power that she had managed, with beauty and cleverness, to find.

And yet she had arranged to speak with the Serra Diora. To risk her husband's wrath—her newly important husband, adviser and friend to the Tyr'agar—by pleading with him after an act of love rare enough these days that she wondered if she was too old, and too worn, to please—for Diora's company.

He was suspicious; she, even she, his not so clever Fiona, had foreseen this. She'd covered his lips with the palm of her hand, gently pressing her well-oiled, scented skin against a beard-framed mouth that was dry and worn in the corners by the wind's work.

"She has always been the Flower of the Dominion," Fiona told him, knowing that she stood upon the sword's edge: his temper. "I have always been the wife that she barely deigned to notice. Don't—Na'Sendar, it is true. She's always been what I'm not, she's always had what I've wanted."

His eyes were sharp as steel, bright and hard. "And what, little Fiona, do you desire?"

"The respect of your wives," she replied.

"You have that, surely."

"I have it in small measure; it has always been given first to the Serra Teresa and second to the Serra Diora. I have been given what dogs are given: scraps and leavings and the occasional kick when I come too close."

His brows, the peppered and familiar frame to eyes that she both loved and feared, rose. "You are… truthful, this day."

"I am the wife," she replied sweetly, "of the second most powerful man in the Dominion. I am Fiona en'Sendari."

And he, he was Widan, not husband. The indulgence had been burned out of him by the grace of the Lord and the command of the Tyr'agar. She had always admired Alesso di'Marente; she had cause to regret it now, and thought, feared, that her regrets in a future she could not see clearly for shifting sands would be harsher and far more enduring.

"Fiona en'Sendari, Serra Fiona, you presume. It is… unpleasant." He rose from the silks, tossing them aside. She arranged them artfully almost without thought before rising. Before approaching the back that he had turned to her; his attention was upon the screen doors that hid the view of the lake from their eyes.

"Forgive me," she whispered, as she approached his back without—quite—touching him. "I speak a truth that has hurt me to a husband that has more to do with his time than notice such a petty thing. I would not have spoken at all, but you asked, and I always do, in all things, as you ask."

"Yes," he said, his voice still distant, his back still turned. "You have always done so."

"I want—"

"To humiliate my daughter."

She was silent. He still did not turn; she weighed the risk she took by the stillness of his back and the neutrality of his voice. Neutrality was always the worst; it was the steel that was never far from Sendari's eyes—or orders.

And yet she continued to take the risk, rather than cringing from the sword's shadow or the fear of its fall as she had always done when she recognized what the bitter shadow meant. "To show her, rather, what a dutiful wife is due. To show her that love and loyalty are rewarded.

"I have been loyal. I have spent my life in your service. I have wanted only what you want, what is best for your clan. She is your daughter, Sendari. Of all women, she should—"

"Enough!" He turned, his hand raised.

She could not avoid it; she did not try. Instead, her face absorbed the blow; the slap, the resounding echo of it, was both order and reply. She wavered; the tears that came to her eyes were only partial pretense. But she had learned at her mother's side: be like the Lady's element. Water can be struck, but the hand passes through it, and when the two are parted—water and attacker—it is the latter that bears the mark.

But not, the Serra Fiona thought bitterly, the scar. She had been a foolish girl; she was, she acknowledged, an often foolish woman.

She waited until he had seen her face, and had seen the wide roundness of her eyes. Timing, now, was everything. A breath. Two breaths.

She fell to the ground before the third had left his lips, pressing knees and arms and face into the perfect mats at his feet, huddling there as if she were child, not wife.

Will this be the day? she thought; she had thought it before. Although it was rarely spoken of, even when the Lady was ascendant, every wife knew that death by a husband's hand was common. Sendari had not yet killed a wife. But never and not yet were separated only by the thin edge of a man's anger. She saw his feet more clearly than anything else, and watched them as he turned, almost on heel, away from her.

"Very well, Serra Fiona. You have… earned the right to your… request. See the daughter whose love for me should have been as unswerving as your own. Prove your point."

She was no fool, although of his wives, she was the least wise. She did not rise.

"But, Fiona," he continued, after a slight pause in which she might have reignited the Widan's flame—his anger, her injury, "do not ask again. "

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was almost a pleasure to speak with the Serra Fiona. Diora acknowledged it as truth, and she was shamed by it, but both acknowledgment and shame were buried beneath the perfect facade of her unadorned face. The sun on her skin had been warm when she walked by the Serra Fiona's side, exposed to wind and sky for the first time since the end of the Festival of the Sun.

To talk about nothing, shaded from open sky and the harsh, harsh glare of the Lord, in the pleasant way that women have who must speak when the walls of the harem do not shelter or protect them, had never been a freedom before; it was a privilege now. A privilege although she had heard, in the Serra Fiona's voice, a fear so strong it was almost terror. When the seraf had departed, Diora gazed out at the surface of the Lake.

"Do you miss it?" Fiona asked softly.

It was an intimate question, a question that not even the wives of her mother would have asked. Diora turned away from the waters to the woman who had never been her friend. She knew they were being listened to. She wondered if Fiona understood this.

"I miss," she replied, "my husband. My wives." There. Truth in that, if one knew how to listen. Only one man did, and he would never expose her. A delicate hand rose from a perfectly folded lap, and fell again; she had forgotten. No fan here, not for Diora; no veil.

The Serra Fiona was silent.

"Your seraf is very fine."

"Thank you. I believe, however, that he must have been trained by the Serra Teresa. We will have to ask her, when she arrives."

Diora almost missed the information the second sentence contained. Almost. "Your pardon, Serra Fiona; the sun is so warm and so bright, I am unused to it. It is… a marvel, and I am dis-tracted." She bowed her head briefly, gathering her thoughts, focusing them. "You spoke of the Serra Teresa?"

"Yes. She has been invited to the Tor Leonne for the Festival of the Moon."

"You must be mistaken."

The Serra flushed slightly, and Diora realized that those words, coolly inflected, were the very ones that she so often used within the confines of the harem when she had been her father's daughter, and Fiona merely his wife. She bowed her head at once, gently, easing the neutrality and passivity of her expression. Vulnerability was often confused with atonement.

Fiona's expression did not change.

"My apologies, Serra Fiona. I was told by my father that the Serra Teresa had been chosen as companion to Adano's Serra, and that she would not be traveling to the Tor Leonne for the foreseeable future." The smile she offered was soft, a thing that hinted at regret; her voice did the rest, tainted by the gift and the curse that she shared with her Ona Teresa. The bardic voice. "But my father owes me nothing; not information, and not truth. Indeed, if you have been told otherwise, I am grateful that you are patient enough to speak with me at all."

The Serra Diora had learned to lie in every conceivable way.

Fiona's eyes widened at the acknowledgment, accepting it at face value. Diora had often wondered at her father's choice; she wondered now, and was as shamed by it as she had been by the desire for company. More, perhaps. Fiona had always played her games, and had Diora been banished, humiliated, or married to an inappropriate man, her father's wife would have offered wine at the Lady's shrines for the rest of her life.

That was gone now; what remained was both a fear and a determination that Fiona had never shown for anything that did not concern her harem or her husband's rise to power—both matters of her own status.

What game? she thought, as the sun's heat lingered. Sweat trickled down the whiteness of her skin as if it were rain and she a statue. Fire doesn't have to burn to kill. Who had said that?

"She should arrive within seven days, well before the Festival of the Moon."

Diora bowed her head again. When she lifted it, her glance was caught and held by the seraf who approached them both, carrying a lacquered tray with two perfect, delicate cups. Water, as Fiona had requested.

Diora was no longer thirsty, not for the water he carried.

She knew every seraf that Teresa had ever trained, and this man was not among them. But something about his eyes—dark eyes in an almost perfect face—was familiar. She did not meet them; instinct spared her that. But she did notice, as he drew closer, that his hands were perfectly smooth, his arms and wrists unscarred.

Fiona, of course, noticed little; he was a seraf. Diora herself would have ignored his presence had she not been searching for eavesdroppers.

"Serra Fiona," she said softly, "might I speak to the seraf a moment?"

Fiona's confusion was genuine. The concern that followed it was genuine as well, although it was more quickly masked. "Of course."

"I think," she said to the man, as he set the tray on the low table between them, "I have seen you serving before, possibly in the house of my uncle. You seem familiar to me."

He did not answer, and that was wise; no seraf did, unless commanded otherwise. But there was about his height and his bearing something… unusual. Familiar, yes.

Of a sudden, she had to hear his voice. She had to hear it. "What is your name?" she asked, the four words falling in a rush of sound, as if forced, as if only speed would see them said at all.

He met her eyes then, full on, as unlike a proper seraf as a high clansmen.

"I am called," he replied quietly, "Isladar."

She didn't flee.

His words brought the night; for a moment all she could see was the darkness she heard in his voice, and it was so utter, she forgot about heat and the consequences of fire. Her own voice left her, just as the day did.

Had she ever wondered why demons were creatures of night, but were never connected with the Lady? She ceased at once: such a power could never be under the Lady's Dominion.

Or, she thought, the Lord's.

She didn't flee; she forced herself to sit in the shade cast by the height of the morning sun. She'd had practice, she thought, and the thought was bitter enough to break through the fear.

"Isladar. An… interesting name. Was it given to you by your master?" Hard to speak the words. But she had been trained by a master; her voice was her sole power. She would not be deprived of it.

"No," he replied, the veneer of his words soft and deferential. He bowed to her; she caught the sweep of his shadow upon the grass because she would not meet his eyes.

Would not?

And why? Her shoulders, never stooped, stiffened imperceptibly. "No?" He must play his game; he was trapped in a guise that she would never have thought could suit him.

"No, Serra Diora. I was not born a slave."

He faltered, with a single word. Slave was a very Northern term, and seldom used, if at all, in the South. She looked up, as if this single weakness was enough to make him fallible. Mortal.

"No? But you bear no scars."

"A wise man knows when struggle is futile and preserves dignity in the stead of a freedom he cannot have."

And she looked up because, in truth, she desired to see his face in the unforgiving harshness of the day's light; to deprive it of essential mystery; to destroy her single memory of Lord Isladar. At night, his visage just strange enough to be other than human, he had been so very, very beautiful.

It had surprised her; it surprised her now, although it shouldn't. What, after all, was more beautiful than power?

"And do you look forward," she said, "to some day when you are not a slave?"

He smiled as she met his eyes, as she saw the whole of his face. "Very clever." He turned then, as she did; they both glanced at the Serra Fiona.

But Diora's glance faltered; Isladar's did not. She could almost feel his eyes rest against the sudden rigidity of her own expression. Serra Fiona had not moved at all. Her eyes were wide and round; they stared ahead at a spot just beyond the Serra Diora's perfect, plainly clad shoulder.

Fear was not as distant as it should have been. But it was not nearly as close as it would have been, had she been wiser. She was cool; she did not choose to dissemble or to play at being helpless.

"Well met, Serra Diora di'Marano." The seraf bowed. "You cost me much when last we met, and if I had known then whose flesh housed the spirit that slipped the Voyani woman past my bindings, you would not have aggrieved your father or your Tyr in the days to follow.

"You are called the Flower," he added. "And in Kialli eyes, you are aptly named: In your season, there is an astonishing beauty about your delicacy. It will fade. You will wither." The lack of malice in the words made them the more chilling; she saw the ages in his eyes, and understood then just how little mortals suffer age.

He was beautiful, although the night had left his features, but his beauty was the beauty of distance. The mountains in the North of Mancorvo, the ocean at the height of the rainy season, the desert after the storm—they were beautiful in just such a way.

But she was certain that they were less deadly, or rather, that the bodies that littered the passes in winter, the ocean floor after the height of a storm or the desert's hot, hot sands, proved only the indifference of nature and the foolishness of man.

"I am called the Flower of the Dominion," she said, as harshly as she ever said anything, "by the romantic, the ironic, or the foolish." The sun shifted across the sky, and as it did, light lit the folds of silk across her perfectly folded lap.

As if it were water.

"And of the three, I am which?"

Silence was her answer; her face was almost as still as Fiona's.

"She cannot hear us," was his reply.

"I… thought not. If you will continue to play at servitude, I must tell you that you are failing in your chosen role."

"Oh?"

"The sun is rising, and the shadows cast by the bowers above are becoming too short for the comfort of the wife and daughter of your Lord."

She was not certain why she'd said the words once they'd left her lips; was not certain why she had spoken in such a clear, unfettered tone. But she thought it was because he was beautiful and deadly and outside of the experience that had so harshly shaped the whole of her life.

Or perhaps it was because she feared no death. Everything her enemies might have used to threaten her with they had already destroyed.

To her surprise, the creature who had captured Evallen of the Arkosa Voyani, and who had so successfully seen to her torture, moved elegantly, gracefully, perfectly as he set about arranging the poles and pegs above which cloth would be draped. The cloth itself was a white silk, painted by the hands of Sendari's wives within the walls of their suddenly powerful harem. She saw Illia's work in the leaves of the lilies that were otherwise implied by the silk itself, rather than painted.

"You are clever," he said as he worked, his hands taking to labor as if they were made for it, and no more, "and I admire clever. To a point."

"And you are here because you admire clever? I had thought that you were the ears and the eyes of your Lord."

"I am," he replied mildly, "both of those. But not, perhaps, this day. I am curious. I have been experimenting in my own fashion with humanity. You have evoked the anger of the Sword's Edge; he is not a mortal who is easily angered. Nor easily frustrated in his ambition." He stepped back to assess the success of his work. Frowned, the expression a ripple of lip and eye that passed above his face and was gone. "I was given to understand that the women of the South were not powerful."

"We serve," she said quietly.

"As do we," he replied. He bowed. "We will meet again, if you survive."

"I half thought you were sent to kill me."

"They do not send me to kill. I am not reliable." He smiled, his eyes narrowed, and for an instant he was the demon she had seen at the Festival of the Sun. "And you, little one, believe you desire death. We do not grant the desired without reasons of our own, and your death would serve no purpose of mine at the moment.

"In time, perhaps, but I have learned, when dealing with mortals, that indulgence of that particular hunger is… costly."

Truth, in the words; truth and darkness. She wondered, as the Serra Fiona suddenly began to breathe again, her pink lips shifting subtly with the rise and fall of her delicate chest, whether her curse and gift was capable of discerning truth from the lips of a creature who had served the Lord of Night before Leonne the Founder had graced the Dominion with his sword and his death.

Night was the Lord's time; darkness the Lord's element. Or so humans believed. They took elements of reality and made myth of it. In turn, time eroded myth and left story behind, and story was good enough gruel only for the minds of the young.

But if the minds of the young outgrew those stories, the hearts did not, and in the corners of memories as old as life—if any mortal span could be considered "old"—stories and shadows became one. Demons were the darkness, the darkness the only domain they possessed.

But the truth—as all truths were—was less simple and vastly less romantic than that. The kin walked the earth. They had always walked it in one form or another, no matter how small their summoned number, although only the Kialli could remember a time when the earth itself was alive with wild magics, all long since tamed.

Lord Ishavriel walked the earth in the heat of the midday sun. He cast a shadow decreed by the height of his body, no more, no less; he dressed finely, in the manner of the humans of the High Court, but not so ostentatiously that he drew attention or suspicion, and he loitered near the water's edge, as most people did who were occasional visitors to the Tor Leonne proper.

Only the last was difficult. The Lake—as natural at its source as he—caused him pain when he chose to approach it. He had chosen once to consume the waters when they were offered; proof, in deed, that no curse and no magic were his match. But he had been wise enough to test his measure, and theirs, in the Shining Palace, where any revelation of what the mortals so quaintly called his true nature was hardly likely to harm his plans.

A costly display.

But he had proved his point. These waters were among the strongest of the magics remaining in the Southern lands, and he was their match. He would be more than their master.

Provided, of course, that his plans went smoothly.

It was not in the nature of plans to run smoothly. Not in the demesne that he had ruled by dint of strength and power, and not upon the earth that had changed so much in the millennia that his feet did not burn at the power beneath them.

And so he watched. Across the width of still water, two women sat in a silence of breeze and midday heat. They were, by the standard of the Court, quite lovely; they were also the wives or daughters of men of power, such as human power was. They were both young, both delicate in seeming, both dark-haired and pale as the Northern snows.

But one of them spoke, and the other did not actually listen; she was frozen in place, unmoved by what she saw or heard—if she saw or heard anything at all. The speaker, her back toward him, her face therefore unreadable, moved deliberately and gently; he could not tell by the delicacy of her movements whether or not she was afraid.

Or rather, he could not tell what she was afraid of. That she was afraid, he could see clearly. He could smell it, it was so strong.

But although he had cast the spells and expended the necessary power, he could not hear a single word she spoke. Syllables were so muted and hushed that one was indistinguishable from the next; all that was left to him was the cadence of her speech. Interference.

Isladar.

He waited. Waiting was simple, although to fill the time with the disguise of human motion was not. Mortals did not stand and wait; they did not observe for any length of time. They lived by the night and the day, in their short, short hours. It was almost a curiosity to mimic them, but curiosity in the end was Isladar's curse, not Ishavriel's.

Isladar, who had bred the half-human godling and lost her for reasons not a single one of the Generals understood. Only Ishavriel made the attempt, and only because of the five he was the most suspicious.

For millennia, Lord Isladar, truly Kialli, had graced the side of the Lord's throne like an ornament, like a human thing of precious metal and jewelry. He had no demesne, no lieutenants, none of the unnamed; he took part in none of the duels that had shaped, scarred and defined the changing face of Allasakar's domain since its beginning. Of all of the Kialli to serve the Lord so closely, only Isladar had survived. Only he.

Why?

To watch him as he was now made him a creature almost beneath contempt. He dressed as the least of the blood-bound kin did, and performed a service—or so it seemed—that the blood-bound might be too good for: spying on a captive girl.

Lord Ishavriel knew it for fact: He had ordered the girl watched. But not by a kinlord.

The girl stiffened a moment; Isladar bowed with a subservient human's perfect posture. Then the other woman, the enspelled human, came to life. When she did, he walked away, skirting the water's edge.

Across the water, the eyes of the Kialli met.

"I did not expect to see you here," Ishavriel said, twisting his words into the wind and forcing the element to carry them clearly.

"I came," he replied, "to deliver a message and to satisfy my curiosity."

"At my expense?"

"It costs nothing," he answered softly, "and may yet serve your purpose."

Ishavriel waited. The shadows lengthened. But waiting served them both ill within these lands, beside these waters; the sun was setting, and their stillness would be marked. It angered him, to speak first.

"What message do you choose to deliver?"

"Just this: Anya a'Cooper has moved her throne."

"Impossible."

"Indeed, that is what we would have said. She is exhausted, and only through my intervention did she survive the… rearrangement. She is not popular among the Kialli."

"Your intervention? Then I am in your debt."

Isladar's smile was dark and sharp; they both knew the value of the words when no blood had been spilled to bind them. "She suffers the fevers."

"In the Shining Palace?"

"No. I did not think it wise to leave her there; I was not in a position to protect her."

"Because of your curiosity."

"Indeed."

Silence. Ishavriel mastered his fury with effort, none of it visible.

"There is more."

"More?"

"She moved her throne," he said, "because she was tired of standing."

He felt certain that he would not like what followed. He was absolutely certain that Isladar found it amusing, although he kept all trace of it from voice or face. Rare, that, in the face of a rival's discomfort. He expected to hear at least a cold chuckle, a quiet laugh; open scorn was more common but unlike Isladar.

"Where is the throne?"

"It is at the head of the pentagram."

"The—" the kinlords did not pale; that was a trait left to mortals, a trick of their blood and their weakness. No; the kinlords lost all movement; they became as still as the stone out of which the Lord had carved his Great Hall.

"The—not the ground upon which the mages channel their power at the Lord's behest?"

"Indeed," Isladar said, his voice a whisper, a sinuous motion of air within air. "She has broken the gate's containment. For the last mortal day, not a single one of the kin has been summoned from across the rift.

"He is not pleased."

Without another word, Ishavriel turned into the shadows the sun cast and vanished.

Only when his shadows were gone did Isladar offer what every other kinlord would have given openly: A smile.

Had he seen it, Ishavriel would have acknowledged that it was perfect.

9th of Scaral, 427 AA

Evereve

She did not leave her room.

Not because she was no longer curious; the curiosity was strong enough that it forced her to rise, time and again, and walk to the closed door that led to the rest of the dungeon of wonders. But each time, through dint of a will and patience that she would never have had as the young girl who had first come in through Terafin's front gates, she returned to the desk that she occupied.

Her lip was no longer swollen.

Her temper was no longer heated. Unfortunately, it hadn't cooled; it had chilled.

You seduce my wife—well, that's what he had thought—and I rape your daughter. Gods, I hate men. Be fair, she added silently— the whole conversation was silent, which was uncharacteristic—he had taken out what was left of his anger on Aristos himself.

She counted to ten.

Well, that was enough fairness.

Unfortunately, nothing happened to take her mind off her anger; she blunted it slightly by throwing a few very heavy things—what exactly they were supposed to be wasn't clear—at the door.

They were, surprise, surprise, gold. They didn't break. She had never detested gold so much in her life; had, in fact, never dreamed she could. Gold, after all, was an important source of power.

Well, so was liver if you listened to her grandmother. She was sharply aware that she probably hadn't. Not enough. But then again, she'd been a child when her grandmother had gone to Mandaros' Halls, and what child listens well? She'd heard mystery, and danger, and adventure, all in the safety and warmth of her grandmother's arms and lap.

The smell of cinnamon and sweat came back to her; she stood a moment, eyes closed, thinking about old stories. During the day, she'd play them out: She, the wily hero, the brave mage, the healer, the bardic wonder, and the shadows her enemies, her forest of wonders, her ancient, twisting passages at the heart of which her enemy waited for the final confrontation. But at night, at night, without the control of her grandmother's stories to bind them, those shadows had come to her, jumped between the thin barding of make believe, laughing at the ill-fitting guise of hero or healer as they pushed it aside.

Five years old, maybe four, she had huddled, trying to work her voice up to a scream so that someone would wake her. A smarter person would probably have taken the nightmares as a hint and stopped playing at the heroics night's terror so thoroughly disgraced. But the night couldn't rob the day of strength. She had still played at being the hero.

She wondered if it were night now; there was no window to oblige her by offering her a glimpse and an answer. Her stomach, however, ever helpful, growled.

And she'd be damned before she went down to the hall for dinner. The one thing about years on the street: Hunger was a known evil, and she knew how much of it her body could take before it was dangerous.

Perhaps the room knew. She had an uneasy sense that it was alive and watching her, preparing a report to take back to its master, Avandar. Or whatever it was he was called here.

Kalliaris, she thought, the word more of a mantra than a prayer. She turned away from the door and trudged back to the bed. Sat, letting the weight of her chin drag her head down. Down. Down. Her lids were kind of heavy, too. Lashes brushed cheeks before she forced them open.

Prayer stopped. Anger, for a moment, let go.

Across from the bed, a section of particularly garish wall had been usurped. By a door.

It was a very, very strange door, and she stared at it for fifteen minutes before she understood what was wrong with it: It was hers. One of hers. Her grandmother's voice hadn't been so strong since childhood, but it whispered in her ear now, repeating every Voyani warning she had ever been offered, Torran words lighting the corners in which shadows, like fears, waited.

Oh, Oma, she thought. I wish the Lady had never taken you. What would you do now if you were me? To that, there was no answer. Jewel ATerafin walked to the door and opened it.

Beyond the door, her rooms shimmered beneath a gauzy veil of light. She wanted them so very badly she almost let herself believe they were real. "And what," she said aloud, "happens if I walk through those doors?"

The doors that were not her doors opened at her back; she heard their smooth glide across fine carpet and turned.

The man who stood between them flinched slightly as he met her eyes. That was to be his only acknowledgment of what he had done. Avandar said, not unkindly, "I do not know."

She had been so angry moments before she could not quite allow the anger to slip from her grasp. But it was harder to hold than she had thought it would be, with her lip still sore.

He didn't seem to realize she was angry. Or perhaps he didn't know how to acknowledge it; he had rarely chosen to acknowledge any temper that had no outward expression. Of course, if she were honest, those had been few. Usually he had done the dance with the rest of them as they made their way through—and out of—the kitchen doors, avoiding any loose pot lid, any pan that wasn't too heavy, any spare utensil. The clatter of metal against stone had a much more satisfying voice than the one she'd been born with.

There was no wind in the room; no sea breeze; no open windows through which air could pass unimpeded.

But she felt it anyway, the movement of air, the hint of water's expanse, the warmth of sun that had burned away all cloud. He came to stand by her side. By her side and a little bit back, as if this were a normal day, as if this present danger was the merely demonic, this mystery the merely magical.

She turned to look back through her door; her room was solidifying as she watched, the details becoming less hazy. She stopped a moment. Bunched her hands in open-and-closed fists that seemed timed with necessary things: heartbeat. Breath.

"Jewel," he said quietly.

"Did you let them go?"

"No."

"Why are you here?"

"I… don't know."

Turning, she hit him.

Not hard enough to hurt him, of course; without training, she probably couldn't. But hard enough to test. He did not lift a hand to stop her. "Don't ever," she said, as coldly as she could. "Don't ever ever ever do this again."

They both knew she wasn't talking about the lip.

She didn't look at him. She looked at her rooms.

There, the chair by her bed where she habitually threw her clothing. Beside it, the chest of drawers, and across the room, the desk that she never used. Her bed, unmade, the canopy so simple and tasteful compared to the bed she'd wakened in she promised never to make young-girl cracks about it again. Her closet.

"Can I go there?"

"It's not your room," he replied softly.

"It's my room."

"It's your memory of your room. Wait," he added. He touched her shoulder. Withdrew his hand immediately when she flinched. "When the light dims, it will be as real as it can be in this place."

Disappointment silenced her. But only for a moment; silence was not one of Jewel ATerafin's many gifts. "I thought it might be—I thought we could—"

"Go back?"

Something in his voice made her turn. She caught only his profile; his gaze was there, upon the room whose reality he dismissed.

"Yes," she said at last. "Go back. I've never been so far from home."

"You don't even know where we are."

"I know where we aren't. That's enough for me." She folded her arms across her chest; jewels caught and pulled against each other as they settled into this familiar position.

"No," he said quietly. "There is no way back from here."

"Avandar—"

"You may enter now."

"Is there any point?" But she left him standing outside the doors, the simple wooden doors, when she passed beneath their frame. She walked to her bed, paused a moment in front of her chest of drawers, and moved on to her closet. Her breath was a wild struggle; her chest felt constricted, as if something heavy had been placed against it and was growing in weight with each passing moment.

He had never been denied her rooms. He entered them quietly behind her, reasserting the order that she had come to view as natural. She wondered, briefly, if it would ever be natural again. She'd always known he had power, of course, but she never been forced to confront it. Funny how the little lies of omission were the things that held the safety of her life together.

Within the closet hung the dresses she wore to those meetings Avandar deemed politically important. And beyond them, hidden by this patina of decorum and rank, the clothing that she wore when she worked with her den in her kitchen. None of them fine silks—she found silk just a touch too delicate—but all of them sturdy enough. She'd had the elbows patched, and after Avandar had finished having his fits, had seen to it that the reinforcements were not immediately obvious, although it cost more.

Without thought, she turned her back to her domicis, inviting him by gesture alone to undo whatever it was that nubbled her spine so uncomfortably.

His fingers moved the length of her back as he undid the small catches that held the dress in place. Southern in look, it had. none of the apparent simplicity of the saris she secretly loved; it took time.

"Jewel," he said.

"Don't."

"Don't?"

"Whatever you were about to say, don't bother. We—thanks." She slid out of the dress, keeping her back to him. Gods knew he'd seen her naked before—and not like he'd ever noticed— but she'd never really felt naked. Either that or it had been long enough that she'd forgotten the early awkwardness.

Either way, it was there now. She was aware of every particular flaw her body possessed, every out of place hair, every extra bit of weight.

She dressed for speed and not for elegance, which was a good thing; elegance was something that was really only within her grasp with Avandar's help, and someplace between Terafin and Evereve, she'd decided his help was too costly.

The shirt she grabbed was hunter green; gold circles had been embroidered into the sleeves and the collar, and they caught the unnatural light, reflecting it. She almost put it back. Didn't.

The mark, the S with the two little v's, was an angry red, decorated by silver and gold. Precious metals. "What does it mean?" She would never have thought her voice could be so quiet.

"It is… a claim. A… falsehood."

"I know you put them on your wife. But what does it mean?"

When the collar of her shirt had cleared her head, and before its sleeves had cleared her hands, he started to speak again.

"I… expended much of my power to bring you here," he said quietly.

"Why didn't you just use it to take us someplace safe?"

He laughed.

She turned, yanking her arms into clothing's confinement and comfort. "Just what is so funny?"

"This was safety," he said softly. "The only safety I, or mine, had."

"Well, I'm not you, and I'm not yours, and frankly I don't feel particularly safe here."

"You aren't. You are not of my blood and you are not… consigned to my service. The direction service takes in our relationship was… never conceived of in the time that this fortress was in use."

"Good. If you could just arrange for us to go home, I'd appreciate it."

"If I could just arrange for 'us,' as you so ignorantly put it, to go home, I would have done so before you woke." He walked to the door and closed it.

They stood together in her room. The curtains were closed; she wondered what she would see if she drew them. Started toward them to find out.

"Don't."

Stopped. "Won't it just be rock?"

"I… don't know."

"Oh." Silence, awkward and uncomfortable. "Why?"

"I never attempted to force windows upon this place. And my… wife… understood its nature well. You are, as always, surprising."

"How?"

"This. This room," he added, when it became clear that understanding was not going to miraculously occur. "It shouldn't exist. That it does speaks either to your power or to the dangers of tampering with a spell that was complicated enough to kill two of the mages required for its casting."

The tone of his voice made clear that it wasn't her power he was worried about.

She'd promised herself that she wasn't going to beg him for anything. She'd even promised that she wasn't going to ask, because on some level she was smart enough not to want to know. But smart wasn't enough.

"Who are you?"

"Avandar," he said smoothly. No cracks in that armor.

"All right. This?"

"This is… Evereve. Aristos told you its name, and he had no reason to lie. As you should well know, lies are best used sparingly."

"I don't lie."

"You've always been too lazy to learn the art."

"It's not laziness. My memory's lousy."

"As you will."

"And we were talking about you."

"In a manner of speaking," he replied. "I did not make this place, but I did discover it, in a fashion." His steps were flat and hollow in the still room; rugs absorbed their sound. "I… had already lost one wife. Two, although the first was killed when she tried to kill me." He lifted his head, folded his hands behind his back. She had seen him stand in exactly that position countless times.

"I lost all of my children."

She approached him slowly, as if approaching a wounded, wild creature—one that had claws, fangs, and weight behind it. His gaze was so far beyond her the walls couldn't contain it.

"I was… I am a very difficult man to kill. An acknowledged truth in my time. I was not… I am not a pleasant man. 'Pleasant' is a goal that those who have to live with fear struggle to attain.

"But my children were vulnerable. My wives. During a time in my life when I thought I could somehow attain happiness by protecting them, I found this place. I struggled with its essential nature. I made it my own. To do so was costly." His shrug told Jewel that the cost was measured in the lives of outsiders.

"I brought my wife here. She agreed to this; she was well acquainted with the death of her predecessor, and she was with child.

"She lost the child here. She did not conceive again until she left these walls, and she left them in haste."

"Avandar, please. We haven't much time."

"Yes and no," he said quietly, rising.

"Yes and no?"

"We discovered, in time, that time—within these walls—is not an issue. My wife did not age. Nor would she."

He was lying about something; she wasn't certain what. There was so much to lie about.

"But time is a jealous god."

"Time's a god?"

He raised a dark brow. "They teach you so very little these days."

"Thanks. I'll take that as a yes."

For a moment she thought she had his attention; that attention dissipated with the criticism. It really is as natural as breathing, she thought, stepping slightly back so she could see his face without being forced to tilt her chin up.

"You said she left."

"She left," he said softly, "because she desired a child."

Jewel shrugged. "Some women do."

And the edges around his dark eyes narrowed, changing their shape and his expression. "She was not a sentimental woman." His voice was cool. "She desired my legacy, or rather, a claim to it."

"And did she have her child?"

"Oh, yes."

"She survived?"

"She survived childbirth, yes. The child survived as well."

"There's something you aren't telling me."

"I am telling you so little it might as well be a lie," he replied. "You have no context in which to put the information."

She walked over to the closet again. Closed her eyes. Opened them, and opened the door. On the floor, tucked into the corner she reserved for long dresses and skirts she couldn't stand, was an old backpack; cracks split leather that was shiny with sweat where her hands habitually rested.

There were blankets in the dresser drawers, and clothing fine enough for the Tor Leonne—if she came as a Voyani. She grabbed the pack's shoulder straps in her right hand and slung it over her shoulder.

"Jewel," Avandar said.

"I'm not really listening."

"You're listening to every pause in my breathing."

Damn him anyway.

She began to roll the blanket into as small an object as she could. It had been years since she'd done this for herself; she-was rusty. "What happened to her?"

"To who?"

"The wife you don't even grace with a name?"

"She tried to have me killed," he replied softly.

"Oh." The blanket stilled. Jewel looked up, but Avandar's face was like a wall whose only gap was arrow slits. "I'm sorry."

"And she died for her mistake."

"Did you kill her?"

"Does it matter?"

She took the shirts and the very Imperial pants out of the drawers and began to fold them up as well, taking less care than she had with the blanket. Years of training slid past her; she wasn't certain if the colors matched, or if the style, such as it was, was current. Didn't much care. "Yes."

He didn't answer. He wasn't going to. She knew him that well. "We don't have much time, Avandar. We've got to go."

"I know," he said quietly. "But to bring you here almost killed us both. To take you out in a similar fashion will."

"You're lying."

"Very well. It will kill you."

"Does it matter?"

His smile was grim, unfriendly. "Yes."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

9th of Scaral, 427 AA

Tor Leonne

He held Saval.

Its hilt was fine, and its scabbard finer still, but the grip that made the sword practical was unadorned leather. In his tenure as par el'Sol he had patiently remade the grip; he trusted no one else with the sword that had become associated with his rank.

It should have passed on to the man who replaced him as par el'Sol; the kai el'Sol's weapon was Balagar, sometimes called Balagar of the Long Night. It was gone. Fredero kai el'Sol had taken it with him, somehow, and if Peder par el'Sol suspected the how, he was consumed with the need to protect the Radann from far worse, in the end, than the theft of the kai el'Sol's sword.

Or so he told the others, and if they chose to believe it—as he tried to do himself—so much the better. Whether or not there was belief, however, mattered little; they chose not to question him. The loss, theoretically, was his.

The streets of the Tor Leonne opened before him like merchant tents before the wealthy; he expected no less. He wore the full regalia of the warrior-priest; the armor in perfect condition, the surcoat a deep blue, signifying the depths of clear sky. In the clarity of cloudless day, the Lord's sight was keenest, his judgment most dangerous. Blue was bisected by the curve of a weapon's blade: Balagar, although very few would recognize the sword should they otherwise see it. From out of the valley its curve made the sun in gold rose, and it rose with ten rays, ten full rays.

They bowed to him, the people of this city, or they fled, depending on their rank. How often, after all, did the kai el'Sol venture among them? How often did he do so accompanied by the par el'Sol, each fully armored, each carrying a naked blade?

There should have been four: there were three, Samadar, Marakas, and Samiel. When he had allied himself with Alesso— Lord scorch him, winds scour—he had already decided upon the man who would replace him in the Hand of God. Significantly, he had not called upon that man to face the Lord's fire, the Lord's fight, and the Lord's test. Why?

The three men who stood at his back now were men he trusted.

Trust was a fool's game; it was also the game of desperate men. Desperation had forced him to trust.

For once in his life, he cursed ambition, because no man became par el'Sol—with the exception of Marakas, perhaps—without ambition. He had chosen his successor carefully. Grego di'Erreno was brilliant, cool, and politically wise; the perfect counterweight for Samadar, a man too much beholden to the Lambertan-bred kai el'Sol. He had intended to replace Samadar in time.

No matter; he could not afford it now. Too much was at stake. Gregor was ambitious, and Gregor had thrown his weight behind the General. The so-called Tyr'agar. No doubt—no doubt—the Erreno-born clansman, when confronted with the same truths that Peder had been confronted by, would make the same choices.

But by then it would be too late. Thus, Fredero kai el'Sol's revenge. What had he said?

/ am the Lord's servant, but the game that is played here is a game for men who understand treachery better than I. Had he thought Fredero a fool for accepting—and forgiving—his treachery? He repented.

It did no good.

Sun glinted off metal; gold, he thought, although the momentary pain would have been the same if the light was reflected off something base.

The three men he led understood the risks that had already been taken; they understood, further, the risks they would take. How long had it been since he had stood beside men who would die to protect him? How long had it been since he had stood beside men he would give his life to protect? How long—and this question stung him, for it was foolish, and it was painful, and he could not quite say why—had it been since he had believed enough in anything to do either?

The Lord values power, and we are the Lord's servants. But Fredero kai el'Sol, the man everyone called the Lambertan kai even though the Radann forsook their blood families when they took their oaths, had been both powerful and above the squabbles of the powerful; he had made no excuses because he had never had cause to need them.

The winds howled in the ears of Peder kai el'Sol, and they howled with Fredero's voice.

At his back, he heard Samadar's reasonable tones and Samiel's quick ones. They were as unlike as two men could be who fought for the same goal. Fredero kai el'Sol had always held them in check; they both respected him.

Peder felt the lack of that unique respect keenly. He had never thought it would bother him, because until this moment, with so much depending on him, it never had.

He had never particularly liked Fredero kai el'Sol. He had planned, with clear conscience, the death that would remove the sole obstacle between Peder and the only position he desired. And he had discovered that, with the success of the scheme—and it was a very empty success, a bitter loss—he had instead achieved the responsibility of saving the Radann from the plans of the Lord of Night. He had always wondered how the Radann could have once been so foolish that they could worship and respect that Lord, but he understood it well enough now: The Lord of Night's face was dark, but it was kin to the Lord's. They were both creatures of power.

And power exerted its own influence, its own seduction. It was his bitter truth, because he had lived it.

Luckily, judgment was not his vocation. Nor atonement. Fredero had given him the Radann, and had made himself legend, by offering a death that no one who had seen it—or heard of it— could ignore.

"Kai el'Sol."

He turned slightly; Marakas, always soft-spoken, had lost the gift of speech after Fredero's death. When it returned, it returned somewhat broken. His face would bear the shadow of the loss for longer, Peder thought dispassionately, than most mothers remember the deaths of their infants. Had Marakas not been gifted in his particular way, Peder would have had him disposed of. The Radann could not afford to be weakened by someone whose mourning was so open and so against the Lord's grain.

But the Radann could ill afford to lose a man whose hands could hold off all but death with a single touch. He held his temper, although his words were often curt.

"Marakas?"

Marakas par el'Sol held up Verragar. It was hard to see it—or perhaps hard only for Peder himself—but when it was pointed out, there was the faintest luminescence along the edge of the blade. The cutting edge.

"I cannot make it out," Samadar said quietly. "My eyes have seen sun for too long. Samiel?"

"It glows."

Their eyes met.

Marakas said, "The sword is alive."

Significant words from a healer.

"I did not realize it, until today. Whatever it is we seek, we've found. And finding it has woken the blade."

The words should have been a comfort. Peder glanced at the shortness of his shadow in the height of the day's light.

Samadar spoke the words that Peder would not. "And what will put it to sleep again?"

But Marakas the meek, Marakas the quiet, Marakas the last shed the words as if they were dirty clothing and he about to enter the baths for the first time in months.

In, Peder thought, six months.

"I am not certain, Brother," he said, although his eyes lingered upon the line of the blade, upon Verragar, "but I want to find out."

"Well?"

The shadows were longer and darker than any the sun could cast. A man stood in their center, dressed in the finest of human conceits: silks of a brilliant dye, gold chains around throat and wrist. At his feet, literally paralyzed by her own fear, was a woman who would perish when her heart stopped beating. She bore no marks, of course; Lord Ishavriel had forbidden them all but the most invisible of torments.

He had forbidden them this, but this they could, with speed and delicacy, take. In a city of souls—especially souls with this blend of light and dark, this shade of peculiar gray, this uncertainty— that was as much self-control as they could muster. The rules were clear: the powerful preyed. The powerless served, in one fashion or another.

"Telkar," the creature said.

Telkar ad'Ishavriel never acknowledged his Lord's name when his Lord was not present. He looked down upon the prone form of the fallen woman; her hands were trembling as he forced her to slowly unwind the silks that covered her body. The humiliation was delicate; for one newly come from the Hells it was almost beneath notice.

But Telkar had arrived early, at his Lord's behest, and he had been held in check a long time. This was as close to freedom as he had yet come in a world so full of textures, shades, colors, light. The hunger was more than visceral; it had become so strong there was almost nothing left.

"I am almost done."

"There is… trouble."

"Ishavriel-Malak," he replied, using the subservient form of the name, "you are beginning to annoy me."

"A pity," a voice said, in a language that was not, and had never been, of the Kialli. "As a servant, he is wiser than the master."

The woman at his feet was forgotten in that instant, as was his momentary irritation; all hungers were taken by the so-called Southern winds. The shadows were torn from the wall and ground, from the element of sky he had taken, and from his victim, before he could finish pivoting in the direction of this unforeseen enemy.

The sun rose in an instant over the poorest streets of the Tor Leonne, and the clansmen there—men who were often forced, in penury, to sell their children to the seraf houses—saw the light, and knew that god no longer dwelled in the heavens alone.

They had seen evil before, but they had never seen it stripped of familiar form, familiar word, familiar gesture. They had seen it before—and behind—swords; had seen it in the evidence of butchery along the roads during the hungry season, where quick death might have served the bandit's purpose just as well; had seen it in the death a man gives his wives for the purpose of his guest's pleasure; had seen it in a multitude of ways, each act a shard of a broken whole.

They had seen it in themselves, had never named it, had perhaps used and worked with it in their time. Shadows, secrets, lies—elements of the foundation upon which power was built.

But when Verragar called the sun's light, and the sun's light came, the shadows were burned away in its harshness. They saw themselves, for a moment, truly—but before they could be broken by that vision, they saw something more: what they could, what they must become.

The Radann held drawn swords.

Verragar sang first, and perhaps because of it, hers was the strongest voice, the brightest light. Radann Marakas par el'Sol fell silent as his flame washed over the creature the sword called demon, and when the flames parted, there was nothing human left.

Saval, Arral, and Mordagar joined in.

There were two demons in the streets of the Tor Leonne. And four angels.

Peder kai el'Sol heard the screaming as the flames stripped the disguise from the only enemies that he now had. Politics were forgotten. The streets of the city consumed them; there was the creature, with his great, furled wings, his elongated body, the fine, long arms that ended in a set of gleaming claws. His skin gleamed in the sunlight as if it were forged and polished.

Ebony was paler than the whole of his eyes.

"You do not know what you interfere with, mortal," the creature said, speaking in a language that resonated with depth and history—a language that Peder both heard as itself and as Torra. Saval's gift.

Had he desired Balagar? He would never feel that envy again. No man would take Saval from him while he lived, nor force his hand to another blade while he could wield one.

"This is impossible. Telkar—we were told—"

"That the mortals had forgotten our existence." The creature's smile was a predator's smile, a movement of long jaw and sharp teeth that looked nothing like a human expression of enjoyment or mirth, but nonetheless suggested it. He gestured.

To Peder's great surprise, a sword came to his clawed hand, emerging from air and darkness. "Did you expect Ishavriel to tell no lie? You are blood-bound for a reason."

"Telkar—"

"They are mortal. We are not. They recognize us because they have shiny toys. But they are not among the wise; they do not understand the nature of their weapons, and I see that they are only barely fit to wield them. One of them," he said, and his eyes cut the distance between Peder and the men who followed his orders, "will not be tolerated long."

The kai el'Sol understood exactly what was meant by the words. The sword he held had a song, but no voice; no method of telling him that he was, or was not, worthy as a bearer. And if he was not?

Fredero kai el'Sol had died for less.

Had died, in the end—Peder understood it now, completely, exactly—for more.

"If I am not worthy of the sword," Peder kai el'Sol said coolly, "the sword will judge." It almost cost him his life.

The beast descended, as if from a height, the red flame of his sword a living creature.

A creature answered by white flame, by light, by heat. Saval rose at once, a hair's breadth faster than Peder himself. They clashed, these swords.

The screams at his back grew louder and lesser; most, wise enough to understand how close they stood to death, had fled, but those that fear paralyzed remained as a chorus.

The second creature, the one that had seen them and offered a warning, was as meek as the merely mortal. One moment he was there, and the next, gone; the shadows swallowed him, but did not hide him. Nothing could hide one of the demon kind from the Light of the Lord.

To the music of fear, they fought, four men and one demon. Swords rose and swords fell. White light, white fire, white heat; red blood. They were silent, and when the creature laughed—and he laughed once, they allowed him that—the silence became heavy with anger, with determination. The Radann were not Northern priests; they were the Lord's men. They had been trained not to dither and plead and stay for hours on bended knee, but to fight. To kill.

Marakas, healer-born, the weakest of the four, took the creature's arm, separating it at the shoulder with a clean stroke of blade, a savage movement. The creature grunted and replied; the great pinion of either wing snapped shut and flew wide in an eye blink. Marakas was thrown wide; Verragar's light was extinguished as the sword skittered against the dirt and stone over which they fought.

Peder heard what he thought was the sound of snapping bone; over the clatter of mail it was hard to tell what, if anything, had broken. There was no other acknowledgment of pain.

But he was the kai el'Sol, not Samiel, who was next to wound the creature, and not Samadar, the oldest of their number. They cut flesh and were cut in turn, their armor becoming his weapon and not their defense as it began to take heat and hold it.

One of you will not be tolerated long.

He saw the flame in the creature's eyes, the flame on the edge of Saval. Fire such as this he had seen at the end of the Festival of the Sun, when the kai el'Sol had bearded the newly crowned Tyr'agar while standing in the very symbol of the Tyr's power.

Fredero had defined the Radann, and Balagar—he saw this clearly now—would take no less a man.

But he had Saval. He would prove himself worthy of Saval.

With a cry that was half roar and half something he would not—could not, for he was the Lord's man—name, he called fire and light. They came in a winding twist of motion that reminded him of the wind and the wind's price.

The creature's roar was a marvel of contempt and amusement. He called fire and the light of it dwarfed the bonfires made of bodies at the end of great wars.

Kallandras looked up an instant before the sun's light changed. To either side, his uneasy allies did the same, stiffening and paling in the glow of red light. It was day's height.

"Is this how it starts?" Yollana asked him.

"I thank the Lady every day," he replied, his voice remote, his eyes upon the Tor Leonne's lower streets, "that I was not born a seer. I do not know where it starts or where it ends, Matriarch."

Margret said nothing; the light faded, the blue sky of sun's height returned. Watching her, Kallandras was reminded that the harshest of shadows cast across a person's face were never banished by light.

Against such a fire as the demon's were three swords and three men. But the three were the Lord's men, and they were his most powerful. They attacked in concert, their white light not extinguished by his red, even if it could not be seen across as great a distance.

Samadar was pierced by steel, his flesh puckered by fire. The pain forced a grunt from his lips, but the sword never faltered.

Samiel took the creature's left pinion.

Peder took his right.

They struck as one man, and when the creature reared up, his throat exposed in a roar that would have shamed the mythical dragons of the Northern wastelands, Mordagar pierced his chest.

And Verragar, once again in Marakas' grip, rose to sever his spine.

The roar became a scream. The creature's form dissolved in the red, red glow of the fire it had summoned, eaten from within by both blade and light. Its last act was to lose form entirely; fire spread in a sudden blaze of heat, red leaving black in its wake.

It was meant to be their deaths.

Baptized by flame and fire, blackened by the ash of their sur-coats and the tendrils of hair and beard, four men were reborn in the poorest streets of the Tor Leonne. Three stood, one knelt; the body of their enemy dissolved and was taken, as all things were in the Dominion, by the wind.

The Tyr'agar was resplendent in ceremonial robes; white and gold lay beneath the face of the sun ascendant. The merciless blue of sky edged his robes, and the fall of two swords, one long and one short, had been perfectly arranged so that the casual observer might understand that this ruler was prepared for war. They caught the eye first, before sun, before robes, before finery.

He noted this dispassionately; the seraf who had been bold enough to aid him had been—of course—trained by the Serra Teresa di'Marano. Like a Northern miner, she could sift through the driest of dirt and find, cast aside by Lord and Lady alike, a perfect gem.

This seraf, a young man with broad shoulders and absolutely exquisite grace, was bred for personal service. He had been offered to the Tyr'agar by the kai Marano, Sendari's older brother. He had been accepted, his name—Aaran—unchanged.

The Serra herself seemed neither pleased nor displeased by the offering—which meant, if Alesso was any judge of the sternness of her mood, that she was in fact ill-pleased. The seraf that she traveled with was now an older man, and almost at the end of his useful service. He could be consigned, as the serafs were, to the Lady, having fulfilled the serafs course and acquitted himself with visible honor. He was attractive in the way that older men are: he had about him that aura of wisdom so unsuitable, and therefore so beguiling, in a seraf.

He was not embarrassed to know the serafs name, although he would never speak it aloud in the presence of others. Serafs' names were matters of practicality, but only those valued as wives were acknowledged to have them. And Alesso had taken no new wives.

Ramdan.

The youth had the same breadth of shoulders and the same height that the older seraf possessed; he had hints of the same wisdom. A fine gift. A fine gift, indeed, and one he was pleased to have accepted.

It was the only pleasant thought afforded him by the day's events.

"Tyr'agar."

He nodded, cool as the waters of the Lake, but infinitely less pleasant.

The Tyr'agnate of Oerta, Eduardo kai di'Garrardi, bowed, the gesture as pleasant and voluntary as the Tyr'agar's nod. Three serafs moved immediately to offer this most important of dignitaries the waters for which Alesso had risked so much.

He accepted the water—and then passed it, untasted, to one of the four Tyran he was, by custom, allowed in the presence of his Lord.

Silence fell like a sword, stilling the words of any who had seen the Tyr'agnate's action. Like contagion the silence spread to those less aware; the platform, with its cerdan, Tyran, and serafs, with its high clansmen, and Widan, became more silent than the Lake itself.

Even the winds deserted them.

The Tyran so honored—and so singled out—took a slow, loud sip of the water, lifting a hand to mouth and back as if the goblet offered him were a common tin cup and not the finest of Northern crystal. Had any cared to think the Tyr'agnate's action a gesture of boorish ignorance, the Tyran's action denied them the ability. He handed the cup back to the Tyr his life was sworn to.

Then, and only then, did Eduardo choose to drink.

/ will kill him, Alesso thought; it was an effort to contain the words, to cage them. But not so great an effort as it was to keep his hand from the hilt of his sword; to deny Eduardo the satisfaction of his anger.

An angry Tyr was seen as weak if he did not act, and he could not afford to kill this man, not yet. Nor could Eduardo openly move against him. They were separated—as if they were errant young men—from the fight they both desired. But that would not always be the case.

He waited a moment; when words did not return to the platform of the Summer Sky, he turned to the Sword's Edge. He had the privilege of seeing a very rare anger minutely change the lines of the older man's face. Eduardo would miss that, of course. He would also miss the fact that when motion began to return to the serafs whom Alesso owned, and from them to the gathering at large, that it did not return to the hand that had stopped in mid-curl around strands of a beard.

Unfortunately for Alesso—and Eduardo, although he neither knew nor cared—that anger, on a day like this, meant one thing: Cortano was thinking of the Serra Diora. And he only thought of her—or spoke of her—when he wished her dead. He was wise enough, political enough, to understand the folly of his desire. But to see the Tyr'agnate behave so disgracefully over a girl, and to see the Tyr'agar he had personally chosen to support join Garrardi in this struggle, was enough to make him think the political risk of her death worth taking.

Sendari was utterly mute.

They were saved from further awkwardness.

Red light blossomed in the sky to the South.

Into the stillness the wind returned bearing two things: heat, and the sound of screaming. Fire. Sudden, intense, and compelling in its beauty—a beauty that Widan fire and hearth fire had never possessed.

Eduardo was forgotten in that instant. Alesso turned to Cortano; Cortano's eyes were wide. His hand had left his beard and hovered midway between chest and face. He had cast something; Alesso was certain of it.

"Sendari?" he said, his voice deceptively calm.

The Widan who was his closest friend was gray as new ash. But he did not answer the question.

And that was answer enough.

The flames grew higher, brighter, wider; they seemed capable of taking the sky from the Lord himself.

Alesso drew his sword. He shouted an order, and then another, bowing to his guests before he departed in the direction of the fire.

Too late: the fire faltered. Noise returned, silence followed, words broke it and then retreated; the conversation moved like the Averdan ocean. He had seen that ocean so seldom it still contained mystery and wilderness.

Conversation, on the other hand, held only danger.

Eyes to the sky, he watched as the fires that had reached for the sun itself were banked. In the glimmering death of burned copper light, he thought he saw lightning, although the skies were as clear as the Lord could desire.

Alesso gathered his Tyran to him, and dismissed Eduardo almost summarily. The Sword's Edge was his shadow; Sendari his second. They began to walk down the road to the main gates, and stopped when they saw the four men.

They were almost bald—in fact, to Alesso's eye they were bald, but they were still some distance away—and they wore full armor, which was unusual in the Tor. They carried naked blades, which were forbidden almost all men who walked that road, but they had passed the Tyran and cerdan whose sole purpose was to weed out the acceptable from the unacceptable when granting passage.

Obviously, they were acceptable.

Although the cerdan paid with their lives, and the Tyran with their ranks, for any mistakes made, Alesso was not completely certain that he would trust them to stop these four regardless: they walked abreast, they strode with purpose, they carried blades that not only reflected the sun's light, but seemed to have swallowed it.

Lightning, he thought, and as the distance between the four men and the waiting Tyr dwindled, he recognized at least one of them by gait: Peder kai el'Sol.

Only the man's features were the same; his hair had been singed off, and the resulting ash had dusted his face into darkness. His eyes were narrow, his lips slightly thinned.

"It would not be wise," a voice to his left said quietly, "to greet them."

He turned, then, to see a face that he had never encountered before in broad daylight, exposed to the eyes of his enemies and his sometime ally. He was, quite literally, speechless.

"They have been tested," Lord Isladar of the Shining Court said, "and they have not yet been found wanting. They burn with the fire; they are the instruments of their weapons, not the masters." As he spoke the words, he fell to bended knee, and only then did Alesso—Alesso who took in all detail in a single glance— realize that he was dressed, and had been acting all along, as seraf.

The two, kinlord and seraf, were separated by such a distance that he could not easily combine them; in the attempt, he was silent.

"If Peder kai el' Sol served you before—and I will not question his service, as you accepted it and you are more conversant with mortal politics than I—he will serve you no longer, no matter what he chooses to say. And perhaps that will serve you against Ishavriel, perhaps not. I cannot stay, General; the events of this day have already begun to cast shadows in the Shining Court.

"But I advise you to clear the road, and to allow no obstruction to the Radann. They are… almost new. The swords they carry have been invoked for the first time in centuries; they have encountered the enemy they were forged to destroy, and they have emerged victorious.

"The Radann will return to their residence, unless they see you first. If they see you first, I believe they will behave in a fashion that is both imprudent and unlikely with the passage of but a single evening."

His bow held for a moment longer, and then he rose.

"Widan," he said quietly, to the silent Cortano. "The Shining Court has grown too large for subtlety; we have always warred among ourselves when our numbers are large, and they have grown. There may be culling. Be prepared."

He was gone.

Alesso turned to Cortano. "Sendari," he said. "Disperse these men in my name."

Sendari bowed at once.

The General was known for his instinct; he trusted it when he trusted little else. He chose. "Let them pass unhindered." He turned to the Sword's Edge. "Accompany me, please."

The word at the end of the curt, short sentence was only barely a request; had he been speaking to any other man, it wouldn't have been spoken at all. Cortano chose to ignore the slight.

Even before they had found shelter in the cultivated wilderness, the Widan had bent his will to silence, enveloping and protecting the words they would speak from eavesdroppers, no matter how powerful they might be.

"Ishavriel?" Alesso asked softly, in a tone of voice that he could not quite make free of threat.

"I do not know. No two members of the Kialli cooperate for long. Isladar plays his own game."

"Isladar," the General replied, "would not—if I read him correctly—allow demons to fight in the streets of my city before he owned it entirely."

"Am I to suddenly understand the minds of the Kialli?" Cortano frowned. "I am not Sendari, Tyr'agar."

"No." The silence was long. At last, Alesso said, "I ask your opinion only."

"Then in my opinion, no. Lord Isladar is cautious. He has rarely if ever offered advice. He has never shown interest in the domination—the obvious domination—of the merely human." There was irony in the words he spoke; irony in the words that followed. "Had he been human, I am certain he would have been Widan—one of mine, in fact."

He was willing to let go of his anger. It was wise, after all. Cortano di'Alexes had his pride, but he was no fool.

"Cortano, I have trusted your guidance, and I have even taken your orders on occasion. Forgive me mine, if you find fault with them, but find out what game is being played."

The Sword's Edge bowed.

9th of Scaral, 427 AA

Evereve

The nature of Jewel's rooms shifted during the first four hours she managed to sleep in something that did, after all, feel very much like her own bed. It was the first calming moment she'd had in this place.

She rose slowly because she didn't want to leave the familiarity of that bed; she dressed in clothing that would never again be so terribly, expensively gaudy, and she walked to the door. Took a breath. Opened it. Gold and gaudiness, high, domed ceilings, the quartered golden circle of bright magelights—all had vanished as if they were a waking dream. His halls were outside, but inside—she'd somehow made it hers.

Almost. The curtains remained closed, and she didn't have the courage to open them. She turned her head to the side and wondered, eyes tracing their straight, heavy fall, if she would any time soon.

The day had passed; although she was afraid her absence would let the rooms revert to their former state, she was also hungry, and she made the trek to the dining hall, following the lights as if they were servants; as if, in fact, they were somehow alive, and trapped and broken by their service just as the statues had been.

After dinner, however, she took advantage of Avandar's awkward silence, broken only by sentences he fractured with a word or two from a different language, to come back to the room as quickly as possible.

She saw the doors as she drew near, and when she did see them she felt her shoulders drop two inches as she relaxed.

That night, she slept with the oldest and most worn of the blankets closest to her skin, drawing them up to her mouth and tucking them under her chin. She made certain that no stray limb, not even a toe, was exposed; there was comfort in that. Home.

What was missing were the sounds of the wing itself. As magelight, in the halls of Terafin, was not considered too great an expense, Teller and Finch often worked late into the night. Even when their voices couldn't be heard—and as they were the quiet ones, that was often—the comfort of their familiar footsteps could. Here, the silence was absolute. She filled it with her breathing.

The pack, cracked leather now fully round and almost ball shaped, was tucked into the corner nearest the doors. Avandar had told her just how useful he thought it would be—not at all— but she felt safer having it ready, and she wanted to leave it that way. Or so she'd told him. It was half true.

The other, more practical half, was that she'd managed to cram so much into the pack that every piece of clothing, every small pot, every piece of flint, was like the keystone in a large arch: if so much as one thing was pulled out, the whole would follow in a messy, inevitable spill.

She sat up in bed and pushed her hair out of her eyes. Reached for it, bound it back, and watched out of the corner of those eyes as the shorter strands popped free immediately. Shaking her head— which freed half the rest—she rose and dressed. The clothing was hers, or as much hers as anything in this place could be. She was happy to have it.

Avandar came in through the doors carrying a tray.

"You've missed breakfast," he said, obvious disapproval in the lines of his frown. Familiar, comfortable disapproval.

Jewel had discovered, over the days that had passed, that Avandar was most himself—or most the man she knew—when he was in these rooms with her. The farther away from them she got, the farther away from himself he got, as if all that bound him to the man she knew was what she knew of him, until—at the edge of the picture gallery that should have collapsed under the weight of its adornments—he lost Weston entirely and spoke in broken something-or-other, the language he never identified. His mother tongue, she was certain of it.

His whole demeanor changed. If she had ever needed proof that words had power—in and of themselves, and not wrapped in enchantment or bardic talent—it was there in the way his voice broke around syllables, like water around river rocks.

She thought about this now, her sleeves unrolled right to the wrists to cover the mark on her arm. She rarely wore her sleeves full-length; she liked to roll them up. Made her feel as if she was about to start working, even if the work she was doing didn't actually require it. But rolled up, she could see the stretch of red and gold and silver that disquieted her. The anger had passed. The explanation—that the mark was necessary to identify her in a way that would save her life—had been offered. She'd almost accepted it.

But it bothered her.

It was going to cause problems. She knew it, but didn't know how.

"Jewel?"

"Hmmm? Oh. Food. Sorry."

Asking him questions was tricky. Ask the wrong question, and he'd start to answer in the wrong language. Language was the first sign. It went downhill from there. But ask no questions, and she was certain they'd stay here forever, or for at least the next two weeks, after which it wouldn't matter much. In a bad way.

"Avandar?"

"Food first."

"I can talk and eat at the same time."

His raised brow was a clear indication of how poor a liar she was.

"I didn't say I could talk and eat neatly." He put the tray down on her desk. "Look, it's not like there's anyone to offend by my manners."

He raised a brow.

She ate first. Picked up the tray and started to walk to the kitchen before she remembered that there was no kitchen here— or at least not one she had access to. Wondered what the kitchen here was like—if there was one at all. It wouldn't have surprised her if food had magically appeared from the ether. In fact it would have surprised her if it hadn't. Not much place to grow things here.

"Avandar?"

"Yes?"

"You've eaten."

"Yes."

"You look—you look better."

His smile reminded her of the shadow candlelight cast. But the gaze that followed it reminded her of nothing in their long— well, friendship wasn't the right word for it. In fact there was no right word for the way they related to each other.

"Avandar," she said, knowing this was a bad question, but not knowing how to avoid it, "you've already said I can't leave the same way I came."

"Yes."

"Is there another way for me to leave?"

Silence.

"Can you leave at any time?"

"I would have said yes," was his quiet reply. He rose. Walked to her closet. Began to methodically straighten the dresses and coats that hung there, as if he, too, were aware that it was the familiarity of his routine in her life that made him a part of that life.

"And now?"

"This room, Jewel."

"Mine."

"Yes. But not even my—wife—was able to exact such changes in so short a time as you have made here."

"Maybe she wasn't as desperate."

"Perhaps. It is not a matter of will; she was not a weak woman in any way."

"Meaning that you think I am."

"Meaning," he said, lifting the shoulder of the dress she least liked and carefully realigning it on its hanger, "that I've seen every weakness you have, and I can guess at those you've never dreamed of."

Her hair stood on end.

"You would be," he continued, no words from Jewel said to break the stream of his, "so easy to break. The right threat, and you would crumple; there would be no need at all to carry it out, although I confess a certain bored amusement might cause your enemies to consider it. When her child was killed," he continued, and the way he said the word "her" made it clear he spoke of his dead wife, "she did not so much as blink an eye, and by that time, the only thing in the world that commanded any of her affection, any of her loyalty, was that child."

"You say that as if it were a good thing."

He turned, the dress gripped in one hand, the hanger in the other, as if they were weapon and shield.

"It was… an admirable thing. She had no defense against her enemies. They killed the child to cause her pain, and only to cause her pain. The only attack she could offer them was her absolute, her unwavering, distance. She gave them that. They took little pleasure out of what should have been a pleasure."

"And the child?"

He raised a brow.

"The child died knowing his mother didn't care at all."

"The child, as you say, was not so young as all that at the time of his death. He understood."

"And this is a good thing."

"Yes."

"Something you want from me?"

He turned his back to her. Placed the dress on the left rack. Turned back. Spoke to her in a language that made no sense. She privately thanked the gods for their momentary mercy.

"So you won't leave me here because this place has made a room for me and you're afraid it will turn the entire place into Terafin behind your back?"

"No." Language reasserted itself quickly; they were in her rooms. "If it turned the entire place 'into Terafin' as you so quaintly put it, I would have little concern."

"But?"

"You have not walked the breadth of my vision," he said quietly, "and I am not—have not always been—sane."

"But I—"

"You have seen the world that I am willing to share with at least one other living woman," he replied. "There are parts of this mountain's vastness that I share with no one. And not because I hoard. Are there not secrets, Jewel, that you would guard from even yourself if you had the ability?"

"The ability?"

"To lie," he answered softly. "To lie to yourself."

"Gods, I hate it when you talk."

Both brows rose slightly.

"You never talk this much," she explained, as she turned away.

"Except when you're telling me why whatever I'm doing is political suicide. I'm used to that. I never realized—I never did— how little I knew you."

"Does it matter? I serve you. I have always served you."

She turned to look at him. "Yeah," she said softly. "It matters. I don't know you. I know everyone else."

"Kiriel?"

"Even her, Avandar." She faced him now, drawing the hair out of her eyes, resting one hand loosely on her hip. "I know that she's half the dark god." The words that left her weren't the ones she meant to say; a sign of the gift and talent that she had always struggled to control. Good thing control wasn't everything. "But I know that there's more to her, that there could be so much more. That she's not the one to stand by while her child is killed and show nothing or do nothing; there's a rage in her that comes from a place that love hurt."

"Eloquently put. Half a dark god," he said to himself. "I sensed the darkness; I assumed she was half kin. More, perhaps."

"I know who she is. I don't always know what she'll be—and I'm afraid of it. I admit it." She laughed. "I know my den, Avandar. I know Arann. I know that he'd die for Terafin, and I know, I know that he'd take her orders over mine if it came to a choice."

Avandar raised a brow. "I would not be so certain."

"I am. I don't think he knows it. I'm selfish. I don't want him to know it. It would change what we have, because he'd feel different, not because I would. Angel would kill for me and die for me without thinking. Carver would do the same, but he'd complain a lot more. Finch and Teller and Jester? They'd have different, quiet lives."

His smile was thin, sharp. "You keep them to yourself."

"Yes. I do." She shrugged. "But you—you I don't know. And I thought I did because I could predict everything you'd do. I knew what you'd say when I wouldn't wear the council ring to Alea's funeral. I knew what you'd say when The Terafin—when she—before we left." She turned, the thickening in her throat unexpected and painful. "But knowing what you'll do isn't the same as knowing you.

"I don't."

"No."

"There's a way out that doesn't involve whatever it was you did to get me in."

"Yes."

She waited. "You think it's worse."

"I know it's worse," he said softly. "But I think we'll have little choice."

"What is it?"

"It's a very simple door." He rejoined dress to hanger, contouring its shoulders so that its fall was perfect. Showed her his back while he put it away. "Twice my height, ten times my width. It is covered, from height to depth, with runic symbols, each speaking of mystery, promise, wonder, and at the end of each, death. It was the door I discovered when I sought a place of safety; it was shown to me by… by a woman with vision much stronger than even yours." His expression froze a moment. "It was not an easy door to find. The path that led to it had been lost for… many years. Or almost so. I encountered… difficulty in making my way here, and when I chose to return to the world without, it was by alternate means."

"And the door?" she asked, because suddenly she knew what it looked like. The words, in runes she shouldn't have been able to read because they seemed the epitome of ancient and she hadn't mastered most of modern yet, were glowing with a light that seemed part sun and part the blood it went down on after battle's end, when corpses were strewn as carrion for the waiting and the watchful. But she could read them.

"Jewel?" His voice was sharp.

She was staring at the door that she could see in a vision that had nothing to do with reality; reading words that she knew would make no sense whatever were she to encounter them in the solidity of the here-and-now.

Two words stood out. Two words, warning, homage, mystery. Ownership. A cold, cold wind blew through the room; one that she alone felt. She shook herself, hard, and then turned to Avandar.

"Who was the Winter King?"

He closed his eyes.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

10th of Scaral, 427 AA

The Northern Wastes

The Lord had not summoned them.

Had he, they would have met in the throne room, and spent the meeting on their knees before a throne that was impressive even to creatures who had no use for, and no patience with, such obvious trappings of mortal power.

Or who had not had patience before their return to the mortal plane. It changed them all, subtly, and in different ways, infecting them like a mortal disease, crippling them, fevering them. Power, upon the mortal plane, had always had a multitude of meanings, but they had been winnowed of those meanings in the Hells by the passage of millennia and the duties—the only true pleasure— of guardians.

High upon the peaks of the Northern mountains, surrounded by the sparse life, the endless cold, the clarity of nights so perfect the desire to spend a decade caught by starlight was at times as strong as the desire for the single pleasure they'd been granted when they had chosen to cleave to their Lord, the world returned to them. The kinlords were awakening.

Perhaps the awakening would have been faster had the world been more recognizably what it was at the time of Moorelas' final ride. It was not. Even the flowers had dwindled in the long absence of the Kialli; the trees—on the rare occasion they were allowed to travel far enough to see them—had lost all voice; the earth had been struck dumb enough that only the great among them could hope to hear the whisper that had once been greater than the roar of dragons. Of the Firstborn and their children, of the brethren, of their ancient enemies, their ancient brothers, only the mortals had flourished.

Surprising, that. They had been the weakest, and the shortest lived. In their youth they were glorious, but their youth was short; they grew into their bindings, bending and folding under the weight, finding new ways in which to deny themselves pleasure and power—and finding a perverse pride in that denial.

They called it dignity.

Lord Isladar had seen that perversity so often that he had grown, in his fashion, to admire it.

They are like the flowers, he would say, and not the rock; they are so brief in their bloom one can pause to admire the blossom itself.

And humanity has become your garden ?

It has become, he had replied, to the ironic levity of the Widan Cortano di'Alexes, my wilderness.

Oddly enough, he found the company of the man who called himself the Sword's Edge almost pleasant. It, too, invoked memories of an earlier life, summoning them when least expected. Or desired. Among the Kialli there had been those like Cortano. Seekers of knowledge. He had not, oddly enough, chosen to be one of them, but he had admired the quality—for it was beautiful—of their odd obsession.

They were gone now. Their time in the Hells had driven them inexorably mad. They were the charnel wind, their voices raised in a howl of pain and fury and fear as the years became a significant weight, for the whole of their world was now knowable; that they understood everything; behind them, in a past they had forsaken for love and pride, were mysteries they were never to discover. They had slowly given up their memories; they had become lesser kin. Demons, yes, but their names were now merely tools for the most powerful to use.

He remembered it well. Remembered it now, when those mysteries, when that tangled past, could once again be offered to them as a gift.

Morellius, he thought. A name. The past. Morellius would have despised him; the Kialli rarely chose to honor friendship.

He bowed his head; the wind was cold, not hot, and it was almost silent. Almost. But he had invoked the element, and it was restless. "Not now," he told it. "But soon."

He looked out from the heights into the depths of the basin the Lord had carved in a single motion. It was there that he took what He denied the Kialli: human life, human pain, human fear. It was there that He sustained himself, feeding upon the souls of the living, regardless of whether or not they had made their final Choice. It was there that He forced them to bear witness to His actions, for in consuming the living, He kept their souls from the Hells for eternity. Kept their souls from the shepherds. The kinlords.

And it was there that the pentagram had been traced against ice-covered rock by blood and unguent; there that it had been burned, in a flash of elemental fire, into the rock itself, a seamless scar that no foolish lesser kin could cross and destroy in its clumsiness.

But its five points were now four, and a vast sheet of thin, standing stone, the center point of which was a chair not unlike the throne of the Lord, now occupied its peak. It was empty, and the kin worked the rock itself in an attempt to appease the fury of their Lord. Anya a'Cooper's work was, indeed, worthy of the lesser effort of a god.

He understood—they all did—why Ishavriel had chosen to keep her. But faced with evidence of her power—and this was undeniable—they were unsettled. Sor na Shannen, before her timely destruction and return, had assured them all that no mortals of true power remained. The Cities had not risen, and their descendants, scattered around the lands that ringed the burning sand, had fallen into the smallness that occupied most of humanity. Mortals.

Anya, he thought, and smiled.

The Lord would rise soon and see to the throne. Anya a'Cooper would rise at the same time and take her place as anchor of the vast magical array necessary to maintain the fabric of the doorway to the Hells. She was wild and unpredictable, and she had grown to like pain—other people's, of course—rather too well, but she was afraid of the Lord's anger, and had she clearly understood just how angry he would be, she might not have been so foolish.

But she understood so little.

She did not understand, for instance, that to rip the wall from the mountain, and then—as an afterthought, when the Shining Palace began to crack and shudder—replace it, keeping only that section that contained her chair, would be so costly. She did understand the effort it took to repair the damage done to the Lord's edifice, because she was not in any fashion stupid, but she clearly had so little sense that she did not then realize the little shudders forcing her to clumsiness were the penultimate warning.

She moved the chair.

And her own weight.

Not even Kiriel would have that power at her disposal when she finally came of age and took her rightful place at her father's side.

Kiriel.

The wind sensed his weakness and buffeted him, howling in petulant displeasure.

"Not now," he said again. "Not yet. But soon; I promise it. The Lord's Fist meets soon, and I with it."

Although he knew the answer, he had the pleasure of asking Lord Ishavriel how long it would take to repair the damage that Anya had done to the gate.

It would distract them from the question that had driven him to the mountain's peak; distract him from facing the fact, yet again, that something in his plan had gone awry, and that he had not yet managed to discover how, or why.

He could no longer see Kiriel.

Lord Isladar was Kialli. It was undisputed. What was often the source of argument was the extent to which he had retained his power after the passage. His memory, as far as the surviving Kialli could ascertain, was perfect.

And it was memory, it was identity, in the Hells that had defined power. Those who had been driven mad by the loss of contact with the world had found new ways to define themselves until all that remained of them was a name, and that name deep enough, old enough, terrible enough to be invoked.

Isladar, therefore, should have been a power.

Instead he owned nothing, ruled nothing, fought little; he was like a mortal dog, but canny. The games he played they could not fathom, and they had made their attempts. Assarak, Etridian, Alcrax, and Nugratz had long since given up. Ishavriel had not, not yet. Because he remembered Isladar of old, and he did not trust him, although perhaps that was not significant; he trusted no one. But the others had games and goals that were obvious; their deviousness was spent in attaining them.

What are your goals, Lord Isladar? What is your game?

He had asked the question privately for the last thousand years, never coming close to an answer, but today he would be given a glimpse of either the game or the Lord, a reminder that some questions were not meant to be answered before one knew the cost the answer demanded. The Oracle's dilemma, if the Oracle still lived.

Lord Isladar came late to the Shattered Hall.

He drew the eye; there was something about him, that day, that was changed. He acknowledged the Fist of the Lord with a passing nod and took a seat.

Etridian spoke; Alcrax answered. Ishavriel remembered the sound and timbre of their voices, but he could not look away from Isladar—and he felt that he should. Something had changed, or was changing, and change was a force that was seldom contained or controllable.

The wind's howl was unaccountably sharp this day and he thought he heard—he thought he heard the voice of elemental air.

"The Lord," Assarak said quietly, "is… not pleased."

Lord Ishavriel was silent, his focus peripherally on the Generals, his intent entirely upon Lord Isladar. The kinlord sat in his chosen chair, forming and reforming rock the way nervous humans curl and uncurl their fists. What game? he thought. The movements could not be ignored; they were almost mortal, and while Isladar could be accused of many things, mortality was not one of them.

Lord Ishavriel was not the only Lord to notice; he was merely the first. As the minutes passed, they divested themselves of words; they were caught by the spectacle. Fidget. That was the human word.

When he had their attention, or perhaps when he had endured as much of it as he desired, Lord Isladar rose and bowed. "Your pardon, Generals," he said softly, and this was another of his traps or his lies, for no Kialli showed deference or tendered apologies that were not forced. "But I find of late that the containment of the hells is… difficult."

"Difficult?" Etridian said sharply.

Isladar's reply was a long while in coming, and they did not have the time to wait. But they took it; it was almost as if, for an instant, the concept of theater gripped them as strongly as it gripped the mortals.

"Difficult." He repeated the word as if he had tried all others and found them equally inadequate. "The Hells and the mortal realm have become so different I almost doubt my memories of life before the Choosing."

The silence that descended upon them all was bitterly cold, a thing not of the Hells. They were immortal. Time passed beneath their notice as they absorbed what he had said.

"You are… bold," Lord Etridian said at last, shaking himself free of the fascination that had been caused, after all, by mere words.

"Am I?" Lord Isladar turned and walked toward the Western wall. Touched it. Murmured three distinct words: a plea for permission. There was only one being of whom the Kialli Lords begged for anything.

The walls resounded with their Lord's reply. Rock moved as if it were cloth being pulled to either side of a great, glassless window. The wind came whistling across its width, but did not enter, or if it did, it was too slight a sensation to be worthy of comment.

"These are not the lands we walked," he said softly, as they rose to bear witness. "Nor the lands we ruled. Look: beneath us lie the streets of the Shining City reborn. They are simple rock and soil too poor to be called anything but dirt. They are crowded with creatures too slight to understand that all identity is memory. Where are our natural enemies? Where is our former glory?

"The Hells have changed us much."

Silence, silence, silence, silence. Only Ishavriel chose to break it. He had to; although Isladar utilized no obvious magics, his words were slowly binding them all—and Ishavriel was not to be bound by Lord Isladar of the Kialli. "And what would you have of us?"

"Of you? Nothing." But they clashed, these two, in the silence that followed, their expressions hardening into complete neutrality. The four remaining Generals waited in silence, sensing battle. "But I would call a Kialli parliament in which to hold our discussion."

Memory.

What Lord Isladar invoked, he invoked, and once summoned to the plane—as any summoned creature would—those memories fought for freedom.

Not even Lord Ishavriel, who had the most to lose in this meeting, could shrug off what Isladar had cast upon them. "You… play a dangerous game."

"Do I?"

"Were the parliaments ever anything else?"

"They were a way of weeding out the weak," Lord Etridian said unexpectedly. "A way of insuring that only the capable ruled." He rose. He rose and went to the window that Isladar had made in the wall. "You take a risk, Isladar."

"I call parliament," the Kialli Lord repeated evenly. "As was our custom, you are free to refuse it."

Etridian smiled. "I will not refuse it. Alcrax?"

Alcrax's smile was slow to come; he did not choose to mar it with speech. He nodded lazily, eyes half-lidded.

"Assarak?"

"With pleasure. I remember the parliaments. I led a few."

"I led many," Etridian said. He had lost the demonic seeming that he habitually forced his body into, reverting to something older and wilder, taller and infinitely more beautiful. Instead of spikes or spines, instead of steel blades, he wore two arms, long and slender; his horns fell away into strands of hair, and those strands fell longer and longer until they touched his back, his spine. He spread his hands wide, and then brought them back in a circular arc whose midpoint was the searing light palm-to-palm contact birthed.

"Nugratz?" Soft, now. The name was a threat.

Nugratz, of the five the one who had never chosen to take a human form, rose. He stretched his wings like the duke of the Hells he had very recently been, and fire edged his shadows. A warning to Etridian.

A warning to them all.

But having given that warning, he merely said, "I will join the parliament when it is in session."

They all turned then. "Ishavriel?"

Ishavriel's smile was slowest to grow, wildest to finish. He stared past Etridian, whose demand for an answer would have been a call to combat in the planes of the Hells, and met Lord Isladar's eyes. "Have you forgotten, Brother," he said, lifting his arms in what was almost a mirror gesture of Etridian's motion, right to left, left to right, "that it was I who convened the greater parliaments at both Scarran and Lattan?"

"I remember it well." Isladar was still as the stone; perhaps more still; the North was warmer than the light in his eyes, although there was so little light to reflect. "And I remember the last of the parliaments. I remember the call that went out into the elements and the wilderness. I remember the question put to us. Oh, yes, Brother. I have forgotten nothing."

"Do you seek to test me here ?"

"I seek," Isladar said, placing his hands upon the new-made stone, "a parliament, no more, no less."

"Then choose," Ishavriel said. "All of you. Choose the element. I will convene."

"I think," Etridian said, his smile chill as Ishavriel's, but more contained, "that Isladar should convene. He is not of the Fist, after all. He is no one's ally."

Isladar bowed.

"Etridian, be grateful our Lord has forbidden the Contest." Ishavriel's teeth grew sharper, longer—but the beauty of his expression was unaltered. He was—they all saw it—Kialli in a way that they had not been since—

Not since the end, and the beginning.

"I choose the element of air," Isladar said.

"Air? Air is hardly an element."

"Think, Etridian," Isladar's response was quick, quiet, wild in the way that Ishavriel's face and voice had been.

"/ should think? You play games, Isladar. This was your request."

"We have not called parliament since Moorelas fell. Call parliament in fire, in water, and the Lord will know."

"He has not forbidden it."

"No. Will you take the risk that He might?"

Silence. Then, "We might convene in the earth itself."

"The earth here is not wild enough to hold us. Can you not sense it? The Shining Palace was made of rock and earth, but there was no struggle."

"Perhaps the old magics are finally dead."

"Perhaps. But I would counsel against the risk."

"As you have always counseled us, Isladar. I would expect no less—or rather, no more. Were you less cautious, you might have ruled—"

"Enough. We have had this discussion."

Etridian's smile was obsidian. "I will accede. Air."

"Air."

"Air."

"Air."

Ishavriel nodded.

Had they been trapped by the Shattered Hall in the same way they had been trapped by the Hells? They had never sought to question their use of that place. Of all the rooms the Shining Palace contained, none matched the Shattered Hall for grandeur; none made so plain the power of the Lord over the earth itself. Had His journey from the Hells to the mortal world injured Him? Had it weakened His power, denying Him the full force of the strength He had once displayed when He ruled this vast plain? Perhaps. But the Shattered Hall had been a work of power, and for that reason, they had chosen to grace it.

They could not convene parliament within the halls themselves, although Etridian had suggested it. Such an act would do one of two things: destroy the hall, or force their Lord to expend His power to maintain it in the face of the wild element. Either outcome was not to anyone's advantage; implicit in their choice was the mountain's heights or the Broken Plains beyond the citadel.

And once they had chosen the heights, they felt it: freedom. Memory.

Lord Ishavriel wondered if they would ever enter the Shattered Hall again.

Isladar convened.

He called the wild air, and it came, fighting every inch of the journey. They watched; they watched in a silence made of memory, but sharpened by observation. Lord Isladar of the Kialli did not use the powers he now displayed in the Hells because the Hells were not elemental.

Was he a greater power here? A lesser one?

The millennia stretched out before them as it had behind, and they realized that the question was not, would no longer be, rhetorical. They were silent, measuring the power of an enemy. Understanding, truly, that if they made their demesnes in this new world, power would mean something different than it had in the Hells.

Hunger, there. Lord Ishavriel felt its sudden bite. As the wild air washed over them, stinging and biting in a momentary rage, he wanted more than the Hells. Had he come here at his Lord's command? Yes. He had obeyed without choice, and with a cunning and a thought bent to the Lord's will, the Lord's purpose. But now…

Hunger.

Perhaps it had always been there.

Perhaps they had missed it because they were no longer exposed to their only sustenance: the torment of the fallen; the justice of the damned.

It made no difference; Isladar had called their attention to it, turning them at last from the insular world of the Hells and returning to them two truths. The first, the simplest, elemental power. Not in the way that they had used it since they first set foot upon the broken ground of the Northern Wastes. No, that had been simple—a tossing of fire, a slight puckering of the earth, a whispering of wind. Water, they had only touched to ward the fall of snow when they found it unpleasant or inconvenient.

But they had wielded the elements as big clubs, clumsily and thoughtlessly. Here, now, they were asked to do something different: to find the heart of its wilderness, and to merge with it, succumbing to its voice while maintaining their own.

To speak, to think, to act in their best interests while the elements attempted to destroy them.

"Isladar!" Etridian cried, as the wind's voice threatened to destroy the fabric of simple words.

"Not yet!" he yelled back, swaying, his feet two inches above the ground, his body at the eye of the growing storm. "But soon. Prepare yourselves!"

The convener was not required to give warning. But this was so old, so distant, that it had become new; it was new to them all. They accepted what he offered without comment, and when the winds came, they forgot it. No warning could prepare them.

The air itself tried to destroy them.

The convener began to speak.

The ground receded from their feet in a rush of light and swirling snow.

Above the mountain's peak, above even the highest of the towers the Lord had built for his own amusement in the Shining Palace, the Fist of the Lord and the Lord's shadow stood. It would tire them to stand thus.

But no Lord of the Hells could admit to such a weakness.

Formality was lost to wilderness.

Ishavriel spoke with the air's voice as if reacquainting himself with the niceties of speech. But snow and rock and fine, fine ice crystals could not obscure sight of his expression as he faced Lord Isladar and spoke.

"I wonder, Lord Isladar, if you know where Kiriel is."

Lord Isladar merely smiled and shook his head. It was clear that his understanding of the heart of the element had not dimmed with time; he spoke with his voice, and without apparent effort.

"She is my charge," he replied evenly.

"And have you been so careful with her?"

"As careful, it appears, as you yourself have been with yours, Lord Ishavriel," he replied, showing a hint of a smile—a Kialli smile, "I have Anya. And perhaps it is best that things remain as they are."

"Yes, Ishavriel. You've dropped the leash of the mage, and she runs too wild for the Lord's liking." Etridian paused. "And too wild for ours. Isladar's keep destroyed a Kialli Lord or two who had grown careless." He shrugged. "Your charge destroyed the pentagram that anchored the gate. The Lord caught and held the spell, but it was a test of His power. I am surprised you did not feel His anger in the South."

"She has not been destroyed," Ishavriel replied, forced to defend the most cherished of his discoveries. Forced, in fact, to retreat from his attack on Isladar's.

Kiriel was almost the pastime of choice for Lord Ishavriel in the lull between the battles of the Hells and the war that was— finally—to start in earnest.

"No." Before Isladar could gain advantage from Etridian's words, Etridian added, "And perhaps we should not be surprised. There is some precedent. Isladar has shown a surprising inability to rein in his bastard, and she is still indulged."

Alcrax snarled. "She is worse than indulged. The Lord has broken His covenant. He has handed her power, where all others are forced to prove their worthiness by earning it."

"Which, in most cases means a simple baring of tooth and claw." Isladar's correction was cool. "If power is defined by the struggle, she will earn her place. And if it is defined merely by killing, she has already earned it."

"We will never find out, will we? He has given her power."

"He has done the unthinkable: He has weakened Himself. His power is not what it was, and hers is not what His was. The extent of her ability to control what she now wears has not been tested. We will," Isladar said softly, the sudden narrowing of his eyes a signal, "find out. If the Lord's work is ever completed. What, Lord Ishavriel, was the mage thinking?"

"How can anyone know, with Anya?" Before he could be attacked for such an admission, he lifted a hand; ice swirled around it, drawing blood to the surface of skin without breaking it. Thus, the discourse of kinlords. "You have her, Isladar, has she not spoken with you?"

"I have her in a protected place. As you are all well aware, I am capable of protecting sleeping mortals." He shrugged. "She has not finished with the human fevers; she will either perish or survive. The words she has spoken, as often happens at such times, make little sense. Can she truly see the color of words? Can she taste them?"

Unspoken, the words hovered. Is this the creature upon whom the success of the Hells gate rests? And more, Is this creature truly the prize of your collection?

Lord Ishavriel was furious. He forced the fury back, but the winds buffeted him a moment before he gained, and held, his footing. Hard to concentrate here.

Isladar's face betrayed nothing; no hint of satisfaction, no amusement, nothing.

Still, there was a contest here, as there had so often been contests in the parliaments, hidden but deadly. The perfect game for Ishavriel and Isladar to play so casually.

Nugratz, wings stretched from tip to tip, was nonetheless uncomfortable enough in the element that he did not attempt to speak. Flight was his strength, but the air in the Hells was not as wild—could never be as wild—as this.

"Ishavriel," Etridian said, his arms stiff as he, too, fought the battle of wild air. "The question. Why did the mage breach the pentagram?"

"She was tired. I was gone. She was, I believe, 'bored' with standing." He turned a moment to Isladar, and said coldly, "I will have her back."

"If I so choose."

"You go too far, Isladar."

Etridian shrugged. "The question, Ishavriel."

He had no desire to answer it. "I have not spoken with her, Etridian. I do not have an answer."

"And you understand her so little you cannot surmise?"

"I assume she wanted a chair. She was told—by Vantinir, the human Northerner—that a chair would disturb the gate; that she was not to bring anything but rock and herself to the pentagram.

"From the spells at my disposal in her quarters—and they are few, as she tolerates so little—I surmise that she took him at his word, returned to her rooms, and removed the stretch of the wall that contained the throne. I admit my surprise that the Shining Palace itself survived." He paused a moment, then added, "She was wise enough to ask permission to shape the rock; she received it."

"And how long will it take before the gate is fully restored?"

"How long will it take for Anya to either escape or succumb to the fevers? There is a reason that we have allowed her her existence here, Etridian. The gate cannot remain anchored—could not have been opened—without her."

"The Lord's power was not what it is now."

"Then ask our Lord," Ishavriel said softly. "But as I said, He has not yet destroyed her, and He has destroyed two for failing him at the gate. We require her presence."

"So you say."

"If you wish it, challenge her. Unlike Kiriel, Anya has earned her rank, such as it is. She has power, and she has learned to wield it."

"To move a chair, and collapse the gate. The armies will be delayed."

"Perhaps you forget, Etridian, that I am a part of the Lord's Fist. I understand well the cost to the armies."

Assarak finally spoke. "While I find this discourse amusing, it is pointless. We do not have the luxury of a full parliament; we are bound by mortal time. If Anya a'Cooper was not destroyed for her part in the gate's… interruption, she is obviously necessary.

"And if Kiriel has not yet been destroyed, so much the better; she offered me challenge, and I will accept it at my leisure. If she lives that long. Isladar, is the mortal taint so strong in her that she will live—and die—in a limited span of years?"

Isladar did not reply. They knew the answer to the question. She was mortal; the god-born were all mortal. And she would live a shorter span of years than one who had never been graced by the blood of the Lord of Night. It was for that reason, among many, that Isladar was so poorly understood by the Generals; Kiriel had commanded his time and attention from birth, and there was so little to be gained for it.

"If you wish to discuss Kiriel, I am willing," Lord Isladar replied. "But it will take time."

Time caught in the pull of the angry, exultant wind. Assarak shrugged broadly. "I care little enough for your pet. Ishavriel's at least serves a useful function." His expression shifted; he dropped ten feet and shored himself up by dint of will and expenditure of power. "The war will be fought, and it will end; we will rule here. The Covenant, and the mantle, were never meant for the planes of earth." He smiled, the muscles of his face giving the expression the nuance of menace.

"Perhaps." Isladar looked up, lifting his head until his eyes were level with Ishavriel's. "Telkar ad'Ishavriel was killed in the streets of the Tor Leonne."

Ishavriel cursed, but quietly. Word traveled far too conveniently. "I was aware of this."

"I was not," Assarak said, speaking sharply. "Who killed him?"

"Humans."

"Mages?"

"No."

"Impossible."

"It was seen."

"And what of it?" Etridian broke in. "We have power now— perhaps it is time that we stop skulking in the pathetic shadows humanity casts. We will rule, but not by hiding. Not by waiting."

Isladar let his words fill the silence that was left between the cracks of the wind's roar. Then he said, quietly, "Mordagar. Arral. Saval. Verragar."

"What of them?"

"They are awake, courtesy of Telkar's inability to, as you say, skulk in pathetic human shadows."

"I did not hear their voices," Assarak replied.

"And they, no doubt, cannot yet hear ours; the distance is too great. But I have seen their light, and I have heard their voices. The Radann do not—not yet—know how to use them.

"In a day, it has become… interesting to be in the Tor Leonne."

"And what of the fifth?"

"Balagar was nowhere to be seen." His smile was soft. "But the Sun Sword is keening now. Listen, if you have occasion to approach the city."

"We need to kill the boy," Assarak said coldly.

"And," Etridian added, diverting attention from his failure in that regard, "the Radann. Isladar, tell the Tyr that the Radann must be destroyed."

"He is aware of this, Etridian. Our plans in that regard have been—"

"Now."

Isladar bowed his head.

But he did not, in fact, agree. Minutes passed as they discussed elements of lesser importance. But hours would not be wasted here: the air was too strong, and their own skills too atrophied, to remain long.

The air left Isladar last, swirling at his feet in such a leisurely fashion the edge of his robe seemed liquid to the eye. He bowed to it, offering what the others had not: a benediction. A gratitude. The wind's voice, here as in the desert, was strong. Much stronger than the earth's voice, although the earth did have a voice. Had he called it too weak for a parliament? Yes. And it was; but too weak and voiceless were not the same. The earth, beneath the surface of water and the force of air, was alive.

He bespoke it as the winds reluctantly let him go and his feet grazed the ice-covered surface. The shock of foot against living ground had dimmed with the passage of years. But he was Kialli, not human, and the passage of years had been slight enough to make little dent in the visceral reality of millennia in the Hells.

Millenia in a place that defied things merely physical, in a universe where sight, where sound, where sensation itself, was filtered through two things: The Lord and the damned.

The world enveloped him; the elements, slow to wake to his presence, now called him, faintly, by a name he had not used since before the beginning. The Hells were gone.

In a moment—less—he could be sent flying back to them; in the next moment, he could be called forth again. As if he and the rest of the Kialli were fragments of memory, hidden parts of their Lord's unknowable past. It was truth; he acknowledged it. He had always been the pragmatic Lord, in either universe.

When the air no longer held him, he whispered to its keening presence; it roared back, ice crystals skittering along the surface of his skin in the wake of its voice. He spoke again; air rippled the length of his arms, pulling at the cloth that surrounded them, snapping at the tips of his fingers in petulant demand.

He had raised Kiriel from birth with the help of a Southern slave. He knew what no other Kialli Lord had ever truly learned: How to deal well with petulance.

/ am called, he told the elemental wind, on all sides. You have taken the measure of my enemies and my allies. They watch me; they are cunning. And they listen. What they see does not concern me. What they hear does.

Carry the words away from them, if you can, and when the words are well away, we will destroy the mountain's peak.

He waited; the wind bit at his skin. On the odd occasion, it had drawn blood, but he had never angered the element enough to fight—to truly fight—for his life. Just as he had never angered his Lord.

Not enough.

The ground in the North was cold. The water above it, frozen and thick, had a more accessible voice. But water was not useful, not yet; earth was essential. He waited until the attention of air was elsewhere, and then channeled his power through ice and water and into the ground itself.

The ground answered," rumbling and slow. Here, there was anger and a desire for blood—or war, he could not be certain which. The voice of the earth was sluggish, slow, thick with the cold and the presence of water. He had wakened it over the past decade, calling softly, coming at regular intervals to stand in the same spot, by the mountain's foot, while he relived his first attempt to call the earth to heel.

He had been young then, but not so young that he thought power was a substitute for intelligence; he watched the success and the failure of others before he planned his own attack. Lord Isladar of the Kialli had always been capable of absorbing the lesson in another's failure. It was considered cowardice in the Hells; it had been considered prudence upon the plane.

He weathered both with the same ease.

You are known by what you choose to hate, and what you choose to love. If you wish to have no weaknesses, you will disdain either.

Truth, there. The fierce love that the Kialli had once been capable of had been winnowed by the Hells; their passion was in hatred, and it was considerable.

Ah. There. He lifted his head as the earth woke. Spoke to it, the syllables forming slowly, as if speech itself were fighting against his use.

The element spoke his name.

Isladar.

He replied. In that exchange of syllables, two hours passed. The rest came more easily.

The mortal.

He felt, rather than heard, the earth yield to his request. Ice cracked at his feet in a ring; it was pushed aside in shards so slowly one might have thought the earth had no power.

Until one saw the ground continue to rise beneath one's feet, the movement slow as glaciers, but as inexorable. He stirred a moment, the thrum of the earth's voice almost a comfort. Earth had been his first element because in all ways it was the hardest: it required, among other things, the patience that the Kialli, immortal each and every one, so often lacked.

Youth was here.

Memory.

And all identity was memory.

"Thank you," he said softly, in his own voice.

The earth replied; it split down the middle, falling in on itself as it crumbled away from a shape at its center. Prone, dusted in rock and rubble, it lay; he watched it only until he could discern the rise and fall that spoke of breath.

Then he walked to where it lay, prone, a thing carved of flesh, not earth, not air, not water. Lifting a gentle hard, he brushed the rockdust and dirt away from her face. There was familiarity in the gesture of comfort, and more; it surprised him. He had forced himself to it with Kiriel, learning, over the course of a decade and a half, to offer her the comfort she craved. It was a binding; he had created a need, or perhaps exploited one that already existed, as just another move in the long game. But as she had grown—and she grew so quickly—she had hidden the need for comfort from everyone but Ashaf. He should have been relieved.

Odd, that he was not. He did not lie to himself; he had never lied to himself. It served no useful purpose. But there were some truths that were slow to surface, slow to demand the attention. As his hands brushed the last of the dirt away from Anya's face, he acknowledged that, in his fashion, he missed the child Kiriel.

Anya a'Cooper was not that child, but there were similarities and echoes. Kiriel was not mad; he had seen to that with care. But she was vulnerable, powerful, and unpredictable. And she was, of course, mortal.

He did not touch Anya when she was conscious. None of the Kialli did, save Ishavriel; she had seen to that with an efficiency he admired.

In fact, the only person, with one notable exception, whom she had been physically affectionate toward had been Ashaf, Kiriel's nursemaid. The old woman, sun worn and careworn, had not returned that affection; she had managed, on a good day, to look at Anya a'Cooper with a tremulous pity, but no more, and that pity had only barely risen above her fear.

And what, in the end, was there not to fear? Anya a'Cooper was a law unto herself. She had more power than any human had ever possessed, with the possible exception of the mages of the Cities of Men, long dead, long taken by desert sand and sun, but she had no understanding of power itself. She had not struggled to hone it for the sake of supremacy, but rather, at the request of Lord Ishavriel, and when she was bored, she would often destroy the room she was taught in in a sudden flash of rage. She hated to be laughed at—and no Kialli Lord could deny her that weakness, it was so much their own—but what constituted being "laughed at" was a mystery to the Lords, for it often involved no malice, or even awareness, on their part.

The Lord had forbidden her death.

Isladar was not so certain that, had he remained completely neutral, Anya a'Cooper would not have survived. She had an animal cunning, a child's cunning, a vulnerability that shifted and turned into a strength.

She had no sense, and no ability to plan, but she was driven by a pain that the damned know, and few others. They could sense it, all of the Kialli who had served in the Hells for so long; pain was their speciality, their drug—as Lady Sariyel cleverly called it—of choice. It was their compulsion; it was the silk that was twined round the chains to take the edge off their bite when one pulled against them.

They therefore flocked to Anya a'Cooper's pain like moths to flame, and like moths, they were often consumed. Because, of course, no one who had harvested the damned could easily resist the desire to take up the challenge and inflict other pain, stronger pain, a pain that bore signature and name.

She didn't approve.

Yet she lived with the Kialli, not the humans. And the one friend she had at Court was the only other misfit: Kiriel, the Lord's child, the half-human godling who had been Isladar's keep.

Kiriel was allowed to touch Anya; Kiriel was the only denizen of the Shining City who had bitten Anya—albeit when she was a young child—and survived the act. Anya, twice Kiriel's age, had a sentimental weakness for children—one that her madness and her instability had not damaged, or rather, had not damaged in a way that was easily comprehended by Kialli.

She was their monster, for although she was powerful she did not desire power—but she was willing to risk her life in the contest, again and again. And what did she gain? Nothing. Anya desired affection. Love that she could trust.

What was trust to the kinlords?

What, he thought, was trust to anything alive?

Anya a'Cooper was not, in any appreciable way, intelligent— but she had that low animal cunning that is far more important than things intellectual for survival. She had walked through the fires. Although she desired love and affection, she knew better than to believe in either.

That was the mortal trap. He admired it. As a way of inflicting pain, it was long and slow, and so very few of the kinlords understood its appeal for that reason.

The kinlord brushed her skin clear of the last of the dirt; he took one long look at her face, and then bowed.

"Anya," he said. When she did not stir, he infused her name with just a hint of power. "Anya."

It was a calculated risk. Anya a'Cooper could smell magic almost before it was summoned, and she considered all magic her province; she was willing to share with Lord Ishavriel, and she never went against a dictate of their Lord. When, that is, she understood them.

Her eyes snapped open, sleep shattering like dropped glass.

"Anya," he said, wiping his voice clear of even the echo of power. He bowed.

"Was I under the dirt?" she asked. "Did you think I was dead? Did you bury me?" She was on her feet before she'd finished the sentence. That, she'd learned in the Hells.

His bow deepened. Her voice had the high, sing-song lilt that spoke of, that meant, death. "You were indeed beneath the surface of the earth. You were not dead, no—but, Anya, Lord Ishavriel has taught you of the dangers of using too much power. You were nearly consumed by the fevers."

"Lord Ishavriel," she said smartly, "also says there's no such thing as too much power. And what does that have to do with being buried?"

"The fevers were strong enough to last two days. You are in the Shining Court. Lord Ishavriel was not here to protect you. I apologize if I've offended you, Anya, but I had to put you somewhere safe. The other kinlords would not see you beneath the surface of the earth."

Her eyes were narrow as a blade's edge. He met them, unblinking. It was important, with Anya, to meet her eyes when one offered her a truth that one hoped would prevent her from entering the black rages that meant death.

"Where," she asked softly, "was Lord Ishavriel?"

"Anya, you know this already. He did not run; he did not desert you. Did he not tell you that the Lord had sent him South?"

She was momentarily nonplussed; her forehead creased. "Oh," she said at last. "You're right. I forgot. South where?"

"In the Dominion," he replied. "The Dominion of Annagar."

"Did he tell me why he was going?"

"I'm sorry, Anya, but I do not know that. He is a kinlord, as am I; we seldom share each other's plans."

Her eyes narrowed again. "You don't like him, do you?"

"No," he replied. "Nor he, I. The kinlords do not like each other. It is not what we do." He had had this conversation with Anya before, but it was never wise to refuse to answer her questions.

"Where is Ishavriel now?"

"He has returned to the Shining City, but he cannot remain here long." He bowed again. "I told the earth that you no longer needed protection while your Lord was present." He paused. Turned from her. Spoke quietly. "Lord Ishavriel had no desire to leave you behind, Anya, but you are needed here, and he is needed in the South. He works a great magic there, and it is important that it succeed."

"When will he be finished?"

"He will finish his work after the Festival." He could almost hear the sudden shift in her expression.

"What Festival?"

"Ah, I forgot that you have not made a study of the Dominion." He turned to face her again. "In Annagar, there are two Festivals every year. One is called the Festival of the Sun, the other, the Festival of the Moon. It is the Festival of the Moon that is important to Lord Ishavriel.

"He is at the very heart of the Dominion, in the city called the Tor Leonne. On Festival Night, all of the people in Annagar are allowed freedom from their fears. They wear masks, they dance or sing—or sometimes fight—in the streets of their cities, they speak to each other freely, regardless of who is lord and who is slave; the masks prevent them from knowing. They drink wine, they eat all manner of food, they sing, or are sung to, and the mages create bright lights and beautiful displays in which to celebrate the rising of the Moon.

"In the South, they believe that the Moon is the face of the Lady, and they pray to the Lady."

"I went to Festival once," she said, her eyes wide, her expression soft and distant. "I went with my father to Averalaan. It was the Kings' Challenge. There were so many people I could hardly move or breathe. I didn't like that part." Her hands curled into fists; those fists began a dance and jab in the air. "But I liked the music—there were bards, real bards, from Senniel College. And I liked the food.

She cocked her head to one side. "Do you think if I ask him, he'll let me go?"

"I do not know Lord Ishavriel well enough to say that, Anya. You must ask him."

She smiled brightly. "I will." The smile fell. "Or I won't. If I ask him, and he says yes, then we'll have fun! But if I ask him, and he says no, then I'll be sad. I don't like to be sad, Isladar. It makes me angry.

"But I haven't been to a Festival for years and years and why won't he take me?"

"You are needed here, Anya. The gate is not—not yet—stable enough. Or large enough. No one else can do what you can do."

She was pleased by the words, but her pleasure was only a shade less dangerous than her anger. "Well, then, maybe I'll have to stay. Or maybe I'll go. Don't tell him that you told me."

No danger, of course, of that.

"I might go and surprise him. He'll be happy to see me! Or maybe he won't. Did you say that everyone wears a mask? I'll wear a mask. Then no one will recognize me. Tell me again, when is the night?"

"It is," he said softly, "thirteen days hence, on the twenty-second night of the month the Northerners call Scaral."

"That's Scarran, isn't it?"

"Yes, Anya."

"Don't you tell him," she said. "Don't you tell him that you told me. I don't want him to tell me I can't go. Don't tell the Lord, either, okay?" She clapped with glee, bouncing against the surface of exposed dirt. Then she grabbed the edges of her dress, pulled them to a comfortable height above the ice, and began to run toward the city.

He watched her go, wondering idly what would come to pass in the very near future. With Anya, as with Kiriel, it was often hard to tell—and as with Kiriel, so many of his plans depended on her actions.

10th of Scaral, 427 AA

Evereve

Long, narrow halls opened up before her, ceilings as high as any five members of her den standing foot upon shoulder—although it looked a good deal more stable. But where gold and crystal, opal and diamond, splashes of gaudy colors that the Empire's current crop of artists would have disdained to call paintings, adorned and obscured the walls in the halls that Avandar had marked, these were austere.

Rising from ground to roof, obscured in the wells of shadow there, were long, slender columns, like perfect stone trees. She wandered among them, thinking of the Common's trees, feeling— in the vast expanse of empty, dusty space—the hint of movement, of bustle, of conversation that once might have graced these halls as they did the market grounds. Gargoyles crouched at the heights of the columns, almost like pigeons nestled in branches.

Although she didn't spend as much time looking at it, the floor was stone as well; old stone, not marble, not the flat wide planks of polished wood she was used to.

There were no windows, of course. No room, no hall, no place in this vast expanse of underground terrain, let in a light that was not artifice, not pretense. She hated it. Although everything else here spoke of wealth, windows and glass were the things that she had most admired about the Terafin manse when compared with her early life; the shadows, the darkness, the lack of those things reminded her of her early poverty.

Different, to stand out in the street, hand out, begging for aid against cold and rain and wind, against heat and sun. But to stand, observing all those things and separated from them by a thin sheet of glass, held in place by lead bars, cut by masters who understood the nature of crystal: that was wealth. Power. Freedom.

There was none of that here.

This hall, and the halls before it, defied the light, and the power they spoke of was a power that had no voice to speak to her, although she'd learned with time that that type of power could still kill.

The Winter King.

The words meant nothing to Jewel.

They meant more than nothing to Avandar, and judging by the minute changes in his studied neutrality, she guessed their meaning was worse, and not better, than nothing.

"It does not concern you, Jewel," he'd said.

And she accepted that.

Which was why she knew she was dreaming.

It was almost worse to be here in her sleep than in some physical reality; she could not be certain of anything she saw, but she knew that something about this hall, these visions, these thoughts must be significant. The problem with dreams, and the quests one undertook in that state, was that after they were over she had to take every little detail and thresh it, looking for the one or two things that had meaning for her.

One of the gargoyles took wing.

She swore, pressing her lips into a thin line to keep the words from escaping. She had no desire to be made a meal of; even though it wasn't permanent, dream-pain had the ability to scar in places only she could see.

Another took wing. Another. Up ahead, above the fine, hard lines of vaulted arch, they were flying in lazy circles, like giant cats with wings. And maybe fangs; hard to say at this distance, and she didn't particularly want to be enlightened.

Dreaming visions were nothing like nightmare, but they had one thing in common: they could turn, at the step of a foot, into something far darker than they had been seconds earlier. She wasn't particularly worried, though; not yet. Her nightmares were always brutish and obvious; they involved death; she had never dreamed of her own death yet, and she was alone.

Then the gargoyles landed.

The columns in the hall, she realized, must be much, much taller than they looked—hard to imagine, given the way her neck bent in half when she managed to get a decent view of what was at their height. But the gargoyles were about as large as small horses.

There were three. They sat on their haunches, like the aforementioned cats with wings, taking turns licking their forepaws or the tips of their pinions.

I hate my dreams, she thought, as she approached them. One was white alabaster, one was black, like onyx without the shine, and one was stone-gray. As one creature they spoke, their voices a blend of tones, harsh and soft, that somehow managed to sound as if they belonged together.

"We know where you're going," they said. Jewel had never liked cats all that much; Finch liked 'em and Teller—inexplicably— loved them and even owned two, but she had consistently failed to see the charm in a creature who didn't do what it was told, destroyed a day of good work by lifting its leg and pissing in the wrong place because you weren't paying it enough attention, and took small chunks out of your face in the morning if you happened—horrors—to forget to feed it "on time."

Some of that affection worked its way to the surface.

"What," the onyx creature said, "you'd rather own something stupid that drools like a madman and thinks like an imbecile?" It turned its head to its companion. "I don't think," it said coolly, "that she is at all suitable."

"Well," the white one said, "you know what his orders were."

"But what if she just fell off our backs? It wouldn't be our fault if she couldn't hold on."

I really hate my dreams. "Look, guys, I'd like to sit here and listen to you argue all day," as much as I'd like to get my liver removed and boiled in oil, "but I probably only have a few minutes of dreamtime left, and I get the impression that you don't want to waste it."

The black cat hissed. The white cat hissed as well, but the tonal difference between the two made it clear that one was chuckling and one was, well, complaining.

The gray cat spoke for the first time. "Have you met us before?"

She started to say no. Stopped. "I… I don't know," she offered at last.

"And you say we're wasting time," the black cat cut in. "Does it always take you this long to think!"

She was not going to spend time arguing with a cat. Not even if it spoke, had wings, and was part of a vision that was probably necessary, as she rarely had ones that weren't. "What do you guys want?"

"Well," the white cat said, folding its wings and preening, "you, lucky mortal, get to choose one of us to take you to the end of the hall."

"My feet will… oh, never mind." The hallway stretched on into a darkness that somehow suggested forever.

The white cat snickered, the sound like the scrape of rough rock against smooth. "You are lucky," he said softly, "that we made him angry and he turned us to stone. We used to get hungrier."

The black cat sniffed. "But we were never desperate enough to eat something as unappetizing as you."

"True, true. But we did—"

"Look, can we get going?" She walked over to the gray stone cat that sat, catlike but blessedly silent, between the white and the black. "Ummm," she said after a minute of staring at the tines—for want of a better word—of his decidedly unairworthy wings, "how do I get up?"

The wings came out, folding neatly to avoid knocking her off her feet. They did not fold nearly as neatly or as gracefully when they approached the cats to either side; both snarled as they were swept back, knocked off haunches that probably weighed more than Arann did. "Well," it said, as their shoulders bunched rather dangerously, and in unison, "you shouldn't sit so close to me." She managed to jump up on the spot between its pinions, tucking her legs around its neck, before it lunged up into air, narrowly avoiding the two cats that were still earthbound.

She could feel it snickering.

Great, she thought. She felt the wind rush by her, throwing her hair back in great bunches that, in the waking world, would then be tangled for weeks. Shouting against the wind, she said, "Where are we going?"

The wind served the gargoyle. He said, catlike but suddenly profoundly serious, "To see the Winter King."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She wasn't certain what to expect.

Anyone, King, Queen, noble, anyone who owned three quarrelsome gargoyles like these and actually got useful work out of them had to be two things at once. The first, very powerful, the second, extraordinarily indulgent.

No wait, she thought, as she closed her knees around the girth of ungiving stone, this is the dream. Lord knows what they represent, but it's probably something obvious.

The cat hissed to itself; she was fairly certain the hissing was an amused one. The wind went rushing past her face, carrying flurries of leaves at such speeds she was left with the impression of their colors and their textures—dry and sharp—rather than any distinct image. Here, they were silver, shining as they caught a light that was neither sun nor moon, but present, for all that she couldn't pinpoint its source. As the creature flew on, the leaves changed, becoming sharper again, but brighter and warmer: gold, and in handfuls enough that she almost—almost—reached out to touch one.

But the winds that howled and carried them, as if they were angry words, also harried the cat; she held tight, the temptation never stronger than mild.

"It's never wise to fly above the forest," the cat said; wind carried his words in a tumble that fell into place only after the leaves had been blown from her hair.

"Is walking any better?"

"What?"

"Is walking any better? "

He laughed, a dry coughing that mingled with sibilance and the sound of grinding stone. "It depends on what you want. But it makes the forest less angry, and the wind less bitter."

" We could walk! "

"It would take far longer than you have, and longer than would please my master."

She would have let him know how much she cared about pleasing his master, but the leaves came again, thick as rain, and this time they stung and scratched, thin, curled slivers of ice.

"Not ice," the cat whispered, catlike in its astonishment at her stupidity. "Look at how they catch light."

She didn't. She'd covered her eyes by shoving her face as close to stone as it could go. But when the leaves had passed by, drawing blood on the surface of her hands, the sides of her cheeks, she looked over her shoulder and saw them glinting with color. Diamond.

I've read this story.

"Stories start somewhere, and they have power at their roots, even when their trunks are long gone."

The leaves came again, and again, but there was no third time; the winds broke as suddenly as if invisible doors and windows in the sky had been firmly and completely shut. The edge of the forest was beneath them; she saw the creature's shadow become a flat, perfect patch as it cleared the jagged tops of glittering trees and landed at last.

For the first time since the journey began, the wind didn't take her words and whip them away; the vision did. There was something that looked like a palace might look if an artist had chosen to take paint and palette and brush to it and give it an otherworldly, ethereal beauty. Spires rose, so slender and tall Jewel wondered if a single person could fit within the rounded curve of its wall. The bricks—it had to be brick, although she thought at this distance it looked translucent—were white and blue and pale, pale gray. A flag flew, but no birds; there was a silence to the whole that felt like sleep.

Or death.

"There is no way," Jewel said softly, "that you live there."

"Of course not," the creature replied. "Do I look like an idiot? That is a people place. A place for crippled creatures that have only two legs and no wings."

"Oh, right. Sorry."

He batted her almost playfully with a paw.

Unfortunately, his paw was made of solid stone. She went rolling along the ground, colliding with the slender stalks of grass and small-blossomed wildflowers that marked the edge of the forest. It was going to take her days to get the flotsam and jetsam out of her hair.

No, it wasn't. This was the dream and the vision.

But it was peculiar. As she progressed, it grew solid, more real than most sleeping visions were.

"Of course," the gargoyle said, licking a stone paw with a stone tongue and waiting while she brushed herself clean. "You are in his domain now."

She shrugged.

"You aren't afraid, are you?"

"No."

Pause. "You aren't?"

"No one could have a servant like you and be all that terrifying."

The gargoyle hissed, but this time she was ready; she stepped to one side and let its paw float harmlessly past.

"I guess you wait here." Jewel started toward the bridge that seemed surrounded by a glistening fog.

"I can go where I please," the creature said, pacing her. "Not like mortals."

She frowned. "Are there mortals here?"

"Not anymore," the creature said. "They used to come all the time. They whined and sniveled. They kept us awake with their crying and screaming." He shrugged. "We killed the ones we could catch. She killed the rest, if they were lucky."

Jewel stopped walking.

"Who is 'She'?"

The look of surprise on the creature's stone face was almost comical. The look of momentary fear as its great head swung from side to side in a frantic attempt to make certain she hadn't been overheard was less amusing. "Don't say that," he hissed.

"Don't say what?"

"Not even as a. joke."

"What was funny?"

"Nothing. Come. We're late."

"But I asked you a—"

The cat stepped on her foot. It hurt.

"Little human," he said, his voice quiet and gravelly, "the Winter King is sometimes merciful and sometimes forgiving; he has been known to forget. But the Winter Queen forgives nothing, forgets nothing, and knows no mercy. If her servants were to hear you now, you would never leave here."

"I'm not here," Jewel replied.

"And you are. There are ways to trap the sleeping. There are ways to trap the dreamers who don't know enough to stay inside of their own dreams." The rise and fall of the feline syllables was almost soothing. The words certainly weren't.

"Why exactly am I here?" Jewel said.

The creature turned to her, and then said, in a voice that was as deep as any she had yet heard it use, "Watch. Listen." and the gargoyle roared.

The grass bowed before the voice of the beast; the flowers bent and gave off petals. This she noticed in a glance, no more, as she raised her hands automatically to defend her ears.

But she stopped; the roar died, and the unnatural wind that had followed it died with it, allowing the flattened grass to slowly unbend.

Across the stretch of field, the castle proved her wrong: It was made of glass, not brick.

And cracks and fissures had opened along the walls, from the ground to the tip of the highest spire. The flag, as pale in color as glass, toppled groundward. Great, curved sheets, beautiful in the light that she suddenly realized—as one did in dreams—was sunset, began to fall.

There was a music to the crash of glass, a display of light as sharp edges deflected pink sky that was not unlike fireworks. But save for that, it was eerily silent.

"Was it empty?" she asked, minutes later, when the glass itself was only expensive—and dangerous—rubble.

"No. Come." He began to walk, and she followed, placing her feet where he had placed his before she realized that glass probably wasn't going to do that much harm to stone pads.

He led her through the debris until he reached something that still stood: Four pillars of gold. In their center, on a throne that was, as the palace had been, of exquisite glass, sat what was left of a man.

He had died, she thought, a hundred years past. His face—for she was certain it was a man's face, and she accepted this certainty for what it was—was shriveled skin over a very fine skull, a wide jaw, sunken eyes. Armor encased it, and the armor, like the castle, was a thing of glass—of perhaps ice. The sword that hung loose and touched floor wasn't made of glass or ice, at least not as far she she could tell; it remained sheathed. As she approached the corpse, she felt the cold.

Winter King.

"Master," the cat said, in a voice unlike any she would have thought to attribute to a cat. "I brought her." And the corpse opened its eyes.

She stifled a scream. It was a near thing, and part of what helped her was the regard of the giant cat. She had a feeling—if something as sharp as a weaponsmith's dagger could be called a feeling— that fear, or more precisely, terror was something that must not be shown in front of that cat.

"I can smell it, you know," the cat said conversationally.

"Shut up," she replied, batting it with the flat of her palm. It lifted a paw to return the blow, but the not-corpse on the chair sat up, hands falling to the smooth, clear rests beneath his palms.

Had she thought that glass was the symbol of wealth and power? It was here in abundance: Beneath his feet. At his back, over his head, beneath his lap. But it lay in shards as far as her eye could see; in sheets that would make windows Terafin could only dream of, if they dreamed that large. She recalled the glassworker as a practical man, but also a highly paid one. Wondered why such mundane details returned to trouble her, or perhaps comfort her, here. She was certain, surrounded by the demise of more than he could dream possible, the glassworker would have been weeping.

The man on the throne still looked dead, although his eyes— from the single glance she gave them—were very much the eyes of the living. His lips, flesh dried almost to nonexistence, moved slightly over teeth that still managed to retain their hold in his jawbone. A smile? Hard to tell.

Jewel knew etiquette. She had learned it, with great pain, at Avandar's hands. Had learned some very little of it at Ellerson's, years and years ago. It was Ellerson's etiquette she chose to use now, by instinct: the bow of a complete nonentity in the presence of royalty.

She would have felt better about it if the cat had been elsewhere. Although it pained her to admit it—even to herself as there was no power on earth that could force her to admit it where the cat could hear it—she hated the loss of dignity being near-splayed out on knees and hands, with forehead almost pressed into the ground, usually caused. And to lose that dignity in front of a cat who was going to sit on his haunches and offer the respect of mere silence—well, it was galling. She hated cats.

"Rise," the Winter King said.

His voice should have been paper thin; it was not. It was strong and full, the voice of an older man at the peak of his powers. Not a youth, never that; he had a voice that measure for measure matched Avandar's.

Great. I'm thinking about Avandar's voice. Cormaris, she thought, invoking the God of Wisdom, I could use a little help.

On the other hand, she was pleased enough to follow what was definitely a command.

"How come you to be here?" he asked. "This is the Winter land, and you are unhunted, your name unrevealed; the dogs do not howl and the cats—my cats, not hers—do not shadow your flight across the broken ground."

He rose. She had been afraid he would do that.

His shadow fell directly across her face, and in its darkness, the age that she had mistaken for death vanished. She met eyes of a startling shade; they were blue, shot though with a silver that seemed to shine like glass. He was tall; the shadows filled out his armor, and the sword that girded him no longer seemed a relic for grave robbers to drool over.

She preferred the shadows here, to the light.

"You see much," he said, although she hadn't spoken out loud.

She wanted to say something flippant; that was how she dealt with authority that made her nervous. But the words felt wrong, and she couldn't force herself to utter them. She swallowed and nodded instead.

"I have not seen another mortal in centuries. In millennia." He stepped toward her, and as long as she stayed within the confines of his cast shadow, he seemed more and more human. It occurred to her that this was dangerous.

"My appointed time has come, and it has passed; does she not remember her quest and her oath?"

"The Winter Queen," Jewel said, answering the question she was about to ask.

"Indeed," he replied softly. "I had thought, when I first woke, that she had finally come to keep her oath. But when I searched my realms, they were empty of all save a dream of you. And I know my dreams, little one. They are all I have now. You, I have never seen in the flesh."

She shook her head. "I'm sure I'd remember…"

"Do you live in the waking world?"

She nodded.

"And you are under the mountains, in the vastness of the Stone Deepings."

"I'm—I'm not sure where I am. I didn't see an entrance, and I haven't found an exit."

"There was one," he said. "But millennia ago, it was taken by magical force; sealed. I thought the mage foolish indeed who would attempt to deprive the Queen of her retreat. But I have since discovered that the fool was not he." His eyes became all reflected light, and she knew it was steel, not glass, that lay beneath the glow. "From the mortal world I was riven; from all worlds."

"Could mortals… reach you here before the—the mage?"

"None," he said, "save those I or my Queen invited. They were foolish, of course; but I do not judge them harshly. They have paid with their lives, and the eternity they were foolish enough to wish for. And I? I have paid. But I have not paid the promised price.

"I am the Winter King," he said. "But there has been no Summer King to succeed me, and I fear, no Summer Queen."

Jewel was silent. The weight of his earlier words had finally settled. "What… promised price has the Winter Queen not paid you?"

His smile was grim indeed. "I was a hunter, little girl."

"She's not very little," the cat said conversationally. He sidled over to the Winter King, and a gloved hand reached down and began to stroke stone head. "She is older for a human, not a half-child. She might be stringy."

"You'll never know," Jewel snapped back. "Because you'll never get the chance to eat me."

The cat hissed and raised a paw. Jewel raised a fist—which, given the circumstances, was stupid, as she knew if she hit the cat all that would happen was the sacrifice of a few layers of skin, all of them hers.

"Peace," the Winter King said. "Girl, can you travel in your waking world?"

"I'd better be able to travel."

"And which god claims you?"

"Pardon?"

"Which god protects you?" The lines of his brow creased; his eyes narrowed. He spoke more slowly, as if the words were meant for an imbecile. "Who do you serve?"

"I—I don't think things work the same way they did the last time you lived on the outside."

"Oh?"

"The gods don't claim anyone. If we choose, we follow their suggestions, and in the end, if we've learned enough in this life, Mandaros lets us pass through His Halls rather than sending us back to learn more."

"If you choose?" the Winter King said. "And are you from the Cities of Man, then, that you can be so bold?" His head rose and fell as he examined her carefully. "You are dressed like a slave," he said at last, "and not a finely trained slave at that. You do not smell of magic or magery, but I sense a depth of power in you that might be trained. In the Cities of Man, you might find freedom if you are canny."

"I—I'm sorry," she said, because she suddenly was. "But I don't know what the Cities of Man are. I come from a city on the coast that two Kings rule. They're god-born, so there are no wars for succession."

"And where do their parents reside?"

"They live in the heavens, or wherever it is gods live."

The silence was long and cold. And into it, not disturbing it in the least, were intimations of a different mortality. Jewel thought of Henden, and Allasakar, and what Meralonne had said about the time before the fall of Vexusa. The gods walked.

The Winter King returned to his throne and sat there, stiffly.

"I came," he said, "from the Cities of Man. From Tor Haval. I was a man of power and rank, and the Winter Queen paid court to me. She offered me my desire and her power, and made clear that the reign was to be for the Winter and the Winter alone."

"And at the end of the Winter?"

"It was not a mortal Winter, not that small a time, but at the end—at the end, she would take from me my life, in the Hunt, the full Hunt, if she could. And if she could not, she would release me to the world without, all knowledge and all memory intact. I asked her how many of her consorts had survived the reign and the Hunt, and she smiled, and her smile—" His expression was lost to memory, and in the shadows, he was handsome. He was young.

"Her smile was so very cold. It was answer enough. 'I will not come for you in Summer,' she said, 'I do not choose the strongest for the Summer Court. Mortals are the Winter Kings.' I came. I wanted her, and I wanted the challenge of the fight that she offered at the end. These," he said, lifting a hand, and pointing at the gray gargoyle that now stood at such perfect attention it might well have been a statue, "were my masterpiece, the making unencumbered by the least of her influence. They are undefeated, although they have never been tested against her."

He was silent. His silence was intense, awkward, disturbing.

At last, Jewel said softly, "I don't know who the Winter Queen is."

The cat hissed.

The man, frozen, said nothing for a long time. When he did speak, he said, "The gods are not dead."

"No."

"Then she is not dead. But she is Winter, and the Hunt is the most terrifying thing you could ever see. The most beautiful. She brings the Winter with her; the shadows and the promise of eternal ice. She rides with her host, She hunts with her beasts; She is undeniable, inevitable. If she hunted at all, you would know it, you would know of it. Your world—it must be so pale and so lacking in wonder.

"I should have known, when she did not come, that there had been changes we had never dreamed of."

She started to answer. Stopped. Thought about a palace of glass and a cat with stone wings, about pillars of stone with branches that grew into great, solid arches at their heights, about leaves of silver, gold, and diamond. About the wild, wild magic that seemed to glimmer beneath the transparent surface of everything she could see in the room, both standing wall and the ruined shards beyond.

"Lacking in wonder, yes," she said, thinking of what it must have been like to live in the age of gods. Thinking, and knowing. "But not in life. Not in justice."

"And you are then one of those who would trade beauty for safety." He did not keep the chill contempt from his words. The answer was obvious enough.

"You chose beauty. Live with it," Jewel said, and turned to walk away.

His laughter stopped her. It was, indeed, beautiful. "Well played, well played, little mortal. That would have cost your life in another time, on another day."

"You want something from me."

"Yes."

"I'm a merchant. I know when to walk and when to talk. You want to talk? I'd suggest a little change in attitude."

"You have dreamed of my Lady," he said. "I can feel it in the words you can't even think of saying."

"You know what I've been dreaming?"

"You are dreaming now, and you are in my lands, and I know what is thought in my lands if I bend my mind to it. I do not know the whole of the dream, but the dream itself has the taint of truth to it. I will not believe the Winter Queen dead.

"And if she is not dead, you will take three things to her, and a fourth will come, and you will remind her of her oath. Tell her that the way has been opened just enough that if her hunters are competent and not the fools they once were, they will be able to find it."

"I think I'll reword that, if you don't mind."

He laughed. "As you please. The night of the Hunt is coming. It is coming. The host will ride." He laughed, yes, and the sound would define laughter for years, it echoed so deeply inside. As if her ears had trapped it, hoarding it for memory. "I will gift you, child, if you will carry this message."

"With what? If I guess right, you'll be dead."

The cat hissed. Loudly.

The man did not blink. "With the Summer Queen," he said. "For the Summer Queen and the Winter are two very different creatures, different sides of the same coin." He rose. "There is a man who is calling your name. He calls it loudly, and he stoops to magic." His expression changed. "It is a familiar magic. I would ask you to kill him, but I fear that you will never find my Lady if he is dead.

"Go." The shadows left his face in a rush. The life left it; he was skeleton once more, strewn like a corpse in a glass throne that sat in the center of four golden pillars. Trapped here, and aware of it.

She nodded.

The cat said, "Only do this, and we will be grateful."

Jewel waited until they had left the presence of the Winter King before turning to the cat and saying, "And that would be helpful how?"

He didn't have time to answer; he disappeared in a flash of blinding, painful light. She cried out; the pain stopped.

Avandar Gallais sat beside her, in her bed, one hand on either shoulder. She could see the traces of magic, wound tight around those hands like multihued, delicate nets.

"Let go," she whispered, as his eyes widened.

He did as she bid—rare, but beside the point.

She fell backward. Felt something dig into her skull. Rising swiftly, she walked to the oval mirror that was one of her few prides. The glass, silvered so perfectly, had been a gift from the Terafin. Reflected there, she could see quite clearly in the tangled mess of hair it would take hours to comb out, if it could be tamed at all without judicious clipping, three leaves. One was silver. One was gold. And one, of course, was diamond.

"Wait!"

He was halfway across a room that seemed suddenly too small before her word bit him. He turned, his expression dark. He was, of all things, angry. "I have a matter to attend to, Jewel."

"No, you don't."

Shock robbed him of words for a moment, and she took that moment, leaving dignity behind, to do the run around him and end up in front of the room's only exit.

"Do you know what those leaves mean?" he asked her, his voice almost as cold as her memory of the Winter King's.

"Better than you think. Probably better than you'd like."

"Jewel, let us have this conversation after I've seen to the defense of my citadel."

"No."

His smile was chill. She wondered if the mountains themselves held some taint of Winter; she could not remember Avandar's expression ever being so frosty at home, although he had never been a warm man. "You will not tell me what to do in my own domain."

"I will," she replied evenly, "Domicis."

The slightly crimson tinge to his skin paled. She watched, unblinking; she had his attention now and she wasn't going to let go. Tenacity wasn't her middle name, but back when they named children for stupid character traits, it would have been a good bet.

"You don't understand," he said softly. "Those leaves—"

"They came from the forest of the Winter King."

He closed his eyes. "Yes."

"He's still there, Avandar."

"He will always be there."

"He won't. She'll hunt him. I get the impression that something you did," she added, without bothering to take the accusation out

of her voice, "prevented the Winter Queen from actually finding him."

"And from hunting him, and sacrificing him. He should have been grateful."

"Avandar."

"You do not understand, Jewel. The Winter King isn't just a man, isn't even a man imbued with the powers she grants. He's an aspect. The man who speaks—and I assume that was the nature of the dream that held you—is a servant to the aspect, not its master; he sacrificed the essence of his mortality when he agreed to become the consort to the Winter Queen. He could no more walk these roads than the gods could, not now."

"He's trapped there."

"Yes. Whether or not he is given reign of these lands. These… were not his. But they are on the true road, and had they been what they were before I… stumbled across them… they would have led to him. And to her."

"We have to free him," she said.

"Everything is simple for you. Do you not understand? She will choose another to take his place. He will be what he was; the geas laid by the title itself is more powerful than the force of a merely human life. Free this human, as you desire to do, and she will merely find another to take his place, and another after his death, and another. There will be a stream of sacrifice.

"Let this man remain upon his empty throne, and there will be no further deaths."

She hated choices like this one. Hated them. But she didn't move out of his way.

"Jewel," he said, using the most persuasive tone he had— which, given his general imperious arrogance, wasn't all that impressive. "He can't hurt me. There is nothing at all that he can do to injure me. But you are vulnerable. Do you think she chose the kind, the just, the honorable, as her Winter Consort? She chose the hunters. She chose the powerful. She chose the merciless. You offer this… man… a kindness that he would despise.

"And I will not have him take advantage of you. I will not have his magic go where—"

"Where yours can't?" She lifted her wrist, exposing the scarlet S.

"Jewel—"

"We need to do this," she said softly.

He caught her face in his hands, cupping it and pulling it up before she could move. She saw his eyes flare; orange light, and green, and a hint of white, swirling just at the edges: magic. She held her ground, but it was difficult; his grip was strong enough—she was certain it was unintentionally so by the look of concentration on his face—that she clung to the ground by the balls of her feet.

"Very well," he said at last, lowering her. "You are not en-spelled. This is merely your usual foolishness."

"No," she said, and she was certain, suddenly, that it wasn't.

Years had given him the key to her tone of voice. His eyes narrowed.

"He offered mea gift."

"You refused it, of course."

"He offered to give me this gift after we'd given him what he desired."

"And his desire?"

"Just the Hunt," she said softly. "Just the Hunt and, I think, the death. Not more."

"If he expects death at her hands—"

"He'll get it," she snapped. "He'll get it. She might use others that way, but she won't disgrace the title of consort. Not this consort. Not this King." It was there again, the steel in the words, the edge of them cutting away all that wasn't truth. And the truth was her gift, her curse. Seer-born.

"I did not know that you knew so much of the Winter Queen."

"I don't. I don't want to. But—but he mentioned the Summer Queen."

Avandar looked away.

"Avandar."

He did not meet her gaze. She studied the shuttered neutrality of his expression; no way in there. So she did what she usually did. She kept talking.

"The Summer Queen must be the opposite of the Winter Queen, and maybe—just maybe—she'll help us."

"You understand so very little; you're like a child with a large sword. You have the weapon; you know the edge is sharp; but you are incapable of wielding it, of even understanding what wielding it means. Yes, Jewel. There will be a Summer Queen. But She is no mortal Queen, and even as the gods could not, She can hold a soul without mercy."

"She won't be the Dark God's friend."

"The Winter Queen is not the Dark God's friend- Nor will she ever be. They contest the same land, They struggle for the same Dominion."

"And won't we be better served if it's the Summer Queen that fights that war?"

"The seasons of the Firstborn," he said coldly, "are not the seasons of creatures who march toward death with the passage of time."

"You haven't answered my question."

"I have." He walked to the desk that adorned her wall less usefully than the mirror did. Placed his hands, palms flat, against its surface. "Those leaves," he said softly, "are part of his domain. And all that he was, was granted by her. Her power demands its price. You have taken something from her lands. I seek to protect you from that theft."

"It was hardly theft."

"You do not understand the Firstborn," he said coldly. "But I am your domicis, I will do as you command."

"The Summer Queen?"

" Yes," he said, spitting the word out as if he could no longer abide its taste. "Yes, it would aid us and our cause."

"Then let's take the leaves. I have a feeling that we'll find our way out now. You said—you said we couldn't leave because it was me you worried about. I don't think, if there's some bar on some gate or some door, it will stay closed against me. He wants her attention."

"Yes, and you propose to draw it how?"

"By going to the Tor Leonne," she replied.

He closed his eyes.

And she, standing in front of the door, slumped against it, mouth suddenly dry. "I didn't—I didn't mean to say that." But her dream was there. The strange, compelling woman riding at the head of a host.

He opened his eyes, met hers. "Jewel," he said, and for a moment the ice melted slightly. "I am sorry."

"The war." She spoke as if she hadn't heard him; as if the vision was as clear and detailed as a solid tapestry before her eyes. "Is about to start in earnest."

"Yes," he replied, lifting his hands from the desk's surface. "And the most bitter thing about those words is that you don't even know what they mean."

12th of Scaral, 427 AA

Tor Leonne

The masks were very good.

Alesso inspected them carefully as they were offered to him, their makers kneeling into the hardwood of his audience chamber, heads bent so firmly into ground they might leave indentations. These men were not the finest of craftsmen, and it was obvious their gifts were seldom used at the request of the high clansmen; he could smell the sweat and dirt of the day's labor. No scented oils, no musky perfumes, no clothing pressed and preserved for a meeting of this nature, and only this nature.

Still, they were dressed well for poorer men; their presentation was a product of their class and not their respect for his station. To make certain that any of the watching clansmen appreciated this fact, he let the maskmakers kneel against the wood while he turned the product of their labor over in his hands, examining it. It was a very plain, very elegant mask, its surface not quite as smooth as he would have liked, but its features otherwise in every way the same as the first of the four masks the Kialli had offered— and ordered—for his people.

He seldom conducted any business of import in these chambers. Or rather, he had seldom done so. But today, in the full white and gold of his station, his hair drawn back and pulled in a tight warrior's knot, the line of his brow broken by crown, he did just that. Six months had passed since the crown of the Tor had been placed upon his brow, but he was still under constant inspection. That would stop only when he won his war—the war that Markaso kai di'Leonne had lost all face, and arguably his -life, losing.

It was close enough to the night of the Festival Moon that the high clansmen, Tor and Tyrs all, had, with few exceptions, arrived at the Tor Leonne. They were given leave to hunt—by hawk or falcon, of course—within the grounds; they were given leave to practice their weapons skill, to ride, and to partake of the hospitality of the Tor itself.

They were also given leave to litter the sides of the audience chamber in which minor matters of governance were decided, and Alesso had been four days without opening those chambers. Sendari had—as he often did—brought this oversight to his attention, and they had argued full into Lady's shadow. In this case,

Sendari had been able to persuade the General that his position was correct: Hospitality required a convening of the court. Hospitality and the need to show all in attendance that his court was as fine, as important, as significant, as the court of his predecessor.

Alesso desired a change in that particular overture of hospitality, but too much had already changed; he would not slight or offend men whose alliance he might need over the simple dignity of craftsmen such as those who now knelt perfectly at his feet.

He handed the mask back to Sendari; Sendari handed it to the Widan Mikalis di'Arretta, a man Alesso did not quite trust. There was something about him, a nervousness or a fear, that spoke of risk. He could ill afford risk at this time.

But he could afford ignorance even less.

"Sendari?"

Sendari di'Sendari turned away a moment from his magically silent speech. "Tyr'agar?" he responded, offering so perfect a bow no one watching—Tors and Tyrs all—could fail to note it, or its significance.

"The masks?"

"They are, in Mikalis' opinion, flawed."

"That was our intention, was it not?"

"Indeed. He wishes to speak a moment with the craftsmen when you have finished to ascertain that they used the correct materials in constructing the masks."

"Done. Gentlemen, I will accept your generous gift with appreciation." Alesso turned from his adviser to the rough silk of merchant craftsmen's bent backs, the gleam of their dark hair. Only the oldest of the men had been colored by the white of wisdom, but it was he who lifted his head and shoulders first when the Tyr'agar granted them permission to speak.

"You honor us, Tyr'agar," he said. He rose gracefully, graciously, the motion belying his age and his apparent rank. His beard brushed the ground as he sat straight-backed, knees bent beneath him in the second half of the subordinate posture. His apprentices had little grace, they rose clumsily, their movements full of youth and strength. It did not matter; they had shown that they could bend. "Stay a moment," he said, tendering the dismissal that would allow them to rise from the ground. "My adviser wishes to speak with you."

"Tyr'agar."

But he was no longer concerned with masks, with the makers of masks, with the obeisance, correct but of poor quality, that those craftsmen displayed.

The Tyr'agnate Eduardo kai di'Garrardi had entered the room, with four of his Tyran.

By Tyrian law he was allowed four Tyran, but by custom a clansman entered the presence of his Tyr with half that complement. It was a public gesture of trust in the liege of one's choosing, and although there was never any trust between two men of power, the appearance was—as all appearances were—important. Eduardo di'Garrardi was not a man concerned with the import of appearance. He was allowed his swords in the Tyr's presence in this room, and he wore both openly. This was not a slight. What was: his sheaths were war sheaths, simple and unadorned.

"Alesso," Sendari said as he began to rise.

He stopped. For a moment—just a moment—he understood Cortano's anger, Cortano's vast impatience, with men whose passions were invoked by mere women.

"My apologies, Ser Sendari," he said, too softly for any but his friend to hear. "Tend to the maskmakers; I understand their task is the task of import. I will see to the Tyr'agnate."

Sendari's bow was perfect, instant, and stiff as steel. "That," he said quietly, "is what I fear."

Alesso made no reply.

"Tyr'agar," the kai Garrardi said, surprising him slightly. Flanked by his Tyran, he approached the room's only chair, the curved half circle with a high back graced by the gold of the sun's rays. It had the advantage of serving as throne. It had the disadvantage of forcing its occupant to sit.

Alesso was immediately on his guard. He was, as a matter of course, armed. Hard to be ready for combat from the curved seat of a chair, a throne. But not—never, for a man like Alesso— impossible.

The Tyr'agnate of Oerta did not bow, although he inclined his head.

Alesso acknowledged the lack of respect with a very slight smile. It was a smile that Sendari would have recognized had he not been involved with the matter of masks; men had died on its edge. Sendari might have tried to blunt it.

Alesso did not particularly regret his absence. "Kai Garrardi," he replied.

* * *

When Sendari heard the two words side by side, he stopped speaking. The sentence he had been in the middle of dangled a moment, like a display of ill-temper, before the man listening realized it would not be finished.

He lifted a brow in curiosity, in confusion. As a craftsman from a humble clan, he was not conversant with the nuances of the court.

"Ser Sendari?"

In reply, the Widan lifted a hand; ruby caught sunlight the Lake had released, glimmering there. The merchant began to speak again, but his lips stopped before the words left them. A good sign.

Sendari turned. From his vantage, he could see the profiles of the man who ruled the Dominion and the man who ruled Oerta. Their faces could have been chiseled by the same stonemason.

There was, about the two men, a power that could not be ignored; it drew the attention, and held it. Alesso di'Alesso had taken the Lake of the Tor Leonne. Crown and Sword were symbols—but the Lake was the Tyr's heart. He held it.

Eduardo di'Garrardi held Oerta. That in itself made him notable; he was one of the four Tyr'agnati. What made him remarkable was the fact that he had taken the Lord's title at the last Festival of the Sun, killing several of his opponents so that he might win his way to the side of the Lord's Consort. That he wanted her was not in question. Eduardo di'Garrardi's passions were ill-concealed, and once revealed, they were followed. Had he not sold an entire village, and more, for the purchase of a single stallion? Sword's Blood.

But it was acknowledged that Sword's Blood had no peer. It had been acknowledged that the Serra Diora di'Marano likewise had no peer. Had his rival been any man other than Alesso, there would have been no question of the outcome.

It comes, Sendari thought bleakly. He had watched and waited, thinking Eduardo kai di'Garrardi far more patient than his reputation implied. Thinking Alesso di'Marente more of a fool.

And thinking that, no matter what, his daughter, his treacherous, beautiful daughter, would be one man's downfall and the other's prize. He did not want her to go to Eduardo for her own sake, although Eduardo was not so foolish a man to claim such a prize and destroy it. But he did not want Alesso to win her either, for although Sendari bore none of Diora's cursed gift, he could hear the death in her voice.

For Alesso.

For Cortano.

For himself.

Alesso and Eduardo were both the Lord's men.

They had been allies, but in six months that alliance had become something dangerously close to a sword dance. No one doubted that they would see the end of it—the only question was in what circumstances. Armies had been gathered for less.

For a woman.

For his daughter.

He had not thought of her mother for months. Alora. She had given him no sons, and for that lack alone he might have replaced her without fear had he been a different man. Could he criticize either Eduardo or Alesso? He had almost given up his destiny— he had given up his power—for her sake, merely because she had asked it.

And in return she had given him a daughter, and that daughter had grown thorns, like all roses do: She had become the Flower of the Dominion. The Lily. The wife of the ill-fated heir. He had adored her at birth; he had adored her when she became wife, then widow. He had adored her until the moment she spoke with Teresa's cursed gift, to wound them all, in the hearing of every clansman of import in the Dominion who had not yet decided against them.

Ah, she had shown herself to be his daughter, then; to be Teresa's niece. Alora's ferocity had never turned to treachery. He had thought to kill her, but the rage had guttered. The pain had not. Now he thought to see her die.

He had done so much to prevent that.

A lesson, he thought bleakly. What was love in the end but foolishness and loss? He had learned this lesson once, but obviously, demonstrably, he had taken so little out of it that he would be forced to learn it again

Diora.

"Ser Sendari?" the maskmaker said, touching his sleeve.

He pulled away immediately, drawing himself up to his full height—which was considerable, but not obvious until he so chose.

"The Tyr'agar asked you a question."

And how much easier it would be to finally, finally, have an end to it. To have nothing left to lose but the game itself. The pause between question and answer would mean much to the watching court. What was infinitely worse was the fact that he had not heard the question. He bowed to Alesso, catching his eye before he fell into the proper posture.

"The request," the Tyr' agnate said, breaking the silence with his usual intemperate tone, "is not unreasonable. I am a Tyr; she is the daughter you have promised me as a bride. But you have been… elusive, Ser Sendari; too often my messages find no one to receive them. My apologies," he added, with brittle insincerity, "for bringing this matter to the Tyr'agar."

"My apologies, Tyr'agnate," Ser Sendari replied immediately, and far more gracefully than Eduardo's sullen temper warranted, "for being unavailable. I am, as you have no doubt heard, fond of my daughter. But I have undertaken the responsibility of counselor to the Tyr'agar at a time of great changes; his fate has taken precedence over hers."

"Indeed."

Sendari had seen ice form. The experience was rare enough that he remembered it clearly; he had, after all, sought it out. But he might have saved himself the time and his father's expense; he watched it again on the living countenance of the ruler of Oerta.

"Then let me trouble you no longer with such a petty request. Tend to your matters of state. I will guard my own interests."

Clumsily said. Sendari started to bow, but Eduardo had turned away from him, both figuratively and literally.

"Tyr'agar," the Tyr'agnate said, drawing attention as fire did a moth's, "I wish two things."

The Tyr'agar was absolutely silent.

"First: I will see my intended. She is her father's daughter, but she is—it is rumored—under the guard of your Tyran. A House such as Marano can ill afford guards of such caliber, and as she is the Flower of the Dominion, I find myself taking no offense at this liberty." Eduardo waited. He waited in vain. After a moment he continued. "Second: I will have this business finished before the end of the Festival of the Moon. The Serra Diora di'Marano will be en'Garrardi when the sun sets on the first Lord's day."

Sendari bowed his head.

The first Lord's day was to be the day that Alesso di'Alesso finally declared his intent: War upon the Northern Empire. Such a war had not, of course, been declared, but the Tyr's intent was an open secret. It would have to be: the armies of Raverra were mobilizing on the Northern border of the Terrean; they faced Mancorvo.

The armies of Oerta had been promised for that day.

Eduardo, you are a fool. But an intelligent fool; a cunning one. The threat had been made, the matter decided. Alesso could not move North without the Oertan armies. With Eduardo as enemy, rather than ally, he could not afford to divest the heartlands of their protection. He could gamble on the Tyr'agnate of Sorgassa, but if he left Jarrani's men behind, he would not have the power to defeat both Lamberto and Callesta. Not even with the aid of the Kialli.

Well-played, Tyr'agnate.

The Tyr'agar rose, divesting himself of the trappings—the trap—of the chair.

"And if she is not?"

The silk of Sendari's robe was, of a sudden, as heavy as stone and earth. But his posture was perfect, his face more of a mask than the confused, common craftsman standing before him could conceive. Alesso, no.

Two hands touched sword hilts. Eight hands followed. Tyr and Tyran faced each other across the length of a hall littered with spectators, none of whom were foolish enough to stand between these two men.

"Your pardon, Tyr'agar," Ser Sendari heard himself saying. Having spoken, his choice was made, but his voice did not please him; he modulated it. "But the Tyr'agnate's request is my concern." Eduardo did not turn to him; to his chagrin, although not to his great surprise, neither did Alesso. "I will arrange, as I can, to fulfill my obligations. Tyr'agnate," he said, bowing as low as he might without actually falling to his knees, "I had hoped to spare myself this. You must understand that I come poorly prepared for the ceremony a man of your station requires. I had hoped to acquit my family in a fashion suited to your rank, and I find myself unable to support that at this time."

Alesso said nothing.

"The fashion of her arrival is not of import, Ser Sendari." Eduardo's words were cool.

"One does not insult the station of Tyr without reason," Ser Sendari countered. He was aware of what this would cost him. "But my fortunes will be made with the war. I had intended to honor your request, and my agreement, appropriately after our victory." Oh, yes, he was aware of what it would cost him: the tongues of the court were already wagging at his open humiliation. He had exposed his throat as a dog did, declaring himself the weaker.

But better that, better that than the war that was almost declared. He held his breath, his face white with effort.

And Eduardo kai di'Garrardi turned, slowly. Reluctantly. "Very well," he said softly. "Had I realized your… situation, I would have been less intemperate. Your daughter could arrive by Voyani caravan and be exulted within my home, Ser Sendari. She would make humble any dwelling—as she did this one.

"I would see her, if that is acceptable to you."

"Of course," Sendari replied.

"We may discuss, privately, the matter of appropriate arrangements."

"Of course."

The Tyr'agnate raised a hand. It was the hand that had rested upon the hilt of his sword. His Tyran did likewise so quickly the two motions—master and guards'—seemed continuous. "Tyr'agar," he said, and his bow was almost perfect.

To Sendari's great regret, Alesso di'Alesso did not speak a word.

Alesso was angry. Sendari expected no less.

When the two men met at the Lake's side, they offered each other the stiffness of perfectly correct greetings, although there were no Tyran, no high clansmen, to witness them. Formality, as any weapon, could be used to either defend or wound.

Sendari cast his spells to protect their conversation from being heard by all but the most powerful of listeners and wondered, as he did so, if there would even be a conversation. There was a quality to Alesso's silence that he had only rarely witnessed; it was not, it could not be broken by any but Alesso himself.

But he had sacrificed his dignity for the sake of Alesso's war. He spoke.

"The maskmaker confirmed what Mikalis di'Arretta suspected. Ground or broken bone must have been blended with the Kialli clays used to construct the masks' faces. He has changed the composition of the clay, but has retained the weight and shape of the whole. He, and his sons, believe they can create replacements for the masks so generously donated by the Shining Court, but he is not confident that he can replace them all without aid.

He has asked permission to seek out those with similar craft and skill."

Alesso shrugged.

"Even so, he feels there is some chance that you will need to use some of the masks that came from the Court if you wish to preserve the numbers. He therefore asks which of the four styles of mask you would like him to concentrate on first. I took the liberty of telling him to start with the most expensive and work his way down."

"Which pleased him, no doubt."

"No doubt."

Containing his growing irritation, Sendari said softly, "There are already rumors in the streets of the Tor about the Lady's Consort. It works against us, Alesso. I believe that while we disperse the masks—as we were ordered to do—we may also disperse the rumors."

Alesso stood with his hands behind his back. His profile had not shifted once; it faced into the wind that blew across the Lake.

The Widan ceased to speak; he listened. Heard the wind's voice. War was waiting.

"Alesso, I had no choice," he said. "You of all men should appreciate this. War is your game."

"We already discussed this," Alesso said softly, speaking at last, his gaze upon the waters of the Lake. "We agreed. Your daughter's role in this war was decided the moment she lifted the Sun Sword from the lake's waters and showed it, newly gleaming, to the clansmen."

"Garrardi made clear he abided by no such decision."

"So it would seem."

"Alesso—"

"This will cost us, old friend."

"Will it cost us more," Sendari replied, his eyes narrowing at the way the words "old friend" took on an edge and a sharpness that made of them an attack, "than losing Garrardi's army? At best," he added. "At worst, the army would be pillaging the Tor Leonne. We would have to travel with Diora to protect her. Is that what you want? To fight rearguard action against—"

"I understand war."

"Yes. And you understand politics. You understand power. What you chose to do today is therefore deliberate, rather than the unfortunate result of youthful ignorance."

"You go too far, old friend."

"Tell me, then, Tyr'agar, what you would have had me do." -Silence.

Alesso di'Alesso, Tyr'agar of the Dominion of Annagar, did not condescend to answer.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

12th of Scaral, 427 AA

Evereve

They stood at a door that Jewel had never seen before. It was twice as tall as Avandar, with a face smooth as glass and broken only by hinges to one side. She couldn't tell what the door was made of: wood, stone, steel. It looked like a thing of shadow, and it glowed very, very faintly. There were no handles, no rings, no knobs, no visible means of entry or exit; there were no windows at which watchful sentries might peer out to ascertain the identity of visitors.

Which made sense; she didn't expect he got much in the way of visitor traffic in these parts.

"Not now," he said, frowning at the door's smooth face. "But you would have been surprised had you been here when the citadel was first wrested from the mountain fastness."

"What exactly are you doing?"

"I'm finding," he said, with a slight gritting of teeth just in case his annoyance wasn't obvious, "my reflection."

"And that's going to help us?"

"Only if you consider walking through the door alive helpful."

She took the hint. Shut up, although it wasn't easy. The time passed; she loss track of how much as her eyes were drawn—for no reason she could think of—to the door. Watching Meralonne cast his spells was a special entertainment; he was alive with a glow of shifting colors and his magic, netlike, sparkled with power's confinement. She liked to guess the nature of the spell before the spell itself was cast. With Avandar, it was never so simple; she was usually involved with something like survival when he was casting his spell. And at the moment, he appeared to be doing nothing but grimacing, which was only entertaining for the first five minutes. "Avandar?"

"Yes?"

"Why does the door have no color?"

"No color?" He turned, the edge of his jaw more pronounced, the curve of his fingers that flick of muscles away from being a fist.

"I'm pretty sure that's what I said." It had no color the way shadow had none, except shadow was usually a soft shade of black, or a shade of whatever color it happened to be hiding from light. She frowned. Stepped forward slightly. "It's—it's like glass," she said. "No, it's like water. Flat water. Still water. I can see—"

"Enough, Jewel. Stand aside."

But she couldn't. Out of the nothing that was framed by the shape of a door, she saw darkness, and out of that darkness, surfacing slowly, eyes closed, lips half-parted, arms bent at the elbow and palms face out, was—herself.

Herself leached of color, but not form.

She opened her eyes.

Caught by herself, frozen by the hardening reality of skin that had seen a bit too much sun, of hair that was becoming a flyaway wild brown, of eyes that were becoming large-pupiled and dark-irised, Jewel ATerafin had the presence of mind to utter a single word.

"Avandar—"

The woman who wasn't her image, and who was, reached out, arms snapping with sudden energy, face twisting into an expression of glee and malice that Jewel prayed had never crossed her own face.

Her fingers, so like Jewel's own that Jewel could no longer tell them apart, were point-to-point with the fingers that Jewel hadn't realized she'd raised.

The other Jewel opened her mouth, lips moving slowly, skin stretching and releasing around syllables. Mine. Jewel's eyelids were extraordinarily heavy. She struggled with their weight; seer-born or no, she would have known it was a bad idea to sleep here.

The other image, the other her, let her fingertips drop; hands that were completely foreign in their familiarity reached up, up, caressed her cheeks. She opened her mouth. Jewel knew what she would say.

Funny thing, though. She spoke with Avandar's voice.

"Jewel!"

Coruscating blue light traveled down the length of Jewel's arms.

Both of them. They screamed, and as they did, their voices, inseparable to start, slid into a harmony of pain and complexity, and from there into a discordant wail, a single voice.

"I trust," Avandar Gallais said, in the silence that followed, his voice inexplicably close to her ear, one arm behind her back, the other beneath the crook of her knees, "you will listen in future."

"No, you don't," she said.

Her wrist was burning. She lifted her arm, and saw it for fact: the cuff of her shirt had been split and blackened, and the angry red mark on her arm was glowing with heat.

He said nothing. But when he turned back to the door, he did not set her down, and she drifted into uneasy sleep waiting— with a certain smug defiance—for his arms to give beneath her weight.

When she woke, she discovered that Avandar Gallais did not give. She opened her eyes and saw two things: the underside of his chin, exposed, as his gaze went out and slightly up, and, above him, a crown of stars, pale and luminescent against the perfect darkness.

She couldn't have said why, but she turned her face into his chest and cried quietly, forcing her body into that peculiar stiffness that was supposed to pass for calm. Gods, she was tired, to cry like this, to even be able to cry like this. She was going to be a woman of power; she had promised The Terafin—Amarais, standing like a slender dagger, her eyes incapable of doing what Jewel's were doing right now—no less. She was no idiot; she knew the truth, knew it better than she knew how to do anything but breathe. Show no weakness.

Amarais had never done her the disservice of putting that dictum into words. Avandar had. All of the time. When she lost her temper. When she was afraid. When she laughed out loud. When, in short, she expressed anything to anyone. She learned to keep her self to herself whenever she was forced to suffer the services of her domicis. But now, just now… She was tired. She wanted her home, nest of political vipers notwithstanding.

He said nothing at all. He did not even acknowledge the fact that she was awake.

She had never thought him capable of kindness.

"Where are we?" she asked, when they had stopped for the day and Avandar had chosen some crevice in between huge formations of slightly worn stone as a reasonable place to eat and sleep. She had taken to the ground as if walking were third nature and not the second that it usually was to uninjured adults; he prudently failed to offer comment or criticism.

He was silent for some minutes as he worked, calling magic for the fire that seemed both necessary and profane beneath the vastness of the night sky. He worked with care; she saw the lines of his power come up through his skin as if that skin were a porous layer of something insignificant beneath which only power resided. She had seen him use magic before, and he had never looked like this.

Her silence must have been unusual—and if she were painfully honest, it was—because he stopped what he was doing and looked up at her. Up. She was standing above him, but she had rarely felt so much smaller in comparison.

His eyes were the color of night sky made liquid, and like the power that now called on flame from the elemental wilderness, the night beneath the sheen of iris and pupil seemed eternal. Endless.

"What do you see?" he asked her quietly. Almost every word he had spoken since she had woken was quiet. It made her nervous.

Almost any act of kindness did; she was well enough versed in the arts political that she knew kindness for the facade it was. Not true, she told herself, the dialogue between youth and adulthood a continuous bickering match. There's Teller and Finch.

But they don't have any power.

They don't have any political power. It's not the same thing.

Wind blew, carrying the aroma of roses, thick and heavy in the fullness of bloom. But everywhere she looked there was rock. She'd never much liked roses; the thorns had cut her several times as an unwary child, and when she looked at them now, those thorns were all she saw; the blossoms, fragrant and softer than skin, were an incidental, like hat or clothing; something easily shed.

"ATerafin?"

"I smell roses," she said without thinking.

His frown was instant, a deepening of the lines around mouth, a narrowing of eyes.

"Where are we?"

He rose. "We are in the Stone Deepings. Under the mountains."

"We can't be under the mountains," she replied, turning her face to the night sky, the glorious, perfectly clear Northern sky. "There," she lifted a hand. "Can't you see it? Fabril's Forge."

"I see rock," he said quietly, although his eyes didn't leave her face. "I see darkness and shadow. The light I carry here," he held out a magestone that was an unusual lavender, "and here," he touched his eyes, "is the light we are navigating the path by."

"But the path," she looked to the North—she was certain it must be North, she knew the constellations so well, "is clear." The crevice they walked in was made of rock as high as the eye could see from one side to another, but it was wide and flat, and she saw no hint of the heavy snows that plagued the mountains and made passage through the Menorans so treacherous at the wrong time of year.

"Jewel," he said, and she heard the power he put into her name as clearly as she had seen it beneath the thin layer of his skin, "you are seer-born. If I could, I would blindfold you and have you walk in utter darkness, but here in the Deepings, I do not think anything as simple as a blindfold would spare you vision. Let me lead. No matter what you see, no matter what you hear— and you will hear much, I think—do as I tell you."

His voice was a stranger's voice. It was deeper than Avandar's, fuller, richer; the words were chosen with care, and not in anger.

"You've been here before."

"Yes, of course. I came here to find the place that would become my citadel." He knelt again, cloth bending at knee and elbow as he spoke to the fire in a voice that crackled like kindling being consumed. She had never heard the magical words spoken so… clearly.

She repeated them.

His eyes widened. His power flared as the fire leaped in jagged blades of flame: orange, yellow, white, and blue. He spoke, words a crackle now, power no longer interior illumination but harsh, red light. His words girdled the flame, constricting it. Forcing it into the shape and the utility of insignificance: campfire.

Her mouth hung open, as if the fire had come from her throat and not the ground upon which Avandar had been so delicately working. Fire had singed his flesh. She knew it without asking, the scent was so sudden, so strong.

He spoke in a language she didn't understand.

"No one else survived it," she said softly.

He tended his burn in silence, taking his dagger and applying it cleanly to the edge of the robe he wore. "In the bag," he said, "there is a salve. Please."

She did as he bid automatically, searching through the jars until she found one that contained a thick unguent consistent with treating burns. But her attention was trapped by fire, by the shadows fire cast. People's shadows.

"They died on this path."

He took the jar from her pale hand. "Yes," he told her quietly, as he coated the ugly patch of skin, "they died on this path."

"Do you believe in ghosts?"

"No."

"Good. I don't either."

His smile was grim. "There are far worse than ghosts to be found on this path, and I fear we will find them all. But if it is in my power to protect you, I will protect you." He was silent for a time. When he spoke, it was grudging, and the very nature of the reluctance made her smile. "And he protects you, in a fashion."

She didn't ask who he meant; she knew.

The Winter King.

13th of Scaral, 427 AA

Tor Leonne

Serra Fiona en'Marano seldom visited the outer reaches of the harem. The harem's heart was her demesne, and if she did not quite rule it, she was nonetheless accorded a reasonable measure of power and respect by the women who jointly did. Her plaintive warblings to Sendari aside, this had been a life in which she'd found a certain satisfaction. It was better than being unmarried, as Serra Teresa was; better than having no home of one's own. But as she listened to the words of a pale Alana en'Marano, she knew that that comfort was coming to a close.

"Alaya," she said softly.

The seraf, like shadow but far more pleasing, was at her side at once. She held brush and comb in her perfectly still hands as she knelt at the feet of her Serra.

"Yes, the jade comb. And the green sari, the one edged in white and gold. But quickly, child," she added, although Alaya was fast outgrowing that endearment. She rose, and Alana helped her unwind the informal silks of her private chambers. The deep blue, unedged and unembroidered, surrounded her feet in folds of soft warmth; serafs would take it, clean it, and fold it neatly for her later use. "Alana, have you told the others?"

"They know," Alana replied, evasive as she often was in matters concerning the other wives. It had offended Fiona once; now it was merely fact. She had survived them; they had survived her. Time built different bonds than affection, but it bound nonetheless.

"Good. I will speak with Diora."

"Thank you, Fiona."

She missed the lilies.

Her father's wives, when they could, brought her the thick, white blossoms from the Lake's edge—but they were not so perfect out of their element; they were a beauty with no context.

Still, she had not yet asked Alana or Illia to stop their infrequent gift-giving; she could hear, in their voices, that they found relief in the ability to provide her what they considered to be some small comfort. They were allowed so little, otherwise. She had been forbidden their company, except on those rare occasions when they were granted permission—by her father directly—to bring her one of the two daily meals she was allowed.

She thought she might have lived without food, although she knew it to be a pensive fancy.

Still, lilies, wives, fathers—these were things she had been deprived of before. And perhaps her father, in his great anger— and it was as great an anger as he had ever felt toward her— understood this. Perhaps he understood, finally, the cost of his treachery. There was only one loss—and it a minor one, but it was all that was left—that he could inflict upon her.

He had destroyed her samisen and her harp.

Standing there, in the middle of this room, he had had them brought; had taken them in his shaking hands. He had spoken little; a word or two that was not, and would never be, strong enough to bridge the enormity of the silence between them. And then he had called the Widan's fire.

If she closed her eyes, she could hear the snapping of strings, the sudden harsh crack of wood. The fires were not extended; that was not her father's gift. No, they were sharp and sudden, and they left once their work had been done.

Throughout it, she showed Ser Sendari di'Sendari all she was willing to show: the absolute serenity of her expression.

Father, she thought, then and now, I know how to wait.

Her hands, folded in her lap just so, had not even shaken. She had endured much worse than this.

When she heard the screens slide open, she slipped into that deferential posture that gave nothing away. Her knees touched the plain mats, and in the lap that formed, she placed her hands, one over the other. She straightened her shoulders, and let her chin dip forward so that she might see the floor more clearly than the screens.

But she lifted her head again when she heard the Serra Fiona's voice.

"Diora."

"Serra Fiona?"

"I've come," she said, as Alaya closed the screens at her back, "to give you news." She smiled brightly, but there was a hesitancy to the whole of her expression that spoke far more than her presence did. Diora waited.

"Your father has arranged for a visitor. For you," she added hastily.

"Serra Fiona, I—"

"It is the Tyr'agnate Eduardo kai di'Garrardi. He—he has demanded the right to see you, and your father has granted it."

"I have seen the kai Garrardi before this. We have spoken."

"Yes. But not as his intended."

No, not that. As a captive; as a prisoner; as an enemy that still had the power to fascinate. Diora's smile was perfect.

Fiona's became so. "Forgive me, Diora." Her voice gave away what her expression no longer would. Fear. Concern. Envy. Pity. It was a human voice.

Had she ever listened to voice and ignored the nuances of its power, the musicality of its cadence, the roughness, the depth of its feeling? Yes. Of course, yes. She was certain that she would never do so again. That had been the most humbling truth about captivity. She wanted Fiona to continue to speak, and she almost despised herself for it.

"I should let them tell you, Diora. But I know it won't make any difference; you won't give anything away.

"Eduardo di'Garrardi has demanded the rights that your father granted him at the Festival of the Sun. Your father has acceded, although if I am any judge of character, it is at the expense of the General's anger.

"You are to be married to the Tyr'agnate of Oerta before the sun falls on the Lord's first day."

* * *

There was about the Serra Diora di'Marano a quality of perfection that nothing marred; he would have recognized her in any setting, and in any style of dress. As the Lord's Consort, certainly. And as the lowest of the Lady's serafs as well.

The former, he had seen with his own eyes, and the latter he saw now: The Serra Diora di'Marano, shorn of all conceit, knelt before him as gracefully, as gravely, as the most perfectly trained of serafs. Her sari was so simple, in fact, the serafs of the highborn would have escaped its use. She had no combs, and wore only the simplest of rings—something the eye could pass over and forget instantly.

But her hair was long and perfect in its drape across bent back, and her face was the same face—measured, neutral, perfect in shape, in size—that he had, once seen, desired.

It was a desire which had been rebuked.

Worse, her father had chosen to accept the suit of the Tyr'agar's heir. He remembered her wedding night. There was almost nothing he would not do to rid himself of that memory.

"Serra Diora," he said, bowing formally.

She did not look up; her posture, delicate and perfect, made a shield of submission. He knew her well enough to understand that no wilting shyness marred the strength of her spirit; beneath all trappings she was as wild, as willful, as Sword's Blood. But she was more cunning.

"Ser Sendari," he said quietly, "I understand your desire to hide your daughter, but your attempt to transform her into a common seraf is less than laudable. She is not to be the wife of a common clansman; she is to be my wife, and I expect her to be attired in a manner appropriate to that station."

"She is not yet your wife." The Widan's voice was mild; his expression was as neutral as his daughter's. There was no doubt in the Tyr'agnate's mind that the daughter favored the father in intellect. He did not recall ever seeing Sendari's first wife—he knew, as they all did, that she was dead—which meant that she could not favor the wife in looks. There were some pairings that were fortuitous.

"She is not yet my wife, no. But as she will be—and soon, soon enough—I… request… that you respect my wishes. If money is the sole reason you have chosen to hide your daughter in every possible way, let me alleviate it for you." He removed a large bag from the folds of his robe and had the privilege of seeing Ser Sendari's shuttered face stiffen into something hard enough that it might be steel.

It amused him to drop the money squarely in front of the Serra Diora's bent form.

"Serra Diora," he said softly, the two words a command. She heard it; she lifted her head.

He knelt before her, reaching out with his ungloved hand. "I have been patient," he said softly. "I have been as patient as any man can be." His hand hovered an inch away from her cheek.

She pulled back.

He caught her chin in that hand; caught her hair, the back of her head, with the other. She had too much dignity to struggle. "Do you understand?" he said softly, too softly for any hearing but hers. "I have waited since the evening that you were given to the kai in waiting. Ser Illara kai di'Leonne. I have waited patiently since he made the mistake of telling me a single glimpse of you is all I would ever have.

"And I remember that glimpse," he added; her face was very close to his now, her lips ever so slightly parted, her eyes involuntarily wide. "There is not a night that has passed since then when I have not thought of you.

"I would not treat you so harshly; I would not offer to others what they have no power to take for themselves." His hand tightened in her hair; she could not look away. The most escape the grip afforded her was the simple expedient of closing her eyes. She did not disappoint him; if there was fear in her—and there was; he could smell it—she did not allow it to rule her actions.

"You have already refused me once, little Serra. But there will be no General to intervene on your behalf—and no interfering kai el'Sol. You will be my wife in a few long days.

"Do you understand what this means? You will be my wife. You will make my harem. You will bear my children. And you will never play games of refusal with me again."

Before she could answer—and he suspected that she would not, for she was so finely mannered, so perfectly graceful—he brought his lips to hers, holding back just that extra second so that he might feel her draw a sharp, short breath.

She did.

He cut it off with his mouth, pulling her to him with handfuls of hair so soft it might have been the folds of silk unwinding. Her hands came up; she rested them against his chest.

He might have laughed had he not been otherwise occupied; she pushed. She pushed him back, her palms flat, her arms as weak as any woman's.

He had waited so long he was not yet—not quite—willing to be put off; he kissed her more fiercely, bruising her lips, wanting to bruise them so that he might see them at their fullest when at last he chose to withdraw.

If he chose. He closed his eyes. This was as close as he had ever come to the Serra Diora di'Marano. He wanted, suddenly, to be a little closer; to touch a little more; his hand slid down from her chin to stroke the length of her throat, the nape of her neck, the perfection of her pale, pale skin.

Not enough. Never enough.

Her tongue fluttered against his like a trapped butterfly against the walls that confined it; he was gentle, but he was unyielding. She would come to understand and desire what he offered her. She had never desired the kai Leonne.

His hands brushed silk, folds of silk. Of a sudden, he wanted to remove it. Her eyes widened; this close to her face, he could not miss it.

The hands that had been open palmed became fists—but she did not strike him; did not otherwise fight.

Nor did she need to.

The fire did.

The fire was his strength. Of the Widan's many spells, it was the first to have come to him. He could remember few moments as clearly as this: The lighting of the first candle.

That candle, round and low, had been his hurdle. A thing of yellow wax, it had been set upon the small Widan's table by the hands of his reluctant wife.

"Sit," he'd told her. And then, unmanning himself because this was the most private of his chambers, he had added, "Please."

Her smile was like the flame, almost as precious, possibly more beautiful. Even then, even marred as it was by her rare display of unease. She had never loved the Widan's craft, but because he had asked it of her, because she had loved him, she sat by the side of the low table, her hands cupping the candle.

She had done this for four weeks.

And on the second day of the fifth week, her hands around cool wax, her eyes alert although she'd sat almost motionless for the better part of two hours in the summer heat, the fire finally heard his voice and answered.

All images, all memories, of any strength were as complicated as these. The fire was his strength.

But so, too, had Alora been before her death. His strength and his weakness.

The only person in his life that he had loved as much— although the nature of the love was different—had also betrayed him. Diora.

His daughter.

He did not think. Had he thought, he might have stayed his hand. But the fire sped down the length of his arms, contained within him until its spark left his fingers. Every Widan described the art differently; every Widan communed in his own way with the source of his power. And every Widan learned, immediately, that power without control was death.

Yet he did not control himself, not here.

The power came automatically, summoned by a fierce protectiveness he would have said—had any dared to ask openly—had died on the last day of the Festival of the Sun. Worse, rage was there, beneath the surface of the fire, and it was a rage that Eduardo's disgraceful behavior could not quite explain.

"How dare you?"

The Tyr'agnate cried out in pain. It was not quite a scream; there was too much anger in the mix, too much outrage. His hands left Diora's face, Diora's body, in the blink of an eye, and Sendari's daughter—his unperturbable, steely child—leaped clear of Eduardo, trailing serafs silk, her face turned away from them both.

The sword rang out.

The fire crackled.

Death hung in the air between them: One man's death. Or two.

It would have been a better death than Sendari had faced in years, a cleaner one. He could have stepped into the flow of the wind, have become just another screaming voice in the wind's maelstrom. He could have discovered, for himself—because no matter how great the desire for that knowledge, it seemed no Widan was capable of answering the question and returning with the information—whether or not the winds ruled the dead, or the Northern gods did, or the Lady. And he might see the wife that he had loved and hated in his time, the only woman whose light had been as bright as the fire's.

Eduardo di'Garrardi swung; Sendari dodged the blade, drew his own. Steel against steel was meant as a distraction, and it succeeded; the kai Garrardi was not trained to fight Widan. He called fire. Fire came as he parried the Tyr'agnate's blow and staggered back. The ferocity of the attack was astounding.

They had come here without Tyran or cerdan.

They had come to the chamber that had been her prison.

And now, the ground at their feet hazed by red light, the air overpowered by the scent of singed hair and singed flesh, they were fighting as men fought: with swords. She thought the roof might burn away, seared into nothing by the Lord's vision, the Lord's gaze. His work, this. His work, as all misery in her life had been.

She gathered the silks more closely about her; Eduardo had pulled at the sari only briefly, but his hands were strong enough to loose their binding.

She had thought—she had thought her father would not intervene. Her hands shook as she crouched against the wall, her face turned groundward in a semblance of the humility so necessary in a Serra's posture. Better that, though, better that than that either man should see her face before she had time to compose it. She was numb with the mixture of fear and humiliation that only men could cause, and it was slow to leave her.

But when the sword skittered across the fine, fine floor and stopped six inches from her bent knees, something stronger took its place. It was her father's sword.

She looked up then. Looked up to see the Tyr'agnate's armor, bare of surcoat, bare of detail by the grace of fire. His hair, his skin dusted black by ash, his face in profile, he stood over her father's prone form, and her father—her Widan father, her powerful father—lay weaponless beneath him.

Before thought could assert itself, before recent history could remind her of everything she had never thought she could forget—even for an instant—her mouth was open, her lips full and then narrowed around a single word.

A single powerful word.

"NO!"

He stopped at once, his sword in mid-arc above his head, his arms extended beneath its weight. Vision, when he fought for his life, took on a clarity that could only be the Lord's gift: All things moved more precisely, and slightly more slowly, as he watched them. He could choose what to react to; could override the instinct that had saved his life more times than he cared to count.

Her word struck him like a forceful blow; a Northern archer's arrow aimed slightly off true while he stood, both hands on the hilt of a sword, the killing blow already begun. He almost staggered with the effort it took to heed her.

But he saw clearly.

The Widan Sendari di'Sendari was at his feet, a second from death, his Widan's fire split, like a wall made of kindling, by the use of the sword that had been the clan Garrardi's since the founding. Ventera hovered a moment as he weighed his options.

As he weighed them and found Sendari's death wanting.

If he killed the Widan, he would be declaring himself for the North. Politically, Alesso was astute—but the entire Dominion knew of his almost legendary friendship with the Widan, and a smaller circle of men knew of his desire for the Widan's daughter. Sendari's death would be all the excuse he required.

And the war?

To go to war, the Tyr'agar would turn his forces first South, to Oerta, and then North. There was no doubt in Eduardo's mind that Jarrani would support Alesso in this. The Sword's Edge would support Alesso. For aid—should he choose to ask it—he would be reduced to seeking alliance with either Mareo di'Lamberto or Ramiro di'Callesta. As it was Callestan lands that he sought for his part in the war, it was a poor exchange.

On the other hand, Ramiro di'Callesta had never dared to strike him with anything more careless than a duplicitous word.

He wanted to kill the Widan.

He wanted the Widan's daughter.

He knew that, having already shown how seriously she took the duty to husband—what man could now doubt that, after hearing the depth of conviction in her speech on the last day of the Festival of the Sun?—she would be no less the dutiful daughter.

And if he was her father's killer, husband or no, he would be forced to kill her.

All these things occurred to him in a rush of thought and clarity as he stood above the prone form of Sendari di'Sendari. All of them.

Such clarity, at such a moment, could only be the Lord's vision, the Lord's gift. Almost before the sound of the Serra Diora's voice had faded into nothing, the Tyr'agnate, Eduardo kai di'Garrardi, lowered his sword.

But he offered no apology for his transgression; he was clearly the victor, after all. For his own reasons, he granted the older man his life. But it was clear to Eduardo, indeed, it must be clear to them all, that that life was also his to take.

"I can be patient," he said, sheathing Ventera, "when I so choose. On the morning after the night of the Festival Moon, Widan." He turned to the Flower of the Dominion. "He has his life because of my high regard for you, Serra Diora."

She bowed her head, hiding her face from view. The desire to pull that face up by the chin and force her to meet his eyes was strong, but so were other desires. Better, at the moment, to wait.

He was not completely certain that he would survive the Widan's fire so easily a second time.

He knew what she had done.

He did not know why.

Speaking at all took effort. But he might have read whole treatises flawlessly, argued with Alesso for weeks, brought the Sword of Knowledge to order less painfully than he spoke a single word. Na 'dio. Almost, he said it. But he could not expose himself to her in that fashion.

He chose, instead, her given name. Her adult name. It was, after all, as an adult that she had become inscrutable. Perfection had destroyed the delicate, trusting child as surely as it did all Serras of highborn clans. It had turned her from daughter to wife almost before he could turn to witness the transformation.

And he had helped.

He had asked the Serra Teresa into his harem. And when Alora had died, he had given Diora into her care.

Teresa would never have raised voice to save his life. He felt certain of that. But he had been more certain that his daughter would not have.

He wanted to ask her why.

But he was a coward; he acknowledged the truth without particular fear or shame.

"Diora." He did not make any effort to disguise himself, to flatten his voice, to keep the truth from it. He wondered what she would hear.

He was no longer certain himself.

The woman whose power was words had none.

Her face was once again the perfect mask, and if her hair was in disarray, her sari carelessly arranged, her chin darkening with a bruise that would require the judicious use of powders to conceal, she rose above it all. She was the Serra Diora di'Marano.

Na 'dio.

Oh, her dead spoke.

They spoke with such terrible voices. When she could imagine them as angry, they hurt her the least; in anger, they were harder to face, harder to yearn for. She had embarked upon the Lord's path, under the Lady's guise, so that she might hear their anger, face it, and not be shamed.

And so, of course, the Lord let the wind whisper in other ways.

Na 'dio, we each have gifts for you, but if you accept them, they demand as much back in return.

Her hands became fists; the nails of her exquisite fingers cutting crescents in the flat of her palms. She would not think of this here. Not here, not where any could witness it.

It hurt her. She had not desired death—which of the wives had?—but she knew, now, that death would have been far, far easier than the life she had chosen. She would not have had to face life alone, her arms bereft of the child she had done nothing—no— nothing—

Death would have been hers, and peace with it, if not for the man who lay, bleeding from two wounds, neither fatal, on the ground in the room's center.

You condemned me to this, she thought, summoning her anger as if it were a creature from the Hells and she a Widan. But like a creature from the Hells, it twisted, defying her command, becoming not a shield behind which to view her father, but rather a blade upon which she might cut herself. Deeply.

She had saved his life.

And he had helped destroy hers.

She was numb. She had spoken with the voice. She had stopped the fall of the Tyr'agnate's sword, using a power that she had not once used in her own defense against him. She had raised voice to save her father even though she had sat in the dark of the only true night she had ever known, listening to the screams of the dying, her hands in her lap, her head bent forward, her body perfectly still.

"Diora?"

The body in the room's center moved.

And her father spoke. He spoke with fear, with hesitation, with the curiosity that had always been the strongest element of his speech, and with something that she would not name. She had nothing to offer in return but silence.

427 AA

Stone Deepings

Jewel had always disliked it—a matter of principle rather than practicality—when Avandar was right. But he was right about the stars. They didn't move at all; they didn't change. Hours spent walking in the great stone crevice under their cool guiding light had not dimmed or deepened the night blue sky; it had not brought dawn or moon. The stars, like the stone, were fixed in place.

She liked them better, but she found them disturbing. "Why can I see them?"

"The stars?"

"The stars."

"I don't know."

"Liar."

"If you are going to ask me a question, do me the grace of believing the answer I give you."

"Avandar, I can hear the lie in your voice. Learn to lie better or don't bother."

"It is not a lie," he replied, through teeth that were gritted in a comforting and familiar fashion. "I have some suspicions—and before you ask, no, I won't share them—but I do not know for certain."

"But the stars aren't real."

"No."

"And you can't see them."

"No."

"And you know that my gift has always made me pretty much impervious to illusion."

"Jewel, I am not ignorant."

"I wasn't lecturing you; I was thinking out loud."

"Think more quietly."

She subsided. Thought quietly. If what she was seeing wasn't illusion, and it wasn't real, what was it?

Why are they weeping, Oma? Her grandmother's face was still, the lines of it, cut—as her grandmother said—by sun and wind, scars from a South that Jewel had never visited. A South she was walking toward, if Kalliaris was in the mood to smile.

Her grandmother and her father—not her mother, not her Southern-born mother—stood on the edge of a large circle of people, all dressed simply, all carrying either clothing or food or offers, word offers, of shelter. Waiting for the Voyani merchants to unload their forbidden cargo: people.

They started to tumble out beneath the heavy flaps of canvas, rolling and stumbling as the bolts of fabric, the cords of Southern wood, the bottles of spice or exotic perfume, were removed and their hiding places destroyed: Men, women, children.

We have to offer them shelter, her Oma had said, and you are old enough to understand this now. They come from a land that is harsher than Mandaros when he's angry. You remember what you see here. You've the blood, child. It's no sin against pride to take what you need to survive. But it's a sin not to offer it in return when you have it.

Jewel, silent, had reached up to grab her grandmother's hand. That leathery hand, bent with age into curves that were both comforting and clawlike, had gripped hers a little too tightly as she watched the men and women continue to stumble from the wagon. They were thin, worn; some of them wore women's clothing although they weren't women. They were all younger than her grandmother.

They are weeping, her grandmother had said, because they are free.

No, they aren't, Jewel said.

You shouldn't argue with your Oma, her grandmother had said, breath sudden and sharp. Come home.

But you said I was old enough—

Come home now. She began to drag Jewel away.

This was the first time that Jewel remembered knowing something so clearly. She was pulled upstream, against the current of bodies, of people—like her Oma—who had come to help these people lucky enough to escape from their evil Southern masters. Gods, things were simple then; the good and the evil so clean. She said, because she was young, because she didn't understand her grandmother, except as the source of all wisdom, sharp words, and comfort: No, Oma, they're crying because the babies died.

And her grandmother had stopped in the streets, clutching Jewel's hand, grip so hard that Jewel was almost in tears. She'd turned back, letting Jewel go.

Jewel understood it now, but the child that she had been and the woman that she was existed for a moment in the same place, the fear of one, and the terrible pity—the unwanted pity that would have so angered the old woman—of the other in perfect harmony.

Kalliaris smiled on me, Oma. What you taught me—/ never forgot it. I never will.

And the old woman answered, "I know."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"Avandar," Jewel said, trying to keep her voice conversational. The problem with that was volume, which was for all intents and purposes nonexistent. She knew it and tried again, louder.

"Avandar?"

"Yes?"

"That was you, right?"

"No."

"But you heard it?"

"Oh, yes," was his quiet reply. She turned to face him, but halfway to familiarity was stopped by a woman she had last seen propped up by cushions in a flat, wide bed.

"Oma," she said, the woman dissolving into the girl, the girl on the verge of tears.

"Jewel," the old woman replied.

Jewel knew better. She knew better. But she walked toward her anyway, her steps picking up speed as they came, each faster than the last; she lifted her arms to shoulder height, wide, as if she could catch—as if she could catch—

But her Oma held out a hand, and her lips took on that thin, compressed line that was a clear signal of annoyance. Avandar's shout meant nothing compared to that disapproval. Jewel stopped again.

"Not here, Na'jay," she said quietly. "Never here. I will take you to where you cannot go, but must, if you are to do what you were born to." A faint hint of pride in the sheen of those eyes. Those familiar and entirely unnatural eyes. "Walk with me, or walk beside me, but do not touch anyone you see on this path. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Oma," Jewel replied meekly. When the old woman started to walk, Jewel took up her place at her side as if it were natural. She paused to look behind her; Avandar walked in his customary position. "This is—"

"The Warlord," her Oma said. "I know."

"Uh—that's not what I call him."

"It is not what he is called that matters," her grandmother replied, not even turning to acknowledge the man they spoke of, "but what he is. He is the Warlord, Jewel. And you will thank Kalliaris in your time for bringing him to you—although I am not sure he will."

"Oh." She absorbed the sound of a voice that resonated with the familiar, and she understood, then, why she saw starlight where Avandar saw rock.

"Yes," her grandmother said. "Memory has always burned its way into you. You hold on to everything so tightly. Everything. Every loss, Jewel. Every death. You will see others where we walk, but I am the first."

She froze. "I don't think I want to see others."

"This road was your decision; you are under the geas of one of the undying. You have no choice, so you may as well not whine about it."

Her memories of her grandmother were always of kindness and wisdom, but this sharp sting of words was just as real. Jewel winced. "Yes, Oma."

"You have a remarkable way with words," her domicis said dryly. "I may take lessons. I have seldom had such an effect."

"You are a man," her Oma said with a shrug, "and the only men a woman should trust are her brothers or her father."

Jewel laughed, thinking of Teller, Carver, Angel; of Torvan, Arrendas; of Morretz—and even, in a fashion, of Avandar himself.

"Yes, I notice you didn't pay attention to that," the old woman said. "But you've managed to survive most of your gullibility."

"Oma—"

"Never mind, never mind, not in front of outsiders, I know." The old woman shook her head. "You should be grateful I was first," she said softly. "I'll be the easiest thing you face." She turned, her eyes glowing faintly, her skin luminescent but still somehow her skin. "You," she said softly, and Jewel realized she was speaking to Avandar, "be careful."

Avandar frowned. "I have crossed this path before," he said quietly. "And I have nothing to fear from it. My dead do not return to haunt me."

She laughed. It wasn't a particularly kind laugh, although Jewel knew, the minute she heard it, that she had heard it before. Memory, buried so far beneath the surface of her daily life that it might as well have been forgotten, spoke in a language that had no words, but it spoke truth. This woman was her grandmother. "Your dead don't have to return."

14th of Scaral, 427 AA

Shining Palace

"Lord," Garrak ad'Ishavriel said, kneeling. The damage done him by Anya a'Cooper had been quick to heal, physically. Had she had time, had she had leisure, had she had focus and desire, he would have born scars for eternity. And the Kialli did not easily scar; it was not in the nature of their forms. Anya a'Cooper had learned things in her tenure in the North that not even Lord Ishavriel had meant to teach her.

It worried him, at times. Pleased him as well. She was easily the most dangerous thing he owned. Certainly the most costly.

And she was still missing.

She was not dead; that, he would have sensed. But she was not at his side, and the gate that her power had been crucial in the opening of now waited in the limbo of lesser magi. The Lord of the Hells was ill pleased. His was the only power superior to Anya's, but that power had been bent to other tasks, tasks that Ishavriel privately suspected were far less monotonous, but of lesser import. Allasakar did not have that option now, if his armies were to be built. He anchored the riven gate, sustaining the foothold that Anya had built in rock and ice. Kialli spirits still came through the portal, shuddering to a stop in the substantial reality of flesh and form. He had watched them arrive for days on end, fascinated by the way they formed bodies outside of the containment rogue magi controlled. Fascinated, as well, by the changing shape of the gate, the rip between worlds that Anya and he had taken such pains to widen, day by day. The world fought them. Proof, if it was needed, that the old earth was alive.

The armies were still gathering; they had lost a day due to the disruption of the misplaced throne, no more. But still, the Lord was not pleased.

No Kialli Lord, be he once a duke of the Hells, could survive the Lord's displeasure for long. Therefore Ishavriel's considerable powers were now bent to one purpose: finding his charge and returning her to the pentagram that anchored the Lord's gate.

Or rather, to almost one purpose.

He condescended to notice Garrak. "You arrive early. Report."

"Lord," Garrak said again, kneeling, the ridges across his spine extended in a way that must have been uncomfortable. "I have two things of interest to you.

"First: The Voyani woman you asked of. She is… missing."

"Missing?"

"She was, you said, in the keeping of Cortano di'Alexes. If he still has her, she is farther beneath the earth than my powers are capable of reaching."

"Dead?"

"That is a possibility. But it is doubtful. I have heard rumors; the slaves speak, if their masters do not. But the slaves speak of an attack—upon the chambers of the Sword of Knowledge himself— by either assassins or demons. In these tales, the Voyani woman is never among the victims. I do not believe that the slaves knew she was present."

"The Sword's Edge has not seen fit to bring this information to council."

Garrak said nothing; he had nothing to add.

"Very well. I want that woman, Garrak."

"We are searching, Lord. We are hampered by daylight."

"Understood. But remain hampered. You are not to show yourselves until the night of the Festival Moon."

"Yes, Lord."

"The second piece of information?"

"Only this," Garrak ad'Ishavriel replied. He rose slightly, and Ishavriel saw that he carried a small cloth sack. There was a deep splash of drying blood across the length of the rough cloth.

"Your orders," Ishavriel said softly. "There was to be no harvesting until the night of the Festival Moon, and even then it was to follow my explicit instructions."

"I have broken no dictate, Lord. I have obeyed you."

"And the blood?"

"A simple death. With mortal blade."

"And the others?"

"No one else has made Telkar's mistake, Lord. I have seen to it myself."

"Very well. Telkar has been… an embarrassment. I have suffered two in the last three days, and if I suffer a third, I will destroy you all at my leisure."

"Lord."

He took the bag that Garrak ad'Ishavriel held in a perfectly steady outstretched hand. Opened it. Drew from it a Festival mask.

"I recognize the design," he said with a slight smile. "And this is of note?"

"Yes, Lord. This mask was created by the humans."

"The humans?"

"I believe that they are replacing the masks that were your gifts."

"I see." He turned the mask over in his hand examining it carefully. "Humans are consistently clever, are they not? Very well. You have done well, Garrak." He rose.

Only when Garrak ad'Ishavriel left his chambers did Lord Ishavriel, Kialli, part of the Lord's Fist, smile.

427 AA

Stone Deeping

The wind was a sea wind; hot and heavy with water. The sky was a night sky, cool and very Northern. Jewel struggled with the dichotomy between two very real sensations.

"There isn't any point in questioning it," her Oma said tartly. "It's as real as I am."

"And I'm having enough trouble with that."

"You shouldn't, you know."

"Easy for you to say."

"True. Everything is, now."

They fell silent; Avandar did not seem eager for the company of an old woman whose tongue was razor sharp, and whose claim on Jewel's affections was so much stronger than his own; he kept to himself. Which was a pity; Jewel found the walk disquieting. Her grandmother seemed to expect something from her; it was implicit in the quality of her silence.

She didn't want to talk about expectations; they led to responsibilities, and no doubt her grandmother's sense of responsibility would not mesh well with Jewel's. So she said, searching for social words, that most despised of things, "Where did I see these stars?"

"These ones? On my lap," the old woman replied, her voice softening into the voice that Jewel best remembered—that, truthfully, had been all she remembered clearly until now. "They aren't the stars over Averalaan."

"No. Not quite."

She was silent, looking at her grandmother in the light of moon and stars. The shawl she wore was suited to a cool night; it was soft and worn with age, thinning but not yet patched and repaired. It covered her shoulders, ran down the length of her back; ended a few inches above the bend in her knee. Jewel knew it well. It had been given to her after her grandmother's death.

Had been sold by her, as well, when things had gotten grimmest in the streets of the city. Food was more important than warmth. At least when it wasn't cold.

"You do what you have to, to survive."

"I know, Oma. You taught me that."

"And you be damn proud of surviving."

"I know." I know. "But there's more to life than survival. And sometimes—sometimes the definition of survival leaves a bit to be desired." She glanced sideways at the old woman's sharp profile. "Wasn't it you who said life on the knees was a serafs art, not a woman's?"

Her Oma shrugged, half irritable. "You see? You remember everything." She shook her head. "It would go better for you if you didn't."

"Why is that? There's no point to life if there's no memory, Oma. Memory's what connects the bits and pieces. It's what gives strength to history."

"And history should be strong, is that it? Our bloodiest battles are fought in history. Our worst atrocities—things you can't even dream of, and you with your head in the sand—are buried, forgotten, and best that way. Some young fool will always steal from history, as if history was its own justification. Ask him, if you don't believe me."

"I would appreciate being left out of this conversation. If, that is, a diatribe can be considered reciprocal enough to be a conversation."

"I'm not arguing for or against all history, Oma. Just the personal."

"But personal history is what binds us, Jewel."

"It can also free us."

"Can it? I'm glad to hear it," the old woman replied. "You can tell her that." Voice sharp with sarcasm—and an Oma's sarcasm at that, sharp to wounding—she lifted what would have been a frail arm had it been attached to a different person's shoulder and pointed.

In the darkness, in the middle of the widening path between the mountain walls, stood a dark-haired young woman with a glint of light at the top of a closed fist. "Hey, Jay," she said.

He had never seen Jewel freeze so abruptly. He had seen enough, in the decade and a half in which they'd negotiated their fragile peace, to understand the texture of all of her fears. Strong fears made her grind slowly to a stop, as if realization took that long to take root, to grip her.

Nah, she's just too stupid to know when to be afraid. Carver's voice, a glimmering edge in words that were otherwise wholly affectionate. It surprised him when the words of any of her den— each member so insignificant he would not have noticed them had he chosen any other course in life—came back to him.

Words seldom deserted her, and when they did, she substituted action in their place, usually anger or rage-driven flinging of pots and pans in the kitchen that served as her inner sanctum, her throne room, her place of judgment.

But here, on this empty road, silence took everything: movement. Word. Breath. The woman by her side, peppery in speech and a hair's breadth from the ill-temper that was so common at a certain age, fell silent as well. He had thought it prudent to keep his distance; he now felt it prudent to do otherwise. It was the simplest decision he had made since leaving Averalaan. Even packing for their trip to the South had been fraught with temper and the fragments of memory that would not leave him.

He walked to her side. Saw, as he did, that the old woman's eyes were keen and bright, like a ferret's when it scented food close by. Jewel's eyes were wide, her mouth half open, her face, muscles stiff, skirting the thin edge between terror and the hope that is so wild it cuts and rends with its multiple uncertainties.

Unfortunately for Jewel, and perhaps for Avandar himself, he could not see what caused it. She was still for so long it surprised him when she took a step forward.

He put a hand out; caught her shoulder.

The old woman she called Oma held her differently, and perhaps more effectively. "Na'jay," she said.

But Jewel, held by them both, was only peripherally aware of their interference. She said a single word.

"Duster."

He tightened the grip on her shoulder.

"You know the name," the old woman said conversationally.

"I know it."

"Did you know the young girl?"

"It was before my time," he replied. He whispered a word, and another word, both sharp and short in the cavernous darkness of the Deepings. The light that he saw by, unnatural in every possible way, nestled like moss across the surface of worn rock, touching the stone that came up from the floor and hung down from the heights like either half of a great maw open to let them pass because they were too insignificant to devour.

Jewel had spoken of stars; there were none. She spoke of a path at their feet, and there was one, tortuous and narrow. She had not misstepped once, although he had watched for it with care; he had seen the result of misstep once before, and he was very anxious not to see that mistake repeated. The old woman at her side had taken no missteps either—if one assumed that passing through solid rock was a matter of confident footing. He had watched, waiting for the moment his magical guidance might prove useful. As she so often did, she wounded what vanity he had: she denied him purpose.

He was no longer what he had been when these paths had devoured the merely mortal. Jewel was.

He could not see with her vision. He doubted that there was another man alive who could, and although he understood the legacy left the Voyani, he suspected that the Matriarchs could not rival her raw power.

It had long since ceased to anger him that she refused to tend to the talent that was her neglected birthright. It had never greatly worried him until now.

He turned to the old woman, and he spoke, and magic reared like mythic serpent in response to his spell; a cascade of orange light spilled harmless from her head to her toes, to be swallowed by the shadows that pooled at her feet. "Don't," she said coolly. "I am not here for you, and I do not serve your purpose."

"But I see you," he said, as Jewel continued to stare at the path ahead, oblivious to the two who were slightly behind her. "You are not a manifestation of her gift and this path."

"No."

"Let her go."

"I am not what you think I am," the old woman replied, as cross as a harried market-goer.

"And I—"

"You are the Warlord. I know you. I know of your history; I see your dead walking behind you, and within you, with every step you take. Nothing is hidden from me here. Nothing."

"This is not your road."

"No," she replied, that voice gentling, bleeding itself of power until something placid and undefined remained at the base of her words. "It is Jewel's road, start to finish, and I have some hope that she will survive it." A wrinkled, sun-worn face turned to his, and the eyes that stared unblinking at him were like no living eyes he had seen—and he had gazed upon the gods in his time. "The gods are walking," she said, "as you prophesied. The paths cannot contain the Firstborn."

"They are contained."

"You understood her vision far better than she, and if you spent time lying to yourself about its significance, you're far more of a fool than you look. Which isn't saying much." He frowned.

"Duster."

"Na'jay."

"Jewel."

The first person she'd met in the Deepings had been her Oma. That had felt so right she hadn't really questioned it.

But the second person… funny, that it would be Duster. She lost Fisher and Lefty to the maze beneath the old city before Duster had met her end at the hands of the demon. She had lost her parents between her grandmother's death and theirs.

But truth? Even though she had cried for days after her father's untimely and unexpected death, something about Duster's death had been sharper, uglier, more painful.

Awful confession, that. She was glad she'd never had to make it out loud. The slender knife that glinted in the moonlight was Duster's trademark threat. Not that she wasn't big with words; she used 'em, sometimes to good effect, sometimes to bad. She had the worst temper because it ran so deep and it was so hard to turn off.

And she almost never pulled that knife when she wasn't angry. Truth. "Duster," she said, her voice as dry as the name. She wanted to say more, but the real words couldn't get past the true ones: I sent you to die.

"Yeah," the shade said. "You sent me. To die. And I did." She took a step closer. "You want to see?"

Jewel saw her clearly enough; the shadows robbed her of nothing. There were times when you saw something—and Jewel knew this was one—and it became the only thing in the world. She'd heard love talked about, in syrupy, stupid words, just as if it were like this: She couldn't breathe, couldn't move, could barely think.

If this was love, she'd give it a miss. A wide miss. In fact, she'd turn her back and walk away as quickly as dignity allowed. When she remembered how to breathe. If she ever could again.

There was no blood on Duster's face. No slash across her skin, no scars that hadn't already been there. She wore what she'd worn the last time Jewel had seen her alive—something she hadn't thought about much until she'd known for certain she'd never see her in it again: Undyed wool, carded by the hands of a sour old woman who'd managed to find the mangiest sheep in existence to shear. It was rough in texture, and too large. Jewel bought everything too large back then, because she hardly ever had money to buy clothing and everyone grew out of everything so damn fast.

"Bloody miracle," Duster said, "considering how much we had to eat. Hear you guys did real well for yourselves after you got rid of me."

She came closer.

Jewel stood her ground. She'd almost run out to meet her; at least that's what she thought she'd done. Stupid. Stupid move. She could see that now. Dagger and Duster. Duster and Death. Avandar's unwelcome hand was on her shoulder, a reminder of the life that Duster had had no chance to be part of.

"You here to kill me?" she asked quietly, shrugging that unwanted hand clear.

"Na'jay," her Oma said, voice as sour as vinegar.

"Maybe." Duster's shrug was more pointed than Jewel's, less useful.

"Maybe?"

"Maybe."

Silence. Heavy with the unsaid. Jewel struggled for that elusive breath. This is what love was like. Damn foolish. Be honest. Be honest, for once. You didn't love her in spite of the fact that she was a killer, you loved her because she was one.

Because she could do the things you were afraid to without thinking twice. Because she could do the things that had to be done without flinching, or throwing up, or looking over her shoul-der and waiting for the hand of Mandaros to descend from the heavens in judgment.

Because her mother, some backstreet whore who had gone home with the wrong man and had never come out again, hadn't invested her with the same guiding principles that Oma and Jewel's mother had; because Duster, wild and dark, eyes and hair like shadow, voice like fire, was a freedom that seemed like power.

She looked it, now: Thin and unbowed, her lip dimpled by some old knife fight that had happened before they'd met. Her eyes, gods, her eyes, larger than full crowns, expressive enough that you watched them no matter what they told you. And they told Jewel a lot, almost as much as the dagger did.

"Yeah," she said, was saying, as Jewel stared. "I think I want to kill you."

"Too bad."

Duster raised a dark brow. "You and me in a fight, and you think you'd win?"

"Not much. But I couldn't have won then, either. See the big idiot to my left? He's smaller than Arann, but still. Mean sonofabitch."

Duster spat. "Too pretty."

"Well, yeah. But he's mean anyway."

"And he's hanging with you? Not that bright. Or didn't you tell him what happens to most of your followers?"

She flinched. Shouldn't have. Knew it. She'd had to walk the edge with Duster more than once, and Duster knew how to find all the weak spots. "Not most of 'em."

"No." She shrugged. Threw heavy hair over her shoulder. "Just the killers."

"You want to get this over with?"

"Nah. I'll keep you guessing. You have to walk past me sooner or later." Duster laughed. "Besides. You can't call the hired help. They can't see me."

Jewel grimaced. The starlight was as clear as the knife's edge, the walls of the cliffs to either side sheer and daunting in their barren beauty. "Avandar," she said quietly, not taking her eyes from Duster, which wasn't hard. "Please tell me I'm not talking to myself."

"Not only will I not tell you that," he replied, "but I will also insult your intelligence by pointing out that it is extremely easy, in the Stone Deepings, to commit suicide. In fact," he added softly, with an edge to his voice that she'd always disliked, "it's the only way to die here."

"Great." She shrugged. Started to walk. "I hate you, you know that?" The knife's edge shadowed her face.

Duster laughed. "Yeah. I know." She fell into an easy walk beside her. "Hate me enough, and I won't be able to kill you. Hate me too much, and you won't be able to kill me."

"You were never this smart," Jewel snapped back.

"Of course not. I was never you." And she pulled the knife back and shoved it forward so suddenly Jewel only had time to bleed.

14th of Scaral, 427 AA

Desert of Sorrows

The night was not very black. It seldom was in these lands; no cloud seemed to settle across the sky for long, and the stars were piercing in their clarity. Nor were the nights long. The Northern Wastes had that as their advantage, although the Lord Ishavriel preferred the Southern desert to the Winter one. For one, there was life in the South that the Wastes did not boast, and where there was life, there was hunting.

But at night, the life was hidden.

Lord Ishavriel turned from his contemplation of the night sky. The constellations, unlike the world itself, had not changed much in the long absence of the Kialli; he therefore took some obscure comfort in naming them all. Humanity named the stars, attaching the brightest of their lights to the oldest of their stories. Even when the stories faded, the names remained, shorn of the depth of meaning.

But not shorn of all power.

The longest night was coming.

He had witnessed it, time and again, in the isolation of the Northern Wastes. He had marked its passing in the Lord's basin, while the Lord devoured what he had forbidden them: mortal souls. Lord Ishavriel had seen the brightest and the darkest of souls offered as sustenance to Allasakar. He had also destroyed a handful of his followers when the sight had driven them to the edge of madness. None of them were among the Kialli.

The Kialli had memory to sustain them. Memory of those places. Memory of these ones. Memory of the coming night.

But although they had marked the night, they had not used it. The seasons had been slow to return to them. The Northern Wastes, in particular, seemed a continuous piece of winter and winter's unchanging cold. But sooner or later—sooner, in Ishavriel's case— the sense of the old seasons returned.

The Winter road would be at its strongest when the night was longest.

In the South, they called it the Lady's Night. Arianne, in all of her glorious finery, might have approved. He wondered, briefly, where she was. If she still survived. They had warred, her people and his.

But never on Scarran.

No, on Scarran, they had often turned their time and attention to this: the desert. Because once, once before mortal memory, where the desert now stood there had been life. A gathering of mortals so vast it was almost impossible to believe it had dwindled into the pathetic Southern Terreans and the inscrutable Voyani caravans.

It was almost enough to cast all memory into doubt. Almost.

And that was a direction in which he did not wish to travel. He had much work to do, and little time to do it in. There was power here, buried in the same way a human heart is: beneath the flesh of the world and the cage of the desert. The other Kialli had not been wakened sufficiently; they did not seek from the desert what he did.

But in this desert, and only this one, all memory played him false. His Lord had decreed, and in anger, the desert had responded. The Cities of Man had been devoured. Lost to the world, lost to the men who had graced both wall and home, they had become part of the desert's heart.

And no one, perhaps not even the Lord Himself, knew where that heart now lay.

But those with the magic waking—waking quickly with the passage of days—were developing ambitions of their own. He knew that now he could find the resting place of at least one of those cities.

He began to cast.

To his great surprise, the desert resisted.

14th of Scaral, 427 AA

Tor Leonne

She woke from her troubled sleep with a start and rolled out of the bed, coming up against wooden planks on her heels, with both daggers gleaming in the moon's light.

"Steady," a familiar voice said.

The shadows resolved themselves into the shape of Elena. Elena with two daggers and no lamp.

She took a deep breath, and the daggers found their sheaths again. It would be minutes before her heart's beat returned to the steadiness she was familiar with. "What are you doing here?"

"You obviously didn't hear yourself shout," her cousin said, snorting at either end of the sentence. "I'd imagine we'll see—Ah."

In the moonlight, Kallandras the stranger had pulled back the flaps of her wagon. He stood like the definition of shadow, his face hidden, his hands free of the daggers that Elena had armed herself with.

Weaponless or no, she knew he was the more dangerous of the two.

"Matriarch," he said, and he offered her a Northern bow. "You are well?"

"Well, yes, and half-naked. Do you mind?" She stumbled into the edge of the pull-down table the wagon boasted, cursing. Her mother had never left it down.

"Here," Elena said, handing her the shirt that had become a pile beneath that table. "And here." She paused. "It's freezing, Margret. Are you wind-taken?"

"No. I'm tired of wearing last week's shirt."

Kallandras had not moved.

"Bard," Margret said, as she struggled into the shirt, teeth beginning to chatter as the truth of the night's chill bit a little more deeply. "If you were one of mine, I'd've broken your jaw by now. Can you learn to take a hint?"

"I can," he said. "Do you know what you said, Margret?"

"Said? I was sleeping!"

And then, at his back, she heard a voice that made his sound welcome. "You were sleeping, yes, but in sleep we're at our most defenseless, and the visions we can ignore while waking strike then."

She cursed as she struggled into her shirt and wound the sash over it, but she cursed quietly. Elena had already bent, albeit briefly, in two. "Yollana."

"Tell him," Yollana said.

"There's a slight problem with that," Margret replied, catching her unruly hair and knotting it.

"Which is?"

"I don't remember myself."

"You spoke in the old tongue," Elena prompted her softly. "And you sounded—"

"Terrified," Kallandras supplied, when Elena's groping for an appropriate word extended that hair's breadth too long.

"He's right," her cousin said. "Terrified. I didn't recognize your voice at all."

"You thought I was murdering someone in the privacy of my wagon?"

"Wouldn't be the first time you'd come close."

"Ha ha ha." She closed her eyes. Opened them almost immediately. Narrowed them. You could do a lot with eyes. "Matriarch," she said, to the oldest woman in the crowded wagon. "There is no circle here."

"No."

"And if someone listens to what we say?"

"We will be heard."

Margret nodded. She was silent for a long time, but it was obvious that she was thinking; her eyes had closed again. When she opened them, Elena, Kallandras, and Yollana were still waiting, clustered around her, and she had a sense, suddenly, that she had been in this room before, and would be again, with these three. There was a fourth shadow that was indistinct but present. She wondered whose it was.

"I was fighting for my life. I was bound," she added, "but the binding itself did not make me feel entrapped. It was as if—as if the binding were clothing or armor; I couldn't move while I was in it, but the fact that I couldn't move made me feel safe." She shrugged. "Not something I'd try when I was awake. I take no responsibility for any stupid thing I do in my dreams."

"Start," Yollana said unexpectedly.

"Pardon?"

"Start taking that responsibility." The old woman's voice was pinched and grave. Much as her own mother's had been when she was being peculiarly serious.

She knew that tone of voice. It was Matriarch business.

Frustration made her bite her lip, and then chew on it. Yollana knew it was Matriarch business, but Margret hadn't. Hells, Yollana wasn't even Arkosan.

"And finish," Yollana insisted. "The dream."

Margret counted to three. Calmed down.

"Did I mention that I couldn't see? No? I couldn't see. I couldn't speak." She slid on her boots in the darkness. Took a deep breath. "Lady, I'm glad this isn't a story circle."

"Don't be. If it were, you wouldn't be in it for much longer."

"Thanks, Cousin.

"Let me start at the beginning." She closed her eyes. Let the edges of sleep return to her, as if it were a vast ocean and she a child, forbidden the water, playing with toes at that water's edge. "I—I can't see. I am lying someplace dark and warm, but the warmth is unnatural; the cold is waiting. But I'm comfortable with the cold, the same way I'd be comfortable with the idea of hunger just after I'd been very well fed. It's—" she hesitated a moment. "It's night."

"Yes," Yollana said softly. "It's night. During the day you would feel the heat at a distance, not the chill."

Margret nodded slowly. "You've had this dream."

"Yes. But I've never woken from it the way you did. You screamed, Margret."

"Because something was trying to let the cold in," she replied. Her eyes snapped open as she stared at the older woman's face. It was said, among the Voyani, that dreams were significant, and as Margret had been daughter to the Matriarch, she had never had cause to doubt it. She wished she could. "Do all Matriarchs have these dreams?"

"Yes," Yollana replied, "And no. This is your first?"

"No—not the first. I've dreamed of this before, but never so strongly."

"Mother's daughter," Yollana said softly. "We do not speak of the dreams among ourselves. It is enough to know that they speak to us in different ways, but they speak the same language."

The wagon was dark. The night, cold.

"I dream of it," the Havallan Matriarch continued softly, "as being wrapped in a great cocoon, one of my own making. It is the labor, not of years, but of centuries, of millennia, and I am content. I have been born. I am waiting, in the warmth of the darkness, for rebirth."

"And it is not the time."

"No, Margret. It is not." The old woman bowed her head.

"That's what I screamed."

"Yes."

"In the old tongue." She could feel the words, thick and heavy in her mouth.

"Yes."

"Because something was trying to destroy that cocoon. To force me into the world before my time. To kill me." "Yes."

"What was it? What was I dreaming of, Yollana? "Arkosa."

She started to speak. Stopped. Her face was as pale as the moon, but shadowed in the poor light. At last she said, "Is that what this is about? Is that why my mother—"

In her voice, he heard the sudden strength of certainty. And fear.

"Yes," Yollana replied starkly. Her voice hid much, much more than Margret's. Oddly enough, her face did not.

The younger woman folded at the knees; the thin, flat bed that was, among the Voyani, a luxury caught her weight with a creak.

"Yollana—"

The older woman lifted a hand; the gesture demanded silence. Margret was a young woman, the youngest—for now—of the four Matriarchs. She obeyed.

But only for a moment. Then she began a mad scramble in the darkness, opening the drawers of a large chest that hunkered against the wall, its line softened by night. Cloth went flying like heavy, formless shadow; some of it fell at Kallandras' feet.

Almost absently he bent to retrieve it, but his gaze in the scant light did not leave Margret's face. He was surprised at the very fine feel of silk against his palms; the Voyani did not often acquire such material for personal use.

But she found what she sought; she stilled suddenly, the flight of clothes ended. "Yollana?"

"Turn, Margret."

She did, again as ordered. In her hands she held the round, fat stub of a candle; wax drippings had changed what must have been cylindrical in shape before fire's touch.

The Havallan Matriarch spoke a sharp word, a soft one, a sharp word, a soft one. Then she lifted her hands, cupping weathered palms in a single motion.

Fire came, caught there in the smallest of sparks. She opened her hands and it leaped, as if for safety, to the candle's wick.

"This will protect us a moment or two, but not more."

"And not," the older woman added quietly, "if anyone with true power is intent upon listening. It is not heart's fire."

"No." Margret set the candle down. "Yollana, not long after the Festival of the Sun I met a clanswoman. She spoke to me of my mother's fate."

"That would be the Serra Teresa?"

"That would be," Margret said, her expression wry, "the Serra Teresa. But while we spoke, another came to interrupt us. He was—he was far too handsome. I never trust that in a man."

"I never knew you noticed it in a man," Elena muttered. Margret did not choose to hear her. Or perhaps she couldn't; Kallandras' hearing was second to none.

"He said, 'We have the keys to Arkosa, and we are willing to grant them to its rightful owners.' "

"You did not believe him."

"How could I? You know the fate of the Cities." Her voice was stark, stripped of almost everything that made her voice her own. Kallandras turned in the darkness. Elena's profile had suddenly become as stiff, as cold, as the daggers she still carried. Elena, the heir to Arkosa now that Margret was Matriarch, and without daughter. "But she told me. I should have known."

"She?"

"The blue-robed witch."

"Ah. What truth did she offer?"

"She told me that the Lord of Night… was here." Margret lifted a hand; encompassed the outer world with a sweeping, a shaking, gesture. "Who else?" she asked, almost whispering. "Who else has the keys?"

"Margret, carefully."

"No. I would see Arkosa destroyed before I would let Him open the door." She turned to face them, her face orange in the candlelight; orange and black but somehow as bright as new silver in sunlight. Faces lit from within, Kallandras thought, were filled with light, and beautiful for it; the light cut. "I didn't know it. I didn't know it until tonight."

Yollana was silent for a time. They might have been kin, these two, the older woman and the younger. Between them, the candle suddenly sputtered. A reminder.

"That," the Havallan Matriarch said, breaking the silence that bound them, "is the choice of the Matriarch; you've made it, without vows, without oaths, without bearing witness to the ancient truths. Arkosan blood is strong in you. Aie, Margret, what you've said. What you've dreamed." She lifted a hand to her forehead. Kallandras had known her long enough to know it was not a coincidence that she covered her eyes. "We cannot afford to wait for the heart to find us; we must find it, and quickly."

"Easier said than done. If it were that easy—"

"It is that easy, compared with what you will face. I don't know why our ancient enemies chose Arkosa. I don't even know, for fact, that it is the only family chosen. But I know that it will be tried first. And if it fails, we fail."

"No."

"Yes, Margret. You will have to trust an older and wiser voice in this. And if you will not trust my voice, trust this: I am the strongest of the seers the Havalla line has had since Michaela the Blind. I know it to be true. We are coming, now, to our final test. Fail, and the Voyanne means—and meant—nothing."

"And if we pass?"

The old woman did not reply.

"Yollana, Matriarch, if you have seen—"

"Matriarch," Kallandras said, lifting a hand and turning his head slightly to the side.

"What?" Her impatience was almost lovely; it brought an odd fire to her eyes, a vibrancy to her voice, that the high clansmen never showed.

"I believe you have visitors."

"Do I want them?"

"I don't believe," he replied, "that you have much choice." Then the door burst open and a large, bearish man with a burning torch filled its small frame.

The fear left Margret's face as the light from the torch graced it. Her shoulders became a stiff line, her lips an even stiffer one. She paused only to snuff the stout candle that stood on the flat, narrow table.

"Stavos," she said.

"Matriarch."

"He did it." Flat, flat voice. The fear was gone; the uncertainty, the dread. Replacing every hint of emotion in her voice: anger. And the pain that caused it.

The old man bowed his head until it was almost level with the impressive line of his shoulders. After a moment it became clear that that gesture was to be his answer.

"Where is he?"

"We have him."

"Here?"

"Outside the wagon."

"Take me to him."

The old man lifted his head just enough to nod. He turned and walked into the night; she followed, covering the distance between his back and the crowded wagon in two lean strides. She stopped just long enough to say a single word.

"Elena."

Her cousin sheathed the daggers in her hands—but they were there now in the fire of her eyes. She became the Matriarch's shadow as they left the wagon together.

Yollana watched her go. "I pity her," she said to the Northern bard. "For this night's work."

"For a dream, Yollana? You have had darker."

"I have had darker dreams than even her dream of the desert," the Havallan Matriarch replied, staring at the door that the passage of two women had left ajar, "but there is no dream as harsh as what she faces now."

"And that?"

Yollana turned back to him. "If we do not have family, if we cannot trust family, we are nothing. You cannot understand this."

He smiled. And he smiled without allowing the bitterness that took him by surprise to show.

His face was bloody. Nose bent at an odd angle—and bleeding— left eye beginning to swell in a way that would end with black and purple before it faded. His hair was sticky; she saw that as she approached him. He would have bent his head—he struggled to do so, to avoid her glare—but the man at his back held him up by the hair.

Two men held his arms.

"Matriarch," Stavos said.

She did not listen. Instead, she approached Nicu. Her cousin. Her favorite cousin.

Her hand moved before she could stop it; she struck him hard enough that he would have flown back a full body's length had he not been held by either arm.

"How dare you?"

Silence.

No one spoke. No one spoke to stop her, and she knew that no one would. Not even Carmello, Nicu's best friend. But her aunt, Donatella, appeared in night's shadow, carrying a torch she held slightly higher than anyone else's.

Light ran in trails down the older woman's face, flowing from her eyes over the sun-worn lines of her cheeks. She looked ancient, at that moment, and so weathered by wind and sun that she shouldn't have had any water left to cry with. Had she spoken at all, had she given voice to the mute plea her presence made, Margret's anger would have known no bounds; it was sharp with new pain, and new pain was a wild and restless creature.

But she didn't speak. She understood that what Margret did, this night, was not only her right but her duty. A weak Matriarch meant a weak clan.

And Margret now knew that at no time in Voyani history— save at the very foot of the Voyanne itself—could a weak Matriarch be less afforded.

"I forbade you the sword, Nicu. I let you keep your own counsel—against my better judgment—about its origin, but I ordered you to stay away from it."

He lifted his face, and beneath the damage done to it, she could see the willful, and wild, and the petulantly handsome youth that had urged her on in most of her childhood escapades. She wanted to turn away.

"And you've become so good at following orders, you expect the rest of us to fall in line?" he said under his breath.

This time, Stavos struck him before she could.

It was probably a good thing. Her hands were frozen at her sides. He was right, of course; Margret, Nicu, and Elena had spent a lifetime thinking of ways to thwart her mother and survive. When he lifted his head again—or more accurately, when it was lifted for him—new blood ran down the length of his face. He wore undyed cloth, a shirt his mother had made; its laces, undone, were sticky with blood and made a string painting across the canvas of his clothing.

"None of the games we played caused deaths." She knew better than to speak. She didn't have to justify herself to Nicu; in fact, it was entirely the wrong thing to do. She knew it would be costly. But she had never just walked away from an argument with Nicu before, no matter how stupid. No matter who had started it.

"And mine have? It's just a sword, Cousin."

"You will be silent until the Matriarch gives you permission to speak. She is not to be questioned here—you are."

Oh, Stavos, she thought, as she saw the stone that had, just this afternoon, been his warm and expressive face.

"Is it?" She spoke as if Stavos had not, her eyes narrowing. Her arms were across her chest before she realized she'd crossed them. "Where did you get the sword, Nicu?"

He was silent.

"Nicu, you know how this will play out. In the end, if I want the answers, I'll get them. Save me the time."

He said nothing.

"Nicu, am I your enemy?"

At that, his eyes met hers; they were dark, and although at least one would be purpled with bruise for weeks by the look of it, they were still his eyes. It cut her.

"Nicu, answer me. Am I your enemy?"

His gaze dropped. But she saw that the question burned him. She wasn't surprised when he answered it.

"No."

"Then why all of this?"

He glanced to either side.

"Nicu, I gave these men direct orders. I gave you the same." She unlocked her folded arms and forced them to her sides, hooking her thumbs into the perfectly tied folds of her sash. Elena's gift. "Tell me. I let it go, tonight. I shouldn't have. I see that now. Tell me about the sword."

"It was—it was a gift."

"From whom?"

He hung his head again. When he didn't lift it after the passage of a half inch of candle, she nodded at Stavos; grabbing a handful of hair, he lifted Nicu's head for him.

"Nicu, from whom?"

She saw the shame in his face, although it was hard to separate it from the anger. His gaze slid off her, past her, to her left.

To, she knew, Elena.

Pity stabbed her more strongly than anger.

"From someone who knows our history and cares about us more than—" He fell silent. Chose silence. It was the first smart thing he'd done all evening. "He offered me the sword. He said it would make me—make us—strong."

"And you took it."

"Yes."

"And what did you give him in return?"

"Nothing."

She felt it, then. He was telling the truth, yes, but it was the type of truth you told when you were lying. He knew what she wanted him to answer; he chose how to best use the words to thwart her. He wasn't stupid enough to lie to a Matriarch. At least he had that.

"So you accepted a sword from a stranger."

"Yes."

"A sword that didn't see you into adulthood, a sword that hadn't been offered your blood, and your family's name."

He flinched. "Yes."

"You used a boy's sword."

That stung; she could see new red in his cheeks, and he pulled at the men who held his arms, breaking his slump.

"I used a boy's sword? Maybe, Margret, 1 finally used a man's sword. Maybe that's what this is all about. I used a man's sword. I fought like a man."

"Like a clansman," she countered, cold as desert night. "Is that what you want? The life of a clansman? Sorry, I can't offer you that. I can offer you the death, though.

"Who was the stranger, Nicu?"

"I don't know."

"Who?"

"Damn it, Margret, if you're going to have me killed, kill me, but I'm telling you the truth. I don't know."

She cursed; she had wished for the Arkosan heart, but never so strongly as now. She hadn't her mother's gift or her mother's talent; she hadn't Yollana's famed sight. All she had was herself, her instinct, her experience. Wasn't what she wanted for a situation like this.

It would have to do. She was certain he spoke the truth. "What did he offer you, Nicu?"

"Nothing."

And that, that was not.

"Did you trust him?"

"I didn't think about it."

Truth.

"The sword is off-limits. I won't have my men—any of my men—use a sword that confuses which of the two, sword or man, is the wielder, and which the weapon.

"But I told you that. You didn't listen.

Now, the only drawn breath in the clearing was her own, and she wouldn't have bothered if she hadn't needed the air to speak with. The night was cold, the stars clearer than they had been in years, or so it felt. Her hands were numb and shaking, they'd been balled into fists for so long.

Stavos was watching her. Stavos, uncle, adviser, trusted ally. She saw his face, saw how hard the lines of it were, saw how dark the eyes. She was no expert. She didn't understand people all that well—Hells, she'd grown up with Nicu and spent more than half her life in his company, and she couldn't understand him at all.

But she knew what Stavos expected of her. She knew, then, what the only thing she could do was. It was a test.

And it was an easy test. No trick questions. No stupid games. This was as black and white as it came. She had given Nicu an order, a direct order. A serious one. He had disobeyed it.

He had disobeyed it, risking them all. He had chosen the Lord's ways over the Lady's at a time when the children—their future, their only true future—had not yet made their way out of the Tor Leonne.

What other choice could there be?

"Take him," she said, more to the two men who held Nicu than to Stavos himself. "Leave him in the wagon circle. Wait until after the Lord's height tomorrow." She looked at Nicu, and then away, her gaze like a glancing blow. Hard, that. Harder, though, to look at Donatella. Donatella, whose gaze, tear-marred and wide-eyed though it was, was measure for measure the same as Stavos'.

She could not turn to look at Elena; all she heard was Elena's drawn breath. Long, slow, steady—a sign that she was controlling either her tongue or her temper. Rare enough it might have been worth seeing—on any other night.

A test. Yes. A test of the new Matriarch.

What do you do when your kin won't follow your orders?

Yollana's answer hung in the air between Margret and the cousin she had grown up fighting with. But she was Evallen's daughter; not even at four years old would she have been stupid enough to ask for another Matriarch's help with her family.

She knew what must be done. Knew what her mother would have done, although she wondered bitterly if her mother's orders would ever have been treated so casually.

So stupidly.

She drew a breath as deep, as slow, as Elena's had sounded. And she faced her cousin's bruised face. It wasn't the first time it had looked like this. She couldn't actually remember the first time he'd gotten into a fight; the first time bruises and swelling had taken the edge off his wild, pretty face.

But she remembered fighting him for a place on Uncle Stavos' knee. Remembered fighting him for a doll that had been his mother's birth gift to her. Remembered how fearless he'd been— how stupid—when he'd saved her life from clansmen raiding what they thought was a small Arkosan caravan. They'd taken heads that day.

Nicu had been fourteen.

He'd also been incensed that he wasn't allowed to keep the head he'd taken.

"Margret—" Nicu began.

"Shut up. Just shut up." To her uncle she said, "Bring the whips tomorrow. I'll flog him myself." She turned away.

Because this had been a test, yes, and she knew she had just failed it.

But she couldn't kill Nicu.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

427 AA

Stone Deepings

"Na'jay," a voice said. Her grandmother's voice. She opened her eyes, or tried to; everything was dark. "Na'jay," the voice said again. The first of the familiar things returned to her: the smell of her grandmother's hair when it hung, long and pale, the soap not quite gone with the jugs of water she'd helped to heat and pour. The second followed quickly: the feel of the rounded swell of legs widened with age beneath her cheek. Her Oma's lap. She opened her eyes.

"I can't see."

"I know, dear," that comforting voice said. "I thought it best. It will pass."

"Duster?"

"She's gone."

"She's not."

"Yes, she is. You have far too much power and far too little knowledge to be traveling this path. Lucky you aren't travelling it alone."

"Avandar—"

"I wasn't talking about him. He was right to be afraid to bring you here. Do you know where you are, Jewel?"

"The Stone Deepings."

"Yes. But do you know what the Deepings are?"

Darkness. Beneath her hands, the chill of hard rock, broken into jagged rubble. Beneath that, smoothed by time or water, the path.

"Would she?"

"Would she what, Jewel?"

"Would she kill me?"

"It's not for me to answer. I never knew her." The old woman heaved the sort of sigh that could be heard across a crowded dining hall. "You didn't kill her, you know."

"I sent her—"

"You sent her because she was the only person you thought could succeed. She failed you." Jewel's face scraped stone as it was unceremoniously dumped off the old woman's lap. "Get up. Start seeing. You've got a long way to walk in this darkness, and you'd better get good at it. I can only take you so far."

Jewel stood in the slow awkward way a person does who's afraid of what she might stumble into while denied sight. "Where's Avandar?"

"Him? Oh, he's frantic. He's shaking you by your shoulders until your teeth chatter, and you're about to wake up."

"I'm sleeping."

"You're dreaming the dreams of Stone Deepings," the old woman said, and her voice was suddenly cool. "You are the key; find the lock before the path kills you."

She was glad she didn't have a mirror. It was one of the vanities that she'd refused herself over time, that leaning toward femininity that seemed either above or beneath her, depending on the time of day, the phase of moon.

"Next time," she said, through teeth that felt as if they'd been chipped, her jaw was so sore, "wait."

"Jewel, I've walked this path. Waiting is tantamount to—"

"Is that my hair? Is that my hair I smell?"

"I… attempted to get your attention by slightly more drastic measures than I generally use."

"You burned my hair?" She got up. Her knees hurt; dampness had settled beneath skin and muscle into the heart of bone. "Oma?"

"She is… gone."

Gone. Just like that. Jewel felt an old twinge: failure. Consequence. Fear. She put it aside. "How long have I been lying here?"

"Long enough." He pronounced each syllable with painful exactness.

"Can't be that long. I'm not hungry."

He offered no reply. Certainly not the reply Carver or Angel would have: exaggerated shock. She was always hungry.

The stars were now an aurora of light, shifting in place in a curtain of pale silver. They aren't real, she told herself, but she stopped as if spellbound by their beauty. She probably was.

"Jewel." She shied away from his outstretched hand; he dropped it at once. Old habits, his and hers. "Do you now understand the nature of this path?"

"No. You're telling me you do?"

He didn't answer. Answer enough. Her eyes narrowed until they seemed closed; until the only thing she could see was Avandar.

"Tell me."

His gaze was remote and cool. "I am your domicis, Jewel Markess ATerafin. I owe you nothing more personal than that."

"It isn't what you owe her, Viandaran, but what you will give her, that fascinates the objective observer." Jewel had often heard voices described as velvet before; she had never actually credited the description as anything but lazy poetry. She apologized now to those of bardic bent; the words had a richness and a depth, a soft smoothness of cadence and tone, that made a listener want them to be physical.

Orange light flared like the most beautiful of magework, framing Avandar as if he were a gem and it the setting that would bring out his true worth. Burning and incandescent, he stood in its ethereal heart, fire's gift. Fire.

"Hello, Calliastra." His voice was like ice.

For no reason she could think of, Jewel was afraid. Of the stranger with a voice like one of those exotic drugs that were forbidden for good reason. Of Avandar. Of what she could see in the fires that he wore like the raiment of kings.

That's because you're not a fool; no one of my blood could be a fool. Oma's voice.

Jewel hated to be afraid.

"And the objective observer is?"

"Jewel, stay exactly where you are."

She started to think of something clever to say and lost the words as the objective observer in question stepped into full view. Avandar had been cloaked in fire, the element of the magical protections he chose to summon. But the woman who spoke in a voice that weaker women would have spent fortunes to keep listening to was cloaked in something entirely different. Shadow and darkness, the absence of light.

She had seen something very like it in Kiriel. Very and nothing.

Jewel swallowed. Or half-swallowed; the walls of her throat had dried out entirely and clung together, which had the side effect of making her breath thin and short.

Avandar, damn him, turned slightly and raised a brow; she thought he was amused. If she'd been certain, she'd've hit him. Just as well.

"The objective observer," the woman said softly, "is Calliastra. And you, child?"

"No, I'm sorry," Jewel managed to say, "but child is ten years ago." Her voice sounded thin and shaky to her ears; she cringed when she thought of what it must sound in comparison to the stranger's.

"You are in the Deepings. Time does not have the same meaning here." She had dimples in the pale white of perfect skin. "My dear, you are… worried. And in such capable hands; how unusual." Gods, Jewel could see the rot beneath the surface of her perfect face, her perfect teeth, her perfect skin; she could see the cruelty and the ice, the heavy weight of earth over the dead. But seeing it, seeing made no difference. She could not look away.

The woman laughed, and the sound was—was so heartbreaking in its beauty Jewel raised her hands to her ears without thinking.

Not without thought, Na 'jay.

Yes, Oma.

The laughter tightened, becoming stronger and deeper in a way that denied beauty while encompassing it.

"The objective observer," the woman said, "is Calliastra. Come, Jewel Markess. I don't believe we've met, and I miss human company."

He caught her wrist, his hand plain and rough in comparison to Calliastra's, nails short and blunt, fingers just too ordinary. She pulled away. Or tried to.

"I'm afraid," he said, tightening his grip, "that I must advise you against what would be so brief an acquaintance."

She pulled. Pulled hard.

Na 'jay, her Oma said, and she heard the voice, understood the warning in it, and still couldn't stop herself. For the first time in her life she not only understood the progression of compulsion, addiction, death, she felt herself pulled into the rush and current of its passing stream.

She didn't like the understanding; in fact, she was barely aware of it: she had to move forward, and Avandar Gallais stood in her way.

Jewel, no.

Avandar's brows rose fractionally. The subtle transformation of his face was instant: She had surprised him. But she'd surprised herself, too. She recognized the knife in her hands. The last time she'd seen it, it was in the process of being buried in her chest by the ghost of a girl she'd once—

Loved.

Long blade. Thin and wavy. Duster had liked to think of its form as a Southern conceit, and although Jewel knew that Southerners carried more practical daggers, she'd never seen fit to correct her friend. They'd built a life on the things they shared: Southern blood, a life in the tougher streets of Veralaan's grand city.

But they were separated by other experiences. A father. Family. The ability to control both temper and desire.

Duster's dagger.

"Jewel," the woman said, and she turned, and she saw in the eyes what she'd seen in Kiriel: Duster, some part of Duster come back to her, death notwithstanding. Those eyes, those perfect, black eyes, narrowed slightly. "Impossible," she said softly, drawing back a moment, losing the velvet that clothed the steel without once losing the appeal.

"No," Jewel said faintly, "I know who you are."

She laughed, the laughter thawing the chill of her expression. "And who is that, exactly?"

"Allasakar's kin."

The silence was slow and smooth; the surprise on the woman's face replaced by a gradual pleasure. Jewel felt her cheeks warm with the approval, and hated it. "Viandaran," she said, "I should have known you wouldn't bring a mortal of little note or worth when you traveled this path." She sauntered—there was no other word for the casual, hypnotic way she walked toward them—as if she owned the path, and the Deepings, as if she had waited for this opportunity and no other.

Nonsense. You've a head, girl. Use it.

Yes, Oma. For the first time in living memory, Jewel wondered if her life would, in fact, have been any better had her grandmother survived.

Put the dagger away.

Jewel stared at the knife, and beyond it, at the man she had almost threatened with its use. He was expressionless; bad sign. It meant he was preparing for a fight.

"I'm sorry," he said, as she hesitated just that little bit too long.

She wanted to tell him the hesitation was because she had no idea how to put the damn knife away, but she was Jewel; she didn't lie easily, and that was only enough of the truth to be plausible to anyone who hadn't laid eyes on the woman who called herself Calliastra.

And because the truth was complicated, and because she barely understood it herself, she didn't get her words out before he spoke his. She forgot about trying.

Fire answered his call in a way that breathing answered hers; naturally, inevitably. Red ringed by blue, it circled her arm, singeing skin so quickly the mark left was white.

Jewel screamed.

The fire had come not from Avandar, but from her: from the mark she bore. She understood what his mark meant then, and she would—in a fury that was inarticulate because words were too simple to express them—make it clear later.

Now?

The dagger fell from her hands as if her hands belonged to him. Her fingers opened, her palm dipped; light struck stone and glittered as the metal rang its odd, skittering chime. She took a step back; another; and a final one; her back came to rest against the chest of the man who was pulling the strings.

If she could have killed him then, she would have.

She'll kill you, her Oma said, voice completely devoid of sympathy. And you, you fool, you'd walk straight into her arms.

She said nothing. Calliastra continued to walk toward her, hand outstretched in an offering of something that wasn't quite friendship and wasn't quite sex. Jewel knew both well enough. She tried to look away. She couldn't. She didn't even know what Calliastra was wearing, because she couldn't look away from her face, but the impression of a long, simple dress that circled a long, perfect body and fell straight to the ground stayed with her in the shadows.

Avandar's arms closed around her, crossing at the wrists just above the hollow of her neck. She had always known he was larger, but she felt dwarfed by him, shunted back into an age she had never particularly liked—not quite woman, definitely not child. She opened her mouth to bite him, and her teeth snapped shut.

There was worse. Far worse.

He said, I'm sorry, Jewel. Believe that I am sorry.

But she didn't hear it with her ears; she heard it in the same way that she heard her dead grandmother's voice.

As if it were a part of her, as if it resided where both guilty and treasured memories did. She had never shared anything that personal with Avandar before. She would not have chosen to now.

Calliastra approached them, Jewel now as silent and still as stone, and just as warm. She reached out with a hand that was not a child's hand, and not a young girl's for all that it was smooth and unblemished. It was a woman's hand, in much the same way that The Terafin's hands, placed palm down on the tables in her vast library, were. Power in them.

"Calliastra."

"Viandaran, do you think to threaten me?" She didn't even sound angry.

"No, Lady."

"Good. I have a fondness for you that would not prevent me from behaving in a manner appropriate to your station."

He said nothing; she drew closer. "Jewel," she said thoughtfully, "what a perfect name. I imagine that children ridiculed you when they first heard it."

"Not more than once," Jewel murmured.

She laughed. "You are wasted on this one. What did you call him? Avandar? Come."

"She cannot," Avandar said.

"Truly?"

Magic was thick as fog in the valleys her grandmother had once called home. Thicker, and colder as well. Magic had a color in Jewel's particular vision; watching it take shape and form—as halo, as glowing orb, as flickering ethereal flame—told her much about the nature of the spell, and the nature of the caster.

There was literally too much information in what she saw now; she froze, trapped by vision, by color, by a sense of textures that moved so astoundingly fast she only barely held on to their essence at all, piling one impression upon another until all she understood was the power that lay behind the structure of the magic itself.

Avandar's arms tightened. His knuckles came up as he pulled her closer; his hands, hard now and fistlike, rested so tightly against the base of her throat she felt hostage to his desire. Whatever that desire was.

"She is already claimed," he said.

Jewel opened her mouth: silence followed the movement of lips and air. She could not speak. And she knew he had forbidden it. Her body resonated with a command so deep it didn't need words.

The subtle sensuality of this woman's expression shifted on an edge; the danger came out to play. "Then release her."

"No."

"You are being tiresome, Viandaran, and I have spent long enough in the godforsaken Deepings, that any company, no matter how pathetic or weak, should have novelty value enough that I am not bored by it." She stepped forward. He made no move to avoid the hands that she laid against Jewel's exposed cheek.

Jewel screamed.

The contact was done in an instant; surprised, the woman pulled back.

"Apologies, child," she said, tilting her chin down to examine the lines of Jewel's face. "The pain… was illusory, and it was not of my making."

Jewel struggled to breathe. The air came in quantities that didn't quite reach the bottom of her lungs; she fought with it, and with the tears that marred her vision, that rippled the perfect face of pain.

"She is not for you," Avandar said.

"Why? She is not the first you have brought upon this path."

He said nothing.

Jewel thought she couldn't feel worse, but she did; some ground had fallen out from beneath her feet when Avandar Gallais had used his magic to take complete control of her body. What very little sense of stability had been left was completely destroyed by the words she knew would follow.

"It's been such a long time since you've tired of a wife or a child—I thought you had given up on them altogether."

He said nothing at all.

"You do know what I do, don't you, child?"

Jewel said nothing, not in mimicry of Avandar but because she had no choice. She would have sworn in the name of seven different gods had she just had her voice.

"I am the daughter of, as you guessed, Allasakar." Her smile was gentle and soft. "You are talent-born; that much is clear. But it surprises me that you see the darkness and think of the god; he has had very little presence in the world of man, and the memory of men is notoriously short."

"She means," Avandar said quietly, "that she is forgotten."

"Yes, I am. But I will not remain so. The paths are crumbling, their edges fraying to reality. I hear the horns and the Hunt, and they are being called this Winter, with a power that I have not heard since the fall of Moorelas.

She lifted her perfect, her beautiful, face, and glanced to the North—to what, in the darkened night of the Deepings, should have been North—and said, "I am my father's daughter, and my mother's. Her hand is not so easily seen, is it?"

"Gods died," Avandar said conversationally.

For the first time, Calliastra was angered. "Viandaran," she said, speaking to Jewel although the words were clearly meant for the man who held her, "has the distinction of being the only mortal lover I have ever taken who has lived to speak of the experience."

"And I did not."

"His survival was a… surprise to me," she said quietly. "And I am so. unused to surprises. Imagine it, the daughter of Allasakar and the daughter of Laursana."

Jewel knew the name; she'd heard it often enough in the halls of the Terafin Manse, in the breathy whispers of young women, young girls, in the mournful prayers of awkward young men. At that age, Jewel had prayed to Kalliaris, and trusted to herself. But she'd had that practical bent about her: food was more important than love. Clothing was more important than love. She'd had both, and while lack of love had made her want to die, lack of food had almost killed her.

She understood why people prayed to Laursana, but she'd learned the hard way that loss wasn't really worth the momentary happiness. It wasn't being alone she was afraid of. It was what would happen to leave her that way. Better not to take that risk. Always.

All this passed as she stared at the woman's enormous eyes, at her perfect skin, at the expression—one of complete attention— that she turned upon Jewel. Somehow it managed to sink in.

"You're the daughter of two gods."

"Yes."

It was vaguely disgusting, like finding out that your parents did more than just sleep in their bed. She almost couldn't conceive of the union between two gods. Then again, she couldn't really conceive of the union between a god and a normal person, and she was living under the reign of two of them.

"Viandaran was the only one of my many lovers to survive the night."

Avandar still said nothing. Jewel had often found his silence frustrating; it was a wall that, short of losing her temper and doing something childish and intemperate—like, say, throwing a pot or a large tureen—she couldn't breach, and in his foulest mood, he retreated there, beyond reach.

He was not in a foul mood now, but she had no way of reaching him.

Not true.

All right, she amended, her grandmother's sharp words forcing a different truth from her, she had no way of reaching him that she was willing to attempt. Not here. Not in this place. Not when she couldn't even move—and best not to think about that. Truly.

Don't judge her, a different voice said. Avandar's. She is the victim of her nature: her mother seeks and grants love and her father seeks and grants death, of a type. She can no more change what she is than either of her parents can: they are eternal. We are mortal. She stiffened.

Get out, she told him, or hoped she did, the words as distinct as she could think them. Get the Hells out.

Silence.

"He brought them to me," Calliastra said softly. "When he stopped loving them, he let me love them a while."

There was malice and madness in the words, and beneath both a terrible hunger, not only emptiness—vast and perfect and completely natural—but a fear of emptiness, a desire to fill it. Imagine it, the goddess had said—for what else did you call the child of two gods?

Avandar's unwelcome answer hit her like a crossbow bolt: The Firstborn, yes. That was what they'd been called. Imagine being born to darkness and born to love. Imagine that love always ended, and always in death, before any of its promise had been fulfilled. Better a god of lust as a parent than one of love. Better, she thought suddenly, any other god.

Jewel was speechless with something that was akin to pity but larger. And pity? Gods, why pity? This woman was a monster, she could see that, nature or no. We are all so much slower to judge, she thought, when beauty is involved.

15th of Scaral, 427 AA

Tor Leonne

Sendari stared at the bent head of his wife as sunlight dappled her hair, lending it silk's sheen. That hair trailed down her shoulders, pooling like liquid against the surface of outdoor mats. She had chosen, this morn, to wear white, white and gold with a touch of a lovely turquoise that removed the colors from the Lord's Dominion. He should have been suspicious, then. The Lord knew that he had suffered all his adult life from the intervention of women he could not trust.

Wearing a sari that had been his gift when he had been granted a clan's name, she had seemed particularly lovely. She still did; the supplicant posture was absolutely correct.

But Sendari was a man who could appreciate loveliness without being moved by it at all.

The rocks in the garden, the small stunted trees, the flowers whose tints were delicate, rather than gaudily brilliant, moved him more at this moment than the Serra Fiona.

He had never been so close to killing a wife. He might stand on the other edge of that act but for two things: First, he had learned, over time, not to act in anger. Second, and more relevant, he had promised himself—in a youth that was so distant from him there were times when he could not believe it was his own—that he would never make killing an act of passion. The seeking of knowledge, yes. Love, yes. Not death.

"How dare you?"

She spoke to the mats when she finally spoke.

"I am sorry, my husband. I am truly sorry. I did not realize that the Serra Teresa was not welcome in your harem."

"How dare you invite her—from Mancorvo no less—without my explicit permission?"

"I have no excuse, my husband. I am sorry. I judged poorly."

"And she is to arrive when?"

"This evening, if the roads permit; tomorrow, otherwise. She sent word."

"Not to me."

He watched as her pretty, feminine fingers curled slightly around the handle of her closed fan. She had taken to ground so quickly she had not divested herself of her adornments.

"I am sorry, my husband. Forgive me. Forgive me. But the Festival draws near, and it is my duty—because the Tyr'agar has no wife and he has chosen to grace your house with the responsibility—"

"I-am-aware-of-my-responsibilities."

"Yes, my husband. Forgive me. I—I—there is so much to do for the Festival of the Moon; so much has changed in the Tor. The Tyr'agar has cut down the trees and widened the paths; he has changed the pavilions and the platforms by the Lake. What was designed for perfect beauty and privacy has become… more open.

"I am not worthy," she continued. "I have tried to prepare the Tor, but my skills—" She swallowed. He heard it, rather than saw it.

Eyes narrowing, he said, "Fiona, you may rise."

Nothing in his voice offered comfort; he knew it when he saw her lovely face. He wanted to see her speak.

Tears had darkened the corners of her eyes where kohl gathered in the creases sun had worn there, year after year finding some minute purchase that spoke of time's passage.

"Continue," he said softly. "And Fiona? Do not attempt to lie to me."

"No, my husband."

"Good. The Serra Teresa."

"When I arranged the Festival of the Sun, she arranged the final details, but it was in the details that the Festival was made. It was Serra Teresa's coordination, Serra Teresa's expertise, and Serra Teresa's knowledge that graced these grounds so memorably.

"I wished to have the Festival of the Moon to myself. I wished the world to know that it was Serra Fiona en 'Sendari, the chosen wife of the Tyr'agar's first counselor, who arranged for the displays and the ceremonies of Moon night.

"But so much has changed in the Tor I—I do not feel I am up to the task. And if there is a failure, it will be attributed to your house. This is your first year. I did not—I could not—take that risk. I tried to tell you," she added, "but you have been so busy with the Sword's Edge and the Tyr'agar you have frequently forbidden interruption by any of your wives." She bowed her head, although she did not flatten herself to the ground again. "I am sorry, my husband.

"The Serra Teresa has never granted me my due, but I must grant her hers: There is no one in the Dominion who could do as well by the Tyr'agar as the Serra Teresa di'Marano.

"I should have mentioned it. I should have said something at once. But we have had so little time together—"

"Enough."

Watching the tears—and they were few and delicate—trail the length of her face did not, in fact, lessen the desire to kill her. But it changed the nature of the desire into one he had lived with, on and off, since the birth of their son, and the nature of that desire was more weariness than passion.

He had thought that marrying a stupid woman would save him from the fate of his first marriage. And to all eyes, Serra Fiona was the finer choice: Younger, more beautiful, exquisitely graceful in all things and—more important—able to bear him a son.

Alora had always regretted that. When she regretted nothing else, that one lack shamed her. Had he desired a son? No. He had loved Alora's child as he had never, and would never, love another child. Mother and daughter.

Everything came back to them.

Ah, the Festival of the Moon was coming. He could feel the Lady's fingers in the shallows of morning; her grip was tight and cold; as merciless as he felt himself to be. No; more so.

"I am not pleased, Serra Fiona," he said coolly. "But in this case, I cannot argue with your motivation. I will… greet the Serra Teresa when she arrives, and I will give her permission to remain within my harem.

"But in matters of such import you are, in the future, to consult me. To make certain that you remember this fact, you may remain here, and in that position, until the Serra Teresa does arrive."

She looked, of all things, grateful. Relieved.

Perhaps, he thought, as he turned from her, she was not as stupid as he believed.

15th of Scaral, 427 AA

Voyani encampment

They came by day, gathering in a silence that was almost funereal. Grim-faced, clad in their hair-bracelets and the dusty shades that were Voyani mourning, they gathered at the heart of the encampment. No wildness, here; no drinking, no discussion, no little burst of conversation that meant an entertaining argument was about to start. The Voyani tied back their hair, removed all rings but oath rings, hid or removed their necklaces, their bangles, their silks. Thus did they protect themselves from the envy of the newly dead: they made their lives as unattractive as possible.

For three days and three nights they would dress in their poorest clothing, and hide their adornments; they would walk hand in hand only with the youngest of children, and mute all displays of open affection; they would speak openly of their sorrows and their losses.

Because the dead, of course, could see everything that could be more easily concealed from the living, and seeing how they had to live, the wind-taken would leave their lives with less regret, and the wind of their passage would be the breeze and not the sand-laden storm.

There were two exceptions to this unspoken rule, this governing convention: The Matriarch and her cousin.

Margret had chosen to face the wind's envy. She was not, after all, going to kill her cousin, and there was nothing beyond that to mourn.

Oh, to be angered by his betrayal, yes. To be saddened for his mother, yes. But to mourn?

She wore red, a brilliant color that drew all eyes, trapped in the shape of a long-sleeved shirt. She wore a gold-embroidered sash— the sash that had been part of her mother's unofficial uniform. She wore her birth-ring, her adult-ring, the necklaces that had been a gift for every year of life she had managed to survive, each of them flattened gold that varied in length and weight. Some years were better than others.

Nicu wore his birth-ring, his adult-ring, and his normal clothing—although the blood that had dried there would be hard to remove.

He was anchored to the ground by a large collar, but beneath that, beneath that she saw glints of gold. He cast a short shadow; the sun was almost at its height. This was an act of the Lord; such floggings—extremely rare among the Voyani—were always performed as close to the sun's height as possible.

"Matriarch," Uncle Stavos said, stepping forward. "He's secured."

I can see that. But she bit back the sarcasm that was second nature to her—or first nature if you asked Nicu or Elena—and settled for the formality the somber situation demanded. "Thank you."

He bowed. Then he rose and barked a quiet order to another man. Andreas stepped forward and handed her the whip. Her hands shook as she took it.

"Steady," Elena whispered.

She shouldn't have looked, but she did, glancing to the side to meet her cousin's eyes. They were shiny-bright, the dark bird's baubles.

"Elena—"

Elena shook her head. Turned away. It was only then that Margret realized that she was doing everything she could to avoid looking at Nicu's bent back. His bent, unbroken, unscarred back.

She pulled her arm up. Back. The whip came with it.

She sat on her mother's knee; Elena sat beside her. But her mother only had two legs. Nicu sat on the ground at her feet, throwing his long hair out of his eyes. He'd refused to let Aunt Donatella cut it; he wanted, he said, to be like Margret and 'Lena.

The Matriarch had the best stories. Everyone said so. And on days like this, with no clansmen, no clan war, no merchants to fleece and no townspeople to scare with hints of a dark future, she was actually willing to sit down and tell one.

Margret got to pick the story. She picked, of course, the one she liked best. The three brothers. Because she was young, and not yet the Matriarch's daughter in anything but name, she was indulged by parent and unrelated adult alike. All Voyani children were.

And the particular indulgence she always craved when she was told this story was that the three brothers be called Nicu, Margret, and Elena.

Her mother would begin:

There was a contest in the heart of Raverra, for the Tyr had decided that his daughter would marry not the usual court-born high clansman, but rather a clansmen beloved by the Lord, and he therefore set a challenge that would kill almost all of the challengers, weeding out the strong from the week.

At that time, the Arkosan caravan was passing through the Tor Leonne, for during any Challenge, there are fortunes to be told and money made, and the three brothers—who, the Matriarch said gravely, and this was Margret's favorite part—went everywhere

together, were in the Tor Leonne when this contest was announced, and they saw not only the Tyr but a rare, rare glimpse of the daughter he wished to marry off.

That single glimpse was enough.

"Look at her! Have you ever seen a woman so beautiful or so perfect?"

"She is a clanswoman," the oldest brother said. "And she is not for us. She could not walk the Voyanne. There are women within Arkosa who are as beautiful, and as accomplished in their own fashion. Look elsewhere, Brother."

Nicu was the name of the handsome brother who approached the Tyr to win the hand of his beautiful daughter. He was in love, and sick with it, and if he did not win the hand of the beautiful Serra, he would perish. His two brothers, Elena and Margret, had forced him to eat what they could, but they knew the Lady's grip on their brother's heart was hard, and cold, and permanent.

The whip fell.

Elena was the name of the smart brother, Margret the mysterious wise one. Years later, Margret would understand why her mother smiled that odd, lovely smile whenever she told them the names of the three brothers, but at that time it had all made sense.

Margret and Elena loved their brother more truly than most of the Voyani love their kin, and they saw, clearly, that the Tyr was not pleased with Nicu's suit.

"He will try to kill our brother," Elena said to Margret.

"Yes. But Nicu loves his beautiful, cold daughter, and if he does not have her, he will die. Therefore, we must do what we can to help him win his goal."

Elena told him what he must do: Who he must watch, and who he must never turn his back upon.

"You must be careful," he said, "of the daughter. She has your heart, but you do not have hers. You are Voyani, and not the clansman she has come to expect, and you will never have the finery she desires."

"But she is so delicate and so perfect!" Nicu replied, seeing nothing. "And in time I will win her heart, not just her hand. Tell me what I must do."

"Do not partake of any food the Tyr offers you," Elena replied. "And although you wish to please her, do not partake of any that the daughter offers you either."

* * *

She drew her arm back again, her face dry as stone and just as expressive.

Margret, the oldest, was silent.

But he loved his brother and wished to see him happy. "Here," he said quietly. "Take this sword."

"But it is your sword, Brother."

"Yes. And it is special; it has both a gift and a curse. Wield it, and you will never be defeated in battle."

"But you never use this blade!" her brother Nicu said, lifting it, marveling at its perfect edge, its perfect crescent curve. He had never looked at the sword so closely before, for his brother so seldom fought.

"There are some battles," Margret said—and she had never understood this part as a child—"that are best not won." He was, her mother told them, very, very wise.

It made sense to none of the three who listened, but it was Margret's favorite story anyway.

The whip fell.

Nicu grunted, and his back, his unbroken skin, was red with welt and blood that had come to the surface in the wake of leather's passing.

It came to pass, her mother would say, the moon in her words and the sun in the warmth of her lap, that Nicu took the sword, and entered the Challenge, and won every battle set for him by the Tyr, no matter how difficult.

The Tyr was a proud and powerful man, and he saw that the young Voyani was going to win the Challenge unless the rules of the Challenge were changed. And although he had desired a man beloved of the Lord, he was still of the clans, and he wished his daughter to be given to no Voyani.

Nor in truth did the daughter wish it, for the three brothers were Voyani, and she would be forced to live their life of hardship on the endless road.

And she said to her father, "You have asked for a man beloved of the Lord, Father, and indeed you have found three. Let us now ask for the second proof: a test of the rider."

And so it came to pass.

* * *

She lifted her arm again. Again. Again. She counted each stroke as it fell and she forced herself to watch.

"They will try to trick you, Brother," the middle brother, Elena, said. "And we are not so fine at riding as we are at walking; we value the strength of our own feet, and we stand on them well."

But Nicu would not eat or sleep, and at last Margret came to him. "They will not allow you to bring your own horse," he said softly. "But bring your horse this." And he held out a very strange leaf. "Give it to him and he will obey your every command almost before you have made it, for he will understand your word as if you spoke his language."

"Do not," Elena added, "use a saddle. They will bring you a horse that is ready to mount; tell them it is the way of our people to ride bareback, and remove the saddle over any protest they might make."

He cried out. It was not quite a scream. She had thought, she had prayed, that he would remain silent. Confronted with the failure of prayer, Margret of the Arkosan Voyani hesitated a moment.

But only a moment.

It came to pass that Nicu, with the leaf in hand and the advice of his brothers, rode the horse the Tyr had chosen. The horse was wild and willful, but when it accepted his offering of leaf and was free from saddle and bridle, it carried him like the wind carries sand.

"You see, Daughter," the Tyr said, for he was an indulgent father, "the young man has won both the test of the Sword and the test of the Rider. I have given my word to the whole of the Tor Leonne, and I will not be forsworn. In three days, you will become his wife."

Because she was a very fine Serra, she said, "Yes, Father." And planned.

Elena did not lift a hand; did not raise her voice, did not speak. But Margret felt her cousin's presence one step to the left, and she wondered if Elena the wild felt, at this moment, as sick, as angry, as horrified as Margret the Matriarch.

There were two bitter Voyani things, her mother had said, that every child endured. There were three things that every Matriarch endured.

* * *

The night of the race, victory was celebrated across the length and breadth of the Tor, but nowhere near as loudly as it was in the Arkosan camp.

And it was to the Arkosan camp that the Serra, accompanied by only two of her father's Tyran, came. She wore fine veils and a very fine sari indeed, but her expression marred her beauty.

Nicu heard of her presence at once and came to her, leaving his brothers to the Lady's shadows. But the Lady's shadows are the strongest weapon of the Voyani, and the brothers found places to hide in it, that they might listen to the Serra's fine, fine words, for Margret and Elena were wise men and did not trust the clansmen.

First death.

The family was everything, and when someone betrayed the family, they died for it. Every child knew that, and accepted it as a hard truth.

But what every child did not know is that betrayal comes not from the hated and the scorned—if they exist among kin at all— but rather from the loved and the trusted.

Margret had seen her first death.

She wanted to raise her hands a moment to stop Nicu's trailing scream from reaching her ears. She was almost done. She wasn't certain she would be able to finish. Important, not to lose count.

"Seven," a voice said, words carried by wind to a place that was deeper than hearing. "Six more, Margret. Be strong." Kallandras' voice. A stranger's voice.

She should have felt anger at his interruption. She couldn't. He was the only person in the camp who could offer her any help at all, because his help was invisible and unnoticed by the men and women who would follow her into death, if she demanded it. Not even Elena could interfere, and Elena was the woman that she depended on for almost everything.

The Serra's hair was as dark as the Lady's Night, and it fell about her face like a gleaming ebon mantle; her skin was white as the softest of silks. Her eyes were dark and filled with mystery; she was delicate and she was perfect.

Nicu of the Arkosans, the youngest of the three brothers, stood frozen with desire and fear. She crossed the distance that separated them, and then, lifting her face an inch from his, exposed her lips by pulling the veil back. He bent, his own lips drawn down to hers by the gravity of youth, and she lifted her delicate fingers to his mouth.

"You have faced both of the contests of my father's making, and you have won his permission to marry."

He nodded; her presence had deprived him of not only clever words, but any words.

"But although no daughter's permission is ever needed in a marriage, I will promise you this: I am not chattel, to come and go at the whim of just any man. I have seen you, Nicu of the Arkosa, and I think it is possible that in time you might love me."

"I love you now," he said.

Her eyes widened delicately, deliberately, and she smiled. "Would that that were true."

"It is true," he replied, stung.

"You love others far more than you love me."

"There are no others, Serra."

"I would have you prove that to me."

"Prove it?" Nicu said, catching her delicate wrist in his strong hand.

"Yes."

First death.

Every child who survived the clansmen's raids and the family wars that occurred once a generation or two between the Voyani bloodlines learned to wield a sword in the defense of their families and their futures. They trained, usually with Uncle Stavos or men like him, large bears with easy tempers and a penchant for a humorous comment at the expense of a poor student.

And every child who had witnessed death was shocked the first time—the first time—they dealt it. Some were savage and wild, some angry, some deliberately cruel. The measure of the man could be taken in the manner of the first death.

Margret's first death had been all business, and after the witnesses had scattered word of it all over the caravan, she had finally been accepted in truth, as she was in fact, as the Matriarch in waiting.

But, Lady, afterward, after the victory celebration, after the eating, the drinking, the song and the dance, she had retired to the woods around the camp and she had been so sick she thought she would never recover.

She could still see the blood of that clansman on her hands, and on his face, where the sword had left the mark that killed him.

"You love your brothers more than anything in the world, and they treat you as a child. They tell you what to do and you do it without thought.

"If they were to tell you to leave me or to disgrace me, you would do it, and I will not live with that shadow, Lady forgive me."

Ah, the younger brother was wild with love of her. Crazy with it. "I love no one as much as I love you. I will send them away."

"They will return," she said coolly. She nodded to one of the Tyran, and he handed her a stoppered flask, a very, very fine one. "This is Lady's sleep," she said, as she took the flask into her own delicate hands. "Only grant your brothers her sleep, and I will be your wife and will serve you faithfully no matter where we travel, and on which road. Do not grant them this sleep, and I will seek it before I will marry you."

He was ashen, gray as bark that has served the flame fully. But he couldn't bear the thought of her death, so he reached out and took the flask she offered.

And Margret and Elena watched.

First death.

Every child saw both deaths.

Margret of the Arkosan Voyani would face the third. Her mother would hardly speak of it, but she understood why: it was this. This killing of kin. The Matriarch was the mother of them all, and she was harsh as Lord's Sun, cold as Lady's Night. Into her hands fell justice, and it fell in the shape of a sword, a whip, a noose.

This last of the three deaths was the only one that she had never faced. And it was the only one that she felt, as the whip came up, as the stranger, speaking in a private voice that only her ears and his would ever hear, counted the strokes, that she could not face.

The killing of kin.

And the three brothers, who loved each other as kin must love or else be forsworn, sat down at a low table together with wine that Nicu had brought them. Elena did not touch the wine set before him, but Margret—who was wise, after all—did, lifting the goblet swiftly and easily to his lips.

"To your victory, Nicu," he said softly, "no matter what the cost."

Nicu lifted the cup as well.

Lifted it in shaking hands, and then, before Margret could drink, threw the cup across the table. The unexpected blow knocked Margret back, and his own cup flew wide, the contents spilled across both the coarse fabric of his shirt and night's grass.

She could not face this last first death.

"Ten," Kallandras said. She lifted a hand; wiped the sweat from her forehead, her eyes. Looked at the length of the shadow she cast. At anything but the bleeding mess of her foolish cousin's back.

She knew she should kill him.

Knew it, hated it, denied it.

And the three brothers embraced.

Nicu went to his wife, and told her the deed had been done, and he claimed her for a single night, for she thought him so simple that it never occurred to her that he might be lying.

And in the morning, when the Arkosans left the Tor Leonne, they left this half-used wife abandoned at the palace gates, where all might see her and know that she was no longer fit as wife to any other man.

"And for that reason," Evallen would say, finishing the story, "the hatred of the Tyrs for the Arkosans has always been strong."

"Eleven."

"We are brothers," Margret would say, or Elena, or Nicu. "We are brothers, and Lady bear witness, nothing will come between us but death."

They would cross hands, right hands, one on top of the other, a jumble of childhood skin and childhood oath.

"Twelve."

Her favorite story, sitting upon her mother's knee. But her mother was dead, and the gift of title now rested upon Margret's aching shoulders.

She lifted the whip for the last stroke. Brought it stinging across his skin. Lifted it again.

Threw it, although she knew it would be seen as the weakness it was, across the length of the open circle where it fell at the feet of an older Voyani woman. Caitla. Stavos' sister.

The expression on that woman's face froze Margret in place. Elena's hand, a sudden weight on her shoulder, provided her the same steadiness. She wanted—Lady, she wanted—to drop to her knees at Nicu's side, to beg his forgiveness and his understanding, to wash the blood off his injured back and bring the salves that would both soothe pain and stave off infection.

And she could do none of these things.

None of these things for her brother.

She would never sit at her mother's knee again. Never choose that story, never hear it spoken aloud. And she would never trust him enough to drink from a goblet he offered her in the Lady's Night, with the object of his desire as the prize for her death, no matter what they had promised so intently, and so honestly, as children.

Margret of the Arkosa Voyani did not weep. The closest she would allow herself to come was to lift her heavy, heavy hand and grasp her cousin's—Elena's—as if nothing else would provide an anchor for the wind's aching howl.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

15th of Scaral, 427 AA

Tor Leonne

He thought to have more warning.

Teresa, although she was a mere Serra, was accounted wise by men of higher station than he, and she traveled—at their kai's insistence—in a fashion that suited that unspoken, unspeakable regard.

At Festival season, such fashion dictated a procession that would, in earlier years, have beggared Sendari di'Marano. Cerdan in great numbers—and worse, their horses—preceded and followed the serafs that bore her palanquin and the caravan that followed with her saris, her sandals, and the other strange accoutrements that were a part of a woman's mystery when they weren't examined too closely: scent and color among them.

As so often happened when a woman of import arrived, be she at the side of her husband or no, the streets of the Tor Leonne would become dense with the idle: small children, their elderly watchers, the women and men who were just free enough they had been born on the right side of the clan-seraf divide. They would point at the flapping clan colors the standard-bearers were responsible for, and they would speak the name of the occupant so carefully hidden from the damaging glare of the Lord's heat as if it were part of a guessing game.

It was, often enough.

And such a caravan might take an hour to pass through the streets of the Tor Leonne; it might take more, depending upon the graciousness of the occupant who held the highest rank. And by the time that occupant arrived at the gates of the plateau, her name had been carried, by wind and the poor alike, as if the multitude of blended voices were better heralds than their own.

Yes, Sendari expected to have more warning.

But the Lake was silvered by the Lady's Moon, the sky broken by the rich, pale light of Her veil, and he, broken in a different fashion, was utterly alone.

Alone, as all men were alone when they chose to visit the Lady's shrine. Leonne, for all that it was a weak clan—perhaps because of it—had had a better, a deeper, appreciation for the Lady's service than Alesso did, or would. Under Leonne's care, Her shrines, small and hidden as they were by carefully cultivated trees and bushes, by flowers and rock formations, had had an aura of privacy. Each man who made his evening trek to such a place was asking for, and was granted, the isolation of Her audience.

And of his own thoughts.

Under Alesso's care, if care was a word that could be so applied, they had become merely hidden places, little wildernesses of neglect rather than oases of privacy. Yet for all that, sweet water glimmered in offering bowls, reflecting, in their total stillness, the lines of her changing face.

Diora.

He knelt. It was comfortable to kneel; the Lord could not see the gesture of supplication, and he therefore could not judge it. But the Lady's gaze was keener, sharp enough to make a man bleed if he hoped to keep his secrets from her notice.

Sendari had learned, long ago, that the Lord's lack of mercy was simple death; the Lady's, complex and terrible, was much, much less pleasant. He therefore bowed to the greater power when that power was displayed.

And he had heard it.

In Diora's voice.

She had saved his life.

Ah, Lady, Lady, she had saved his life. Had spoken with a power that had done what shield and sword could not: it had stopped the blade of the Tyr'agnate of Oerta.

He should not have been at the shrine.

He should have been with Cortano. With Mikalis di'Arretta. With Alesso di'Alesso. The Festival closed upon them like an enemy army, and the masks were as yet unmade, their mysteries unresolved, their danger held at bay by a deception that, privately, Sendari thought unlikely to work.

Somewhere in the Tor, he was certain, the Kialli spies gathered in ones and twos, assured of safety by both their own power and the power of the Court that ruled them; if he was not at the side of the men who made masks their study, he should have been with the Widan who made secrecy theirs. They had been working, under Cortano's merciless—and tireless—direction, upon a magic that might, with the Lady's dark blessing, grant them the vision necessary to detect the demonic beneath the human visage.

The death of Cortano's Widan in the capture of the Voyani woman had damaged the research of that fragile magic almost beyond repair. But it had provided the Sword's Edge with a burning, a terrible, incentive, and Sendari thought it likely that Cortano di'Alexes would find the power to reveal the essence of the Kialli before any of them would piece together the puzzle of the masks.

He should have been at Cortano's side.

But he was here, in this shrine, bent before a bowl of water drawn from the Lady's Lake, his daughter's name a silent motion of lips.

And when the light of the Lady's face was disturbed as it lay against the surface of water that men killed and died to claim as their own, he knew that time had run out.

Because, warning or no, as inevitable as the dawn that must grow from the heart of the Lady's Night, the Serra Teresa di'Marano stood by his side, shattering the privacy that the Lady's shrine promised. The promises of the Lady.

He was not bitter. The time for bitterness had passed. Rather, he was numb.

She dropped to her knees at once; abasing herself before the water, the moon, and her brother; he turned to acknowledge her presence only after long minutes had passed in the treachery of her silence.

And he was shocked into his own by what he saw. Shocked into the speechlessness that he so often used as his only defense against the power that had destroyed not only Teresa's life, but his daughter's as well.

Serra Teresa di'Marano, the Serra whose refinement was valued by the high clansmen and clanswomen who would form not only Alesso's court but all courts across the Dominion, was dressed not in sari and fine, fine jewels, but rather in soft leathers. Her scent was not jasmine, not wild rose, not moon water, but rather the dust and sweat of the open road, and her hair, long and fine and defiant of a thing as inevitable and debilitating as age, was pulled so tightly back from her face it might have been a warrior's knot.

But her eyes, her eyes as she sat up and turned her face toward him, were no eyes but hers; nothing diminished them—and nothing warmed them. That had not always been the case, but Sendari was now at a remove from the anger that had driven his relationship with this most difficult of sisters. As it so often did, weariness had seeped in to take its place.

The Festival of the Moon was coming, and it cast long shadows.

"Serra Teresa," he said stiffly.

"Ser Sendari," she replied. She was as cool as desert twilight.

"There is no war between us." He bowed his head. Light glimmered off lake water; the weariness was greater now than at any time he remembered in his life. Not even the test of the Sword of Knowledge, from which he had emerged bleeding and barely victorious, had been so completely exhausting, so numbing.

It had been almost six months since Diora's betrayal.

It had been over six months since she had spoken a word to him that had not been cool and quiet and completely proper.

At least, he thought bitterly, she grants me that. She knew he was not a fool.

But the Serra Teresa lifted her head. "No war, Brother?" she said softly. Knife's edge, those words. He did not understand it.

"My… wife is long dead," Sendari replied, eyes on the light. "And her daughter—my daughter—is beyond me. If I lost the mother to you, the daughter was, I believe, my own doing. It was not my intent." The words were his words; the voice, his voice. He recognized neither, in this moonful night, this darkness of the Lady's making.

"Would you have let her perish with Leonne?"

Silence. Then, "Did she summon you?"

Silence again. But the quality of the Serra Teresa's silences were matched only by the quality of her voice; they were immaculately timed, and they said what she intended them to say.

Yet he saw her lower her head; saw her, in the darkness that pale fire illuminated, lift arm and hand to see the road's work, and not the weaver's. "I have come, this eve, for just one purpose," she said at last, "It is night and I will be… honest with you."

"In a fashion."

"In a fashion."

He wondered, not for the first time, what she would have become had she been born a man.

"Diora did not summon me; she has no power with which to do so."

"She bears your gift and your taint."

"Yes."

"And from what I understand, you could speak to her now and she might hear you."

Silence. She broke it with his name. "Sendari," she said. "You've been studying."

"Yes."

"But without the aid of the bards."

"They are not… bountiful in the capital at the moment. They were not present for the Festival of the Sun, and it is unlikely we will see them, except perhaps as spies, for the Festival of the Moon. Next year; perhaps the year after. Perhaps never."

He saw the straight lines of her perfect profile. The road could not take that from her. In truth, it could take nothing from her if one knew how to look, and Sendari had seen this woman all his adult life. One cannot judge a blade when it is housed within its scabbard, but if it is the right blade, once seen its edge is never forgotten, no matter what scabbard adorns it.

"She cannot summon me across such a great distance."

"She could have asked the wives to—"

"The Serra Fiona summoned me, Sendari, as I believe you must know. There has been no great love between us. She would not lie."

He felt, suddenly, that he did not wish the honesty she had offered, and he rose, letting his lap fall away as his knees lost their bend. Silk, heavy and full, rippled with the Lady's light; the night was unseasonably chill.

"I will aid the Serra Fiona as I am able, on such short notice. I came quickly, I journeyed in haste."

Her words made no sense; he let them sink in, examining them in detail until he understood their essential wrongness. "You did not travel with Adano's permission."

"I could not afford to ask it," she replied, and her eyes were as dark as night. He saw the effort of the journey then, because she let him see it. Immediately wondered why she had chosen to expose that much. They had their strengths and their weaknesses. His eyes fell from hers; there was, about her stare, a strength that he found disturbing.

But not so disturbing as this: her hands were bare. She wore no rings at all.

The emerald had always been Alora's gift, an oath ring, a symbol of—

Love.

And Teresa did not wear it.

The desert night was falling. The Festival of the Moon, like a sweet and a terrible doom, had already opened to envelop them both.

"There is," his sister said, "war between us, Sendari."

He wanted to ask her what that war was, but he was afraid, suddenly, of her answer. "Do not," he said, his voice as heavy with menace as he could force it to be. "Do not enter this fray."

"What choice have you left me?" she countered. "What choice have you left even the least of us?"

"The least of you?" He felt an old anger rising. Interesting. He had thought it dead. "You have offered me honesty, Serra Teresa. Do me the grace of offering less insult with it. You have spent a life hiding behind the facade of powerlessness; it has never been more than facade."

"Not true," she replied. "I have never been able to escape the gift and the curse that my father and my brothers found such a useful weapon at their convenience. And I was powerless to save Alora's life, the one life I would have exposed all to save."

"You did not try."

"I knew it would fail. A healer cannot be forced to that healing."

"It was within his nature!"

"Does it matter?" Her voice was desert night, his day's height.

It did. It did. Because if Teresa no longer loved and honored that memory, no one did. He acknowledged it, beneath the Lady's Moon. In every way that he could be, he was forsworn. The Alora of his youth, the Alora of his early life, would look at him now and see nothing at all to stop her gaze, to hold it, to catch it.

Unless it be the man who would harm her daughter, her only child.

"Are you forsworn, Teresa?"

Her eyes narrowed. "I?"

"You—" He turned away. Anger, he could give her. But this was too complicated to be anger.

She had offered him honesty. "I do not wear the ring in fact, but it has never left me in any way that matters. She was only your wife, Brother," she added. "To me, she was everything."

"I would have given up my life for her."

"But not for her memory. Not for your word to her memory."

"If her memory were not so sullied by you, perhaps I might have." But as his words left his lips, they had, for the first time, a bitter, bitter taste, a cloying texture, a defensive quality that robbed them, in the end, not only of strength but also of truth. He was lying. And he knew that she would hear that lie even had she not been gifted. Cursed.

"I have come," she said quietly, as he knew, as he suddenly knew she would, "for Diora."

He was silent.

The weight of the Lady's hands were upon his brow and around his throat; he could not speak. Had he stood? He no longer clearly remembered when.

She was his sister.

He had hated her in his time. But the ties that bound them, blood ties all, had stayed his hand. He had never willingly exposed any weakness that she might exploit, but he had never feared death at her hand.

Death might have been easier.

He knew her well. "Serra Teresa," he said, striving for formality.

"Ser Sendari," she replied, bowing her head to the ground a moment in perfect grace.

He thought to escape, but the moon's light was as sharp as the Lord's blade. Colder.

"Cortano will kill her."

"This is not the appropriate place for such a discussion. And you, a Serra, are not the appropriate person with whom to have it."

"He will kill her," Teresa continued softly.

"Teresa, you go too far."

"No. No, I have never gone far enough, and perhaps that is why we are here, we two, at this shrine, in this wilderness. We have hidden much, Sendari."

"I have never successfully hidden anything important from you." Bitterness. Truth sometimes held little else.

"But you have, Brother. You were—you are—the seeker of knowledge. I did not realize that the search was only a means of leaving behind what you were afraid of knowing."

"Teresa. Enough."

"No." She rose. She rose without even the patina of proper respect for their differing positions.

"We are no longer children in our mother's harem," he told her. There was warning in his words, but worse.

"No. We are children—we are all children—in the Lady's harem. And it is night, and the Festival is coming."

"Wait, then. Wait until Festival Night when the truth—when all truths—are forgiven."

"That, Sendari, is precisely why I will not wait."

He could have turned and walked away, but he, ungifted, heard the threat in her voice: the voice itself. She had never dared to use it against any of them: father, kai, or par. Never yet.

He bowed to the inevitable truth that governed the Dominion: It was better to have the semblance of choice, even if both parties knew it was entirely illusory. Because if she forced him to turn, there were only two outcomes that could follow from her action.

His death. Or hers.

He could not be certain that she would be so unwise; she had never been a reckless woman. But certain or no, it was a risk, this eve, and he was not willing to face it.

"You will not wait because you will not see the truth forgiven?"

"There are some truths that cannot be forgiven."

"Teresa—"

"Cortano will kill your daughter. Have you told yourself otherwise?"

"Perhaps you have not heard. She is to be wed to Eduardo di'Garrardi on the morning following the Lady's Night."

"I have heard."

"Then this is—"

"Do you think that will protect her?" She paused. "Do you think that you have left her any choice? The Festival Night will occur, and it will be either the first of its kind or the last for many, many years. She will be forced to act. Cortano will be forced to kill her.

"And I gave my word to Alora, and my word means something. I have come for Diora, Brother. How will you stop me? Will you call the Lord in the Lady's Night?"

He was silent. "You know."

"There was a time when you would have had the courage to tell me yourself. There was a time, Brother, when we might have planned together the safest course to follow."

"You would never have agreed to this," he said flatly.

"No. But perhaps, had we spoken, you would not have agreed either."

"And you tell me that I am untruthful."

All masks, gone. All trivialities, all niceties, all rules. They stood, the anger between them growing, as if they were children, with the rawness and the passion, the immediacy and the purity of emotion, that that state implied.

"Tell me that you are not."

"I owe you nothing."

"Truth." She paused. "And lie. You believe it as you say it, but it is wrong."

"Teresa—"

"You have always said that you did not desire power. That you desired love. I watched you with Alora, and I believed you. I watched you attempt to refuse your daughter to the Tyr'agar's son, and I believed you."

He was silent. The storm was gathering sand.

"But you do not love your daughter, Sendari, except at your own convenience, and you have never loved her."

"How dare you?"

"You sold her to Leonne; we understood it. You wept, and we felt the pain of your loss. But that's all it was: your loss. You wring your hands, you twist your beard, you suffer. You. And Diora?

"She has lost far, far more at your hands than at any man's. It would have been more honest to kill her when you slaughtered the clan you forced her to join."

"I saved her life."

"You saved her life because you could not bear to accept the truth: Your love has always been a matter of convenience. You think your suffering hallows it. It doesn't. You mourned Alora because you let her decide your life, your life's course, rather than choosing it for yourself. And when she was dead, you turned to Alesso, and gave your life, and responsibility for your life's decisions, to him. Your daughter, mourned or no, became an object of barter.

"As all daughters are, when their fathers seek power."

He turned then. His hand rose of its own accord, the ice of desert night burned away in a flash of fury. "Do you know what I have sacrificed for her? To save her?"

She was made of stone. He struck her; she teetered back, but lifted no hand in her own defense. And she would not be silent. She spoke through the pain he had caused, and he knew he had caused pain; the marks of his hand across her dust-adorned face were already blossoming.

"And you no doubt wept for yourself because she did not love you for the gift of her life. You wept for yourself without ever once recognizing the depth of her love for her wives, for her husband's child. The depth of love.

"The time for weeping is done. The Festival of the Moon approaches and in it all things will be laid bare. You have invited the Lord in to visit, and he will not leave so easily. I thought—I had hoped—for better. But it is done. You have betrayed us all."

"Teresa, I warn you—"

"What warning have you for me but death? And what death could be worse than the death the Lord of Night brings?"

"The death," a soft voice said, "his servants bring."

They both turned, then.

And in the pale moonlight, a lone man bowed. "Widan Sendari," he said. "I suggest you retire."

His face, in shadows, was of them; long, slender, dark. He was taller than Sendari; taller than Alesso. He wore clothing appropriate to the station of high clansmen, but he wore no colors, no crest, and Sendari expected none. But he did not recognize the man.

It was clear, from the sudden stillness of his sister's face, that she did. "Sendari," she said, the nuance of the spoken word so complicated he almost didn't understand anything it encompassed.

"This is a private affair," he said to the stranger.

"No. It was a private affair. But the rules of the Courts are clear. She is an enemy, and she has knowledge that she should not have."

The shadows lengthened, lengthened, lengthened.

And Sendari, slow to understand anything through the haze of the pain Teresa had inflicted, understood at last that those shadows were a darkness that even the Lord's gaze could not pierce; they were not of, and not for, the Lady.

"You have not been granted permission to hunt in the Tor," he said softly.

"No. But we have been granted permission to protect what is ours: secrecy. Silence."

"This is not your affair."

"It is my affair. Go, Widan. Or stay and witness. It makes little difference to me."

"I would not advise it," the Widan replied. The pain fell away as the Lord's gift filled him: the clarity of battle. The imperative of life or death, and only life, only death.

The whole of the creature's attention turned to him. "Do you seek to give me orders? I am ad'Ishavriel. I follow the commands of no mortal."

"You will follow mine, in this."

"Or you will use your pathetic magery against me?" The creature smiled.

Sendari had seen just such a smile, many times, on the face of his closest friend. It had always ended in victory for Alesso. He stopped then. Considered his options. Clearly, the Shining Court understood some part of his measure, but how much? How much of his magic had he displayed in the presence of the kinlords? He would not risk the fevers in a gaudy, and useless, display.

And would he risk them for Teresa?

For Adano, yes.

And for Diora, although her words—her cutting, her terrible words—would haunt him in the doing.

But for her?

She was his sister. They were kin, clan, blood. He lifted a hand.

And she lifted her head, the tilt of her chin so slight only he and Adano, their kai, might have recognized it for what it was. His face was a mask now; the presence of a stranger bled it of emotion until all emotion was once again as it should be: hidden. Unreadable.

"I will not use my pathetic magery against you," he said quietly. "If you have made a study of me, you understand that I am not, in the end, driven by pride."

"No. But I have discovered much by listening to your conversation; you are governed by worse: the weakness of affection."

It was meant to sting. It stung.

"Perhaps," Sendari said, conceding the obvious truth with a mild shrug, a mild nod. It was easy, after all; clean. This creature wished to see him squirm, and he offered, in return, bland acknowledgment. A parry.

Teresa, his terrible, his much hated, sister, wanted so much more from him than mere pain.

"You have no taint of attachment to this one. Leave her with me, and I will rid you of a difficulty."

The Widan shrugged. "My apologies," he said, although whether it was to the demon or to the sister, he could not say.

Teresa nodded. She straightened the line of her shoulder, shedding anger and emotion just as Sendari had done, but fully. Finally.

He stepped back; stepped outside of the circle of the Lady's shrine. The moonlight was extraordinary in its brightness, given that the Lady still wore some part of her veil.

The darkness approached his sister. Lifted a clawed hand to her exposed face. The motion was as graceful as a caress, as seductive; Sendari shivered, seeing it.

Serra Teresa did not. She raised her head so that she might see, fully, the face of the demon who meant to be her death.

And she spoke three simple words.

"Do not move."

Hearing them, Sendari forgot to breathe. Or perhaps breath was forbidden him. He had heard the gift in her voice before, but never like this. Wind was in her words. Death. The desert heat. The sandstorm.

Had he ever thought he understood the depth of her power? He knew, now, that he had seen the sheathed sword, and only the sheathed sword. She drew the weapon, revealing herself. Exposing herself.

She stepped forward; he saw a flash of pale light that disappeared in the darkness, and then he heard the surprised grunt of Lord Ishavriel's creature, cut off in its entirety as it lost first throat and then head to the clean precision of his sister's long knife.

She had turned her back upon Sendari, obscuring much of the rigid demon's form, but because she had never been tall, he saw the creature disintegrate from headless neck to shoulder, crumpling slowly inward as if her blow had hollowed the whole. It shouldn't have been surprising—he'd seen it before in the Court—but it was. Perhaps because he had never stood so close to it; perhaps because he had never seen the kin fight outside of the great stone halls of the Shining Palace, or perhaps because his sister, hand shaking slightly, resheathed her long knife without hesitation.

The wind was her servant.

The ashes were carried away, and the night settled into the quiet of the Lady's contemplation. He had seen so much of the Lord of Night's power. It had seemed like the sun, like the wind, but stronger, more certain, an inevitable end to the life they had led. For what other purpose had the god himself come to earth?

"Your compatriots do not trust you," she said softly. "But then again, no man of power trusts another who possesses it, no matter what assurances are offered." She did not turn.

He did not speak.

"This," she said softly, "is an ending, Sendari."

He bowed; his clothing made the noise, rustling at both fall and rise, that his words could not.

Her shoulders became a single line, and he saw that, from a distance, she might have been… a man.

Teresa.

He had never seen this, but he had always seen it in her. Numb, he watched her leave, wondering what she had said to Adano, if she had said anything at all. Wondering when, and how, he would see her again. Worse, if he would survive it. He was surprised at how much the question hurt.

They had never been friends, but they had not—quite—been enemies, and he had thought that strange hostility would endure for the length of their lives.

He lifted a hand.

Surprised himself. "Teresa."

She stopped; although she had moved, as she always did, with grace and certainty, she had not walked with speed. She did not turn. "Widan Sendari."

Night voice.

"Do you realize what you've done?"

"I have killed an enemy," she said quietly, "of the Lady." And then, before he could speak again, she added, "Yes, Brother. I know there is no return."

"You do not have to do this. No matter what has passed between us, I have never betrayed my clan. I would never betray you. Return to Adano. Return to your life."

Her head fell slightly; her shoulders dropped. She drew a breath that seemed endless.

And then, beneath the sharp light of the Lady's growing crescent, the Serra Teresa di'Marano turned to face him. "You have betrayed us all," she said quietly. "If it is not your hand that draws the dagger across our throats, it matters little; we are dead, or worse, if the Lord walks."

"The Lord?"

"Sendari, I have treated you as many things, but never a fool. Tender me the same grace. Adano does not know, and I have not told him; I think it would break him, in a fashion, and the Lambertan Tyr will need Tors of strength and integrity.

"War is coming. I knew it at the Festival of the Sun, and you knew it then as well. But I could not be certain, not then, what price you were willing to pay to not only start the war, but win it. I… had some warning. I have thought of little else since I received it. But I had hoped…

"I would have said many, many things of you, but I did not see you as a servant of the Lord of Night." Her face was particularly beautiful in the dull glow of lamp and the pale silver of moon. "But that is my weakness; I saw the truth, and I planned for it, but not well. I hoped that the plan itself would be unnecessary. I waited, Sendari. I spent time that we did not have if we are to stand against the Lord of Night.

"You've chosen your master, and I do not think, having made that choice, you will be able to turn from the descent you've begun; your path is steep, and it pulls you down at ever greater speed."

He watched her face for a minute, two, three. "Why," he asked at last, "are you telling me this?"

"Because, having chosen your master, you will still be yourself. You would not lift hand to save my life, but you will not take it, and you will not lift hand to see it taken."

"You are so certain of this?"

"Am I wrong, Brother?"

"Teresa—"

"I tell you this," she said, voice low, "because Alora loved you. And I tell you this because, in my fashion, I loved you as well; of my brothers, you were the one I most favored. You and I—we were ill-loved by the only man in our lives who had power. You were a scholar, a Widan-Designate, not a man. I, I was merely a woman."

"Yes."

"She saw it."

He did not speak the name of his dead wife, but the breeze that stirred as Teresa's words ebbed into silence carried it. Alora.

He could almost understand, seeing Teresa stripped of the finery and the mannerisms that had defined her in the eyes of the Dominion, what Alora had loved in her. And that was difficult.

Almost as difficult as what she said next.

"I told you I came for Diora, and do not mistake me; I gave her mother my word that I would watch over her, and death will break that word before I will. But I could have continued that task in the safety of anonymity.

"I came to say good-bye, Sendari."

"We should have let you have a life," he replied.

"Yes. So much harder, then, to walk away." She bowed. A man's gesture.

He could not quite offer her the courtesy that she offered him; he did not bow.

And as she walked away, beneath the changing face of the Lady's strongest moon, he said no farewells. As if, he thought bitterly, hoarding the words would change the truth.

The moon was bright enough to cast long shadows, but none of them were new; he stood in the darkness he had chosen, feeling a peculiar numbness as he listened to the rhythmic movement of water against the dark stalks of rushes.

Diora.

Teresa.

And then, unnaturally, Sendari.

427 AA

Stone Deepings

He would not let Calliastra near her.

He did not have the power to send the child of gods away, but he had the power to prevent her from touching Jewel.

Mostly, that was a good thing.

But the road, still bowered by distant stars, was long, and the walk tiring in a way that it hadn't been when she'd had her Oma by her side.

"Jewel," Avandar said softly, when she stumbled and he righted her, "let me carry you."

"You've been walking as long as I have," she snapped, "And you're older. I can take care of myself."

"Or you could let me help you," Calliastra said. There was no menace at all in her voice; there wouldn't be, Jewel thought, until a moment before death, if at all. Death had never had much promise, but when she looked too long at Calliastra's face, she understood the allure of suicide.

Hated that.

Calliastra took the refusal in stride, although there was a delicate shift in her expression at each refusal that Jewel came to understand meant hurt. Pain.

"Jewel," Avandar said softly.

"You could offer me a blindfold."

He laughed. It was jarring to hear that laughter; the path was quiet and suffocating with the presence of Calliastra, and that presence had strangled all mirth. Well, all of hers anyway, not that she'd recently had that much to spare.

"And that was funny how?"

"You are seer-born," the goddess replied. "Blindfold or no, you would still understand what my presence entails; you would be drawn to it. If you could not see me, my voice would become that much more distinctive, that much more compelling; if you somehow managed to deafen yourself, the ground would slope toward me, the air would carry my scent. You, seer-born, must learn to accept what you do see; to run from it in any way—"

"Is impossible," Avandar replied.

In perfect synchronicity.

"Is it true?" she asked, although she knew the answer.

"Is what true?" Each word as light as mountain air, but not as crisp, not as sharp.

"Did you feed her your wives and your children?"

He shrugged. Offered her silence by way of response.

The stones beneath her feet grew sharper and taller; she concentrated on walking in the shadows at his side as the silence widened the gap between them.

When she had given up on getting an answer—or rather, an answer that involved words, since the texture of his silence was often answer enough—he surprised her.

"Yes."

It wasn't the type of surprise she liked. And what was worse was this: She wasn't certain if she was surprised because she had hoped to believe that Calliastra was lying, or because she had never expected him to willingly surrender that much knowledge about his past and his personal life.

He's got nothing else to lose, she thought, silent in the face of the implications his words made. I've seen the place he called home. I might have been party to enough of a change that he loses it entirely. What is there to hide?

Another voice spoke, so much like her own she would have thought she was continuing her dialogue if her thoughts hadn't been headed in a different direction.

Everything.

She thought it would be impossible to sleep. She fought it for as long as she could. But in the end, stone or no stone, night or no night, goddess or no goddess, she was drawn to a place that Avandar and Calliastra could not—directly—touch. She slept.

"You keep interesting company," a voice said, stretching the word "interesting" so that it sounded feline and unpleasant.

She opened her eyes. Shrugged. "Goddess. Whatever Avandar is. I don't have much say in the company I'm keeping."

A stone paw came down gently on top of her foot. She felt the growing weight of stone. "I wasn't talking about them," the gargoyle said. "I was talking about me."

/ hate cats.

"The Winter King and the Firstborn are enemies," he continued conversationally.

"I listen better when I'm not in pain," she replied, staring pointedly at his very large, very stone paw.

"Everybody else's pain is always more important," the creature replied, rolling its eyes, its face a study in exaggerated disgust. "I was sent to tell you that Calliastra will not help you."

"How surprising."

The big cat hissed.

"She is the enemy of the Lady of the Hunt."

"Oh. And she is?"

A louder hiss. "The Lady," he said. "The Winter Queen. You are not at all the right sort of human. You have bad manners, and you are scrawny and stupid. But I'm not allowed to eat you or even play with you a little bit until the door is open. So pay attention."

She snorted.

Laughed.

"If you want me to help you, offering to make me a cat's toy isn't exactly incentive."

"But we're bored," the creature complained, lolling its massive head in a circle as if easing itself of some hidden tension. "And the Winter King is impatient. We can't have any fun until the Hunt begins."

She started to speak, and found herself flying through the air. The ground at her back was hard, and the flight winded her.

The cat took off, muscles carved in stone fluid beneath stone's surface. She couldn't imagine the enchantment that had created this creature; couldn't imagine the strength it took to move that much weight into that flight.

But she found that she could imagine the effect that much weight would have when it landed; she cried out and rolled as quickly as possible into the lee of a large stalagmite.

That rock snapped like a thin icicle as the cat clipped it and continued to circle. "We don't like being bored," it said, its voice as irritating as ever, its presence a danger now, not an annoyance.

"She will help the enemy," he continued. "Do not speak to her, do not speak of her, and do not give her any part of yourself. You are too valuable."

Right, Jewel thought, until I open that stupid door.

"Very good," her Oma said.

The cat snarled. Her Oma frowned. "Get away, you impudent creature. What she had in mind when she granted permission for your existence, I don't know."

The cat's hiss was different. It didn't land, and Jewel realized that the hesitation had something to do with the presence of her Oma.

"You do know," the cat miauled back.

Her Oma shook her head. "No, I don't. Oh, I know what the effect'll be, but I don't know what she was thinking. I can guarantee she won't be happy with the results." Her Oma's smile took on that spicy, Southern edge. "Of course, neither will you, little cat. She'll play with you the way young boys play with flies."

The cat's hiss was a full-throated sound that was so unnatural Jewel thought it would end in a hacking, awful cough—which was deserved. It didn't.

The cat left, and quickly.

"You just have to know what to say," her Oma explained, rubbing her hands on her apron the way she did after she'd finished any job worth doing. That apron, old and graying, worn and patched, was like a map to the woman's life; a bit of food here, sweat and dust there, dirt, creases from her lap, from the bend in her knees when she worked on her hands. It also wasn't what she had been wearing when she'd first appeared in the mountain pass.

Great. Ghosts need clothing? But she remembered both things clearly, and wondered how much of what she saw was fabricated, was fabric, of that memory.

"Let it go," her Oma said.

"I can't. History makes me what I am."

"Yes. But you know the price of making that history an excuse for what you can be."

"It's not just my own history I'm concerned with," Jewel said softly.

"Of course not. I didn't raise an idiot. But if you can't cleave to the Warlord's shadow, other shadows will devour you. There is no light on this road, and you've chosen to walk it."

"Not much of a choice," another voice—a voice she had never heard before—contributed. She looked up to see a woman sitting in the v made of twin rock formations. There were flowers in her hair; leaves that trailed like willow swatches down the side of her face. "Not much of a choice at all if she wasn't told the nature of the road before the walking."

"Busybodies everywhere," her Oma said, turning just as Jewel had done. "You're not wanted here."

"No?" She stepped onto the path, and where she walked, stone gave way to earth and earth to flowering plant. "You must be Jewel," she said.

"You know me?"

"I didn't. But Calliastra has been calling you, loud and long, and we all have ears to hear with. There hasn't been this much activity on these paths since the gods walked." She smiled, and her smile was beautiful in a way that Calliastra's wasn't. There was nothing to compel in it; nothing to attract; nothing to make a person uncomfortable with the unsaid, unacknowledged sensuality of a first meeting. "I'm Corallonne."

"And Corallonne is?"

"I'm Calliastra's… cousin," the woman said with a smile. "And not all roads lead to where you are going."

"Her road does," Jewel's Oma said emphatically.

"Well, then, I guess that's that," the woman replied lightly. "I never argue with an old woman. I hope to see you again, Jewel, or your kin; the road shouldn't be traveled, but since it will be, let it be traveled well. Take from my garden, or rather, from the garden that will grow where I have ventured, and be comforted."

"I'm not in need of comfort."

"But you are, child." Her smile was reminiscent of Finch's. "Let me tell you something you would know if you were willing to think about it: The Warlord gave his wife and his children— some of them—to Calliastra."

"I already know that, but thanks for the thought."

"It was a death they earned when they attempted to bring about his death, and it was a kinder death than he would have suffered.

"But," she bent down, reached out with her hands, and came up carrying round fruits that looked a lot like apples, "all things grow, if they know life and if they are mortal. All things change."

"He's not, strictly speaking, mortal," Jewel's Oma said.

"He is," Corallonne replied. "Mortal through and through, with no ability to acknowledge it anymore, not in a way that counts. You know it, and I know it."

"Mortality, by definition, involves death," her Oma snapped, sharp as vinegar.

Corallonne frowned slightly. "He is not the man he was."

"He has been many men."

"Indeed."

"And he's failed at being all of them."

Corallonne's frown deepened. "And we can judge? What is failure? What is success? There is birth and death, and the Halls of Mandaros, where we—you and I—will never go." She turned to Jewel, who was bound by their words as if her life depended on them, although indeed both women were calm and peaceful. "Judge him if you will, but judge with hope."

"Hope?"

"Where there is damnation," Corallonne said quietly, "there is also redemption."

"Na'dio."

She sat, composed, in a darkness alleviated by nothing but the memory of the moon.

Sleep had proved elusive, but this was common. Uncommon, and more painful, was the reason. She had saved her father's life. Of all deaths, his had been the one she had least desired. But she had desired it. The dead, her dead, spoke with the voice of a wind that scours rock to smooth facelessness.

The screens that slid by day to admit food and the rare, rare visitor would remain closed this night, as they had all nights since the death of the kai el'Sol. But there were some things such doors could not keep out.

"Ona Teresa," she replied, matching words of power with words of power, smoothing the guilt and the anger out of the voice that spoke them. "I had not heard that you had arrived."

"Nor, I fear, will you."

Silence. "You are not staying in the Tor?"

"No."

"But I—"

"I will be here for the Festival of the Moon, child," Serra Teresa replied. "But I will not help to plan it; I will not wear the silken sari or bear the silken fan; I will not wear gold or jade or… emerald. I will have no retainers save one, be protected by no Tyran."

"I… I do not understand."

"It is time, Na'dio, that we leave the Tor Leonne."

Ona Teresa.

She had trusted her aunt as she had trusted no one but her wives. She considered the words, hearing the command inherent in them. Hearing the fear, the wildness beneath their surface.

Her aunt, she thought dispassionately, was worried. Afraid.

"When?"

"When?"

"When do you desire my departure from the Tor?"

"This eve."

"The night of the Festival Moon is one week away, Ona Teresa."

"The night of the Festival Moon will be, I fear, far too late. I am coming for you, Na'dio."

There was only one thing she desired more than she desired the feel of the moon's breath across her upturned face. She had planned, after all. There had been so little else to do.

"Ona Teresa."

"Yes."

"Not tonight."

The silence was long. Full. At last it was broken, and Diora felt her breath return to her in a rush although, until that moment, she hadn't realized she was holding it. "Na'dio, the games played here are—"

"Men's games. Yes, I know. And you have cautioned me against their play."

"Indeed. I will caution you again, but your victory at the Festival of the Sun speaks for itself. If you are not ready to leave, I will accept that. But I must warn you: I am not nearly so certain of my ability as you are of yours. The night of the Festival Moon will be a__difficult night."

"It will be the night," Diora said coolly, "before my wedding."

"Yes. And preparations for that wedding will necessitate the presence of far too many people. Will you not reconsider?"

"I… cannot. I cannot leave the Tor without taking an old friend with me, and she—she will not be ready to leave until that night."

"Na'dio—"

"Will you tell me the price of failure?" Diora said, soft as the moon's light and just as cool.

The pause was as long as the question had been. "No."

"I cannot leave here alone, and my friend is not yet ready to travel. I can make no plans until the Festival itself—and perhaps not even then. It is a moon night, but the traditions and the freedoms of those nights have not been offered to me this year."

"I will wait," the Serra said.

"Thank you, Ona Teresa. I—" She fell into silence. Silence had always been her only protection.

"Yes?"

"I—I should tell you something you may not be aware of." Her aunt waited with the patience of a Marano. "Kallandras of Senniel, Kallandras of the North."

"The North, as the South, prepares for war—and that war, I think, will be the war. If you have not heard, Ser Anton di'Guivera now serves the last of the Leonnes. He will travel South in the boy's company."

"I have heard_little. But I remember the first time I saw Kallandras: It was during the Festival of the Moon, in the year that the Tyr'agar declared war against the Empire." She did not add, because she did not need to, that that declaration, and the loss that had followed in battle, had probably cost the Tyr his life and his line.

"Yes. He is here?"

"I do not know where he is, but he is in the Tor Leonne, or very near it. His voice is strong."

"Thank you, Na'dio. I will bespeak you later. You have planned, and I have planned, and as all plans must, they will require revision."

The silence was long, had been far too long.

"Ona Teresa?"

"Yes, Na'dio?"

"I… must sleep."

"Sleep, then." Pause. "I am here, and I will not leave you behind."

The silence was terrible.

"Ona Teresa?"

"Yes, Na'dio." Not a question.

She could not ask. She could not see the moon, had been forbidden the harem's heart and the comfort of the women who had been her mothers in the absence of the one who had died birthing her, had been given to sunlight only when those responsible for the deaths—the deaths that drove her like the sand-laden storm— decreed it. And she could not ask for what she desired, not quite. Was she not the Serra Diora di'Marano? Was she not her aunt's perfect daughter?

So she chose to ask a different question, and in its fashion, it was just as terrible.

"Did you know?"

The silence, as always, was marked. The Serra Teresa di'Marano understood her meaning at once. "You have never asked me that question."

"No."

"Were you afraid of the answer?"

"Can't you hear it?" Diora asked. "Can't you hear it in my voice?"

"I hear much, Na'dio. Much. But you are distant; perhaps that protects us both. Let me answer. Listen well. Understand that we two cannot lie to each other; our gifts are too strong and our training too poor.

"No. I did not know. I believe your uncle, Ser Adano kai di'Marano, did." Her voice was smooth, cool, distant; perfect in every way. "But I am also certain that he did not understand the whole of the game; it will hurt him much when he finally does."

"And will he?"

"He, of the three of us, comes closest to being a fool. But not, sadly for him, that close. Yes. He will."

Diora's fingers ached. She had always played the harp or the samisen when they spoke in such a fashion, and the absence of music—as comfort and retreat—had created a hunger that was almost as great as the one that had driven her to ask the question of her aunt.

She did not acknowledge it.

She had been taught well, and taught most by the woman to who she spoke.

"Na'dio," that woman said, voice soft as the river silks, and strong as the desert wind. "You must sleep."

"Yes."

Silence. And then, perhaps because captivity and silence changed all rules, perhaps because her knowledge of voice and word was so much greater than Diora's own, she offered her almost-daughter what the younger woman could never have asked for: she sang.

The sun has gone down, has gone down, my love, Na'dio, Na 'dio child.

And in the cradle of that voice and those words, time unwound in the dim and cramped room. The Serra Diora di'Marano offered her aunt no greater acknowledgment than this: she slept.

CHAPTER TWENTY

When she woke from her sleep, there was fruit in her hands. Round and unblemished, like the ideal of an apple and not the fact. She had not been hungry until she felt the firm curve of fruit against her palms. After which she was, of course, starving. She expected no less. It was what would have happened in a dream, and often did, things turning on an event or a sensation, branching in a way that felt totally natural while you were trapped in it, but made no sense when seen at a safe remove.

That was what had been bothering her, dimly, since she had first seen her Oma. She had not, in fact, felt as if she had truly been awake since she had left the streets of Averalaan.

She felt, more than saw, the grin of a big, gray cat. Not as stuuuupid as you look. But that would be imposssible.

She hated cats.

So: she could doubt reality while hunger gnawed away at all other sensation. She could doubt that she'd seen Duster; that she'd seen her Oma, that she'd seen someone who claimed to be the daughter of darkness and love—liar—but there was one thing she could not, did not, doubt: That Avandar had killed wives. Children. Friends.

He is master here.

Aristos' stone voice, grating and rough, which was fitting given his fate.

He's not my master.

What is he, then ?

He had saved her life more times than she cared to count; enough that she had long since stopped questioning The Terafin's wisdom in choosing Avandar as her domicis.

The hunger that had curled her over with its strength was gone as she thought of the woman to whom she owed everything in her present life. The woman that she would never see alive again.

You promised her, her Oma said sharply. And you know how I feel about promises.

Does any Voyani feel any differently?

She snorted. You've got the blood but not the upbringing. I feel promises are important. They feel promises are important as long as blood ties bind them. Don't forget it. You've got power, but you've not the blood—you belong to a family that left the Voyanne/or the safe streets of the Northern city.

Safe. Safety was the child's dream.

And sometimes, the adult's. She looked up from the food in her hands and saw the only companion she had on the road if you didn't count a disembodied voice or two.

His back was her wall. His shoulders, broad, were unbent; his neck was straight, spine more like spear than like bone; he stood, unarmed, the way an armored member of The Terafin's Chosen would have stood had they been guarding The Terafin herself.

She wanted to ask him how old his children had been. Remembered what Corallonne had said, and didn't doubt it: he had given them a kinder death than they would have offered him. But even so. Had Duster tried to kill her, what would she have done? Everything in her went against the killing of kin. Well, her own at any rate.

Beneath her, spread out and wrinkled in a way that would have made silk merchants cry, his outer robe. She hated this road. She could not clearly remember falling asleep. Could not, in fact, remember whether or not she had fallen asleep in the cradle of his arms.

"Avandar?"

"Jewel," he said in a low voice, turning toward her. "You've been—" He stopped, tensing as his gaze fell to her hands and what they carried.

"I haven't eaten yet," she said, the wryness of her smile instinctive. It surprised her when he relaxed visibly. "You do realize I'm starving, don't you?"

"Of course."

"And it would be a bad idea to eat?"

"That food, and here, yes. Although I am by no means certain that the intent was harmful."

"Which means you know where the food came from."

"There is only one place it could have come from, on this road," he said softly. "But there are worse people to meet than Corallonne." He looked back—or forward—and Jewel saw Calliastra's shadow.

"I suppose if I ask you if we're there yet—"

"I would tell you that you'll know when we arrive."

"I was afraid of that."

His smile was a glimmer of his old smile; thin and easily broken, but present.

"Will you?"

"Will I what?"

"Will you know when we arrive?"

The smile deepened. She'd hated it, back home: it was the smile reserved by adults for children who had done something precocious, and she was well past the age where precocious described any part of her behavior. But because it was familiar here, and because she—weakling that she was—desperately craved the familiar and the real, she accepted it almost happily.

"They have not come for me. Calliastra came for you. I see that Corallonne was wakened as well. Truly, Jewel, I thought that I would define the path we took. I would not have risked you otherwise. But there is something in you that sees far too clearly, and here those who see clearly are clearly seen.

"Your question is a wise one. No. I do not think I will know we have arrived before you do."

The words slowly made sense, and when they did, she didn't like them. "You do realize," she said, slipping into irritable incredulity, "that this is the worst case of the blind leading the blind I've ever seen?"

He laughed. His laughter filled the canyon the pass had become while she slept, and the rocks shivered with the passing touch of his voice.

15th of Scaral, 427 AA

Tor Leonne

"Kallandras."

He would not have said he had been waiting for her, but when he heard her speak he felt no surprise, none of the minor shock that accompanied unexpected recognition. His gentle inquiries— guarded and admittedly few—had led him to believe that the Serra would not make the trek to the Tor Leonne for the Festival of the Moon, no doubt a punishment of sorts devised by the younger of her two brothers.

But the Festival of the Moon was her festival.

"Serra Teresa." The Serra's voice carried her presence across the miles that separated them, and it was only many years of experience with the voice—and the dialogue of bards—that prevented him from falling into a flawless Southern bow.

"Forgive me," she said, her words so completely controlled they changed the meaning of the word power, "for this late interruption. I had not expected to see you at this Festival, and I myself—

"I am newly arrived in the Tor Leonne. I have taken little time in my journey and perhaps I have been imprudent; I sought out no information until after I had completed the first of my errands. It seems that the city is not to be graced with the presence of the Voyani."

"Your information is correct; it is not safe for the Voyani to venture into the Tor Leonne, greater or lesser, at the moment."

Her silence was the silence of thought, not leave-taking. "I find myself in an awkward situation," she said at last. "And I ask your pardon if the awkwardness and the urgency conspire to rob me of grace."

"Serra Teresa," he replied, completely truthful although such flattery seldom was, "I cannot think of the situation that would rob you of grace."

"Southern grace, then," she replied, and he heard the momentary smile in her perfect voice.

"I would forgive you much."

"I had intended—I had hoped to find Yollana of the Havalla Voyani within the Tor."

"Ah. Was she expecting you?"

"She had received warning that I might travel upon short notice; word does not travel quickly or perfectly between the clansmen and the Voyani."

"I can carry word to Yollana for you, if you wish it."

"I do," the Serra Teresa replied. "But I find myself, nonetheless, in an awkward position."

"May I be of assistance?"

He read the hesitation in the pause, but the answer itself was firm. "Yes." And bold. Surprising.

"Only tell me how."

"I… if you are able, I would be honored if you would meet me in the city."

"The honor would be mine. Where in the city?"

"Perhaps by the Eastern Fount of Contemplation?"

He heard the levity in her voice; for his own part, he laughed, and let the wind take the sound to where she stood—wherever that might be. "Most certainly. But I warn you now, I desire a kinder reception than I received on the previous occasion I agreed to meet you there."

There was much about that night and this that was similar. The night was cool but clear, the wind evident in the way it brushed strands of hair into and out of his eyes. He could see by the light, but the shadows were longer than he would have liked, and he did not desire the attention a lantern would lend him.

The Fount itself made more noise than he did; water trickled up and down in a thin stream encircled by a stone basin. Once, there had been gold highlights across the stone's face, but time and desperation had worn such adornments away: the rock remained, and the water it contained.

He paused by it a moment; there was a single person by the Fount, and he, seated cross-legged in the center of the circle of contemplation. The circle itself was scuffed and dusty; that would change in scant days as the men and women responsible for the city's face worked their way from the center out in preparation for the Festival.

For a festival, he thought, that would be quiet and strained enough that the wild honesty it encouraged might never come to pass.

"Serra Teresa," he said quietly.

The person in the circle shook off silence and stillness. "I would not have thought I was so easily recognized; I have taken pains to be otherwise."

"There is very little about you that is easily hidden," he replied, bowing in the correct Southern fashion for a man meeting a Serra whose family outranks him when that family—father or husband—is present.

"Say, rather, that there is very little you miss."

"At your insistence, Serra." He rose. "Remember, I have seen you dressed in such a fashion before; the years are not enough to distance me from that experience." He offered her a hand; it was a Northern gesture. He was mildly surprised when she accepted it. "I have taken the liberty of finding you accommodation."

"Let me take the liberty of accepting it." Her voice was grave, as still as the waters of the Lake on a windless night. He saw the moon in her eyes, or across their surface. She paused, and he saw her lips move, but heard only the movement of wind.

"Ramdan?" he asked.

"Yes, and two of my brother's cerdan."

"That… would be impolitic."

"I have considered this. I accept the risk."

His turn to pause; his turn to turn voice to wind. "Margret."

She could not reply, but he knew how to' leave pause for reply between his words. "We will have not only the Serra Teresa as visitor, but also her oldest servant and two of her cerdan. Prepare yourself, if this displeases you, and tell Yollana."

He turned back to the Serra. "I believe it is time that we leave this place."

"I put myself in your hands, Kallandras of Senniel."

"Follow, then." He turned moonward, then back, seeing much in her face and the Lady's that was similar. "You will not be returning."

A brow rose, dark against white; no skin was as pale as hers unless it belonged to a Serra of clans that could afford to keep her, unspoiled by sun and obvious labor, within the confines of a harem. "I am so very obvious."

"Ah." He smiled. "I take no credit where credit is not due; it was Yollana's guess."

Yollana met them as they approached the camp's outer edge. Her arms were folded in such a way that she could prop herself up on a cane by the weight of her elbow, and her face, at this distance, was as sour as wine left to air. She stood not ten feet from Margret, and Margret, flanked by Elena and Tamara, waited impatiently, arms folded across her chest, a younger version of Yollana, whose similarity at that moment was marred only by the lack of a cane. She had no other obvious guards, no brothers who had stepped out of shadows to add their strength to hers.

But Kallandras knew there were at least two men with crossbows in the shadows the wagons made of moonlight. He assumed they would be trained on the cerdan who followed at the Serra Teresa's back.

"You took your time," Yollana said, as they approached. Kallandras noted, with some wryness, that she reserved the sharp edge of her words for him; to Teresa, she offered a surprisingly genuine nod of head, as much acknowledgment as a Voyani matriarch ever gave an outsider.

"Accept my apologies, Matriarch," the Serra replied. "It took… longer than we had hoped to leave the Tor without pursuit."

The older woman shrugged. "It's not my caravan," she said. "You can grovel to the Arkosan Matriarch to your—or more likely her—heart's content, but do it on your own time." Her gesture belied the careless sting of her words; she stepped forward and. reached out to the Serra Teresa.

Without hesitation, the Serra Teresa offered her both hands. Those hands, ringed and ringless, locked as the women stood facing each other.

Yollana was not diplomatic. They were, in Kallandras' opinion, the most powerful people in the small clearing. He wondered, privately, if that was why Margret had chosen to denude herself of guards: Yollana, Havallan, was nonetheless the Matriarch in the camp, and the younger woman wisely wished to spare herself exposure to the too obvious comparison.

"Aie, Na'tere, look at you. You're indecently young."

"It is the moon's mask, no more. The Lord's gaze has treated you no less harshly."

Yollana's laugh was a crow's laugh; jarring compared to the softness of Teresa's. "And you lie so poorly; I expect better from a clansman." She lifted her head, but not her hands, and looked beyond Teresa's shoulder. "Ramdan. You're still in her service, then."

He bowed.

"You've not thought the better of my offer?"

Teresa smiled. "Matriarch, you embarrass him."

"Ha. I've tried. It's not possible. Now you, maybe you could."

"I," the Serra replied, with perfect gravity, "have never tried. I will leave you to your contest of dignity." It was, Kallandras noted, the Serra and not the Matriarch who pulled her hands free first. She looked up, past Yollana to the woman who waited, arms pressed more tightly against her chest.

"Matriarch."

"Serra."

The Serra Teresa offered a very correct Southern obeisance, but the perfection of its lines was ruined by the clothing she wore; men's clothing, all, and made for the road.

He did not require his training or his gift to read Margret's mood; it was written—poorly and plainly—across the breadth of her face. He had passed desert nights, without the benefit of Voyani hospitality or shelter, more warmly.

He had expected no less; Margret's feelings toward the clansmen were legendary among the four families. He had not often met her mother, but Evallen of the Arkosans had considered it a point of concern; she herself, as any Matriarch, had no great love of the clans, but she understood their uses, and when necessary was able to "hold her nose," as she put it, and deal.

And as she spoke, her glance had passed over her daughter, lingering there just long enough for a man of Kallandras' training to note her unease.

"Serra," that daughter said. "I did not expect to find you here."

"I did not expect to be here," the Serra replied smoothly—and without rising.

"Have you been to the plateau?"

"Briefly, Matriarch."

"And did you—did you speak with your niece?"

He heard the fear and the loathing, the desperation and the terrible hope, that weighted each word.

"We could not speak freely," the Serra Teresa replied. "She is kept in isolation, and she is watched."

The hope left Margret's face; its absence hardened the lines around her eyes, her mouth. "Then why have you come at all?"

In the moonlight, Yollana's face was blanched of emotion, but Kallandras knew her well enough; the older woman was angry at the exchange.

"I was forced to either come in haste, or come late," the Serra replied. "There was no opportunity for me to attend the Festival of the Moon otherwise."

"I don't care if you attend the Festival," Margret's voice was low. "But you—you of all people—have access to—"

"Margret." Yollana's bark was, for Yollana, mild.

"Matriarch?" A warning there.

Yollana heeded it as she heeded all else. "Don't you understand what you see?"

"Exactly what do you expect me to see?"

"The clanswoman has traveled without her retinue, and in unseemly haste."

"Yes?"

Yollana smacked her forehead with the heft of her palm. Had she been dealing with one of her own, Kallandras knew it wouldn't have been her head she smacked. "She has traveled without permission."

"She—impossible! She's a clanswoman. They barely breathe without permission, and when they draw such a breath, they do it so no one notices."

She was, Kallandras thought suddenly, absolutely correct.

"Someone will notice," Serra Teresa said quietly, unmoved by Margret's distaste. "There is much between us. Evallen."

The younger Matriarch opened her mouth and closed it quickly. Wise. "What do you want, then?"

"Shelter, for the moment; a chance to help you in your current struggle."

"Oh?"

"We desire the same thing."

Margret's laugh was bitter and a little overlong. "And that?"

"The liberation of my niece. She has what you require, and she has capabilities and depths that you will find useful on the road you must travel."

"I'm not taking her with me. I only need what she carries."

The Serra Teresa bowed.

Margret turned and began to walk away. Turned back. "You can stay until we get it." Kallandras had seldom heard words more grudging.

"She is … perceptive," he said as Serra Teresa rose.

"Oh?" The word was cool. Private.

He understood a warning when he heard it. He had offered her the private voice; he offered her silence in its stead.

Because Margret's unvoiced suspicion was—and this surprised him—correct. That the Serra Teresa could have met with her niece had she not chosen so drastic a course of action was not in question.

What he had not questioned until this meeting was the inverse: That she could have avoided the drastic course of action and in so doing, met with her niece. She had forsaken both brothers and the life she had led in order to avoid that early, simpler meeting.

He wondered idly if the Serra Diora di'Marano truly understood the depth of her aunt's commitment. For by avoiding Diora in such a fashion she had forced from Margret at least two things: an alliance, and the offer of hospitality. By taking advantage of that hospitality, and Teresa's aid in Diora's rescue, Margret opened herself up to the debt of Matriarchs. She would owe Diora and Teresa safe passage, at the very least, to the Terrean of Mancorvo or Averda for their part in the return of the Voyani heart.

Teresa, safely ensconced in her brother's harem, needed no such hospitality. But the Serra Diora would need it—and more. There was literally no other way that she could cross the Dominion in safety. No clansman would dare offer her shelter.

Whether or not Margret would honor that debt, on the other hand, remained to be seen.

How much do you know, Yollana ?

The sun was high. Beneath the wide brim of leather hat, the Serra Teresa hid her face from both the Lord's gaze and man's. But the Matriarch of the Havallan Voyani passed the masks Kallandras had brought for her, one at a time, into the shadows before the Serra's face. /

The Serra did not speak, but Yollana nodded anyway; it was a conversation of sorts, but it offered no satisfaction to eavesdroppers such as he.

He would not have thought that Teresa would expose her abilities to anyone who could not divine them for themselves: the bard-born, those afflicted in a similar fashion. He was surprised; he had underestimated her, and the Serra Teresa was a difficult woman to underestimate.

"Serra Teresa. Matriarch." He spoke more to give them warning of his presence than to offer any politeness. They stopped in their inspection to acknowledge his interruption with a nod. "Are we closer to any understanding?"

Mikalis di'Arretta offered a frustrated nod in return. "Closer. But not close enough." He rose, agitated. "The Sword's Edge, and the Tyr'agar," he said speaking through his teeth in just such a way that Sendari knew immediately how little sleep he had been allowed in each of the past few days, "were ill-advised to set themselves against the Voyani."

Sendari looked up from the comfort of cushions and mats; this work, they did in the privacy of the halls reserved for the Sword of Knowledge. And Cortano's halls, muted and sparsely decorated, were nonetheless quite fine. Mikalis seemed out of place in the room; his face unshaven, his clothing unwashed, his hands flecked with dirt and clay, moist with sweat. He had no proper quarters upon the plateau. Sendari did, and his appearance—cool and exact—reflected that. "Perhaps. Perhaps they had a choice between the Court and the Voyani. You know the Lord's law: choose allies among the weak, and you will join them."

"I know the Lord's law," Mikalis muttered, "But let me add the Lady's advice: Choose carefully that which you designate as weak."

"That is not the Lady's—"

"It is the essence of her words."

The masks lay before him like a public accusation.

"Mikalis, you have my apologies. I have spoken to Cortano."

"About?"

"You have slept some three hours in the last two days, or so rumor has it."

"Rumor is not usually that accurate." The man grunted and sank back into the cushions, his restless pacing halted by the smoothness of Sendari's words. He gripped his neck in the palm of his hand and strained against taut muscle awhile.

"The dead drive the Sword's Edge now."

"The dead make bad drivers."

"Oh?" The sarcasm in the single word was mingled with something more raw and less complicated. It was something Sendari knew too well; he backed away, as was prudent.

Mikalis di'Arretta relented; he had that type of grace. "I want what any good clansman wants: revenge. I am not a great warrior; had I been, my early life would have been simpler. The only hope I have of thwarting our enemies is this, this work. I do it." As he spoke, he stared at his hands, turning them palm in and palm out as if they held some secret he could only define by such close inspection.

"Some of the older magics were based on odd principles, and it is generally thought that they were more religious in nature— and vastly less effective—than the magics we practice today."

"You believe this magic and that magic are connected?"

"Either that or the masks mean nothing; they're a clever trap to draw our attention from a different form of attack."

"I've considered that," Yollana said, wiping the sweat from her forehead almost absently. "But a shadow has fallen across all of these faces. Can you not feel it?"

The Serra Teresa met her eyes, tilting her chin and exposing her face a moment to the Lord's gaze.

Yollana laughed. "I forget myself. You are nothing at all like the Voyani, Serra, but the Voyanne has nonetheless scarred your soul; I recognize the look. And because I do, I treat you as one of my own."

"And I welcome such hospitality," the Serra replied, "when it does not involve the friendly blows I've seen you deliver to those closest to you."

"Who could hit such a face?"

But the Serra Teresa had fallen silent.

The silence stretched; her gaze had been caught by the gaudiness of the finest of the four masks. Feathers dyed in delicate blues and brilliant reds crowded eyes that were wide, gold-circled, round. The nose, beaklike, had a ferocity about its joining with the mouth; it spoke of cruelty, the essence of all power when it is unbridled by such a trifle as affection. She lifted it slowly, turning it front to back in a slow circle.

"What would happen," she asked the Havallan Matriarch, "if I were to wear this?"

"I wouldn't advise it."

"No?"

"No. I'd be hesitant to let most of the men and women in this camp even touch it."

"Could you make this mask safe?"

"Not safer than the replicas you've had made." "And the replicas?"

"They are as lifeless as the clay they are made of." "But these—could we have someone wear them?" "Sendari, I have told you what I know. I have examined these masks in great detail. I have drawn upon all the knowledge I've gathered in my life on the edge; I am only barely able to touch the enchantment. It's almost as if—as if—"

"You cannot remove these enchantments."

"No."

"Could you make this mask safe enough?"

Yollana's expression shifted. It was subtle work; the lines of her face—and her face was lined—grew heavier, deeper, as if she had momentarily freed all suppressed age. She had eagle eyes and she had vulture eyes; all Voyani women did. But it was not as hunter that she turned on Teresa now, although she had the intensity of the hunter that feeds a whole tribe.

"I forbid it, Teresa."

And the Serra Teresa, stranger, student—and if Kallandras was any judge of the quality of the interchange between the two, an excellent one—said quietly, "In this camp, that right is not yours."

"As if what?"

Mikalis was silent for a long time. At last, and with a hesitancy that Sendari understood the minute he began to haltingly speak, he said, "I do not know how you… express… your power. My first teacher—an older man who did not survive the fires—"

"You were taught by a Designate?"

"My clan was not as powerful as yours, Sendari."

"My apologies. I—please. Continue."

Mikalis drew breath. Reached, for the first time since Sendari had been in attendance, for the sweet water that had been drawn from the Lake at Alesso's command. That water refreshed, and while it did not obviate the need for sleep, it removed the effects of its lack for some small time.

"His name was Coramir."

"I do not remember him."

"You wouldn't. He was a Widan-Designate only after he was careless enough to get caught." An old anger burned briefly, lighting Mikalis' features from within. Sendari had never seen him so animated.

"But I digress. Coramir explained two things to me. First, he said that power was so personal even sex was uniform and bland by comparison." Mikalis' grimace was informed by affection, but it was a grimace. "Second, he said that our way of 'seeing' power sometimes narrowed what we saw."

"This is not so different from my own first teacher."

"He told me about his vision."

"That is very different."

"I will not protect him now; his voice is the wind's voice and he has no use for his secrets. His own use of magic was sedate, simple, subtle: His search for power was like his search for a book in the library of a very rich man. He might wander down the aisles, casually picking up title after title, perusing the contents and setting them aside."

"I am surprised that he managed to cast at all."

"He did. But… slowly.

"He said there were times when a book he picked up was written in a foreign language; it was still a book, it was obviously meant to be read—but it was not meant to be read by him."

"You think that is how he would have seen these masks?"

"Yes. And he would never have gone beyond them. He was convinced that the language barrier was a protection, a guard set by the Lady so that magic of malign nature might see no moonlight."

"I find it hard to believe that someone this superstitious was almost Widan."

"We all have our superstitions."

"My apologies, Ser Mikalis. I meant no disrespect. I was thinking out loud."

"I had great difficulty learning from Coramir in those early years. His vision was so enticing, I would look for 'books' when it came time to draw power and focus."

Sendari nodded. It was a common student's mistake, and it was a mistake that most students would never rise above. This was one of the main reasons most masters kept their paradigms to themselves.

"But my focus was much, much less civilized, much simpler. And I will tell you now because I cannot see what it reveals of me and my magics."

"I am… honored."

"No. We are desperate." But his smile, brief though it was, provoked the same from Sendari.

"I am a juggler, of sorts. I see power as small, round balls."

Sendari's brows rose.

Mikalis reddened. "There are reasons why our internalizations are so seldom exposed. When I reach for power, it has a curve. The size of the curve tells me much. Over the years, I have learned that if the 'ball' fits the 'palm' of my hand, I will summon a magic I can easily control. I can draw less—find something the size of a pebble; I can draw more, and find something whose curve matches the size of that basin." He was quiet a long time. "That basin, or perhaps something larger than that, will kill me if I am not careful."

"But there is more, and this is something I was able to… expand upon during my travels with the Voyani. I can sometimes touch the curve of another's power. Sometimes, when the mage is a man of Cortano's capabilities, I touch a wall, no more. He guards everything.

"Sometimes, when a mage has what I believe is your paradigm, then beneath the surface of the globe, I feel fire, flame, heat; it is uncomfortable enough that it makes any other discovery more difficult. But I still feel the roundness in my own hand, or in both. You are a powerful Widan, Sendari; more powerful in measure than you are in respect, at least among the Widan."

"You would do well to keep this to yourself."

"I would. I have. But not now. Not with the Lady's waters between my lips and the certain knowledge that when these masks are worn we will—"

"Yes?"

Mikalis hid himself behind the Lady's water. "Let me go back to the example of Cortano. His power is such that he guards everything. When I touch any spell of his working, I touch a wall; flat in every possible way. I am incapable of gaining information that he does not wish me to have: I do not know the intensity of his power, the cost of its use. Only a fool would try to gain more than that from Cortano."

"We are all fools, in our time."

"Aye, we are all fools at least once," Mikalis said wryly. The wryness twisted his lips for an instant, no more. "But I can tell you this. When I touch the power that exists as potential, the power that exists before his casting, I feel it."

"Lady's Moon," Sendari said softly. He was silent with the enormity of what he'd been told. Surprised that Mikalis had been open enough to speak of it at all.

"Yes. It is… hard work. Intricate and difficult. And it almost never applies to something that has been created. It is also," he added, his lips dimpling in pained smile, "the only reason I survived the test of the bridge. I am not, by nature, a man of power."

He met Sendari's eyes again. Ah, Mikalis, he thought. And you think I am such a man. It stung.

"I assumed that these masks were created by a master of just such magic," Mikalis said, unaware of the effect his words had.

"Interesting. I can feel nothing at all. No heat. No light."

"I know. I thought, until yesterday, that I could feel nothing. I thought that they were expertly protected. I was wrong. These masks are not magical as we understand them; they are not magical as the Voyani would understand them. They are a spell whose last component has not yet been cast: the potential, but not the finality."

"You mean—"

"Yes. They are not, in and of themselves, magical—but there is magic about them, half-finished, trapped, and waiting. When I touch this magic, this working, I feel something, in both palms, that is almost flat." He waited a moment.

Sendari sank slowly to the floor. "You mean—" "You are faster than I was. Yes. I thought they were protected, as Cortano is, from detection. I was wrong. It is not a flat wall I feel; the curve is there if I traverse the power for long enough."

Margret was not happy.

"The choice is not yours to make," the Serra Teresa said quietly. All eyes suddenly turned to the younger of the two Matriarchs. Teresa's reminder was unwelcome, but it was there: Margret was the undisputed—ha!—ruler of the Arkosan Voyani, and both Teresa and Yollana were her guests.

Oh, the woman could be a bitch. Smart, vicious, cold as desert night.

As Lady's Night.

"How can she even start to make these safe if she doesn't understand their power?" Her voice. She was hedging. Anyone watching would know it, but Matriarchs were expected to be cautious.

"I didn't say I didn't understand it," the Havallan Matriarch replied. "I said I didn't—and don't—understand the purpose the power is put to."

Ah. "Not the same thing."

"Not at all."

"Yollana, we're in this together. You've no right to withhold information."

"No?" The older Matriarch pushed herself to her feet, teetering imperiously as she gained solid footing with the aid of a cane.

"This is not the Lord's power."

"No. That we would all recognize—Widan, Radann, and Voyani alike. They know us well enough to know that, Matriarch."

"Then what is the power that drives this mask?"

Yollana bowed her head a moment. When she lifted it, her face was somehow sterner. "I believe it is a magic that was lost before the Voyanne opened to swallow us all; it was old, even then, and wild."

There was a minute pause between question and answer, one they all heard. But only Margret could fill in the words that Yollana could not speak aloud: Before the fall of the Cities.

"Yollana—"

"I can touch it, yes. I can manipulate it to some small extent, for reasons it is forbidden to speak of. But the power at work here is vast and almost endless." She spun in a slow circle before adding, "If I am not mistaken in its source."

"What is it supposed to do?"

"I… cannot be certain."

"Yollana!"

Yollana turned a critical eye upon the Serra Teresa; an appraising eye. "They cannot, themselves, be certain that the masks will have all of their intended effect."

" What is that effect? "

"I believe," Yollana said quietly, "It is a summoning." She was silent a moment.

"Matriarch." Yollana turned at the interruption; Margret turned as well, but not as if the title fit her. She recognized the voice. The fire of the heart circle she had build let no word out that she did not wish heard, but it let word in when that word was carried by her blood relatives.

Adam stood respectfully at the fire's edge, his eyes orange with flame's reflection.

She spoke the words that would break the circle just long enough to allow him entry. She saw his eyes narrow a moment; read the thought that stabbed him in passing: Mother used to do this.

Aie, yes, this had been hers, and the fact that she didn't rule the circle was sure proof, if it were needed, that she was gone. Everything Margret would do from now until her own death would be certain proof that she was gone.

"Adam?"

This close, and without the heat to distort him, she saw that his chest was heaving.

"Is it Nicu?"

"Nicu?" he frowned. "No. Nicu's with Donatella and Tamara."

She relaxed slightly. "Then what?"

"The clansmen."

"Adam, please. Faster."

"Stavos set us to watch, Alanos and I. We've been in the streets of the Tor. He's still there. I had to come to tell the Matri—to tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"There are lineups in the city streets. Long lines, patrolled, sort of, by the Tyr's cerdan. We don't look that different from most of the people in the Tor, so we joined one."

"Risky, you idiot."

"Stavos said—"

"I'm your sister. You listen to me, not Stavos. Go on."

"Alanos thought maybe it had something to do with food."

"Alanos thinks everything has something to do with food."

"Anyway, we joined the line. It took a while to really start moving. There was some man at the head of the line, and when he finally reached him, he took our hands for a minute, and then he, well, he gave us each something."

"Adam!"

He jumped at the tone of voice; she could squeeze a lot of expression into his name. Years of practice. She could also squeeze a lot into other forms of expression, and he was less fond of those: Matriarch's privilege, and one that their mother had practiced more often on Margret than on her brother. He pulled something from the folds of his shirt. It was pale, flat clay, whitened by heat, shaped like the undetailed upper half of a face. A mask.

"It is not a god's magic; we would know it. Both of us have studied the antiquities, but where you have chosen to remain in the South, I have traveled. Bluntly, I have touched the working of the Northern 'gods,' and I recognize the feel of their power.

"If this were the work of the Lord of Night himself, it would chill us; his work could not pass beneath our hands so disguised. It is not in his nature; it is not in ours."

"Mikalis, what you've said—"

"I know."

"We must speak with Cortano."

"Indeed," a third voice said quietly.

Both men turned at once. They were seated, but before they could leave mats and sparse cushions, the Sword's Edge lifted a hand, silently negating the need for the gesture his rank demanded. "What have you discovered?"

Mikalis replied, speaking smoothly. Smoothly, Sendari thought, and with vastly less comfort. Sendari understood why; it was risky to say that one knew anything—anything at all—about Cortano's power.

"Ah." Cortano's expression was unreadable. In another man, that would have been a bad sign; Cortano was often unreadable. "It happens, gentlemen, that your discovery is relevant to… current events."

"You have news," Sendari said. Not a question.

"Perceptive."

"Is any of it welcome?"

"Be the judge, Sendari. We now have no choice. Not only must we understand the magic the masks are part of, but we must also be able to counter their power."

"Counter it?" Mikalis interrupted, hands curling into tightening fists. "But—"

"Two headless bodies were found in the Tor Leonne yesterday. They had been disposed of carelessly, and perhaps too casually. The heads, we did not find; nor could we find markings or rings of any sort that would give us a clear indication of who those men were."

"Not serafs, then."

"No. We assumed that someone would eventually lodge an inquiry or complaint."

"And there have been none?"

"No. It had only been a day, judging by the condition of the bodies themselves. But the Tyr'agar is a man of… instinct. He had the bodies brought to the Sword of Knowledge, and he demanded answers."

"From headless corpses?"

"Indeed."

"You found them."

Cortano's brow rose a half inch. Sendari cursed himself inwardly. He was usually far, far more politic than this. Far better able to hide the extent of his knowledge of the abilities of the other Widan.

Diora. Here, where he could least afford it, weakness.

"We found answers, yes."

Sendari did not speak, smoothing the lines of his face into neutrality, into the safeness of silence instead.

"The Radann have been sent out. The Hand of God."

It took Sendari a moment, a long one, before the words made any sense at all.

Mikalis di'Arretta, however, did not understand the exchange, and he was not so well-trained or well-schooled that he knew better than to reveal his ignorance by asking. "Why?"

"Assume that we were able to put face, and therefore identity, to the bodies in question. There had been no inquiries—and there would likely be none for some time—because the two men who belonged to those bodies were demonstrably not dead."

"My apologies, Sword's Edge, but I do not understand."

The Sword's Edge gestured; magic's fine arc lit hands that were rarely exposed to the Lord's glare with a glow that was both white and violet. A cloud rose in the near-airless room, sparking and struggling as if seeking a life of its own.

They waited; as folds of billowing light coalesced at the cloud's heart, they were given the beginning of an answer to Mikalis' question. Two men stood, arms folded, expressions both wary and anticipatory. They were not tall men, but not short either; they had dark hair and the beards of the clans, but their manner of dress put them near the bottom of the clan heirarchy.

Sendari recognized them at once. The maskmakers.

"They were not dead?"

"No, indeed. They have been working, at our request, on the masks that were to replace those given us by the Shining Court."

"And the Radann?"

"We have not received word, but I expect it shortly."

"You suspect—"

"Yes."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

427 AA

Stone Deepings

She woke with a start to the sound of horns.

She was tired of waking that way; stumbling from the darkness of sleep and the certainty of nightmare into a waking world that was distinctly not better.

Avandar was at her side before she had left all of nightmare behind. His face, in the constant gloom of star-broken night, was pale. "Calliastra," he said quietly, "is gone."

That should have been good news. Jewel's lips had started up in the reflex of a smile before they froze there, stupidly.

The horns, dirgelike and loud, gave meaning to the phrase shattered silence. Avandar did not glance up; did not so much as look in the direction that she thought the sound came from. She did. And then she turned, as the first notes were answered, in the distance, by a second set, by a third. At her back, the wind howled, and above it, carried by it, she heard the frenetic growling of stone: Gargoyle.

She knew, then.

"Jewel?"

"What would scare Calliastra off?" Jewel asked softly, in the momentary lull between the rise and fall of the horns' voices.

"Very little," was his quiet reply. "She has… angered many in her time, but is proof against almost any retribution."

"And that almost would be?"

"She would not tempt the wrath of her father."

"Okay… let's try for the less obvious. As in, someone I wouldn't know." She matched his silence for a moment, and then said, "Avandar, what do the horns mean?"

He closed his eyes. "I would never have brought you here," he said quietly, "had I known what you would meet on this road."

"Tell me."

"Tell you ?" He laughed, the laughter in time with the strongest of the horn calls. "Jewel, of the many I have lost to this road, a handful have met one of the Firstborn. You have met two: Calliastra and Corallonne. I can protect you from Calliastra, and to my knowledge, excepting only situations in which her gardens are threatened, Corallonne sheds no blood that is not her own.

"But even I have not met what I fear you are about to on this road."

"Avandar—"

"They call her Arianne, the Winter Queen."

"That's what I was afraid of."

His turn to look nonplussed.

"I met the Winter King, remember?" She lifted her head. "Why all the horns?"

"The horns characteristically mean two things. She is on the trail in a Hunt or she is gathering her host. She does not hunt— she cannot now that the ways are closed—except at the height of Scarran, the Old Winter, when her power is at its peak."

"When is Scarran?"