"The Akhendi khirnari?" asked Alec.

"No, Nyal. Caring for the lover who threw you over shows more character than I have."

Alec allowed himself a smug grin. "See? I knew you were wrong about him."

Amali huddled in darkness by the bedchamber window, fighting back tears as Rhaish thrashed again in his sleep. He would not tell her what his dreams were, though they grew worse every night, making him sweat and groan. If she woke him he would cry out, glaring at her with mad, sightless eyes.

Amali a Yassara was no stranger to fear; she'd seen her family skirt starvation, driven by it out of the lands they knew to live like beggars in the streets of successive towns and cities across Akhendi. She'd let Nyal heal her fears for a time, but he wanted to take her away, to wander like a teth'brimash again. It was Rhaish who'd saved her, lifted her up and made her proud again to wear the sen'gai of her people. Her parents and brothers ate at the khirnari's table now, and she carried the khirnari's son under her heart. Before the Skalans had come, bearing hope, she had felt safe. Now her husband shouted madness in his sleep.

With a guilty shudder, she felt in the pocket of her nightdress for the warding charm Nyal had given her to mend. It wasn't his, but it was a link to him, an excuse to meet again when she'd finished with it. Her fingers stroked the crude knots of the wristband: a child's work, but effective. Nyal's fingers had brushed her palm as he'd given it to her when they first arrived at the House of Pillars. She let herself savor the memory of that touch, and those that followed; his fingers on her hair, his arms around her, shielding her for a little while from all her fears and worries. It wasn't the Ra'basi she ached for now, but the sense of peace he'd always been able to give her— just never for long enough.

She pushed the charm back into her pocket, her talisman to summon that comfort again if she needed it. Drying her tears, she found a soft cloth and went to wipe her beloved's brow. '

18

Magyana

Cool mountain air against her face. Jagged peaks against a flawless sky. One more pass to traverse and she'd be on the high plains beyond. She closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the mingled scents of wet stone, wild thyme, and the sweat steaming from her horse's withers.

Freedom. Nothing ahead of her but endless days of exploration—

Magyana jerked out of her doze as the quill slipped from her fingers. Her mouth was dry. The stale, overheated air inside the queen's tent made her head ache. The dream had been so clear—for just an instant a flash of resentment overwhelmed her. I never asked for this!

Retrieving the fallen pen, Magyana trimmed it and settled resignedly back in her chair. Freedom was an illusion she'd been able to maintain too well for too many years. The gifts that raised a wizard to the highest levels of the Oreska came with a price— different for each, according to their talents.

The bill for her wandering years had come due, and here she sat, unable to do more than watch over the best of queens as Idrilain fought death, her final adversary.

Being Idrilain, she had managed to rally, at least for a time. Klia's departure for Aurenen had somehow buoyed her. In the month since,

she clung doggedly to life, even putting on a little flesh as the infection in her lungs receded. Most days she hovered in a murky half-sleep, surfacing now and then into lucid conversation, catching up with a few questions on the progress of the war and Klia's mission, though of the latter there was still cruelly little to report. Neither strong enough nor willing to make the long journey back to Rhiminee, Idrilain was content to remain in what was now essentially Phoria's camp. As Queen's Wizard, Magyana remained with her, trapped in this stuffy tent, surrounded by medicine vessels and the heavy smell of illness and an old woman dying—

Magyana pushed away the guilty thoughts. Yet tied she was, by love, oath, and honor, until Idrilain saw fit to release her, or was released herself.

Leaving the queen to sleep, Magyana carried her chair and writing materials outside. Late-afternoon light bathed the sprawling encampment in a deceptively gentle light. Dipping her pen in the inkpot, she began again.

"My dear Thero, yesterday the Plenimarans drove a line of Mycenian troops back to within a few miles of where I sit. In Skala more towns have been burned along the eastern coast. Stories of a darker sort come in from all quarters—half a regiment of White Hawk archers stricken in one night, overwhelmed by evil vapors; dead men rising to strangle their own comrades; a dyrmagnos summoning ghostly terrors and fountains of fire in broad daylight. Some are mere soldiers' tales, but a few have been verified. Our colleague, Elutheus, himself witnessed a necromancer calling down lightning at Gresher's Ford.

"Even Phoria cannot discount such reports, but she stubbornly maintains that such attacks are so isolated as to be of little concern. In the short term, she may be right. With the destruction of the Helm, the Overlord's necromancers cannot command enough power to overwhelm us with mere magic, but the threat of it among our soldiers, fed by rumor and report, does great harm nonetheless.

"The news is not all bad, however. To Phoria's credit, she is a decisive leader, if not a diplomatic one, and the generals trust her. Over the past week she has organized significant strikes against enemy forces to the east, and has had several victories. Tell Klia that her friend, Commander Myrhini, captured fifty enemy horses. A great coup indeed, as many cavalry soldiers are afoot for lack of mounts to replace those killed in battle. Others are making do with whatever horses they can commandeer about the countryside, a situation that is not endearing them to the locals.

"The third of Klia's dispatches reached us here yesterday. Phoria said little, but her impatience is clear. Surely some small concession can be coaxed from the Iia'sidra? Otherwise, I fear she will recall you. With every new death of an able commander reported, Klia's presence on the field is more greatly missed."

Magyana paused, considering information she dared not entrust to writing, even in such a message as this. Like the fact that she, eldest of the remaining Oreska wizards, dared not openly translocate this parchment to her protege lest Phoria hear of it. The Princess Royal made no secret of her distrust of wizards in general, and her mother's adviser in particular. Magyana had already been summoned once to explain her actions, and for nothing more than performing a scry at General Armeneus's request. In the weeks since Phoria had taken over as War Commander, a subtle shift had occurred. Watchful eyes and ears were at work for her in every quarter, including those of that handsome snake, Captain Traneus.

Klia has enough to occupy her mind, thought Magyana, obscuring the letter with a spell only Thero could unravel. She would put it in the hands of the dispatch rider herself later. Let Traneus make of that what he would.

19

Another Evening's Entertainment

The dream was less coherent this time, but more vivid. The burning room was still his old chamber in Bokthersa, yet here were the heads of Thryis and the others glaring at him from the mantelpiece. There was no chance this time to choose what things to save, what to abandon. Fire raced up the hangings of the bed, the draperies, up his legs, but its touch was deadly cold.

The smoke boiling up through the floorboards thickened the band of sunlight spilling into the little chamber, blinding him with its bright glare. His throat was full, his hands useless.

Across the room, just visible through the smoke, a lean figure moved closer.

"No!" he thought. "Not here. Never here."

liar's presence made no more sense than that of the glass spheres he clutched so desperately in both hands. The flames cleared before Ilar as he approached, his smile warm and welcoming.

So handsome. So graceful.

Seregil had forgotten how the man moved, light and easy as a lynx. Almost close enough to touch now.

Seregil felt the cold flames eating into him, felt smooth glass slipping through his fingers.

Ilar reached for him. No, he was offering him something, a bloody sword.

"No!" Seregil shouted, clutching frantically at the glass orbs. "No, I don't want it!"

Seregil started up in bed, drenched in sweat and amazed to find Alec still asleep beside him. Hadn't he been shouting?

Shout? he thought in sudden alarm. He couldn't even get his breath. The cold smoke from the dream still filled his lungs, making even the slight weight of Alec's arm across his chest a stifling burden. He was choking, suffocating.

He slid out of bed as carefully as his rising panic allowed, still irrationally concerned about waking Alec. Snatching up discarded clothing, he blundered out into the dimly lit corridor.

Breath came easier once he was in motion. But when he paused to drag on his breeches and boots, the smothering sensation overwhelmed him again. He hurried on, pulling on the surcoat—Alec's, it turned out—as he went.

He was practically running now, past the second landing and on down the broader staircase that led to the hall.

What am I doing?

He slowed, and as if in answer, the breath locked tight in his chest. So he blundered on, praying he didn't meet anyone in his current state.

Raw instinct guided him down a side passage and out through the kitchen to the stable court. The moon was down, the shadows thick. A murmur of voices and a faint glow of firelight near the gate marked where the sentries stood, just outside the gate. Scaling the back wall unseen was a simple feat for the man once know as—

Haba

—the Rhiminee Cat.

The soft turf of the street muffled the sound of his boots as he jumped down from the top of the wall and loped away, the unfastened coat flapping loosely around his bare sides.

For a while the feel of his heart and breath and the long legs carrying him along were enough to fend off thought. Gradually, however, he grew calmer, and the panicked dash slowed to a walking meditation.

The confusion of the Cockerel with his childhood room—a homecoming of sorts? he wondered, beginning to pick away at the dream that had precipitated this headlong nocturnal perambulation.

But the rest: glass orbs, fire, smoke, Ilar. Try as he might, the dream's import still eluded him.

But then again, the images spoke of the past he'd mourned and here he was, alone under the stars, as he'd so often dreamed of being during the lonely years in Skala.

Alone with his own thoughts.

Introspection had never been a favorite pastime. In fact, he was quite skilled at avoiding it. "Take what the Lightbearer sends and be thankful." How many times had he quoted that, his creed, his catalyst, his bulwark against self-revelation?

The Lightbearer sent dreams—and madness. His thin mouth tilted into a humorless smirk: better not to dwell too long on that. Nonetheless, this dream had driven him out alone for the first time since their arrival in Sarikali. Goose flesh prickled his skin, and he fastened the coat, noting absently that it was a little loose in the shoulders for him.

Alec.

Seregil had been with him or others day and night without cease since their arrival, making it a simple matter to fill every waking moment with the business at hand—so many concerns, so much to do. So very easy to stave off the thoughts brewing since he'd set foot in Gedre—hell, since Beka had told him about this mission in the first place.

Exile

Traitor

Alone here in the haunted stillness of a Sarikali night, he was stripped of his defenses.

Murderer

Guest slayer

With hallucinatory clarity, he felt the hardness of a long-gone dagger's hilt clenched in his right fist, felt again for the first time the jar and give as the blade sank into the outraged Haman's—

You knew him. He had a name. His father's voice now, filled with disgust.

Dhymir i Tilmani Nazien

Guest slayer

—into Dhymir i Tilmani Nazien's chest all those nights and years and deaths ago. There was an obscene simplicity to that sensation. How was it that it took less effort, less strength, to stab the life from a person than to carve one's mark in a tavern tabletop?

With that thought came the old unanswerable question: What had made him draw steel against another when he could just as easily

have run away? With a single stroke he'd taken a life and changed the entire course of his own. One stroke.

It had been almost nine years before he killed again, this time to protect himself and the Mycenian thief who'd taught him the first rudiments of the nightrunner's trade in the dark stews and filthy streets of Keston. That killing had been fraught with no such doubts. His teacher had been pleased, said she could make a first-class snuffer of him, but even under her questionable tutelage he had never killed unless driven to it.

Later still, when he'd killed a clumsy ambusher to protect a young, recently met companion named Micum Cavish, his new friend had assumed it was Seregil's first time and made him lick a little of the blood from the blade, an old soldier's custom.

"Drink the blood of your first kill and the ghosts of that and any other can't haunt you," Micum had promised, so earnest, so well intentioned. Seregil had never had the heart to confess that it was already far too late, or that only one death had ever haunted him, one that galled enough to pay off all the others.

A glint of light ahead as he rounded a corner broke in on his thoughts. He'd been striding along without thought of direction, or so he'd imagined. A grim smile tugged at the corner of his mouth when he realized that his wandering feet had taken him deep into Haman tupa.

The light came from a large, brazier, and in the compass of its flickering glow he saw the men gathered around it. They were young, and drinking. Even at a distance, he recognized a few of them from the council chamber, including several of Nazien's kin.

If he turned now, they'd never know he'd been there.

But he didn't turn, or even slow.

Take what the Lightbearer sends—

With a perverse shiver of excitement, he squared his shoulders, smoothed his hair back, and strolled on, passing close enough for the firelight to strike the side of his face. He said nothing, gave no greeting or provocation, but he could not suppress a small, giddy smile as a half dozen pairs of eyes widened, then tracked him with instant recognition and hatred. The tightness in Seregil's chest returned as he felt the burn of their gaze between his shoulder blades.

The inevitable attack was swift, but strangely quiet. There was the expected rush of feet, then hands grasped at him out of the darkness. They slung him against a wall, then threw him to the ground. Seregil raised his arms instinctively to cover his face but made no other move to protect himself. Boots and fists found him again,

striking from all directions, finding his belly and groin and the still tender arrow bruise on his shoulder. He was picked up, shoved from one man to another, pummeled, spat on, flung down, and kicked some more. The darkness in front of his eyes lit up momentarily in a burst of white sparks as a foot connected with the back of his head.

It might have gone on for minutes or hours. The pain was crude, erratic, exquisite.

Satisfying.

"Guest slayer!" they hissed as they struck. "Exile!" "Nameless!"

Strange how sweet such epithets sounded when flavored with the dry lilt of Haman, he thought, floating dreamily near unconsciousness. He'd have thanked them if he could have drawn breath to speak, but they were intent on preventing that.

Where are your knives?

The beating stopped as abruptly as it had begun, though he knew without uncurling to look around that they were still standing over him. A muttered order was given, but he couldn't make out the words over the ringing in his ears.

Then a hot, stinging stream of liquid struck him in the face. Another fell across his splayed legs and a third hit his chest.

Ah, he thought, blinking piss from his eyes. Nice touch, that.

Giving him a few last disdainful kicks, they left him, tipping over the brazier as they went as if to deny him the comfort of its warmth. They could just as easily have emptied it onto him.

Noble Haman. Merciful brothers.

A low chuckle scraped out of his chest like a twist of rusty wire. Oh, it hurt to laugh—he had a few cracked ribs to remember the night by—but once he got started he couldn't stop. The breathless gasps grew to undignified giggles, then bloomed into raw, full-throated cackles that racked fresh pain through his sides and head. The sound would probably draw the Haman back, but he was too far gone to care. Red spots swirled in front of his eyes, and he had the strangest sensation that if he didn't stop laughing soon, his unmarked face would come loose from his head like an ill-fitted mask.

Eventually the whoops lessened to hiccups and snorts, then dwindled to whimpers. He felt amazingly light, cleansed even, though his dry mouth tasted bitterly of piss. Crawling a few feet to safer ground, he sprawled on the dew-laden grass, licking moisture from the blades beneath his lips. There was just enough moisture to torment him. Giving up, he staggered to his feet.

"That's all right," he mumbled to no one in particular. "Time to go home now."

Something twisted painfully in his chest as he whispered the word again.

Home.

Seregil wasn't sure afterwards just how he got back to the guest house, but when he came to he was curled up in a back corner of the bath chamber, dawn light streaming in softly around him through the open windows. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to move. It hurt to have his eyes open, so he closed them.

Hurried footsteps brought him around.

"How did he get there?"

"I don't know." That was Olmis, one of the servants. "I found him when I arrived to heat the water."

"Didn't anyone see?"

"I asked the guards. No one heard anything."

Seregil cracked an eyelid and saw Alec kneeling beside him. He looked furious.

"Seregil, what happened to you?" he asked, then recoiled, nose wrinkling in disgust at the rank odor emanating from Seregil's damp clothing. "Bilairy's Guts, you stink!"

"I went for a walk." Fire erupted in Seregil's side as he spoke, turning the words to gaps.

"Last night, you mean?"

"Yes. Just had to—walk off a bad dream." The ghost of a chuckle slipped out before he could stop it. More pain.

Alec stared at him, then motioned for Olmis to help strip off the filthy clothing. Both let out startled exclamations as they opened his coat. Seregil could guess what he must look like by now.

"Who did this to you?" Alec demanded.

Seregil considered the question, then sighed. "I fell in the dark."

"Down a privy, by the smell of him," muttered Olmis, wrestling off his breeches.

Alec knew he was lying, of course. Seregil could tell by the hard set of his lover's mouth as he helped Olmis lift him into a warm bath and wash away what they could of the night's debacle.

They probably tried to be gentle with him, but Seregil hurt too much to appreciate the effort. He didn't feel light anymore. The night's euphoric spell was broken; this pain was dull, nauseating,

and constant—no brilliant flashes or crests. Closing his eyes, he endured the bath, endured being lifted out and swathed in a soft blanket. He let himself drift off, away from the massive throbbing in his head.

"I should fetch Mydri," Olmis was saying, his voice already faint in Seregil's ears.

"I don't want anyone else seeing him like this. Not his sisters, especially not the princess. This never happened," Alec told him.

Well done, tali, Seregil thought. I don't want to have to explain it, either, because I can't.

Seregil awoke propped up in a soft bed. Squinting up in confusion, he made out the play of firelight on rippling gauze hangings overhead.

"You slept all day."

Moving only his eyes, Seregil found Alec in a chair close beside their bed, a book open across his lap.

"Where—?" he rasped.

"So you fell, did you?"

Snapping the book shut, Alec leaned forward to place a cup of water to Seregil's lips, then one containing a milky sweet concoction that Seregil fervently hoped was either a painkiller or swift poison. He had to lift his head slightly to drink, and when he did, hot wires of pain drew taut in his neck and throat. He swallowed as quickly as he could and sank back, praying he didn't vomit it back up. That would involve far too much movement.

"I told everyone you came down with a fever in the night." This time there was no mistaking Alec's tightly reined anger.

Something fell into place in Seregil's addled brain. "I wasn't out spying without you." He longed for some of the previous night's hysteria to buoy him, but it was long gone, leaving him flat and depressed.

"What, then?" Alec demanded, pulling back the blankets. "Who did this to you, and why?"

Glancing down, Seregil saw that his ribs were expertly bandaged, the bands just tight enough to ease the pain and help the cracked bones to knit. The rest of his naked body was covered with a truly impressive array of bruises of varying sizes and shapes. The acrid stink of urine had been replaced by the cloying aroma of some herbal salve. He could see the greasy sheen of it on his skin.

"Nyal bound you up," Alec informed him, replacing the bedclothes with hands far more gentle than his tone. "I waited until the others left for the day, then brought him up. No one else knows about this yet, except Olmis. I told them both to keep quiet. Now, who did this?"

"I don't know. It was dark." Seregil closed his eyes. It wasn't too great a lie, really; he'd known only one of them by name, the khirnari's nephew Emiel i Moranthi, and Kheeta had hinted at bad blood between him and Alec, though he'd refused to elaborate.

If it's vengeance you 're after, tali, don't bother. The scales are still too heavily laden in the Hamans' favor.

Once his eyes were closed, he found it hard to open them again. The milky liquid evidently was a painkiller and he welcomed its dulling influence.

After a moment he heard Alec sigh. "The next time you feel the need to go out for a 'fall,' you tell me, understand? "

"I'll try," Seregil whispered, surprised by the sudden sting of tears behind his eyelids.

Warm lips brushed his forehead. "And next time, wear your own damn clothes."

At Alec's insistence, Seregil's "fever" lasted through the following day.

"I'll go keep an eye on Torsin and the Viresse," Alec told him, ordering Seregil not to stir from bed. "If anything of interest actually happens, I'll bring you every detail."

Truth was, Seregil was in no condition to argue the point. A short trip to the chamber pot had been an exercise in pain in more ways than he wanted to think about, though he'd managed it by himself. He was pissing blood, and thanked any gods still listening that Alec wasn't nursemaid enough to check. He'd have to speak to the slop boy, tell him to keep his mouth shut. Hell, he'd pay him if he had to. He'd survived worse treatment and there was no sense in worrying Alec any more than he was already.

Left alone for the day, Seregil lapsed back into sleep for a time, only to awaken in a panicky sweat to find Ilar bending over him. He braced to roll away, only to hit a solid wall of pain.

He fell back with a strangled moan and found himself looking up instead at Nyal. From the look on the Ra'basi's face, his waking expression hadn't been a welcoming one.

"I came to check your dressings."

"Thought you were—someone else," Seregil croaked, fighting down the hot nausea welling at the back of his throat.

"You're safe, my friend," Nyal assured him, not understanding. "Here, drink some more of this."

Seregil sipped gratefully at the milky draught. "What is it?"

"Crushed Carian poppy seed, chamomile, and boneset leaf boiled in goat's milk and honey. It should ease your pain."

"It does. Thanks."

Seregil could feel the effects already, just blunting the edges. He stared up at the ceiling while the Ra'basi gently checked the bindings around his chest, asking himself what the hell he had been thinking, handing himself over to the Haman like that. Mortification wrenched at his heart as he thought of what would be made of his absence from the Iia'sidra chamber. His attackers would have better sense than to brag about committing violence on sacred ground, but rumors might already be leaking out along the fretted network of gossip that underlay any large gathering. That aside, he'd virtually abandoned his responsibilities and left the burden on Alec.

"Madness," he hissed.

"Indeed. Alec is still very angry with you, and rightly so. I never took you for a stupid man."

Seregil managed a weak chuckle. "You just don't know me well enough."

Nyal frowned down at him, suddenly devoid of sympathy. "If that little night encounter had happened so much as a pace outside the boundaries of Sarikali, your talimenios might be mourning you right now."

Ashamed, Seregil looked away.

"What, no laughter at that? Good." Nyal produced a steaming sponge from somewhere below Seregil's line of vision and set about cleaning him.

"I didn't know you were a healer," Seregil said when he trusted himself to speak again.

"I'm not, really, but one picks up all sorts of skills, traveling."

Seregil studied the other man's profile. "We do, don't we?"

Nyal glanced up from his task. "That sounded almost friendly, Bokthersa."

"You'll get into trouble calling me that."

Nyal gestured sloppily with the sponge. "Who's to overhear?"

Seregil acknowledged the barb with a grin of his own. "You're a

nosy bastard, and an easterner. Not to mention the fact that you're the lover of a young woman who's the closest thing to a daughter I'll ever have. The combination makes me nervous."

"So I've noticed." Nyal gently turned Seregil over to spread fresh salve on his back. "A spy, am I?"

"Perhaps, or maybe just a balance to my presence."

Nyal eased him back down, and Seregil looked him in the eye. Incredible eyes, really, clear and seemingly guileless. Strange that he hadn't noticed them before. No wonder Beka—

He was wandering, he realized. "So are you? "

"A balancing factor?"

"A spy."

Nyal shrugged. "I answer to my khirnari, like anyone else. What I've told her is that what your princess says in private is no different than what she says to the Iia'sidra."

"And Amali a Yassara?" Aura's Fingers, had he said that aloud? Nyal's potion must be having more of an effect than he'd thought.

The Ra'basi merely smiled. "You're an observant man. Amali and I were once lovers, but she chose to accept the hand of Rhaish i Arlisandin. But I still care for her and speak with her when I safely can."

"Safely?"

"Rhaish i Arlisandin loves his wife very much; it would be unworthy of me to be the cause of discord between them."

"Ah, I see." Seregil would have tapped the side of his nose knowingly if he could have raised his hand that far.

"There's nothing dishonorable between Amali and me, I give you that on my honor. Now come, you must get up and move before your muscles stiffen any more. I expect it will hurt."

Getting out of bed proved to be the worst of it. With Nyal's assistance and considerable cursing, Seregil managed to slip on a loose robe and stagger woozily around the room several times. On one pass he caught sight of himself in the mirror and cringed—eyes too large, skin too pale, expression too nakedly helpless to be the infamous Rhiminee Cat, No, here was the frightened, shame-laden young exile come home again.

"I can walk by myself," he growled, and pulled away from Nyal only to find that he couldn't, not by a long shot.

Nyal caught him as he staggered. "That's enough for now. Come, you can do with some fresh air."

Seregil surrendered himself back into the man's capable hands

and was soon settled more or less comfortably in a sunny back corner of the balcony. Nyal was just tucking a blanket around him when a brisk knock sounded at the door.

Nyal went to answer it, but it was Mydri who returned. Seregil hastily checked the neck of his robe, hoping no telltale marks showed. It was a futile effort.

"A fever, is it?" she said, glowering down at him. "What were you thinking, Seregil?"

"What did Alec tell you?"

"He didn't have to tell me anything. I could see it in his face. You should tell that boy not to bother lying; he's got no skill for it."

He does when he wants to, Seregil thought. "If you're here to scold me—"

"Scold you?" Mydri's eyebrows arched higher, the way they always had when she was truly angry. "You're not a child anymore, or so I'm told. Do you have any idea what it would do to the negotiations if word got out that a member of Klia's delegation had been attacked by a Haman? Nazien is already expressing admiration for Klia—"

" Who said anything about the Haman?'^?

Her hand moved so fast it took him a second to register that he'd been slapped, and hard enough to make his eyes water and his ears ring. Then she was bending over him again, poking him painfully in the chest with one finger.

"Don't compound your stupidity with a lie, little brother! Did you think such a hollow act would make anything right? Did you think at all, or just hare off blindly like you always did? Have you changed so little?"

The words hurt far more than the blow. He probably hadn't changed all that much, though he knew better than to say so just now.

"Does anyone else know?" he asked dully.

"Officially? No one. Who would strut around bragging of breaking Aura's sacred peace? But there have been whispers. You must be at the Iia'sidra tomorrow, and you'd damn well better look like you've been ill!"

"That shouldn't be a problem."

For a moment he thought she was going to hit him again. Sparing him a last disgusted glare, she swept out. He braced to hear the door slam in her wake, but she refrained. Mustn't give the servants anything to talk about.

He pressed his head back against the cushions and closed his eyes, concentrating on the sounds of the birds and breeze and people passing by along the street below. The brash of cool fingers against his cheek a moment later startled him badly. He thought Nyal had gone when his sister had arrived, but here he was again, studying him with unwelcome concern.

"Are people so eager to hit you back in Skala?" the man asked, examining whatever new mark Mydri had left.

Seregil should have been angry at the intrusion, but suddenly he was too tired, too sick.

"Now and then," he replied, closing his eyes again. "But there it's usually strangers."

20

The Passing of Idrilain

Midnight was long past by the time Korathan reached Phoria's camp. He'd outdistanced his escort some miles back, pressing on alone in the vain hope of catching his mother's dying words.

The pickets recognized his shouted greeting and cleared out of the road without challenge. Thundering into camp, he reined in at the tent showing his mother's banner, scattering a crowd of servants and officers gathered there.

Inside, the heavy odor of death assailed him.

Tonight only Phoria and a wizened drysian attended the queen. His sister's back was to him as he entered, but the drysian's solemn face told him that his mother was already dead.

"You're too late," Phoria informed him tersely.

From the state of her uniform, he guessed she'd been called in off the battlefield, too. Her cheeks were dry, her face composed, but Korathan sensed a terrible anger just held in cheek.

"Your messenger was delayed by an ambush," he replied, throwing off his cloak. Joining her beside the narrow field bed, he looked down at the wasted corpse that had been their mother.

The drysian had already begun the final ministrations for the pyre. Idrilain was dressed in her scarred field armor beneath the lavish burial cloak. That would please her, he thought, wondering if these considerations were Phoria's doing or the servants'. The strap of her war helm was cinched tight to hold her jaw shut, and her dimmed eyes were pressed open for the soul's journey. Her ravaged face had regained a certain dignity in death, but he saw traces of blood and dried spittle crusting her colorless lips.

"She died hard?" he asked.

"She fought it to the end," replied the drysian, close to tears.

"Astellus carry you soft, and Sakor light your way home, my Mother," he murmured hoarsely, covering Idrilain's cold hands with his own. "Did she speak much before she went?"

"She had little breath for talking," Phoria told him, turning abruptly and stalking out. "All she said was, 'Klia must not fail.' "

Korathan shook his head, knowing better than anyone the pain Phoria's anger hid. He'd watched for years in silence as the gulf between queen and heir had widened while Idrilain and Klia drew ever closer. Loyal to both, he had been able to comfort neither. Phoria had never spoken of what caused the final rift between herself and their mother, not even to him.

Whatever it was, you are queen now, my sister, my twin.

Leaving the drysian to complete his task, Korathan walked slowly to Phoria's tent. As he approached, he heard her voice raised sharply. A moment later Magyana emerged hastily from the doorway.

Seeing Korathan, she gave him a respectful bow, murmuring, "My sympathies, dear Prince. Your mother will be sorely missed."

Korathan nodded and continued in.

He found Phoria sitting at her campaign table, greying hair loose about her shoulders. Her soiled tunic and mail lay in a heap beside her chair. Without looking up from the map before her, she said tonelessly, "I'm appointing you as my vicegerent, Kor. I want you in Rhiminee. The situation here is too dire for me to leave the field, so we'll hold the coronation tomorrow as soon as you round up the necessary priests. My field wizard will officiate."

"Organeus?" Korathan took a seat across from her. "It's customary for the former queen's wizard to officiate. That would be—"

"Magyana. Yes, I know." Phoria looked up at last, pale eyes flashing dangerously. "But only because Nysander died. Who was she before that but a wanderer who spent more time in foreign lands than in her own? And what did she do while she served Mother except convince her to become dependent on foreigners?"

"The mission to Aurenen, you mean?"

Phoria let out an inelegant snort. "The queen's not cold an hour and Magyana is in here badgering me for a pledge to continue with Idrilain's plan! Nysander would have been no different, I suppose. Meddlers all, these old wizards. They've forgotten their place."

"What did you tell her?" Korathan asked quickly, hoping to circumvent another tirade.

"I informed her that as queen I do not answer to wizards, and that she would be informed of my decisions when I saw fit."

Korathan hesitated, choosing his words with care. One had to, when Phoria was like this. "Do you mean to abandon the negotiations? The way things have gone these past months, Aurenfaie aid might be of value."

Phoria rose and paced the length of the tent. "It's a sign of weakness, Kor. I dare say the surrender of the Mycenian troops along the northwestern border—"

"They surrendered?" Korathan groaned. Never in the history of the Three Lands had Mycena failed to stand with Skala against the incursions of Plenimar.

"Yesterday. Laid down their weapons in return for parole. No doubt they've heard that the Skalan queen sent her youngest daughter begging to the 'faie and it took the last of the heart out of them, exactly as I predicted it would. Southern Mycena is still with us, but it's only a matter of time until they turn coat, too. And of course, the Plenimarans know. I've had reports of raids on the western coast of Skala as far north as Ylani."

Korathan rested his face in his hands a moment as the enormity of the situation rolled over him. "I've been pushed back nearly ten miles in the past six days." The force we met above Haverford had necromancers in the front line. Powerful ones, Phoria, not the hedgerow conjurers you've met with back here. They killed an entire turma's horses beneath them as they charged, then sent the corpses galloping back among our ranks. It was a rout. I think—"

"What? That Mother was right?" Phoria rounded on him. "That we need the Aurenfaie and their magic to survive this war? I'll tell you what we need: Aurenfaie horses, Aurenfaie steel, and the Aurenfaie port of Gedre if we're to defend Rhiminee and the southern islands. But still the Iia'sidra debates!"

Korathan watched with wary fascination as his twin paced, left hand clenched over the pommel of her sword so tightly that the knuckles showed white.

Her old campaigning sword, he noted. She'd put aside the sword

of Gherilain for now so that she could be formally invested with it at her crowning, with all the power and authority it represented. He'd known all his life that this moment would come, that his sister would be queen. Watching her now, why did he suddenly feel as if the ground had given way under him?

"Have you sent word to Klia?" he asked at last.

Phoria shook her head. "Not just yet. I'm expecting fresh dispatches by tomorrow. We'll wait to see which way the wind's blowing down there. Strength, Kor. We must preserve a position of strength at all costs."

"Any news you get by dispatch, even if it comes tomorrow, will be at least a week old. Besides, Klia is sure to put the best light on things, especially once word reaches her that you've taken the throne."

Phoria gave him a strange, tight smile that narrowed her pale eyes like a cat's. Going to a table at the side of the tent, she unlocked an iron box and took out a sheaf of small parchments. "Klia and Torsin are not my only sources of information at Sarikali."

"Ah, yes, your spies in the ranks. What do they say? Will the Iia'sidra give us what we ask?"

Phoria's mouth set in a harsh, unyielding line. "One way or another, we shall have what we need. I want you in Rhiminee, my brother."

Going to him, she took one of his large hands in hers and tugged a ring from his finger, the one set with a large black stone carved with a dragon swallowing its own tail. Smiling, she slipped it on the forefinger of her left hand. "Be ready, Kor. When this dragon comes back to you, it's time to go after another."

21

Rhui'auros

It won't take much acting to play the recovering invalid, will it?" Alec said as he helped Seregil dress the third morning after the beating. His friend's body showed a shocking array of purple and green bruises where it wasn't bandaged, and he still wasn't eating much except broth and Nyal's infusions.

"The act will be to convince them that I am recovered." Seregil let out a strangled groan as he eased his arms into the sleeves of his coat. "Or to convince myself."

Seregil still refused to divulge what had really happened to him that night. The fact that he seemed in better spirits since the attack bothered Alec almost as much as his friend's stubborn silence on the matter.

No sooner do I rake a few old secrets out of him than he goes and takes on a load of new ones.

"I'll come with you today," he said. "It's almost gotten interesting. The khirnari of Silmai has been taking Klia's part openly, and she's convinced the Ra'basi are about to tumble our way. You missed the banquet with them last night; most cordial, and the Viresse noticeably absent. Do you think Nyal had a hand in that?"

"He claims not to have been asked his

opinion. It could be that Ra'basi is getting tired of being under Viresse's sway." Seregil limped to the small mirror over the washstand. Evidently satisfied with what he saw there, he stretched his arms tentatively and let out another pained gasp. "Oh, yes, I'm much better!" he muttered, grimacing at his white-faced reflection. "Help me downstairs, will you? I think I can manage after that."

The others were at breakfast in the hall. Klia sat poring over a stack of new dispatches.

"Feeling better?" she asked, glancing up.

"Much," Seregil lied. He eased into a chair next to Thero and accepted a cup of tea he had no intention of drinking. The wizard was frowning over a letter.

"From Magyana?" he asked.

"Yes." Thero passed it to him and Seregil skimmed the contents, holding it so Alec could see, too.

" 'The third of Klia's dispatches reached us here yesterday. Phoria said little, but her impatience is clear,' " Alec read aloud. " 'Surely some small concession can be coaxed from the Iia'sidra? otherwise, I fear she will recall you—' "

"Yes, we've already seen that," Torsin told him. "A small concession, she asks for. What else have we been laboring for all these weeks?"

Seregil saw the quick glance Alec shot the envoy and knew he was recalling the man's night visit to Khatme tupa.

"I get hints of the same threat from my honored sister," Klia growled, tossing aside the letter she'd been reading. "Let her come down and see what I'm up against. It's like trying to argue with trees!" She turned to Seregil with a grimace of frustration. "Tell me, my adviser, how to make your people hurry! Time's running short."

Seregil sighed. "Let Alec and I do what we're best at, my lady."

Klia shook her head. "Not yet. The risks are too great. There must be another way."

Seregil stared into the depths of his cup, wishing his head was clear enough to think of one.

The ride to the council chamber was a tense affair. Ignoring Seregil's muttered warnings, Alec helped him mount and dismount, claiming he looked faint. By the time Seregil was finally seated in

his place just behind Klia, he was pale and sweating, but seemed to recover a little once he'd gotten his wind back.

Alec scanned the faces around the circle. Reaching the Haman contingent, he stopped, a sudden knot of tension tightening his belly. Emiel i Moranthi was grinning openly at Seregil. Catching Alec's eye, he gave him a slight, sardonic nod.

"It was him, wasn't it?" Alec grated under his breath.

Seregil merely glanced at him as if he didn't know what Alec was talking about, then motioned him to silence.

Alec looked back at Emiel, thinking, Just let me and a few friends catch you in a dark street some night soon. Or just me alone, come to that. He hoped the thought showed on his face, whatever the cost.

Seregil saw the Haman's appraising leer, but steadfastly ignored him. It was easier to carry on with the pretense that he had recognized no one in the darkness that night.

And just who are you trying to fool?

He pushed the thought aside with practiced ease. There were more important things to be dealt with right now.

Alec had been correct about a shift in the Ra'basi's stance. Moriel a Moriel took it upon herself to contest a point being put forth by Elos of Golinil about certain Skalan shipping practices. Whether it represented full support remained to be seen.

Satisfied that Seregil was back on his feet, Alec returned to his ramblings through the city the next day. At Klia's request, he commandeered Nyal and set out to ingratiate himself among the Ra'basi in the hope of gleaning both goodwill and useful information.

It proved an easy task. Alec soon found himself welcome at a makeshift tavern, known for its ready supply of strong beer and spiced eggs. Not only was it a popular meeting, place for people of various clans, but Artis, the brewer who ran the place during the day, was a servant of one of the Ra'basi khirnari's closest advisers. He'd set up shop on the street level of a deserted house, serving his customers through an open window that overlooked a walled garden. Archery, dice, and wrestling were the sports of choice to pass the time.

The beer proved passable, the eggs inedible, and the results of Alec's spying meager. After three days of loitering and drinking, he'd added nearly a dozen shatta to his collection, lost his second-best

dagger to a Datsian woman who outwrestled him, and learned only that the khirnari of Ra'basi had some sort of falling out with the Viresse a week before, though no one seemed to know the details.

Lounging there with Nyal and Kheeta after a shooting match, Alec decided that he'd probably learned everything there was to be learned among the Ra'basi. He was about to leave when he overheard Artis launch into a tirade against the Khatme. Evidently he'd had a run-in with a member of that clan the night before over a keg of beer he'd sold. Still smarting from his own failure among that strange clan, Alec sauntered over to hear more.

"Arrogant bunch of stargazers, that's what I say," Artis fumed as he served beer from his window perch. "Think they're closer to Aura than the rest of us."

"They don't take to outsiders much, I've found," Alec ventured. "Or ya'shel, for that matter."

"They've always been a strange, standoffish bunch," the brewer muttered.

"What do you know of the Khatme?" a Golinil woman scoffed.

"As much as you do," he drawled, passing out cups of murky new beer. "They keep to themselves and they serve themselves, for all their talk of Aura."

"I hear they make fine wizards," Alec put in.

"Wizards, seers, rhui'auros," the brewer allowed grudgingly. "But magic is a gift meant to serve and that's something the Khatme don't do willingly. Instead, they stay up in their eagles' nest of a fai'thast, dreaming their strange dreams and handing down proclamations."

"You know, in all the time I've been here, I haven't seen much magic used. Where I come from, folks imagine the 'faie throwing it around left and right."

Several of Alec's companions snickered.

"Look around, Skalan," Artis said. "Do you see any need for magic? Should we fly through the air instead of using our own feet? Or knock birds out of the sky instead of learning archery?"

"This beer of yours could use a bit of magicking," a boy laughed.

Artis gave him a hard look, then wove a brief sigil over their cups. The beer foamed slightly, giving off a strong, malty odor.

"Taste that, then," he challenged.

The contents of Alec's cup were certainly clearer than before. Impressed, he took a drink, but immediately spat it out.

"It tastes like swamp water!" he sputtered.

"Of course," Artis declared, laughing now. "Beer has its own magic. It doesn't need any help, as any brewer knows."

"And so knowing, takes it too much for granted," said a new voice.

A grey, wizened little rhui'auros stepped from the shadows of a cul-de-sac next to the building.

Kheeta and the others raised their let) hands and gave the man a respectful nod. In turn, he raised a tattooed hand in blessing.

"Welcome, Honored One," said Artis, coming out to offer him beer and food.

The others made room for the old man and he sat down, wolfing down the eggs and bread as if he hadn't eaten in days and dribbling his beer down the front of his already none-too-clean robes.

When he'd finished he looked up and pointed to Alec. "Our little brother asks about magic and you scoff, children of Aura?" Shaking his head, he picked up a bow lying near his feet and placed it in Alec's hands. "Tell me, what do you feel?"

Alec rubbed his palm over the smooth limbs. "Wood, sinew—" he began, then gasped as the rhui'auros touched a finger firmly to the center of his forehead.

A cool sensation swept the skin between his eyes, like the kiss of a mountain breeze. As it spread deeper, the bow seemed to subtly vibrate in his hands, reminding him of the time he'd touched a drysian's staff and felt the surge of power through the wood.

"I feel—I don't know. It's like holding a living thing."

"It is Shariel a Malai's magic you feel, her khi," the rhui'auros replied, pointing to the Ptalos woman who owned the bow. He motioned for Kheeta to give Alec the knife from his belt.

Gripping it, Alec felt similar sensations from the metal. "Yes, it's there, too."

"Our khi suffuses us the way oil soaks a wick," the rhui'auros explained. "Everything we touch takes on a bit of it, and from it comes all our gifts. Shariel a Malai, take up Alec i Amasa's bow."

She obeyed, eyes widening in surprise as the man touched her brow. "By the Light, the khi is strong as a storm wind in it!"

"You shoot well, do you not?" the rhui'auros asked, noting the collection of shatta on Alec's quiver.

"Yes, Honored One."

"Better than most?"

"Perhaps. It's just something I'm good at."

"Good enough to strike a dyrmagnos?"

"Yes, but—"

"He fought a dyrmagnos?" someone whispered.

"It was a good shot," Alec admitted, recalling the strange, dreamlike calm that had come over him when he took aim at his hated tormentor. His bow had trembled strangely in his hands as he'd let fly, but he'd always put those sensations, indeed even his success, down to the spells Nysander had woven around it.

"Little brother, when will you visit me?" the rhui'auros chided. "Your friend Thero comes to the Nha'mahat often now, yet for you I wait and wait."

"I'm sorry, Honored One. I—I didn't realize I was expected," Alec stammered, taken aback by this revelation about Thero. The wizard had never mentioned it. "I've been wanting to, but—"

"You must bring Seregil i Korit, as well. Tell him to come tonight."

"The Exile no longer bears that name," an Akhendi reminded him.

"Doesn't he?" the rhui'auros asked, turning to go. "How forgetful of me. Come tonight, Alec i Amasa. There is so much you must tell me."

Tell you? thought Alec, but before he could question the man further the rhui'auros blurred before his eyes, disappearing like a design of colored sand in a strong wind.

"Well, at least you can't complain of not seeing magic," said Artis. "Now what's this about you killing a dyrmagnos?"

Alec's first thought was to find Seregil and tell him about the rhui'auros's strange summons, but his drinking companions wouldn't let him go without hearing the tale of the battle against Irtuk Beshar and Mardus. Struck by a sudden inspiration, he played heavily on Seregil's role in the fight, reasoning that stories of the "Exile's" heroism could only do Seregil good in reclaiming his place among his people. As he recounted his own part that day, however, the rhui'auros's words kept coming back to him, making him wonder if there actually had been more than experience guiding his hand that day.

Afternoon sunshine lit the eastern half of the Iia'sidra chamber and threw the other half into near darkness. When Alec slipped in, a member of the Khatme delegation was pacing the open floor at the center of the room, haranguing the assembly with an extensive list of the historic depredations of outlanders.

Many in the audience were nodding approval. Just visible behind Klia, Thero appeared angry, Seregil bored and tired. Braknil and his honor guard loomed behind them, faces duty-blank. Wending his way through the minor clans, Alec took a seat beside Seregil.

"Ah, you've come at the most interesting part," his friend murmured, stifling a yawn.

"How much longer will you be?"

"Not long. Everyone's out of sorts today; I think most of them are ready for a jug of rassos. I know I am."

Torsin turned and shot them a pointed look. Seregil covered a smirk with his hand and sank a bit lower in his chair. With his other, he signed for Alec to stay.

The Khatme finished at last, and Klia stood to reply. Alec couldn't see her face, but from the set of her shoulders he guessed she'd had enough, too.

"Honored Khatme, you speak well and clearly of Aurenen's concerns, " she began. "You speak of raiders, and those who have betrayed the laws of hospitality, yet in all these tales, I hear no mention of Skala. I don't doubt that you have good reason to fear some foreigners, but why should you fear us? Skala has never attacked Aurenen. Instead, we have traded in good faith, traveled your land in good faith, and respected the Edict of Separation in good faith, although we believe it is unjust. Many here do not hesitate to remind me of the murder of Corruth; is that because it is the only transgression you can throw up at us?"

"You demand access to our northern coast, our port, our iron mines," a Haman declared. "If we let you bring miners and smiths to make settlements, how then can we expect them to leave when your need is gone?"

"Why do you think they will not?" Klia countered. "I have seen Gedre. I have ridden through the cold, barren mountains where the mines are. With all due respect, perhaps you ought to visit my land. Perhaps then you would understand that we have no desire for yours, only the iron to fight our war and save our own."

This response gained her a ripple of applause and a few poorly muffled laughs among her supporters. But Klia remained stern.

"I have listened to Ilbis i Tarien of Khatme recite the history of your people. Nowhere in that history did I hear of Skala acting as aggressor toward your land, or any other. Like you, we understand what it is to have enough. Through husbandry and trade and the blessings of the Four, we have never needed to take what was not freely offered. The same can be said of the Mycenians, who even now sway, driven to their knees by the onslaught of Plenimar. We fight to repel the aggressor, not to conquer. The previous Overlord of Plenimar was content within his own borders for many years. It is his son who has renewed the old conflict. Must I, youngest daughter

of a Tirfaie queen, remind the Aurenfaie of their heroic role in the first Great War when we fought as one?

"My throat grows sore from giving the same assurances day after day. If you will not allow us to mine, then sell us your iron and let our ships come to Gedre to get it."

"And so it goes," Seregil muttered. "The war could be lost before we can get beyond whether or not Klia is personally responsible for Corruth's murder."

"Are there any plans for tonight?" Alec asked, glancing nervously in Torsin's direction.

"We're to dine in Khaladi tupa. I'm actually looking forward to this one. Their dancers are exceptional."

Alec settled back with an inward sigh. The shadows crept a few more inches across the floor as Rhaish i Arlisandin and Galmyn i Nemius of Lhapnos launched into a verbal battle over some river that divided their lands. The argument ended when the Akhendi stalked from the chamber in a rage. The outburst signaled the end of the day's debate.

"What did that have to do with Skala?" Alec complained as the assembly broke up.

"Balance of trade, as usual," Torsin told him. "At the moment Akhendi must depend on Lhapnos's goodwill to float goods down to port. If and when Gedre opens, then Akhendi will gain the advantage. That is only one of several reasons why Lhapnos opposes Klia's request."

"Maddening!" Klia muttered under her breath. "Whatever they decide in the end, it will have more to do with their troubles than ours. If we were dealing with a single ruler, things would be different."

Their host of the evening swept down on her, and Klia allowed herself to be led aside for a private conversation.

Seregil gave Alec a questioning look. "You've been waiting to tell me something, I think?"

"Not here."

The walk back to their lodgings seemed a long one. When they were finally alone in their room, Alec closed the door and leaned back against it.

"I met a rhui'auros today."

Seregil's expression did not change, but Alec detected a sudden tightness at the corners of his friend's mouth.

"He asked that we come to the Nha'mahat tonight. Both of us."

Still Seregil said nothing.

"Kheeta hinted that you have—bad feelings about them?"

"Bad feelings?" Seregil raised an eyebrow as if considering Alec's choice of words. "Yes, you could say that."

"But why? The one I met seemed kind enough, if a little eccentric."

Seregil folded his arms. Was it Alec's imagination, or was he trembling slightly?

"During my trial—" Seregil began, speaking so softly that Alec had to strain to hear. "A rhui'auros came, saying I was to be brought here, to Sarikali. No one knew what to think. I'd already confessed everything___"

He faltered, and the hint of a dark memory traveled to Alec across the talimenios bond; his vision darkened as a burning stab of panic constricted his chest.

"They tortured you?" Memories of his own experiences added to the leaden weight settling in the pit of his stomach.

"Not in the way you mean." Going to a clothes chest, Seregil threw back the lid and rummaged in its depths. "It was a long time ago. It doesn't matter."

But Alec could still feel the sour tang of panic clinging to his companion. Going to him, he laid a hand on Seregil's shoulder. The man sagged a little under the light touch.

"I just don't understand what they want with me now."

"If you'd rather not go, I could make some excuse."

Seregil managed a lopsided grimace. "I don't think that would be wise. No, we'll go. Together. It's time you did, tali."

Alec was silent a moment. "Do you think they can tell me about my mother?" The words came hard. "I—I need to know who I am."

"Take what the Lightbearer sends, Alec."

"What do you mean?"

The strange, guarded look came into Seregil's eyes again. "You'll see."

22

Dreams and visions

The minor clans had no official voice in the Iia'sidra, but they were not without influence. The Khaladi were among the most respected and fiercely independent; Klia considered them an important potential ally.

At Sarikali they occupied a small section in the eastern part of the city. The khirnari, Mallia a Tama, met them at the head of what appeared to be her entire clan and led them on foot to the open land beyond the city's edge. Her blue-and-yellow sen'gai was made of twisted bands of silk intertwined with red cord, and she wore a voluminous silk coat over her tight-fitting tunic. "

The Khaladi were taller and more muscular than most of the 'faie Alec had met, and many had bands of intricate tattoos encircling their wrists and ankles. They smiled readily and treated their guests with a mix of respect and warm familiarity that quickly put him at ease.

On a flat expanse of ground just beyond the city's edge, a circular area a few hundred yards in diameter had been covered with huge, multicolored carpets and ringed with bonfires. Instead of the usual dining couches, low tables and piles of bolsters were arranged around the perimeter. Mallia a Tama and her family served Klia's party themselves, washing their guests' hands over basins to

symbolize the customary bath and offering them wine and dried fruits dipped in honey. Musicians arrived carrying pipes and long-necked stringed instruments unlike any Alec had seen. Instead of plucking or strumming the latter, the players sawed at the strings with a short bow, producing a sound at once mournful and sweet.

As the sun sank and the feast progressed, it was not difficult for Alec to imagine himself transported to their mountain fai'thast. Under different circumstances, he would have been content to spend the entire night in such company.

Instead, he kept a watchful eye on Seregil, who often fell silent and glanced frequently at the progress of the moon.

Do you dread the night's destination so much? Alec wondered with a twinge of guilt at his own anticipation.

As the banquet neared its end, thirty or more Khaladi rose and shed their tunics, stripping down to short, tight-fitting leather breeches. Their lightly oiled skin shone like satin in the firelight.

"Now we'll see something!" Seregil exclaimed under his breath, looking happy for the first time that night.

"We are great dancers, the best in all Aurenen," the khirnari was telling Klia. "For in the dance we celebrate the circles of unity that make our world—the unity between our people and Aura, the unity of sky and earth, the unity that binds us one to another. You might feel the magic of it, but do not be alarmed. It is only the sharing of khi that unites the dancers with those who watch them."

The musicians struck up a dark, skirling melody as the performers took their places. Working in pairs, they slowly lifted and balanced each other with sinuous grace. Without the least hint of strain or tremor, their bodies twined into configurations at once disciplined and erotic, arching, folding, curving as they rose and fell.

Rapt, Alec felt the flow of khi the khirnari had spoken of; differing energies of each successive dance enfolded him, drawing him in although he never stirred from where he sat.

Some dances featured a single gender or male and female couples, but most involved all the varying groups at once. One of the most moving was a performance by pairs of children.

Klia sat motionless, one hand pressed unconsciously to her lips. Pure wonder showed on Thero's thin features, softening them to something approaching beauty. Beyond them, Alec could see Beka among the honor guard, the hint of tears glistening in her eyes. Nyal stood beside her, not quite touching as he watched her watch the dance.

One pair of men held Alec's attention for dance after dance. It

was not simply their skill that moved him but the way they seemed to hold each other with their gaze, trusting, anticipating, working in perfect unison. His throat tightened as he watched them during one particularly sensual dance; he knew without being told that they were talimenios and that they had lived this dance, this mingling of souls, together most of their lives.

He felt Seregil's hand cover his own. Without the least embarrassment, Alec turned his hand, weaving their fingers together and letting the dance speak for him.

As the moon rose higher, however, Alec found himself increasingly distracted by the thought of the rhui'auros's summons.

Ever since Thero had first mentioned the rhui'auros and their abilities back in Ardinlee, he'd wondered what it would be like to have that missing piece added to the small mosaic of his life. Wandering with his father, knowing no kin, claiming no town as their own, he'd never questioned his father's silence. Only when he'd gone to Watermead and been embraced by Micum Cavish's family had he realized what he'd lacked. Even his formal name reflected that: plain Alec i Amasa of Kerry. Where there should be additional names to link him with his own history, there were only blanks. By the time he'd been old enough to ask such questions his father was dead, all the answers reduced to ash plowed into a stranger's field.

Perhaps tonight he would learn his own truth.

He and Seregil saw Klia home, then turned their horses for the Nha'mahat.

The Haunted City was deserted tonight, and Alec found himself starting at shadows, certain he saw movement in the empty windows or heard the whisper of voices in the sighing of the breeze.

"What do you think will happen?" he asked at last, unable to bear the silence any longer.

"I wish I could tell you, tali," Seregil replied. "My experience wasn't the ordinary sort. I believe it's like the Temple of Illior; people come for visions, dreams—the rhui'auros are said to be strange guides."

I remember that house, that street, Seregil thought, amazed at the power of memory.

He'd avoided this section of the city since their arrival, but he'd come here often as a child. In those days the Nha'mahat had been an

enticingly mysterious place only adults were allowed to enter, and the rhui'auros just eccentric folk who might offer sweets, stories, or a colorful spell or two if you loitered long enough between the arches of the arcade. That perception had been shattered along with his childhood when he'd finally entered the tower.

The fragmented memories of what followed had haunted the farthest reaches of his dreams ever since, like hungry wolves hovering just outside the safe circle of a campfire's glow.

The black cavern.

The stifling heat inside the tiny dhima.

The probing magicks stripping him, turning him inside out, flaying him with every doubt, vanity, and banality of his adolescent self as the rhui'auros sought the truth behind the killing of the unfortunate Haman.

Alec rode beside him cloaked in that special silence of his, happy, full of anticipation. Some part of Seregil longed to warn him, tell him—

He gripped the reins so tightly that his knuckles ached. No, never speak of that night, not even to you. Tonight I enter the tower a free man, of my own will.

At the command of a rhui'auros, an inner voice reminded him, whispering from among the gaunt wolves of memory.

Reaching the Nha'mahat at last, they dismounted and led their horses to the main door. A woman emerged from the darkened arcade and took the reins for them.

Still Alec said nothing. No questions. No probing looks.

Bless you, tali.

A rhui'auros answered their knock. The silver mask covering his face was like those worn at the Temple of Illior: smooth, serene, featureless.

"Welcome," a deep male voice greeted them from behind it.

The tattoo on his palm was similar to those of the priests of Illior. And why not? It was the Aurenfaie who'd taught the ways of Aura to the Tir. For the first time since his arrival, it struck him how deeply intertwined the Skalans and 'faie still were, whether they realized it or not. There had been years enough for the Tir to forget, perhaps, but his own people? Not likely. Why then did some of the clans fear reclaiming the old ties?

The man gave them masks and led them into a meditation chamber, a low, windowless room lit by niche lamps. At least a dozen people lay naked on pallets there, their dreaming faces hidden by silver masks. The damp air was heavy with thick clouds of fragrant smoke from a brazier near the center of the room. Just beyond it, a

broad, circular stairway spiraled down out of sight. Wisps of steam curled up from the cavern below.

"Wait here," their guide told Seregil, pointing to an empty pallet against the far wall. "Someone will come for you. Elesarit waits upstairs for Alec i Amasa."

Alec brushed the back of Seregil's hand with his own, then followed the man up a narrow staircase at the back of the chamber.

Seregil walked across to his assigned pallet. This took him past the round stairway, and his chest tightened. He knew where it led.

Alec resisted a look back at Seregil. When the rhui'auros had told him to bring Seregil, he'd assumed they would make their visit together.

They climbed three flights of stairs in silence, meeting no one in the dark corridors. On the third floor they followed a short hallway to a small chamber. A clay lamp flickered in one corner, and by its wavering light Alec saw that the room was empty except for an ornate metal brazier by the far wall. Not knowing what was expected of him, he turned to ask his guide, but he was already gone.

Strange folk, indeed, he thought, yet they held the key that could unlock his past. Too excited to sit still, Alec paced the little chamber, listening anxiously for the sound of approaching footsteps.

They came at last. The rhui'auros who entered wore no mask, and Alec recognized him as the old man he'd met at the tavern. Striding over to Alec, he dropped the leather sack he carried and clasped hands warmly.

"So you have come at last, little brother. Seeking your past, I think?"

"Yes, Honored One. And I—I want to know what it means to be Hazadrielfaie."

"Good, good! Sit down."

Alec settled cross-legged where the man indicated, in the center of the room.

Elesarit dragged the brazier to the center of the room, summoned fire there, then took two handfuls of what looked like a mix of ash and small seeds from the sack and cast them into the flames. Sharp, choking smoke curled up, making Alec's eyes water.

Elesarit pulled his robe over his head and threw it into a corner. Naked except for the tattooed whorls covering his hands and feet, he began to slowly circle Alec, bare soles whispering across the floor as he moved. Thin and wizened as he was, he moved gracefully, weaving his patterned hands and thin body through the

smoke. Alec felt goose flesh break out on his arms and knew at once that, like the dances of the Khaladi he'd watched earlier, these movements were a form of magic. Faint music, strange and distant, hovered at the edge of his perception, perhaps magic, perhaps only memory.

It was unnerving, this ceremony: the old man's silence, the shapes that twisted themselves from the smoke and dissolved before he could quite make them out, the heady smell of the substances burning on the coals of the brazier. Lightheaded, Alec fought against a sudden wave of dizziness.

And still the rhui'auros danced, moving in and out of Alec's field of vision, in and out of the ever-thickening smoke that seemed to wind itself into denser coils in his wake.

The man's feet fascinated Alec. He couldn't look away from them as they whisper-shuffled past: long toes, brown skin, and branched ridges of veins beneath the shifting black tracery.

The smoke stung Alec's eyes, but he found he didn't have the strength to lift his hand and wipe them. He could hear the rhui'auros circling behind him now, yet somehow the feet stayed before him, filling his vision.

Those aren't his feet, Alec realized in silent awe. They were a woman's—small and delicate in spite of the dirt that edged the nails and darkened the cracks on the callused heels. These feet were not dancing. They were running.

Then he was looking down at them as if they were his own feet, flying beneath the edge of a stained brown skirt, running along a trail through a frost-rimed meadow just before dawn.

A misstep on a sharp stone. Blood. The feet did not stop running.

Fleeing.

There was no sound, no physical sensation, but Alec knew the desperation that propelled her on as clearly as if the emotions were his own.

Meadow gave way to forest with dreamlike speed, one landscape melting into another. He felt the burning in her lungs, the clenching ache deep in her belly where dark blood still flowed and the slight weight of the burden she carried in her arms, a tiny bundle wrapped in a long, dark sen'gai.

Child

The infant's face was still covered in birthing blood. Its eyes were open and blue

as his own.

Gradually his line of sight shifted upwards and he gazed through her eyes at a lone figure in the distance, standing on a boulder against the first pale wash of dawn.

The girl's desperation gave way to hope.

Amasa!

Alec had recognized his father first by the way he carried his bow across his shoulders. Now the wind whipped tangled blond hair back from that square, plain, bearded face in which Alec had tried so often without success to find himself. He was young, not much older than Alec himself, and racked with desperation as he glared back past the girl.

He loomed closer until he seemed to fill Alec's vision. Then came a wrenching lurch, and Alec was looking down into the face of a young woman with his own dark blue eyes, full lips, and fine-boned features, all framed by ragged clumps of dark brown hair, hacked cruelly short.

Ireya!

He didn't know if the voice was his own or his father's, but he felt the agony of that despairing cry. Helpless as his father had been, Alec watched in horror as she thrust the baby into his arms and dashed back the way she'd come, toward the horsemen who pursued her.

Then Alec was looking down at the small, bruised feet again as she ran at them, spreading her empty arms wide as if to gather the arrows speeding at her heart from the bows of

brothers

The force of the first shaft knocked Alec flat on his back and hot pain sliced the breath from his lungs. It passed as quickly as it had come, however, and he felt his life leaving like smoke from the wound, rising on the sparkling morning air until he could see the horsemen gathered around the still body below. He couldn't see their faces to know if they were pleased or horrified at their own deed. He saw only that they ignored the distant figure fleeing west with his tiny burden.

"Open your eyes, son of Ireya a Shaar."

The vision collapsed.

Opening his eyes, Alec lay sprawled on the cold floor, arms flung wide.

Elesarit crouched next to him, eyes half closed, lips parted in a strange grimace.

"My mother?" Alec asked through dry lips, too weak to sit up. The back of his head hurt. In fact, he hurt all over.

"Yes, little brother, and your Tirfaie father," Elesarit said softly, touching Alec's temple with the fingertips of one hand.

"My father—he had no other names?"

"None that he knew."

The smoke closed in around him again, bringing another wave of dizziness. The ceiling overhead dissolved into a miasma of shifting color.

Stop! he begged, but his throat was numb. No sound escaped.

"You carry the memories of your people," the rhui'auros said, lost somewhere in the shifting blur. "I take these from you, but not without giving something back."

Suddenly Alec was standing on a rugged mountainside beneath a huge crescent moon. Barren peaks stretched out in front of him for as far as he could see. Far below, a torch-lit procession wended its way along a twisting track, hundreds of people, it seemed, or thousands. The chain of tiny, bobbing lights stretched back through the night like a necklace of amber beads tossed on rumpled black velvet.

"Ask what you will," a low, inhuman voice rumbled behind him, like rocks grinding together in an avalanche.

Alec whirled, reaching for a sword that wasn't there. A few yards from where he stood, a cliff rose into the darkness overhead, sheer except for a small hole near the bottom not much larger than the door of a dog kennel.

"Ask what you will," the voice said again, and the vibration of it sent loose pebbles clinking and pattering down around Alec's feet.

Sinking to his hands and knees, he looked into the hole, but there was only darkness beyond.

"Who are you?" he tried to ask, only somehow the words came out "Who am I? " instead.

"You are the wanderer who carries his home in his heart," the unseen speaker replied, sounding pleased with the question. "You are the bird who makes its nest on the waves. You will father a child of no woman."

A deathly chill rolled over him. "A curse?"

"A blessing."

Suddenly Alec felt weight and heat against his back. Someone placed a thick fur robe over him, one that had been warmed before a fire. It was so heavy that he couldn't lift his head to see who had covered him, but he glimpsed a man's hands and recognized them— strong, long-fingered Aurenfaie hands. Seregil's.

"Child of earth and light," the voice pronounced. "Brother of shadows, watcher in the darkness, wizard-friend."

"What clan am I?" Alec gasped as the warm robe pressed down on him.

"Akavi'shel, little ya'shel, and no clan at all. Owl and dragon. Always and never. What do you hold? "

Alec looked down at his hands, pressed to the rocky ground as he fought now to hold up the weight of the robe. Tangled in the fingers of his left hand was his Akhendi bracelet with the blackened charm. Wadded beneath his right was a bloodstained length of cloth—a sen'gai, though he couldn't make out the color.

The weight of the robe was too much for him. Falling forward, he was trapped by its smothering bulk.

"What name did my mother give me?" he groaned as the moon was blotted out.

There was no reply.

Exhausted, trapped, and aching in every muscle, Alec cradled his head on his arms and wept for a woman nineteen years dead, and for the silent, brooding man who'd stood helplessly and watched his only love die.

Seregil inhaled deeply as he waited, hoping the smoke of the strong herbs would take the edge off his fear. There were no meditation symbols in this chamber—no Fertile Queen, Cloud Eye, or Moon Bow. Perhaps the rhui'auros stood too close to the Lightbearer to need such things.

"Aura Elustri, send me light," he murmured. Folding his hands loosely in his lap, he closed his eyes and tried to find the inner silence necessary to free his thoughts, but it would not come.

I'm out of practice. How often had he entered a temple during all his years in Skala? Less than a dozen times, probably, and always with some ulterior need.

The even breathing of the dreamers around the room grated on his nerves, mocking his restlessness. It was a relief of sorts when a guide finally came and led him down the winding stairs to the cavern below.

Oh, yes, he remembered this place, with its rough stone and heat and the flat, metallic odor that tightened the knot of dread already cramping his gut.

Three passages branched from the main chamber, sloping down

into darkness. Seregil's guide waved a globe of light into being and set off down the one to their right.

The same? Seregil wondered, stumbling along behind him. Impossible to know for certain; he'd been so frightened that night, half dragged, half carried into total darkness.

It got hotter as they went. Steam curled thickly from seams in the rock. Condensation dripped from above. It was difficult to catch his breath.

drowning in darkness—

Small dhima stood at irregular intervals along this tunnel, but Seregil's guide led him far deeper into the earth before stopping beside one.

"Here," the man instructed, lifting the leather door flap. "Leave your clothes outside."

Stripping off everything but the silver mask, Seregil crawled inside. It was stifling and stank of sweat and wet wool; a small fissure emitted a steady flow of hot vapor. Seregil crawled to a rush mat next to the steam vent. His guide waited until he was seated, then dropped the flap back into place. Blackness closed quickly in around Seregil; the man's footsteps faded back in the direction they'd come.

What am I so scared of? he wondered, fighting down the panic that threatened to unman him. They finished with me, passed sentence. It's over. I'm here now by Iia'sidra dispensation, a representative of the Skalan queen.

Why didn't someone come?

Sweat drenched his body, stinging the scabbed abrasions on his back and sides. It dripped from the tip of his nose to pool in the contours inside the mask. He hated the feel of it, hated the darkness and the irrational sense that the walls were pressing in on him.

He'd never feared the dark, not even as a child.

Except here. Then.

And now.

He crossed his arms across his bare chest, shaking in spite of the heat. He couldn't fight off the wolves of memory here. They rushed at him, wearing the faces of all the rhui'auros who'd interrogated him. They'd woven their magic deep into his mind, pulling out thoughts and fears like so many rotten teeth.

Now, as he huddled trembling and sick, other memories followed, ones he'd buried even deeper: the sharp sting of his father's hand against his face when he'd tried to say farewell; the way friends

had refused to meet his eye; the sight of the only home he'd ever known or hoped to dwindling to nothing in the distance—

Still no one came.

His breath whistled harshly through the mask. The dhima trapped the steam, searing his lungs. Stretching out his arms, he felt for the wooden ribs on either side of him to reassure himself that the sodden walls were not collapsing in on him. His fingers brushed hot wood and rested there. A moment later, however, he let out a sharp hiss of surprise as something hot and smooth skittered over his left hand. Before he could pull it back, the unseen creature had clenched itself around his wrist. Needle teeth pierced the fleshy part of his palm just below the thumb, spreading quickly to engulf his entire hand.

A dragon, and one at least the size of a cat, judging by the weight.

Seregil willed himself not to move. The beast released him, dropped to his naked thigh, and scrambled away.

Seregil held still until he was certain it was gone, then cradled his hand against his chest. What was a dragon that size doing so far from the mountains, and how venomous was such a bite? This made him think of Thero, and he choked back an hysterical laugh.

"That will leave a lucky mark."

Seregil jerked his head up. Less than a foot to his left squatted the glowing, naked form of a rhui'auros. The man's broad face looked vaguely familiar. He had thickly drawn markings on his large hands. His muscular chest was covered with others that seemed to move with a life of their own as he reached to examine Seregil's wound.

There was no light; Seregil couldn't even see his own hand, but he could see the rhui'auros as clearly as if they both sat in daylight.

"I remember you. Your name is Lhial."

"And you are called the Exile now, yes? The Dragon now follows the Owl."

This last phrase sounded familiar somehow, but he couldn't place it, though he recognized the two references to Aura: the dragons of Aurenen, the owls of Skala.

The rhui'auros cocked his head, regarding him quizzically. "Come, little brother, let me see your newest wound."

Seregil didn't move. This was one of those who'd interrogated him. "Why did you ask me to come here?" he asked at last, his voice hardly more than a hoarse whisper.

"You have been on a long journey. Now you have returned."

"You cast me out," Seregil retorted bitterly.

The rhui'auros smiled. "To live, little brother. And you have. Now give me your hand before it swells any more."

Baffled, Seregil watched as his hand became visible at the rhui'auros's touch. A soft glow spread out from the two of them, brightening the tiny chamber and making both of them visible. Lhial moved closer so that their bare knees touched.

Prodding gently at one of the bruises on Seregil's chest, he shook his head. "This accomplishes nothing, little brother. There is other work ahead for you."

Turning his attention to Seregil's hand, he inspected the bite. Parallel lines of punctures oozed blood on the lower palm and the back of his hand where the dragon's jaws had clamped around the base of his thumb. The rhui'auros produced a vial of lissik and massaged the dark salve into the wound. "You remember that night you were brought here?" he asked, not looking up.

"How could I not?"

"Do you know why?"

"To be tried. To be exiled."

Lhial smiled to himself. "Is that what you've thought, all these years?"

"Why then?"

"To tinker with your fate, little brother."

"I don't believe in fate."

"And you suppose that makes any difference?"

The rhui'auros looked up with an amused smile, and Seregil recoiled against the dhima wall. Lhial's eyes had gone the color of hammered gold.

An image leapt into Seregil's mind: the shining golden eyes of the khtir'bai gazing at him from the darkness that night in the Asheks.

You have much to do, son of Korit.

"I walk the banks of time," Lhial told him softly. "Looking at you, I see all your births, all your deaths, all the works the Lightbearer has prepared for you. But time is a dance of many steps and missteps. Those of us who see must sometimes act. Dwai sholo was not your dance. I made certain of that the night you were brought here, and so you were spared for other labors. Some you have already accomplished."

"Was Nysander's death part of this dance?"

The golden eyes blinked slowly. "What you and he accomplish together is. He dances willingly, your friend. His khi soars like a hawk from beneath your broken sword. He dances still. So should you."

Tears blurred Seregil's vision. He swiped at them with his free hand, then looked up into eyes again blue and full of concern.

"Does it hurt, little brother?" Lhial asked, patting Seregil's cheek.

"Not so much now."

"That's good. It would be a shame to damage such clever hands." Lhial settled back against the far wall, then snatched something from the shadows above his head and tossed it to Seregil.

He caught it and found himself clutching an all-too-familiar sphere of glass the size of a plum. He could see his own startled reflection on its dark, slightly roughened surface.

"They weren't black," he whispered, holding it in his cupped palm.

"Dreams," the rhui'auros said with a shrug.

"What is it?"

"What is it?" Lhial mimicked, and tossed him two more before he could put the first aside.

Seregil caught one but missed the last. It shattered next to his right knee, splattering him with maggots. He froze for an instant, then brushed them away in revulsion.

"There are many others," the rhui'auros said with a grin, pitching more of the orbs at him.

Seregil managed to catch five before another broke. This one released a puff of snow that sparkled in the air for an instant before melting away.

Seregil scarcely had time to consider this before the rhui'auros tossed him more. Another broke, releasing a brilliant green butterfly from a Bokthersan summer meadow. And another, splashing him with dark, clotted blood flecked with bone. More and more flew from the rhui'auros's fingers, one after another, until Seregil was surrounded by a small pile of them.

"Clever hands, indeed, to catch so many," Lhial remarked approvingly.

"What are they?" Seregil asked again, not daring to move for fear of breaking more.

"They are yours."

"Mine? I've never seen them before."

"They are yours," the rhui'auros insisted. "Now you must gather them all and take them away with you. Go on, little brother, gather them up."

The same feeling of helplessness he had in the dreams threatened to overwhelm him now. "I can't. There are too many. At least let me get my shirt."

The rhui'auros shook his head. "Hurry now. It's time to go. You can't leave unless you take them all."

The rhui'auros's eyes shone gold again as he stared through the curling steam at him, and fear closed in around Seregil.

Standing as best he could in the low chamber, he tried to gather an armload, but like eggs, they slipped from his grasp and smashed, releasing filth, perfumes, snatches of music, fragments of charred bone. He couldn't move without crushing them, or knocking them out of sight into the shadows.

"It's impossible!" he cried. "They're not mine. I don't want them!"

"Then you must choose, and soon," Lhial told him, his tone at once kind and merciless. "Smiles conceal knives."

The light disappeared, plunging Seregil into darkness.

"Smiles conceal knives," Lhial whispered again, so close to Seregil's ear that he jumped and flung out a hand. It found nothing but empty air. He waited a moment, then cautiously reached out again.

The spheres were gone.

Lhial was gone.

Disoriented, angry, and no wiser than when he had entered, Seregil crawled to the door but couldn't find it. Feeling his way along the wall with his good hand, he made several circuits of the tiny chamber before giving up; the door was gone, too.

He returned to the mat and settled there miserably, arms wrapped around his knees. The rhui'auros's parting words, the strange glass spheres that now haunted his waking life as well as his dreams— there must be some meaning behind it all. He knew in his gut that there was, but Bilairy take him if he could find the pattern.

Tearing the mask off, he wiped the sweat from his eyes and rested his forehead against his knees.

"Thank you for the enlightenment, Honored One," he snarled.

Seregil woke in the public meditation chamber. His head hurt, he was dressed, and the silver mask was in place again. He held his left hand up and found it whole. No dragon bite. No lissik stain. He almost regretted it; it would have been a fine mark. Had he gone down to the cavern at all, he wondered, or had the dreaming smoke here simply carried him into a vision?

Getting up as quickly as the pounding behind his eyes allowed, he discovered Alec sitting on a nearby pallet. A mask still covered his

face, and he seemed to be staring off across the room, lost in thought.

Seregil rose to go to him. As he did so, something slipped from the folds of his coat and rolled away toward the stairwell—a small orb of black glass. Before he could react, it rolled over the edge and was lost without a sound. Seregil stared after it for a moment, then went to rouse Alec.

Alec started when Seregil touched his shoulder. "Can we leave now?" he whispered, getting unsteadily to his feet.

"Yes, I think we've been dismissed."

Removing their masks, they left them on the floor beside the dozing doorkeeper and let themselves out.

Alec looked dazed, overwhelmed by whatever had happened to him in the tower. Leading his horse by the reins, he set out on foot. He said nothing, but Seregil sensed a weight of sadness pressing down on him. Reaching out, he pulled Alec to a stop and saw that he was crying.

"What is it, tali? What happened to you in there?"

"It wasn't—it wasn't what I expected. You were right about my mother. She was killed by her own people right after I was born. The rhui'auros showed me. Her name was Ireya a Shaar."

"Well, that's a start." Seregil moved to put an arm around him, but Alec pulled away.

"Is there a clan called the Akavi'shel?"

"Not that I know of. The word means 'many bloods.' "

Alec bowed his head as more tears came. "Just another word for mongrel. Always and never—"

"What else did he tell you?" Seregil asked softly.

"That I'd never have any children."

Alec's evident distress took Seregil by surprise. "The rhui'auros are seldom that clear about anything," he offered. "What exactly did he say?"

"That I would father a child of no mother," Alec replied. "Seems clear enough to me."

It did, and Seregil kept quiet for a moment, working it around in his mind. At last he said, "I didn't know you wanted children."

Alec let out a harsh sound, half-laugh, half-sob. "Neither did I! I mean, I'd never given it a lot of thought before. It was just something I assumed would happen sooner or later. Any man wants children, doesn't he? To carry his name?"

The words went through Seregil like a blade. "Not me," he replied quickly, trying to make light of the matter. "But then, I wasn't raised

a Dalnan. You didn't think I was going to bear you any babes, did you?"

The bond between them was too strong for him to mask his sudden flash of fear and anger. One look at Alec's stricken face told him he'd gone too far.

"Nothing will ever separate us," Alec whispered.

This time he didn't resist as Seregil embraced him, but instead clutched him closer.

Seregil held him, stroking his back and marveling at this fierce blend of love and pain.

"The rhui'auros—" Alec's voice was muffled against Seregil's neck. "I can't even explain what I saw, or how it felt. Bilairy's Balls, I see now why you hate that place!"

"No matter what you think they showed you up there, tali, you won't lose me. Not as long as I have breath in my body."

Alec clung to him a moment longer, then stepped back and wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

"I watched my mother die. I felt it." There was still a deep sorrow in him, but also awe. "She died to save me, but my father never spoke of her. Not once."

Seregil stroked a stray strand of hair back from Alec's cheek. "Some things are too hurtful to speak of. He must have loved her very much."

Alec's face took on a faraway look for a moment, as if he were seeing something Seregil couldn't. "Yes, he did." He wiped at his eyes again. "What did they want with you?"

Seregil thought again of the maddening glass balls, the snow and filth and the butterfly. Somewhere among those jumbled hints lay a pattern, a link of familiarity.

They are yours:

"I'm not sure."

"Did he say anything about the ban of exile being lifted? "

"It never occurred to me to ask."

Or perhaps I didn't want to hear the answer, he thought.

A great lethargy settled over Seregil as they rode for home. By the time they reached the house and stabled their horses, his bones ached with it.

A few night lamps lit their way upstairs. Alec's arm stole around his waist and he returned the embrace silently, grateful for the contact.

Tired as he was, he barely took note of a sliver of light showing beneath a door on the second floor.

A whisper-gentle touch on Thero's chest had woken him in the middle of the night. Starting up in alarm, he scrutinized the corners of his chamber.

No one was there. The small warding glyphs he'd placed on his door when he'd taken up residence here were undisturbed.

Only after he'd made a complete circuit of the room did he notice the folded parchment lying among the disordered bedclothes.

Snatching it up, he broke the plain wax seal and unfolded it. The small square was blank, except for a tiny sigil in one corner— Magyana's mark.

He paused, hearing footsteps in the corridor outside. Casting a seeking spell, he saw it was only Alec and Seregil and returned his attention to Magyana's message.

Hands, heart, and eyes, he mouthed silently, passing his hand across the sheet. Ink seeped from the parchment, flowing into Magyana's cramped scrawl.

"My dear Thero, I send you sad news in secret and at my own risk. By your Hands, Heart, and Eyes___"

A hard knot of dread crystallized in the young wizard's throat as he read on. When he'd finished he pulled on a robe and stole barefoot to Klia's chamber.

23

A Conversation

Ulan i Sathil rubbed Torsin's token—half a silver sester—between his fingers as he strolled beside the Vhadasoori pool. It was quite dark, and he heard the Skalan before he saw him. The wracking cough was as distinctive as a halloo, echoing faintly over the water. It was always distressing when a Tir began to fail this way, especially one of such value.

Following the sound, Ulan stepped out onto the surface of the pool and glided across to where Torsin stood waiting. It was a good trick—one of many that had not come down to the Skalan wizards—and made a strong impression on the mind of any Tir who witnessed it. It was also much easier on his aching old knees than walking.

Torsin, of course, had seen the trick before and seemed only mildly surprised when Ulan stepped up onto shore.

"Aura's blessings on you, old friend."

"May the Light shine on you," Torsin replied, patting his lips with a handkerchief. "Thank you for meeting me on such short notice."

"A walk under the peace of the stars is one of the few pleasures left to old men like ourselves, is it not?" Ulan replied. "I'd suggest stretching out on the grass to watch the sky as

we used to, but I fear neither of us would regain our feet without help or magic."

"Indeed not." Torsin paused, and Ulan thought he heard regret in the sigh that followed. When Torsin spoke again, however, he was his usual direct self. "The situation in Skala is shifting rapidly. I am now instructed to present you with a tentative counterproposal, one which will most assuredly be more palatable to you."

Instructed by whom, I wonder? thought Ulan.

Linking arms, the two men strolled slowly along the water's edge, speaking too softly now for the slender figure watching from the shadow of a standing stone to hear.

24

Bad News

A brisk rap at the chamber door jerked Seregil awake just before dawn. Still half caught in a nightmare, he sat up mumbling, "Yes? What is it?" The door swung open a few inches and Kheeta peered in at him. "Sorry to come so early, but it's by Klia's order. She wants you and Alec in her chamber at once."

The door closed and Seregil fell back among the pillows, trying to pull together the scattered images of his latest dream. Once again, he'd been trying to save the glass spheres from the rising fire, but each time he tried to gather them, there were more: a handful, a roomful, a dark, limitless vista of the cursed things beneath which unseen monsters burrowed, coming ever closer.

"O Illior, maker of dreams, give me the meaning of this one before it drives me mad!" he whispered aloud. Rolling out of bed, he fumbled in the dark for his boots. "Wake up, Alec. Klia's expecting us."

There was no answer. The other half of the bed was empty, the sheets cool. Alec had been too shaken to sleep after they'd returned from the Nha'mahat. He'd been sitting by the fire when Seregil fell asleep. "Alec?" he called again. His questing fingers found a taper on the mantel and he pushed it about in the banked

ashes on the hearth until he found a live coal. The wick flared at last and he held it up.

Alec was nowhere to be seen.

Puzzled, he finished dressing and set off for Klia's room alone. He was halfway down the corridor when he heard footsteps on the stairs leading to the roof. Here was Alec at last, bleary eyed and still dressed in last night's clothes.

"Were you up there all night? "

Alec rubbed at the back of his neck. "I couldn't sleep, so I went up to the colos to think. I must have finally dozed off. Where are you off to so early? I was hoping for a few hours' sleep in a warm bed."

"Not just yet, tali. Klia's sent for us."

This woke him up. "Do you think the Iia'sidra has reached a decision?" he asked, following Seregil downstairs.

"Even if they had, I doubt they'd spring that on us at dawn."

As they walked down the second-floor corridor toward Klia's chamber they could hear familiar sounds echoing up from the kitchen: clattering of pots, hurried footsteps, the voices of some Urgazhi riders joking with the cooks in broken Aurenfaie as they came in for their breakfast.

"Sounds like a normal enough morning," Alec remarked.

Thero answered their knock and admitted them to Klia's sitting room.

The princess sat by a small writing table. Although she was dressed for a day with the council, one look at her pale, too-calm face left Seregil with a sinking feeling. No, this was no normal morning.

Thero moved to stand just behind her, as if she were queen and he her court wizard. Lord Torsin and Beka already occupied the room's only chairs, and they looked as uneasy as Seregil suddenly felt.

"Good, you're all here. The queen my mother is dead," Klia announced flatly.

The words sapped the strength from Seregil's legs. The others seemed equally affected. Alec pressed one hand to his heart, the Dalnan sign of respect for the dead. Beka sat with her hands clasped around the hilt of her sword, head bowed. Of them all, Torsin appeared most stricken by the news. Sagging in his chair, he coughed convulsively into the stained handkerchief.

"I will not see her like again," he gasped out at last.

Thero held up a letter for the others to see. "It's from Magyana, dated yesterday and written in evident haste. It reads: 'The queen died the night before last. Brave soul, she should not have survived

this long, even with our magic and healing. The darkness seems already to be closing in around us.

" 'Northern Mycena has fallen to Plenimar. Phoria has already been crowned in the field. Korathan will replace Lady Morthiana as vicegerent at Rhiminee.

" 'Against all urging, Phoria has forbidden sending this news to Klia, so I risk all that you may not be taken by surprise.

" 'I am presently out of favor and have little influence. I have not been released from service, but am no longer consulted. Korathan has her ear, but is his sister's man, as is her wizard, Organeus.

" 'Phoria has not yet ordered Klia's return, which puzzles me. She and her supporters clearly have little faith in a propitious outcome. You must impress upon Klia that she is very much on her own now.

" 'I wish I could offer you more guidance, dear boy, but things are as yet too uncertain. Illior grant that I will not be sent from the royal camp before you are all safely on your way home again. —Magyana' "

"This couldn't have come at a worse time," said Klia. "Just when we were beginning to make progress among the Haman and some of the undecided clans. How will they respond to this?"

Another coughing fit shook Torsin, doubling him over in his chair. When it passed, he wiped his lips and wheezed out, "It is difficult to predict, my lady. They know so little of Phoria."

"I'd say our greatest concern is the fact that she didn't send word herself," said Seregil. "What do you suppose prompted that lack of sisterly consideration?"

"Does the Iia'sidra know of her opposition?" asked Alec.

"I suspect some of them do," Torsin replied bleakly.

"Two days!" Klia slammed a hand down on the polished desktop, making the others jump. "Our mother dead for two days and she sends me no word? What if the Aurenfaie already know? What must they think?"

"We can find out, my lady," Alec told her. "If this was Rhiminee, Seregil and I would have paid a few night visits to your opponents already. Isn't that why the queen wanted us here in the first place?"

"Perhaps, but I'm the one who makes those decisions here," Klia warned. "For any Skalan to be caught spying could destroy everything we've worked for. And consider Seregil's position. What do you think would happen to him if he were caught? No, we'll wait a bit longer. Come with me to the council today, both of you. I want your impressions."

Torsin exchanged an uneasy look with Seregil, then said gently, "You mustn't go to the Iia'sidra today, my lady."

"Don't be ridiculous. Now more than ever—"

"He's right," said Seregil. Going to her, he knelt and rested a hand on her knee. This close, he could see how red her eyes were. "Mourning is a deeply sacred rite among the Aurenfaie; it can last for months. You must at least observe the Skalan four-day ritual. The same applies to me, I suppose, considering how much we've made of my kinship to your family. Alec can be my eyes and ears."

Klia rested her head on one hand and let out a shakey sigh. "You're right, of course. But Plenimar presses closer to the heart of Skala every day I'm here without an answer. This delay is the last thing Mother would have wanted!"

"We may be able to wring some advantage from it, all the same," Seregil assured her. "According to Aurenfaie custom, the khirnari are expected to. visit you. This could offer certain opportunities for, shall we say, private debate?"

Klia regarded him quizzically. "I can't appear publicly, yet I can scheme and intrigue from behind a veil of mourning?"

Seregil gave her a crooked grin. "That's right. I'll wager certain people will be watching quite closely to see who comes to you and how long they stay."

"Yet how are we to announce the queen's death?" Thero asked suddenly. "If it weren't for Magyana, we wouldn't even know."

"What am I supposed to do? Lie?" Klia asked, angry again. "Dissemble until our new queen sees fit to inform me of this turn of events? If lack of mourning would dishonor me in the eyes of the Iia'sidra, what would that do, eh? That could well be Phoria's purpose. By the Four, I won't be her dupe!"

"Quite right, my lady," Torsin agreed. "Your forthrightness has been our greatest asset."

"Very well, then. Lord Torsin, you'll go to the lia'sidra today and announce the queen's passing. Let Phoria worry for herself where we came by the information. Alec and Thero will accompany you, together with a full honor guard. I want a detailed report of the day's proceedings. Captain, find black sashes for your riders and see that their cloaks are reversed and the horses' manes cropped. My mother was a Skalan warrior; she'll be accorded a warrior's honors."

Beka rose to attention."Do you wish me to announce the queen's death to my riders? "

"Yes. You're dismissed. Now, Seregil, what else must I do to satisfy Aurenfaie convention?"

"You'd better talk to my sisters. I'll fetch them."

"Thank you, my friend, we aren't bested yet. Now if you'll excuse us, I need a moment with Lord Torsin."

It's time we learned whether she knows of his meeting with Khatme, Seregil thought, following the others out. As he turned to close the door, something on the floor next to the doorjamb caught his eye: a small, flattened clod of moist earth. Kneeling, he examined it more closely.

"What's that?" asked Thero, already halfway to the stairs.

"How old do you make this?" Seregil asked Alec.

Alec squatted down beside him and nudged at it with a forefinger. "Not more than a few minutes. The floor's still damp beneath it, and no sign of drying about the edges. It's come off somebody's boots." Picking it up, he sniffed it and took a closer look. "Horse manure, with bits of hay and oats stuck in it."

"Beka must have tracked it in," said Thero.

Alec shook his head. "No, she was already here when we arrived, and this is fresher than that. And I was standing near the door the whole time we were in there and would have heard if anyone walked by. This person didn't mean to be heard, and this bit of muck places him close to the wall next to the door—an eavesdropper for certain, one who came in through the stable yard."

"Or from it," Seregil muttered, inspecting the corridor floor and both stairways. "There are a few other smudges here, leading to the back stairs. Not an experienced hand, our visitor. I'd have taken off my boots, but our spy just clomped in trusting to luck."

"But how would anyone have known to come here just now?" asked Thero. "I went straight from my chamber to Klia's. No one could have known about Magyana's letter."

"Beka came in from the stable yard," Seregil pointed out. "Anyone taking note of the summons could have followed her in. The approach also suggests that whoever it was, he was either very bold, very foolish, or trusted that his presence in the house wouldn't be questioned if anyone saw him. Or her."

"Nyal!" Alec whispered.

"The interpreter?"Thero said incredulously. "You can't seriously think that the Iia'sidra would assign a spy to Klia's staff, especially one as inept as this one appears to have been?"

Seregil said nothing for a moment, recalling the conversation he and the Ra'basi had shared during his convalescence. Perhaps the painkilling draughts had skewed his judgment, but he hoped Nyal wasn't their spy; the irony of the realization forced a grin to his lips. Now it was Alec who seemed ready to believe Nyal guilty.

"This isn't the first time we've had cause to question his motives." Alec sketched out the details of the tryst they'd observed between Nyal and Amali outside the Dravnian way station.

"You didn't actually overhear what they were discussing?" asked Thero.

"No."

"That's unfortunate."

"Suspicion and conjecture," said Seregil. "We're still standing on smoke."

"Who else could it have been?" said Alec. "One of the guards or servants?"

"I don't think Beka or Adzriel would be pleased with that speculation."

"I'll add a few spells here," Thero said, glaring at the doorframe as if it had somehow betrayed him. "We'd better warn Klia."

"Later. She has enough to trouble her this morning," Seregil advised. "You and Alec attend the Iia'sidra as planned. I'll find out what our Ra'basi friend has been up to this morning."

Alec started upstairs to change, then turned back. "You know, Phoria trying to hide the queen's death like that makes me wonder just who our real enemies are."

Seregil shrugged. "I suspect we have plenty on both sides of the Osiat."

Alec hurried off, but Thero lingered a moment longer, his narrow face more serious than usual.

"Worried about Magyana?" asked Seregil.

"Phoria will know who sent us the news."

"Magyana understood the risks. She can look out for herself."

Thero turned in at his own door. "Perhaps."

Seregil stopped in the stable yard on his way to Adzriel's to inquire about Nyal's whereabouts and was relieved to find Beka nowhere in sight. Steb and Mirn were standing guard duty at the courtyard gate.

"How long have you been on duty? " he asked them.

"Since before dawn, my lord," Steb told him, rubbing at the patch over his blind eye as he stifled a yawn.

"Any visitors? Anyone go in or out of the house?"

"No visitors, my lord, and the captain was the first in the house this morning. Princess Klia sent for her. She told us about poor old Idrilain when she came back." The one-eyed rider paused, touching

his hand to his heart. "Since then most of us have been in and out of the kitchen for our breakfast, but that's about all."

"I see. By the way, have you seen Nyal this morning? I need to speak with him."

"Nyal?" said Mirn. "He went out riding not long after Captain Beka was summoned to the house."

"Right after? Are you sure?" asked Seregil.

"Guess her moving around woke him up." Mirn smirked, earning a quick elbow and a dark look from his comrade.

Seregil brushed this aside. "This morning, though, he went riding as soon as she went to the main house?"

"Well, not just that minute," Steb explained. "He stayed on to breakfast with us, then headed out. We saw him leave."

"I expect he'll be back soon. He always is," Mirn added.

"Then this isn't the first dawn ride he's made?"

"No, my lord, though more often than not the captain goes with him. That's what makes some folks think—"

"You tell them to keep .that sort of thinking to themselves," Seregil snapped.

In the barracks, he found Beka conferring with her three sergeants.

"Good, you're all here," Seregil said, joining them, "Seems we may have an eavesdropper in the house."

Mercalle looked up sharply. "What makes you think that, my lord?"

"Just a hunch," he replied. "Keep an eye on who enters the house. The upper floors are off-limits anyway, so there shouldn't be anyone going up there except Klia's people and the servants."

Beka gave him a look that said she suspected there was more behind his request than he was letting on, just the sort of quiet, questioning glance her father would have used.

Seregil gave her a nod, then let himself out the back gate and crossed to Adzriel's door.

Entering this early had a bittersweet familiarity about it. As a boy, he'd often slipped out to ride before dawn or stayed out all night with a gang of companions when he could get away with it. How many times, he wondered, had he and Kheeta sneaked in by a certain back door and crept like thieves up to their beds?

For a fleeting moment he was tempted to try it now and come sauntering down as if—

as if I belonged here.

Tucking this new bit of heartache away for later scrutiny, he knocked and was led to a room near the kitchen, where his sisters

and their household were just starting an informal breakfast. Another twinge struck as he took in the cozy family tableau.

Mydri was the first to notice him. "What's the matter, Seregil? What's happened?"

Adzriel and the others turned, hands poised motionless over their torn bread and boiled eggs.

"Our—your kinswoman, Idrilain, is dead," he informed them, glad of a plausible excuse for what must have been a very long face.

Alec took his place behind Lord Torsin and Thero in the Iia'sidra circle and looked around, only to find himself being watched in turn by the Viresse khirnari.

Already seated among his delegation, Ulan i Sathil gave Alec a cordial nod as their eyes met. Alec returned it and hastily looked away, making a show of greeting Riagil i Molan. People were already taking note of Klia's empty chair, and Adzriel's.

Brythir i Nien of Silmai leaned forward in his chair and peered across at Torsin. "Will Princess Klia not attend today?"

The ambassador rose with melancholy dignity. "Honored Khirnari, I bring tragic news. We have just received word that Queen Idrilain of Skala is dead, felled by wounds received in battle. Princess Klia begs your patience while she mourns."

Saaban i Irais stood. "Adzriel a Illia also sends her regrets. She and our sister Mydri must attend Klia to mourn the passing of our kinswoman."

Most registered regret or surprise at this news. Khatme was inscrutable, Viresse solemn. Rhaish i Arlisandin of Akhendi gazed stonily at the floor. Beside him, Amali looked stunned.

The Silmai khirnari pressed both hands over his heart and bowed to Torsin. "May Aura's light guide her khi. Please convey our great sorrow, Torsin i Xandus. Will the princess not return to Skala to mourn?"

"It was Idrilain's wish that her daughter stay until her mission among you here is accomplished. Princess Klia asks that you grant her four days to conduct the proper rites, after which she prays that our long debate may see a timely conclusion."

"Are there any Objections?" the old Silmai asked the assembly. "Very well, then we will gather again at the end of the mourning period."

Signs of mourning were already in evidence by the time Alec and the others returned to the guest house.

Following Skalan custom, the main entrance was sealed and hung with an inverted shield. Incense billowed up from a brazier set on the doorstep. Strings of Aurenfaie prayer kites also fluttered from poles set into the ground, and from the windows and roof.

A low, droning song greeted them as they entered the main hall by a side door; six rhui'auros stood in a circle at the center of the room, chanting softly.

Klia was with Seregil, Adzriel, and Mydri, putting the final touches on a large prayer kite. Nearby several Bokthersan servants were busy constructing others. It looked as if they meant to festoon the whole house with them.

"What news?" Klia asked as they entered.

"All is well, my lady," replied Torsin. "The council will resume in five days."

Seregil dismissed the servants, then asked, "And what were your impressions?"

"That the Viresse already knew," Alec told him. "I can't explain it; it was just the way Ulan i Sathil watched us as we came in."

"I think he's right," Thero agreed. "I didn't dare chance brushing Ulan's mind, but I briefly touched that of Elos of Golinil. There was no surprise, only thoughts of Ulan."

"You did what?" Seregil gaped at the wizard in dismay. "Didn't I tell you how dangerous that could be?"

Thero spared him an impatient glance. "You didn't think I was dozing through all those long sessions, did you? I've been making a study of the lia'sidra members. Ulan i Sathil and the khirnari of Khatme, Akhendi, and Silmai have the strongest aura of magic about them. I'm not certain what the full extent of their skills may be, but I've sense enough to stay clear of them. Most of the others are far more limited—Elos of Golinil in particular. If Ulan has a weak point, it's his daughter's husband."

"If they did know, then perhaps you're right about having a spy in the house," Klia noted, frowning.

Adzriel looked up sharply, her face as solemn as her brother's. "I chose the staff for this house myself. They are above reproach."

Seregil shook his head. "That's not who I was thinking of."

25

Nightrunning

Skalan mourning was an austere affair, and fires, hot food, alcohol of any sort, lovemaking, and music were all strictly abstained from. A single candle was allowed in each room at night. Should the soul of the departed visit any of its loved ones, there must be nothing to distract it from its journey.

This was new territory for Alec, whose Dalnan upbringing dictated a quick burning and ashes plowed into the earth. He'd seen death often enough since he'd come south with Seregil, but his friend was neither Skalan nor one to adhere to custom. When Thryis and her family had been murdered, Seregil had set the inn ablaze as a pyre and sworn vengeance on their murderer, a vow Alec had himself carried out when he strangled Vargul Ashnazai. Seregil's grief for Nysander's death had been too deep and silent for mere ritual to encompass. For a time he'd almost stopped living himself.

This time, however, Seregil willingly observed the abstentions, sitting with Klia through the interminable visitations. Alec sensed genuine sadness in his friend, although Seregil said little.

It was Beka who finally drew him out. The three of them had gathered with Thero in the

wizard's room on the second night, passing the time in desultory conversation.

Thero was weaving the shadows cast by the candle into fantastic shapes against the wall. Seregil remained unusually quiet as he sat slouched in his chair, legs stretched out before him, chin on hand. Alec studied his friend's pensive face, wondering if Seregil was watching Thero's shadow play or lost to his own inner phantoms.

Beka suddenly nudged Seregil's foot with her own and raised her eyebrows in mock surprise when he looked up.

"Oh, it's you," she said. "And here I'd been thinking it must be Alec sitting there. No one else I know can keep quiet for so long."

"I was just thinking about Idrilain," he replied.

"You liked her, didn't you, Uncle?"

Alec Smiled, guessing that she'd used the familiar term to coax him out of his brown study; she called him "Uncle" only in private now.

Seregil shifted in his chair, clasping his hands over one updrawn knee. "Yes I did. She was queen when I came to Rhiminee, and did her best to find a place for me at court. It didn't work out, of course, but I might never have met Nysander if not for her." He sighed. "In a way, Idrilain was Skala to me. Now Phoria sits on the throne."

"Don't you think she'll rule well?" asked Beka.

Seregil's eyes met Alec's, acknowledging shared secrets. Then he shrugged. "I suppose she'll rule according to her nature."

The nature of the new queen proved to be a topic of prime interest to the Aurenfaie.

Adzriel had arranged a receiving room for Klia just off the main hall, mixing Skalan and Aurenfaie trappings. A tripod of headless spear shafts supported Klia's inverted shield. Censors clouded the air with the bittersweet vapors of myrrh and stop-blood weed, the soldier's field herb. Delicate Aurenfaie scrolls hung beside the room's three doors, painted with prayers directing the queen's soul onward should she come to visit her daughter and forget how to move on. An Aurenfaie screen of thin parchment blocked the window, except for a small hole by which the khi could come and go.

Another Aurenfaie touch was a small brazier by the door, where each guest cast a small bunch of cedar tips as they entered, an offering to the departed. The scent of it was said to be pleasing to the dead, but the living were soon well sick of it. By the end of each day a pall of smoke hung near the ceiling in a slow-roiling cloud. The

odor of it clung to clothing and hair and followed them to their beds at night.

Sitting beside Klia each day, Seregil wondered what the dead queen would make of the conversation if she did choose to visit.

Each visitor, regardless of clan or stance, began with the usual expressions of condolence but soon maneuvered their way to subtle inquiries about Phoria.

Alec reported similar interest. Every member of the Skalan delegation, even the Urgazhi riders, were suddenly thought to be authorities on the new queen's character. People who had not deigned to speak to Alec since his arrival now cornered him on the street. "What is this new queen like?" they all wanted to know. "What is her interest here? What does she want from Aurenen?"

Braknil and Mercalle had the most to say in Phoria's favor; they'd both fought beside her in their younger days and praised her bravery in glowing terms.

Lacking Seregil's connection to the royal family, Alec made himself useful helping Thero and Torsin greet their visitors in the hall and seeing that each dignitary was properly attended to as they waited for an audience with Klia.

He was so occupied on the third day when Rhaish i Arlisandin and his young wife arrived. He withdrew as Torsin and the khirnari launched into a hushed discussion, but Amali followed him and laid a hand on his arm.

"There's something I must share with you in private," she murmured, casting a quick glance back at her husband.

"Certainly, my lady." Alec led her to an unused room just off the hall.

As soon as he'd closed the door she strode to the far end, clasping her hands in obvious agitation. Alec folded his arms and waited. She hadn't spoken directly to him more than twice since their arrival in Sarikali.

"Nyal i Nhekai advised me to speak with you," she confided at last. "He says you are a man of honor. I must ask that no matter what you say to the request I am about to make, what I say will go no further than this room. Can you give me your word on that?"

"Perhaps it would be better if you spoke to someone with more authority," Alec suggested, but she shook her head.

"No! Nyal said to speak only to you."

"You have my word, my lady, as long as whatever you have to say doesn't put me at odds with my loyalty to Princess Klia."

"Loyalty!" she exclaimed softly, wringing her hands. "You must be the judge of that, I suppose. Ulan i Sathil has summoned certain khirnari to meet with him tonight at his house. My husband is among those who will be there."

"I don't understand. I thought he and your husband were enemies?"

"There is no good feeling between them," Amali admitted, looking more distracted than ever. "That is why it worries me so. Whatever Ulan has to say, it cannot bode well for your princess, yet my husband will not tell me what the purpose of the meeting is to be. He has been so—so very upset by all this. I cannot imagine what would convince him to go to that man's house."

"But why tell me?"

"It was Nyal's idea, as I said. I spoke with him earlier. 'Bring this to Alec i Amasa as soon as you can!' he said. Why would he send me to you?"

"I can't say, my lady, but I give you my word that your secrets are safe."

Amali clasped his hands between hers for a moment, tears standing in her eyes as she searched his face. "I love my husband, Alec i Amasa. I wish no harm or dishonor to come to him. I would not have spoken if I did not fear for him. I cannot explain it—there's just been such a weight of dread on my heart since this whole dreadful debate began. Now more than ever, he is Klia a Idrilain's best ally."

"She knows that. When are the khirnari to meet?"

"At the evening meal. The Viresse always wait until after sunset to dine."

Alec stored away this information. "Perhaps you should return to the hall now, before you're missed?"

She gave him a small, grateful smile and slipped out. Alec waited a few moments, then went out to the barracks to find Nyal.

The Ra'basi was playing bakshi with Beka and several of her riders. As soon as Alec appeared in the doorway, however, he excused himself and walked with him into the stable.

"I just spoke with Amali," Alec told him.

Nyal looked relieved. "I feared she would not go to you."

"Why, Nyal? Why me?"

The man gave him a wry look. "Who better than you to act on such information? Unless I'm mistaken, you and Seregil have certain—

talents, shall we say? But Seregil is bound at Klia's side by duty and blood ties, and by other concerns you are well aware of. You aren't."

"Concerns such as atui?"

The Ra'basi shrugged. "Sometimes honor is a matter of perspective, is it not?"

"So I've been told." Alec wondered if he'd just been insulted or shared a confidence. "What's the purpose of this meeting? Amali seems concerned for her husband's safety."

"I have no idea. I'd heard nothing of it until she came to me. Ra'basi was not included in the invitation."

Ah, so that's your angle! Keeping the thought to himself, Alec went on ingenuously, "That's odd. Moriel a Moriel still supports Viresse, doesn't she?"

"Perhaps Viresse grows arrogant," said Nyal, arching a sardonic eyebrow. "Perhaps Ulan i Sathil forgets that Ra'basi is one of the Eleven and not some minor clan who owes him loyalty."

"And if I do make use of this information, what then? What do you want from me in return?"

Nyal shrugged. "Only to know of anything that affects my clan's interests. Or Akhendi's."

"Akhendi? You ask that on behalf of your khirnari?"

Nyal colored visibly. "I ask for myself."

Alec frowned. "Or for Amali a Yassara? How many lovers do you have, Nyal?"

"One lover," he replied, meeting Alec's look without flinching, "but many that I love."

Alec was waiting for Seregil when he emerged from the receiving chamber late that afternoon. Drawing him aside, Alec quickly repeated what Amali and Nyal had told him, then held his breath, waiting for Seregil to come up with some reason for him not to investigate. Not that it would stop him from going, of course.

To his relief, Seregil finally gave a reluctant nod. "Klia must know nothing of it until you're back."

"Easier to apologize than to get permission, eh?" Alec grinned. "I suppose you can't—"

Seregil dragged the fingers of one hand through his hair, scowling. "I hate this, you know. I hate not being able to act, being so damned constrained by honor and law and circumstance."

Alec raised a hand to his friend's cheek, then let his fingers trail

down to a fading bruise just visible above his collar. "I'm glad to hear it, tali. You haven't seemed yourself since we got here."

"Myself?" Seregil gave a mocking laugh. "Who's that, I wonder? You go, Alec. I'll stay here and behave myself like a good little exile."

They slipped into Klia's darkened receiving room just after nightfall. Alec felt a bit guilty, but elated, too. Beneath his cloak, he wore an Aurenfaie tunic, trousers, and loose sandals, filched by Seregil from some servant. His tool roll, rescued at last from the obscurity of the clothes chest, was secreted once more inside his tunic. It was a risk to bring it, which is why he hadn't bothered to tell Seregil, but he felt better having it along.

I'm doing this for Klia, whether she wants me to or not, he thought, quelling any doubts.

They lifted aside the screen covering the window and Alec threw one leg over the sill. A sudden rush of excitement left him a little giddy. Finally, after all these weeks, here was some useful work. A stray thought sobered him for a moment, however. "No sen'gai!" he whispered, raising a hand to his head.

"I didn't know if I could still wrap one properly," Seregil admitted. "Besides, going bareheaded will make you all the more anonymous in the dark—just another servant out for an evening stroll."

"I'm always a servant," Alec complained jokingly, trying to simultaneously whisper and whine.

"Breeding tells," Seregil shot back, clasping him by the back of the neck and giving him a playful shake. "Luck in the shadows."

"I hope so."

It was a short drop to the ground, and Alec managed it soundlessly. This side of the house stood perpendicular to the street and overlooked open ground. Following it back would take him to the wall of the stable yard. Either direction meant passing sentries. He could hear Arbelus and Minal talking somewhere out front. Waiting until they'd wandered back toward the door, he quickly crossed the grassy verge and blended into the shadows beyond.

Following Torsin weeks before had been an impulse, a fluke. This time, he had a mission and it felt as if he were seeing the place through different eyes, overlaid with memories of similar jobs carried out in Rhiminee. Here there were no cutpurses and footpads to avoid, no City Watch to evade. No whores of either sex called to him from the shadows. There were no lunatics, beggars, or drunken soldiers. The makeshift taverns had none of the disreputable reek of the raucous establishments of Skala.

Instead, the strange quiet that overlay the city tonight pressed in on him, and his imagination conjured ghosts in shadowed doorways. Never before had he been more aware that this was a city of the dead, tenanted only occasionally by the living. It was a relief to meet other people along the streets, though he kept his distance.

He had an uneasy moment as he passed Haman tupa. Movement in a side street to his left caught his eye. He continued on to the next building, then ducked around the corner and looked back, waiting for any potential stalkers to betray themselves. No one appeared. Nothing but the call of a night bird broke the silence.

Shrugging off a lingering sense of being watched, he continued on, running now to make up for lost time. It wouldn't do to arrive late even if he wasn't invited.

Ulan i Sathil's grand house stood on a small rise overlooking the Vhadasoori. According to Seregil, who'd known the place in his youth, it was laid out around a series of large courtyards, not unlike the clan house at Gedre. As he surveyed its imposingly plain walls from the shelter of a nearby alleyway, he longed again for Rhiminee's villas, with their tall, well-tended trees and usefully ornate exterior carvings. If the Viresse house ran true to form, however, whatever it lacked in handholds was more than made up for by a scandalous lack of walls, dogs, sentries, and locks. At least this place had a few accessible windows.

Most were dark. The only visible signs of light were concentrated to the left of the main entrance. Alec kicked off his sandals and poised for a dash, but shrank back at the sound of approaching hooves. Four horsemen reined in and knocked for admittance. In the spill of light from the doorway Alec caught a brief glimpse of the visitors as they entered. He couldn't make out faces from this angle, but he saw that they wore the purple sen'gai of Bry'kha.

Looks like I'm just in time.

He waited until the door closed, then ran to a window to the right of the door that looked promising, unshuttered and dark. Alec slipped over the sill and went into a crouch, listening. Satisfied that the room was unoccupied, he pulled the lightstone from his tool roll and shielded it with his hand. By its light, he saw that he was in an empty room. He tucked the stone into his belt and crept out into an unlit corridor, his bare feet silent on the smooth stone floor.

He found his way to a passageway leading to the main hall. As he

watched from the shelter of a doorway, a servant crossed the room and returned a moment later with several Lhapnosans. He caught the words "welcome" and "garden."

Luck in the shadows indeed, thought Alec, retreating back the way he'd come. Whatever the 'faie might think about thieves and thought readers, it seemed their god had a favor or two to spare the humble nightrunner. Now if his luck would just hold until he found the right garden.

After several wrong turns, Alec ended up in a room with a low balcony overlooking an illuminated courtyard. Creeping to the archway, he peered out, then ducked quickly back, heart pounding in his chest. Ulan i Sathil sat less than twenty feet away. Moving more carefully, Alec chanced another look.

The large, lushly overgrown garden was lit by crescent-shaped lanterns set on tall poles. Ulan faced his guests, most of whom were hidden from view by the angle of the wall. Alec guessed by the murmur of conversation that there were no more than a dozen people present. Those he could see included the khirnari of Lhapnos and Bry'kha, together with some of their kin and members of minor clans. Servants were circulating with wine and sweets.

He was about to belly-crawl to the opposite side of the archway when a whiff of scent froze him on all fours. He'd smelled the same spicy, musk only once before, in the shadows of the House of Pillars. It raised the hairs on the back of his neck and spread gooseflesh up his arms.

Turning, he scanned the room for its source, glancing toward the door in time to see a growing glimmer of light beneath it. He had just time enough to scuttle behind the door before it swung open. Through the crack between door and frame, he saw a bored-looking watchman raise the lantern he held and peer around the room. Satisfied, he went out again, closing the door behind him.

Alec stayed where he was for nearly a minute, testing the air like a hound as he waited for his heartbeat to slow. For an instant he thought he smelled the perfume again.

"Who are you?" he whispered, realizing as he did so that he was more fearful of receiving a response than not.

No one answered, and the scent did not return.

Don't be a fool, he berated himself as he crept back to the window. Someone wearing a strong scent had passed by in the corridor, maybe even someone the watchman was looking for. It was probably a common scent. Then again, he'd been to endless gatherings since his arrival in Aurenen and never smelled anything like it.

He shook off the disconcerting thoughts. He couldn't afford to linger.

Standing on the opposite side of the archway now, he peered around and with a sinking heart recognized Seregil's old friend, Riagil i Molan of Gedre sitting between Ruen i Uri of Datsia and Rhaish i Arlisandin. The khirnari of Bry'kha and Silmai were there, too, along with several minor khirnari.

It was clear from the level of conversation that more guests were expected. A few moments later several Haman entered, but Nazien i Hari was not one of them. These were all younger men, and it was Emiel i Moranthi who bowed in greeting to their host.

Alec's lip curled at the sight of him, his distaste tempered only by the pleasure of observing the arrogant bastard unaware.

This must have completed the company, for Ulan stood to address them. Alec sank down and settled his back against the wall to listen.

"My friends, my opposition to the Skalan's demands are no secret among you," Ulan began. "I am frequently accused of acting out of self-interest. I do not deny this, nor do I apologize. I am a Viresse, and the khirnari of my clan. My first duty is to my people. There is no dishonor in this."

He paused, perhaps to let his guests reflect on their own loyalties. "Until now my opposition has been based on my desire to preserve the prosperity of my clan. Like you, I had the greatest respect for Idrilain a Elesthera. She was a Tirfaie of great atui and valor. Klia a Idrilain is very like her mother and I hold her in equal esteem.

"But now Idrilain is dead, and it is not Klia who ascends that throne, but her half-sister, Phoria. I have called you here tonight not as a Viresse, or a khirnari, but as a fellow Aurenfaie who realizes that we must, in the affairs of the wider world, act as a single people. This new queen is not a woman of honor. Of this I have proof."

Alec scrambled to his feet and peered out. Ulan was holding up a handful of documents, the largest of which bore a large wax seal Alec knew only too well.

O Illior! Memories of secrets he'd all but forgotten he knew settled over Alec like a pall. It was a Queen's Warrant, no doubt the lost twin of a forged document used by Phoria five years earlier to reroute a shipment of gold destined for the Skalan treasury. On the surface it had been a foolish indiscretion, done to help protect a kinsman of the queen's vicegerent, Lord Barien, who'd also been rumored to be Phoria's lover. In fact, the whole business had been secretly engineered by enemies of the queen, a faction known as the

Lerans. He and Seregil had uncovered the plot by accident during their investigation of that same forger. Only Nysander had been privy to the resulting confrontation between Idrilain and her daughter. All Alec knew was that Phoria had remained heir.

He gnawed his lip in frustration as Ulan fitted the facts into a far more damning picture, depicting Phoria as a weak woman, led by passion rather than honor.

Risking another glance out into the courtyard, Alec saw the gloating satisfaction of the Haman and Lhapnosans. The Gedre khirnari was whispering anxiously to Rhaish i Arlisandin, who'd gone pale. The Silmai elder merely stared down at his hands, as if lost in thought.

Ulan i Sathil continued on, evincing nothing but an earnest desire to inform. Nonetheless, Alec was certain he caught a triumphant gleam in the man's eyes.

What a schemer you are, Alec thought, not knowing whether he should feel angry or awed.

Too restless for company, Seregil retired early and attempted to read by the fire, but one book followed another onto the untidy pile beside his chair. Soon he was up and pacing as he mulled various unhappy scenarios to account for Alec's prolonged absence.

Alec's foray into Torsin's room aside, it had been months since either of them had done any outright burgling. As the stars marched toward midnight, he found himself worrying as if Alec were still his green protege.

Perhaps he'd been caught. Seregil could imagine Klia's reaction if Alec was brought home under Viresse guard, accused of spying. Or maybe he'd stumbled into the clutches of Seregil's Haman friends.

No, he thought, rubbing at the fading bruises on one forearm, Alec was too clever for that. Maybe he'd just gotten lost.

Seregil had nearly talked himself into going out to look for him when Alec slipped in.

"Well?" Seregil demanded.

Alec was frowning. "You're not going to like it. Ulan found out about Phoria and Barien: the whole business of the forged papers, the Leran gold, everything."

"Bilairy's stinking codpiece!"

"And he did a fine job of painting our new queen as an honorless

liar," Alec went on as he changed into his own clothing. "You know what this means, don't you?"

"Yes." Seregil sighed. "Come on, let's find Thero and get this over with."