The Swordsman's Oath

Taken from the correspondence of Leorn Den Lirel,

last Governor of Caladhria in the 7th year of Emperor Nemith the Reckless;

held at the Archive of the Temple at Col

Solstice salutations from Leorn to his brother Jahon.

I do not know how long this letter will take to reach you but I feel sure the Imperial Despatch will still fight their way through, no matter what calamities befall the rest of us. I don’t know what reports you’ve had of the situation here, but you can take the worst and double all the figures. It’s bloody chaos and without any support from home, there’s not a thing I can do about it, so I’ve given up trying. Don’t worry, I have a ship standing by and will sail for home as soon as the fighting comes south of the Ferl River. Amille insists on celebrating Solstice here but I’m sending her and the children home immediately afterwards. The damp may have got into my library, but not into my wits! Please tell Mother to expect them anytime around the turn of Aft-Summer; we’ll have to stay with her until we can move our tenants out, so make sure you give them notice to quit as soon as you receive this.

As I’m sure you can imagine, this is not how I had hoped my appointment would turn out, but with the Emperor withdrawing the Cohorts for his mad plan to conquer Gidesta I simply do not see how I am supposed to maintain Imperial rule here. None of the locals have paid their due taxes since Equinox and I can’t even get the records to make a fresh assessment. My officials are showing remarkable ingenuity when it comes to finding reasons for staying inside the Governor’s Compound rather than risking themselves on any of their duties in the countryside. I cannot say I blame them and I am certainly not going to send them out to battle with brigands and scavengers armed only with quill-case and inks. Most of them are spending their time drawing up highly dubious claims to supposed ancestral lands and planning how to go about seizing them when Tormalin rule officially ends.

I suggest you start liquidating your investments here, discreetly but rapidly; there are no profits in Caladhria anymore. It might be worth keeping an eye open for opportunities in Lescar; Governor D’Evoir’s murder will mean panic selling and there should be bargains to be had. From what I hear, the Reeves are planning to set themselves up in their old tax districts and work together to enforce their own rule. I don’t suppose they’ll be swearing allegiance to that wine-soak that calls himself Emperor these days, but frankly I don’t see why that should concern us if you see a likely chance to turn up some coin. Nemith’s idiot ambitions must have cost our House his own weight in white gold by now, and the sooner Poldrion ferries him to the Otherworld the better as far as I’m concerned. I’m planning to drop his Imperial Majesty’s statue down the privy pit when I leave.

I nearly forgot; no, I have no idea what Den Fellaemion was up to when he sailed last. In all the confusion that surrounds us these days, I couldn’t even tell you how many years ago it was. I can’t think of anyone else who might either. I think Den Rannion was somehow involved, but the present Sieur seems very keen to hush it up, so I can only suppose it came to naught.

The lost settlement of Kel Ar’Ayen, 42nd of Aft-Summer

This is rather different to our little excursion last year,” I observed to Shiv as the wizards’ ship swung slowly at anchor in the broad estuary. It was a relief to be out of the gales that scythed across the open ocean and I turned to the warmth of the late summer sun, noticeably hotter here than I would expect at home this end of the season. I smiled with pleasure at the sensation of the sun on my clean-shaven face.

“If I have to cross the ocean, I’d rather do it in a well-built three-master with the mightiest of the Council subduing wind and wave, I have to admit,” Shiv grinned back at me. “It’s a sight better than that fishing boat, isn’t it? Even Livak only got a little seasick.”

I didn’t want to discuss Livak at the moment. “When will the rest of us be going ashore?” I nodded at the ship’s row-boat, which was unloading a group of mercenaries on the nearby beach.

Shiv frowned. “There still seems to be some disagreement about that. Most of the mages want to stay aboard for a while, let Halice and her—er—‘associates’ scout out the terrain first.”

“Surely the search would get done faster and more effectively with magic to help?” I turned to Shiv, puzzled.

He shook his head ruefully. “I think it’s going to take a while for my esteemed colleagues to become used to working cooperatively with fighting men, whatever Planir may require of them.”

I looked along the rail, to where Halice stood with the commander of the mercenary force, a massive man called Arest with an uncompromising attitude and an ill-educated Dalasorian accent. Lack of education didn’t mean lack of intelligence however; his narrow eyes were alert with practical cunning, and from what Livak had told me he’d been a major player in the endless games of the Lescari wars for a good few years. More importantly he had no problem treating Halice as an equal, leaning his blunt head close to hers as they discussed their next moves. I wondered briefly if they might have been lovers at some stage; they had that air of familiarity about them but discarded the notion as irrelevant. I looked at Halice’s leg, now much straighter and able to bear some weight, though still far short of being fully healed. I wondered what part she would be playing in this particular game.

When Planir had got his decision from the Council and instantly set about organizing this voyage, he had been momentarily wrong-footed by the discovery that all his own most valued agents, men whose skills and sword arms were retained for his use by liberal amounts of coin, were absent on other commissions. It had been Halice who had suggested looking for mercenaries spending the Summer Solstice in the Carifate. It seemed the battles of Aft-Spring and For-Summer between Parnilesse and Triolle had been bloody, vicious and inconclusive, hardly a surprise in itself, and the self-declared neutral region around Carif had been full of the disgruntled remnants of scattered corps, looking around for a hire that offered them a better than even chance of ending the summer with coin in their hands, instead of as ashes in an urn.

Halice had made herself extremely useful to the Archmage, using her many contacts to weld together a troop of hardened fighters sharp enough to have seen the way the fish were running and get clear of the futile slaughter that was overwhelming the central dukedoms. The roll of Raeponin’s runes had brought bloody chaos back to Lescar once more after a few years of comparative peace. I spared a thought for Aiten’s family, hoping Messire’s gold was giving them either a measure of security or the means to flee.

Shiv and I watched a second group of fighting men and women getting their gear together, tightening straps and adjusting sword-belts. The mercenaries were a battered lot, I had to admit, which was probably what was disconcerting the wizards. Nearly all bore scars on faces and hands, old and white as well as new and purple, some ugly and puckered, betraying a lack of the skilled treatment a sworn man can justifiably expect. Their clothes were mostly leather, black and brown with only rare touches of color, covered with cloaks of fur and crudely tanned skins rather than the good broadcloth that a true patron provides. 1 stifled a pang of muted sorrow, remembering Aiten arriving to take service with Messire in similar rough attire.

“Halice was saying these are among the best she could hope to find.” Shiv smoothed his own immaculate tunic unconsciously and adjusted the ornate silver belt buckle that Pered had given him before we left. “It doesn’t look as if they spend much of their loot on clothes, does it?”

“Who needs to look smart to fight? I reckon their money goes into their swords.” The quality of the weapons each warrior carried had been the first thing I had looked for. “Workmanship like that doesn’t come cheap.” The ragged and stained garments worn by the mercenaries contrasted sharply with their armor and weaponry, ready for anything they might discover in this untrodden land. Most wore two swords as well as daggers in belts and in boot tops, while many carried bows, a mace or a spear and more besides. Well-honed metal scattered bright reflections from the hot sun, in sharp contrast to the dull sheen of plate and chainmail, newly scoured free of the biting rust that had gnawed at the metal on the long voyage, fed by the damp, salt air. I was having to burnish the steel of my mirror almost daily if I wanted to shave without cutting myself, but at least my own armor required little maintenance.

Arest started down the ladder into the ship’s boat and Shiv and I both involuntarily held our breath as rope and wood creaked with protest under his weight; the man wore a full hauberk and coif, greaves and vambraces, as well as carrying swords, a shield and a pack. He reached the boat and sat on a bending thwart without mishap and we breathed a sigh of relief.

“I wouldn’t fancy anyone’s chances of dragging that lot off the river bed if he went in!” Livak said cheerfully as she came to lean on the rail next to us. I turned to her with a smile. I’d seen precious little of her on this voyage as she’d rapidly allied herself with the mercenaries, leaving me tied by my oath to continued attendance on Planir.

“What do you reckon then? Do they look as if they’d be useful in a fight?” she asked me, a tentative smile on her face.

“I’d say so.” I had been watching the warriors covertly on the voyage, wanting to make sure of the quality of help I’d have at my back, if need be. Most had the cock-on-a-dunghill arrogance that any mercenary picks up along with a sword paid for by the season, but the intensity of the regular drills and exercises they had undertaken with unspoken consent during the crossing had won a measure of my respect. I certainly felt more comfortable with them than I would have with the Archmage’s agents, if the man Darni whom we’d met the previous year was anything to go by. Learning that individual was employing his abrasive arrogance in Solura to further Planir’s ambitions had been no loss. “They look as if they could take on most things and force a draw, if not an outright win. So, what’s the plan?”

“Let’s ask her,” Livak whistled sharply. Halice looked round, raising a hand in acknowledgment as two female mercenaries stopped her with some question. Both were shorter than Halice, one slightly built with masses of curly chestnut hair and a delicate, heart-shaped face curiously at odds with her chainmail vest and crested helmet. The other was one of the few mercenaries not in armor of some kind, wearing stained and patched black leathers with a surprising number of daggers about her person. Black-haired and with an open, friendly expression, she looked as if she should be running a market stall or a busy household rather than hiring out her services to the highest bidder.

Halice disposed of their query briskly and came down the deck to join us. Her gait was more even but still unbalanced, and I wondered again about the extent that her injury had been healed. Was this as good as her leg was to get? If so, her future looked as if it would be in organizing a corps rather than fighting with it. Perhaps this was her start in that line of work.

“So what’s the plan?” asked Shiv at once.

“Rosarn takes her scouts and begins quartering the ruins, trying to get a line on major landmarks and buildings, to get ourselves oriented correctly.” Halice waved at the woman in black who was now poring over a freshly pale parchment with a lad I recognized as one of Mentor Tonin’s pupils, called Parril or something similar. “Minare and his lads are to clear the wharf, try and get an anchorage prepared so we can bring the ship in close and not have to ferry people on and off with the boats all the time.” She looked sharply at Shiv. “That would be a cursed sight quicker and easier with some help from you mages, you know.”

I cursed and clutched at the ship’s rail as my vision suddenly swam and shifted, thickets of matted vegetation vanishing to show me stout wharves of dressed stone where now a crumbled bank slid crookedly into the water, sturdy houses lined up around a flagged market square, unsuspecting people busy about their everyday lives, all unaware of the approaching Elietimm threat.

“What is it?” Livak was watching me warily.

“D’Alsennin,” I said curtly, making a conscious effort to loosen my whitened knuckles. “I’m remembering things he knew here.”

A fleeting look of unhappiness came and went in Livak’s eyes.

“You really don’t like this, do you?” I challenged her, knowing it was probably a mistake but sick of the way she had been avoiding me.

“What do you think?” she spat back. “I know it’s not your fault and I’m sorry for it, but that aetheric magic killed Geris, and it killed Aiten. One of those Elietimm bastards got inside my head and nearly pushed me into madness as well. Just the thought of someone else’s mind lurking inside yours makes my skin crawl.”

“I’ve got it under control,” I replied, just about managing not to raise my voice in frustration and anger.

“I don’t think so.” Livak shook her head, her face pale beneath the freckles raised by sun and wind. “Last time we shared a bed, when you melted in passion, your eyes changed and you called me Guinalle again. I keep seeing someone else looking at me through your eyes, especially when you’re tired.”

I managed to hold my tongue, getting a firm grip on the outraged denial that had to be Temar’s, but that very realization brought the truth of Livak’s words home to me. I saw tears standing in her emerald eyes, belying the firm set of her jaw. I took a deep breath, knowing any more argument between us would be as destructive to us both as two eagles locking their talons in battle only to crash together on to the rocks below. A tremor threatened my composure as I realized I could not say whether the memory of such a sight in boyhood was Temar’s or my own.

Drawing a deep breath, I looked at Shiv, who was shifting from one foot to the other, looking acutely embarrassed. Halice’s expression was unreadable as always.

“Arest will be going with Lessay and his troop,” she continued, as if there had been no interruption. “We want to find some defensible position, somewhere with a vantage point on the shoreline would be best.”

“You want Den Rannion’s steading.” The words were out of my mouth before I could help myself and I gritted my teeth.

Halice looked at me, keen speculation in her hard eyes. “Where’s that? What’s it like?”

I looked landward but the unfamiliar lines of river and shore meant I could not place any of Temar’s memories. “So much has changed.” I frowned.

“The lay of the land shifts over the generations,” said Shiv thoughtfully. “It won’t be so marked on the ocean coast, where you come from, Rysh, but big rivers like this carve the land over time and the sea carries sand along the shoreline with every season.”

I ignored him. “It was a good stone-built hall by the end, with a sound perimeter wall and a gate-house. Even if the roof’s come in, I’d say the masonry should still be standing.” I blinked as judgments learned at my father’s elbow mingled oddly with Temar’s memories of Den Rannion’s sturdily built home. “It was on the other side of an inlet from the main wharf, with its own river access.”

“Let’s see if we can find it.” Halice turned and waved to Lessay, the third of Arest’s troop commanders. He headed for us without further ado, nailed boots ringing on the decking. About a full hand’s width taller even than me, he was thin as a rail, long blond hair pulled back into a ratty braid with humorous blue eyes and an indeterminate accent dominated by recent years in Lescar. I was still finding it hard to see how he and Arest managed to work together so well, given the contrast between the commander’s uncompromising use of his authority to achieve things and the way Lessay accomplished his results with good-humored jokes and encouragement.

“Ryshad thinks he knows somewhere that might make a secure encampment,” Halice explained.

“Go on,” Lessay urged us to elaborate.

I was grateful he was prepared to take Halice’s word at face value; Arest was the sort to test word or coin in every way short of melting it down. Taking a deep breath, I tried to look at the river bank through Temar’s eyes, or was that wrong? Should he be looking through my eyes? I shook my head absently, searching my memory for any dreams of the settlement that Temar had inflicted on me. The scene before me melted abruptly away and the daylight faded to be replaced by a winter’s dusk. Bright radiance put the darkness to flight, warm orange flames denying the chill of the year’s end. The stiffening wind carried the scents of incense and perfumed woods burning on braziers, while more purposeful fires sent the savor of roasting meat into the air. Laughter and snatches of music rebounded from the stony heights to carry the festival to the ships. I flinched as a gust threw a handful of sleet into my eyes, but when I raised my hand I found my face was dry.

“Ryshad?” asked Livak gently.

I looked down at my fingers, the nails blued with cold, now fading fast in the hot still warmth of the morning as Livak laid her own hand over mine in mute reassurance.

“It’s over there.” I looked at the view with new eyes, Temar’s memories overlaying the indistinguishable hummocks and thickets to show me houses and alleys in a disconcerting manner that I didn’t want to examine too closely. “Do you see that crag on the skyline? Take a line down from there—see where the rock outcrops at the water’s edge. The inlet used to run pretty much from that lone tree to the thing with the yellow blossoms. The steading should be just about in the middle of those stands of that long grassy stuff.”

“Let’s get to it.” Lessay let loose another of those piercing whistles the mercenaries used among themselves and waved in the rowing-boat from the shore. “Maraide, Jervice, fetch some axes and the like.”

The longboat was uncomfortably laden when we pushed off from the ship, with entirely too little freeboard for my peace of mind. We landed without mishap, however, and gathered some more help from Minare’s troop, who were only too glad to leave off wrestling with fallen blocks of masonry knee deep in the mud. I led the way confidently across the hidden remnants of the settlement toward Den Rannion’s steading, my feet on oddly familiar ground. My boot heel rang on stone and I halted, looking down to see the flagstones of the marketplace, broken and tilted at odd angles.

“Watch your footing,” I called back over my shoulder, moving more cautiously and testing any slab before I put my weight on it. A curse from behind made me turn and I saw one of the mercenaries up to his shin in a hidden pit of dirty water. Arest drew level with me, sword in hand as he scanned the increasingly dense undergrowth on all sides. A large bird with a curious twisted beak burst out of a nearby bush, squawking in harsh alarm.

“That’s it.” I raised a hand to sketch the outline of the ivy-covered walls, almost invisible against the dense leaves of the close set trees all around, blurred by the man-high grasses that clumped thickly where the flagstones were absent underfoot.

Arest nodded slowly. “Where’s the main gate?”

I pointed with my off hand. “Round past that bush with all the purple fruit on it.”

As we drew closer, the outlines of the steading became clearer and I had to fight to keep Temar’s memories from overwhelming me. I drew a deep breath and concentrated on seeing it as it had been, without letting the waves of sorrow and regret that were hammering at the doors of my mind sweep over me.

“Here’s the gate-house!” The mercenary Minare, a short but thick-set man of unquenchable optimism with the reddish hair of some old Forest blood in his line waved his billhook to summon help. Standing back to let the others hack down the vines and bushes, I saw the still intact arch of the doorway, now low enough to touch as the generations of windblown soil had suffocated the entrance, raising the ground level. The stout hardwood of the gate was still there, now dark and immovable, tied close with creepers and debris.

“Should we put it in?” Minare’s usually cheerful face was doubtful as he hefted his sturdy billhook.

“Not just yet,” Arest mused as he looked up to scan the walls thoughtfully, still well above our heads in their shroud of greenery. “We might want it intact. Is there another way in? There’s no point in putting a hole in our own defenses, if we don’t have to.”

About to ask what he thought he might be defending against, I blinked away Temar’s recollection of the Elietimm attack. I thought carefully. “There was a sally port on the off side of the hall.”

Arest took a pace backward and studied the long curve of the wall. “I’d like to know what’s inside,” he murmured to himself.

“Let me.” Livak pushed past a mercenary who was examining a scratched hand with an expression of distaste. She gave the finger-thick vines an experimental tug and grinned at us. “If I start yelling, just blast that door in, will you, Shiv?”

“Be careful.” I stifled a protective urge that had to be Temar’s; I knew well enough how Livak could take care of herself, didn’t I?

“Of course,” she said dismissively as she climbed deftly up the obscured stonework, gloved hands finding fingerholds with the ease of long practice, albeit at getting into other people’s houses uninvited. Reaching the top, she peered over before swinging herself cautiously down to what remained of the walkway.

“This looks a bit doubtful,” she commented. “I think I’ll climb down.”

I glanced around to see a ripe mixture of frustration and anticipation on the upturned faces of the mercenaries all around me as we waited in silence, long moments sliding past like the sluggish waters of the broad river.

“Come on, lads, let’s try and find that sally port.” Minare laid his billhook on his broad shoulder, looking to Arest for his approval. At the big man’s nod, he and a handful of others began slashing down the undergrowth to carve a path around the base of the wall.

“If we’re to get any anchorage cleared, we’re going to need help from you mages,” Arest turned to Shiv abruptly, looming over the slighter man in a frankly intimidating manner. “It’s plain stupid to have my lads exhausting themselves when you could do a better job in half the time. We don’t mind doing the hard work—that’s what we’re being paid for—but there is a limit to what I’ll ask of the troops.”

“I see your point. I’ll speak to Planir,” answered Shiv hurriedly.

“Is anyone still out there?” Livak’s voice was muffled by the blocked doorway, but her irritation came through clearly enough. “Didn’t you hear me calling?”

“What have you found?” I shouted hastily.

“That sally port, for a start,” came the reply. “Minare and his lads are clearing it at the moment.”

“Let’s go,” Arest slapped his hands together in a decisive gesture and everyone moved, hurrying down the newly hacked and trampled path around the base of the wall.

I had to duck my head to enter the sally port, looking doubtfully at the crumbling stonework of the lintel. The courtyard was surprisingly clear of undergrowth; the pale lines of the shingle paths showed faintly through a blur of low level weeds. As I crushed them underfoot the scents of thyme and pennymint rose sharply around me, dizzying me with the ever present threat of D’Alsennin’s memories. The roof of the hall had fallen in but the walls still stood four square and defiant, fine-dressed stone still visible through the stains of age and decay. I took a deep breath to clear my mind of the shadowy image of the place as it had been.

The hall’s tall, stone-mullioned windows had been glowing with lamplight when Temar had last seen them, the harmonies of the Maitresse’s harp floating above the noise of the court-yard, guests’ horses being stabled now the colony had sufficient beasts to let people ride the young stock. The kitchens, set to one side of the hall, had been bustling with activity, the two new maids busy fetching and carrying through the covered walkway, giving as good as they got when the outdoor men had whistled and teased them, begging for a mouthful or, better yet, a taste of honey from their lips. Workshops either side of the gate-house were idle now, tools laid aside after the day’s labor and neatly stowed. The tall gates, newly black with pitch, stood hospitably open, the gate-wards resting on their bench, greeting everyone by name.

Now all was silent apart from the heavy tread of the mercenaries as they began efficiently clearing the enclosure. Odd words grew into low-voiced conversations as more people arrived.

“How secure is the wall?” Arest’s voice startled me from Temar’s reverie and I looked around to see him shouting at Minare. “Any breaches worth worrying about?”

“Not so far!” the mercenary replied, not looking around as he and his lads continued cutting their way through the clinging vines, bright scarlet flowers masking vicious thorns.

“I think I can determine that for you,” Planir’s voice turned heads all around the enclave. The Archmage stooped through the sally port and laid one long-fingered hand on the dark stone of the jamb. A crackle of amber light danced around his fingers and seemed to vanish into the masonry. “There,” Planir pointed to a section of the wall obscured by masses of leaves hanging down over the top. “A tree has disturbed the foundations and the whole wall is cracked. It’ll probably come down if a heavy-footed owl lands on it.”

I looked around for Livak at this and saw her auburn hair catching in the evening sun as she clambered over the tangle of fallen beams and timbers that choked the hall. She looked around and saw me, waving with a satisfied smile as she looked down on mercenaries too heavily armored and too clumsy to follow her.

“How are we going to clear this lot, wizard?” she shouted to Planir.

“Let me show you.” Otrick appeared from somewhere and a swirl of blue radiance gathered up Livak to carry her bodily through the air and deposit her neatly at my side. White beneath her tan, she clutched at me to steady herself and I was glad of the excuse to put an arm around her and draw her close. “Stuffing wizards,” she muttered shakily, glaring at Otrick with something closer to outright dislike than the wary amusement he usually elicited from her.

The same azure light was now coming from a couple of other mages as more people crowded into this decayed sanctuary. I realized I was standing with my mouth open as massive balks of rotting wood were lifted out of the hollow hall, floating impossibly to stack themselves neatly beside the weak point Planir had identified in the wall. I was not the only one; all the mercenaries halted to gape at the spectacle and exchange startled looks.

“Do you reckon any of this lot would take a hire with a decent corps?” Arest jested with a creditable attempt at maintaining his poise. “We could put whoever we liked on the Lescari throne with that kind of help!”

I made a mental note to try and keep the mercenary commander apart from Kalion, though I had the impression the Hearth-Master would be more inclined to want to deal with Dukes and Princes than the men who kept them in their positions of power. Dressed for once in voluminous breeches, more practical than his usual florid robes, the fat mage was directing one of Tonin’s pupils to lay out his bed roll beneath an awning that two others were erecting with some difficulty. As I watched a couple of mercenaries took the canvas and ropes from the scholars and had the shelter securely rigged inside a handful of moments.

“The first thing we need is to determine the layout of the town,” Arest turned to address the Archmage in tones that brooked no argument. “We could spend the next couple of seasons clearing thickets and piles of fallen stones and barely scratch the surface.”

Planir looked at me, gray eyes as unfathomable as the night seas. “You could save us a great deal of time here, Ryshad. Shiv tells me you’ve been seeing the place as Temar knew it.”

I shot an irritated glare at Shiv, who colored faintly. “I’m sorry, but the Archmage needs to know,” he said apologetically.

“That might help some, I suppose—” Arest’s skepticism would have annoyed me intensely in any other circumstances, but this was not the time to force any kind of trial of strength or will.

“I’m not prepared to let D’Alsennin loose inside my head if that’s what you’re hoping, Archmage,” I said curtly. I was having enough difficulty keeping Temar’s intrusive recollections barred securely at the back of my mind as it was.

Arest continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “—but I’d rather rely on proven magic. We need you wizards to give us the lay of the land as it was when this place was built, to do whatever you can to identify key buildings and places—the market, for instance. That’s where we might find metalwork, even gems, valuables that will have withstood Maewelin’s teeth. You did say we would be entitled to any spoils we found.” The challenge in his demand was unmistakable.

“I have been telling my colleagues much the same,” agreed Planir peaceably. “Obviously, a priority is the scrying in support of the information Mentor Tonin has culled from his researches; we must locate this cavern as soon as possible, after all, but we will make sure you get every assistance from the mages not directly required at present.”

“I could help, Archmage, I’m not needed for scrying.” I looked around to see one of the younger wizards, a man a few seasons younger than myself. Dressed in gray with a red-trimmed collar to his jerkin, I recognized him from the Council meeting.

“Thank you, Naldeth, that would be most helpful.” Planir bowed briefly. “Please excuse me.”

I followed Naldeth’s eyes and saw he was studying Maraide, the lass with all the glossy brown curls. “Do you know if she’s a follower for anyone in particular?” he asked me, his gaze covetous.

I have to admit I was finding the reactions of the wizards to the mercenaries more amusing than anything else. The ship had been rife with increasingly lurid speculations in avid undertones as we had sailed to Carif and I recalled Naldeth had been the source of some of the wilder tales of turbulent adventure and limitless wealth, far removed from the truths of life as a sword for hire, as Aiten had told it to me. He’d have found all this highly entertaining, that much I was certain.

“None of the women in this troop are followers for the foot soldiers or courtesans for the commanders either,” I told the mage firmly. “They’re here for their fighting skills and if you’re interested in anything more I suggest you wait for the lady to indicate an interest. Put a hand wrong and I imagine you’ll be served your stones on a skewer.”

“Oh.” Naldeth’s face fell, to my relief. That kind of disturbance would do little for the harmony of this expedition and, besides, I’d seen Maraide leaving Planir’s cabin with a discreet air of satisfaction on more than one occasion on the long voyage, when the menace of Temar’s memories had made sleep impossible. Even that passing thought brought new visions of Den Rannion’s steading to the fore, the past and the lost hemming me in on all sides. I blinked and tried to rub away the tenseness in my neck, driving the encroaching recollections away with increasing difficulty.

A series of whistles alerted Rosarn’s troop and I saw them gathering at the sally port, axes and long knives to hand.

“If you want to help, now’s your chance,” I said to him crisply. “Come on, I want to have a look around for myself.”

What I really wanted was to quit this place before I lost my grip on present reality all together. As I walked rapidly across the enclosure, Livak hurried to meet us, slipping her hand in mine as she slid me a sideways glance of concern. I squeezed her hand with a reassurance I did not really feel as we listened to Rosarn’s crisp instructions. I stifled a brief longing for the simpler days, when Aiten and I had stood taking our orders with a similar lack of question or personal involvement in our tasks.

“I want to know exactly where this town starts and ends, and I want to know what state the buildings are in. Look out for snakes and stingers. We’ll all need to know if you see anything so remember color and size. I imagine anything bigger will move itself sharpish once we start making a noise, but be careful in case anything’s laired up in a hollow somewhere. Big Thorfi, you take your section over the way, Clever Thorfi, keep the road to your off hand.”

“All right if we come along?” I raised a polite hand, trying not to laugh at Rosarn’s distinction between the two men, which was clearly familiar to all the mercenaries. “This is Naldeth, a mage who would like to help.”

Rosarn nodded. “You’d better come with me, wizard. You’re a sworn man, aren’t you, Ryshad? Then you can pick your own path, but watch your step.”

We followed the mercenaries out of the crumbling circle of the walls and looked at a seemingly impenetrable mass of plant life smothering the remains of the colony, more shades of green than I could have imagined were possible. To my relief my vision stayed steady, firmly rooted in the present.

“You two, over there.” Rosarn looked back and waved us to the far side of a creeper-covered hummock as the rest of her troop spread out to examine similar anonymous shapes shrouded in vegetation. Livak drew her sword and slid it under the knotted stems, slicing away a great swath of glossy green to expose the dull gray of weathered stone. At home I would have called it ivy, but here the leaves were long and smooth, dark and secretive. I reached for my own blade then thought better of it; I could do without making any more contact with Temar’s imprisoned mind than I had to.

“We’re doing this at the wrong time of year,” she commented. “It’d be a lot easier if we could wait until all this died back.”

“The growing season goes on well into Aft-Autumn here,” I said absently as I reached for a stick to poke into a tangle of orange flowering bushes.

“Oh.” Livak glanced at me, her eyes uncertain again, before she hacked down another snarl of smothering leaves. I tried to reassure her with a smile and made myself a silent vow to talk to Mentor Tonin when we returned to the encampment. Dast’s teeth, I simply had to get this under control for the sake of my own sanity and any lasting relationship I might have with Livak, never mind Planir’s arcane schemes.

A strange little slate-colored bird with an odd, fluting cry came fluttering out of the bush, startling us both as its calls of alarm roused its fellows from their perches and the air was suddenly full of flapping bluish wings.

“Do you think this is a building?” asked Livak when the commotion had died down, her voice determinedly matter-of-fact as she looked at the largely smooth stone face she had uncovered, shockingly pale against the dark green of the vines.

I rammed my stick into the leaves and it rapped hard on rock. Moving along, I repeated the strike until I was rewarded with a dull, damp thud.

“I’d say that’s a door or a shutter.” I nodded.

Livak began cutting away the dense creeper as I looked around to see how the others were doing. Several groups were trying to uncover stonework in much the same way as we were, and the simple sight of decent, dressed masonry, albeit stained and deeply weathered, was starting to make the place look as if there might have once been a town here, even without the benefit of Temar’s memories.

“It’s a door all right,” said Livak with some satisfaction.

I tapped the ancient and wormy wood with my stick and felt it give slightly. The handle and hinges were dark stains of corrosion on the wood and windblown soil obscured the bottom edge of the door. This was never going to open again, not while Dastennin was ruling the oceans. Taking a step backward, I lifted my boot and kicked it in, bracing myself on the stonework on either side, not wanting to enter before anything else chose to leave.

“Shit!” Livak leaped to one side as a flurry of blackbeetles scurried in all directions and I stamped hard on something with far too many legs for my peace of mind.

“What’s the problem?” shouted Rosarn abruptly from somewhere beyond a nearby thicket.

“Crawlers,” I yelled. “Nothing to worry about.”

Livak and I exchanged a rueful grin and peered cautiously into the dim interior, blinking at the contrast to the bright sunlight.

“There’s a shutter over there,” observed Livak, and I walked around the outside to hammer the crumbling wood inward with my useful stick. This gave some more light, enough to see the ominous downward bulge of what remained of the ceiling and the massive crack running down the back wall.

“Stay by the door,” I warned Livak as she moved cautiously inside. “That lot could come down at any time.”

“It’s been there a while. I don’t suppose it’ll choose to fall down today,” she said scornfully as she poked her sword inquisitively among the debris thickly littering the floor.

I tried to see what she was prodding. “What have you got?”

“Barrel staves, I’d say, hoops, nails, something that might have been hinges a handful of generations ago. I’d say it was a store of some kind.”

I frowned and looked around again at the lie of the land. Surely the warehouses had all been closer to the sea as well as to the docks?

“Anything of interest?” Rosarn appeared at my shoulder and I stood back to let her peer in through the window.

“Not really.” Livak coughed and a passing breeze carried the damp smells of rot and decay out to us.

“How about you?” I asked.

Rosarn held up a small spotted animal, blood clotting its frozen snarl. “Well, if I find a few more of these, I might get a new pair of gloves out of this job, but no, all we’re finding is empty walls and rubbish like this. What I came to tell you is that wizard reckons there are caves in that outcrop over there.” Rosarn looked at me with the faintest suggestion of a teasing smile. “They don’t seem to be big enough to be this cavern you’re looking for but I thought we might make sure there’s nothing dangerous lurking in the bushes. Why don’t you two come with me and we’ll do a little reconnaissance. Maybe I’ll find some more of these,” she added, hanging her scrawny prize on a handy branch.

Livak grinned at her and after a quick look at the crumbling stonework of the window took the longer way out of the door and around to join us.

I had no option but to draw my sword to cut down the burgeoning plants as we worked our way beneath the cool shadow of the crag, but to my relief Temar remained locked quiescent in the back of my mind.

“Here’s something,” Naldeth ducked under a low branch and vanished into a hollow of darkness, Rosarn following him hastily with an oath. “It’s certainly a cave of some sort,” the mage’s voice came back to us, muffled and echoing.

I pulled the branch aside impatiently, cursing as it sprang back, lashing me with thorny tendrils. “How far back does it go?”

Livak was ahead of me, slipping past the obstructive tree and reaching into her belt-pouch for her firesteel and a stub of misshapen candle. The yellow light flared in the blackness and showed us a shallow cavern in the rock face. I slapped down Temar’s dislike of such places with an irritated thought.

“What’s this?” Naldeth spun a ball of magelight around his hand and moved to the far side of the cave where the reddish illumination struck a whitish gleam out of the gloom. “Bones?”

My heart started pounding in my chest despite all my efforts to tell myself this could be nothing of significance. I closed my eyes and suddenly saw the last dawn of the colony again, people running, screaming, fleeing the pitiless blades of the Elietimm as they came out of nowhere, gold heads catching the faint sunlight, cutting down the hapless colonists like corn beneath a sickle. Had we left someone behind, taking desperate shelter in a hidden cranny in the rock face, only to die of wounds or thirst?

“It’s an animal, but I couldn’t tell you what kind,” said Rosarn, mystified.

My eyes snapped open and the image of slaughter faded into the darkness of the cave.

“Look at this,” Livak’s tone was one of wonder as she lifted a broad, bulging skull in both hands, as wide as a bull’s but far more rounded. I looked more closely and ran a tentative finger around the one, huge hollow in the middle of the brow.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I shook my head. “Rosarn?”

The mercenary woman looked up as she knelt, sorting through the pile of stained and broken bones. “No, never. I’ll tell you something, though. This is a den of some kind. Look, these are chewed, you can see the teeth marks where they’ve been cracked open for the marrow.”

Livak turned the great skull thoughtfully in her hands.

“What size would you say something would have to be to bring down a beast this big?”

“Big enough that I don’t want to meet it,” said Rosarn briskly. “Let’s go.”

“Is there anything other than bone?” Naldeth was stirring a heap of fragments with a foot. “If we can find a pot or something, I can try and use fire to make it reflect its origins. It’s something I’ve been working on and Planir said—”

“You shine magelight on it or some such?” Rosarn sounded politely skeptical.

Naldeth shook his head impatiently. “No, you set it afire and the magelight sometimes reflects things of interest before it consumes the object.”

I felt suddenly sick. “Tell me you haven’t been doing this with any of the colony artifacts?”

“What? No, no, we did consider it but Planir forbade it until I had more consistent results.” Naldeth smiled sunnily. “It’s a good thing, he did, really, isn’t it?”

“There’s no fresh spoor,” Livak pointed out. “I’d say whatever’s lived here is long gone by now.” She poked at a smaller skull, pointed with a central ridge. I would have called it a badger at home but the teeth were all wrong.

“There are other caves we could explore,” said Naldeth eagerly.

“Maybe so, when we’ve checked with the scholars. Otherwise all we’re going to do is raise more pointless questions.” Rosarn shook her head firmly.

“But we’re supposed to be looking for this cavern, for the colonists,” objected Naldeth.

“It’s not here,” I said, stopping to wonder at the certainty with which I spoke.

“Then where is it?” demanded Rosarn.

All I could do was shake my head helplessly. “I don’t know, not yet.”

We all blinked, rubbing our eyes when we left the cave for the bright sunlight outside.

“Right, you two carry on over yonder.” Rosarn strode briskly away to deal with a couple of mercenaries who were taunting some creature cowering in the angle of two collapsed walls.

Livak looked at me and shrugged. We continued hacking down the all pervasive vines to reveal nothing more exciting than more empty and broken buildings. I was becoming tired, thirsty and frustrated when Livak stood abruptly upright and pointed.

“Smoke!”

I turned to see the thin blue spiral of a camp fire twisting upwards into the still air and realized that the sun was high in a noonday sky. As I did so, we heard Rosarn shouting to us.

“Food! Everyone back to the camp!”

We pushed our way back through the increasingly battered undergrowth and entered the walls of the Den Rannion steading to see a well-organized encampment taking shape.

“So who’s got something to tell?” Halice was asking as she took her belt-knife to a row of small creatures spitted and browning nicely over a good fire. Livak and I joined the line to get our share.

“Lots of nothing special,” one of the older mercenaries said as he stripped a mouthful of meat off the leg he held. “All empty.”

“That’s a bit off, if you ask me.” A thin-faced man who had dealt with receding hair by shaving his head clean was passing rough flatbread from a linen sack. “This place was supposed to have been sacked, wasn’t it? Dawn attack, lots of people killed in their night-gowns, that kind of thing?”

I nodded as he looked enquiringly at me, not trusting myself to speak as I held the doors to Temar’s memories firmly shut.

“So where are the bones?” the bald-headed man asked, looking around the circle of mercenaries. “All right, so there’d have been scavengers and I know it was a long time ago, but Saedrin’s stones, you’d have thought we’d have found some bones, inside these buildings maybe, certainly in the ones that were burned out.”

“Scavengers would have scattered bones but they’d still be around. Carrion feeders eat where they find a meal,” one of the older women agreed, gnawing unconcernedly on her meat.

“That is a shame,” frowned a middle-aged man in the robes of a scholar. “If you could find us a skull, there are some necromantic rituals we might try. I’d have liked to see what that would raise.”

That silenced everyone for a long moment.

“Never mind the bones, what about other things?” A burly man looked over his shoulder since he was sitting with his back to the circle, facing toward the entrance in case of unexpected threats. “I was at Thurscate when the Draximal retook it, four years back. Now that had fallen close on a generation before and not been touched since, and there was all manner of stuff everywhere. Lots of things will rot, granted, but not pots, coin and suchlike. I reckon this place was stripped, not just abandoned.”

“Who would have done that?” I was curious to see how far these supposedly untutored warriors would pursue these questions. They’d clearly been keeping their ears open on the voyage over the ocean.

Rosarn passed me a joint of meat from the fire which I split with Livak. “We were talking the other evening about what could have happened to those Elietimm that were here when the old magic failed,” she mused, “me and Lessay. They’d not have been able to return home, not without their magic. It doesn’t look as if they set up here, so where did they go?”

“Does it matter?” Livak said indistinctly, licking hot fat from her fingers. “They were all men, weren’t they? They’d all have been dead inside a couple of generations, no matter how many of them took to dancing on the other side of the floor.”

That raised smiles all around and the talk turned to more general matters as the other groups of mercenaries drifted in, summoned by the tempting smell of roasting meat. I noticed Livak looking pensive as she stared into the impenetrable forest and I tapped her on the shoulder to offer her some more of the unleavened bread.

“Oh, thank you.” She tore off a mouthful and chewed, still looking thoughtful.

“Misaen borrowing your wits for something?” I asked lightly.

“What? Oh, it’s just that I was wondering how far this land goes. Do you know?”

I shook my head, “No, no one had the time to find out before the colony was lost.”

“I mean, I like being out in the country well enough, for all that I’m city-bred, as long as it’s farms or forest,” continued Livak, “but I’ve never been anywhere like this, where there are no roads no matter how far you travel, no villages or towns to get a bed and a bath when you really need one, nothing but wilderness in every direction. It’s worse than Dalasor.” She sounded more intrigued than dubious and I followed her gaze into the mysterious forest, distant heights rising beyond it leading to Misaen alone knew where. Where had the forge god and the lord of the sea settled on dividing this land? How far was it before Dastennin’s realm took over once more and some as yet unseen ocean lapped against an untrodden shore?

“That’s why they came here, the colonists, to find empty land, enough for all those dispossessed as the Empire contracted.” I settled myself against a convenient fallen tree and took a long drink of well-watered wine from my belt flask. “I suppose that’s why the Elietimm wanted it so badly too, you remember how poor and cramped their islands are.”

I offered Livak the bottle, and she looked as if she were about to say something more but Arest’s harsh voice overrode her.

“Right, let’s get on with it. Listen for my horn at sunset.”

There were a fair number of reluctant glances as we all stood up, and the kind of muttering that any competent sergeant at arms would quell with a look or, in Messire’s militia, his baton. Sworn men would never dream of tarnishing their oaths by voicing such dissent either. I sighed; all of that was starting to seem increasingly irrelevant given my own concerns. Arest simply ignored the murmurs and no overt protest arose as everyone returned to the tedious and ultimately fruitless task. As the afternoon wore on I found it increasingly hard to maintain either concentration or patience, venting my annoyance with long and complex muttered curses on Temar, Planir and even Messire for getting me into this mire. For all my efforts, I only seemed to get bogged further and further down. But of course the first thing you’re told about getting out of a marsh is not to struggle, to wait for help. Where did that leave me? Who was going to pull me out of this morass but myself? Planir was more likely to use my sunken head as a support for a walkway if it suited his purposes, and Messire had given me over entirely to the Archmage’s use, hadn’t he? What price our oaths now?

“Enough!” The ringing note of Arest’s horn and the bellow that followed it were the most welcome sounds I could recall hearing in a long season. Tossing aside a hefty branch that I’d been using to hammer down yet another blocked and rotting door to reveal little more than garbage, I made my way rapidly down to the foreshore below the steading, where the mercenaries had tapped a barrel of weak beer. They were drinking thirstily, eating odd remnants of meat and bread and shaking their heads over the unproductive day. Many were stripping to wash the sweat and dirt of the day away in the slowly coiling waters of the estuary. That seemed like a cursed good idea and I began making a neat bundle of my gear, securing it with my sword-belt.

“Take this back, will you?” I called to Livak, acknowledging her consent with a wave as I took a running dive into the murky waters and struck out with scything strokes. It was nothing like swimming in the clean, clear seas of home, but there was enough salt in the river this far down to give it a welcome tang on my lips. I pulled myself through the water with a punishing stroke, channelling all my frustrations into physical exertion, letting go of all restraint as I concentrated solely on speed and breathing, finding a release from the mental struggles I had been wrestling with for so long in the pure, uncomplicated demands on my body. As I rolled my head to take a breath, I thought I saw someone else, trying to make a race of it, dark hair sleek in the corner of my eye. I redoubled my efforts, but when I had to rest, lest I exhaust myself, I found myself alone in the water. I’d been competing against some shadow from the mysteries locked in the back of my mind. Fresh memories swirled slowly inside my head as I floated, limp for a moment. I clenched my fists in impotent anger and swam slowly back, walking reluctantly into the embrace of the walls, tired limbs trembling slightly.

“That’s quite some swim.” Shiv handed me a towel and I dried myself roughly, covering myself with the shirt he offered next, rapidly dragging clinging breeches over my still damp thighs.

“Where’s Planir?” I demanded.

“Talking with Arest, over there,” replied Shiv, eyes widening at my brusque manner.

I looked blindly at him for a moment. There was something wrong, wasn’t there? An elusive memory teased me, fragile as a shade. I screwed my eyes shut to try to capture it. The scents of the summer came to me on a wisp of breeze and I smelled the richness of the forest, the sharpness of the dew-damp stone, the faintest suggestion of salt and weed from the exposed mud flats down river.

Forcing a smile to reassure Shiv, I took a deep breath, running a hand through my wet hair, now just about long enough again to curl and tangle. I interrupted the Archmage’s conversation with scant ceremony.

“Ryshad,” Planir greeted me politely enough, but I could see the questions in his eyes while Arest glared at me with frank annoyance.

“It’s not here, it’s not anywhere close,” I said abruptly. “There was never any smell of the sea by the cavern. The forest was different too, more resinous, more aromatic. We’re looking in the wrong place!”

I was nearly shouting as uncharacteristic rage filled me— rage with myself for not realizing sooner, with Temar for taking the tattered remnants of the colony so far afield before finding sanctuary, at all these cursed scholars and wizards for not working things out more readily. It was so obvious, wasn’t it? Heads turned all around and a voice called out from the wall walk, the sentry quickly reassured by Arest.

“Where are they then?” Planir demanded, arms folded, authority undiminished by his breeches and shirt sleeves.

“The mines, that’s where they fled, up river to the sanctuary of the caves up there,” I shook off Temar’s clinging memories and turned to Shiv. “Can you scry at that kind of distance?”

“I can try.” He set his jaw.

Planir raised a hand. “No, Shiv, not this evening.”

We both stared at him, open-mouthed. “It’s late, everyone is tired,” said Planir firmly. “If the colonists have slept for so many generations, a day’s delay to make sure everyone is fresh will hardly make a difference.”

I opened my mouth to object heatedly but Livak slid herself inside the circle of my arm. “Come on,” she said abruptly. “He’s right. We’ve all done enough today. Lend us a hand in the hall and then we can make sure we pick a good spot to sleep in.”

“That would probably be best,” Shiv admitted with ill grace. “I am pretty well drained after helping clear that anchorage.”

I yielded reluctantly, only a little cheered to find Livak taking my hand as we crossed the now busy courtyard. I vented some of my anger in driving uncounted generations of crawlers out of the corners of the ruined hall, but I was still seething inside.

“I think we’ll stake our claim here,” Livak announced, planting her light pack and the heavy bundle of my armor either side of the low remnant of an interior wall that would give us some semblance of shelter and privacy. “This will do us fine.”

“Good.” Fighting for calm, I looked around to see if anything was being done about food and saw Halice handing out bread and stew with her usual air of efficiency.

“So who made you quarter master?” Livak inquired with a grin as we took our place in the line.

Halice greeted us with a thin smile. “This cursed leg has to be good for something.”

I took a hungry mouthful of excellent stew and nodded to Halice. “You certainly have a talent for it.”

“It’s how I started in the mercenary trade,” she remarked, rather to my surprise. “I hired out as a cook, to a merchant train first of all and later to a corps. That’s where I learned to fight.” She smiled at me, more at ease than I could remember her, and not just for having two sound feet again. “What did you think? I just picked up a sword and went looking for adventure? The only thing that’ll get you is dead in a ditch or chained in a brothel.”

That raised chuckles of agreement on all sides. “At least it’s keeping me clear of the real work,” Halice continued with a broader grin. “It’s not bad, taking my ease for a change.”

“How are the scholars doing?” I tried not to envy her contentment too much and looked for distraction toward the intense huddle around Tonin’s fire.

“They seem very pleased with themselves,” Halice replied with a touch of amusement. “Tonin has been drilling Parrail in the incantations they’re hoping to use to revive the sleeping colonists.”

Livak blew through a hot mouthful of meat and vegetables, wincing as she swallowed it. “So now we have to wait until morning?” she asked in a resigned tone. “Before we can finally get all this sorted out?”

“Just so, we wait,” confirmed Halice, her own impatience clear in her furrowed brow.

I stifled a sour desire to ask what in Dastennin’s name they had to worry about with a spoonful of stew. I was the one with an ancient Tormalin lurking all too wakeful in the back of my head, wasn’t I? It was getting so I couldn’t think of anything else, fighting a growing, cumulative exhaustion along with Temar’s increasingly intrusive personality.

Darkness, broken only by piecemeal dreams

At first there was nothing, no sensation, no light, no sound. It seemed that he had never known any existence but this dark enchanted sleep. Painfully, agonizing as warm blood pulsing in a dead limb, awareness returned, old dread, new dismay. Once known and recognized, emotion coursed sluggishly down old paths. Temar awoke to nothingness, blackness pressing down on him. Terror began to scratch at the corners of his mind, gnawing at his determination to withstand this trial. Uncertainty began to grow, spurred on by the sudden realization that he could feel nothing, nothing at all. There was no release in an accelerating heartbeat sending fire into his blood, to kindle a fury to fight off whatever was threatening him. No sweat beaded his brow to cool him, no ancient instinct was raising his hackles to warn of impending danger. He floated, bodiless in the featureless void, and when the urge to cry out could no longer be denied he lost himself in sickened terror at the realization that he had no mouth to shout with, no voice to raise. Pure horror overwhelmed him, screaming soundlessly out to be lost in the suffocating enchantment.

Guilt tormented him, to be swept aside by the motion of a violent sea, tossing and swamping a vessel caught in the teeth of a rending storm. Lightning flashed overhead, sparking eerie phosphorescence from the timbers and lashed-up rig of a skiff with no business out on the open ocean. A man wrestled with the tiller, himself tied to the thwarts with a knot of thick rope; Temar heard the desperate mariner’s thoughts clearly. He would fight his way clear of the storm or sink with the ship; if he could not save his precious cargo, both living and that held in unknowing, enchanted sleep, Dastennin could cast him to drown for eternity with Poldrion’s demons in the river of shades. It was Vahil, Temar realized, some measure of awareness returning to him just before it slid from the feeble grasp of his mind.

The echo of steps in a lofty hall was the next thing he knew, a purposeful stride, crisp with determination.

“Have you considered our petition?” A female voice rang out from some unseen direction, Temar struggling to register anything beyond a dull grayness swirling all around.

“Do you have any idea what you are asking?” It was a Sieur’s reply, confident enough to make a refusal with comforting eloquence. “Even if such an expedition could be organized, we could not sail before the latter half of spring, and Saedrin only knows what we will find. With the Empire falling asunder on all sides, you are asking me to risk men and material on a quest to find a new and most dangerous foe, doing nothing more in all likelihood than giving these marauders fresh encouragement to sail to encompass our own destruction!”

“We cannot leave them like this!” Elsire was weeping now, Temar realized distantly, a longing to comfort her welling up inside him.

“May we have your permission to contact the Shrine of Ostrin in Bremilayne?” Vahil’s voice was rough with emotion, his pain a bright goad in the leaden mists that wreathed around Temar.

“You may, of course,” the Sieur replied wearily. “The Healer grant that they might be able to help you, though I should warn you they have troubles enough of their own just at present.”

Temar’s awareness shied away from the heavy weight of the Sieur’s despair and dissolved into the dullness of the haze.

The scent of thyme crushed under the hooves of a galloping horse mingled with the acrid dust of the road and the sharp reek of the beast’s sweat. A scream rang out and Temar heard foul curses spat from all directions as the clash of swords struck sparks from his sleeping mind. Harness rattled and creaked, the swish and snap of a whip with its promise of pain to spur on the already desperate. A dire sense of urgency possessed him, a desperation mingled with an arrogance that soon shifted to fear, uncertainty and pain. The bite of the sword was as deep in the mind as into the body and Temar struggled in a futile effort to rid himself of the panic that was flooding him, its tendrils dragging him down as surely as weeds would drown a swimmer. Sudden agony overwhelmed him to be replaced by an emptiness even more horrible, until the darkness claimed him once more.

“So what exactly are you and how do I unlock your secrets?” Temar awoke with a start to see a hawk-faced man with flaxen hair stooping over him. Terror filled him but in that same instant he realized the man with the piercing blue eyes was not looking at him but at something to one side. He was himself still disembodied, no more than a shade crying to Poldrion for passage to the Otherworld, Temar realized. Who was this man? Memory struggled to knit together the tangled skeins of recollection and a distant echo of pain and terror sounded dimly in Temar’s reason. Pale heads in the dawn sunlight flashed across his mind’s eye and a terrible sense of danger began to build in Temar as the blond, cold-eyed man began a low murmur of enchantment, a tainted miasma overlying the image Temar was seeing. This time Temar reached desperately for the mists of the enchantment that concealed him, diving into the concealing depths to evade the poisonous touch of the sorcerer.

Light seared him like a burning brand.

“Come on, Viltred, move! They’re nearly on us!”

In a gateway, the speaker stood, intense eyes in a pale face, reddish hair streaked with white swirling in the biting wind. His companion hurried after him, burdened with a motley collection of jewelry, weapons and trinkets. The first man ran, long legs spurning the short grass while his companion, shorter and more sturdy, dark of hair and beard, plunged after him, the long skirts of his azure surcoat threatening to trip him at every stride. Temar was silent in helpless anguish as trifles slipped from his grasp to be lost in the uneven ground.

Quarrels thudded into the turf on all sides, but as Temar despaired of the two men ever escaping the arrows were snatched out of the air by unseen hands, blue light streaming from the bearded man’s hands, brilliance startling against the overcast.

“Here, Azazir, it’s here!” Suddenly they were at a cliff’s edge, black basalt columns forming a perilous stair to a tiny coracle, which bobbed seemingly untethered in the tumultuous foam of the breaking seas.

“Watch your step,” the red-headed man shouted, an insane exultation in his voice as he skipped lightly down the treacherous rocks, sure-footed as a cat. The younger man picked his way down more carefully, testing his footing at every step. Spray lashed him, bitter cold biting deep into flesh and bones as he made the long and hazardous descent.

Yells from aloft signalled the arrival of pursuit but as black-clad warriors gathered at the cliff-top and a few bolder than the rest began to edge down the slick and treacherous rocks, the red-headed man reached the flimsy leather boat. Standing easily in the frail craft, he raised his hands and green light gathered around him, casting an unearthly light on his thin face. Where the sea spray landed on the rocks, it began to cling, to pool, to draw together, drops making rivulets that joined to stream down the black stones, pushing at feet and hands. As the younger man reached the sanctuary of the tiny craft, he dumped his burden and wove his own skein of blue light, gusts of wind snatching at heads and shoulders, sharp blasts of icy air tugging at legs and feet. The first to fall shrieked in utter terror as he fell to his fate in the icy foam, the second clawed frantically at his neighbor, only to drag him down too, smashed on the unforgiving rocks before the seas claimed the bodies as their own. A wild exultation filled Temar, but before he could seize it the swirling mists swept over him as surely as the icy seas of his vision.

A longing filled Temar with an intensity beyond anything he had known. Guinalle. She was gone, not lost but hidden, a jewel buried deep in the earth as surely as the finest gem Misaen ever minted, not rough and unpolished but sleeping in peerless beauty, waiting only to be revealed to those that sought her. He shook off a sudden image of green eyes, dark with passion against unbleached linen in a tumble of auburn hair and determination filled him. He had to escape this, whatever this was, to reach out and find some way to rescue Guinalle. Nothing less would do.

The ruins of the Den Rannion steading, Kel Ar’Ayen, 43rd of Aft-Summer

“Are you awake?” Livak propped herself on one elbow to look curiously at me, her eyes huge in the light of the moons, both at the half, greater waning, lesser waxing to the full that would signify the arrival of For-Autumn.

I nodded and heaved a long sigh. “I am now.”

“You’ve been dreaming?” she asked with that uncertainty that I was truly coming to hate in her voice.

“Dreaming someone else’s dreams, as far as I can make out.” I sat and stretched to work the stiffness out of my shoulders. Temar might have suffered terrors made worse by his bodilessness, I thought to myself, but I’d wager I was suffering enough for the pair of us with the knots his memories were tying my sleeping muscles into. “I think I’ve been seeing something of what Temar’s been perceiving over the generations, when someone’s emotions have been running sufficiently strong to make some kind of connection with him, if that makes any sense.”

Even in the modest moonlight, I could see Livak looking both dubious and confused. A qualm of fear chilled me in the midst of the warmth of the night as it occurred to me to wonder what might happen when Temar’s dreams included me. Would I see myself through his eyes? Sitting up, I looked across the gloomy enclosure to see a faint green glow betraying Shiv’s magelight. I ruffled Livak’s unbraided hair with an affectionate hand. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep again for a while,” I whispered. “I’m going to stretch my legs.”

“Have one for me,” she said sleepily, voice muffled by her blanket.

When I drew closer to Shiv, I saw he was talking in a low voice with Tonin. The mentor had a small chest between his outstretched legs and I caught an unmistakable glint of gold in the magelight.

“Rysh.” Shiv looked up with a welcoming smile. “Can’t you sleep?”

“Not without my uninvited guest taking over my dreams,” I replied as lightly as I could.

“We’ve been discussing how to go about the scrying in the morning,” explained Shiv.

“Did you say you’d been dreaming of the colony again?” Tonin looked up, expression inquisitive, so I reached into his casket to forestall further questions.

“What are these?” I picked out a small brooch, dropping it instantly as a shock like the spark from cat’s fur stung my fingers.

“Some of the colony’s artifacts,” Tonin retrieved the ring with careful fingers and rolled it lovingly in a scrap of silk.

“What we need now is to find the people they belong to,” said Shiv, frustration lifting his voice loud enough to raise a few heads from their blankets.

“Do you think we could have a little less disturbance?” A waspish request came from a dark bundle and I identified it with some surprise as Viltred. I’d have thought the old wizard would have stayed on the ship, given a choice.

“Does anything strike a chord with you?” Tonin offered me the casket and I reached hesitantly for a plain gold ring, the kind that men at home still give their wives to mark their child’s first steps. Resting it in the palm of my hand, I tentatively loosened my hold on the bars that held Temar behind closed doors. Nothing resulted, leaving me feeling absurdly disappointed. I shook my head, more than a little mystified.

Tonin removed the ring and laid a chatelaine across my hand, the long chains jingling softly as the keys, knife and purse swung to and fro. Still feeling nothing, I handed it back and took the casket from Tonin. For the most part, it contained rings, some plain, others ornamented with enamel or engraving, a few heavy cabochons and more seals that must have been worn for generations before crossing the ocean in hopes of reaffirming their ownership. Faceted gems on rings and other jewelry shone soft and secretive in the fugitive moonlight. I reached down to find a slim dagger in an ivory sheath. A smear of brazing showed where the hilt had been repaired after that scuffle with Vahil, I noted, but otherwise the trifle that had betrayed Den Domesin’s noble birth was still an elegant piece. I smiled at the memory of Albarn’s chagrin when his pose as a yeoman’s son orphaned in the retreat from Dalasor had been so easily unmasked.

The fleeting moment was shattered as Viltred was seized with a paroxysm of coughing and Tonin turned to him hurriedly, helping him to sit upright.

“Viltred, are you all right?”

I looked around to see Tonin laying a concerned hand on the old wizard’s brow. Even in this dim light, his color struck me as unhealthy.

“What do you think?” The aged mage struck Tonin’s hand away crossly but was seized by a further fit of coughing that left him gasping, clutching his arms to himself.

“Take this.” Tonin ignored the old man’s irascible reply and held a small vial to his pallid lips. “Trust me, it was studying healing that first took me into investigating aetheric magic. I was to be initiated into the Daemarion conventual life until my father decided I should see a little more of the world before making such an important decision. I found I liked Vanam, you know, never seemed to find the right time to leave, got my silver ring, then the next project came along…”

The Mentor’s inconsequential chat made it impossible for Viltred to interrupt. Whatever was in the potion certainly eased the old wizard’s breathing and the knot of pain between his brows gradually loosened.

“I think we’d all better get some sleep,” said Tonin apologetically, repacking his casket with deft hands.

Shiv yawned and nodded. “I’ll see you in the morning, Rysh.”

I nodded and turned on my heel but did not return to my niche with Livak in the great hall. There was no way I could risk sleep again, not with every memory Temar had of this place awake and clamoring for my attention. I picked my way carefully through the sleeping figures and climbed up the wall to a ledge where I could rest my feet on an old and weathered corbel. Only I could also see it as it had been, a cheeky likeness of Den Rannion’s steward, his beak of a nose now reduced to a faint stump, hooded eyes mere blind hollows in the pitted stone. I drew a deep breath and settled myself to wait for morning. That would bring some surcease from all this, I swore to myself, else Planir would be facing questions on the point of my sword. Only it’s not your sword, I rebuked myself, it’s that lad Temar’s, and demanding answers with threats is his style, not yours. I hoped that was true, it was starting to become difficult to tell.

As the night wore on, I found some small measure of com-fort in the regular pacing of the sentries and their quiet exchanges as the duties were swapped. Eventually the sun came up with the rapidity Misaen had thought fit for this strange land and, from my vantage point, the daylight showed me our little troop gathered within the sheltering walls, surrounded on all sides by skeins of milky mist. Huddled shapes began to stir, crawling out of blankets to go to relieve themselves, to share a drink and low-voiced chat over a mouthful of flatbread. The last of the night watch rolled themselves gratefully in their cloaks, with hoods over eyes and genial curses for those talking too loudly nearby.

Jumping down from my perch, I headed for the Archmage as soon as he emerged from his tent, waving aside an offer of food from Halice as I passed her.

“How soon can you scry for these mines, Planir?” I asked without preamble.

“Just as soon as the necessary wizards have woken and broken their fast,” replied the Archmage with the faintest hint of surprise at my early appearance.

“Who do you need?” I was determined to get this masquerade on the stage as soon as all the fiddlers were together.

“Wake Viltred, somebody, please,” Planir commanded over his shoulder, his own eyes fixed on mine.

“I’m already awake, Archmage,” the old wizard said crossly, a steaming tisane in one hand as he rubbed the knotted fingers of the other against his arm as if they pained him. “What do you want me to do?”

“Scrying,” replied Planir tersely. “ ’Sar, where are you?”

“Here,” Usara yawned fit to crack his jaw and grimaced as he scrubbed at his eyes with a shaking hand. “Sorry, I rather overdid it yesterday, clearing that channel in the river bed.” He nodded a casual greeting to me but started visibly when I looked up to return it.

“What are you staring at?” I snapped.

“I think most of us find it rather disconcerting to watch the color of your eyes flickering like that,” Planir answered for Usara in level tones that nevertheless effectively silenced me.

“It is certainly an effect I’ve never come across in the written record, but then there was never any hint about this whole business with the dreams either.” Mentor Tonin arrived at my shoulder, busily lacing his ink-smeared jerkin before accepting an armful of parchments from an attentive pupil whom I identified as his protege, Parrail, a wiry-haired Ensaimin lad I’d have thought was scarcely old enough to be halfway through an apprenticeship, let alone wearing the silver seal ring that Vanam bestowed on its scholars. “Thank you for agreeing to undertake this scrying so early, Archmage. I very much appreciate the courtesy.”

“Where’s Naldeth?” Viltred looked around crossly and the brisk young mage pushed his way through the warriors with scant apology.

“Where do you want me?”

“I’ll need you to join the nexus.” Planir rolled up his sleeves as Shiv set a broad silver bowl nearly an arm’s length wide on a rough wooden table lashed from green timber. He poured plain river water from a skin and, with a snap of his fingers, the silver bowl was full of emerald light, the radiance illuminating a gathering circle of awed faces as the mercenaries looked on silently. I stifled an ill-tempered desire to tell them to lose themselves and take their ignorant curiosity elsewhere.

Viltred laid a hand on the rim of the bowl and now it shimmered with mingled blue and green light. Usara nodded to Planir, laying his own hands on the sides of the bowl and the circle of colors developed a yellowish undertone. Naldeth stretched out his hands, palm down over the water, and a reddish tint warmed the swirling pattern. The waters circled faster and faster, a vortex plaiting the liquid light in a dizzying spiral until Planir dipped both his hands into the center of the well and the bowl rang with a chime like a great temple bell. I could hear the watching mercenaries stir and murmur behind me but Planir’s steel gray eyes held my gaze in a viselike grip.

“Watch and tell me what you recognize.” The Archmage spread his hands and an image rose from them, a circle in the empty air, edged with an ever changing pattern of the colors of wizardry, the clarity of the vision startling in the midst of the early morning mists. The picture moved and swooped, circling until I saw the placid expanse of the estuary, the wizard’s ship at anchor. I blinked as my eyes swore every oath they knew to tell me I was moving, while my ears denied them absolutely, leaving my stomach churning violently somewhere in the middle. I’ve never suffered from seasickness but now I made a mental note to be more understanding to those, like Livak, who do.

The river sped away beneath the magical mirror, the banks on either side narrowing, growing more steep, white water now breaking the swirling greens of the current, the flatter grasslands of the coastal plain shrinking as the forest marched down to the water’s edge. I found myself swaying and tilting as my vision convinced me I was somehow traveling over this landscape, high as a bird but effortless in this enchanted flight. Peering in a futile attempt to see around the corner of the image and completely caught up in the spectacular improbability of the experience, I nearly missed it.

“There, back a little, on the near side, that’s the entrance to the gorge!” I struggled with the words as Temar’s memories came clamoring out of confinement and an urgency I could not explain filled me with dread.

Planir closed his eyes for a moment and the image wheeled round, whispers on all sides telling me I wasn’t the only one finding this more than a little hard on the gut. The sunlight in the spell shone down on a narrow defile, ferns and wiry stems of opportunist bushes very nearly concealing it completely as a small torrent bubbled its way over a rocky bed to lose itself in the main flow.

“Where exactly is this?” Planir demanded, looking intently at the vision from his own side.

“It’s a little way upriver from the mining settlement.” I had the answer before I realized I knew it. “Temar and Den Fellaemion managed to get the survivors away on the boats and then marched them to the mines to get them away from the moorings.” A flood of recollection threatened to overwhelm me, the shouts, the weeping, the outburst of anger as frustrated people with nothing more to lose save their lives rounded on those driving them so hard for the sake of their salvation.

“Do we know where that is, ’Sar?” The Archmage rounded on the younger wizard, whose face was grim with effort as he poured his power into the spell.

“Yes,” he said shortly.

Planir clapped his hands and the unearthly vision was gone, leaving only a bright pattern lingering inside my eyes, shooting across the pale morning light as I rubbed them. The mercenaries began to drift away, curiosity and misgivings in their low-voiced conversations, a few stumbling over unseen obstacles with attention momentarily elsewhere.

“Archmage!” Kalion pushed his way toward us, an expression of intense annoyance creasing his fat jowls.

“Hearth-Master,” Planir greeted him with smooth courtesy.

“Why was I not wakened for this scrying? I would have thought I was the obvious choice for anchoring the nexus and—”

“Archmage!” The urgency in Shiv’s voice turned every head toward him. He was still leaning over the broad silver bowl, scrying alone now. “It occurred to me to trace down the river on the other side of the watershed, to see if it offered a better route from the coast. Just look what I’ve found!”

We crowded around to look down into the shining water. The bowl showed three ships riding easily on the calmer waters of the coastal reaches, anchored just off an inlet that I recognized from Temar’s encounter with the stolen Salmon. I looked up to see every face grim.

“That’s where the Elietimm attacked the colony’s ships,” I told Tonin, who nodded thoughtfully, checking a much folded piece of parchment.

At this size, each boat looked more like a child’s toy than a real vessel. Still, no child’s toy would have tiny figures moving around the decks and rigging; well, not outside Hadrumal certainly.

“Could this be a deception?” I asked suddenly, remembering the illusions the Ice Islanders had wielded to such deadly effect before.

“I don’t see why it should be,” said Planir thoughtfully. “They have no reason to know we’re here, after all.”

“Are you sure of that?” Otrick elbowed his way to the Archmage’s side. “Haven’t they followed us here?”

“I don’t think so,” mused Planir. “Could you expand the radius a little, Shiv, show me some of the coast? No, there, that camp looks well established. That’s a base for exploring the interior, I’d say. Back to the ships, if you’d be so kind, thank you. Look, that sail’s been jury-rigged, and you can see a season’s fouling on the bottom of that ship riding high in the water.”

The Archmage looked up at the circle around the bowl. “I’d say that’s an expedition that’s spent the summer here, charting and surveying. However, I would certainly say it suggests Elietimm interest here is at least as urgent as ours.” He looked over at me. “If Messire D’Olbriot is looking to re-establish a colony here, I think he might have to evict some sitting tenants.”

“That’s a service I think we could very well look to render the Sieur,” Kalion mused, expression intent.

“That’s the enemy, is it?” Arest pushed Kalion aside to loom over the bowl, scowling darkly as the fat mage attempted to recover his position before thinking better of it.

“Thank you for joining us,” Planir greeted the warrior with a trace of irony.

“So what are you going to do about them?” demanded the big mercenary. “They’ve got four or five times our number, given the size of those ships. If they find us we’re dead and booking passage with Poldrion. You either have to kill or capture them.”

“How far away are they?” Planir inquired of Shiv thoughtfully.

“No more than a handful of days’ sail.”

“Too close,” the Archmage grimaced and shook his head. “I think you’re right, corps-master. We cannot afford to risk having them at our back, or them getting wind of what we’re doing.”

“You’re simply going to kill them?” Tonin’s expression was aghast.

“Give me one good reason why not?” challenged Arest. “They’ll kill us without a second glance at the runes if they find us!” The scholar subsided in unhappy confusion.

“Taking such decisions is part of the price for taking a place at the highest tables,” Kalion did not look in the least distressed at the prospect. “It’s a matter of statecraft, mentor.”

“I’ll soon knock the bastards out of this game,” Otrick’s eyes sparked blue fire as he spread his hands over the bowl.

“I don’t want to alert them unnecessarily,” Planir laid a warning hand on Otrick’s arm. “Use wind and wave, work with Shiv and simply drive the ships on to those rocks. That will suffice for the present.”

“No dragons?” scowled Otrick, glaring up at the taller wizard like a terrier about to take on a mastiff.

“No dragons,” the Archmage confirmed in a tone that brooked no argument.

Livak slid in beside me as we all watched, unashamedly avid as the two mages bent their heads over the water, Otrick’s grizzled and tousled, Shiv’s black and neatly braided for a change, in the manner I’d seen on several of the mercenaries.

The sky above the tiny ships began to darken; clouds swept in from the ocean in swirls of white, then gray, then forbidding black. Piling high on top of one another, lightning began to flash within the dark towers of vapor, an odd thing to see without the sound of thunder following. Where the waters had been placid and blue, green swirls of current now began tugging at the anchor ropes, the ships shifting and bucking, white teeth of breaking foam nipping at them, harrying them. The tiny figures on the decks were moving busily now, reefing sail and wrestling with flailing ropes. We saw them flinch from something, a hard rain of hail punishing them with icy blows, dimpling the waters all around but not quelling the gathering waves now ripping the vessels from their grip on the sea floor, driving them inexorably into the savage embrace of the rocky shoreline.

I felt Livak shift her footing beside me.

“Move aside, trollop.” Viltred’s harsh words startled me and as I looked up, three things happened inside the space of half a breath.

Livak drew a dagger from her belt and lunged at the old mage, only to be sent headlong backward with a stunning flash of red fire from Kalion. Viltred ignored them both to fasten his skinny hands around Otrick’s equally scrawny neck, his rushing charge sending table, bowl and water flying. The Relshazri wizard was not big, but he was big enough, Otrick’s robust personality residing as it did in a small if wiry frame. Viltred had him down in an instant, leaning all his weight into crushing the Cloud-Master’s throat.

I looked for Livak, to see her wringing her scorched hands, expression dazed.

“Are you all right?”

“His eyes, Rysh, his eyes!”

At her scarcely coherent words, I moved to grab a handful of Viltred’s hair, wrenching his head back to show me sockets filled with featureless black.

“Elietimm magic!” I yelled, barely getting it out before a shattering pain numbed my hands, next smashing upwards into my head and dropping me to my knees. A flash of amber light snapped audibly through the air and I looked up through tears of agony to see Viltred wrestling in toils of enchantment woven by Planir, the backlash flinging me aside.

“Tonin, do something!” the Archmage shouted angrily, cursing under his breath as Viltred struggled in his bonds, blue flames crackling down the golden beams to set Planir’s sleeves alight. The Archmage grimaced in pain but his concentration did not waver.

The mentor spilled his parchments on the dewy grass, tossing them aside until Parrail snatched one from the litter and the pair of them began a faltering incantation. Livak reached for me and I helped her to her feet, scarcely more steady myself. I noticed distantly that Shiv and Naldeth were tending to the fallen Otrick while Kalion was weaving a circle of unearthly, crimson flame around the Archmage and Viltred, still frantically struggling against the confines of the wizardry. A cry that sent birds fleeing their roosts all around ripped through the morning mists and Viltred suddenly collapsed, all the magic vanishing to leave a smell of burning and a riot of startled questions shouted on all sides.

Planir ran to gather the fallen Viltred in his arms. The killing anger in his face contrasted with his gentle hands as he searched for pulse or breath. Mentor Tonin rummaged frantically in a pocket, but when he found his little vial saw there was no longer a need for his medicaments.

“Did we do it? Did we restore him before his heart gave out?” the scholar wondered fruitlessly, more to himself than to anyone else.

Planir just shook his head, eyes steely with an awesome wrath.

“Ware the invaders!” Temar’s voice sounded inside my head so loudly I could not believe the rest of the encampment hadn’t heard it too. Startled, I sprang to my feet, abandoning questions over Viltred’s fate.

“Ware Elietimm,” I bellowed, a bare breath before black-liveried shapes leaped out of the empty air, swords naked and hungry, pale steel soon running with the blood of startled victims. The mercenaries, caught on the back foot, ran to meet this unexpected challenge but took a moment to realize that the invading Elietimm were sweeping past anyone with a blade to cut down scholars and wizards with indiscriminate butchery.

I ran to Planir, Livak at my side, mercenaries led by Minare dashing toward us, all of us desperate to protect the wizards gathered in a tense circle around the Archmage. Tonin tried frantically to run to one of his pupils, a young woman, harebell eyes glazed and lifeless as they stared blindly at the brightening sky, the pallor of death shrouding her young face, but two mercenaries tripped him with merciless force and dragged him bodily with them.

“Get behind me, you imbecile,” Minare cursed the weeping mentor, thrusting him into Parrail’s startled arms. “She’s dead meat and you need to save yourselves!”

Minare’s lads formed themselves into an angry ring of steel around the mages, blades outward, hacking down the invaders, who were throwing themselves forward again and again, taking blows from behind without heeding them as they spent their lives in a single-minded attempt at killing the wizards.

I parried a scything stroke to my knees and swept my own blade upwards to take the man’s hand off at the wrist. Our eyes met in that instant and I saw only madness and hatred in that ice-blue, white-rimmed gaze. His life bleeding out from the wound, the Ice Islander still ripped a dagger from his belt and lunged past me, reaching over my shoulder in a suicidal bid to stab at Shiv. As I wrestled with him, feet slipping on the bloody ground, Livak slid a careful hand inside this foul embrace to stab him once in the vitals. The Elietimm stiffened in my arms, head jerked backward as foam bubbled from his bloodless lips. I flung his corpse from me, dead before it hit the ground.

A great gout of flame reached for the distant sun and I saw Kalion ignite the ground all around him, a knot of panicked scholars clinging to the tails of his jerkin as the fires greedily licked at their boots. The handful of Elietimm who escaped immolation circled the inferno, seeking any flaw only to die at the hands of Lessay and his warriors coming up behind them, eager to channel their own fury and chagrin into killing those who had taken them so badly by surprise.

In what could only have been a matter of moments, Arest’s harsh voice was echoing around the encampment, the stone now betrayed as such an inadequate defense, as little use to us as it had been to Den Rannion. “Any enemy still alive? No? Make sure!”

“My lads, get your arses on to the walls!” Outrage thickened Minare’s yell.

Lessay’s shout came hard on the heels of Arest’s. “Find your pairs, check who’s wounded and count the dead!”

Voices harsh with the accents of Lescar came from all directions in turn, other mercenaries hurrying to fetch water, bandages and salve as calls came from the wounded. I hugged Livak close once she had sheathed her daggers and we looked around for Halice and Shiv. They were together, Shiv pale as Halice ripped away a bloody sleeve in one brisk movement.

“I have tunics I’ve put fewer stitches in than you, wizard,” she remarked with rough sympathy as she washed the gore from a ragged slice above his wrist. “Whoever taught you to use a blade left a nasty hole in your defenses; I’m going to have to give you a few lessons!”

“Leave that! Shiv, here, with me!” Planir caught the dented silver bowl from the ground as he strode toward us, the rim now an irregular ellipse. The Archmage swept a hand over and across it, the last remnants of the morning mist sucked down to coalesce into a feeble puddle in the mud-smeared base.

“Your hand,” Planir caught Shiv’s fingers, still slippery with blood, the burns on his own wrist raw and angry beneath the scorched linen of his shirt.

A flash of multi-hued light struck an image from the surface of the water, the inlet where the Elietimm had anchored, the rocky arm reaching out into the surf, the trees of the forest gently tossed by no more than a breeze, no sign of either camp or vessels.

“Pox on it!” spat the Archmage. “Tonin, get over here!”

The still trembling mentor peered into the bowl and shook his head slowly in mystification, wringing his hands.

“Are they still there and somehow hiding themselves, or have they gone elsewhere?” demanded Planir.

Tonin shook his head again. “I have no way to tell, Archmage.”

“We’ve three dead and a handful wounded, two badly, out of the fighting force,” Arest declared, striding up. “What of the scholars?”

Parrail peered unhappily around Tonin’s shoulder, tears carving pale streaks through grime on his face. ‘They killed Keir and Levia, mentor—”

“How many of your number are wounded?” demanded Arest.

“Six,” Parrail drew a long, shuddering breath and tried to straighten his shoulders. “And two others dead, Alery and Mera.”

I winced; by my count, that meant two of every three of the scholars were fallen or injured. I was relying on them and their learning to free me from Temar’s insidious tyranny.

“What of the wizards?” Arest looked around and cursed. I looked after him to see Kalion kneeling by a motionless figure, one of the two cloak carriers who had attended him so assiduously on board ship, a youngish wizard whose name I had never quite caught. When the fat wizard stood, his face was swollen and purple with a fury that promised dreadful retribution.

“Get Shannet and that lass of hers off the ship,” Planir ordered, dropping both Shiv’s hand and the scrying bowl. “Arest, deploy your troops to give us a secure perimeter while we work. Kalion, over here, if you please. Kindly work with Shannet to construct both a barrier and concealment over this place; you can draw on everyone save myself, Usara and Shiv.”

Kalion nodded, eyes burning with determination now he had a task on which to focus. “The only thing that will get past me will be embers blown on the wind!”

“I’ll provide that,” croaked Otrick hoarsely, rubbing darkly purple bruises on his throat with a shaking hand.

The Archmage spun on his heel to fix Tonin with a challenging eye.

“Mentor, who is your most adept pupil still unharmed?”

“That would have to be Parrail,” Tonin quavered.

“Then work with all the others, wounded or not, to weave whatever enchantment you think might conceal or protect us from aetheric magic,” the Archmage commanded him crisply. “Get to it at once, if you would be so good.”

“What do you want with the lad?” asked Tonin, shuffling through his parchments nonetheless.

“You’re going up river, scholar,” Planir turned from the gaping lad to me. “Ryshad, we need to find that cavern and fast. You and Shiv, take the boat, take ’Sar and as many troops as Arest can spare you. The Elietimm will be here as soon as they can. If they’ve crossed the ocean, they almost certainly have magic to work against the weather, so it could be any time. Otrick, Kalion and I will be able to hold the river mouth for a good while, but the faster you find the colonists, the happier we’ll all be!”

I could feel Temar’s exultation echoing around the back of my mind. “Of course, Archmage,” I replied with some difficulty.

“I can scout for you and we’ll ask Minare for some of his lads.” Livak spoke up from where she was holding Shiv’s arm secure for Halice’s needle. “Go on, Rysh, find him while we finish up here.”

I did as I was instructed and we had the ship manned and rigged for river sailing before the sun was halfway across the morning sky. I stood on deck, looking up at the Den Rannion steading, no heads visible against the greenery although I knew full well archers now waited patiently on every trust-worthy section of the wall walk, ready to send a deadly rain of arrows down from the battlements. Equally unseen, Kalion’s magic was enclosing the whole area in defenses of elemental fire, Shiv assured me, while Planir’s power stalked beneath our feet and Otrick’s skills rode high on the winds above. Parrail had tested the aetheric barriers with repeated attempts to contact his colleagues, each failure perversely boosting his confidence.

“Are you sure you’re doing it right?” Livak demanded a breath before I could come up with a more tactful version of the same question, but Parrail was not affronted by this.

“Quite sure, my lady,” he replied in the cultured tones of Selerima, one of the great trading cities of western Ensaimin. “I am one of the most well-versed practitioners of these arts, as we so far understand them,” he added with simple pride.

“Do you know what you have to do to revive these colonists?” I asked, trying not to let my desperation show. At least Parrail was proving older than I had first thought, being a rather baby-faced youth with softly curling brown hair above a snub and freckled nose. His rueful hazel eyes told me he was well used to this kind of reaction, as he nodded, clutching Tonin’s ornately inlaid casket to his chest. “I will continue to study our theories as we travel,” he assured me earnestly.

The word theory had a worrying lack of certainty about it, but there was nothing I could do about that. The boy had earned the silver ring to prove his scholarship, hadn’t he? I waved to Halice, who nodded to the mercenaries waiting with her on the wharf side. They cast the ropes securing the boat into the water. Raising a hand, I signaled to Shiv who was standing by the captain of the ship at the tiller. Defying both current and tide, masts and spars bare of canvas, rails lined with mercenaries, bows at the ready, the boat moved upstream, slowly at first and then more rapidly, a spur of foam at her prow frothing with green light.

“Now we should see an end to this, Arimelin willing,” muttered Livak, coming to stand beside me, offering a cup of tisane.

I took a sip of the steaming liquid, feeling the bracing bite of herbs at the back of my throat. “You’re sure you want to do this? I’d understand if you wanted to steer well clear of any aetheric magic—”

“And stay with Planir? To risk being skewered by an Elietimm who thinks he’s an Eldritch-man or get myself fried by Kalion getting overenthusiastic?” Livak shook her head. “I’d sooner challenge one of Poldrion’s demons to a draw of the runes for free passage to the Otherworld!”

“That’s a cheery thought,” I grimaced as I took another sip of tisane. “I’m glad to have you with me though, after the way you avoided me on the voyage here.”

“I had a lot of thinking to do.” Livak fixed her gaze on the curve of the river as it narrowed toward a bend. “I had to decide if I wanted you badly enough to put up with all that comes with you just at present.”

“And you do?”

“For the moment,” Livak’s eyes remained hard. “And I’ll be making sure every cursed thing possible gets done to empty that D’Alsennin out of your head, once and for all.”

Despite the seriousness of our situation, I felt absurdly happy. As I watched the river banks slide past, at once both unknown to me and familiar to Temar, I could not agree with her more, finding it harder and harder to batten down the defenses in the back of my mind.

We reached the mouth of the gorge just as the sun slid down behind the grim and mossy crags of the high ground above us. The captain guided the ship cautiously into a limpid pool, frowning as gravel scraped noisily beneath the hull.

“Where to now, Shiv?” I asked as both wizards and Parrail came to join me and Livak at the rail.

“I’ve no idea. I mean it’s the right place, sure enough, but I can’t locate a cave,” He shook his head. “I’ve been scrying and there’s nothing, nothing at all.”

“There’s something preventing me from searching beneath the surface on the far side of that ravine,” Usara looked thoughtful. “That must mean something.”

“Parrail?” I turned to the young scholar who clutched a parchment defensively to his chest, eyes wide.

“I’m sorry,” he stammered, “I’m sorry but I can’t find anything out of the ordinary.”

“Which is what we’d expect if this place was supposed to be shielded from aetheric magic,” Livak managed to damp down most of the scorn in her voice. “Let’s follow Usara’s lead. Buril and Tavie, you’re with us.”

It seemed Halice’s word was good enough to give Livak a measure of authority over the mercenaries and the two she named climbed down readily into the ship’s boat, the rest remaining alert and guarding the ship. I followed more slowly, my feelings increasingly confused, reluctant to risk making contact with this ancient magic, desperate to rid myself of Temar and constantly struggling to keep him from laying his shadowy presence over my eyes and my hands. I was starting to feel quite light-headed as we reached a rocky ledge, where a stunted tree offered a handy place to tie up. The feeling worsened as my feet made contact with the ground and with every step we took up that narrow ravine, my senses reeling as the jagged walls of the defile seemed to be pressing in on me, frozen in time but ready to topple down on me at any moment.

“It’s no good, I can’t find any kind of entrance to a cave,” said Usara with marked irritation.

“There’s no sign along here,” called one of the mercenaries, a bull-necked man with blunt features marred by a thoroughly broken nose. “Nor here,” confirmed his mate, Tavie, I think it was, a burly bruiser with a gut on him like a two-season child-belly.

Livak looked down from where she was exploring a narrow ledge, sure-footed as a mountain goat. “This all looks as if it’s been undisturbed since Misaen made it,” she commented. “Shiv?”

“What?” the wizard looked up from a puddle in a rocky hollow where he had been working magic. “No, there’s nothing I can see that’s of any use.” He turned to me, face deathly serious. “The only one who’s going to be able to find that cave is Temar D’Alsennin.”

My first instinct was to reach for my sword but I managed to stick my hands through my belt instead. “What do you mean?”

“You have to let Temar show us the way,” Usara folded his arms. “It’s the only way, Ryshad.”

I shook my head slowly, wanting to shout my denial but unable to find the words. Livak slid down a convenient tree and reached up to lay her hands on either side of my face, drawing my gaze to her.

“Look at me, Rysh,” she said softly. “Arimelin save us, I don’t want to see this again, but finding this cave is the only way you’re going to be rid of him, isn’t it? Saedrin’s stones, I know what we’re asking of you, better than anyone else, but you have to do this, to save yourself.”

She was right, curse her, curse the day Messire had ever given me this unholy sword. What choice did I have? Death? If I could leave this Temar D’Alsennin behind to make his own deal with Saedrin, would it be so very bad to cross over to the Otherworld and see what a new life there had to offer? I was so tired, so very tired, exhausted by the now incessant struggle to keep myself intact, to maintain my crumbling defenses against Temar. I was not even sure I even knew myself anymore, so much had changed in me over the seasons. Could I trust myself? Not really, but one thing I knew—I could trust Livak. I reached up with one trembling hand to bring her slim fingers to my lips in a bone-dry kiss. Shutting my eyes, I laid the other hand to the sword-hilt and lost myself in a bottomless pit of darkness.

The mining settlement of Kel Ar’Ayen, 43rd of Aft-Summer

Temar blinked and stumbled, disconcerted to find himself standing upright and putting out a hand to save himself by grabbing a tree branch. How was it that he had woken up here? Or was this just one more of the tormenting dreams that the enchantment had wrapped around him, only to rip away the illusion of normality to leave him alone in the dark once more?

No, this was real; it was daylight. He could feel the uneven rocks beneath his feet, wet leaves in his clutching hand, warm sun on his back. He could smell the green freshness of the flowers and bushes all around and he drew a deep breath of the warm, moist air down into his lungs. This was real, no vision of a forbidden reality to tempt him into madness. That first exultation of sensation faded to be replaced by a lurking headache and treacherous weakness in his limbs. Had he been ill, he wondered, vaguely recalling childhood fever. No, better not to think of that, of the way he had woken from delirium to find father and siblings lost to him forever, never to know each other again, even if they should meet by chance in the Otherworld.

A voice spoke hesitantly beside him and Temar frowned, unable to make sense of the rapid, oddly phrased sentence. Who was this man? Obviously he was from some distant land with a different tongue. He looked to be ten or so years older than Temar, somewhat taller with long black hair and a sallow complexion. He was dressed in curiously cut and tailored clothes, a blood-stained bandage grimy beneath the tattered remnants of what had once been a good linen shirt of leaf green.

“Temar D’Alsennin?” the man tried again, slowly. While the accent remained hard on the ear, Temar could at least recognize his own name. He nodded, cautiously and asked his own most immediate question. “Who are you?”

The man frowned then tapped himself on the chest, speaking slowly. “Shiv.”

Temar did not think that much of a reply and wondered why the foreigner was looking so uneasy. He closed his eyes for a moment and ran rapidly through his memories, ruthlessly shoving aside the chaos of his dreams in a desperate search for his last moments before the enchantment had taken his wits from him. That was it, he had been sent into a sleep woven of Artifice to remain safe until rescue could come. Eyes snapping open, Temar took a step toward the man in green, clear challenge in his words.

“How do I come to be here?”

The man shrugged helplessly and looked past Temar to someone at his back. Angry at himself for allowing them to take him unawares like this, Temar swung rapidly around to find himself outnumbered and took a pace sideways to get the solid rock of the gorge to defend his back.

“We are here to help you,” a lad some few years younger than Temar spoke up, snub-nosed face pale with tension beneath a thatch of coarse brown hair, a small book in one hand, crammed with odd notes and scraps of parchment. “My name is Parrail and I have some knowledge of enchantment.” His words were spoken with painstaking care and his sincerity was evident. “What you know as Artifice,” he added hastily.

That was all very well, but Temar was more concerned about the other people he could see. Two men, guardsmen by his guess, were further up the gorge, looking at him with frank curiosity, while a tempting blossom with tousled red hair was standing rather closer, arms folded and an expression close to hatred burning in her grass green eyes. Temar found himself recoiling from this a little, unable to think how he might have offended the lady, though her claim to such a courtesy looked rather doubtful, given her immodest breeches and manlike jerkin. The last member of this band of brigands was a quiet man of no more than usual height with thinning sandy hair and shrewd eyes, dressed in some kind of long robe with no weapons that Temar could see. Was he a priest of some kind? Temar looked around again and realized with some relief that only the retainers and the woman looked to be carrying weapons. If it came to a fight, the runes were not too heavily weighted against him.

He laid a hand to his own hip, reassured by the familiar feel of his own sword and glanced down instinctively. What he saw chilled him to the bone. This was not his hand; it was older, broader, tanned with oil ingrained around the nails, small scars pale in a lattice around the knuckles, a hard-worked hand with its fellow matching it. Temar spread both hands before him, unable to stop them shaking, mouth agape in consternation. These were an artisan’s hands, no noble bloodline bore these sturdy workmanlike fingers. The great sapphire that had been his father’s was gone too, but a deep indentation marked the flesh of the central finger, for all the world like the mark from the band of a ring.

Was this madness? Had he finally succumbed to the insanity that had tormented him through the smothering darkness of the enchantment? Terror threatened to overwhelm him. Stumbling, he fell to his knees, heedless of the pain of the sharp rocks. The scene before him shifted and altered, everything distorted as if he were looking through cheap and flawed glass.

“Come on,” the man called Shiv caught him under the arms and helped him stand. Temar’s vision cleared but his confusion grew as he realized he now stood taller than this man, not shorter. He looked down to see long, muscular legs encased in stained leather breeches running down to boots far wider and longer than they should have been. Temar was certain he had never owned such garments or footwear. What had happened to him?

The scribe or whatever he was hurried to Temar’s other side. “You are under an enchantment, a sorcery, laid upon you by the Lady Guinalle. We are here to restore you and your fellows if we can only find the cavern where you are hidden.”

Guinalle! All Temar’s alarm for himself receded as he picked that name out of the man’s slow words. He clung to the thought. Guinalle—she would help him, she would know why he was so fearfully transformed, she could answer all the questions that were crowding around him, threatening, taunting.

“Where is Guinalle?” The man with the bandage seemed almost to be hearing his thoughts.

Temar shook off his hands and scowled, sensation returning to his nerveless hands and feet. “What do you want with her?”

“We wish to restore her to herself, to awaken her,” the lad with the parchments said hesitantly.

“We need her aid to defend ourselves against invaders from the sea,” the thoughtful man in brown spoke up, picking his halting words with evident care, his accent still strange to Temar’s ear. The red-headed girl said something fast and furious that escaped Temar completely, her speech an incomprehensible gabble.

The lad rummaged in a pocket and held out a ring to Temar, a tarnished and battered circle of bronze whose engraved crest was worn to little more than a shadow. It was the crest of Den Rannion’s house, the ring a retainer would wear to show his allegiance and status.

“Vahil!” Memory came hurrying back to Temar and a frail hope reached past the taunts of delusion. “Vahil returned home? He has sent you?”

The one called Parrail hesitated, but the two unarmed men answered as one: “He has.”

“To seek your help against the men from the sea.”

Sudden recollection of the invaders’ assault shook Temar. “They are here?”

“Not yet, but they are coming,” replied the man in green.

“We need to find the cavern before they arrive,” added the man in brown, hushing the lad, who was looking more and more confused.

Temar shut his eyes for a moment and rubbed a hand over his aching head, stopping in consternation to feel a mass of short curls. That should tell him something, he knew, but what?

“What has happened to me?” he asked, more in anguish than in any hope of answer.

The redhead spat something at him but the man in green snapped back at her in words too rapid and oddly spoken for Temar to understand.

“Guinalle will be able to restore you.” The brown-robed man took a step forward and offered a pale-skinned hand. “We mean no harm to any of you. We only wish to help.”

Temar reached out one trembling, unfamiliar hand and clutched the man’s thin fingers. Contact with another living being steadied him; this was certainly no dream, no delusion wrought of fear and tangled memory.

“Where is Guinalle?” the man asked, eyes intent despite his friendly expression.

She would have the answers, Temar realized at once. Guinalle would know what to do; she might even know these people, whomever it was that Vahil had sent, from whatever distant land. He had to find Guinalle!

Turning, he surveyed the gorge, dismayed to find it narrower and deeper, the bottom choked with stones and clinging ferns as the foaming water splashed and bubbled its way through to the river. Was this the right place? Low oaks clung grimly to crevices in the rocks, twisted branches reaching upwards to the light. Finer branches of ash and hazel dappled the ground with shifting shadow. Winter storms must have sent landslides or floods or something to reshape the land so drastically, Temar concluded desperately. Struggling along the treacherous stream bed with no little difficulty, he scanned the sides of the defile frantically for any sign of the cavern’s entrance. Chest heaving with burgeoning panic, Temar halted, turning abruptly to see these strange visitors watching him, waiting, expressions wary.

“Search, curse you,” he shouted, suddenly enraged. “Help me!”

“What do we seek?” the lad Parrail called after an awkward moment of still silence.

“A narrow ledge, leading to rock-cut steps, a walk down into a small cave that gives onto a larger.” Temar looked around helplessly. “I cannot tell where it might be.”

“Think of Guinalle,” the wounded man urged as he made his way through the jumble of broken rock. “Let your instincts lead you to her.”

As the man spoke Temar felt an irresistible conviction that Guinalle was somewhere close. He turned and turned again, head going from side to side like a hound searching for a windblown scent. Moving rapidly, eyes unseeing, he let this unfamiliar body stumble through the chattering stream until he was brought up hard against the treacherous surface of a long, sliding scree of shattered rock. Blinking through blurred vision, temples throbbing, Temar looked up to see a familiar series of hills far distant, sharp profiles against the clear blue sky, backdrop to the raw and broken stones blocking the entrance to the cavern.

“She’s here,” Temar said helplessly.

The red-headed girl moved quickly along the narrow and treacherous ledges, hands and feet deft as she moved out on to the shifting surface of the scree. One of the swordsmen tried to follow her, lost his footing, tumbled and gained only scrapes and bruises for his trouble. The girl spat what could only be curses at him and he colored uncomfortably, turning to quench his hurts in the cool waters of the stream. The girl moved slowly up the long slope, everyone else watching in a tense silence broken only by the skittering of loose stones dislodged by her careful movements. Pausing, she wedged her feet securely against some larger stones and looked down, calling the first thing Temar had understood from her.

“Mind your heads!”

She began tossing stones down into the water, ringing splashes echoing down the rocky angles of the gorge. Soon a black patch of darkness showed against the gray of the rock face, a hole in the side of the hidden valley.

“Be careful, Livak!” the one called Shiv yelled as the redhead swung her legs slowly around and eased herself through the narrow gap. Temar stood, looking upwards along with all the rest, silent while the sounds of the chattering stream, the woodland birds singing all around, went unheeded.

“Yes! It’s here!” The girl Livak’s face reappeared in the breach, pale but triumphant, her voice somehow easier now on Temar’s ear.

“Get yourself out of the way and I’ll clear the entrance!” The man in brown robes shouted upwards, rolling his sleeves up in a purposeful fashion. The girl nodded and scrambled with some alacrity to a ledge above the opening.

Temar watched, open-mouthed, as the man laid a hand on the boulders at his feet and an unearthly golden glow swept up through the scree, bright beneath the dull gray of the weathered and stained stones. With a whisper at first, building to a full throated growl, the very rocks themselves flowed like water, swept sideways like wind-tossed waves, sliding downwards to leave the black hollow that led to the cavern open to the sunlight. A final ripple clattered back down through the scree, running its length to toss a few stones gently at Temar’s feet as the amber light faded and vanished.

He stared at the man. “What are you?”

“My name is Usara.” The man smiled and bowed abruptly from the waist. “I am a wizard.”

Temar shook his head in mystification.

“I work magic, but not as the Lady Guinalle does it. My colleague Shiv and I follow a different path.”

“Come on.” Livak, the redhead, was glaring at Temar again with that unwarranted dislike. “Let’s get this done!”

The broken and treacherous rocks were now transformed into a firm pathway and Temar found himself hurrying ever faster to reach the entrance to the cavern. He paused on the threshold, squinting into the darkness, any old fear of such places irrelevant in the face of his urgency to find Guinalle. A glow at his shoulder made him turn to reach for a torch, but he took an involuntary step backward when he saw a pale yellow flame burning insouciantly in the center of the magic-wielder’s palm.

“Don’t worry about it.” The other one, Shiv, raised his own hand to create a greenish light, seemingly reflected from the very rocks. “Just help us find Guinalle.”

Temar needed no further urging to move away from these strange people with their peculiar talents. He hurried down the rough-hewn steps, the arcane light pursuing him as the others followed. At the foot of the uneven stair, he paused and looked around the huge expanse of the cave, heart pounding in his chest but strength and courage returning to him with every pulse of his blood.

The cavern had been much enlarged by the miners, Temar recalled, hewn out of the living rock, angles and facets marking the stroke of axe and pick on the walls. The roof was jagged and uneven, dipping and rising in a series of frozen waves. The silent air was motionless, not over-cold but the absolute stillness made him shiver nonetheless. He forced himself to take another step as his unwanted companions crowded at his back. As they moved out into the cave as one, their footsteps rang harshly in the hushed calm.

Unnerved, the younger lad stood close to Temar and glanced around for guidance while the guardsmen exchanged wondering glances, looking back up to the circle of leafy daylight at the head of the stair. The two men, with their unnatural light growing to reach the furthest reaches of the cavern moved out to either side. No one entered the body of the cave, Temar noted with surprise, leaving that to the girl, Livak. She took a careful step forward, then another, a thief’s tread silent on the sandy floor as she picked her way through pallets and mattresses, rough beds of cloaks and blankets packed close together, a pale light of enchantment hovering over her head to show her a motionless figure in every space—men and women, unformed youths, bearded artisans, staid matrons, fresh faced maidens, children curled in unconscious memory of that first, short, dream-filled sleep within their mother’s belly. Temar watched as the green-eyed girl moved slowly between the motionless figures, his scalp prickling with apprehension.

Most looked peaceful, as if they merely slept, but others wore frowns, faces twisted with fear and sorrow, a crystal tear glinted in the corner of an eye, a mouth half open on a final protest. Some wore bandages, old blood staining the linen black and brown. These people were not asleep however. The warm flush of natural rest was nowhere to be seen. It was replaced on all sides by a cold pallor, an unnatural stiffness. Livak put a tentative hand to a young man’s cheek and shuddered.

“It’s like touching a marble statue,” she said softly, an echo carrying her words whispering around the cave, spiraling up into the darkness of the roof.

“Where will Guinalle be?” Parrail plucked hesitantly at Temar’s sleeve, eyes huge and black in the dim light.

Temar frowned. “I’m not sure. She would have been the last, so she could seal the cave, along with the Artifice, so…” His words trailed off as he looked around, gaze drawn to a low pallet set a little aside from the serried ranks stretching out into the cavern. He hurried toward it, the boy at his side, desperate hope taunting him, tears starting at a sudden pain behind his eyes.

“She’s beautiful,” the lad breathed and Temar could not find any words to answer him as he looked down on Guinalle’s motionless form. Clad in simple cream linen under an undyed woollen gown, her rich chestnut hair provided a single note of color, frozen in soft wisps against a face as remote and colorless as the more distant moon. A crystal vial with a silver lid shone between her breasts and a tightly furled parchment rested beneath her clasped hands. Temar stroked her hair, which was stiff and unresponsive under his fingers where it had once flowed, sensuous as silk.

“If this is her, get on with it,” Livak startled both of them as she appeared on silent feet to lean down and pull the document from Guinalle’s helpless hands. “Come on, Parrail, this is where you’re supposed to make yourself useful.” She spared Temar a glance, venomous with that peculiar dislike, and he felt a sudden shock of pain through his temples again.

The boy, Parrail, leafed through his book hastily, lips moving silently as he ran a finger over something. “Right,” he sniffed, and ran a trembling hand over his mouth. “I think I can do it.” He took the crystal vial and wrapped Guinalle’s white fingers tightly around it. Unrolling the parchment, he squinted uncertainly at the flowing script before clearing his throat and starting to read.

“Ais margan arsteli sestrinet…”

His faltering words echoed around the great cave and a terrible weakness overwhelmed Temar, dropping him helpless to hands and knees. Face close to Guinalle’s he saw her white pallor sicken and gray and, for one terrible moment, he saw the skull lying in wait, shining beneath her flawless skin. Something in the depths of Temar’s mind was screaming in anguish and rage, that lone, tormented voice drowned in the next instant by howls of disembodied anguish battering him from all sides. A foul charnel air choked him and he struggled for breath.

“No,” he gasped, “no, stop, you’re killing us!”

“Have you no sense of rhythm in you? Trimon curse you for a tone-deaf fool!” Livak snatched the parchment from Parrail as she cursed him.

“Ais marghan, ar stelhi, sess thrinet torre…” Her musical voice rang high and clear in the emptiness as she chanted the cadence of an ancient tongue and Temar blinked the desperate tears from his eyes to become aware of another sound. Slight and hesitant at first, the sigh of breath rose from Guinalle’s sleeping form and he saw the first kiss of life soften her lips to a living rose. A blush warmed her pale cheeks and the unnatural stiffness left her body and clothes, the folds of her gown relaxing in a soft fall around her slim frame and wisps of her long hair moving slightly as her breath caught them.

She shivered suddenly and opened her eyes, wondering and curious as she saw the faces above her. No one spoke. Guinalle frowned slightly, puzzled. She reached out and touched Temar’s face as he knelt there, heart too full of emotion to speak.

“Are you real? I dreamed of you, in a distant land, far from family and friends. Is this another dream?”

Temar clasped her delicate hand in his to warm it between his palms. “This is no dream. You are awake now, Guinalle. Vahil sent help to rescue us all!”

Guinalle sat up abruptly, her eyes confused. As she did so, the crystal vial rolled down her skirts to shatter on the stone floor. The strong scent of perfume made her gasp, “I remember, I remember! The sleep, the cave—” She looked round, eyes wide and face distressed, snatching her hand away.

“Guinalle.” Temar’s voice was choked with tears and he reached for her. The look of consternation she gave him cut him like a knife.

“Who are you?” she asked, suddenly wary, drawing away unconsciously. “What do you want with me?”

“It’s me, Temar.” He did not understand this, why did she not recognize him?

“D’Alsennin has somehow been revived within the body of one of our companions,” Livak spoke to Guinalle, forcing herself to speak slowly and clearly, sparing Temar only a fleeting look of naked hatred. “That sword has something to do with it, I don’t fully understand how. You must send Temar back to himself and pray to Arimelin that our friend survives unharmed!”

Guinalle was rubbing her eyes, as if she sought to wipe away the lingering effects of her long enchantment. Raising her head, she studied Temar closely, frowning.

“Yes, I see it now—the eyes, the gestures, all that I know, but the face, the body, no wonder I did not recognize you, Temar.”

“What are you saying?” Now it was his turn to retreat in instinctive defense. “I know I am somewhat changed, but the enchantment—”

“Look at me.” Guinalle studied his eyes and he saw wonder in her face. “Look at your hands,” she said, “feel your hair.” She reached to run her fingers through the tight curls.

“What are you doing?” Temar snapped, “don’t you know me?”

“I know you, Temar D’Alsennin, none better, but not in this guise,” Guinalle said with a touch of her old manner. “You must let this man return, and go back to your sleep until we can revive you properly. You have fought the Artifice and twisted it, broken through it to invade an innocent man’s mind and steal his body! That was never intended.”

Temar could not meet her gaze. He looked back down at his hands to see those tanned and scratched artisan’s fingers instead of the thin aristocratic hands of a nobleman, the sapphire seal ring of his house missing. Fear clutched at him, his own cowardice appalling him.

“I can’t, I can’t go through that again,” he whispered, remembering the sickening, smothering sensation, the feeling of drowning, of choking, the soft claws of enchantment stealing his mind away. “I can’t do it, don’t ask it of me!”

“So will you stay as a thief in this man’s body?” Guinalle’s hazel eyes were hard in the unearthly green light, her tone uncompromising. “Where will you go? There will be no place on either side of the ocean for the abomination you will have become!”

Temar gasped under the lash of her words and tears started to his eyes. “How can you say that?”

Guinalle rose cautiously to her feet and held out her hand. “Come with me, whoever you are.”

She picked her way unsteadily through the rows of silent sleepers, the strangers who had accompanied Temar to this place following at a distance, the red-haired woman fumbling in a belt-pouch, face dangerous as she rested her other hand on a dagger at her belt. Guinalle came to a lone figure by a hollow, laid out on its back, hands meeting on its chest, fingers circled around empty air. Temar looked down at himself, at his lean, angular face, bloodless lips, thin black brows startling against the pallor of his skin, harsh lines above closed, blind eyes.

“We brought you down here after we wrought the Artifice,” murmured Guinalle, eyes distant. “Vahil took your sword, he and Den Fellaemion bade me farewell, and then I laid myself down to sleep with you all.” She gazed around the cavern and sighed. “I felt so alone, so very alone.”

“I’m here now,” Temar blinked away angry tears.

“No, you’re not, you’re no more than an evil dream tormenting this man. You cannot live in his body without both of you going mad.” Guinalle shook her head with absolute conviction. “Temar, listen to me, trust me. You must go back under the bonds of the Artifice until I can return you to yourself.”

“I won’t! I can’t!” shouted Temar. “How can you ask that of me?” He seized her, rage filling him, struggling with a furious impulse to shake some understanding into her.

“For the sake of the love we once shared,” replied Guinalle softly as the echoes of his outburst died away. “This isn’t you, Temar, is it?”

Temar stared at her aghast and then at the strange hands he was using to clutch Guinalle’s shoulders, his own familiar hands empty and still beside them. A sudden howling fury rang silently through his head, an enraged demand for release hammering against the inside of his skull, sending his senses reeling, blinded, deafened. The moment passed but he staggered under its impact.

“I can’t face the darkness again,” he pleaded, unable to help himself.

“Trust me.” Guinalle laid her cool hands on his temples and the pain coursing through his head eased a little.

“Place the sword back in your own hands,” she said calmly. “It’s going to be all right, my dearest.” Her eyes left Temar’s for an instant, to convey her reassurances to the silent knot of strangers watching, still, intent.

Temar unbuckled the sword with clumsy fingers, sliding it into the unfeeling hands of the body that had once been his. Weakness overcame him again and he knelt, all strength in his legs deserting him as Guinalle began a low-voiced incantation, her own voice roughened with tears.

The scream of terror and desolation that ripped from his throat set Temar’s blood racing in his veins, but as he tried blindly to climb to his feet he pitched forward—and knew no more.

Kel Ar’Ayen, 43rd of Aft-Summer

I came to myself lying across a body that was as cold and immobile as stone. Pushing myself backward in horror, I found I was as weak as a half-drowned kitten and able to make about as much sense as I struggled to speak. I gasped and hugged my arms to myself, nausea surging up within me, threatening to choke me. A flush like sudden fever left me sweating and dizzy, head ringing like a new-struck bell. I swallowed on a throat ripped raw by the screams of another man’s anguish.

“Hush, let me,” Livak was at my side, dragging me away, to prop me sitting against the rough wall of the cave. She knelt before me and gripped my shoulders with both hands, staring deep into my eyes. “Ryshad?”

I nodded and she held me tight, burying her face in my neck where I felt her hot tears of relief. I wrapped my own arms around her, feebly at first then with growing strength. The urge to vomit passed and I felt the sweat cooling on my body in the dimness of the cavern.

“Are you all right?” I recognized Guinalle at once, but where I had always heard her voice clear and comprehensible in my dreams now I found it hard to understand her slow and lilting words.

“I am, thank you.” I nodded as best I could with Livak’s red hair half smothering me.

“Do you remember…” Guinalle began hesitantly.

I raised a hand to silence her. “Yes,” I replied curtly. “No matter, I don’t want to speak of it.”

She managed a half-smile of guilty relief and turned to Temar. Disentangling myself from Livak’s embrace, I managed to get to my feet and looked down on the physical body of the man I’d spent so long struggling against inside my head. Livak came to join me, wrapping an arm around my waist as she tucked herself under my arm. Temar looked very young and I realized with an overwhelming relief that I was free of his uncertainties, his ill-governed emotions, all the ills of youth that I had thought I had left behind long since. Not that this whole foul experience hadn’t left me with a few quandaries of my own, but I would address them in my own time, I decided. For the present, it was enough to know I was sole master of my own head once more.

Guinalle laid a fond hand on Temar’s waxen forehead and I shivered as unseen fingers touched my own skin in a shadowy echo.

“Are you all right?” Livak moved to look at me, face concerned, and as she did so her foot knocked against a dagger on the floor. I recognized it as hers and reached down to pick it up.

“Careful with that,” Livak took it from me hastily and plunged the blade repeatedly into a patch of damp earth until the blade gleamed, cleaned of the oily salve it had carried.

“What were you planning to do with that?” I stared at her, startled.

“His lordship over there was none too keen on giving up your warm body to return to that cold one yonder.” Livak glowered at Temar’s unconscious form. “I was just about ready to make his decision for him, when he yielded. Let him argue the fall of the runes with a dose of tahn in his blood.”

I hugged Livak to me. “Thanks for the thought, but don’t blame the lad too much.” I closed my eyes on a brief memory of that appalling sensation of being locked away in endless darkness, cut off from all sensation. “After a taste of what he’s been going through, I can’t say I would have done any different.” Seeing the world through Temar’s eyes had been a salutory reminder of the power of the emotions of youth, the mixture of fear and impetuousness that had driven me in my turn first to the excesses of thassin and then to service with Messire.

Livak snorted and muttered something under her breath as Shiv and the others approached cautiously, the mercenaries in particular looking extremely unsettled. “What do we do now?” Tavie demanded truculently, folding muscular arms over his rounded gut, a scowl lifting his lip to show teeth like a row of burned-out houses. “We came to find this cave and now we’ve done it. What next?”

I looked at Shiv and Usara who turned to Parrail. “Well, I have as many of the small items as we thought promising with me,” he offered. “Shall we see who we can revive?” He looked questioningly at Guinalle, whose head had turned at his words.

“Let me see,” she held out her hands and Parrail gave her the casket with alacrity, kneeling beside her to open it. As Guinalle examined the rings and trinkets with tentative hands, she looked up at us, eyes wide. “How long have we slept?”

I exchanged an uncertain glance with Shiv and Usara. but Parrail spoke up eagerly. “Close on twenty-four generations, as far as we can tell.”

Guinalle’s jaw dropped and she gaped at the lad. “What? How? I mean…” The multitude of questions defeated her and she buried her face in her hands, Parrail putting a helpless arm around her in a futile attempt at comfort.

“We have come to find you, to seek your assistance against that same enemy that destroyed your colony here.” Usara knelt before Guinalle and took her hands in his, holding her tearful gaze. “There will be answers to all your questions in time, but just at present we need your aid. Your Artifice has long been lost to our people and the Elietimm, the men who attacked you, they are using it against us. Will you help us?”

Guinalle struggled for an answer. “I…”

“Leave the rest of it for another time, just consider that one thing,” Usara’s voice was calm and soothing but I could hear the urgency behind his words. “We need your help, otherwise more people will die at the hands of these invaders.”

Guinalle blinked and rubbed away her tears with a trembling hand. “Whatever I can do, I will,” she faltered.

“Should we be doing this?” Parrail looked around the great cavern, uncertainty wrinkling his brow. “I mean, the theory sounded all very well, but—”

“What else are we going to do, now we’ve come this far?” Shiv took a parchment from Parrail’s book. “I hardly think we can leave Guinalle all alone? Now, is this a list of the people you think owned these artifacts?”

Parrail scrambled to his feet hastily. “It’s what we compiled from the dreams, the most common images that were seen. You see, that one there, the chatelaine, all the evidence suggests it belongs to a mature woman with rather noticeable pock marks and—”

Shiv thrust the list at the scholar. “You read it out. Tavie and Buril, come with me and see if you can find anyone matching his descriptions.”

The mercenaries shared an uncertain look before joining Shiv and then Usara in slowly quartering the cave as Parrail read out brief and often unflattering descriptions of the people they sought.

“Oh dear.” Guinalle stifled a hesitant smile. “Mistress Cullam always preferred to be called robust or sturdy rather than fat.”

“Are you up to doing this?” Livak was looking at Guinalle with open skepticism.

The slender woman lifted her chin and a spark of determination lit her eye. “I am, but first we should revive as many Adepts in artifice as we may. They will be able to support me in restoring the others.”

“Can you identify them for us?” I took a step toward the others.

“In a moment.” Guinalle turned to Temar’s motionless form. “I cannot leave him in the darkness any longer.”

She knelt to lay her hands on Temar’s own, where they clasped the hilts of the sword. I gripped Livak’s fingers so hard that she flinched. Again I felt that shadowy touch, like a breath of cold air, but it passed and I felt a curious sense of release as Temar drew a first, long shuddering breath. As he opened his eyes Guinalle drew him close to her and, by unspoken agreement, Livak and I turned to leave the pair of them alone.

“How are you getting on?”

Shiv looked up from a child’s tiny form at my question, an enameled silver flower on a bracelet in his hand. “Pretty well, but we’ve artifacts for fewer than a third all told, even with those still back in Hadrumal.” He shook his head. “We’d better be careful whom we chose to revive. I hope Guinalle can identify people for us; I don’t fancy finding I’ve woken a child whose mother is still no better than dead.”

I looked back over my shoulder to Guinalle and Temar, still clinging to whatever reassurance they could give each other.

“She says we should try and revive any Adept in Artifice,” I commented.

“Can you,” Shiv hesitated. “I mean, do you think—”

“I can still remember the dreams, if that’s what you’re trying to ask,” I managed a weak grin, but in fact when I looked through my memories the dread that had colored the images for so long was absent. I could still remember, but now it was like recalling a story, a tale I’d heard, something that had happened to someone else, if it had ever happened at all. I walked a little way and pointed to a long-boned woman with a smear of old blood dark against the white of her frozen hands. “This is Avila; I’m pretty sure she chose a brooch, set with rubies and little pinkish diamonds.”

“It’s a cloak pin and has an inscription on the underside,” said Guinalle, coming toward us, hugging herself and shivering slightly. “It was from her betrothed, an Esquire For Sylarre.”

“You remember that kind of detail?” Parrail wrapped his cloak around Guinalle’s shoulders and she thanked him absently. “Of course,” she replied with a faint smile. “It was only yesterday, after all.”

I felt a presence at my shoulder and turned to see Temar waiting. Livak stirred under my arm and I held her close to silence her.

“I must apologize for my conduct,” the young man began stiffly; I sympathized with his struggle between pride and embarrassment, but I shook my head.

“No, you weren’t to know,” I said firmly. “I bear you no ill will.” I was relieved to find I meant it, too, if a little surprised at myself. Having had the smallest taste of imprisonment within my own head, I found I simply could not blame the boy.

“I should make some recompense,” Temar’s jaw jutted obstinately. “You should keep the sword, it is the only thing of value I possess.” His eyes looked lost, clinging to this hollow notion of honor.

I shook my head in absolute refusal. “No, I’m sorry but I cannot accept it.” A tremor in my voice showed me I was not yet so secure as I thought.

“I insist—” Temar tried to lay the scabbard in my hands, so I put them behind my back.

“It was never mine,” I told him firmly this time. “I don’t want it!”

Something in my voice must have convinced him; he colored and belted the weapon on without another word. I watched him look around for Guinalle and hurry toward her, now on the far side of the cavern, Parrail attentive at her side.

“Your Messire gave you that sword,” commented Livak, her hard eyes still following Temar.

“He did and look where it got me,” I said grimly. A gasping cry echoed round the vast expanse of the cavern and we saw Guinalle embracing Avila, the older woman rubbing at her eyes with one trembling hand, the other clasping her brooch as if it were the only constant thing in her world.

Shiv joined them, concern plain in his stance, while Parrail hovered, uncertain and unsure in the face of some abrupt challenge from Temar. Avila struggled to her feet, still shaking, and, thrusting aside Shiv’s offer of support, made her way to a woman lying next to three children swaddled together under a rough blanket. Her words were lost at this distance but I watched with growing dismay as Shiv shook his head, pointing first to one of the children, then to another, something bright glinting between his fingers. Parrail stepped forward and rummaged in his coffer, finally shook his head in a helpless gesture over the tiny middle figure and the woman.

Blood drummed in my ears as I remembered the belt buckle that Kramisak had used to weave his snares around Kaeska. I’d had no notion of its significance—how could I have?— but now guilt seared me. If only I had retrieved it. When would this little family be reunited once more in the sunlight, not left still and cold in their rocky tomb? Avila’s sudden sobs shattered the silence until she stifled them in her hands as Guinalle desperately sought to comfort her, tears now streaming down her own cheeks.

“I want no more of this!” I turned blindly to escape the gloom of the cavern.

“Let’s get out of here,” agreed Livak abruptly. “We should let them know on the ship what’s going on, and get some food organized for when they start waking these people up.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I confessed.

“Halice did,” grinned Livak, the fear and strain finally leaving her eyes soft as new leaves in the sun. I followed her readily back up toward the fresh daylight and out into the warmth of the living sun. I had done my duty by my patron, the wizards and the lost colonists of Kel Ar’Ayen, I decided. Someone else could answer the questions, make the decisions and deal with the problems, for a while at least. Livak and I got the mercenaries who had remained on board ship busy gathering firewood, flushing game from the surrounding woods and preparing to feed whoever emerged from the cavern. We left them to it and found our own secluded glade, where I proved to Livak that she now had my undivided attention any time she wanted it.

I woke the next morning feeling more fully rested than I could remember in seasons. Leaving Livak curled in the nest of blanket we had shared, I went down to the riverside to wash the sleep from my face and found Shiv frowning over a cup of water.

“Caught a worm or something?” I asked with a grin.

“Morning, Rysh.” Shiv looked up. “How are you feeling, in yourself?”

He winced as he heard his own words and I laughed. “Pretty much my old self. It’s nice not having a lodger inside my skull. So, what are you doing?”

“Trying to scry the settlement.” Shiv shook his head. “Only Kalion’s put up such a strong barrier that I can’t hold the focus together. Oh well, I’m sure they’d summon us fast enough if there was trouble.”

I nodded. “How many have you revived all together?”

“Close on five hundred, as you would know if you hadn’t managed to lose yourself so thoroughly last night,” replied Shiv with a strained smile. “It was no Festival Fair, I can tell you, trying to explain what had happened to them all, in terms that would make even the slightest sense.”

I looked at the ship, straining at its moorings in the current. “You’re going to have to make several trips and you’ll still be packing them in like salted herring,” I commented.

“Most will be staying here—they’re too confused to do anything else at present.” Shiv emptied his cup into the river. “Some of the mercenaries too, to defend the cavern if need be, while we take some of the Artificers down river to meet Planir and help decide what to do next.”

“Shivvalan!” We both looked around to see Guinalle hurrying toward us.

“Is there a problem?”

“What were you doing, just then?” Guinalle looked startled, flushed with haste.

Shiv looked down at his cup. “It’s called scrying. I believe you can work something you call a far-seeing? It’s similar but I believe we reach rather further—”

“You also lay your minds open to any attack an adept might care to make!” Guinalle shook her head. “I was weaving my own spell, making sure no invaders were anywhere near and I found you at once, defenseless as a newborn babe.”

Shiv grimaced. “That’s how they got to Viltred then.”

“Who? Never mind.” Guinalle frowned, irritated. “The thing is, I can sense a considerable working of Artifice along the coast. I can’t tell its purpose, not yet, but it has to be the invaders, from what Parrail was telling me last night.”

“We’d better get back to the settlement as fast as we can.” I stood up; my respite clearly over for the moment. “Make sure there are enough here to defend the cavern, but we’ll need all the troops and magic we can spare if Planir’s facing trouble.”

Shiv nodded. “ ’Sar and I were talking about this yesterday evening, looking at routes here if the Elietimm have somehow got wind of what we’ve done. That other river’s the only fast way in, so we started work early to block it a good way downstream.”

“How did you do that?” inquired Guinalle.

“ ’Sar did the rocks, I did the water,” Shiv grinned, “you see—”

“You can tell her when we’re on the boat.” I paused, disconcerted to realize I had no sword at my hip. “We need to get things moving—and I need a new sword.”

“Take my spare.” Tavie handed me a serviceable sword, a little heavy for my taste and marred with a couple of deep notches. “It’s nowhere near the quality of that Empire blade, though,” he added dubiously.

“Trust me, that’s not a problem,” I assured him. The weapon was probably worth about a handful of copper and I accepted it with pleasure. Now that Shiv had the current working with him, our progress down the river was rapid enough to make the newly revived colonists gasp. I noticed that Guinalle spent the trip deep in conversation with Usara, doubtless swapping theories on magic, with Parrail hovering attentively at her elbow while Temar looked on with no small measure of annoyance. I moved to join him at the far rail, finding myself drawn by a sympathy I didn’t fully understand.

“If she doesn’t want you, lad, it makes no difference, no matter how badly you want her,” I told him.

“Thank you, but I fail to see how it is your concern,” he said stiffly.

“You’ve been making it very much my concern for most of the past season.” I raised a hand. “No, I don’t blame you; we’ve covered that, haven’t we? I just thought you might like to benefit from the mistakes I made when I was your age.”

After a moment, Temar smiled faintly at me. “I lost all my elder brothers, you know.”

“I know, and I lost my younger sister, so I’ve no one else to boss around anymore.”

As the ship sped silently down the rapid river, Temar and I stood in the prow and talked, swapping tales of family and friends, discovering just how it was that we came to have so much in common that the Artifice had been unable to prevent a connection. I also gained some understanding into just why my older brothers Hansey and Ridner sometimes found Mistal and I more than a little trying. Parrail joined us after a while and volunteered some theories about aetheric sympathies, but I have to admit they made little sense to me. Noon came and went and we rounded a bend in the river to see three tall-masted ships securing themselves at anchor in the estuary.

“Dast’s teeth!” I swore, “Elietimm!”

“They must have seen them from the camp.” Livak hauled herself up on to the rail of the ship to get a better view. “Why hasn’t someone raised the alarm? What are they playing at?”

The smoke of several camp fires curled lazily upwards from the walls of the steading. I could see sentries patrolling, bows resting casually against shoulders, no sign that they had seen anything amiss at all!

“It’s a ward, a very powerful one. Someone on those ships is using artifice to make anyone looking out from your camp see only what they have seen before.” Guinalle was at my side, face pale and set. “Look, the enchantment must be concealing those soldiers, over there. They’ve landed men to make an unexpected attack.” As she pointed, I saw small detachments of black-liveried troops making their way cautiously through the undergrowth to take up positions to encircle the unsuspecting wizards.

“Saedrin seize it!” I looked around to see Shiv peering at the distant wall, a faint nimbus of green around his hands as he quelled the magelight that would betray us to the Elietimm lurking down river. “It’s no good, I can’t reach anyone.”

“We’re pissing in the wind, trying to get through Kalion’s defenses,” Usara cursed with equal frustration. “He’s not Hearth-Master for nothing.”

“What can you do?” I demanded of Guinalle. “Can you break the ward, was that what you called it? Can you make our people see the truth of what’s out there?”

She looked down river, scanning the banks and the distant vessels. “Until I can find who’s doing this, I can’t combat the ward. Even then, their Artifice might be too strong, if there are several people working together,” she scowled. “We need to do something they’re not prepared for. The only way they’ll drop the ward and betray themselves is if we can really distract them, and they’ll be expecting Artifice, defending against it. I can tell from the way they’re baffling the wards that Parrail’s friends are trying to maintain. Whoever is doing this is a master of illusions.”

“Let’s try something a little less subtle then.” Usara breathed and sent a shaft of ocher magic into the river. The waters roiled and bubbled, mud and weed swirling upwards from the river bed. “I’ll give them something they’re not expecting.”

“Let me help.” Shiv spread his hands and a dark mossy green light began to glow in the depths. The magic suddenly sped away, down toward the Elietimm ships. As it drew closer, a massive shape erupted from the water in an explosion of foam and noise. If I had thought the sea serpent in the Archipelago was huge, it was a bait worm compared to the monster the two wizards conjured from mud and magic. Rearing out of the water to reach higher than the tallest mast, it crashed down on the deck to split the vessel clean in two, ragged planking embedded in its sides as it rose up again, blunt head darting this way and that to snap struggling figures out of the water. Ropes snaked down into the waters as the other boats hastily cut their anchors to flee, sails flapping frantically as the mighty shape dived back into the water, only to rear up once more between the ships and the safety of the open sea. Shooting across the surface of the river, the great beast smashed broadside into one, sending it reeling over to start taking water in every hatch while the monster’s tail lashed mercilessly at the remaining vessel, sending splintered spars splashing into the water.

“Wizards keeping shipwrights in work again, are they?” Livak shouted from somewhere behind me. I heard mercenaries cheering as they armed themselves for a fight. “That should have attracted everyone’s attention!”

“Get me something shiny, quick,” Usara was calling to her. “And a candle, anything that will burn.” Snapping his fingers to light a spill of kindling wood, the wizard angled the magical flame to reflect against some mercenary’s rough scrubbed pewter plate.

“Otrick, answer me, curse you!”

“What is it? ’Sar, is that you?” The old mage’s perplexity traveled clearly enough through the faltering spell.

“Don’t you see the ships?” Usara shouted. “Get Kalion to drop his cursed barrier so I can talk to you properly.”

“Those are Elietimm ships! Saedrin’s stones, where did they come from— ”

“They’re landing troops to attack you! Get ready to defend the walls,” yelled Usara as the spell flickered and weakened.

“Target anyone wearing a metal gorget,” I bellowed as the light died away. “Do you think they heard?”

Usara shook his head, face aghast. “Something’s happened to Otrick!”

Given the chaos erupting around their ships, the Elietimm had abandoned their attempts at stealth and were charging towards the Den Rannion steading, harsh battle cries sounding across the waters.

“Get us ashore, curse you,” Livak was shouting at the master mariner.

“We can mount a counterattack.” Buril looked up from conferring with his fellow mercenaries.

“Let us at them, Esquire,” one of the colonists urged Temar, receiving nods of agreement from the others. “We have a fair rate of scores to settle!”

A crack of lightning silenced everyone as black clouds boiled out of nowhere and spears of magic lanced downwards to send black-liveried bodies flying, scorched vegetation burning merrily. Where a detachment tried to stamp out the flames, a surge of crimson fire leaped up from the ground to seize one man greedily by the arm, burning him to the bone despite every effort to quench it, rather transferring itself to anyone who came to the hapless soldier’s aid, leaving only charred remnants behind. Screams of fear and pain began to rise above the war cries.

“Do you think they need our help?” I heard one of the mercenaries ask his mate doubtfully.

“Over there, he’s over there!” Guinalle gestured wildly at the far bank, toward the ruins of some kind of watchtower. “Their Artificer, he’s over there!”

“Master, can you get us beside that wharf?” I shouted to the captain. “We have to get off quick if we’re not to be cut to pieces as we land!”

“Let us.” Shiv nodded to Usara and the great serpent vanished, leaving only a few swimmers struggling among the flotsam of the ebbing tide. Our boat rode over the water, however, gliding impossibly through the exposed mud flats to wedge itself securely against an undercut shore, the mercenaries leaping over the rail to land on dry grass, which was soon running red with the blood of the Elietimm who charged down to meet our unexpected attack.

After that first success our assault faltered as a handful of our warriors fell to their knees. The air felt heavy around me, almost as if a storm threatened. I wondered if some wizard’s magic was going awry. Then one woman, Jervice, Halice’s friend, struggled to her feet and I saw her eyes were black as pitch.

“Drianon forgive me!” As Livak whispered her prayer, she threw a dart, hard and true and Jervice crumpled to the ground before she could plant her raised sword in the skull of the man next to her. Others were not so lucky and I saw more than one colonist, so long in waiting, sent straight to Saedrin’s door by an unexpected blow from behind. Rage threatened to overwhelm me and I clubbed the man responsible with a heavy hand, sending him bleeding to the ground.

“Tror mir’al, es nar’an,” Guinalle set up a frantic chant somewhere close. “Parrail, repeat this after me and don’t stop, if you love your sanity!”

As the peculiar rhythm built, the sense of pressure faded and our attack was pressed home with renewed bitterness. “Go for the commanders, the ones with gold or silver at their throats!” I heard Temar shouting. More of Livak’s darts went shooting past my ear to drop anyone she could see with a gorget in their steps. I spared her a glance, hearing her chanting something under her breath. “What are you saying?”

“Whatever—it is—that she is,” Livak said between repetitions. “It can’t hurt, can it?”

“Over there!” Dragging Parrail along with her other hand, Guinalle grabbed my sleeve and then pointed at the creeper-clad base of the watchtower. “He’s in there.”

“Temar!” I pointed to the tower and looked around. “Tavie, Buril, with me, and you others!”

“Maintain the ward, whatever you do.” Guinalle dropped Parrail’s hand and I noticed the bruises of her finger marks in his flesh. “It’s up to you now. I have to block the source of this Artifice.”

She hurried toward the tower, heedless of danger, Livak and I hastening to put ourselves either side of her as we fought our way through the melee. As we reached the entrance, ’Sar sent magic from somewhere behind us to reduce the doorway to rubble and splinters. After an instant of recoiling from that shock, Temar and I led the charge inside. Those who came to meet us died quickly, as I found myself knowing every move Temar was going to make a breath before he did it. It seemed to be working both ways as well. As I darted to the side and an Elietimm sought to follow me, Temar’s sword was already moving to spill his guts over the dusty floor. As a second man thought he could smash his blade down into Temar’s outstretched arm, I was already poised to drive my crude blade into his head, ripping it out again to smash the hilt into the face of the gorget-wearer hoping to meet Temar’s retreat. The rest of the guard died bloodily under the swords of those beside us.

“Upstairs.” Guinalle was flattened against the wall, blood on her skirts, eyes fixed on the beams above her head. Livak, similarly splashed, waited ready to defend her, but no assailants were getting past Buril and Tavie, who had set themselves at the threshold. The two heavy-set mercenaries were drenched in gore, some their own, grimly purposeful as they hacked down any Elietimm trying to seek sanctuary within the tower again.

“Come on.” Temar set a foot on the lowest step of the stair winding up the inside of the wall and I hurried to follow him. I nodded and we both ran up the narrow treads, swords raised, ready to kill whatever we found but crashing helplessly into some unseen barrier that sent agony shooting through my skull. Gasping for breath, I stared into the hollow room in total disbelief.

It was him, the priest from Shek Kul’s domain—Kramisak, the bastard who had fled and left me to watch over Kaeska’s agonized death. He sat, calm, within a circle of eerie radiance, a mocking half-smile on his thin lips as he nodded toward me in a taunting salute. Stripped to the waist, his hands were raised and he was once more covered in black sigils, shocking against the white of his skin and hair. “I will attend to you later, Tormalin man, I have bigger fish on the hook at present.”

I glared at him and waved Temar over to test the circle on the opposite side. We found we could move around the enchanter easily enough but could not reach him; even touching a sword to the baleful light sent agony shooting up the arm that held it. As I walked slowly round, I looked over the river to see how the battle fared. The walls of the encampment were wreathed in scarlet fire; Naldeth or Kalion must have set all the creepers alight, which did not suggest the fight went well for our side. Where were Otrick’s lightning strikes, which had shattered Elietimm ambitions the year before?

“It’s a ward, a strong one.” Guinalle stood at the top of the steps, peering around Livak’s shoulder. Livak’s face was pale and set and I knew just what it must be costing her to come face to face with the Elietimm magic that had tortured her so foully before. Kramisak’s attention wavered for a moment and the circle brightened, but Guinalle raised a hand with a stream of liquid syllables and whatever the bastard was attempting against her went past in vain.

“Livak, do you trust me?” Guinalle moved to one side, her eyes never leaving the Elietimm enchanter. “Believe me, anything he can do, I can match. Hold my hands, echo my words and understand that he cannot touch us.”

Livak’s eyes were wide with apprehension, but she took Guinalle’s pale and delicate hands in her own tanned ones and repeated the arcane chant that the younger woman raised, Guinalle’s ancient accents, unheard for so many generations, mingling with the cadence of Livak’s Forest blood, songs learned in childhood from her long absent father giving her the pattern of the lost magic.

“No, you cannot!” Kramisak leaped to his feet with a shout of outrage as his circle flickered and died. He seized a mace that lay on the floor and launched himself at Guinalle. I dashed forward to intercept him, catching the crushing head of his weapon on the battered edge of my sword. He spat at me, slime just missing my face, and cursed me in his own tongue before hissing a familiar chant at me. I braced myself but no confusion threatened me, no dizziness robbed me of my wits.

“Daughter of whores and mother of vermin!” Kramisak tried to go for Guinalle again but I sent him sprawling backward into the far wall with a kick in the stomach.

“It’s time for a fair fight, you pox-rotted bastard,” I heard myself say. “There’s unfinished business between us, gurry-breath!”

“Then it’s my turn.” Temar was circling around behind me now, making sure Kramisak had no opportunity to reach Guinalle and Livak if he somehow evaded me.

“I took you once, prince’s man. I can do it again,” the enchanter snarled, hefting his mace in both hands.

Not today, I thought, going in hard against his rapid blows, sweeping his iron-bound mace aside to rip a long tear down his near arm. To have his own blood let like that seemed to enrage Kramisak still more and he came at me with a flurry of furious strokes. For all his ferocity, I found myself evading him with ease. He seemed completely unable to read my moves, and equally was unable to stop himself mistakenly anticipating my strokes and stepping into a blow rather than defending against it. I cut him again, a deep wound to the upper arm that weakened his blows considerably. He still managed to get a bruising strike in on my leg, but in doing so laid himself open to a sideways slice that left his ribs showing white bone within the torn red flesh. This ragged sword was sawing into him like wood and I leaned all my strength into my blows.

He was fighting Temar. I saw it in an instant of incredulous understanding. Kramisak did not realize that the mind behind my sword in our battle before Shek Kul had been another’s. He was fighting Temar and was losing to me. What would Temar do to that lunge, I asked myself rapidly. He would parry, just so. I stepped in the other direction and slid my notched sword around and over Kramisak’s mace to rip into his throat, great gouts of his blood making the hilt slip in my hands as the disbelief in his eyes faded and he fell forward, the foul and all too familiar stench of death rising from his body as his last spasms ended. I leaned down and cut the belt, with its antique buckle, from his corpse.

Great cries rose from the mercenaries outside. I stepped to a ruined window to see what was going on. To my total surprise, those Elietimm still standing were throwing down their weapons, kneeling, arms spread wide, unmistakably suing for mercy, something the mercenaries were rather more inclined to grant than the colonists, who slew most that they could reach before the mercenaries stopped them. Across the river the fires around the steading suddenly died and Shiv vanished in a flash of azure light, leaving the knot of colonists he had been defending with spears of lightning looking at each other, completely astounded. He reappeared next to me a moment later, chest heaving.

“Is it over?” I demanded, Temar at my side, Livak and Guinalle still clutching each other’s hands by the stairway.

“For the present!” Shiv let loose a wild yell of triumph, embracing me, a gesture I returned without hesitation before turning to do the same to Livak, kissing her soundly as well.