The First Stone

Mark Anthony The First Stone

And again,

For Chris

ON DARK WINGS

The dragon folded its wings against its sleek body; the stones of the keep shuddered under its weight. Four years ago, when they had first encountered Sfithrisir in a high valley in the Fal Erenn, Grace thought the dragon looked like an enormous sooty swan. Now it seemed more like a vulture. Its featherless hide absorbed the starlight, and its eyes glowed like coals. The small saurian head wove slowly at the end of a ropelike neck, and a constant hiss of steam escaped the bony hook of its beak.

Fear and smoke choked her, and Grace fought for breath and to keep her wits. She had to have both if she was going to survive.

“Answer . . . answer me this, and an answer you shall have,” she said in a trembling voice, speaking the ancient greeting which she had learned from Falken. “One secret for one secret in trade. Why have you–”

“Mist and misery!” the dragon snorted, the words emanating from deep in its gullet. “There is no time for foolish rituals concocted by mortals whose bones have long since turned to dust. I did not come here to barter with you for secrets, Blademender. The end of all things comes. Have you not seen the rift in the sky? Surely it has grown large enough that even your mortal eyes can see it now. And it will keep growing. Now it conceals the stars, but soon it will swallow them, and worlds as well. It will not cease until it has consumed everything there is to consume, until all that remains is nothing. . . .”

We live our lives a circle,

And wander where we can.

Then after fire and wonder,

We end where we began.

“Forget not the Sleeping Ones.

In their blood lies the key.”

PART ONE

RIFT

1.

The dervish stepped from a swirl of sand, appearing on the edge of the village like a mirage taking form.

A boy herding goats was the first to see him. The boy clucked his tongue, using a switch to prod the animals back to their pens. All at once the animals began to bleat, their eyes rolling as if they had caught the scent of a lion. Usually a lion would not prowl so near the dwellings of men, but the springs that scattered the desert–which had never gone dry in living memory–were failing, and creatures of all kinds came in search of water and food. It was said that, in one village, a lion had crept into a hut and stolen a baby from the arms of its sleeping mother.

The boy turned around, and the switch fell from his fingers. It was not a lion before him, but a man covered from head to toe in a black serafi. Only his eyes were visible through a slit in the garment, dark and smoldering like coals. The man raised a hand; its palm was tattooed with red lines. Tales told by the village’s elders came back to the boy–tales about men who ventured into the deepest desert in search of forbidden magics.

Obey your father and your mother, the old ones used to tell him when he was small, else a dervish will fly into your house on a night zephyr and steal you away. For they require the blood of wicked children to work their darkest spells.

“I need . . .” the dervish said, his voice harsh with a strange accent.

The boy let out a cry, then turned and ran toward a cluster of hovels, leaving the goats behind.

“. . . water,” the dervish croaked, but the boy was already gone.

The dervish staggered, then caught himself. How long had he been in the Morgolthi? He did not know. Day after day the sun of the Hungering Land had beaten down on him, burning away thought and memory, leaving him as dry as a scattering of bones. He should be dead. However, something had drawn him on through that forsaken land. What was it? There was no use trying to remember. He needed water. Of the last two oases he had gone to, one had been dry, and the waters of the other had been poisoned, the bloated corpses of antelope floating in its stagnant pool.

He moved through the herd of goats. The animals bleated until the dervish touched them, then fell silent. He ran his hands over their hides and could feel the blood surging beneath, quickened by fear. One swift flash of a knife, and hot blood would flow, thicker and sweeter than water. He could slake his thirst, and when he was finished he would let the blood spill on the ground as an offering, and with it he would call them to him. They would be only lesser spirits, enticed by the blood of an animal–no more than enough to work petty magics. All the same, he was tempted. . . .

No–that was not why he was here. He remembered now; he needed water, then to send word, to tell them he was here. He staggered toward the circle of huts. Behind him, the goats began bleating again, lost without the boy to herd them.

This place was called Hadassa, and though the people who dwelled here now had forgotten, it had once been a prosperous trading center built around a verdant oasis. Over the decades the flow of Hadassa’s spring had dwindled to a trickle. The merchants and traders had left long ago and had not returned; the city’s grand buildings were swallowed by the encroaching sand. Now all that remained was this mean collection of huts.

When he reached the center of the village, the dervish stopped. The oasis, once a place of sparkling pools and shaded grottos, was now a salt flat crazed with cracks. Dead trees, scoured of leaf and branch, pointed at the sky like burnt fingers. In their midst was a patch of mud, churned into a mire by men and goats. Oily water oozed up through the sludge, gathering in the hoofprints. The dervish knelt, his throat aching.

“You are not welcome here,” spoke a coarse voice.

The dervish looked up. The water he had cupped dribbled through his fingers. A sigh escaped his blistered lips, and with effort he rose again.

A man stood on the other edge of the mud patch. His yellowed beard spilled down his chest, and he wore the white robe of a village elder. Behind him stood a pair of younger men. They were stunted from a poor diet, but their eyes were hard, and they gripped curved swords. Next to the man was a woman who wore the red serafiof a seeress. In youth she had been beautiful, but the dry air had parched her cheeks, cracking them like the soil of the oasis. She gazed forward with milky eyes.

“The cards spoke truly, Sai’el Yarish,” the woman said in a hissing voice. “Evil flies into Hadassa on dark wings.”

“I cannot fly,” the dervish said.

“Then you must walk from this place,” the bearded man said. “And you must not come back.”

“I come only in search of water.”

One of the young men brandished his sword. “We have no water to spare for the likes of you.”

“It is so,” the old man said. “A change has come over the land. All that is good dwindles and fades. One by one, the springs of the desert have gone dry. Now ours is failing as well. You will not find what you seek here.”

The dervish laughed, and the queer sound of it made the others take a step back. “You are wrong. There is yet water to be found in this place.” From the folds of his serafi, he drew out a curved knife. It flashed in the sun.

“Do not let him draw blood!” the blind woman shrieked.

The young men started forward, but the mud sucked at their sandals, slowing them. The dervish held out his left arm. The knife flicked, quick as a serpent. Red blood welled from a gash just above his wrist.

“Drink,” he whispered, shutting his eyes, sending out the call. “Drink, and do my bidding.”

He felt them come a moment later; distance meant nothing to them. They buzzed through the village like a swarm of hornets, accompanied by a sound just beyond hearing. The men looked around with fearful eyes, and the blind woman swatted at the air. The dervish lowered his arm, letting blood drip from his wound.

The fluid vanished before it struck the ground, as if the hot air gobbled it.

“Water,” the dervish murmured. “Bring me water.”

A moment ago they had been furious in their desire. Now they were sated by blood, their will easy to bend. He sensed them plunge downward, deep into the ground. Soil, rock–these were as air to them. He felt it seconds later: a tremor beneath his boots. There was a gurgling noise, then a jet of water shot up from the center of the mud patch. The fountain glittered, spinning off drops as clear and precious as diamonds.

The village elder gaped while the young men dashed forward, letting the water spill into their hands, drinking greedily.

“It is cool and sweet,” one of them said, laughing.

“It is a trick!” the blind woman cried. “You must not drink, lest it bring you under his spell.”

The young men ignored her. They continued to drink, and the man in the white robe joined them. Others appeared, stealing from the huts, the fear on their sun‑darkened faces giving way to wonder.

The seeress stamped her feet. “It is a deception, I tell you! If you drink, he will poison us all!”

The village folk pushed past her, and she fell into the mud, her robe tangling around her so that she could not get up. The people held out their hands toward the splashing water.

The dervish bound his wound with a rag, staunching the flow of blood, lest the bodiless ones come to partake of more. Morndari, the spirits were called. Those Who Thirst. They had no form, no substance, but their craving for blood was unquenchable. Once, he had come upon a young sorcerer who had thought too highly of his own power, and who had called many of the morndarito him. His body had been no more than a dry husk, a look of horror on his mummified face.

Water pooled at the dervish’s feet. He bent to drink, but he was weak from hunger and thirst, and from loss of blood. The sky reeled above him, and he fell. Strong hands caught him.

“Take him into my hut,” said a voice he recognized as the village elder’s.

Were they going to murder him? He should call the morndariagain, only he could not reach his knife, and he was too weak. The spirits would drain his body of blood, just like the young sorcerer he had once found.

The hands bore him to a dim, cool space, protected from the sun by thick mud walls. He was laid upon cushions, and a wooden cup was pressed to his lips. Water spilled into his mouth, clean and wholesome. He coughed, then drank deeply, draining the cup. Leaning back, he opened his eyes and saw the bearded man above him.

“One such as yourself came here not long ago,” the old man said. “We feared him, but he worked no spells. He babbled that his power was all dried up like the springs, that magic was dead.”

“Did you kill him?” the dervish said.

The other shook his head. “He was mad. He ran into the desert without a flask of water. The ground shook when you worked your spells. We have felt many such tremors of late. Some have been strong enough to knock down all of the huts in a village. Do the spirits cause the trembling?”

The dervish licked blistered lips. “No–perhaps. I don’t know.”

The morndariwere attracted by the tremors, that he did know. That was how he had followed them. How he had found it.

The old man set down the cup. “All the tales I know tell that a dervish brings only evil and suffering. Yet you renewed our spring. You have saved us all.”

The dervish laughed, a chilling sound. “Would that what you say were so. But I fear your seeress was right. Evil does come, on dark wings. To Hadassa, and to all of Moringarth.”

The other made a warding sign with his hand. “Gods help us. What must we do?”

“You must send word that I am here. You must send a message to the Mournish. Do you know where they can be found?”

The old man stroked his beard. “I know some who know. But surely you cannot mean what you say. Your kind is abomination to them. If they find you, your life is forfeit. The working of blood sorcery is forbidden.”

“No it isn’t,” the dervish said. He looked down at his hands, marked by fine white scars and lines tattooed in red. “Not anymore.”

2.

It was the quiet that woke Sareth.

Over the last three years he had grown used to the sound of Lirith’s heartbeat and the rhythm of her breathing. Together they made a music that lulled him to sleep each night and bestowed blissful dreams. Then, six months ago, another heart–tiny and swift–had added its own cadence to that song. Only now all was silent.

Sareth sat up. Gray light crept through a moon‑shaped window, into the cramped interior of the wagon. She had not been able to make the wagon any larger, but by her touch it had become cozier. Bunches of dried herbs hung in the corners, giving off a sweet, dusty scent. Beaded curtains dangled before the windows, and cushions embroidered with leaves and flowers covered the benches against either wall. The tops of the benches could be lifted to reveal bins beneath, or lowered–along with a table–to turn the wagon into a place where eight could sit and dine or play An’hot. Now the table was folded up against the wall, making room for the pallet they unrolled each night.

The pallet was empty, save for himself. He pulled on a pair of loose‑fitting trousers, then opened the door of the wagon. Moist air, fragrant with the scent of night‑blooming flowers, rushed in, cool against his naked chest. He breathed, clearing the fog of sleep from his mind, then climbed down the wagon’s wooden steps. The grass was damp with dew beneath his bare feet–his two bare feet.

Though it had been three years, he marveled daily at the magic that had restored the leg he had lost to the demon beneath Tarras. He would never really understand how Lady Aryn’s spell had healed him, but it didn’t matter. Since he met Lirith, he had grown accustomed to wonders.

He found her beneath a slender ithayatree on the edge of the grove where the Mournish had made camp. A tincture of coral colored the horizon; dawn was coming, but not yet. She turned when she heard him approach, her smile glowing in the dimness.

“ Beshala,” he said softly. “What are you doing out here so early?”

“Taneth was fussing. I didn’t want him to wake you.” She cradled the baby in her arms. He was sound asleep, wrapped snugly in a blanket sewn with moons and stars.

Sareth laid a hand on the baby’s head. His hair was thick and dark, and when they were open, his eyes were the same dark copper as Sareth’s. However, everything else about him–his fine features, his rich ebon skin–was Lirith’s.

The baby sighed in his sleep, and Sareth smiled. Here was another wonder before him. For so long, Lirith had believed herself incapable of bearing a child. Years ago, after her adoptive parents were murdered by thieves in the Free City of Corantha, she had been sold into servitude in the house of Gulthas. There she had been forced to dance for the men who paid their gold–and to do more than dance. Countless times a spark of life had kindled in her womb, only to go dark when she consumed the potions Gulthas forced all the women in his house to drink. Finally, no more sparks kindled.

Lirith had wept the night she finally told Sareth these things, thinking that once he knew what she had been in the past he would turn away from her. She was wrong; her revelations only made him love her more fiercely. That she could endure such torture, yet remain so good, so beautiful inside and out, showed there was no one in all the world more deserving of love than Lirith.

Besides, even if she could have conceived a child, he could not have given her one. Or so he had believed. When the demon below Tarras took his leg, it had taken something else–something intangible, but no less a part of him. He could love Lirith with all his heart, but he could not makelove to her.

Worse, both of them had dreaded the day when the laws of his people would sunder them, for Sareth could only marry one of his clan. Then, not a month after Queen Grace destroyed the Pale King, they feared that day had come when the Mournish arrived at Gravenfist Keep. Though they were great wanderers, never to Sareth’s knowledge had the Mournish traveled so far north. What brought them there could only be of the greatest importance.

It was.

“She is of our clan,” his al‑Mama said, touching Lirith’s cheek with a gnarled hand.

“How?” Sareth had finally managed to say.

The old woman let out a cackle. “I am old, but I am not blind. I saw the look in your eyes when you gazed at her. But the laws of our people are clear, and you are of the highest blood of ancient Morindu. You above all must not marry outside our clan.” Her gaze softened. “Yet I would not see you be in pain. I studied the cards for long hours–more precious time than these old bones should spare–and at last I saw the truth.”

They listened, amazed, as al‑Mama told the tale she had pieced together by gazing at the T’hotcards and speaking to elders among the various bands of Mournish. Twenty‑seven years ago, a band of Mournish from the farthest south were run out of the Free City of Gendarra by an angry guildmaster. He had purchased a love potion from one of the Mournish women, and it had worked as she said it would, granting him the love he deserved. However, this had not been the love of the beautiful lady he admired, but rather that of a sow who merrily trotted after him everywhere in the city. For as a selfish man he deserved no better.

Enraged, the guildmaster sent his mercenaries after the Mournish, and they were waylaid. Most escaped, but not all. One wagon was caught and burned, and the young Mournish couple within died. They had had a baby, an infant girl, and it was believed she perished with her parents. Only it was not so, and al‑Mama’s cards had revealed the rest of the tale, which no one had known until then: how the infant had been thrown into a thicket of bushes when the wagon toppled, and how a day later she was found by a tradesman on his way home to southern Toloria. He took the baby with him, for his wife had always wanted a child.

Thus Fate had taken Lirith away from the Mournish, and Fate had brought her back–to her people, and to Sareth.

When the Mournish departed Gravenfist Keep, Lirith had traveled south with her people and her husband, and life had seemed joyous beyond imagining. Then, one night a little over a year ago, as the two of them lay together, they had discovered one more wonder wrought by Lady Aryn’s spell. Their bodies had become one, and they had laughed and wept with a pleasure neither had thought themselves capable of. Over the moons that followed Lirith’s belly had swelled, and here now in her arms was the greatest wonder of all: little Taneth, dark and sweet and perfect.

Lirith sighed, turning her gaze toward the east.

Sareth touched her shoulder. “Are you sure it was because of Taneth you came out here, beshala? Is there not another reason?”

She gazed at him, her eyes bright with tears. “I don’t want you to go.”

So that was what this was about. Last night, a young man from another Mournish band had ridden hard into the circle of their wagons, bearing ill news.

“I do not wish to leave,” Sareth said. “But you heard the message just as I did. A dervish has come out of the desert, or at least one who claims he is a dervish. He must be seen.”

“Yes, someone must go see him. But why must it be you?”

“I am descended of the royal line of Morindu.”

Lirith’s dark eyes flashed. “So is your sister, Vani. She is the one who was trained at Golgoru. She is the T’gol. It is she who should be doing this thing, not you.”

Sareth pressed his lips together; he could not argue that point. Three thousand years ago, the sorcerers of Morindu the Dark had destroyed their own city lest its secrets fall into the hands of their foe, the city of Scirath. The Morindai became wanderers and vagabonds, known in the north as the Mournish.

After their exile, the Morindai forbade the practice of blood sorcery until Morindu was found again. However, there were those who defied that law. Dervishes, they were called. They were renegades, anathema. The silent fortress of Golgoru had been founded to train assassins who could hunt down the dervishes and destroy them with means other than magic.

Sareth moved to the edge of the grove. “My sister is gone, and the cards reveal not where, though al‑Mama has gazed at them time after time. I know of no way to find her–unless you think Queen Grace may have heard some news.”

Lirith shook her head. “You know I have not Aryn’s strength in the Touch. I cannot reach her over the Weirding, let alone Grace. They are too far away.” She frowned. “Indeed, it seems my ability to reach out over the leagues grows less these days, not more. I can hardly weave the simplest spell of late. The Weirding feels . . . it feels tired, somehow.”

“Perhaps it’s you that’s a little tired, beshala,” Sareth said, touching Taneth’s tiny hand.

She smiled. “Perhaps so. Still, it is strange. I will have to ask Aryn about it the next time she contacts me.”

While Sareth did not doubt Lirith was happy living among the Mournish, he knew she missed her friends. The Mournish had journeyed to Calavere–where Aryn and Teravian ruled as king and queen over both Calavan and Toloria–only once in the last three years, and they had not returned at all to Gravenfist Keep, where Queen Grace dwelled. Still, the three witches could speak from time to time, using magic, and that was a comfort.

An idea occurred to Sareth. “Why don’t you and Taneth go to Calavere, beshala? It will not take you long to journey there, and the roads are safe. Aryn is to have her own child soon, is she not? I am certain she will enjoy seeing our little one. And when I am finished with my work in the south, I will send word.”

“I believe you are trying to distract me,” Lirith said, giving him a stern look. However, she could not keep it up, and she laughed as she hugged Taneth to her. “I confess, I long to see Aryn with my eyes, not just hear her voice over the Weirding. And if I stayed here, I imagine I would do nothing but fret and worry about you.”

“Then it’s settled,” Sareth said. “You will go to Calavere at once. I will ask Damari to accompany you.” He scratched his chin. “Or maybe I’d better make that Jahiel. He’s much less handsome.”

“Damari will do just fine,” Lirith said. Then her mirth ceased, and she leaned her head against his bare chest, Taneth between them. He circled his arms around them both.

“Promise me you won’t worry, beshala.”

“I will be waiting,” was all she said, and they stayed that way, the three of them together, as dawn turned the sky to gold.

3.

Sareth left that day, taking only one other–a broad‑shouldered young man named Fahir–with him. Word had been sent to the fastness of Golgoru, in the Mountains of the Shroud, but there were few T’golthese days. Nor was it likely one would reach Al‑Amъn sooner than Sareth; from here it was only a half day’s ride to the port city of Kalos, on the southern tip of Falengarth, at the point where the Summer Sea was narrowest. Sareth hoped to reach the city by nightfall and book passage on a ship tomorrow.

Before he left, his al‑Mama called him into her dragon‑shaped wagon and made him draw a card from her T’hotdeck. His fingertips tingled as they brushed one of the well‑worn cards, and he drew it out. As he turned it over, a hiss escaped her.

“The Void,” she rasped.

There was no picture on the card. It was painted solid black.

“What does it mean? Do I have no fate, then?”

“Only a dead man has no fate.”

He swallowed the lump in his throat. “What of the A’narai, the Fateless Ones who tended the god‑king Orъ long ago?”

She snatched the card from his hand. “As I said, only a dead man has no fate.”

His al‑Mama said no more, but as Sareth left the wagon he glanced over his shoulder. The old woman huddled beneath her blankets, muttering as she turned the card over and over. Whatever it portended, it troubled her. However, he put it out of his mind. Perhaps the dead had no fate, but he was very much alive, and his destiny was to return to Lirith and Taneth as soon as possible.

They reached Kalos that evening as planned and set sail the next morning on the swiftest ship they could find–a small spice trader. Fahir, who had never been at sea before, was violently ill during the entire two‑day passage, and even Sareth found himself getting queasy, for the Summer Sea was rough, tossing the little ship on the waves. The ship’s captain remarked that he had never seen such ill winds this time of year.

Fortunately, the voyage was soon over, and they disembarked in the port city of Qaradas, on the north coast of the continent of Moringarth, in the land of city‑states known as Al‑Amъn. Sareth had traveled to Al‑Amъn several times in his youth; it was a custom among the Mournish of the north that young men and women should visit the southern continent, where most of the Morindai dwelled. Qaradas was just as he remembered it: a city of white‑domed buildings and crowded, dusty streets shaded by date palms.

“I thought the cities of the south were made of gold,” Fahir said, a look of disappointment on his face.

Sareth grinned. “In the light of sunset, the white buildings do look gold. But it is only illusion–as is much in Al‑Amъn. So beware. And if a beautiful woman in red scarves claims she wishes to marry you, don’t follow her! You’ll lose your gold as well as your innocence.”

“Of the first I have little enough,” Fahir said with a laugh. “And the second I would be happy to dispense with. This is my first trip to the south, after all.”

They headed to the traders’ quarter, and Sareth examined the front door of every inn and hostel until he found what he was looking for.

“We will be welcome here.”

In answer to Fahir’s puzzled look, Sareth pointed to a small symbol scratched in the upper corner of the door: a crescent moon inscribed in a triangle. This place was run by Morindai.

Inside, Sareth and Fahir were welcomed as family. After they shared drink and food, the hostel’s proprietor suggested a place where camels and supplies for a journey could be bought at a good price. Sareth went to investigate, leaving Fahir with orders to rest, and to not even think about approaching the innkeeper’s black‑haired daughter.

“By her looks, I think she favors me,” Fahir said. “Why shouldn’t I approach her?”

“Because by her al‑Mama’s looks, if you do, the old woman will put a va’kshaon you that will give you the private parts of a mouse.”

The young man’s face blanched. “I’ll get some rest. Come back soon.”

They set out before dawn the next day, riding on the swaying backs of two camels as the domes of Qaradas faded like a mirage behind them. At first the air was cool, but once the sun rose heat radiated from the ground in dusty waves. All the same, they drank sparingly; it was a journey of six days to the village of Hadassa, where the rumors of the dervish had originated.

During the middle part of each day, when the sun grew too fierce to keep riding, they crouched in whatever shade they could find beneath a rock or cliff. They were always vigilant, and one would keep watch while the other dozed. Thieves were common on the roads of Al‑Amъn.

Nor was it only thieves they kept watch for. While the sorcerers of Scirath had suffered a great blow in the destruction of the Etherion over three years ago, recently the Mournish had heard whispers that their old enemy had been gathering again. Even after three thousand years, the Scirathi still sought the secrets lost when Morindu the Dark was buried beneath the sands of the Morgolthi. Because the dervishes sought those same secrets, where one was found the other could not be far off.

The days wore on, and water became a hardship. The first two springs they came to had offered some to drink, though less than Sareth had been led to believe. However, after that, every spring they reached was dry. They found no water, only white bones and withered trees. Doing their best to swallow the sand in their throats, they continued on.

Fahir and he never spoke of it, but by the fifth day of their journey Sareth knew they were in grave danger. There were but two swallows for each of them left in their flasks. It was said that Hadassa was built around an oasis. However, if its spring had gone dry like the others, they would not make it back to Qaradas alive.

You could cast a spell, Sareth thought that night as he huddled beneath a blanket next to Fahir. Once the sun went down the desert air grew chill, and both men shuddered as with a fever. You could call the spirits and bid them to lead you to water.

Could he really? The working of blood sorcery was forbidden among the Morindai; only the dervishes broke that law. True, the elders of the clan had allowed Sareth to use the gate artifact to communicate with Vani when she journeyed across the Void, to Earth. However, that had been a time of great need, and it was not a true act of blood sorcery. Sareth had spilled his blood to power the artifact, but he had not called the bodiless spirits, the morndari, to him as a true sorcerer would.

Besides, Sareth asked himself, what makes you believe you could control the spirits if they did answer your call? They would likely consume all your blood and unleash havoc.

Yet if he and Fahir did not find water tomorrow, what choice did he have but to try?

The next day dawned hotter than any that came before. The white sun beat down on them, and the wind scoured any bit of exposed flesh with hard sand. They were on the very edge of habitable lands now. To the south stretched the endless wastes of the Morgolthi, the Hungering Land, where no man had dwelled in eons–not since the land was broken and poisoned in the War of the Sorcerers.

The horizon wavered before Sareth. Shapes materialized amid the shimmering air. He fancied he could almost see the high towers of the first great cities of ancient Amъn: Usyr, Scirath, and the onyx spires of Morindu the Dark. . . .

Sareth jolted from his waking dream. He lay sprawled on the sand as his camel plodded away from him. Fahir slumped over the neck of his own camel as the beast followed its partner toward a cluster of square shapes. That was no mirage; it was a village.

Sareth tried to call out, but his throat was too dry. A moment later shadows appeared above him, blocking the sun. Voices jabbered in a dialect he couldn’t understand, though he made out one word, repeated over and over: Morindai, Morindai. Hands lifted him from the ground.

He drifted in a void–as dark and featureless as the card drawn from his al‑Mama’s deck–then came to himself as something cool touched his lips. Water poured into his mouth. He choked, then gulped it down.

“More,” he croaked.

“No, that’s enough for now,” said a low, strangely accented voice. “You have to drink slowly or you’ll become sick.”

Sareth’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. He was inside a hut, lying on a rug, propped up against filthy cushions. A man knelt beside him, holding a cup. He was swathed from head to foot in black; only his dark eyes were visible.

Fear sliced away the dullness in Sareth’s mind. Was this one of the Scirathi? They always wore black. He remembered how he had been tortured by the sorcerer who had followed them through the gate to Castle City. That one had enjoyed causing Sareth pain.

No, they always wear masks of gold. The masks are the key to their power. This is no Scirathi.

Fresh dread replaced the old. Sareth pushed himself up against the cushions, knowing he was too weak to flee.

“What have you done with Fahir?”

“Your friend is being cared for in another hut,” the dervish said. “You need not fear for him.”

Sareth licked his cracked lips. This was not how he had intended for things to unfold. He had planned to come upon the dervish unaware, so the other could not cast a spell, only it had been the opposite, and now he was in the other’s power. He tried to think what to say.

The dervish spoke first. “You’re her brother, aren’t you? Vani, the assassin. We knew she was in communication with her brother through the gate artifact, and the resemblance is clear enough.”

Confusion replaced fear. How could the dervish know these things? And why did his accent, strange as it was, seem familiar?

“Who are you?”

The dervish laughed. “That’s a good question. Who am I indeed? Not who I was before, that much is certain.” The dervish pushed back his hood. His pale skin had been burnt and blistered, and was now beginning to heal. “However, I used to be a man called Hadrian Farr.”

Sareth clutched at the cushions. “I know who you are. Vani told me of you. You’re from the world across the Void. How can you be here?”

The other made a dismissive gesture. “That’s not important now. All that matters is that you take word back to your people.”

“Word of what?” Sareth did not care for the other’s proud manner of speech. “Why don’t you tell them yourself?”

The dervish moved to a window; a thin beam of sunlight slipped through a crack in the shutters, illuminating his sun‑ravaged face. “Because, once I am done here, I must go back. Back into the Morgolthi. After all these ages, it has finally been found.”

“What are you talking about?” Sareth said, rising up, angry at not understanding, angry at his fear. “What has been found?”

The dervish–the Earth man named Hadrian Farr–turned and gazed at him with eyes as sharp and gray as knives.

“The lost city of Morindu the Dark,” he said.

Outside the hut, the wind rose like a jackal’s howl.

4.

Beltan knew there was no way out of a fight this time.

Not that he minded, he had to admit, baring his teeth in a grin. After all, during the course of his five‑and‑thirty years, he had been a knight of Calavan, a commander in Queen Grace’s army, a master swordsman, and a disciple of the war god Vathris Bullslayer. It went without saying that he enjoyed a good battle.

The monster hulked before him: gleaming red, belching heat and smoke, blaring a shrill cry to signal its aggression. Beltan’s fingers tightened around a shaft of cold steel, green eyes narrowing to slits, nostrils flaring. He sized up his enemy, and each of them tensed, waiting for the other to make the first move. Both of them knew there could only be one victor in a duel like this. And by Vathris, Beltan vowed it was going to be he.

The traffic light changed. Beltan floored the gas pedal, double‑shifted into third, and spun the steering wheel. The black taxicab roared in front of a red sports car, cutting it off, and whipped around the traffic circle.

“Hey there!” came an annoyed voice from the backseat of the cab. “I told you to be careful. I’ve got a tart on my lap.”

It was one of the magics of the fairy blood that ran in Beltan’s veins that it helped him to understand the language of this world. Even without it, he probably could have made do, for he had learned much about the world Earth in the last three years. All the same, some words–like tart–still had the ability to confound him. He glanced in the rearview mirror, not certain if he would see a pie on the man’s lap, or a saucy‑smiled wench like one might find in King Kel’s hall.

It was pie. Though it wasn’t just on his lap. It was on his shirt and tie as well.

“Sorry about that,” Beltan said cheerfully.

The man dabbed with a handkerchief at the crimson goop on his shirt. “I wouldn’t be expecting a tip if I were you.”

Beltan wasn’t. He didn’t drive the taxi because they needed the gold; he did it for fun. Behind him, the driver of the red sports car honked his horn and made a rude gesture. Beltan stuck a hand out the window and waved, then turned down Shaftesbury Avenue.

He dropped his fare in Piccadilly Circus–the man paid with a sticky wad of cherry‑covered pound notes–then maneuvered the cab through the frenzy of cars, buses, and tourists that filled the traffic circle. A group of men and women wearing white bedsheets like they were some sort of ceremonial robes clustered beneath the winged statue that dominated the center of the Circus. They held up cardboard signs bearing hand‑scrawled messages. The Mouth is Hungry, read one of the signs. Another proclaimed, Are You Ready To Be Eaten?

The people in white sheets were almost always in Piccadilly Circus these days. More could be found haunting other busy intersections around London. The tourists gave the sign‑holders a wide berth, edging past them to snap furtive pictures of the statue before retreating. Above, gigantic neon signs blazed against the dusky June sky, glimmering as if made of a thousand magic jewels.

After several quick offensive maneuvers–and a few more offensive gestures from other drivers–Beltan was out of the Circus and heading down Piccadilly Street, toward the Mayfair neighborhood and home. Driving a taxi in London was definitely a warrior’s job. All the same, it had not been Beltan’s first choice of occupation.

After arriving there, he had assumed he would join the army. Peace was simply the time a warrior spent sharpening his sword before his next battle, the old saying went, and Beltan wanted to make sure his sword–and his mind–stayed sharp.

He knew this country had a queen. No doubt she was good and just, for this land was free and prosperous. So he decided to go to her, kneel, and pledge his sword. However, when he went to her palace, the guards at the gate had given him dark looks when he spoke of presenting his sword to the queen, and he had been forced into a hasty retreat.

After that, he asked some questions and learned one could join the army simply by speaking to one of its commanders and signing a paper. He went to see one of these commanders– sergeantwas his title. He was a doughy man, and didn’t look like he had swung a sword in a while, but Beltan treated him with deference. He bowed, then informed the sergeant that he had served in the military all his adult life, that he was a disciple of Vathris, and had heard the Call of the Bull.

The sergeant didn’t seem to know what to make of all this, which seemed odd, but Beltan explained, and the man’s face turned red.

“We have quite enough of a problem with that sort of thing already,” he said, shaking his head. “Good day!”

Later, when Beltan stopped for an ale at a pub where other men who had heard the Call of the Bull often gathered, he had told this story, and the bartender said he wasn’t surprised, that in most places in the world men like themselves weren’t welcome in the military.

That seemed nonsense to Beltan. The generals of this land could not think it was better to send into battle men who would leave families behind, rather than men who were comfortable in one another’s company and who would leave no children fatherless should they never return from war.

And do you not have a child, Beltan?

He turned the cab onto a narrow lane and had to concentrate as he wedged it into a parking spot that was no more than four hands longer than the car itself. There was no doubt that having fairy‑enhanced senses was an advantage when parallel parking.

Beltan paused a moment to clean out the cab, using a discarded newspaper to wipe the pie off the backseat. As he did, a headline caught his eye: CELESTIAL ANOMALY EXPANDING.

The article below discussed the dark spot in the heavens that had been detected some months ago. Beltan had never been able to see this dark spot himself–the night sky was obscured by London’s bright lights–but he had watched a program on the Wonder Channel about it. Men of learning called astronomers had discovered the spot by using giant spyglasses that let them see far into the heavens. They did not understand what caused the darkness–some suggested it was a great cloud of dust–but according to the article in the paper, it had just blotted out Earth’s view of two more stars, and the pace of its growth seemed to be increasing. Soon now it would be visible to the naked eye, even in London.

While the astronomers in the article claimed the anomaly was too far away to affect Earth–out beyond the farthest planet–a few people claimed the blot was going to grow until it consumed the sun, the moon, and everything. People like the sign‑holders in Piccadilly Circus. So far, no one took those people seriously.

Beltan stuffed the trash in a nearby bin, locked the cab, and headed toward the narrow building of gray stone where they lived on the third floor. It was a good location, as there were a small, friendly pub and several eating establishments in the alley next to the building, and all sorts of markets lined the street before it. With the tall buildings soaring around like parapets, it made Beltan think of living in a modest tower on the edge of a bustling castle courtyard.

In other words, it felt like home.

He stretched his long legs, bounding up the timeworn steps, and started to fit his key into the front door. As he did, a tingling coursed up his neck, and he turned. Just on the edge of vision a shadow flitted into the alley, its form merging with the deepening air. Compelled by old instincts, Beltan leaped over the rail and peered into the alley. Four people sat at a table in front of the pub, and a waiter was setting up chairs outside one of the restaurants. There was no sign of the shadow.

All the same, Beltan knew his senses hadn’t lied to him. Something had been there. Or some things, for it had seemed more like two shadows than one. Only what were they? He had felt a prickling, which meant danger. Perhaps they had been criminals, off to do some wicked deed. Sometimes the fairy blood allowed him to sense such things.

Whatever it had been, the shadow was gone now, and his stomach was growling. He headed back to the front door, let himself in, and bounded up two flights of steps to their flat.

“I’m home,” he called, shutting the door behind him.

There was no answer. He shrugged off his leather coat and headed from the front hall into the kitchen. Something bubbled in a pot on the stove. Beltan’s stomach rumbled again. It smelled good.

He headed from the kitchen into the main room. It was dark, so he turned on a floor lamp– even after three years, being able to bring forth such brilliant light by flicking a switch amazed Beltan–then moved down the hall. Their bedroom was dark and empty, as was the bathroom (a whole chamber full of marvels), but light spilled from the door of the spare room at the end of the hallway. Beltan crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe.

“So here’s where you’re hiding.”

Travis looked up, setting something down on the desk by the window, and smiled. Beltan grinned in return. A feeling of love struck him, every bit as powerful as that first day he saw Travis in the ruins of Kelcior.

“What are you smiling about?” Travis said.

Beltan crossed the room, hugged him tight, and kissed him.

“Oh,” Travis said, laughing. He returned the embrace warmly, but only for a moment before his gaze turned to the darkened window.

Beltan let him go, watching him. Travis’s gray eyes were thoughtful. He looked older than when Beltan first met him; more than a little gray flecked his red‑brown hair and beard. However, the years had done his countenance good rather than ill, and–while sharper–it was more handsome than ever. Beltan’s own face had been badly rearranged in more than one brawl over the years. How Travis could love someone as homely as he, Beltan didn’t know, but Travis didlove him, and these last three years had been ones of quiet joy and peace.

Only they had been years of waiting as well. The Pale King was dead, and Mohg was no more, but Earth and Eldh were still drawing near. What that meant, or how soon the two worlds would meet (if they would even meet at all) Beltan didn’t know. But somehow–maybe through some prescience granted him by the fairy’s blood–he knew Travis’s part in all this was not over. And neither was his own. Sometimes, in the dark of night, he found himself hoping he was right–hoping that one day the waiting would be over, and his sword would be needed again.

You’re a warrior, Beltan. You aren’t built for peace.

He dismissed that thought with a soft snort. This wasn’t about him and his warrior’s pride. Something was troubling Travis; Beltan didn’t need magical senses to know that.

“What is it?” he said, laying a hand on Travis’s shoulder. Then he glanced at the desk and saw the frayed piece of paper lying there.

Beltan sighed. “I miss her, too. But wherever she is, she is well. She knows how to take care of herself.”

Travis nodded. “Only it’s not just her, is it?” He kissed Beltan’s scruffy cheek. “It’ll take me a few more minutes to finish burning dinner if you want to take a shower.” Then he was gone.

Beltan hesitated, then picked up the piece of parchment. It was as soft as tissue. How many times had Travis read the letter?

Probably as many times as you have, Beltan.

One cloud had dimmed their happiness these last three years, and that was thinking of all those they had left behind. Grace, Melia and Falken, Aryn and Lirith, and so many others. But of them all, none were in their thoughts more than one.

“Where are you, Vani?” he whispered.

He had asked himself that question a thousand times since the day they found the letter in her empty chamber at Gravenfist Keep. It had been early spring, just a month after Queen Grace slew the Pale King and Travis broke the Last Rune. A caravan of Mournish wagons had arrived at the fortress, bearing the happy news that Lirith was one of their own, that she and Sareth could wed. Yet the Mournish must have brought other news, for the next morning Vani was gone.

Without thinking, his eyes scanned the letter. However, he needn’t have bothered to read, for he had the words committed to heart. The letter was addressed to him, and to Travis.

I hope you both can forgive me, but even if you cannot, I know what I do is right. I think, in time, you will agree. It does not matter. By the time you read this, I will be gone. There is no point in trying to search for me. I amT’gol . You will not be able to follow my trail, for I will leave none.

For many years I have known it was my fate to bear a child by the one who will raise Morindu the Dark from the sands that bury it. As so often happens, my fate has come to pass, but not in the way I imagined. I will indeed bear a child by you, Travis Wilder, but notto you. And nor to you, Beltan of Calavan, though you are the one who made her with me. Instead, I choose to be selfish and take her for my own.

Why? I am not certain. The cards are not yet clear. But I have spoken to my al‑Mama, and one thing is certain: Fate moves in a spiral about my daughter. She is at the center of something important. Or perhaps something terrible. What it is, I cannot say, but I intend to find out. And if it is dangerous, I will protect her from it. Even if it means keeping her from her father. From both her fathers.

Again, I beg your forgiveness. I have taken our child away from you both. In return, I give to you something I hope you will find equally precious: I give you one another. Do not squander this gift, for what I have taken from you cannot be replaced. You must love one another. For me. For us. Just as I must do this thing for our daughter.

May Fate guide us all.

–Vani

That was it. There was no more explanation, no chance of stopping her. She was simply gone.

What she meant when she said lines of fate swirled around her–around their–daughter, they didn’t know, and nor had Vani and Sareth’s al‑Mama offered more explanation. The old woman simply cackled and said that each had their own fate to worry about. “Except for you, A’narai,” she had added, pointing a withered finger at Travis.

A’narai.The word meant Fateless. Which made no sense to Beltan, because the Mournish seemed to think Travis was the one destined to find the lost city of their ancestors one day.

“I think fate is nothing more than what you make it,” Grace had told Travis and Beltan that night, after a celebratory feast in the keep’s hall–one of a dozen such feasts King Kel had arranged since their victory over the Pale King. “The only way to have no fate is to never really make a choice.”

Maybe she hadn’t been trying to tell them what to do. Or maybe she had, for she had left something in Travis’s hand when she went: half of a silver coin. Either way, that night they made a choice.

“I don’t think Eldh needs me anymore,” Travis had said as they stood atop the keep’s battlements.

Beltan wasn’t so certain that was true, but there was one thing he did know. “ Ineed you, Travis Wilder.”

Travis gazed at the silver coin on his palm. It was whole now, a rune marking each side. One for Eldh, and one for Earth. He looked up, his gray eyes the same color as the coin in the starlight. “Come with me.”

So much had happened in the time they had known each other–so much pain, sorrow, and confusion. All of that vanished in an instant, like ashes tossed on the wind.

“Haven’t you figured it out by now?” Beltan said, laughing. “I’m always with you.”

Travis gripped the coin, and they embraced as a blue nimbus of light surrounded them. And that was how they came to Earth.

Beltan opened a desk drawer and placed the letter gently inside. Then he headed to the bathroom, leaving a trail of clothes behind him. Hot showers were a luxury he did not know how he had ever survived without. How could he ever go back to bathing in a tub of lukewarm water or, worse yet, diving into a cold stream?

I knew this world would make you soft, he thought as he stepped under the water and grabbed the bar of soap. The sharp, clean scent of lavender rose on the steam. Ah, good–Travis had finally gone to The Body Shop as Beltan had been pestering him to.

He washed away the day’s layer of car exhaust and sweat, then stepped out of the shower. Living on Earth hadn’t made him quite as soft as he had feared. Once it was clear he would not join the army, he had worried he would go all to flab like many warriors who traded their swords for cups. Then he had discovered a place down the street called a gym.

At first he had taken the various mechanical contraptions inside for torture devices. Then a young man with large muscles had shown Beltan how to use them. He went to the gym often now, and he was happy to note that his ale belly was a bare wisp of its former self.

He toweled off, then scraped his cheeks with a straight razor, preferring the blade to the buzzing device Travis had bought him one Midwinter’s Eve, leaving a patch of gold on his chin and a line above his mouth. His white‑blond hair seemed determined to keep falling out, but a woman at a shop next to the gym had cut it short, and had given him a bottle of something called mousse. (That was another one of those confusing words.) The mousse made his hair stick up as if he had just gotten out of bed, but that seemed to be the fashion of this world. Besides, Travis said he liked it, and that was all that counted.

He picked up his discarded clothes on the way to the bedroom, traded them for fresh jeans and a T‑shirt, and appeared in the kitchen just in time to see Travis set dinner on the table.

“It smells good,” Beltan said. “What is it?”

“What do you think it is?” Travis asked with a pointed look.

Beltan eyed the full bowls. “It looks like stew.”

“Then let’s call it that.”

Travis said he was a poor cook, but Beltan thought everything he made was excellent. Then again, Beltan thought any food that didn’t bite back was good, so maybe Travis had a point. Beltan ate three helpings, but he noticed Travis hardly touched his own food. He never seemed to eat much these days, but Beltan tried not to worry about it.

“I don’t think I need food like I used to,” Travis had said once, and maybe it was true. Even without going to the gym, he looked healthy. He was leaner than when they first met, but well‑knit and strong.

All the same, sometimes Beltan did worry. A few times, after they had made love, Travis’s skin had been so hot Beltan could hardly touch him, and he had seemed to shine in the dark with a gold radiance. While Beltan didn’t like to admit it, those times made him think of the Necromancer Dakarreth, whose naked body in the baths beneath Spardis had been sleek and beautiful, gold and steaming.

The blood of the south runs in his veins now, Beltan, just as it did in the Necromancer’s.

Beltan didn’t know what it meant–only that both he and Travis had been changed by blood. And maybe that was all right. Because, no matter what had been taken from them, if they could still love one another, then they had everything.

“I’ll get the dishes,” Beltan said.

“No,” Travis said with mock sternness, “you’re going to go watch TV while I clean up. Remember, I’m unemployed at the moment, and you’re the hard worker who’s bringing home the bacon.”

Beltan frowned. “Was I supposed to stop at the butcher and get salt pork on the way home?”

Travis laughed, and it was a good sight to see. The bookstore where he had worked for the last year had closed, and he hadn’t found a new job yet. That was probably why he had been reading Vani’s letter. He had been home by himself all day, and sadness usually waited until people were alone to creep in and touch them. However, the mirth in his eyes seemed genuine.

“Go,” he said, pushing Beltan into the living room.

Beltan did as commanded. He sat on the couch, listening to the cheerful clatter coming from the kitchen. Maybe they should call Mitchell and Davis Burke‑Favor. It had been over a year since the two ranchers had last journeyed from Colorado to London for a visit. It would be good to see them. Then again, their ranch kept them busy, and it was hard for them to get away. Beltan hoped Travis would find a job soon. Not that they needed the money; the Seekers had taken care of that.

It had been Travis’s idea to go to the Seekers as soon as they reached Earth. He reasoned the organization would find them sooner or later. Besides, it had been good to see Deirdre Falling Hawk, though there had been no sign of Hadrian Farr–nor had the last three years brought any news of him, at least as far as Beltan knew.

Travis and Beltan had cooperated with the Seekers, submitting to interviews and writing lengthy reports about Eldh–its geography, peoples, languages, cultures, history, politics, and magic. In exchange, the Seekers had given them new identities, along with the papers to make them legal. They were now, officially, Travis Redstone and Arthur Beltan. The Seekers also granted them an amount of money that had no meaning for Beltan, but which according to Travis meant they would never want for anything for the rest of their lives.

All the same, they had to do something. Beltan had wondered if Travis wanted to return to his hometown, to Castle City, to rebuild the tavern he had once owned there. However, when he mentioned this, Travis had asked how Beltan liked London.

Beltan liked it very much. London was like nothing on Eldh. The ancient city of Tarras seemed a simple village in comparison. They had bought the flat in Mayfair, and had found jobs. Since then, they had spoken little with the Seekers, and it had been over a year since they had last seen Deirdre. Evidently, as far as the Seekers were concerned, Travis and Beltan’s case was closed, and that suited both of them just fine.

Beltan picked up the remote and switched on the television: another one of those marvels he had begun to take for granted. There was an astonishing array of choices called channelson TV (many displaying sights as vulgar as they were fascinating), but of them all Beltan’s favorite was the Wonder Channel. He enjoyed learning about this world that was now his home. Over the last three years, he had read voraciously–now that he couldread, thanks to Grace’s tutelage in the Library of Tarras– though one day, after noticing the way he squinted at a page, Travis had taken him to a doctor to get him a pair of reading spectacles. The spectacles helped, but sometimes, like tonight, Beltan’s eyes were too tired for a book.

Television wasn’t as good as reading, but Beltan still liked it, and he pressed a button on the remote, changing to the Wonder Channel. A show called Archaeology Now!was just starting. He had seen this program before. It showed live footage of archaeologists working at various sites across the world, hoping to catch them at the very moment of a great discovery.

Archaeologists, Beltan knew, were learned men and women who dug up and studied the remains of ancient cultures and civilizations. It intrigued him to know that, in its past, Earth had been more like Eldh, but the problem with this show was that archaeology was, by any estimation, tedious work, and usually involved scraping away at dirt with tiny little picks and brushes. The pert young woman who hosted the show did her best to make every chipped bead or broken piece of pottery that came out of the ground seem like a breakthrough discovery, but often her smile seemed more than a little strained.

“Today, we’ll take you to the jungles of Belize,” her excited voice blared through the TV’s speakers, “where archaeologists are about to open the tomb of a Mayan princess that has remained hidden for over a thousand years. After that, we’re off to Australia, to uncover what could be the first signs of human habitation on that continent. And finally, we’ll venture into a cave to discover what incredible artifacts were revealed by a recent earthquake on the island of–”

A knock sounded at the door of the flat. Beltan muted the sound on the television and stood. The knock came again, hard and impatient.

“Coming,” Beltan grumbled, determined that this time he was not going to buy anything from whoever was on the other side of the door. He undid the lock and threw the door open.

So his instincts had been right after all. Their peaceful time in London–the waiting–was over.

She looked older than he remembered, her face honed by care, but she was still lithe and beautiful, wearing an aura of danger as well as sleek black leathers. In her arms she held a small girl with gray‑gold eyes. The girl laughed and reached a chubby hand toward Beltan.

“Please,” Vani said, her voice low and urgent. “Let us in.”

5.

Travis had always liked the simplest things best.

After the Second War of the Stones–much to his horror– Grace had wanted to make him a baron of Malachor. There was a ruined castle in the west of the Winter Wood, she said, only three days’ ride from Gravenfist Keep. He could take five hundred men and twenty Embarran engineers with him. In a year, the castle would be in good working order. His men could bring their families from the south; they could hunt the forests and clear land for farming, and Travis could be their lord.

“I’ll need smart and trustworthy barons if I’m going to have a chance of making this kingdom work again,” Grace had said with such characteristic matter‑of‑factness it made him laugh.

However, to be a baron–to have a great hall and vassal lords and servants–was the last thing Travis wanted. A two‑bedroom flat in London was more than enough castle for him, and he was content to share the duties of ruling it with Beltan. The sorts of things he had done today–watching ships pass beneath Tower Bridge, walking home through the energetic streets of the West End, cooking a dinner that Beltan wolfed down no matter how awful it was–those were all he desired. Maybe it was because of everything he had witnessed in his time on Eldh, but these days Travis didn’t need much to be happy.

Only if that was so, why had he felt so gloomy today? Yes, he had lost his job at the bookstore and hadn’t found another to replace it. But money wasn’t a worry, and another job would come along. That wasn’t what was troubling him, and that wasn’t what had made him read her letter.

The dishes were done. Travis pulled the sink plug, leaned on the counter, and stared as the dishwater swirled down the drain. It circled around and around before vanishing.

Spirals are symbols of great power, spoke the echo of Jack Graystone’s voice in his mind. They attract magic, and trap it within them.

There had been a vast spiral inside the White Tower of the Runebinders, Travis remembered. It had drawn them into its center, and there he had first come face‑to‑face with wraithlings. The pale beings had come to take the Stone of Twilight from him; they had reached out spindly hands, and in their touch was death. Only then, without even knowing how, Travis had bound the tower’s broken foundation stone. The tower’s magic had awakened; the wraithlings were destroyed.

Looking back, Travis supposed that was the moment he became a wizard. However, that life was over. He wasn’t a wizard anymore. The Great Stones were a world away, on Eldh; he had given them to Master Larad for safekeeping. True, there was magic here on Earth, but it was a faint shadow of what it was on Eldh. Travis hadn’t even attempted a spell since the day he and Beltan came to Earth.

Yet if he wasn’t a wizard anymore, why did it feel like he was the thing trapped in the spiral?

Until it happened, Travis had never believed he could be so happy as he had been these last three years in London. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t someplace just because that was where he had ended up, but rather because he had chosen to be there. To be here, with Beltan. Yet he couldn’t leave the past behind, not completely. Jack’s voice still spoke in his mind from time to time, along with the voices of all the Runelords who had gone before him. Travis would never truly escape the spiral of power that had drawn him in, that had taken him to Eldh.

Nor were the voices the only reminders of what he had been, for sometimes his right hand ached to hold the Great Stones again, and if he looked in those moments, he would see a silvery symbol glimmer on his palm: three crossed lines. It would vanish after a few seconds, but it was always there, just beneath the surface. Waiting.

Once a thing is made, it cannot be unmade without breaking it.That was what Olrig–the Old God who was also the Worldsmith and Sia and the hag Grisla–had said to Master Larad, when Larad asked to be a Runelord no longer. The same was true for Travis. He could not change what he was.

Only what was he, exactly?

First Jack had made him into a Runelord. Then the fires of the Great Stone Krondisar had burned him to nothing before making him anew. And there was one more transformation that had changed him. . . .

A compulsion came over Travis, so swift and strong that a small paring knife was in his hand before he realized what he was doing. He longed to see blood, to see if here on Earth theywould come if he called. He pressed the knife against the skin of his left forearm . . .

A noise broke the spell; he jerked the knife away. It had left a white mark in his flesh, but it had not drawn blood. He swallowed the sickness in his throat, then forced himself to set down the knife.

Out in the living room, the blare of the television ceased. A moment later came the sound of the door opening. He thought he heard a low voice saying something. Then the door shut. Beltan must have told whoever it was to go away.

Travis picked up a damp plate and a dish towel to give his trembling hands something to do, then headed into the living room. “Who was at the door, Beltan? I didn’t hear you–”

The plate slipped from his wet fingers. It seemed to make no sound as it struck the floor, shattering into a dozen white shards.

“You look well, Travis,” Vani said. Beltan stood just behind her, but Travis couldn’t look at him. He stared at the T’gol.

She wore supple leathers as she always had, and her gold eyes were just as piercing. However, her black hair was longer than he remembered, frosted by a streak of white that started at the peak of her brow. Though her bearing was as proud as always, there was a weight to her shoulders and a shadow on her expression he had never seen before.

“You look tired,” he said.

She nodded. “We have journeyed far to get here.”

It wasn’t until she spoke those words that he realized she held a child in her arms: a girl with dark hair, clad in an ash gray dress. She seemed too large to be three years old–Travis would have guessed her to be five–but there was no doubting who she was. The resemblance to each of them was plain to see: her sharp cheekbones, his high forehead. Travis looked at Beltan. The blond man’s eyes were locked on the girl.

“Please set me down, Mother,” the girl said in a voice that was precise and articulate despite a marked lisp.

She slipped from Vani’s arms, padded across the floor, and crouched beside the broken plate. She arranged the pieces, fitting them together with motions that seemed too skilled for such tiny hands.

The girl looked up at Travis. “Make it whole.”

He was too startled to do anything but kneel beside her and place a hand on the broken plate.

“ Eru,” he said, trying to gather all the force of his will into the word.

He heard a chorus of voices echo the word in his mind. Only the chorus became a dissonant chord. The familiar whooshof magic in his ears ceased, and he felt a wrenching sensation deep inside. He lifted his hand. The shards of the plate had fused together into a melted gray blob.

The girl frowned. “It didn’t work right.”

“No, it didn’t.” Travis held a hand to his throbbing head. Both Vani and Beltan glanced at him, her expression curious, his concerned.

The girl moved to Beltan, took one of his big hands, and curled her own hand inside it. “Hello, Father.”

Beltan’s expression transformed into one of wonder, and his hand closed reflexively–gently–around the girl’s. She turned, her eyes on Travis now. They were gray, like her dress, but flecked with gold.

“Hello, Father,” she said again.

Travis couldn’t speak. For so long he had wondered if she was fair‑haired or dark, if she had all her fingers and toes; he had tried to picture what she would look like, the image in his mind changing a little with each passing month. Now she was here, so much like he had imagined, and utterly different, and he had no idea what to say to her.

Beltan knelt, laid a hand on her shoulder, and gave her a solemn look. “What is your name, child?”

Her look was as serious as his. “My name is Nim.”

Again the voices spoke in Travis’s mind, echoing the name. Only it wasn’t just a name, it was a rune.

“ Nim,” Travis murmured. “Hope.” He moved toward Vani. “Did you name her that?”

The girl–Nim–laughed, all traces of seriousness gone. “Don’t be silly, Father,” she said. “You did.”

“I told her she was my greatest hope,” the T’golsaid to Travis, “and that it was you who told me the ancient word for hope was Nim.”

Travis tried to clear the lump from his throat. “You spoke about me–about us–often?”

Vani nodded. “As soon as she could speak–which was quite early–she always wanted to know everything I could tell her about you both. She can be quite . . . persistent.”

“You’re very brave, and your father was a king,” Nim said, pointing at Beltan, then she pointed at Travis. “And you’re a great wizard.”

Travis glanced down at the melted plate, and his stomach churned.

“Nim,” Vani said, kneeling beside the girl, touching her arms, “why don’t you go play in the bedroom for a while?”

The girl heaved a dramatic sigh for the obvious benefit of Travis and Beltan. “That means she wants to say things to you that I’m not supposed to hear.”

“Yes,” Vani said, gold eyes flashing, “it does.” She turned Nim around and gave her a gentle but firm push toward the hallway. Nim made a show of dragging her small black shoes on the floor, then vanished into the bedroom. The door shut behind her.

“So now what?” Travis said, his voice going hard.

Both Vani and Beltan stared at him.

Travis had always imagined that, if this moment somehow ever came, he would feel immeasurable joy. And for a moment he had. It was good to know Nim’s name, to know she was whole and healthy and beautiful. Only that moment was over, and now anger oozed from Travis, hot and thick, like blood from a reopened wound.

“You can’t do this, Vani.”

“Do what?”

“What you’re doing.” He clenched his hands into fists and advanced on the T’gol. “Don’t you understand? We’ve been happy here. For three years, we’ve been just fine without you.”

“Travis . . .” Beltan started to say, laying a hand on his shoulder, but Travis shook it off.

“We didn’t have a choice,” he said, moving in until his face was inches from hers. “And you know why? Because you left us.”

“I had my reasons,” she said, her voice cool. “Did you not read the letter I left for you at Gravenfist Keep?”

Travis let out a bitter laugh. He had read it all right, over and over, and each time it made less sense than the last. “It doesn’t matter why you did it. You went, and you took something away that we can never get back, not even now that you’ve brought Nim here. That was the choice you made, and I don’t know what you’re doing in London, or how you even got to Earth, but you can’t just walk through that door like nothing ever happened. You don’t have that right. You gave it away the night you left us without even bothering to say good‑bye.”

As he spoke, his voice had risen, and her body had grown rigid, her eyes sparking. She was T’gol; she could reach up and snap his neck with her bare hands before he could blink. In fact, she looked as if she wanted to do it right then. Beltan started to reach for her, but she shut her eyes and turned away, crossing her arms over her stomach.

“I know,” she said. And again, the words soft and broken, “I know.”

Travis wanted to harden his heart, to refuse to hear the sorrow, the regret, the anguish in her voice. Only wasn’t that what he had given up so much to fight against? Those whose hearts were made of cold iron rather than weak, mortal flesh?

The anger drained from him like the dishwater in the sink, leaving him empty and shaking. He felt Beltan’s strong arms wrap around him, and he leaned his head on the blond man’s shoulder.

“Maybe you’d better tell us why you’ve come,” Beltan said, the words gruff, and Vani nodded.

6.

Ten minutes later, they sat around the kitchen table, drinking mugs of coffee Beltan had brewed. Nim was in the living room now, lying on her stomach on the floor, drawing with a pencil and some paper Beltan had found in the desk. Before heading into the kitchen, Travis had paused for a moment, watching her. The pencil seemed far too large for her fingers, but she moved it across the paper with deliberate motions, sticking out her tongue as she concentrated.

“She seems older than three winters,” Beltan said. “She looks like five, and speaks as if she is older than that.”

Vani wrapped her hands around her mug. “She’s always been that way. She was born after only seven moons, as if she was anxious to be out and learning about the world.” She smiled, and the expression smoothed away some of the lines from her face. “She was only six moons old when she first spoke, and then not simply a single world. I will never forget it. I was cradling her in my arms, and she said, ‘Set me down, Mother.’ I did, and she walked over to a pebble and picked it up. I’ve never seen a child speak or walk so early.”

“I heard her,” Travis said. “When she was still in your womb, Vani. It was in Imbrifale, after you and Beltan had passed through the Void, when I spoke the rune of fire to warm you. To warm her. I heard her voice in my mind. It was so small, I thought I was just imagining it, but . . .”

“You weren’t imagining. What did she say to you?”

Wonder filled Travis, just as it had then. “She said, ‘Hello, Father.’ ”

Beltan’s eyes shone, and he gripped Travis’s hand.

There was so much Travis wanted to know, so many questions to ask–where they had been, what they had done–but before he could speak, Vani reached inside her leathers, drew out a small object, and set it on the table. It was a tetrahedron fashioned of perfect black stone.

“The gate artifact,” Beltan said, leaning over but not touching the onyx tetrahedron. “So that’s how you reached Earth.”

“My people have had it in their keeping these last three years,” Vani said. “I gave it to them when they came to Gravenfist Keep.”

“Before you left,” Travis said. The words sounded harsher than he intended, but he didn’t care.

“Yes,” Vani said, turning her gold eyes on him. “Before I left. Then, a few weeks ago, I went to my people, to ask if I might have the artifact back. I found them in the far south of Falengarth.”

Beltan picked up the coffeepot and refilled their mugs. “Were Sareth and Lirith with the Mournish?”

“I fear I missed them. My brother had taken a ship across the Summer Sea, to Moringarth, a week before I arrived, and Lirith had gone north with their son, Taneth, to visit Aryn at Calavere.”

Despite everything, Travis couldn’t help smiling. So Lirith and Sareth were parents now. A sudden desire to see them, to see everyone they had left on Eldh, came over him. Only that was impossible, wasn’t it? Even as he thought this, his fingers crept toward the fragment of the gate artifact on the table; he jerked his hand back.

“Why did you go to your people to get the gate?” Beltan said.

“For the same reason I left you three years ago and could not return.”

Travis took a breath. “And what reason is that?”

“I am fleeing the Scirathi.”

They listened, too stunned for speech, as Vani described in brief but vivid words why she had left Gravenfist that day three years ago, and where she had been in the time since.

She hadn’t known the sorcerers of Scirath were pursuing her, at least not at first. After leaving Gravenfist Keep she had journeyed south, sailing across the Summer Sea to Al‑Amъn, seeking out oracles and seers, trying to understand the fate her al‑Mama had seen in the cards.

Your daughter is not yet born, the old woman had told Vani, yet already powerful lines of fate weave themselves around her. You dare not stay, lest you be trapped in the net.

It was there, in Moringarth, where the Scirathi first attacked her. Several of the gold‑masked sorcerers had surrounded the hostel where she was staying. She was heavy with child then, and she could not have fought them, except that they seemed unwilling to harm her. They only wanted to capture her, to keep her from escaping. One cut himself and began a spell of binding. However, Vani managed to take his knife and cut him deeper, so that more blood flowed than he had intended. Many spirits came in answer to his spell, and they consumed his blood, draining him dry. The other sorcerers were forced to weave their own spells to keep the ravenous morndariunder control. In the confusion, Vani fled.

After that, she was vigilant, and they did not catch her unawares again. However, she was forced always to keep moving. By the time she gave birth to Nim she was on a ship sailing north. For the next three years she kept traveling from place to place, never staying in one spot for more than a month or two, and never daring to return to a location where she had been before, for fear they would be waiting for her.

When she finished, Travis and Beltan could only stare at her. Through the door they heard Nim humming as she drew. At last Travis forced himself to speak.

“So have you learned what the Scirathi want with you?”

“They don’t want me.”

“Nim,” Beltan said, his voice hoarse. He stood, pacing around the table. “It’s Nim the sorcerers want, isn’t it?”

Vani nodded, her expression haunted.

Beltan slammed a fist on the countertop. “The filthy Scirathi–I will kill them all with my bare hands.”

Sparks shone in his green eyes. Alarmed, Travis rose and moved to him, touching his arm. For a moment Beltan was rigid, then he sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry, Travis. It’s only . . . we’ve just met her, and now they want to take her away.”

Travis looked at Vani. “What do they want with her?”

“I would that I knew,” Vani said, gazing at her hands splayed on the table. “But whatever the reason, the Scirathi have grown more relentless in their pursuit these last weeks. I could not stay anywhere more than a few days before I was forced to flee. That was why I sought out my people and asked for the gate. I knew it was the only way to escape.”

Travis gazed at the piece of the artifact. “How did you open it, Vani? The gate.”

Beltan gave him a startled look.

Travis sat again. He slid his hands across the table toward her own but did not touch them. “The blood I filled it with beneath the Steel Cathedral would have been consumed when you and Beltan returned to Eldh. So what blood did you use to open the gate?”

Vani opened her mouth, but no words came out.

“It’s all right, Mother,” said a small voice behind them. “You can tell them. I don’t mind.”

Nim stood in the kitchen door, holding a piece of paper.

“Tell us what, sweetheart?” Travis said, keeping his tone light, unsure how much she had heard.

The girl pranced to the table and set the paper down. “How we came here. Look, I drew you a picture. It explains everything.”

Travis turned the paper around. The drawing was made up of simple but expressive lines. At the bottom of the paper was a small black triangle. Above the triangle was a large circle with wavy edges. On either side of the circle stood a stick figure, one tall, the other short. The shorter figure held a hand toward the triangle. Small black shapes like teardrops fell from the little figure’s hand onto the triangle.

Only the drops weren’t tears, Travis knew. A sweat sprang out on his skin.

Vani picked up the paper, folded it in half, and gave it back to Nim. “It’s time for you to go to sleep.”

“I know,” the girl said. “I can put myself to bed. I just wanted my fathers to kiss me good night first.”

They did. Beltan picked her up and hugged her, and Travis gave her a solemn kiss on her forehead. She ran to the door, then stopped and looked at Vani.

“I’m lucky, Mother,” she said.

Vani’s gaze was thoughtful. “How so, daughter?”

“Most children have just one father. But I have two.”

With that, Nim was gone. Travis and Beltan sat again at the table. Vani stared at the door where the girl had vanished.

“How?” Travis said simply.

Vani didn’t look at him. “She told me to do it. I refused at first–older though she seems, she is only three–but the sorcerers were close behind us, and I knew my people would not be able to delay them for long. I had little choice. And I learned early on that she knows things. Things she shouldn’t know, yet does all the same.”

Beltan pressed his hand to the inside of his right arm.

“So her blood activated the gate,” Travis said, feeling ill.

“She didn’t even cry as I pricked her finger with a needle.” Vani hesitated, then touched his hand. “Somehow, through some magic of the Little People, she truly is your child, Travis. Even as she is my child, and Beltan’s. She is what she is because of all of us.”

Travis struggled to comprehend. How could Nim really be his child? The Little People had tricked Vani and Beltan, making each think the other was Travis. The two had lain together, and Nim was conceived. But it was only illusion; he hadn’t really been there. Or was it some enchantment of the Little People? Some magic that had taken something from all three of them and imparted it to Nim?

“There’s something else I have not told you.” Vani circled her hands around the onyx tetrahedron–the topmost portion of the gate artifact. “It has been three weeks since I came to Earth. It took me that long to find you, for I began my search in Colorado.”

“Sorry,” Travis said. “We didn’t know we needed to leave a forwarding address.”

Vani did not smile. “I kept the lid of the gate artifact so that I might remain in contact with my people. While a Mournish man or woman’s blood is not enough to open the gate–”

“It’s enough to send a message,” Travis said. “Yes, I know. Are you saying you’ve heard something?”

“Hold out your hand.”

Travis did so, and she set the onyx tetrahedron on his palm. It was warm, and he felt a hum of magic. Blood flowed beneath his skin. Blood of power. Just the proximity to it was enough to awaken the artifact. A tiny, transparent image of a man appeared above the tetrahedron.

It was Sareth. He held a knife, and there was a dark line on his forearm.

“Sister,” the image spoke in a reedy but clear facsimile of Sareth’s voice, “I returned from the south, from Moringarth, only today, and our al‑Mama tells me that you are already two weeks gone. I wish that I could speak with you in person. But I fear, whatever dark wonders you might tell me, the news I bear would be darker yet.”

A grimace crossed the image of his face. “I must be brief. Let me say this: I think it is fate you chose to journey to Earth. In Moringarth, I spoke to a dervish, and though what he told me seems impossible, I am certain it is true. The burial place of Morindu the Dark has been discovered. Already the Scirathi seek it out, and our people move to hinder them and reach the city first. And, sister, this news is even stranger than you imagine, for the dervish who brought it to me is a man from Travis Wilder’s world, a man named Hadrian Farr. He says word must be sent to Travis, that the time draws near when he must return to Eldh and–”

The image of Sareth flickered, then vanished. The tetrahedron grew cool and heavy in Travis’s hand. He could feel both Vani’s and Beltan’s eyes on him as he set it on the table. His mind buzzed, and his hands itched. What had Sareth been about to say before the spell of blood sorcery ceased? What was Travis supposed to return to Eldh and do?

They want you to raise it, Travis. To raise it from the sands that swallowed it long ago. Morindu the Dark, lost city of sorcerers.

He shoved his chair back from the table and stood.

Beltan’s green eyes were worried. “What are you doing?”

“I’m calling for help,” Travis said as he picked up the phone and dialed.

7.

“Come on,” Deirdre Falling Hawk muttered as the train rattled to a stop at the Green Park station.

The doors lurched open, and she squeezed through the moment the opening was wide enough. “Mind the gap,” droned a recorded voice, but she had already leaped onto the platform, breaking into a run as her boots hit the tiles. Travis hadn’t said why he wanted her to come over, but there had been something in his voice–a sharpness–that made her heart quicken. Besides, Travis and Beltan hadn’t invited her or any other Seeker to their flat in the three years since they had come to London. Something told her this wasn’t an invitation for a drink and casual conversation.

She gripped the yellowed bear claw that hung at her throat as she pounded up the steps and into the balmy night. A man wearing a grimy white sheet stood next to the entrance of the Tube station, holding a cardboard sign, a blank look on his face. The sign read, in neatly printed letters, You Will Be Eaten.

“Are you ready for the Mouth?” he said as she passed him, the words accompanied by a puff of sour breath.

Deirdre ignored him–the Mouthers were everywhere in the city these days–and darted across Piccadilly Street. She had never been to Travis and Beltan’s flat, but she knew exactly where it was. The Seekers had a penchant for keeping tabs on otherworldly travelers. Even those whose cases were closed.

Except the case would never really be closed, whether the Seekers were actively investigating it or not. And it wasn’t just because of the phone call from Travis that Deirdre ran headlong down the sidewalk, daring other pedestrians to get in her way.

Just before the phone rang, she had been sitting at the dining table in her flat, working on her laptop computer, doing some cross‑indexing between two databases. It was tedious work, but necessary as well. The kind of work she’d been doing a lot of lately.

Not that she wouldn’t rather have been investigating rumors of unexplainable energy signatures or artifacts of unknown origin, journeying to exotic locations, poring over lost manuscripts, or decoding hieroglyphics. However, if there were any otherworldly forces lurking out there, waiting to be discovered, then they were studiously avoiding her, because she hadn’t worked on an interesting case in over a year, and the last several leads of any promise she had found had all run into dead ends.

Eyes aching from staring at the computer, Deirdre had just decided to call it a night when the machine chimed. On screen, a message appeared.

Do be sure to take this call.

That was all. There was no indication of the sender, no box in which she could type a reply. She was still staring at the message when the phone rang, causing her to jump out of her seat.

If the call had come a minute before, she would have been tempted to let the answering machine get it, to soak in a bath before going to bed. After all, what could be so important she couldn’t deal with it tomorrow? Deirdre didn’t know, but the message on the computer screen changed everything. She lunged for the phone, unsure who it would be on the other end, though somehow not surprised when it was Travis Wilder.

“Deirdre, I’m so glad you’re home,” he had said, his words clipped. “Can you . . . can you come over right away?”

“Of course,” she had said. “I’ll be there in half an hour.” She hung up and glanced at the computer. The message was gone, but she knew now who had sent it.

It was he. There was no other possibility, even though he hadn’t contacted her in over three years. The last time had been just a few weeks after the events in Denver, when the Steel Cathedral was destroyed, and the truth about Duratek’s involvement in the illegal trade of the drug Electria was revealed. After that, for a time, she had hoped. Every phone call, every e‑mail message, had caused a jolt of excitement.

Only they were never from him. Whoever the mysterious Philosopher was who had helped her in the past, he had fallen silent. But hadn’t he said it would be like that? It may be some time until we speak again, he had told her at the end of their first and only telephone conversation. But when the time comes, I’ll be in touch.

That time was now. Yet what did it mean? Something had happened–something had changed–but what?

You know what it is, Deirdre. Perihelion is coming. Earth and Eldh are drawing near. That’s what he told you three years ago. Maybe it’s close now. Maybe that’s why everything is changing. . . .

She turned down a deserted side street, half jogged the last block to their building, and started up the steps. Just as she reached the door, the short hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Again she gripped her bear claw necklace–a gift from her shaman grandfather–and turned around.

The black silhouette of a figure stood on the edge of a circle of light cast by a streetlamp. A thrill of dread and wonder sizzled through Deirdre. Was it him? Surely he was keeping watch on Beltan and Travis. How else would he have known Travis was about to call her?

The figure reached out a beckoning hand. As if compelled by a will not her own, she started back down the steps.

“Deirdre!” a voice called from above. “Up here.”

She turned and looked up. Beltan leaned out of a window two floors above her.

“I’ll let you in,” the blond man said, then his head ducked inside. A second later the building’s front door buzzed, and the lock clicked.

Deirdre glanced over her shoulder, but the circle of light across the street was empty. She pulled on the door before the buzzing stopped, then bounded up two flights of stairs. The door of their flat opened before she could knock on it, and she was hauled inside by strong hands.

“It’s been too long since we’ve seen you,” Beltan said as he lifted her off the floor in an embrace.

“So you’re going to crush me as punishment?” she managed to squeak.

Beltan set her down and straightened her leather jacket. “Sorry. For me, hugs only come in one strength.”

“That would be maximum,” she said, returning his grin. However, her smile vanished as she caught Travis’s troubled gray eyes. He moved forward and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“Thank you for coming.”

“I’ll always come when you call, no matter how long it’s been or how far away you are. But what’s going on? And why couldn’t you tell me over the phone?”

He stepped aside. The first thing she noticed was the broadsword hanging above the sofa; that had to be Beltan’s. Then her gaze moved down, and she saw the woman sitting there. The woman stood, stretching limbs clad in supple black leather.

“Oh,” Deirdre said, and would have fallen to the floor if not for Beltan’s strong hands.

They set her on the sofa, propped her up with a pillow, and pressed a glass of porter into her hand. A few sips of beer revived her enough that she was able to tell them she was fine, though she wasn’t certain that was really the case.

For the last three years, Deirdre had done her best not to think about them. The Seekers had officially closed the Wilder‑Beckett case. The gate to the world AU‑3–to Eldh–had been destroyed, and Duratek Corporation had been destroyed as well. The company had been dismantled by the governments of Earth; its executives were in jail or, in many cases, dead. There would be other investigations, maybe even other worlds. But the door to this one had been shut. It was over.

At least, that was what she had told herself. But deep within, Deirdre had known it wasn’t over, not truly. They had all of them been waiting, that was all. Waiting for a day when two worlds would draw closer. Waiting for a time they would be called again.

“All right,” Deirdre said, setting the empty glass on the coffee table. “Who’s going to tell me why I’m here?”

Vani and Beltan both cast glances at Travis. He sat down on the sofa next to her and took her hand in his.

“I supposed I always let myself believe it was just a story, that there was nothing behind it.” His gray eyes were solemn. “I thought it would never come. Only now it finally has.”

Deirdre shook her head. “I don’t understand. What’s come?”

“Fate,” Travis said.

Before Deirdre could ask what he was talking about, Vani spoke, and for the next several minutes Deirdre listened as the T’golexplained how and why she had come to Earth, and of her last three years fleeing from the Scirathi. Vani’s words were terrible and fascinating, but Deirdre found it hard to focus on them. A droning noise filled her skull; there was something she needed to tell them, but what was it?

She stared at the T’gol. Vani’s face was sharper than before, but still lovely, even delicate. Tattoos like vines accentuated the exquisite lines of her neck; thirteen gold rings glittered in her left ear. However, Deirdre knew it would be a mistake to let that beauty lull her. Vani was an assassin, trained since girlhood in the arts of stealth, infiltration, and killing in swift silence.

There was much Vani alluded to that Deirdre already knew, things she had learned when she first met the T’goland which Deirdre had included in her reports to the Seekers: how Vani’s people believed Travis Wilder was the one destined to raise Morindu the Dark from the sands that had swallowed it long ago, and how the gold‑masked sorcerers, the Scirathi, hoped to reach it first, to steal the magics entombed within for their own purposes.

“Only what exactly is buried in Morindu?” Deirdre said as she rubbed her temples, voicing her thought without meaning to.

“Good question,” Beltan rumbled. The big man sat on the floor, making steady progress through an enormous bowl of popcorn.

“My people cannot say for certain,” the T’golsaid, prowling back and forth before the curtained window. “No records survive from the last days of the War of the Sorcerers. We have only what our storytellers have passed down. Nor were any of the Morindai there at the very end, for the people of Morindu were ordered to flee the city as the army of Scirath approached. Only the Seven A’narai, the Fateless Ones who ruled in the name of the god‑king Orъ, remained behind. They and the Shackled God, Orъ, himself.”

The War of the Sorcerers. Deirdre had heard Vani speak those words before. In Denver, the T’golhad told them of the great conflagration that, three thousand years ago, had engulfed the ancient city‑states of Amъn on Eldh’s southern continent. The sorcerers, powerful and angry, had risen up against the arrogant god‑kings of the city‑states, seeking to cast them down and take their place. However, Morindu was unique, for it was a city of sorcerers, ruled by the most potent among them. In fear and mistrust, the other city‑states named it Morindu the Dark.

Near the end of the War of the Sorcerers, a great army led by the sorcerers of Scirath had marched toward the city. Rather than fall to its foes and let its secrets be plundered, Morindu had chosen to destroy itself. When the army arrived, they found only empty desert.

Soon after that, the War of the Sorcerers ended in a violent cataclysm that destroyed the city‑states and blasted all of Amъn, transforming it into a wasteland. What few people survived fled north to the shores of the Summer Sea, to begin civilization anew in Al‑Amъn. Eventually, some of the Morindai found their way across the sea, to the northern continent of Falengarth, and there became a wandering folk known as the Mournish. These were Vani’s people. However, Vani was no mere gypsy. Deirdre knew the T’golcould trace her lineage all the way back to the royal line of Morindu the Dark.

“All right,” Beltan said around a mouthful of popcorn. “If the Mournish don’t know what’s buried in Morindu, then tell me this: What do the Scirathi thinkis buried there? What are they so eager to get their paws on?”

Vani rested her hands on her hips. “Many things, I imagine. Books of spells. Artifacts of power. Treasures of gold and gems. Or perhaps–”

“Blood,” Travis said. “They want blood.”

Deirdre shivered. At one time Travis had possessed an artifact shaped like a gold spider, a living jewel called a scarab. The scarab had contained three drops of blood taken from the god‑king Orъ. With it, Travis had been able to activate the gate artifact, opening a crackling doorway to Eldh.

“You think they want blood of power,” Deirdre said. “Blood from the god‑king Orъ.”

Travis shook his head. “No. I think they want Orъ himself.” He turned his gaze on Vani. “He’s still there, isn’t he? The Seven stayed with him to the end, and they buried him with the city.”

Vani knelt on the floor. Beltan gave her a suspicious look and edged the bowl of popcorn out of her reach.

“We suppose he is still there,” the T’golsaid. “But we do not know.”

“You mean his body,” Deirdre said. “It’s been three thousand years. It’s not like Orъ can still be alive.”

Vani shrugged. “Who is to say what can and cannot be? It is said Orъ was five hundred years old at the time Morindu was destroyed. He was the most powerful sorcerer ever known. So powerful that Fate itself tangled around him, its strands unraveling, so that only the Seven A’naraicould stand in his presence. Yet in time that power consumed him. He fell into a deep slumber, and so it was that the Fateless Ones drank of his blood, becoming sorcerers of dreadful might themselves, and ruled in his name.”

“Okay,” Deirdre said, hoping logic might make all of this seem less terrifying. “Let’s pretend for a moment Orъ is somehow still alive, buried beneath the desert. What would happen if the Scirathi found him?”

“That must not be allowed to happen!” Vani said, her eyes flashing. “With Orъ’s blood, there is no limit to the evils the Scirathi might work. I have no doubt that they would first hunt my people, slaying the Morindai down to the last man, woman, and child.” Vani stood, pacing again. “But that would only be the beginning. With Orъ’s blood at their command, they might enslave all of Moringarth–all of Eldh. They would dominate its people with all the hatred, all the cruelty, they have fostered in their hearts all these ages. Nothing could stand before them. That is what the Seven understood. That was why they destroyed their own city.”

Travis cleared his throat. “The way you describe them, the Scirathi make the Pale King sound like a chap who just wanted to come out of his kingdom and play.”

Vani raised an eyebrow. “Compared to what the Scirathi might become, he was.”

“Wait just a minute,” Beltan said, a handful of popcorn halfway to his mouth. “Weren’t all of the Scirathi killed when the demon destroyed the Etherion in Tarras?”

“All of the Scirathi in Falengarth, yes,” Vani said. “But far more yet dwell on Moringarth. If each of them was to drink of the blood of Orъ, they would become an army such as you cannot imagine.”

“She’s right,” Travis said, slipping from the sofa to the floor and sitting across the coffee table from Beltan. “Remember what happened to Xemeth after he drank from the scarab? He would have destroyed us if it hadn’t been for the demon. And he was only one man, and not even a sorcerer at that. The blood made him . . .”

Travis gripped his right hand inside the left, and Beltan gave him a look of concern. Deirdre wondered what he had been about to say.

“All right,” she said, trying to get all of this straight in her mind. “I understand that Orъ’s blood is powerful, and that the Scirathi would do anything to get their hands on it. But Morindu has been lost for ages. Why is this so important now? And what does any of this have to do with me?”

“I believe this will answer both of your questions,” Vani said, setting a tetrahedron of black stone on the coffee table. “Travis?”

Travis hesitated, then reached out and touched the stone. Deirdre sucked in a breath as the image of a man appeared above the tetrahedron. She had never seen him before, but their kinship was clear in his striking, angular features, and she knew he was Vani’s brother. This was a message from Eldh.

The message was brief, and it changed everything. By the time the image of Vani’s brother vanished, Deirdre’s heart was racing.

“You bastard, Hadrian,” she murmured. “You fabulous bastard. You actually did it.”

“Did what?” Beltan said, brow furrowing.

She hugged a throw pillow to her chest. “He had a Class Zero Encounter. Translocation to another world. Something every Seeker has worked for, and something none of them has ever achieved.”

Until now.

“Maybe I should be a Seeker,” Beltan said brightly. “I’ve been to another world. This one.”

Despite the buzzing in her head, Deirdre grinned at the blond man. “Don’t be such a show‑off.”

She reminded herself that she was having multiple Class One Encounters herself at this very moment–something rare enough in the history of the Seekers. Resting her chin on a hand, she gazed at the onyx tetrahedron. What did it all mean? How had Farr gotten to Eldh? And why was he the one who had told the Mournish that Morindu had been found?

You always were a fast learner, Hadrian. They said you’re a dervish, which I gather is some sort of sorcerer. I wish I could talk to you now. I know I should do something, but I have no idea what.

The only thing she knew for certain was that this case wasn’t over. In fact, she had the feeling that–despite everything that had happened–it had only just begun.

“So now what?” Deirdre said.

“Now Travis must fulfill his fate,” Vani said as if everything had already been decided.

Beltan’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“Travis must return to Eldh,” Vani said, standing. “He must journey into the Morgolthi and reach Morindu before the Scirathi.”

Beltan jumped to his feet. “Why don’t you go find it yourself, you and the Mournish? It’s your bloody city.”

Vani kept her eyes on Travis. “It is his fate to do it.”

“Why?” Beltan said, cheeks ruddy. “Because you want it to be?”

Vani’s face was hard. “No, because it is. Our oracles saw it long ago: The wizard who came to Eldh to defeat a great evil in the north would also be the one to raise Morindu. This task is his.”

“Don’t you think he’s done enough already? He gave up everything to fight the Necromancer, and the Pale King, and Mohg. He’s done enough for the world. For both worlds. This is his time now. Our time. And you can’t just walk in here and take it from him. By all the gods, I won’t let you!”

Deirdre felt she should turn her head, that she shouldn’t be seeing this, only she couldn’t look away. She had never seen Beltan cry before, but he was weeping now, tears running down his cheeks, and the big man’s anguish made her own heart ache. Even Vani did not appear unmoved. The T’golcast her eyes downward, but again she said, her voice low this time, “It is his fate.”

Travis laughed, and all of them stared. It was a bitter sound. He was gazing down at his hands. “I still can’t figure out how it can be my fate to find Morindu if I’m supposed to be one of the Fateless.”

“What you say is true,” Vani said, kneeling beside him. “But it is the fate of my people to find Morindu through you.”

Beltan wiped the tears from his face with a rough gesture. “Then you have no idea what his fate really is. For all you know, you’re telling him the wrong thing. Maybe it’s because he refuses to go to Eldh that you find the city yourselves.”

Vani started a hot reply, but Travis held up a hand.

“It doesn’t matter. Even if I wanted to try to find Morindu–” he gave Vani a sharp look “–and I’m not saying I do, but even if I did, I couldn’t. There’s no way for me to get back to Eldh.”

Deirdre ran a hand through her close‑cropped hair. “What about the artifact?” However, even as she spoke, she remembered what she had learned before about the way the gate artifacts functioned.

“This is only part of the artifact,” Vani said. “With it, I can receive messages from my brother. But he has the greater part, and without it we cannot open a gate.” She gave Travis a piercing look. “But do you not have other means to travel between the worlds?”

Beltan let out a loud guffaw. “You mean you just assumed he could go back to Eldh?”

Vani gave him a dark look but said nothing, and it was clear this was exactly what she had believed.

“It’s not like he can just snap his fingers,” Beltan said, grinning, though it was a fierce expression. “By Vathris, even I know that much. True, he could use the Great Stones to travel between worlds, but he left them in Master Larad’s care. And the silver coin he has only works in one direction, to bring him to his home–and that’s here.”

Vani gave Travis a stricken look. “Is this true?”

“You doubt Beltan?” he said simply.

She hunched her shoulders and looked away.

“What about Brother Cy?” Deirdre said.

She was as surprised as the others that she had spoken–after all, they were the otherworldly travelers, not she–but now that their eyes were on her, she felt braver. In his reports, Travis had spoken of the mysterious preacher Brother Cy, and Deirdre had encountered one of his cohort, the purple‑eyed Child Samanda. According to Travis, Cy, Mirrim, and Samanda were Old Gods. A thousand years ago, they had helped to banish Mohg beyond the circle of Eldh, only in the process they were exiled with him. Then, when Travis inadvertently created a crack between the worlds by journeying back in time, Mohg was able to slip through the gap into Earth–and so were Cy and the others.

“Brother Cy helped you get to Eldh more than once,” Deirdre said. “Couldn’t he help you again?”

Travis’s face was thoughtful. “I don’t think Brother Cy is here anymore. When Larad broke the rune of Sky, Mohg was able to return to Eldh. I think Cy and Mirrim and Samanda went as well. It’s their home, after all. I don’t think we’ll be getting any help from them this time around.”

“There must be another way,” Vani said, her words imploring.

Travis laid a hand on the T’gol’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Vani. But even if I wanted to help, I can’t. You have to face the fact that there’s no way for any of us to get back to–”

The telephone rang.

They all gazed blankly at one another for a moment, as if the sound had jarred them out of a spell, then Beltan picked up the cordless phone and held it to his ear.

He cocked his head, then held the phone out toward Deirdre. “It’s for you.”

Deirdre fumbled as she took the phone. Who could be calling her here? She hadn’t told anyone where she was going–not the Seekers, not even her partner Anders. However, as soon as she heard the rich, accentless voice emanating from the phone, she knew who it was.

“Turn on the television,” the nameless Philosopher said. “I think you’ll be interested in what you see.”

There was a click, and a dial tone replaced his voice. Deirdre set down the phone, her heart pounding.

“Who was it?” Travis said.

She licked her lips. “Where’s the remote control?”

A minute later, they gathered around the television. In quick words, Deirdre had described the message she had received on her computer just before Travis called and what he had said just now on the phone.

“You say this Philosopher friend of yours hasn’t contacted you in over three years.” Travis said. “I wonder why now?”

“Let’s find out,” Beltan said, and clicked a button on the remote.

The television glowed to life, displaying a scene of a blue ocean breaking against white rocks. The camera panned, focusing on weathered columns–what looked like the remains of an ancient Greek temple–rising toward an azure sky. A small graphic image in the corner of the screen advertised the name of the program: Archaeology Now!

“Wait a minute,” Beltan said. “I was watching this show hours ago. How can it still be on?”

He punched the remote, trying to change the channel, but it no longer seemed to function. The volume came up.

“I didn’t do that. What’s wrong with this thing?” Beltan banged the remote against the table.

Travis grabbed his arm, stopping him. “Listen,” he said.

Now the television showed a man dressed in khakis standing next to one of the columns. “–and which were opened by a recent earthquake here on the Mediterranean island of Crete,” he was saying. “Tonight, we’re taking our cameras and you into one of those caves, not far from the ancient palace of Knossos, to an excavation where Dr. Niko Karali is hoping to uncover evidence that could further our understanding of ancient Minoan culture, and perhaps provide new clues to an age‑old mystery: why the thriving Minoan civilization vanished almost overnight three thousand years ago. As always on our program, we have no idea what we’ll find, because everything you see is live. So let’s head–”

The sound cut out, and the video began to move rapidly.

“Don’t look at me,” Beltan said, pointing to the remote control, which sat on the coffee table.

Despite the announcer’s statement, Deirdre was certain this show was anything but live. It had been recorded earlier that night, and now it was being played back for their benefit. The video became a blur of images too fast for the eye to decipher. Then the video froze, and a single image filled the screen.

It was a stone arch, or part of one at least, set against rougher rock. A hand held a brush, clearing away dust and debris from one of the stones of the arch. Beneath the brush, Deirdre could just make out a series of angular marks.

She clapped a hand to her mouth at the same moment Travis swore.

“By the Blood,” Vani whispered, her gold eyes wide.

Beltan cast them an annoyed look. “Great. Am I the only one who doesn’t know what that writing says?” His expression grew thoughtful, and he rubbed his arm. “Although I feel like I should know.”

Deirdre gripped the silver ring on her right hand. The ring Glinda had given her. She didn’t need to look to know that the angular characters etched inside it were shaped just like those on the television screen.

Travis drew closer to the TV. “I’ve seen writing like that before.”

“It is the ancient writing of Amъn,” Vani said. “Few know it now. Even I cannot read what it says, though there are some among my clan who could. And there are others . . .”

“You mean sorcerers,” Travis said. “There was writing sort of like that on the stone box that one Scirathi created to hold the gate artifact.”

“Not sort of,” Vani said. “The writing is identical.”

All of them seemed to understand at once, as if a jolt of electricity had passed between them, carrying the knowledge.

“A gate,” Deirdre said. “That arch is a gate, isn’t it?”

Or part of one, anyway. She didn’t need to wait for the archaeologists to uncover the entire thing to know that they wouldn’t find the arch’s keystone–that it was missing.

Only it wasn’t missing. Deirdre knew exactly where it was: in the vaults of the Seekers. The Seekers had discovered it in the tavern that sat on the same spot that centuries later would house Surrender Dorothy. It was in researching Glinda’s ring that Deirdre had discovered the existence of the keystone, for the writing on the ring and the keystone were identical.

Travis pressed his hand against the television screen. “Maybe there is a way back,” he murmured.

Vani’s eyes shone, and Beltan gave her a dark look. However, before the blond man could speak, the sound of small feet broke the silence. Deirdre tore her gaze from the TV. A girl stood at the end of the sofa. Her hair was dark, but her skin was moon‑pale.

“You must be Deirdre,” the girl said, her words articulate, though mustcame out as muth.

“Nim,” Vani said, kneeling beside the girl. “What are you doing out here? You’re supposed to be in bed.”

Nim. Deirdre didn’t recognize the name. However, she knew who this girl was. It was Vani and Beltan’s daughter.

“I can’t sleep,” Nim said.

Vani brushed her hair from her face. “And why is that, beshala?”

“Because there’s a gold face outside my window,” the girl said yawning. “It keeps watching me.”

Vani held the girl tight. “It was a bad dream, dearest one. That was all.”

However, there was doubt in the T’gol’s eyes, and a terrible certainty that the girl hadn’t been dreaming came over Deirdre. Fear cleared her mind, and at last she understood what it was that had been troubling her all evening, what it was she had forgotten.

“Vani,” Deirdre said, her mouth dry. “You came to Earth to escape the Scirathi, right?”

“Yes,” the T’golsaid, clutching Nim to her. “Why do you ask?”

Sickness rose in Deirdre’s throat as she recalled the picture hehad sent her during their final conversation three years ago: an image of two figures in black robes slinking down an alley in a modern Earth city, their faces concealed behind masks. Gold masks.

Deirdre drew in a breath. “Because I think they’re already–”

Her voice was drowned out by the sudden sound of shattering glass.

8.

The bones would always be there.

Over the last three years, the grass of the vale had grown up around them, lush and dense, and had crept up the sides of the larger mounds, shrouding them in green. Just that spring, on the sides of those mounds, a tiny flower of the palest blue had begun to bloom in profusion. No one–not even the eldest of the witches, and the wisest in herb lore–had ever seen a flower like it before. And while no one was certain who had first used the name, soon everyone called the little flower arynesseth.

In the old language, the name meant Aryn’s Tears. Almost as soon as the name came into use, a story sprang up around it, growing as quickly as the grass in the vale. It was said, in the days after the Second War of the Stones, brave Queen Aryn of Calavan stood upon the wall of Gravenfist Keep, and there she let fly the ashes of the knight Sir Durge, who had been noble and true above all other men. The wind carried the ashes out into the vale of Shadowsdeep, and one could always know where they came to rest, for in those places the arynessethbloomed the thickest.

In places like this.

Grace Beckett–Queen of Malachor, Lady of the Winter Wood, and Mistress of the Seven Dominions–stood at the foot of the mound she had ridden to that morning. It was one of the highest in the vale, rising up no more than a furlong from the Rune Gate, whose gigantic iron doors hung open, steadily rusting away.

As her honey‑colored mare Shandis grazed nearby, Grace knelt and parted the grass with her hands, revealing a skull bleached white by sun and rain and snow. The skull was elongated, the eye sockets large and jewel‑shaped. There was no mouth. She let the grass fall back and stood, holding her right arm against her chest. The wraithlings had perished. So had the feydrim, and their master the Pale King. All the same, the pain in her right arm lingered on, just like the bones beneath the grass. Just like the memories.

Grace started up the side of the mound. It was Lirdath, and even this far north in the world the morning was already growing fine and hot. Soon she was mopping the sweat from her brow with a hand and wishing she had chosen something lighter than a riding gown of green wool.

After several minutes of steady work, she reached the top of the mound. She panted for breath and pushed her blond hair from her face; it was getting too long again. Others might have thought it beautiful, a gilded frame to her regal visage, but to Grace it was simply a nuisance. She would take a knife to it as soon as she got back to the keep.

Hands on hips, she gazed around. She could see the whole vale from up there. Sharp mountains soared against blue sky, and in the distance Gravenfist Keep rose like a mountain of gray stone itself. Summer had come, and the vale was a verdant emerald. Still, here and there white patches gleamed like snow.

She half closed her eyes, and through the veil of her lashes she could see it again, pouring out of the mouth of the Rune Gate like a foul exhalation of hatred: the army of the Pale King. Its ranks of feydrimand wraithlings and trolls, heartless wizards and witches, was without number, and they had come for one purpose–to cast the world into shadow forever.

Only they had failed, thanks to the bravery and sacrifice of countless men and women. And of one man more than any other. Grace knelt, letting her fingers brush across the arynesseththat bloomed atop the grass‑covered mound. She plucked one of the small white‑blue flowers. Its scent was faint and clean, like snow.

“I miss you, Durge,” she murmured. “I could use your help. There’s still so much more to do.”

She stayed that way for a time, content to listen to the wind and the far‑off cries of a hawk. At last she stood, and as she looked back toward the keep she saw a horseman coming. His need must have been great for him to make no effort to conceal himself.

By the time the horseman reached the foot of the mound, she had descended to meet him.

“I thought I might find you out here, Your Majesty,” Aldeth said as he climbed down from a horse as gray as his mistcloak.

Grace raised an eyebrow. “All I told Sir Tarus was that I was going for a ride in the vale. How did you know to find me here?”

“I serve you with all my heart, Your Majesty,” the Spider said with a rotten‑toothed grin. “But that doesn’t mean I have to tell you the secrets of my craft.”

She folded her arms and waited patiently.

Aldeth threw his hands in the air. “Well, fine, if you’re going to torture me like that. He can’t blame me for not being able to resist your spells.”

“I’m not casting a spell, Aldeth,” she said, but the spy seemed not to hear, and he rattled on for several minutes about how it wasn’t hisidea to go to Master Larad, how he had been dead set against it, knowing how offended she would be, but how Sir Tarus had insisted that they ask the Runelord to speak the rune of vision, and how he–Aldeth–would never have dreamed of compromising his queen’s privacy in such a manner.

“No, you’d simply sneak after me.”

“Exactly!” the Spider said, snapping his fingers. “That way, you’d never even know I was–”

He bit his tongue, and he looked as if he was going to be sick. Grace couldn’t help a smile. He really was getting better; a year ago he would have dug himself a far deeper hole before having the sense to shut up.

“Oh, Aldeth,” she said, patting his cheek. Then she climbed into Shandis’s saddle and whirled the mare around. As she did, she cast one last glance at the Rune Gate.

Last summer, at Sir Tarus’s urging, Grace had finally ordered an exploratory mission into Imbrifale. Tarus himself had led the small company of knights through the gate, with the Spiders Aldeth and Samatha serving as scouts. Master Larad and the young witch Lursa had gone as well, for there was no telling what fell magics might remain in the Pale King’s Dominion.

For an entire month, Grace had paced the outer wall of Gravenfist Keep, gazing out across the vale, waiting for them to return. She had hoped to be able to speak across the Weirding to Lursa. However, the moment the troop passed through the Rune Gate, all contact with them ceased, as if their threads had been cut by a knife. The Ironfang Mountains, woven with enchantments to imprison the Pale King, proved a barrier that could not be pierced by thought or magic.

At last, on the first day of Revendath, they returned to Gravenfist Keep. The company had not lost a single member on the journey; however, all of them suffered in spirit. None seemed able to speak of what they had found except for Master Larad, and even he spoke in halting words, so that it took many days before Grace finally learned all they had discovered.

Imbrifale was dead. Nothing lived in that Dominion–not men or monsters or animals, or even trees or plants. Every living thing that had dwelled there had been infused with and twisted by the Pale King’s magic over the centuries. Nothing had not been bound to him, and when he and his master Mohg had perished, so did all else.

What had happened in the thousand years the Rune Gate was shut would never truly be known, for no written records had been found, but some things could be gleaned from what the company saw. They came upon terrible cities, built like the hives of some insect species. There the feydrimand other inhuman slaves of the Pale King were bred and born, fed through holes in tiny chambers, where they either perished or grew strong enough to break their way out.

Other cities were more like the castles and keeps of the Dominions, though sharper, harsher, made only for function, with no consideration for beauty or comfort. There the human subjects of the Pale King had dwelled, and beneath one such keep they had found a labyrinth of chambers that contained stone tables large and small, and racks filled with knives and curved hooks. In one such chamber they discovered a cabinet containing iron lumps, some the size of a man’s fist, some tiny, no larger than a robin’s egg. In the next chamber was a pit filled with bones, many of grown men and women, but others the birdlike bones of infants–the remains of those who had not withstood the transformation.

Elsewhere the company came upon mines: immense wounds gouged in the land, oozing fetid liquids and emitting noxious fumes. Near each mine stood a foundry, many of them still filled with half‑finished machines of war. At last they had reached Fal Imbri, the Pale King’s palace, and they had looked upon his throne: a chair of iron forged for a giant, carved with runes of dread, its edges sharp as razors.

The throne was empty. The company had turned around to begin the long journey home.

“Do you want us to go back there, Your Majesty?”

Grace turned in the saddle. Aldeth was gazing at the open Rune Gate, his expression grim, his gray eyes distant. He seemed not to notice the way his hand crept up his chest.

“No,” Grace said softly. “There’s nothing for us there.” She forced her voice to brighten. “Now come, let’s go see what Sir Tarus wants with me.”

9.

Half an hour later, they rode through an arch into the courtyard between the main tower of the keep and Gravenfist’s outer wall. Once this place had thronged with warriors, rune‑speakers, and witches desperately battling to hold back the army of the Pale King. It was crowded today as well, though there were far more farmers, weavers, tanners, potters, merchants, and blacksmiths than there were men‑at‑arms.

Over the last three years, Gravenfist Keep had become less of a military fortress and more of a working castle. Most of the men who had marched here with Grace had stayed, and their families had come north to join them. There were now a number of villages in the valley, and farms were springing up in the fertile lands between the mountains and the Winter Wood–lands that had lain fallow for centuries.

There had been a brief time when Grace had considered relocating her court to the old capital of Tir‑Anon, some thirty leagues to the south; that was where the kings and queen of Malachor had dwelled of old. She had journeyed there the autumn after the war, along with Falken and Melia, but they had found little. Tir‑Anon had been utterly destroyed in the fall of Malachor seven hundred years ago. There was nothing save heaps of rubble overgrown with groves of valsindarand sintaren. They had returned to Gravenfist sober, and determined to make it their home.

“There you are, Your Majesty,” Sir Tarus said, rushing up as Grace brought Shandis to a halt before the main keep. His face was nearly as red as his beard.

“So it appears,” she said. “Thanks to a little help from Master Larad, Aldeth here was able to ferret me out.”

She glanced to her left, but where the spy had ridden a moment ago there was now only empty air. A sigh escaped her. “I wish I could disappear like that.”

Tarus clucked his tongue. “Queens don’t get to disappear, Your Majesty.”

“And why is that?”

“Because they must be ever available to their counselors, vassals, and subjects, of course.”

She allowed him to help her down from her horse. “That’s exactly why I wish I could vanish sometimes.”

“None of that now, Your Majesty,” Tarus said, giving her a stern look. “There’s work to be done.”

Grace sighed. This was part of an ongoing battle with Sir Tarus. She had made him her seneschal three years ago (after Melia gently pointed out that Grace didn’t have to try to run the kingdom all by herself), and in the time since Tarus had taken the job seriously. Too seriously, she sometimes thought. He worked at all hours of the day and night, and he hardly seemed to smile anymore. Where was the dashing young knight with the ready grin she had first met in the forests of western Calavan?

He’s still in there, Grace. Just older, like each of us.

A groom came to take Shandis to the stables, and Tarus walked with Grace to the main keep.

“Well,” she said as they approached the doors of the great hall, “were you going to tell me what was so urgent it couldn’t wait? Or are you simply going to spring it on me and see if I faint from shock?”

“Now that you mention it, I was sort of favoring the latter option,” Tarus said. “Only then I reconsidered,” the seneschal hastily added when she gave him a piercing glance.

However, even after he told her what had transpired, Grace still felt a keen jolt of surprise as she stepped into the great hall and saw the two men standing before the dais. One she did not recognize at all. He was a younger man, short but well built, dark‑haired, and clad in a gray tunic. His face was squarely handsome, but softened by a sensuous mouth. He held a staff carved with runes.

The other man she did recognize, but only after careful consideration. When she first met him, at the Council of Kings in Calavere, he had been a corpulent man dressed in ostentatious clothes, his gaze haughty, his thick fingers laden with rings.

The years had aged him greatly. He was rail‑thin now, and wore a simple black tunic and no jewelry. His bulbous nose was still ruddy–a testament to a past penchant for too much wine– but his close‑set eyes were clear and sober. He and his companion knelt as she entered.

“Rise, Lord Olstin of Brelegond, please,” she said when she managed to find the breath to speak. “You are welcome in Malachor.”

A sardonic smile played across his lip, though the expression was self‑deprecating now rather than arrogant as it once had been. “You are kind, Your Majesty. Kinder than you have either right or reason to be. Though it has been nearly five years, I have not forgotten how uncivilly I treated you at the Council of Kings, and I warrant you have not forgotten either.”

Grace winced, for it was true. She remembered well how Olstin had wheedled and cajoled, attempting to play her against King Boreas, and then–after she ordered him to step away from a serving maid he had slapped–had threatened her.

“You didn’t know at the time I was a queen, Lord Olstin.” She couldn’t help a small laugh. “Of course, I didn’t know I was a queen, either. So let’s call it even, shall we?”

“I don’t think so, Your Majesty,” Olstin said, approaching her. “You see, we are not even at all.”

Tarus cast Grace a sharp look, but she gave her head a small shake. “And why is that, Lord Olstin?”

“Because Brelegond owes you something, Your Majesty. It owes you its gratitude, and its allegiance.”

Grace was too astonished by these words to reply, but Sir Tarus took her arm, led her to the chair atop the dais (she refused to call it a throne), and sat her down. Additional chairs were placed for the guests on the step below Grace, and Tarus found a servant to bring them all wine, though Olstin chose water instead. Gradually, Grace’s shock was replaced by fascination as she listened to Olstin speak. Little news had come from the Dominion of Brelegond these last three years. It was farthest of all the seven Dominions from Malachor, and during the war it had been sorely damaged by the Onyx Knights.

The rebuilding had been slow, according to Olstin, but over time much had been accomplished. King Lysandir, who had been chained in the dungeon beneath Borelga after Brelegond fell to the Onyx Knights, had never truly recovered from his ordeal, and had passed away last winter. His niece, Eselde, had been crowned queen, and under her rule Brelegond had regained its former strength; indeed, it was stronger than it had been before the war.

“The gods know we were a foolish people, ruled by a foolish, if not unkind, man,” Olstin said. “We were the youngest of the Dominions, and so became caught up in fostering the appearance of prosperity and importance, rather than doing anything to truly beprosperous or important. However, young as she is, Eselde is quite practical. Even before her uncle died she was ruling in all but name, and she has accomplished much in a short time.”

“I’m glad,” Grace said, and she meant it. “But now, Lord Olstin, you must tell me what you need.”

Olstin laughed, wagging a finger at her. “No, Your Majesty, this rudeness I will once again do you: You must not dare to offer Brelegond help, at least not now. Much news has come to us these last years, and we are quite aware of all you have done. You have helped Brelegond, and all the Dominions, quite enough. Now it is our turn. My queen knows Brelegond is the last of the Dominions to offer allegiance to you as High Queen. We hope we shall not be the least.”

Again Grace found herself speechless as Olstin described Queen Eselde’s offer of gold, resources, and men to help in the restoration of Malachor. Grace’s first instinct was to decline; Brelegond needed these things for its own rebuilding. However, a meaningful look from Tarus reminded her that Malachor’s coffers were rather empty at the moment, and there was much work yet to be done. So she accepted, with no qualms at expressing the humbleness she felt.

“I have one other thing to offer you,” Olstin said when the business had been concluded. He gestured to the young man who had listened silently and intently throughout their conversation. “This is my nephew Alfin. For many years, out of ignorance, we forbade our young people who displayed a talent for runes or witchcraft to pursue such arts. Perhaps, if we had chosen differently, we might have stood against the Onyx Knights. Regardless, we are changing that now. Alfin has learned much on his own, but he would join your new order of Runelords, Your Majesty, if you would accept him.” He glanced at the young man fondly. “I am partial, of course, but he has talent I think.”

“I believe that remains to be seen, uncle,” the young man said, blushing. The combination of humility, fine looks, and obvious intelligence made for a fetching combination that was not lost on Grace. Or on Sir Tarus by the way the knight gazed at the other man.

“I think he looks very promising, Your Majesty,” Sir Tarus said and, for the first time in a long time, smiled.

“Indeed,” Grace said. She was still no expert on the subject of human feelings–she never would be–but she had learned enough to see that Alfin returned Tarus’s smile with far more than polite interest.

“Come,” Tarus said to the would‑be Runelord. “I’ll take you to meet Master Larad.”

After the two men left, Olstin confessed his weariness from traveling, and as he pushed himself up from his chair Grace noticed the scars on his wrists; King Lysandir was not the only one who had been hung in a dungeon by the Onyx Knights. She had a servant show Olstin to a chamber upstairs, then found herself alone in the great hall.

Grace was often by herself these days. Being a queen was a lonelier job than she had imagined. But that was all right. She hadn’t become a doctor on Earth to make friends, and she hadn’t become a queen to make them, either. Although her job now wasn’t putting broken people back together, but broken kingdoms.

She glanced up. Hanging above her chair, near Durge’s Embarran greatsword and the shards of Fellring, was a banner emblazoned with a silver tower. When she first saw such an emblem, on the shield of the Onyx Knights, the tower had been set against a black background, and above it had been a red crown. However, this banner was as blue as the sea, and above the tower flew the white shapes of three gulls.

The banner had been a gift from Ulrieth, the Lord of Eversea. Two years ago, in this very hall, Grace and Ulrieth had signed a treaty, forging a peace between the lands of Malachor and Eversea. The treaty proclaimed that both kingdoms were equal and independent, that one should never seek to rule over the other, and also that should one face a threat, then the other would come to its ally’s aid.

It had been a triumphant day. Talking with Ulrieth, Grace knew that the dark spell the Runelord Kelephon had cast over Eversea was finally broken. The order of the Onyx Knights– who had slain Grace’s parents and caused so much strife in Eredane, Embarr, and Brelegond–had been disbanded.

“We are a people of peace now,” Ulrieth had said. He was a white‑bearded man who carried much sorrow–and much wisdom–on his brow. “We have no more taste for war. And we remember from whence we came.”

He had shaken Grace’s hand and, after seven hundred years, Malachor was finally whole again. For after Malachor fell, some of its people had fled to the far west of Falengarth, founding the kingdom of Eversea. Many others went south, forging the seven Dominions. Grace was Mistress of the Dominions, and so with this treaty all the descendants of Malachor were united once again.

The signing of the treaty almost hadn’t happened, though, because Grace had had a difficult time coming up with twelve nobles to be her witnesses. Her kingdom was so new it didn’t have nobles. Before the signing, she had hastily made earls and countesses, barons and baronesses, of those she relied on most: Tarus, the Spiders Aldeth and Samatha, the witch Lursa, Master Graedin (much to his delight), Master Larad (much to his chagrin), and of course Falken and Melia. Both the bard and lady had protested, of course–until Grace lamented she wouldn’t have enough nobles to sign the treaty, at which point the two had relented to becoming the count and countess of Arsinda, a fiefdom between Gravenfist and Tir‑Anon that these days was thickly overgrown with forest.

In addition to her own homegrown nobles, King Vedarr of Embarr had attended the ceremony; it had been good to see the grizzled old knight–now the ruler of Embarr–who had helped to defend Gravenfist so staunchly. King Kylar of Galt had also come. The king no longer looked so young, and while he still stuttered, people had stopped calling him Kylar the Unlucky. Rather, he was called Kylar the Rock, for during the war, and against overwhelming odds, he had held back the Onyx Knights who had tried to press into Galt from Eredane.

The new king of Eredane was also at the signing. His name was Evren, and he was a distant cousin of former Queen Eminda, who had perished at the Council of Kings. It had been hard for Eredane to find an heir to its throne, for the Onyx Knights had murdered virtually all in the royal line. However, the people of Eredane seemed to have done well in rallying behind Evren, for he was a thoughtful, well‑spoken man.

Grace had believed all was in order, but two days before the signing she found she was still one noble short. She had counted herself among the twelve needed to witness the document, only to discover Ulrieth had twelve in addition to himself. Luckily, at the last moment, she realized there was one more noble she could call upon. A messenger was sent with the fastest horse in Malachor down the Queen’s Way to the petty kingdom of Kelcior. Two days later, just minutes before the treaty signing, he arrived in all his bluster and swagger. He had burst through the doors of the great hall, and the first words out of his mouth were–

“Hello there, Queenie!”

Grace gasped as the booming voice shocked her out of her reverie, though for a dazed moment she wondered if he wasn’t a figment of her memory. But no, his burly figure couldn’t be anything but real. After three years of growth–and with the help of a witch’s potion, some rumored–his red beard was bushier than ever. And, if it was possible, he seemed even larger than the last time she had seen him.

His laughter rang off the stones as he strode through the doors of the hall to the dais. Something limp was slung over his massive shoulders, and only as he tossed it on the floor did she realize it was a stag.

“You look sad, Queenie,” King Kel thundered, “but I know something that will cheer you up.” He gave her a wink and rested his boot on the dead stag. “Let’s have a feast!”

10.

A visit from King Kel always raised her spirits, and by the time Grace stepped into the great hall that night, she found both the hall and her mood much transformed. Trestle tables had been pulled out to offer plenty of places to sit, and the high table now commanded the dais. Torches infused the air with smoky light, and the music of drone, lute, and pipe drifted down from the gallery, played by unseen minstrels.

“Let’s dance, Queenie!” Kel said, pouncing on her the moment she passed through the doors.

Grace’s first instinct was to curl up and play dead, as dancing with King Kel was much like getting mauled by a bear. However, she was too slow, and he grabbed her hands, proceeding to toss her about in a series of wild motions that could be termed dancingonly by a person of uncommonly generous spirit.

Fortunately, before the centrifugal force gave her an aneurysm, servants entered bearing goblets of wine. Kel liked drinking better than dancing, and the only thing he liked better than drinking was eating, and the servants had brought in trays laden with food as well. The gigantic man let Grace go in the middle of a spin and stalked toward the servants; they backed away like small, frightened animals.

Once she came to a halt, Grace found herself near the dais. Gentle hands helped her up the steps and sat her down in her chair at the center of the table.

“Thank you, Falken,” she said, giving the bard a grateful smile.

“Here, dear,” Melia said, handing her a glass of wine. “This should help you forget the ordeal.”

Grace drank, and after a few sips the room’s spinning slowed to a leisurely roll.

“So did he ask you to marry him again?” Falken inquired.

Grace sighed and nodded. Kel asked her to marry him every time he visited.

“I’m big, you’re pretty, and we’re both royalty,” he would say. “What match could be better?”

Melia patted her hand. “Don’t worry, dear. I’m sure Sir Tarus will keep him away from you.”

“Actually,” Falken said, “I think Kel could stuff Sir Tarus in his pocket and use him as a handkerchief.”

Grace laughed. “It’s all right. I can handle King Kel.” After all, she had faced far greater perils. Besides, Kel was an important ally now that the seven Dominions had all agreed Kelcior was to be recognized as a sovereign kingdom. And while she had no intention of ever accepting them, she thought Kel’s proposals were sweet. After all, it wasn’t as if other men were beating a path to her door.

You know that’s not true, Grace, she chided herself. King Evren of Eredane would marry you in a heartbeat to gain a favorable alliance.

But that wasn’t what Grace had meant.

“Is something wrong, dear?” Melia said, concern in her golden eyes.

“I’m fine,” Grace said, and she tried to produce a smile, but it came out more as a grimace, so she took a sip of wine to conceal the expression. What was wrong with her lately? Ever since spring a gloom had kept stealing over her, even though she had every reason to be happy.

Two of those reasons were sitting next to her now. Grace didn’t know what she would have done without Falken’s and Melia’s advice these last years, or their company. She had never known her parents, but she often let herself imagine they had been like the bard and the lady.

Falken’s hair was more silver than black these days. In the time after the war it had become clear to all of them that the bard–who had lived for over seven hundred years–was aging. Though they hadn’t realized it at first that summer in Perridon, the curse of eternal life Dakarreth had cast on Falken was broken when the Necromancer perished. Falken was mortal again.

However, he was still the same Falken, and if he looked more wolfish than ever, he still had the same ringing laugh, and the same magical silver hand. Their work done at last–Malachor avenged, and the Necromancers destroyed–he and Melia had finally been able to acknowledge the love they had borne one another for centuries. They had wed two years ago, and they intended to live out the rest of their days here in Malachor.

The rest of hisdays, at least. For Melia was the last of the nine New Gods who descended to Eldh to work against the Necromancers, and though a goddess no longer, she was still immortal. What would happen to her once he was gone–once all of them were gone?

“Are you certain you’re well, dear?” Melia said. Falken had gone to fetch them more wine.

Grace hesitated, then decided to tell the truth. “I was just thinking about you and Falken, about how you’re . . . and one day he’ll . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to speak the words.

Melia did. “How one day he’ll die, you mean?” She let her gaze follow after the bard, her expression full of love. “But that’s no reason to be sad, dear. That time is long off yet. Besides, we all must die one day.”

She brushed a hand through her hair, and Grace saw it for the first time: a streak of white marked Melia’s blue‑black hair. All at once the lady’s words struck Grace. We all must die one day. . . .

She clutched a hand to her mouth, unable to stifle a gasp.

Melia studied her, then nodded.

“How?” Grace finally managed to speak.

“I chose mortality when we were married,” Melia said.

“You . . . you can do that?”

“I can, and I did. It was the one power left to me. And nor can the decision be reversed.”

“Does he know?”

“Not yet. But he will in time.” She touched Grace’s arm. “Please, Ralena. Let me be the one to tell him.”

“To tell who what?” Falken said, setting down three goblets and sitting next to the two women.

Grace drew in a deep breath. “To tell you how much we love you,” she said, and kissed his cheek.

The feast continued with much cheer. Falken and Melia danced until Kel cut in and began tossing the small, amber‑eyed lady about as if he were intent on juggling her, much to both her and Falken’s mirth. Lord Olstin made a brief appearance and paid his respects to Grace, though he ate little and drank nothing, and soon retired. His nephew, Alfin, stayed a good deal longer, though Grace had little opportunity to speak with him, as Tarus kept the young Runelord largely to himself throughout the evening. Grace wondered if they had made it to see Larad yet.

Speaking of Master Larad, where was the Runelord? Of all her advisors, he had in many ways become her most valuable. Ever since they first met him, Larad had done what he believed was right regardless of what others wished, and regardless of the consequences to himself. While that trait–and his acerbic nature–made him difficult to endure at times, she always considered his point of view seriously.

At last she gave up searching the hall for Larad. However, she did come upon Lursa. The Embarran witch was married now; her handsome warrior had finally won that battle–or perhaps it was the other way around, for he had traded his sword for a plowshare. After her wedding, Lursa had become Matron of the witch’s coven at Gravenfist Keep. Grace wove with the coven when time allowed, but since that was almost never these days, she always enjoyed hearing from Lursa what patterns they had been fashioning.

Lately the witches had been working on spells to encourage crops to grow faster and bear more fruit. However, they had been having considerable trouble completing the enchantment. There was a gap in their weaving that would not be soon mended, for last winter the spry old witch Senrael had passed from the pattern of life into the warp and weave of memory. While another witch deemed old and wise enough had donned the shawl of Crone, Senrael was sorely missed.

“May I take my leave, Your Majesty?” Lursa said, her intelligent gaze straying across the hall. “I see Master Graedin, and I want to speak to him. Earlier this year, it seemed I was making progress in rune magic. Once I spoke the rune of fire, and I swear I made a candle flicker. But now I only seem to be getting worse. Lately nothing happens at all when I try to speak a rune.” She sighed. “I suppose it’s hopeless to think I ever could.”

Grace felt a note of concern. Lursa was usually brisk and cheerful, but her expression seemed dull now, even despondent.

“I’m sure Master Graedin will help you sort things out,” Grace said, and granted the witch leave to go.

Lursa crossed the hall to where Graedin stood against the far wall. The young Runelord was as tall and gangly as ever, and a grin crossed his face as Lursa approached, though his smile soon faded as they spoke. No doubt Graedin would help Lursa with her problem. He had suspected there was a connection between rune magic and the magic of the Weirding well before it was revealed that Olrig, patron god of runes, and the witch’s goddess Sia were one and the same–and were in fact simply two guises of the being known as the Worldsmith.

Except Olrig and Sia weren’t the Worldsmith anymore. The world had been broken, and the fact that it had been remade exactly as it was before didn’t change the fact that someone else was the Worldsmith now.

I miss you, Travis, Grace thought. And Beltan, too.

Sometimes when she thought of them her heart ached, just as her right arm did when she remembered standing before the Pale King. She missed them even more than she did Lirith or Aryn, for at least she could speak to the two witches from time to time, even if it was only across the threads of the Weirding.

Not that she had spoken to them often of late. Lirith was too far to the south for Grace to contact on her own; she could only do it with Aryn’s help. And Aryn had been too busy in recent times for idle conversation. She was a queen now, not of one Dominion but two. Teravian was not only King Boreas’s son, but Queen Ivalaine’s as well. As Ivalaine had had no other heir, Teravian was now king of Toloria as well as of Calavan, and Aryn was queen of both realms.

They spent their time traveling between the two courts, and by all accounts had done much to earn the admiration and loyalty of their subjects in both Dominions. But their labors had prevented them from journeying to Gravenfist save once, and Grace doubted future visits were in the cards, given that Aryn was now expecting her first child. Still, it was enough to get occasional reports, and to know that despite their labors both Aryn and Teravian were happy, and these days very much in love.

However, as much as she cared for all her friends, it was to Travis her thoughts most often turned.

I want so badly to talk to you, Travis, Grace thought, gazing into her goblet of wine and wishing she had the power to see a vision in it as Lirith sometimes could, wishing she could get a glimpse of him. I think you’d understand what I’m feeling better than I do.

Only what was she feeling? It was so strange. There was a sorrow, yes. But there was something else: a tinge of nervous expectation. But what exactly was she expecting to happen?

For them to not need you anymore.

It was the dry doctor’s voice that spoke in her mind, making its diagnosis. The thought startled her, but not so much for its suddenness as for how true it felt.

You did your part, Grace, you gave Malachor a second chance to be. But its people don’t need a queen, not anymore. They’ve built this kingdom themselves. Why can’t they rule it themselves?

Yes, it made sense. If Travis could create a world, then depart from it, why couldn’t she do the same with a kingdom? She pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the rapid beating of her heart.

“Are you all right, Your Majesty?” spoke a sharp‑edged voice.

Grace looked up from her wine to see Master Larad standing above her. He was clad in a twilight blue robe. His eyes glittered in a face that was made a fractured mosaic by a webwork of fine white scars.

She sighed. “Why does everyone keep asking me that tonight?”

He shrugged but said nothing. Larad never offered an answer unless he had a strong opinion.

“Did you speak to Alfin, the young man from Brelegond?” she said in hopes of changing the subject.

“Yes, for a few moments.” Larad’s expression soured. “Before Sir Tarus whisked him away. More confirmation will be needed, but I believe Alfin has significant talent.”

Grace smiled. “So, is everything well in your new tower?”

She had ordered a tower to be raised on the south side of the keep for the use of Larad and the Runelords, and construction had just recently been completed. The tower included a chamber on its highest floor built to house the three Imsari, for it was the mission of the new Runelords to guard the Great Stones. The tower also housed a runestone: a relic covered with writings of the Runelords of old, and which the new Runelords were actively studying. The runestone had been discovered beneath the keep last year, when the Embarran engineers performed an excavation in order to make some repairs to the foundations.

“It’s not my tower, Your Majesty,” Larad said, glowering. “It is yours. The Runelords dwell here at your pleasure.”

“No,” Grace said softly, tightening her right hand into a fist. “No, it’s not up to me. This is your home.”

Larad gave her a speculative look, but he did not respond to this statement. Instead he said, “I am sorry to disturb you during a time of merriment, Your Majesty, but I have made a discovery that I did not believe could wait.”

Actually, Grace suspected Larad was not sorry at all to disturb her with important news, and that was one reason she appreciated him. “What is it?”

“There’s something wrong with the runes.”

“You mean there’s something wrong with a specific rune you’re trying to understand?”

He sat at the high table beside her, his dark eyes intent. “No, Your Majesty, I mean with all runes. I began to suspect something was amiss about a month ago. Some of my fellow Runelords were beginning to have difficulty speaking runes they had previously mastered. They would speak a runespell just as they had before, but only a feeble energy would result, or no energy at all. I sent a missive to the Gray Tower, hoping for advice from All‑master Oragien, and last week I received his reply. It seems the same troubles have been plaguing the rune‑speakers there. Since then, I have performed many experiments, but only today were my misgivings proven beyond doubt.”

“How?” Grace said, her throat tight.

Larad held out his hand. On it was a triangular lump of black stone. One side was rough, the other three smooth and incised with runes. “This is a piece of the runestone, the one that was discovered beneath the keep.”

Shock coursed through Grace. “Why did you do it? Why did you speak the rune of breaking on the runestone?”

“I didn’t, Your Majesty,” Larad said with a rueful look. “This morning, one of the apprentices discovered this piece lying next to the runestone. It broke off on its own. And once I examined the runestone carefully, I saw many fine cracks that had not been there before.”

“But you can bind it again,” Grace said, glad the music drifting down from the gallery masked the rising pitch of her voice. “You can speak the rune of binding and fix it.”

“So I thought, until I tried.” Larad tightened his hand around the broken stone. “Despite all my efforts, I could not bind this piece back to the runestone.”

That was impossible. Larad was a Runelord–a real Runelord, like Travis Wilder. Speaking the rune of binding should not have been beyond him. Only it was.

Grace recalled her earlier conversation with Lursa. “You should talk to the witches. They’ve been having difficulty weaving a new spell. Maybe it’s not just rune magic that’s being affected.”

Larad raised an eyebrow. “If so, that is dark news indeed. I will speak to the witches. Perhaps they have sensed something I have not.”

And I’ll speak to some witches as well, Grace added to herself, resolved to ask Aryn and Lirith about it the next time they contacted her.

Larad begged his leave, and once the Runelord was gone Grace was no longer in the mood for revelry. She bid Melia and Falken and Kel good night, putting on a cheerful face. Even if Master Larad was right–and Grace had no doubt he was– there was no use spoiling the revel for everyone else until they knew more.

She left the great hall, ascended a spiral staircase, and started down the corridor that led to her chamber. The passage was dim, illuminated by only a scant collection of oil lamps, and as she rounded a corner she did not see the servingwoman until she collided with her. The old woman let out a grunt, and something fell to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Grace said, stumbling back. “I didn’t see you there.”

The other wore a shapeless gray dress and oversized bonnet. She bowed low and muttered fervently, no doubt making an apology, though Grace couldn’t understand a word of it.

“It’s all right,” Grace said. “Really, it was my fault.”

However, the old woman kept ducking her head.

So much for the whole not terrifying the servants thing, Grace thought with a sigh. She glanced down and saw that the object the old woman had dropped had rolled to a stop next to her feet. It was a ball of yarn. Grace bent to pick it up.

“Oh!” she said.

Carefully, she pulled the needle from the tip of her finger. It had been sticking out of the ball of yarn, but she hadn’t seen it in the dim light.

“Well, I suppose that evens the score,” she said with a wry smile.

Grace stuck the needle back into the ball of yarn, then held the ball out. The old woman accepted it in a wrinkled hand. She muttered something unintelligible–still not looking up –then shuffled away down the corridor, her ashen dress blending with the gloom. Grace shrugged, sucked on her bleeding finger, and headed to her chamber.

Two men‑at‑arms stood outside the door. Though it irked her they were always stationed there, they were one of the concessions she had made to Sir Tarus. The men‑at‑arms saluted as she approached. Grace gave them a self‑conscious nod in return– she still had no idea how she was supposed to greet them, if at all–then slipped into her room and pressed the door shut behind her, sighing at the blissful silence. Maybe the men‑at‑arms weren’t such a bad idea after all. They could keep King Kel from barging in at odd hours and asking her to dance.

Bone‑tired, she shucked off her woolen dress and shrugged on a nightgown, wincing as she did. Though the pain in her right arm never entirely went away, most of the time it was a dull, bearable ache. Tonight, however, despite all the wine she had drunk, it throbbed fiercely.

She held her arm to her chest, gazing at the lone candle burning on the sideboard. Its flame blazed hotly, just like his eyes had, burning into her as he raised his scepter, ready to smite her down. Only at the last moment the sky had broken, and as he looked up she had thrust the sword Fellring through a chink in his armor, up into his chest, cleaving the Pale King’s enchanted iron heart in two.

Fellring had shattered in the act, and Grace’s sword arm had been numb and lifeless for days afterward. Only slowly, over the course of many months, had she regained the use of it, and she knew it would never be the same again. But none of them were; the battles they had fought had changed them forever, and maybe it was all right to have some scars. That way they would never forget what they had done.

Grace blew out the candle and climbed into bed.

It wasn’t long before a dream took her, and an hour later she sat up, staring into the dark, her hair tangled with sweat. She clutched the bedclothes, willing her breathing to slow.

It was only a dream, Grace, she told herself, but it was hard to hear her own thoughts over the pounding in her ears.

It had been a wedding. The dream was so vivid, she could almost see them still: a king dressed all in white, and a queen clad in black. A radiance emanated from him, and he was handsome beyond all other men; a halo of light adorned his tawny head like a crown. She was like night to his day: dark of hair and eye and skin, a mysterious beauty wearing a gown woven of the stuff of shadows. They gazed at one another with a look of love. He took her dusky fingers in his pale hand as the priest–a commanding figure all in gray–spoke the rites of marriage.

Only before the priest could finish the words, a figure strode forward, a gigantic warrior. The people who had gathered to witness the marriage fled screaming, and the priest ran after them. The couple turned to face their foe. The warrior was neither light nor dark, solid nor transparent. He could be seen only by his jagged outlines, for where he was there was nothing at all, and he held a sword forged of nothingness in his hand.

You are the end of everything, the white king said.

The black queen shook her head. No, she said, her dark eyes full of sorrow. He is the beginning of nothing.

The warrior swung his empty sword, and both their heads, light and dark, fell to the ground, their bodies tumbling after.

That was when Grace woke. She climbed from the bed, lit the candle with a coal from the fire, and threw a shawl about her; despite the balmy night she was shivering.

Grace didn’t usually place much stock in dreams, but once she had had dreams about Travis Wilder that had come true, and this dream had been unusually vivid, like those had been. Only what did it mean? She didn’t recognize the light king or the dark queen, though in a way they made her think of Durge’s alchemical books. She had paged through some of them when she packed up the knight’s possessions a few months after he died. The books had been written in a kind of code and were rife with metaphorical tales about fiery men marrying watery ladies, resulting in the birth of new child elements with fantastical properties, such as the power to turn lead to gold, or to cause a man to live forever.

However, the king and queen in her dream hadn’t created something new. They had been slain. Slain by . . . nothing. Grace had no idea what it meant, if it meant anything at all. Which it almost certainly didn’t, she reminded herself. Dreams were simply the brain’s janitors, cleaning out the day’s synaptic garbage.

All the same, she knew rest would be impossible for the remainder of the night, and she felt trapped in the stuffy chamber. She needed to get out, to breathe some fresh air.

She padded to the door, weaving a quick spell about herself, so that the men‑at‑arms outside would detect her passing as no more than a fleeting shadow. It was a simple spell, but at first the threads of the Weirding seemed to slip through her fingers and tangle themselves in knots.

You’re just half‑asleep, Grace, that’s all.

She concentrated, and after some effort the spell was complete. It unraveled after less than a minute, but by then she was already ascending a spiral staircase and was well out of sight of the men‑at‑arms. Getting back into the chamber was going to be tricky, but she could worry about that later.

Pushing through a door, Grace stepped onto the battlements atop the keep. The night was clear and moonless. A zephyr caught her hair, brushing it back from her face, and she breathed deeply, feeling the sweat and fear of her dream evaporate.

Grace approached the south side of the battlement and cast her gaze upward. The stars were brighter and far closer‑seeming than those of Earth, as if Eldh’s heavens were not so very distant. She searched for a single point of crimson among the thousands of cool silver, hoping to glimpse Tira’s star. It wasn’t the same as hugging the small, silent, flame‑haired girl who had become a goddess, but seeing her star always made Grace feel a little closer to her.

However, there was no sign of Tira’s star near the peaks of the mountains. Maybe the hour was later than Grace thought. She craned her neck, raising her gaze higher into the sky.

It felt as if an invisible anesthesia mask had been pressed to her face, filling her lungs with cold, paralyzing her. The wind snatched her shawl from her shoulders, and it fluttered away like a wraith in the gloom. In the center of the sky was a dark hole where no stars shone. The hole was larger than Eldh’s large moon, its edges jagged like the warrior in her dream.

Only that was impossible. A circle of stars couldn’t simply vanish. Something was simply covering them up–a cloud perhaps. She blinked; and then she did see something in the dark rift: a fiery spark. Was it Tira’s star?

No. The spark grew brighter, closer, descending toward Grace. A new wind struck her face, hot and acrid, knocking her back a step. Vast, membranous wings unfurled like shadows, and the one spark resolved into two: a pair of blazing eyes. Even as Grace realized what it was, the dragon swooped down, alighting atop the battlement, its talons digging into solid stone as the keep groaned beneath its weight.

Grace knew she had to flee. She should run down the stairs and sound an alarm. Only then the dragon moved its sinuous neck, turning its wedge‑shaped head toward her, and she could not move. So close was the thing that she could feel its dusty breath on her face as it spoke, and in that moment she realized she had met this creature once before.

“The end of all things draws nigh, Grace Beckett,” the dragon Sfithrisir hissed. “And you and Travis Wilder must stop it.”

11.

The dragon folded its wings against its sleek body; the stones of the keep shuddered under its weight. Four years ago, when they first encountered Sfithrisir in a high valley in the Fal Erenn, Grace had thought the dragon looked like an enormous, sooty swan. Now it seemed more like a vulture to her. Its featherless hide absorbed the starlight, and its eyes glowed like coals. The small, saurian head wove slowly at the end of a ropelike neck, and a constant hiss of steam escaped the bony hook of its beak.

Fear and smoke choked her. For some reason the reek made her think of the smell of burning books. Grace fought for breath and to keep her wits. She had to have both if she was going to survive.

“Answer . . . answer me this, and an answer you shall have,” she said in a trembling voice, speaking the ancient greeting she had learned from Falken, and the proper way to address a dragon. “One secret for one secret in trade. Why have you–?”

“Mist and misery!” the dragon snorted, the words emanating from deep in its gullet. “There is no time for foolish rituals concocted by mortals whose bones have long ago turned to dust. I did not come here to barter with you for secrets, Blademender. The age for such petty games is over. Did you not hear what I spoke? The end of all things comes. Have you not seen the rift in the sky? Surely it has grown large enough that even your mortal eyes can see it now. And it will keep growing. Now it conceals the stars, but soon it will swallow them, and worlds as well. It will not cease until it has consumed everything there is to consume, until all that remains is nothing.”

Grace gritted her teeth and did her best to look the dragon in the eyes, though matching the weaving of its head made her queasy. Sfithrisir wasn’t lying about the rift; dragons could only speak truth–though that truth was always twisted to their own ends.

“I don’t understand, Sfithrisir,” she said, sticking to the truth as closely as she could, but formulating it carefully, like a dragon herself. “I thought the destruction of the world was what your kind craved.” The dragons had existed long before the Worldsmith created Eldh, dwelling in the gray mists before time.

“The end of the world, yes! How I loathe this wretched creation.” His talons raked the stones, cracking them. “It is a prison, binding us and everything in it. Blast the Worldsmith for making it.”

Despite her fear, Grace managed a grim laugh. “Travis Wilder is the Worldsmith now.”

“Do you think I do not know that, mortal?” The dragon ruffled its wings. “I am Sfithrisir, He Who Is Seen And Not Seen. In all of time, no one’s hoard of secrets has been greater than mine. I know what Travis Wilder has done. Runebreaker he was. He destroyed the world just as I knew he would. Only then he betrayed us by making it anew. That I had not foreseen, and if I could, I would burn him to ashes for it.”

Grace held a hand to her forehead. “If you’re so mad at Travis for forging the world again, shouldn’t you be happy about the rift in the sky?”

“You know nothing, mortal. Do you think this material thing you see before you is all that I am?”

The dragon sidled closer and the air about it rippled, distorting everything around it like images seen through crystal. It felt as if Grace’s own body was stretching and contracting in impossible dimensions. The sensation was not painful, but wrenching and deeply wrong.

“You believe order gives power and purpose,” the dragon said. “But you are mistaken. Order only limits, confines. In the chaos before this world existed, there was such freedom as you cannot possibly imagine. There were no limitations, no arbitrary rules to be obeyed. I would destroy this world, yes. I would return to the mayhem of before.”

“Then why fight against the rift?”

Sfithrisir’s wings spread out like smoky sails. “Because the rift discerns not between a world of stone and air and water and fire, or a world of formless mists! At the rift’s borders, all of being ends–order and chaos alike. It is the annihilation of all existence, not only for this world, but for all those worlds that draw near to it.”

A shard of understanding pierced Grace, freezing her heart and shattering her soul. She could comprehend destruction. A rock could be crushed to dust, a piece of wood burned to ash, a living organism sent back to the soil that gave it life. But in each case something–dust, ash, soil–remained. Travis had destroyed the world Eldh when he broke the First Rune, but even before he forged the world anew somethinghad existed. He had told her about it: the gray, swirling mists of possibility.

But the rift was not like that. Inside it was neither light nor dark. It was a place without potential, without possibility. It was a vacuum, a field in which nothing existed, or could ever exist. In that moment, in the presence of Sfithrisir, Grace truly understood what the rift was. It was Pandora’s box emptied of everything it had contained.

It was the end of hope.

Grace clutched her stomach. She was going to be ill. No human mind should try to comprehend what hers just had. But already the crystalline moment of understanding was passing, her mortal faculties too feeble to hold on to it.

“It’s . . . it’s like the demon below Tarras, isn’t it?” she gasped. “The sorcerers had bound one of the morndari, and it wanted to consume everything in the city. It almost did.”

“Wrong again, mortal. The spirits, the beings which the sorcerers call Those Who Thirst, come from a place which is like this world reflected in a mirror. It is the opposite of this creation in all ways, a place not of being, but of unbeing. Yet all the same, it is something; it exists. The rift will eradicate the morndarijust like everything else.”

Despair weighed upon Grace, pressing her down like a hundred blankets. The dragon’s words rang in her mind. The world would cease to be. And those worlds which drew near it.

Earth, she said to herself. He means Earth.But the name hardly felt real, as if the world it signified was already gone, its lands, its cities, its people swallowed by the rift and replaced by nothing at all.

“How?” Grace said. “How can Travis and I do anything to stop it?”

“I am wise beyond all,” Sfithrisir said, letting out a soft hiss of steam. “Yet even I do not know the answer to that question.”

Sudden anger filled Grace. She clenched a fist and shook it at the dragon. “I don’t believe you. You’re supposed to know everything. Even Olrig had to steal the secret of the runes from you.”

Sfithrisir’s head bobbed in what seemed a shrug. “And can you truly steal knowledge, mortal? Is not the knowledge retained by the one it is stolen from even as the thief makes off with it?”

Grace’s anger faded. Somehow the dragon’s words made sense to her. Olrig stole the runes from the dragons, who had heard them spoken by the Worldsmith. But Olrig wasthe Worldsmith.

There have been countless Worldsmiths, Grace. Olrig or Sia or whoever the last Worldsmith is wasn’t the first. The world before this one was destroyed, and afterward only the dragons remained. They’ve always been there, watching, listening, hoarding knowledge. Then Olrig learned the runes of creation from them, just like all the other Worldsmiths before him must have, and used the runes to make Eldh.

Which meant, much as the dragons loathed creation, they were part of its cycle. And that was why Sfithrisir had come to her. If the rift continued to grow, Eldh would never be created again. Or destroyed again.

“You don’t know we can stop it,” Grace said, looking up at the dragon, meeting its smoldering eyes. “If there’s nothing in the rift, then your knowledge ends at its borders. There’s no way you could possibly know that Travis and I have the power to stop it.”

The dragon’s wedge‑shaped head ceased its constant movement. “Perhaps your mind is not so limited after all. No, I cannot see into the rift, and so I know not how it can be defeated. All the same, much as I loathe this creation, I know it must be saved, and that you and Travis Wilder have the power to do so. The knowledge of it is woven into the very fabric of this world, and I have read it there. I do not know how to close the rift. But this one thing I do know: Only the Last Rune can save this world.”

“You mean the rune Eldh?”

“No,” the dragon hissed, eyes sparking. “Eldh was the first rune spoken at the forging of this world, and it was the last rune at the end of this world. But what will be spoken at the end of all being, of all worlds? Even I do not know the rune for that.”

The dragon uncoiled its long neck, stretching its head toward the sky, spreading its wings. Red light tinged the horizon. Dawn was coming. The dragon beat its wings. Its talons left the stones of the battlement.

“Wait!” Grace shouted over the roar of the wind, reaching a hand upward. “How can I find out what the Last Rune is?”

“Seek the one who destroyed this world.” Sfithrisir rose upward in a cloud of smoke. “He will come in search of it.”

The creature beat its gigantic wings, and Grace was knocked back by the blast. By the time she looked up, the dragon was a red spark in the gray sky. The spark winked out and was gone.

Footsteps sounded behind her, and Grace turned to see Sir Tarus along with the Spiders Aldeth and Samatha running toward her across the battlement.

“Your Majesty!” Tarus said breathlessly as they reached her. “Are you injured? By all the Seven, that was a sight I never dreamed I would see in my life. Are you well? Did it harm you?”

She was so dazed she could only shake her head.

Samatha gripped a bow, aiming an arrow at the sky, then swore. “It’s gone. I can’t see it anymore.”

“It’s not as if an arrow would have done you any good against a dragon,” Aldeth said with a snort.

Samatha lowered the bow and glared at him, the expression making her face even more weasel‑like. “And how would you know? Have you ever met a dragon before?”

“No,” Aldeth said. He looked at Grace, his gray eyes solemn. “But Her Majesty has.”

Grace gazed up at the sky. It was getting lighter. The stars had faded, and she could no longer see the rift. Only it was still there. And it was growing.

“What is it, Your Majesty?” Tarus said, touching her arm. “Are you certain you are not harmed?”

“I’m fine, Sir Tarus. Let’s go downstairs. I need to talk to Melia and Falken at once.”

However, it was Aryn and Lirith she spoke to first.

Their voices came to her across the Weirding just as the sun crested the summits of the southern mountains. She was in her chamber, hastily donning a gown so she could go downstairs, when Aryn’s voice spoke to her as clearly as if the blue‑eyed witch had been in the chamber.

Grace, can you hear me?

She gripped the back of a chair, gasping in surprise and delight.

Aryn, yes, it’s me. I can hear you just fine.

Happiness hummed across the threads of the Weirding, and love. But there was more. A sense of urgency, and something else. Before Grace could ask about it, another voice spoke– deeper, smokier.

Sister, it is so good to be with you again, even if only over the web of the Weirding.

Despite all that had happened, Grace couldn’t help smiling. “Lirith,” she murmured aloud. Then, in her mind, How is Sareth? And little Taneth? And your al‑Mama?

Very well, though given to fussing a bit.

Which one do you mean?

All three of them, I confess, Lirith said, her laughter like chimes in Grace’s mind. But I departed the south several weeks ago. Taneth and I are in Calavere now, with Aryn and Teravian. They’re both doing well, and Aryn looks beautiful.

No, I look large, came Aryn’s reply. I don’t think I’m ever going to have this baby. I’m just going to keep getting more enormous. Soon I won’t be able to fit in the castle at all, and Teravian will have no choice but to erect a gigantic tent for me in a field.

Grace could imagine Lirith pressing dark, slender hands against Aryn’s belly. Do not believe her, Grace. The baby is healthy and will come very soon. And I can see in Teravian’s eyes every time he looks at her that he has never found his queen more lovely.

Grace didn’t doubt it. She sighed, wishing she could be there with the two witches and spend all day laughing and talking about such simple joys. Only . . .

What is it, Grace?Aryn said. Something is wrong, isn’t it? Lirith was certain of it when she woke this morning.

Grace gripped the chair. Have you had a vision, Lirith?

No, I haven’t. And that’s what’s so strange. I haven’t had a vision in months. Or at least . . .

At least what?

She could sense Lirith struggling for words. I suppose I have had visions. Or what feels like a vision of the Sight to me. The same queer feeling comes over me, and my gaze goes distant, or so Sareth tells me, and I have the usual headache when the spell passes. Only it’s as if the magic is broken somehow. I never see anything with the Sight anymore. Instead, I see nothing. Nothing at all.

A coldness came over Grace, and she sank into the chair. Your magic isn’t broken, Lirith.

She told them everything, sending words, thoughts, and feelings over the Weirding, so that in moments they knew all that had happened. I think you did have a vision, Lirith. If Sfithrisir is right, if the rift keeps growing, then that’s all there will be in the future: nothing. Just as you saw.

She could feel both Aryn and Lirith recoil in horror. However, neither had seen the rift, nor had they heard of anyone who had. That gave Grace a small amount of hope. The rift must only be visible in the far north. That meant it was still small. And that meant there was still time to do something. At least, she had to believe that.

Do you think the rift has something to do with what’s happening to rune magic?Lirith said.

Grace curled up in the chair, hugging her legs to her chest. I suppose it’s too much to believe it’s a coincidence. And it’s not just the Runelords. Lately, the witches here have been struggling with weaving spells.

That is troubling news, came Aryn’s reply. I confess, it was more difficult than usual to reach you over the Weirding. Were it not for Lirith’s aid, I’m not sure I would have succeeded.

So magic was being affected in the south, not just the north. That was troubling news.

I have to go, Grace said reluctantly. I have to talk to Melia and Falken about what we’re going to do.

Wait, Grace, Lirith said, and something in her voice made Grace sit up straight in the chair. We have news ourselves. Such strange news . . .

Grace stared, her body going numb, as she listened to Lirith speak of the letter she had received from Sareth just last night, brought to Calavere by a rider from the south. After three thousand years, Morindu the Dark, lost city of sorcerers, had been found. But it was not so much the news that stunned Grace as the name of the dervish who had brought this knowledge to the Mournish.

Grace, I’m getting tired, Aryn said when Lirith finished. I know there’s so much to talk about, but I can’t hold on to this thread any longer. It keeps slipping through my fingers. We’ll have to talk again later.

“No, wait!” Grace cried out, standing. “Please don’t go!” But their threads had already slipped away.

She moved to the window, gazing outside, letting the morning sun fall on her face. A hawk wheeled against the flawless blue sky.

“How?” she murmured, her hand creeping up her chest, pressing against her heart. “How did you get here, Hadrian?”

That was a question that would have to wait. However, this news changed everything. Grace no longer needed Melia and Falken to help her decide what to do. She already knew.

Seek the one who destroyed this world, the dragon had said. He will come in search of it. . . .

Travis would help her find the Last Rune–the rune that had the power to stop the rift.

And now she knew where she would find Travis.

Grace turned from the window, opened the door, and went downstairs to tell Melia and Falken that she was leaving Malachor.

12.

Vani and Beltan were already moving toward the back of the flat before the sound of falling glass ceased. The blond man paused to grab his sword from the wall above the sofa. Its broad blade gleamed, a decoration no longer.

“Travis,” he said gruffly, “you and Deirdre stay in here.”

Travis gave a wordless nod, then the knight and the T’golvanished into the darkened hallway. His heart raced, but all it would take was a single spell cast by a sorcerer and its beating would stop forever.

He bent down on one knee. “Come here, Nim.”

The girl walked to him, her gold‑flecked eyes solemn, and pressed a small hand against his cheek. “You shouldn’t be afraid. Mother always sends the gold men away, and this time she has my father Beltan to help her. He’s very strong, you know.”

Despite his fear, Travis couldn’t help smiling. “Yes, he is.” He scooped the girl into his arms, amazed at how light she was, and stood. Deirdre was frantically dialing a number on her cell phone.

“What are you doing?” Travis whispered.

She held the phone to her ear and ran a hand through her shaggy red‑black hair. “Calling for backup.”

Holding Nim, Travis took a step toward the hallway. He couldn’t see Beltan and Vani anymore; they must have slipped into the bedroom. There was no sound now. What was happening in there?

By the hand of Olrig, why don’t you go find out for yourself? Jack Graystone’s voice spoke in his mind. You’re a Runelord, Travis. You can take out a mere sorcerer. You’ve done it before.

Yes, he had slain a sorcerer before, but not with rune magic. It had been in Castle City, in the year 1883, when he had finally come face‑to‑face with the Scirathi who had followed them through the gate. A drop of blood from the scarab had entered Travis’s veins, and that blood of power had allowed him to turn the death spell back on the Scirathi, slaying him.

That’s right, I quite forgot, Jack’s voice spoke excitedly in his mind. Runes won’t be much help on this world without the Great Stones to lend them some punch. But you’re a sorcerer now yourself, and a fine one at that. You have nothing to fear from them, my boy.

Travis was quite certain Jack was wrong about that. All the same, he started toward the kitchen to get a knife.

Behind him, Deirdre swore softly. Travis halted and turned around. “What’s the matter?”

She lowered the cell phone. “My partner, Anders, wasn’t home. I was leaving a message on his machine, only then there was a burst of static and the phone went dead.”

Nim tightened her arms around Travis’s neck. “The air feels funny,” she said. “It’s all tickly.”

Travis tilted his head back and shut his eyes. He didn’t know how she had sensed it, but Nim was right. Power crackled on the air.

His eyes snapped open. “Deirdre, get away from the–”

The front door of the flat burst open in a spray of wood.

Deirdre stumbled to her knees under the force of the blast, the cell phone flying out of her hands. Travis hugged Nim to him. In the doorway stood a figure clad in black, a serene gold face nestled into the cowl of its robe. Before Travis could think, the sorcerer raised a hand, stretching its fingers toward him.

Nim screamed, and Travis felt his heart lurch in his chest.

“Meleq!” he shouted.

The rune was weak–weaker than he would have expected even here on Earth–but it was enough to lift a chunk of wood from the floor and fling it at the sorcerer. The blow was far too feeble to cause damage, but on instinct the sorcerer moved his hand to bat the chunk of wood aside. Travis felt his heart resume its rapid cadence.

“Sinfath!”

A sick feeling came over him, just as when he had tried to bind the broken plate and failed. The sorcerer stepped through the door. Travis swallowed the bile in his throat.

“Sinfath!” he shouted again.

This time it worked, though again the rune was pitifully weak. All the same, a foggy patch of gloom precipitated out of thin air around the sorcerer. It would obscure his vision, but only for a moment.

“Come on,” he croaked, grabbing Deirdre’s hand and hauling her to her feet. Clutching Nim to his chest, Travis ran toward the hallway, Deirdre stumbling on his heels.

They were only halfway across the living room when the windows shattered, knives of glass slicing the curtains to shreds. Black gloves parted the tatters of cloth, and a second figure hopped down from the windowsill, robe fluttering like shadowy wings as it alighted on the floor.

Travis stopped short, and Deirdre crashed into him. He shot a glance over his shoulder in time to see the last effects of his runespell dissipate. The first sorcerer stalked toward them, while the second positioned himself in front of the entrance to the hallway, blocking their egress.

“What do we do?” Deirdre hissed, grabbing his arm.

“Nothing,” he said.

Behind the second sorcerer, the air in the hallway rippled, like the surface of a pool disturbed by a falling stone. Travis’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a feral grin, and the Scirathi tilted his gold mask to one side in what seemed a quizzical expression.