Book One

FIRST FLAMES

The apple struck Elena on the head. In surprise, she bit her tongue, and her foot slipped off the next rung of the ladder. She fell the two yards to the hard ground and crushed a decayed apple, smearing sticky foulness over the seat of her new work clothes.

“Careful there, Elena,” Joach called from another ladder, the strap from his apple basket digging into his forehead. The basket on his back was almost full.

She glanced to her own basket, its contents spilled across the orchard ground. With her face as red as the apple that had dropped on her, she stood, trying to reclaim as much dignity as possible.

Wiping her brow, she looked to the sun, which was low on the horizon. Late afternoon shadows stretched toward her. Sighing, she gathered her stray fruit. The dinner bell would be ringing soon. And her basket, even reloaded, was only a bit over half full. Father would be angry. “Head in the clouds,” he would accuse her. “Always slacking from real work.” She had heard his words often enough.

She placed a hand on the ladder leaning against the trunk of the tree. It wasn’t as if she was purposefully avoiding work. She didn’t mind working long hours in the fields or orchards. But the monotony of the chores did little to keep her attention from wandering to the numerous curiosities around her. Today she had found a kak’ora bird’s tiny nest tucked in the crook of an orchard tree. The nest, long abandoned for the season, fascinated her with its intricate weaving of twigs, dried mud, and leaves. Then there had been the lacy spiderweb she had found, heavy with dew, like a jeweled drape. And the molted husk of a fiddler beetle glued to a leaf. So much to study and admire.

She stretched the ache buried between her shoulders, staring at row after row of apple trees. For just a heartbeat, Elena felt a twinge of suffocation—the “willies” her mother called it. In the past, many workers had whispered of the orchard’s smothering touch. The trees consumed the entire high country, blanketing hundreds of thousands of acres, spreading from the distant peaks of the towering Teeth down to the lowlands of the plains. While the orchard wore many different seasonal faces—a spread of pink and white blossoms in the spring, an impenetrable green sea in summer, a skeletal tangle in winter—its very bulk had a constancy that ate the spirit, draining it.

Elena shivered. The branches blocked all the horizons around her. The entwining limbs overhead kept even the sun’s touch from Elena’s face. When she was younger, she had played among the rows of trees.

Then the world had seemed huge, full of adventure and new discoveries. Now, nearing womanhood, Elena finally understood the whispered words of the other workers.

The orchard slowly choked you.

She raised her face. Here was her world. A trap of trees, leaves, and apples. She could find no break in the view. The cloying smell of decaying apples lay thick on the air. The odor crept into one’s pores, marking each person like a dog with its scent, claiming you as its own. Elena spun around, drowning in the beauty of the orchard.

If only she had the wings of a bird, she would fly from here. Sail across the plains of Standi, wing over the I’nova swamps, fly among the humped islands of the Archipelago to the Great Ocean itself. She turned in circles under the boughs of the trees, imagining faraway places.

“When you’re done dancing, Sis,” Joach called down to her, “you’d better get back to work.” His stern words clipped her wings and rumbled her from the clouds. She stared up at her older brother.

His voice rang with echoes of her father. For a moment, Elena could even see her father in her brother’s broadening shoulders and strong, sunburned face. When had that happened? Where was the boy who had run screaming with her in imaginary hunts through the orchards?

She stepped back toward her ladder. “Joach, don’t you ever want to leave this place?”

“Sure,” he said, continuing to pick. “I want my own farm. Maybe I’ll stake out some land by the wild orchards near the Eyrie.”

“No, I mean leave the valley—leave the orchards.”

“Be a townie in Winterfell, like Aunt Fila?”

Elena sighed and mounted her ladder. The orchard had already swallowed her brother whole, his mind and spirit trapped in the tangle of branches. “No,” she said, trying again, “I mean leaving the foothills, going to see other lands.”

He stopped, a ripe apple in his hand, and turned to her, his eyes serious. “Why?” Elena slipped the carrying strap across her forehead. “Never mind.” Her basket now felt twice as heavy.

Nobody understood her.

Suddenly laughter burst from her brother, drawing Elena’s attention back.

“What?” she said, expecting ridicule.

“Elena, you’re so easy to fool!” Joach’s face split with a mischievous grin. “Of course I want to leave this boring valley! Who do you think I am, some doddering farmer? Sheesh, I’d leave here in a bloody second.”

Elena grinned. So the orchard hadn’t snatched her brother yet!

“Give me a sword and a horse, and I’d be long gone,” he continued, his eyes wide with his own dreams.

They shared a smile across the row of trees.

Suddenly a ringing clang echoed across the field: the dinner bell.

“About time!” Joach said, leaping from his ladder to land gracefully on the ground. “I’m starving.” She grinned. “You’re always starving.”

“I’m growing.”

Her brother’s words were certainly true. Joach had spurted in size over this last season; his fourteenth birthday would come next week. Just a year older than she, he already stood a good head taller. She resisted the impulse to glance down at her chest. The other girls on neighboring farms were already sprouting in all directions, while she, if she took her shirt off, looked not unlike her brother. People had often mistaken them for brothers, even. They had the same red hair, tied in a ponytail in back, the same green eyes above high cheekbones, and the same sunburned complexion. While it was true she had more freckles, longer eyelashes, and a smaller nose, she was still almost as muscular as he. Working in the fields and orchards together since they were children had conditioned them similarly.

But the farm work they did amounted to no more than children’s chores. Soon Joach would join the men in the harder labors and grow the chest and arms of a true man, even as he grew in height already.

Eventually no one would mistake them for brothers—at least she hoped not. Unwittingly, she found herself staring at her chest and thinking fervently, the sooner the better.

“If you are done admiring those baby apples of yours,” he teased, “let’s get going.” She plucked a fruit and threw it at him. “Get out of here!” She meant to sound abrasive, but her laughter at the end ruined it. “At least I don’t keep flexing in front of the mirror when no one’s looking.” It was his turn to go red faced. “I wasn’t… I mean, I didn’t—”

“Go home, Joach.”

“What about you?”

“My basket is far from full. I think I’d better work a little longer.”

“I could pour some of my apples into your basket. Mine’s overflowing anyway. That way it’ll look like we did the same amount of work.”

Knowing her brother was trying to help her, she still felt a twinge of annoyance. “I can pick my own apples.” Her words came out more acerbic than she had intended.

“Okay, I was only trying to help.”

“Tell Mother I’ll be back before sundown.”

“You’d better be. You know she doesn’t like us out after dark. The Cooliga family lost three sheep last week.”

“I know. I heard. Now get going before they run out of mutton. I’ll be fine.” She saw her brother hesitate for a heartbeat, but his hunger won out. With a wave, he headed away, marching between the rows of trees, back toward the house. Quickly swallowed up by the trees, even his scrunching footfalls faded to silence.

Elena climbed to the top of the ladder and pushed her way up to the more heavily laden branches. In the distance, she spied the multiple trails of chimney smoke rising from the town of Winterfell, hidden deeper in the valley. Her eyes tracked the black, smudged columns until they faded to faint haze high above the valley, where winds blew the smoke toward the distant ocean. If only she could follow…

As she stared, her father’s words returned to her, his voice gruff: Your head’s always in the clouds, Elena.

Sighing, she tore her gaze from the sky and leaned her belly against the ladder for balance. This was her life. Using both hands, she grabbed apples and dropped them over her shoulder into her basket.

Experienced fingers judged if the apples were ripe enough to pluck, pausing here, picking there, until all the mature apples from the local branches rested in her basket.

As she worked, her shoulders began to ache again, shooting complaints down her back. But she did not stop. Swatting at the flies that circled about her, she climbed up another rung to reach fresh branches, determined to fill her basket before sundown.

Soon the ache in her shoulders spread like a weed to her belly. She shifted her position on the ladder, thinking the rungs were bruising her midriff as she leaned. Suddenly a sharp cramp gripped her gut. She almost lost her balance, but a quick hand on the ladder stopped her plummet.

Eyes narrowed, she held on to the ladder, waiting for the pain to subside. It always did. For the past few days, she had been suffering from bouts of cramping. She had kept silent, attributing it to the number of blisterberries she had been consuming. The season was short, and the purplish berries had always been her favorite. Cramping or not, she couldn’t resist their sweet nectar.

Breathing sharply between her clenched teeth, she rode out the pain. Within a few heartbeats, it faded back to a dull ache. Resting her forehead against her arm, she allowed herself a few deep breaths before continuing.

Glancing up, she spotted a sight that made her forget about her belly. The late evening sunlight pierced the canopy of leaves and blazed on a beauty of an apple, exceptionally large, almost the size of a small melon. Ah, how her mother prized these large, succulent apples for her pies. Even her father would be doubly pleased if she returned with her basket full and this trophy of an apple.

But could she reach it?

Stepping up another rung, one more than her father normally allowed them to climb, she strained an arm upward. Her fingertips brushed the bottom of the apple, setting it to swinging on its stalk.

Blast! If Joach were here, he could have reached it. But this was her prize. Pressing her lips together, she carefully eased herself up another rung. The ladder teetered beneath her. Hugging the trunk with one arm, she stretched the other toward the prize. Her hand inched toward the large fruit as her shoulder throbbed.

With a triumphant grin, she watched her hand slide into the sunlight outlining the apple. Or at least she intended to. As her hand slipped higher, it vanished as it struck the edge of the sunbeam. Thinking the sun-dazzle had momentarily blinded her, she did not immediately panic.

Instead, her stomach cramped viciously, her lower belly flaring with agony as if someone had dragged a rusty dagger through her innards. Gasping, she stumbled down a rung, clutching tree and ladder in a huge embrace.

A hot wetness seeped between her thighs as she hung there. Believing the pain had loosened her bladder, she glanced down in disgust. But what she saw there caused her to slip down the length of the ladder and land in a crumpled pile at its foot.

Rolling into a seated position, she again examined herself. Blood! Her gray pants were soaked in the crotch with seeping blood. Her first thought was that something had cut her up inside. Then it dawned on her, and a small smile played about her lips. Something she had heard about, had been hoping for, had finally happened: her first menstra.

She, Elena Morin’stal, had become a woman.

Stunned, she sat there and raised a hand to her forehead. Before she could touch her damp brow, her right hand drew her eyes.

It was swamped in blood, too!

A thick redness coated the entire surface of her hand like a ruby glove. What had happened? She knew she hadn’t touched herself down there. Besides, she wasn’t bleeding that much.

I must have cut myself on a ladder nail during the fall, or maybe on a sharp broken branch, she thought.

But there was no pain. Instead there was an almost pleasant coolness. She wiped her hand on her khaki shirt. Nothing wiped off. Her shirt was still clean. She wiped harder. Still nothing.

Her heart began to race, and stars danced across her vision as she started to panic. Her mother had never warned her of anything like this associated with a woman’s first menstra. Maybe it was some sort of woman’s secret, kept hidden from men and children. That had to be it! She forced her breathing to slow. It obviously didn’t last. Her mother’s hands were normal.

She took several cleansing breaths. It would be okay. Her mother would explain this nonsense. She stood up, and for the second time that day, righted her spilled basket and gathered her stray apples. The last apple she spotted was the giant trophy apple. She must have grabbed it before she fell. What luck!

She touched her right earlobe in proper deference to the spirits for this boon. “Thank you, Sweet Mother,” she murmured to the empty orchard. Here lay a good omen as she started her womanhood.

Bending over to retrieve her prize, she watched her bloodied hand close upon it and remembered the moment when her hand had vanished, disappearing in a blaze of sunlight. She crinkled her brow and dismissed the thought. It must have just been the light playing tricks on her tired eyes.

Her hand clamped on the apple. Mother would make a fine pie out of this. She pictured the warm apple and cinnamon oozing from a fresh slice of pie.

As she lifted her trophy, the apple quaked in her palm as if it were alive, then promptly withered and dried to a wrinkled, parched mass. Pulling her lips back in disgust, she dropped it. As the apple hit the ground, it flashed up in a flame bright enough to blind her eyes. Elena raised her arm across her face, but the light just as quickly vanished. She lowered her arm cautiously. All that was left of the apple was a tiny mound of ashes.

Holy Mother of Regalta!

As she backed away from the black pile, the dinner bell again clanked from across the orchard, startling her but also setting her in motion. Abandoning her basket, she fled across the orchard.

By the time Elena reached her family’s farmyard, only the last rays of the setting sun still glowed in the western sky. Shadows lay thick across the packed dirt between the horse barn and main house. Leaping over the irrigation ditch, she burst from the last row of trees.

A wagon loaded with day workers trundled toward her, heading for the town road. Raucous laughter carried across the yard. The mule driver, Horrel Fert, waved her out of the way. “Move it, lass,” he called to her. “I’ve got a boot full of hungry men here needin‘ to git to their dinners.”

“And our ale! Don’t forget our ale!” someone called from the back of the wagon. His comment triggered another spate of laughter.

Elena hopped to the side of the yard. The train of four mules leaned into their harnesses and pulled the creaking wagon past her. She began to raise her right hand to wave to the departing workers, then lowered it, hiding it behind her back, suddenly ashamed of her stained hand. If the red color was a mark of budding womanhood, she suddenly felt awkward at declaring her change before the rowdy men. She even found her cheeks blushing at the thought.

As soon as the wagon lumbered past, Elena darted across the yard, but not before hearing one of the men declare to another, “That girl’s an odd one. Always running about. Not right in the head, I wager.” Elena ignored the insult and continued toward the back door of her house. It wasn’t anything she hadn’t heard before. The children at school were even cruder with their tongues. Elena had always been a tall, gangling child, dressed in old homespun hand-me-downs from her brother. She endured being the butt of much joking, often crying herself home. Even her teachers thought her somewhat slow, believing her daydreams to be evidence of a dull mind. This judgment hurt, too, but over time, Elena’s heart had grown thick-enough calluses.

Isolated, with only her brother and a few youngsters from neighboring farms for companionship, Elena had discovered the joys of exploring on her own. She had rooted out many wonderful places in the surrounding foothills: a rabbit warren where the does and bucks would feed freely from her hand; an anthill as high as her head; a lightning-struck tree that was hollow inside; a patch of mold-frosted headstones from a long-lost cemetery. She would often return exhausted from a day of roaming, bramble scratched and muddy, with a wide grin on her face.

Frowning now, Elena slowed her running as she neared the back door.

As much as she enjoyed her explorations, she could not ignore that lately a certain discontent had crept around her heart. She found her eyes lingering on far horizons. Her hands itched for something she could not name. It was as if a storm were building up in her bones, waiting to burst free.

Elena climbed the back steps. As she reached toward the door handle, her eyes caught the ruby glow of her stained palm in the last rays of the sun. And now this! What did it mean? Her fingers trembled as they hovered over the brass door handle. For the first time, she sensed the true depth and breadth of the strangeness that could lie beyond her orchard. She closed her eyes, suddenly fearful.

Why would she ever want to leave her home? Safety was here, and all those who loved her. Here were lands as comfortable as worn flannel on a cold morning. Why seek more?

As she shivered on the doorstep, the door burst open before her, startling her down a step. In the doorway, her father towered with Joach’s shoulder clutched in his large hand. Both the men’s eyes widened in surprise to find Elena on the stoop.

“See,” Joach said sheepishly, “I told you she’d be right in.”

“Elena,” her father said, “you know you’re not supposed to be in the orchards alone after dark. You need to think—”

Elena flew into her father’s arms.

“Honey?” he said as he closed her up in his thick arms. “What’s wrong?” She buried her face into her father’s chest, never wanting to move from his arms. More than the thatched roof and warm hearth, here was her home.

The twilight gloom deepened under the thick branches of the orchard trees. Rockingham pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders and stamped his feet. The night always grew so cold in this cursed alpine valley. He hated this assignment from his superiors. Stuck in a backwater village of backwoods bumpkins—and these frigid winters! Nothing like the sunny climate of his island home…

As a cold breeze bit at his thin cloak, Rockingham pictured his home in the Archipelago. The beaches, the moist heat, the sunsets that took hours to dim over the ocean swells. As he remembered the home he had left so long ago, a trace of memory whispered at his ear: long blond hair and laughing eyes… and a name… a woman’s name. But who? He tried to grasp the memory firmer, but it fluttered away like a frightened bird. What was he forgetting? Then, a frigid gust snatched at his riding cloak, its icy touch distracting him from his reverie. Rockingham clutched the wind-whipped material to his exposed neck.

Making noises of impatience in the back of his throat, he watched the near-blind seer swirl a finger in a mound of cooling ashes beside an overturned apple basket. The old man raised his nose to the night breeze that swept between the rows of trunks, for all the world like a hunting cur checking an invisible trail. He then raised the soiled finger to his crooked nose.

“She bleeds,” the blind man said, sniffing at his finger, his voice like old sheets of ice breaking and grinding against one another.

“Of whom do you speak, Dismarum? Why did you force us from town?”

“The one the master seeks—she has come at long last.”

Rockingham shook his head. Not this nonsense again! A whole night’s rest disturbed for this old man’s fantasy. “She’s a myth!” he said, throwing an arm up in disgust. “For how many centuries has the Dark Lord tried to imbue a female with his powers and failed? During my tenure at Blackhall, I saw the result of the exalted one’s effort: the misshapen creatures howling from the dungeons. It’s impossible. A female cannot wield magick.”

“Not impossible. She is here.”

Rockingham kicked the basket nearby, scattering red fruit across the ground. “You said the same last year. We splayed that girl’s entrails across the altar and found you were wrong.”

“That is of no matter.”

“Tell that to the townspeople of Winterfell. Her screaming almost set them to riot. If it wasn’t for the battalion of dog soldiers, they would have driven us to the fields.”

“Thousands can die, as long as we catch the right one.” Dismarum clutched Rockingham’s elbow with a bony claw. “I have been waiting for countless years. Old prophecies, whispered from the past, told me she would come to this valley. I came here a young man, when your great-grandfather was still an infant in swaddling… and I have waited.”

Rockingham pulled his elbow free of the iron grip. “Are you sure this time? If you’re wrong, I will personally relieve you of your tongue, so I don’t have to listen to your lies anymore.” Leaning on a gnarled poi’wood staff, the blind seer turned his milky globes in Rockingham’s direction.

Rockingham jerked a step back. Those eyes seemed to penetrate to his spine.

“She is here,” Dismarum hissed.

Rockingham cleared his throat. “Fine. I’ll collect a squadron from the garrison in the morning and have her arrested.”

The old man turned those ghostly eyes from him, his ancient fingers pulling the cowl of his cloak over his bald head. “It must be tonight.”

“How? This girl’s parents aren’t about to let us drag her into the night. These farm folk are not as cowed as the rabble in the cities. They’re still a damnably independent lot.”

“The master has granted me your aid, Rockingham. I requested you. You will be enough.”

“Me? Are you telling me that you’re the reason I was yanked from Blackhall and assigned to this blighted valley?”

“I needed someone like you, prepared by the master.”

“What are you babbling about?” the soldier demanded.

Instead of answering, the old man whipped out a long dagger, flashing silver in the moonlight, and stabbed it into Rockingham’s lower belly, just above the groin. Stunned, the younger man fell back, but not in time to stop the seer from slicing clean up his belly, splitting him like a fish.

Stumbling to his knees with a moan, Rockingham clutched his slit belly, trying to dam in the loops of his intestine. “Wh-wh-what have you done?”

With one hand still holding the bloody dagger, Dismarum pointed with his other limb, an arm that ended in a blunt stump. “Go, my children. Seek her out. Be my eyes. Be my ears. Destroy those that stand in our way!”

Weakening, Rockingham fell to one hand, his other arm clutched around his belly. Something writhed in his gut, like coals stirred in a fire. His agony flared. He fell to his side with a squeaking cry, giving up his grip.

As darkness began to blot out his vision, he saw them leave his belly, thousands of them: white wormlike grubs. As they poured and rolled into the night air, they seemed to swell and stretch until each was an arm’s length long and as thick around as his thumb. They squirmed in a fetid mass over and around him, some burrowing into the soil and disappearing away. Blackness swallowed the sight from him as he died.

Only the old man’s words followed him into oblivion. “Seek her out, little ones. She will be mine.” Elena sighed as she sank into the hot bath, steam Rising to the raftered ceiling, the scent of berries pungent in her nose from the crushed leaves Mother had added to the tub.

“The hot water will cleanse you, and the herbs will ease your cramping,” her mother assured her as she poured another hot pitcher into the tub. “But you must stay here until the water begins to cool.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Elena answered. She rolled back and forth in the hot water, letting sore muscles stretch and relax. The strangeness of the day’s events had faded, bled away by a meal of roasted duck accompanied by the dry mumblings between her parents across the dinner table on the best place to barter for a new bull. The revelation of her first menstra had drawn far more attention from her family than her stained hand. It all now seemed like a bad dream.

“Tomorrow I’ll send Joach to announce the party,” her mother said, her eyes adrift with plans. “I’ll have your Aunt Fila arrange for the cake and send your father out for more cider. Do we have enough chairs?

Maybe I’d better take the wagon to the Sontaks’ and borrow some of theirs. And then I should make sure—”

“Mother, I don’t need a party,” Elena said, but secretly she was thrilled. Everyone would know she had become a woman. Smiling, she slid down under the waters, then resurfaced, wiping water from her eyes.

“Pish, we must have a party. You’re my only little girl.” A certain sadness crept into her mother’s eyes.

Elena remained silent. She knew her mother was remembering the stillborn girl birthed two years after Elena. Since then her mother had been unable to get pregnant. Now streaks of gray coursed through her auburn hair, and many wrinkles were etched where her skin was once smooth. For the first time, Elena realized that her mother was getting old. She would have no other children besides Elena and Joach.

Her mother ran long fingers through her graying tresses and gave a soft sigh. Her eyes focused back to the present and on Elena’s right hand. “Now, Elena, you’re sure you didn’t fool with any of Grandma Filbura’s paints?” She picked up Elena’s ruby-coated hand in her own and turned it back and forth. “Or maybe accidentally splash some rugger’s dye from the workshed on it? You know I don’t like you kids playing in there.”

“No, Mother,” she said, pushing higher in the tub. “I swear. It just suddenly turned red.”

“Maybe some prank of Joach’s.”

“I don’t think so.” Elena knew Joach well. The shock on her brother’s face when he had first seen her stained hand had been genuine.

“Then maybe one of the neighbor’s kids. Those Wak’lens are always brewing mischief.” Elena slipped her hand free of her mother’s and picked up the horsehair-bristled brush. “So this isn’t some women’s mystery?” she said, scrubbing at her palm. “Something secret to do with becoming an adult?”

Her mother smiled at her. “No, my dear, it’s just some prank.”

“Not a very funny one.” She continued scrubbing, but the bloody stain remained.

“They seldom are.” Her mother brushed Elena’s cheek with her palm, but her gaze remained on Elena’s hand, small wrinkles of worry whispering around her lips. “I’m sure it will fade. Don’t fret about it.”

“I hope it’s gone by the party.”

“If not, honey, you could wear my dressy gloves.”

Elena brightened. “I could?” She stopped grinding the brush across her flesh; her skin was beginning- to burn. Maybe she’d just leave it be. She had always fancied wearing her mother’s long satin gloves. They would look spectacular with her party dress!

“Just finish cleaning before the water cools. We’ll talk more about the party later.” Her mother stood and straightened her robe. “It’s getting late. Make sure you drain and rinse the tub before you go to sleep.”

“Yes, Mother,” she said with an exasperated sigh. She wasn’t a child anymore.

Her mother kissed her on the top of her head. “Good night, sweetie. I’ll see you in the morning.” Slipping from the bathing chamber, her mother closed the door on the animated ruckus coming from the main room. Joach was still getting a tongue-lashing from Father for leaving his sister in the orchard alone.

Elena could imagine Joach’s expression—dutifully subdued. She knew her father’s harsh words breezed past Joach with hardly a sting.

She smiled. With the thick oaken door shut, all she heard was a low murmur. She leaned deeper into the steaming water, content, her worry about the burning apple just a distant throb. It had to have been some sort of trick. Suddenly she was glad she had failed to mention the apple. It seemed so silly now that she was home, just some silly prank.

Still…

She held her hand up in the lamplight. The light seemed to absorb into her hand, and the color appeared to swirl in whorls across her skin. She remembered how she had been thinking about warm apple pie when the apple had suddenly heated up and dried to a wrinkled crisp.

It seemed almost magickal.

She waved her hand across the steamy air, pretending to cast spells and perform evil magick.

Grinning at her whimsy, she imagined herself one of the ancient darkmages from those old stories told around camp-fires, stories of times before Lord Gul’gotha came across the Eastern Sea to rescue her people from chaos.

The mythical stories of the wild magick were whispered at night and sung in songs: of the silver-haired elv’in people and the giants of the highland; of A’loa Glen, the thousand-spired citadel of black magick sunk under the seas ages ago; of the og’res of the Western Reaches, who spoke like humans but burned with hatred for humankind; of the mer-creatures that swam among the Blasted Shoals far to the east.

Elena could recount hundreds of such stories told to her as she grew up.

In her head, Elena knew it was all wives’ tales and pure invention, but her heart still thrilled at the old stories. She remembered sitting in her father’s lap, her tiny fists clutched to her throat, as her Uncle Bol recounted “The Battle for the Valley of the Moon.” He had prefaced the story by telling her in hushed tones that this very valley was where the battle had taken place. “And the town of Winterfell was only a small crossroads,” he said in a furtive whisper, “with a shabby stable and a drafty inn.” She had laughed at such a thought. Only a small child at the time of the telling, not even yet allowed in the fields, she had swallowed every word from her uncle as if it were true. She smiled now at her foolishness. How the adults must have laughed at her gullibility.

Well, she was no longer a child.

She lowered her hand back to the water and blushed. She knew she was too old to be fantasizing about such follies. She was a woman today. These stories were all fantasy. Magick was not real. It was all the mummery of carnival tricksters and scoundrels.

In school, she had been taught her land’s true history. How, five centuries ago, the Gul’gotha had crossed the sea and brought civilization to her land and people. How they had brought reason and logic to destroy her ancestors’ pagan rites. How her people had once practiced human sacrifice and worshipped invisible spirits. Then the king of Blackball, the Lord Gul’gotha, had come. A tumultuous time followed as his lieutenants offered peace and knowledge to her barbarous ancestors. Blood was shed as the hand of peace was offered. But eventually truth and wisdom prevailed, and the trickster mages were destroyed. An age of logic and science began, wiping out myth and barbarism.

Frowning, Elena rubbed the barley soap through her hair, tired of pondering dry lessons from school. She had more important things to consider. What should she wear to the party? Should she wear her hair up like an older woman?

She pushed the sudsy locks atop her head. She hated it that way, preferring to let it flow free, but she was entering womanhood, and it was coming time to stop acting like a little girl. With soap trailing down her neck, she let her hair drape to her shoulders.

And what about Tol’el Manchin, the blacksmith’s handsome apprentice? She pictured his curly black hair and ruddy complexion—and his arms! The months of working the forge’s bellows had grown muscles that the other boys were jealous of. Would he come to the party? Surely he would, wouldn’t he?

Elena felt her heart begin to beat faster. She would ask her mother to let her wear her grandmother’s shell necklace. It would be grand with her green dress.

Elena glanced down at her wet torso. Only the barest hint of developing womanhood interrupted the rivulets of bathwater draining across her chest. There wasn’t much there to attract the eye of Tol’el.

Others in her class were already murmuring about underclothes and the tenderness of blossoming growth.

Elena reached to her chest and pressed firmly. Nothing. Not even a hint of the ache the other girls whispered about.

Maybe it would be best if Tol’el didn’t show up for the party, maybe even best if the party was canceled.

Who was going to believe she was a woman?

Elena suddenly shivered as a stray draft blew across her exposed back. The bathwater was quickly losing its heat. Elena sank to her shoulders, the tepid water still warmer than the chilly bathing chamber.

Why couldn’t the bathwater stay hot a bit longer? A twinge of ire flashed through her. Couldn’t she at least have a few more moments of steamy bliss? She sank deeper into the cooling water.

As she lay there, she pictured herself soaking in the hot springs of Col’toka. She had read about them in a school text: volcanic springs deep in the snowy Teeth. As she dreamed about their mineral-rich waters, her own soapy tub seemed to warm with her thoughts. She sighed, a smile playing about her lips. This was nice.

As she continued to recline in the bath, picturing in her mind the steam-choked chambers of Col’toka, her bathwater continued to warm, soothing at first, then becoming surprisingly hot! Elena’s eyes fluttered open.

Her skin began to redden from the heat. She sprang to her feet in the water. Bubbles started to rise along the edge of the tub. Her lower legs and feet began to scald. Elena leaped from the tub just as the water began to roil with steam and bubbles.

As Elena backed away, the water erupted over the edge of the tub, hissing as it splashed to the oaken floor. The room swelled with choking steam. Elena’s naked bottom bumped into the bathing chamber’s cold door, startling her to action. She fumbled for the handle. What was happening?

Swinging the door open, she stood in the doorway, a call to her mother frozen on her lips. At that moment, the remaining water blew from the tub in a final explosion of steam. Elena was thrown forward by a wall of superheated air and flung naked into the next room.

She landed on a rug and slid across the floor, the loose rug bunching up under her. As she came to rest, she noticed she was not alone in the room. Her father had sprung from the couch where he had been enjoying his evening smoke. Her brother sat frozen in a chair by the fire, his mouth hanging open.

As she sat up, her father’s pipe dropped from his slack lips and clattered to the floor. “Elena, girl, what… what did you do?” he asked.

“I didn’t do anything! The water just kept getting hotter and hotter.” Elena began to feel the sting of her scalded skin, and tears welled up in her eyes.

Joach stood up and stomped out the burning tobacco that had spilled from his father’s pipe before it scorched the rug. He seemed to concentrate fully on his chore, his cheeks blushing slightly. “Elena, don’t you think you’d better grab a towel?”

Elena glanced at her naked form, and now a sob of embarrassment escaped her throat.

Just then her mother clattered down the stairs in only her nightgown, her robe clutched in one hand.

“What happened? I never heard such a noise!” Her eyes settled on Elena’s crumpled form and grew wide. She hurried over to her daughter. “You’re red as a boiled potato. We need to get some salve on those burns.”

Elena allowed herself to be bundled up in her mother’s robe. But even its soft cotton was like coarse burlap against her tender skin. Wincing, she pushed to her feet.

Her father and Joach had stepped to the bathing chamber entrance. “The tub is cracked,” her father said, his voice thick with shock. “And the wax on the floor has bubbled up from the planking. It looks like someone tried to set the place on fire.” He turned questioning eyes toward Elena.

“Whoa,” Joach said, shaking his head, his eyes wide. “You did some damage, Sis!”

“Hush, Joach!” Her father turned to face her fully. “What happened here?” Her mother put a protective arm around Elena. “Now, Bruxton, I won’t have you pointing fingers. She’s hurt. And besides, how could she do such a thing? Do you see any wood ash or smell coal oil?” Her father grumbled under his breath.

“Elena is already shook up enough. Leave her be. We’ll solve this in the morning. Right now she needs medicine.”

Elena leaned into her mother’s arms. What truly had happened? How could one explain a tub of water suddenly trying to boil you alive? Elena had no real answer, but in her stomach, she knew somehow she was to blame. She remembered the burning apple, and her head began to ache. The whole day had been one mystery after another.

Her mother gently hugged her. “Let’s go upstairs and treat those burns.” She nodded, but already the worst of the stinging was beginning to fade. Glancing down at her palms, she noticed that the stain on her right hand had faded from a deep purplish red to a ruby color that hardly stood out from her singed arms. At least the scalding had boiled away a fraction of the dye—a small blessing considering her sore skin and the ruined bathing chamber.

“SO WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?” JOACH WHISPERED. HE SAT cross-legged at the foot of Elena’s bed. He had snuck into her room after her mother had finished smearing her arms and back with medicinal balm.

Clutching her pillow in her lap, Elena sat with her knees almost touching her brother’s. “I’m not sure,” she said, keeping her voice quiet in the dark room. Neither of them wanted to attract their parents’ attention.

Elena could occasionally hear her father’s rough voice echo up from below. She cringed with each of his outbursts, shame burning her cheeks. They were not a rich family, and it would cost much to repair the ruined bathing chamber.

Suddenly, her mother’s voice carried up to them. “They said she might be the one! I must tell them!” Her father’s voice rose higher. “Woman, you’ll do no such thing! That side of your family is daft! Fila and Bol—”

Joach nudged her with his knee. “I’ve never heard them so mad.”

“What do you think they’re talking about?” Elena strained to listen, but her parents’ words had lowered back to a murmur.

Joach shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Elena felt tears beginning to well in her eyes. She was thankful for the darkness that hid them.

“I’m surprised that cracking the tub got them so upset,” Joach said. “Heck, I’ve done worse than that.

Remember when I fed Tracker that basket of hazelnuts Mother was going to use in Father’s birthday cake?”

Elena couldn’t stop a smile from coming to her lips. She wiped at her eyes. Tracker, their stallion, had suffered from diarrhea all night, and their father had spent his entire birthday shoveling the barn clean and walking the horse to keep it from getting colic.

“And the time I told the Wak’len kids that you could touch the moon if you jumped from the top branches of a tree.” He snickered in the dark.

Elena punched his knee. “Sam’bi broke his arm!”

“He deserved it. No one pushes my little sister in the mud.” Elena suddenly remembered that day two years ago. She had been wearing the flowered dress Aunt Fila had given her for the midsummer celebration. The mud had ruined it. “You did that for me?“ she asked, her voice a mix of shock and laughter.

“What are big brothers for?”

Elena again felt tears beginning to threaten.

Joach slid from the bed, then leaned over and hugged her. “Don’t worry, El. Whoever is playing these pranks on you, I’ll find out. No one messes with my little sister.” She hugged Joach back. “Thanks,” she whispered in his ear.

Straightening up, Joach slunk to the door. He turned to her just before slipping from her room. “Besides, I can’t let this mysterious prankster get the better of me! I’ve a reputation to uphold!” DISMARUM KNELT IN THE DAMP WEEDS IN THE MOONLIT ORchard, a cowled figure, crooked as a rotten stump. Not a single bird called this night; not an insect whirred. Dismarum listened, both with his ears and with his inner senses. The last of the mol’grati had snaked into the soil, worming their way toward the distant homestead. The ragged-edged wound in dead Rockingham’s belly had long stopped steaming into the night as the carcass chilled.

Pressing his forehead against the cold dirt, Dismarum sent his thoughts to his creatures. He received their answer back like the singing of a thousand children’s voices, a chorus with one message: hunger.

Patience, my little ones, he sent to them. Soon you shall feast.

Satisfied with their progress, Dismarum stood up and stumbled over to Rockingham, feeling with his one good hand, seeking his dead guide, his weak eyes of little use in the dark. His fingers settled on Rockingham’s frozen face. Squatting beside the dead man, Dismarum unsheathed his knife. He tucked the hilt in the crook of his stumped arm, then pricked a finger with the dagger’s blade. Ignoring the twinge from his sliced finger, he sheathed his dagger and turned to Rockingham. Using his bloodied finger, he painted Rockingham’s lips with blood, like an undertaker preparing a corpse for viewing.

Once done, Dismarum leaned over and kissed Rockingham’s bloody lips, tasting salt and iron. He exhaled between the cold, parted lips, huffing out Rockingham’s cheeks, then slipped his lips to the dead man’s ear. “Master, I beg you hear my call,” he whispered into the cold ear.

Dismarum leaned back, waiting, listening. Then it came: The air grew frigid around him; he sensed a malignant, icy presence. A noise like a wind rushing through dried branches escaped the dead lips. Then words trickled up from Rockingham’s black throat. “She is here?”

“Yes,” Dismarum answered, his eyes closed. “Speak.” The word echoed, as if from a dank well. “She has ripened, bloodied with power. I smell it.”

“Get to her! Bind her!”

“Of course, my lord. I have already sent the mol’grati.”

“I will send one of the skal’tum to aid you.” Dismarum shivered. “That won’t be necessary. I can—”

“It is already on its way. Prepare her for it.”

“As you command, Master,” Dismarum said, but he could already sense the receding presence. The wintry orchard seemed sultry in the wake of its passing. Still, Dismarum pulled his cloak snugly around his shoulders. It was time to go. The mol’grati should already be in position.

Dismarum lowered his hand to Rockingham’s belly, his ‘ palm sinking into the gelatinous wound, clotted blood slipping between his fingers. He sneered, revealing the four teeth still rotting in his black gums.

Kneeling beside the carcass, he grabbed handfuls of dirt and hurriedly stuffed them in Rockingham’s wound. After adding thirteen handfuls, Dismarum used his good hand and the stump of his one arm to pull the edges of Rockingham’s wound together.

Holding the clammy edges, he whispered the words taught him by his dread master. An ache developed in his own belly as he recited the words. The last words were spoken in a push of agony, as if he were giving birth. He squinted at the almost unbearable pain as the last syllable stumbled from his tongue. His old heart hammered in his breast. Mercifully, though, the agony subsided with the last word.

Leaning back, Dismarum ran a hand over Rockingham’s wound. The edges were now sealed together, healed. He placed a finger on his dead guide’s forehead and spoke a single word. “Rise!” The carcass jerked under his finger, spasmed almost a handspan above the cold dirt, then settled to the ground. Dismarum listened as a single ragged breath escaped Rockingham’s cold lips. After several heartbeats, a second rasping gurgled out, then a third.

Dismarum pushed to his feet, struggling up with his staff gripped tight in a single fist. A cow lowed mournfully from a nearby field. He stood silently as Rockingham struggled, gasping and choking, back to this world.

After several racking coughs, Rockingham pushed to a seated position. He raised a tremulous hand to his belly and pulled his ripped shirt over his exposed midriff. “Wh-what happened?”

“Another fainting spell,” Dismarum answered, his attention aimed toward the distant dark homestead.

Rockingham closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead. “Not again,” he mumbled as he rolled to his knees, then slowly to his feet. He pawed at the trunk of a tree to steady himself. “How long have I been out?”

“Long enough. The trail grows cold.” Dismarum pointed a finger toward the farmhouse. “Come.” The old seer began walking, thumping his staff with each footfall. Exhaustion from the use of his master’s black art made his limbs as weak as a hatchling’s. He noticed that Rockingham remained standing by his tree trunk.

“The night grows thin, old man,” Rockingham called to his back. “Maybe we should return to town and come back for the wench in the morning. Or at least let us ride—the horses are near enough—” Dismarum turned his cowled face toward Rockingham. “Now!” he said with a hiss. “With daybreak, we must have her shorn and trussed. The master left explicit instructions. She must be bound while the moon still glows.”

“So you say.” Rockingham shoved off the tree like a boat leaving a safe harbor. He stumbled toward the seer as Dismarum turned to follow the trail of the mol’grati. Rockingham continued to blather. “You’ve been reading too many scribblings of madmen. Wit’ches are from stories to frighten children. All we’ll find at this farm is a frightened farmgirl, her hands thick with calluses from working the plows. I’m losing a night’s slumber in this mad pursuit.”

Dismarum stopped and rested on his staff. “You’ll lose more than slumber if she slips our net tonight.

You’ve seen in the master’s dungeons how he rewards failure.” The seer allowed himself a moment of satisfaction as Rockingham shuddered at his words. Dismarum knew that Rockingham had toured the nether regions of Blackhall and seen the twisted remains of those who once walked under the sun. His talkative guide now followed silently as Dismarum led the way.

The seer appreciated the silence. He could have left the feeble man stiffening in the cold orchard, but besides harboring the mol’grati, Rockingham still had many other uses. Back at Blackhall, the master had splayed Rockingham open upon his blood altar and imbued him with the darkest of his arts. Dismarum still remembered the man’s screaming that midnight, how he bled from his eyes in pain, how his very back broke as he writhed on the bloody stone. Afterward, the master had put him back together again, piece by piece, then wiped the fool’s memory of the long night. Forged into a tool of the master, Rockingham had been granted to Dismarum to aid in his vigil of the valley.

Dismarum glanced sidelong at Rockingham. He recalled one particularly odious rite, made at the stroke of midnight during Rockingham’s forging, requiring the slaughter of a newborn babe. The infant’s innocent blood bathed both the altar and Rockingham’s exposed, beating heart. He remembered the tool imbued into Rockingham at that moment— something so dark that even the thought of it now sent a shiver through the milky-eyed seer.

Somewhere over the hills, a dog howled into the night, as if catching a brief scent of the thing hiding inside Rockingham.

Oh, yes, there was much more that Rockingham would yet do.

Elena could not sleep. Her burns chafed with every slight movement. Her mind still swam with the frightening events that had occurred in the bathing chamber. As much as she would like to believe herself blameless in the destruction of the room, in her heart she knew better. This concern, too, kept her eyes open, far from slumber.

What had happened?

Her mother’s words kept running through her head. She might be the one. There had been fear, rather than pride, in her mother’s voice.

Elena slipped her hand for the hundredth time from under her blanket and held it up. In the dim light, the stain on her right palm appeared darker. The salve her mother had slathered over her arms glistened in the weak moonlight sifting through her bedroom’s curtains. The sweet scent of wit’ch hazel drifted strong from the balm. Wit’ch hazel. The very air she breathed spoke her fears.

Wit’ch.

Her uncle Bol, always a storehouse of old stories and tales, had kept her and her brother shivering in their bedrolls when out on hunting trips, tantalizing them with stories of wit’ches, og’res, and the faerie folk—creatures of both light and dark, fantasy and folklore. She remembered the serious set to Uncle Bol’s lips and his intense eyes, highlighted in the cooking fire’s glow, as he spoke his tales. He seemed to believe what he was telling and never winked slyly or raised his eyebrows in exaggeration. It was the earnest way he spoke, his voice low and rumbling, that was the most disquieting aspect of his stories.

“This is the true story of our land,” he would say, “a land once called Alasea. There was a time when the air, land, and sea spoke to men. Beasts of the field were the equals of those who walked on two legs.

The forests to the distant west— what were even then called the Western Reaches—gave birth both to creatures so foul as to turn you to stone dare you see them, and to creatures so wondrous you would fall to your knees just to touch them. This was the land of Alasea, your land. Remember what I tell you. It may save your life.”

And then he would talk late into the night.

Elena struggled to conjure up some of Uncle Bol’s humorous stories to ease her worries, but her troubled mind kept dredging up darker tales—stories with wit’ches.

Elena rolled to her side in her tiny bed, the soft cotton ticking scratching at her legs. She pulled her pillow over her head, trying to block out the old stories and new fears, but it didn’t help. She still heard the hooting of a barn owl from the rafters of the nearby horse barn. She threw her pillow back from her face, clutching it to her chest.

The barn owl repeated his protest, and a heartbeat later, the flutter of heavy wings could be heard flapping past her window as the owl began its nightly foraging. Nicknamed Pintail, the owl earned its lodging by keeping mice and rats out of the grain bins. Nearly as old as she, Pintail had roosted in the barn’s rafters for as long as Elena could remember and began his hunt at the same hour every evening.

Though the bird still hunted, age had dulled the poor creature’s vision. Worried about the bird’s well-being, Elena had been sneaking scraps out to the old owl for nearly a year.

Elena listened as Pintail flapped past her window, finding some small solace in this familiar ritual. She let out a rattling sigh, releasing the tension from her body. This was her home; here she was surrounded by a family that loved her. In the morning, the sun would shine, and like Pintail’s, her own daily routine would begin again. All these wild happenings would fade away or be explained. She closed her eyes, knowing now that sleep was possible this evening.

Just as she started to drift off, Pintail began screaming. Elena bolted up in her bed. Pintail continued to scream. Not a hunting challenge or a territorial warning, this was a wail of agony and fear. Elena flew to her window, pulling the curtains wide. A fox or bobcat might have caught the bird. She clutched her throat with worry as she scanned the farmyard below.

The horse barn stood just across the yard. She heard the mare and stallion’s concerned nickering. They, too, knew this owl’s screeching was cause for alertness. The yard below was empty. Just a wheelbarrow and a stone-chipped plow her father was repairing stood on the packed dirt.

Elena pushed open her window. Cold air swirled her nightclothes, but she hardly noticed as she leaned out. She squinted and tried to pick out movement in the shadows. There was nothing.

No! She took a step away from the window. Just at the edge of the empty pen that housed the sheep during shearing season, a shadow moved. A figure—no, two figures—stepped from the darkness under the branches of the orchard trees into the feeble moonlight that limned the yard. A cowled man with a crooked staff and a thin man who stood a head taller than his bent companion. Somehow she knew they weren’t lost travelers but something darker, threatening.

Suddenly Pintail flew screeching into the empty yard, just a handspan above the head of the taller man.

The man ducked slightly, raising an arm in alarm. Pintail ignored him and swooped across the open space, banking sharply as he struggled with something caught in his claws. Elena felt a moment of relief that Pintail was all right.

Then the owl twisted in midair, flailing, and tumbled toward the ground. Elena gasped, but before the bird hit the hard dirt, Pintail spread his wings and halted his fall, sailing upward again—right toward her! Elena stumbled a few steps back from the window as the bird swooped to the windowsill and landed hard, his beak open in a scream of rage.

Elena thought at first that the owl had caught a snake, but she had never seen a snake so sickly white before, like the belly of a dead fish. It writhed within the grip of the bird. Pintail was obviously struggling fiercely to restrain the creature, and from the bird’s screeching, the fight was obviously causing the bird harm. Why doesn’t Pintail just drop the foul thing? she thought. Why keep carrying it?

Then Elena knew. She saw the snake thing worm itself deeper into the owl’s chest. Pintail wasn’t carrying the thing; he was trying to dislodge it. Pintail’s frantic claws were trying to stop it from burrowing deeper inside him. Pintail rolled a huge yellow eye toward her, as if asking for help.

Elena rushed forward. Pintail teetered on the sill, trying to balance with one claw, struggling with the loathsome creature. Just as her hand reached out to her friend, it became too late. The snake broke free of Pintail’s claws and drove the rest of the way inside the bird. The owl froze, its beak stretched open in agony, and fell backward, dead, out the window.

“No!” Elena lunged to the window, leaning on the sill, searching for Pintail. Below, she spotted his broken body collapsed on the packed dirt of the yard. Tears rolled down her face. “Pintail!” Suddenly the ground beneath his body churned like quicksand. Elena screamed as hundreds of the monstrous snake creatures writhed in a mass up from the dirt and swallowed the bird. Within two heartbeats, all that was left was a scattering of thin white bones and a skull whose empty eye sockets stared back at her. Her knees weakened as the worms disappeared back into the soil. Somehow she knew they were lying in wait, still hiding and hunting for more meat.

With tears in her eyes, she again spied the two travelers on the far side of the yard. The cowled one, using his staff as a crutch, began to hobble across the treacherous yard, apparently feeling no threat from the foul beasts that lurked beneath the dirt. Then he stopped and raised his face toward Elena’s window.

Shivering, she bolted from the opening, suddenly fearful of those eyes settling upon her. The fine hairs on the back of her neck tingled, sensing danger.

She must warn her parents!

Elena ran to her bedroom door and threw it open.

Her brother was already in the hall. Joach rubbed at his [garbled] down the stairs and through the den toward her parents’room. The house was dark and hushed, the air heavy, as before a summer storm.

Panic welled in Elena, her heart thumping loudly in her ears. She pushed Joach toward the table. “Light a lantern! Hurry!” He ran to the tinderbox and obeyed her order. She flew to her parents’ bedroom door.

Normally she would knock before entering, but now was not the time for manners. She burst into the room just as Joach ignited the oiled wick. Light flared, casting her shadow across her parents’ bed.

Her mother, always a light sleeper, awoke immediately, her eyes wide and startled. “Elena! My dear, what’s wrong?”

Her father pushed up on one elbow, squinting groggily in the lantern’s light. He cleared his throat, a look of irritation on his face.

Elena pointed toward the back door. “Someone’s coming. I saw them in the yard.” Her father sat straighter in the bed. “Who?” Her mother laid a hand on her father’s arm. “Now, Brux-ton, don’t think the worst. It might be someone lost or needing help.”

Elena shook her head. “No, no, they mean us harm.”

“How do you know that, girl?” her father said, throwing back the sheets. Dressed in only his winter woolens, he clambered from the bed.

Her mother slipped from the bed and into her robe. She crossed the room and circled Elena in an arm.

“Your father will take care of this.”

Joach followed her father with the lantern as he crossed the den. Elena, trailing from a safe distance with her mother, noticed her father pick up the hand ax they used to shave logs into kindling for the fire. Elena leaned closer to her mother.

Her father passed through the kitchen and approached the back door with Joach beside him. Elena and her mother stayed by the kitchen hearth.

Her father hefted the ax in one hand, then yelled through the thick oaken door, “Who is it?” The voice that answered was high and commanding. Somehow Elena knew it was not the cowled one who spoke, but the other man, the taller figure. “By order of the Gul‘-gothal Council, we demand access to this house. To refuse will result in the arrest of the entire household.”

“What do you want?”

The same voice came again. “We have orders to search the farmstead. Unbar the door!” Her father turned a worried look to her mother. Elena shook her head, trying to warn her father.

He turned back to the door. “The hour is late. How do I know you’re who you claim to be?” A sheet of paper was shoved under the door at her father’s bare feet. “I bear the proctor’s seal from the county’s garrison.”

Her father signaled for Joach to pick it up and hold it in the lamplight. From across the room, Elena saw the purple seal on the bottom of the parchment.

Her father turned and whispered toward them. “It looks official. Joach, leave the lantern and take Elena upstairs. Both of you stay quiet.”

Joach nodded, obviously nervous and wanting to stay. But as always he did as his father directed. He placed the lantern on the edge of the table and crossed to Elena. Her mother gave her a final squeeze, then pushed her toward her brother. “Watch after your sister, Joach. And don’t come down until we call you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Elena hesitated. The nickering lantern light skittered shadows across the wall. It was not the speaker that gave her pause, but the other, the cowled man who had yet to speak. She did not have words for the cold sickness around her heart as she remembered the face that had tried to spy her in the window. So instead she stepped back to her mother and gave her a longer hug.

Her mother patted her hair, then pushed her back. “Hurry, sweetheart. This doesn’t concern you. Now you and Joach scoot upstairs.” Her mother attempted a reassuring smile, but the fear in her eyes destroyed the effort.

Elena nodded and backed to her brother, her eyes still on her parents in the kitchen.

Joach spoke behind her. “C’mon, Sis.” He placed a hand on her shoulder.

She shivered at his touch but allowed herself to be led away. They backed across the den to the shadowed foot of the stairs. The lantern in the kitchen, like a lonely beacon across the dark house, highlighted her parents. From the stairway, Elena watched her father turn away and begin to lift the rusted iron rod that barred the door against brigands. But Elena knew that what stood outside the door was much worse than thieves.

It was this fear that kept her bolted to the foot of the stairs. Joach tugged at her arm and tried to coax her up. “Elena, we have to go.”

“No,” she whispered. “They can’t see us here in the shadows.” Joach didn’t argue, obviously wanting to watch, too. He knelt beside his sister on the first step. “What do you think they want?” he whispered at her ear.

“Me,” she answered, also in a whisper, without even thinking. Elena seemed to know this was true. All of it was somehow her fault: the change in her hand, the burned apple in the orchard, the exploded bathing chamber, and now this midnight visitation. There were too many strange happenings to be mere coincidence.

“Look,” Joach whispered.

Elena focused back to where her father swung the kitchen door open. He continued to block the threshold, the ax still in his hand. She heard their voices.

Her father spoke first. “Now, what is all this commotion?”

The thin man stepped to the doorway, now highlighted in the lantern. He stood just a few fingers shorter than her father, but not as broad in the chest, and he had a small paunch of belly protruding from a torn ruffled shirt. He wore a riding cloak and black muddied boots. Even from across the house, Elena could tell the cloak was from an expensive clothier, not something purchased in the village. He rubbed at a thin brown mustache under his narrow nose, then answered her father. “We’ve come concerning an offense.

One of your daughters has been accused of a… um, a foul deed.”

“And what offense might that be?”

The speaker glanced over his shoulder and shifted his feet, as if needing assistance. The second figure now approached the doorway. Elena saw her father stumble back a step. The lantern light revealed a figure cloaked in a coal black robe topped by a dark cowl. A staff was planted in the dirt beside him.

Using a skeletal hand, the occupant of the robe kept the edge of the cowl pulled between his face and the lantern light, as if the brightness stung. His voice creaked with age. “We seek a child—” He held up his bony hand. “—with a bloodstained hand.”

Her mother let out a sharp gasp that was quickly stifled, but the old man’s face twisted toward her, the lantern light now shining into the cowl. Elena suppressed a gasp herself as those eyes turned toward her mother—they were dead eyes, like the dull globes of stillborn calves, opaque and white.

“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” her father said.

The cowled one collected up his staff and retreated to the dark yard.

The younger man spoke. “Let us not disturb your entire family. Come out here where we can talk in private, perhaps settle this matter without a fuss.” He bowed slightly and extended a hand toward the farmyard. “Come, it’s late and we could all use sleep.”

Elena watched her father take a step toward the door and knew what awaited her father in the yard. She remembered Pintail’s body being torn by the beasts that lurked under the soil. She darted up and meant to run to the kitchen, but Joach caught a fist in her nightclothes and yanked her back.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he hissed at her.

“Let go!” She struggled with Joach, but he was much stronger. “I must warn Father.”

“He told us to stay hidden.”

She spotted her father stepping to the doorway. Oh, dear goddess, no! She ripped out of Joach’s grip and ran to the kitchen. Joach pursued. The three adults turned to her as she burst into the lantern light.

“Wait!” she called. Her father had stopped at the threshold, his face reddening with fury.

“I thought I told you—”

Behind her father, the younger intruder grabbed her father’s shoulders and shoved him outside. Elena screamed as her surprised father flailed and toppled down the three steps to the hard dirt. Her mother rushed the man, a kitchen knife raised in a fist. But her mother was too old and the man too quick; he snatched her mother’s wrist and wrenched her around.

Joach yelled in fury, but the man sneered and shoved her mother through the door to land in a crumpled pile beside her father. Joach, spittle flying from his mouth, flew at the intruder. The man swung a cudgel from inside his cloak and clubbed Joach on the side of the head. Her brother collapsed to the wooden floor with a crash.

Elena froze as the man’s eyes settled on her. She saw his eyes twitch toward her right hand, the one stained red. Then his eyes grew wide.

“It’s true!” he said and took a step away through the door. He glanced out to the cowled one in the yard.

“She is here!”

Her father had struggled to a standing position by now. He stood guard over his wife as she nursed her left arm and pushed to her knees. “Don’t you touch my daughter!” her father spat at the intruders.

Joach, his forehead bloody, rolled to his feet and stood between Elena and the door, swaying slightly.

The old man hobbled toward her parents. “Your daughter or your life,” he creaked, his voice like serpents in the dark.

“You’re not taking Elena. I’ll kill you both if you try.” Her father stood firm under the old one’s gaze.

The robed figure simply raised his staff and tapped the ground twice. With the second strike, the dirt at her parents’ feet erupted explosively, the cloud of mud obscuring her parents. For the first time in Elena’s life, she heard her father scream. The dirt settled, and she saw her mother and father coated in the white worms that had attacked Pintail. Blood flowed freely from them.

Elena screamed, falling to her knees.

Her father swung toward the doorway. “Joach!” he screamed. “Save your sister! Ru—” Further words were choked shut as the worms climbed in his mouth and throat.

Joach backed into Elena, pulling her up.

“No,” she said, a mere whisper. Then louder, “No!” Her blood ignited with fire. “No!” Her vision turned red, and her throat constricted shut. She flew to her feet, quaking, her fists clenched. She was dimly aware of Joach, wide-eyed, stumbling back from her. All of her attention was on the yard, on her parents writhing on the churning dirt. Suddenly she screamed, sending all her rage out from her.

A wall of flame burst forth and blasted into the yard. The two foul men tumbled out of the fire’s path, but her parents could not move. Elena watched it envelop her mother and father. Her ears, still humming with energy, heard her parents’ screams end as if a door was shut upon them.

Suddenly Joach grabbed her around the waist and propelled her back from the kitchen into the dark den.

The kitchen wall was on fire. Elena collapsed into his arms, spent, a mere rag doll now. Joach struggled with her weight. The room filled with smoke.

“Elena,” Joach said in her ear, “I need you. Snap out of it.” He began coughing in the oily smoke. The fire had spread to the curtains in the den.

She labored to get her feet under her. “What have I done?”

Joach stared at the flames behind him, tears shining on his cheeks in the firelight. He looked forward, searching.

Smoke choked the air. Elena coughed.

Joach took a step toward the front door, then stopped. “No. They’ll expect that. We need another way out.”

He suddenly pulled her toward the stairs. Elena felt pinpricks returning to her numb limbs. She started to shake with silent sobs. “It’s my fault.”

“Hush. Upstairs.”

Joach pushed her to the staircase, then prodded her up the steps. “C’mon, El,” he whispered urgently in her ear. “You heard them down there. They’re after you.”

She turned to him with tears in her eyes. “I know. But why? What did I do?” Joach didn’t have an answer. He pointed to the door to his room. “In here.” She spied the window at the end of the hall and shook free of Joach. “I didn’t see what happened. I need to see.” She stumbled toward the window.

“Don’t!”

Elena ignored her brother’s urgent whisper. She reached the hall’s end. The thick-paned window did not open but had a wide view of the farmyard below. She leaned her forehead against the cold glass. Below, only steps from the rear door, lit by the flames, she saw what was left of her mother and father. Smoke billowed across in waves.

Two sets of scorched bones, entwined in each other’s arms, lay on the brown dirt, skulls touching each other. The old man stood a few paces away. The fringe of his robe smoldered. He had an arm raised, pointing toward the front of the house.

Joach stepped behind her and pulled her from the window. “You’ve seen enough, Elena. The fire spreads. We need to hurry.”

“But… Mother and Father…” She looked toward the window.

“We’ll mourn for them later.” Joach helped her to his bedroom. He pulled open his door. “Tonight we need to survive.” His next words were ice. “Tomorrow is soon enough for revenge.”

“What are we going to do, Joach?” she said as she entered his room.

“Escape.” In the shadowed room, she could still see the firm set to his jaws. How could her brother remain so hard? A few tears had escaped him, nothing else. “We need warmer clothes. Grab my wool overcoat.” Her brother slipped into his pants and a thick sweater her mother had knitted him for last Winter’s Eve. She remembered that holiday night, and fresh tears began to flow. “Now,” Joach said.

She grabbed his long coat off the hook in his closet and pulled into the thick warmth. She hadn’t realized how cold she was until the warmth of the jacket embraced her.

Her brother stood by his bedroom window. “El, how’s your balance?”

“I’m doing better. Why?”

He waved her to the window. The view looked out on the side of the house. A huge chestnut tree spread its thick branches far and wide, tickling both the eaves of the house and the roof of the horse barn. Her brother pushed the window wide. “Do as I do,” he said, as he climbed onto the sill.

He leaped out, caught a thick branch in his hands, and swung up onto a thicker limb. He had obviously done this before. He twisted around and waved her forward.

She climbed onto the narrow sill. Her bare toes clung to the wood. She looked down at the dirt far below. If she should fall, a broken bone was the least of her worries. It was what lay under the dirt that made her teeter on the sill.

Her brother whistled like a warbler, drawing her attention back to him. She leaped out the window and caught the same branch he had. Joach helped pull her onto the thick bough beside him.

“Follow me!” Joach said, his words low, fearful of drawing the others’ attention. She heard voices from the front of the house, followed by a crash of glass. She followed him through the limbs of the tree, ignoring the tinier branches that snatched at clothes and flesh.

Through the branches of the tree, they crossed the treacherous yard. As they reached the smaller branches, the limbs began to bend under their weight. Joach pointed to the open door of the barn’s hayloft. “Like this.” He ran down a thin branch and jumped across the empty space. He landed with a roll on a tufted pile of hay. Instantly on his feet, he was at the door again. “Hurry!” he hissed toward her.

She took a deep breath and ran. She must do this! And she might have succeeded if a branch hadn’t snagged a pocket as she leaped. The coat ripped, spinning her in midair. She flailed as she flew and could not suppress a scream. Still yelling, she collided with the barn just below the door to the loft.

Before she could fall, Joach had a handful of the overcoat’s collar in his grip. She hung in the coat from his arm. “I can’t pull you up,” he said, straining. “Reach up and grab the edge! Hurry! They’re sure to have heard you!”

With her heart clamoring in her ears, she struggled to grasp the edge of the hayloft opening. Only her fingertips reached the wooden lip. But it was enough. With her fingertips pulling and Joach yanking on the coat, they managed to haul her into the loft.

Both winded and gasping for air, they pushed through the hay to the ladder leading down.

Elena paused at the top rung and pointed to the dirt floor of the barn. “What if the worms are down there, too?”

Joach pointed to the stallion and the mare in their stalls. “Look at Tracker and Mist.” The two horses, agitated from the commotion, eyes white and rolling with fear, were still alive. “C’mon.” Her brother led the way, scrambling down the ladder.

Elena followed, piercing her right hand with a thick splinter as she slid down. She picked the piece of wood from her palm, noticing that the ruby stain had faded to a slight pink, almost the same color as her other hand.

Joach had already thrown the stall doors wide, and the two horses snorted warily as they stepped out, upset at the smoke. Her brother tossed her a set of reins and a bit. She ran a fast hand down Mist’s neck, calming her, and slipped the bit and reins in place. They didn’t have time for saddles.

Joach leaped atop Tracker and sidled over to help pull her onto Mist’s bare back. Once seated, he crossed to the door at the rear of the barn and used his toe to kick loose the latch. The doors swung open, facing the edge of the orchard. Joach held a door wide to allow Mist passage.

As Elena guided Mist outside, she scanned the dark space between the barn and the trees. Clouds had masked the moon, and the air was thick with smoke. Just as she was turning Mist toward the trees, light bloomed from behind Joach. Elena swung in her seat and gasped. Behind her brother, at the corner of the barn, the cowled man stepped into the rear space. His partner held a lantern high.

“Elena, go!” Joach swung his horse to face the two men. “I’ll hold them off.” Elena ignored him and watched the old man raise his crooked staff and strike the packed dirt. With this sharp impact, the ground swelled around the two men and spread in a wave, like a pebble dropped in a pond. The wave of churning soil raced toward Joach. Momentary glimpses of thick white bodies roiled in the dirt. “No! Joach, run!”

Joach saw what sped toward him. He yanked on Tracker’s reins, twisting the horse’s neck around.

Tracker whinnied in panic, fighting for a moment, then danced in a circle and began to leap away from the pursuers. But the horse moved too slowly. The advancing edge of the corrupt wave swallowed the mount’s hind legs.

Elena watched as the rear of the horse sank into the soil as if into mire. The mud turned black with blood.

Tracker reared up and screamed in pain, his eyes bulging. Joach held tight to the reins. The horse crashed to the ground. The hooves of his forelimbs dug deep into the packed dirt, trying to drag his rear limbs out.

Joach urged the horse on, but Elena knew it was futile. The predators in the soil could rend flesh from bone in mere heartbeats. Elena raced her steed toward the struggling pair. She pulled up fast in front of Tracker. With an arm wrapped in the reins, Elena had to fight to keep Mist in place before the panting, wild-eyed stallion. “To me!” she screamed to her brother.

Joach recognized the futility of his position. “Leave me! Go!”

“Not without you!” Mist skittered back a step. The wave, momentarily delayed by the meal of the horse, now rolled toward her. Tracker’s forelimbs became trapped in the churning soil. “Jump!” she yelled to her brother.

Joach clenched his fists on the reins, frozen in indecision. Then, with a shake of his head, he fought to his feet on the bucking horse. Cartwheeling his arms for balance, he leaped from Tracker’s back and landed hard on his belly across Mist’s rump. His sudden weight set fire to the horse’s legs. Mist leaped away as if struck by a whip.

Elena let Mist run, only guiding her enough to point her toward the dark orchards. Elena was busy with her other arm, trying to keep her brother on horseback.

The three plunged into the grove of apple trees.

The juggler, bare chested, wearing only his baggy traveling trousers, stepped to the edge of the stage and set down his pan. Each town was the same, one blurring into the next, the same vague faces staring up from the audience. He had been on the road now for eight years, alone, with only his memories for company. And still those memories crowded him too closely.

A few in the audience mumbled and pointed fingers toward him. He backed a safe distance from the edge. He knew the fingers pointed to his right shoulder, where his arm should have been.

The juggler tossed his four knives in the air, slicing the pipe smoke of the room into thin ribbons. He watched the first tumble back toward his left hand and, with practiced indifference, snatched the hilt and returned the knife aloft with a flick of the wrist. He sent the remainder chasing after the first. The spinning blades caught the flame of the torches and blazed back to the audience clustered up to the inn’s rickety stage.

Appreciative ooh’s and ahh’s echoed thinly from some in the audience, but most of their attention was on the quality of the ale being proffered by the inn and the promptness of the service. With one eye on his knives, the juggler watched a harried barmaid wallowing through the crowd, a platter laden with sloshing glasses balanced about her head. She wore the plastered smile of the overworked.

He nodded briefly to acknowledge the clink of a coin in the pan at the foot of the stage. It’s how one earned a living on the road.

“Hey, buddy!” someone yelled from the stage’s apron, his voice slurred with a generous lubrication of ale. “Careful there with those fancy pig pokers, or you might lose your other arm.” Someone else cackled from near the back of the room and answered the drunken man. “Careful there yourself, Bryn. You’re standing awful close to those whirling knives. He might just clip off that ugly woolyworm under your nose you call a mustache.”

The audience roared at the jibe.

The insulted man—who was balding and had a thick, curled and waxed mustache—pounded a footboard of the stage. “Oh, yeah? Well, Strefen, at least I’m man enough to grow one.” This was not a good sign. Not that the juggler expected this altercation to worsen into anything more than an exchange of insults. But when the audience found more entertainment among the tables than on the stage, he would catch few coins in his pan. He needed to gain their attention. These days, even a one-armed juggler sometimes warranted no more than passing interest.

He let a knife fall to the floor, feigning loss of control. The blade struck into the wooden stage with a thunk and sank deep into the board. This caught the audience’s eyes. Nothing like failure that could be ridiculed to draw attention to oneself. He heard the beginning of derisive laughter bubbling from the crowd. Then each knife, one at a time, supposedly toppling uncontrolled, landed its blade tip into the hilt of the one below it— thunk, thunk, thunk—ending up with all four knives stacked in a row on top of each other.

The tower of knives waved slightly back and forth in front of the stunned guests of the inn. A smattering of claps spread into a moderately enthusiastic applause. The tinkle of a few coins in his pan accompanied the acknowledgment.

Each copper bit, which could otherwise be spent on ale, was hard won. If he wanted to purchase dinner tonight, he still needed more of a take. He seldom earned enough to put a roof over his head in the evening, but he was used to sleeping under his horse.

He swung to the side of the stage and opened his satchel. He retrieved his next trick—a set of oiled torches. He grabbed the three in his fist and lit them from a flaming brand in a brazier. They flared to life.

The audience responded with a hush when each torch burned a different color—a deep green, a sapphire blue, and a red deeper than ordinary flame. He had learned this trick, which used an alchemy of special powders, during his years in the Southlands.

A few claps erupted behind him.

He turned to face the audience with the torches raised high and flung them upward, almost to the rafters of the inn’s common room. As they cascaded down, showering a trail of light, he caught them up and returned them toward the roof.

The applause was now vigorous, but his ear still only heard a few coins tapping into his pan. So he sent the torches even higher, his biceps bulging with the effort until his body shone under a thin oil of sweat. A few women oo/i’ed to the left of the stage, but he noticed from the corner of his eye that they were staring at his physique and not the cascading torches. He had learned that there were other ways to earn a living on the road, and he was not above showing his wares.

As he worked the torches, he flexed his shoulders, displaying his wide chest and ample musculature.

Black haired and gray eyed, with the ruddy complexion of the plainsmen of his home, he had been known to juggle more than knives and torches to earn a room and a bed.

More coins were flipped into his cache.

With a final flourish, he bowed with all three torches still aloft. The audience gasped, as usual, as the torches tumbled toward his bowed back. He noticed one of his buxom admirers raise a concerned hand to her mouth. Just as the torches were about to hit, he performed a standing flip and caught each torch one at a time, sailing the torches into a waiting bucket of water. Each sizzle of vanquished flame accelerated the clapping. When he was done, the audience was on its feet clapping and thumping tabletops with mugs.

He noticed his pan was still filling with coins. He kept bowing until the audience calmed and the coins stopped flowing. With a final wave, he collected his knives and pan and leaped from the stage. The crowd still murmured appreciatively, and a few patrons patted his back as he moved through them. He pulled on his leather jerkin, still too heated from his performance for the thick cotton undershirt he normally wore.

By eyeballing the pile of coins, he knew he would eat well tonight, and with luck, he might just have enough left over to pay for a room at the inn. If not, he spotted a few ladies who still had an eye fixed on his bare chest. There were other options.

The innkeeper slid his fat belly down the bar toward him, his chubby face pinked by the heat of the room to the color of a pig’s rump. He wore the wine-stained smock that seemed the usual attire for the owner of an inn of this quality. Pushing back the four hairs that still adorned his head, he swung his wide nose to the juggler and plopped his thick paw on the scarred wood of the bar. “Where’s my cut?” he said in a wheeze.

The juggler counted out the proper percentage of coins to pay for his use of the stage. The innkeeper’s eyes watched each copper descend into his meaty palm. The juggler expected him to begin licking his lips at any moment, the lust was so evident in the keeper’s eyes.

“That’s all?” he said, shaking the fistful of coins. “I saw those coins filling your pan. You’re holding out on me.”

“I assure you, your percentage has been met.” The juggler stared the innkeeper square in the eye.

The innkeeper backed down with a grumble and swatted a barmaid out of his way as he returned to his post farther down the bar. Another barmaid, a comely lass with thick blond hair in braids, slipped a glass of ale in front of him while the innkeeper had his back turned. “Enjoy,” she whispered to him with a slight smile and lowering of lash. “Something to cool the fire in you until later.” She continued to the next customer with only the briefest glance back at him.

No, his horse would definitely be sleeping alone tonight.

He collected his glass of cold ale and twisted around to lean on the bar and watch the next performer mount the stage. This was a tight crowd, and after his performance, he pitied the young boy he saw climbing the steps to the stage.

Not boy, he realized once he saw the performer straighten from placing a pan by the apron of the stage.

She was small, and the gray trousers and plain white shift she wore did little to highlight her feminine attributes, the few that there were. At first he thought her barely past her first bleed, a sapling of a woman, but once she sat on the stool and faced the crowd, he knew he was wrong. Her face, young with a buttered complexion and a rosebud for lips, belied the look in her violet eyes: a sadness and grace that could only come from the passage of many hard years.

The crowd, of course, ignored her as she slipped a lute from a cloth case. The tables grew raucous below her with the din of wine orders, friends carousing, the clink of glasses, the occasional guffaw. Pipe and torch smoke thickened the air. She seemed a petal amidst a raging storm.

The juggler sighed. This was not going to be a pleasant sight. He had seen other performers pelted from the stage with soiled napkins and the crusts of bread.

But the small woman positioned the lute against her belly, leaning over the instrument like a mother with a child. The wood of the lute was thickly lacquered, almost appearing wet in the sheen of the torches. It was the reddest wood he had ever seen, almost black, and the grain of the wood whirled in tiny pools upon its surface. This was an expensive instrument to be carting through the backwoods.

The crowd still ignored her. He heard an argument break out concerning who would win the cider contest at the local fair next month. Fists flew and a nose was broken before the combatants were pulled apart—all over cider. Well, he supposed that during his travels he’d witnessed other ridiculous fights that had ended worse than a split lip and a bloodied, battered nose.

He sipped from his ale, letting it slide down his throat. He allowed his eyes to close halfway just as the woman on the stage strummed her first chord. The music, for some reason, seemed to cut right through the chatter and settle in his ear like a nesting bird. She repeated the chord, and the crowd began to settle, the voice of the lute drawing eyes back to the stage.

He widened his own eyes. The bardswoman looked out, not to the crowd but farther, somewhere other than here. He watched her shift her fingers slightly on the neck of the instrument and saw the nails of her other hand strum down the strings. The new chord was a sister of the first. It echoed across the room as if searching for those first notes. The crowd settled to a silence, afraid to disturb this quest.

With the lull, the woman began to play. The sweetness of the music spread across the room, speaking of happier times, brighter times than the cloudy day that had just ended. The juggler watched her fingers dance across the wood and strings. Then she did the most remarkable thing: She began to sing. Her voice started low, barely detectable from the honeyed chords, but as she played, her voice raised as a harmony to the other. Though he did not understand the tongue she sang, he sensed the meaning. She sang of years, of the turning of seasons, of the cycle that all life followed.

The crowd sat stunned in their chairs. One man coughed, and his neighbors glared at him as if he had spat the foulest offense. But the rest ignored him and stared slack jawed toward the stage.

She continued, oblivious to their reaction. Subtly her voice changed, and the chords began to moan more than sing. She now warned of danger, of the time when the cycles of life are threatened. She sang of beauty destroyed and innocence shattered. Drums could be heard behind her voice and the strike of her chords.

The juggler found himself wanting to console her, to tell her all was not lost. He watched her fingers slow on her lute as her song again shifted to a new rhythm, the beat of a fading heart. Slower and slower the chords stretched across the aching room. Patrons leaned toward the stage, trying to keep her from stopping. But stop she did, a final brush of nail on string, then nothing. Only a single note of her voice hung in the air. Then this, too, faded with her breath.

The room was deathly still, no one wanting to be the first to move. The juggler inexplicably felt a tear roll down his cheek. His hand did not move to wipe at it. He let it fall. Many other eyes in the room were wet and cheeks damp.

He expected this to be the end, but he was mistaken. A whisper of a chord began to drift again from her lute. Her fingers did not seem to be even moving. It was as if the lute itself were singing. The music wafted through the room, brushing the many moist cheeks. Then her throat sang the final passage—of one alone, the last of the brightness standing among the ruin. Her music drew further tears from the juggler, as if her song were specially for him. But he was also aware of the many others in the room touched by her music, other souls attuned to her rhythm. Then with her final chord, firm and clear like a bell, and with the last whisper of her song, she offered them all one consolation, one word: hope.

Then it ended. He watched her shift from her stool and stand.

The crowd took the breath it had been holding and released it in a single gasp. A murmur of surprise followed by clapping ensued. There was a rush to the stage to rain coins into her pan. Before he knew what he was doing, the juggler found himself standing before her pouring the coins from his own pan into hers.

He glanced up to the stage and found her violet eyes staring back at him. She was cowering at the back of the stage, apparently intimidated by the frenzy around her and the calls of praise. She held the lute clutched to her chest.

Suddenly there was a commotion from the door to the inn. A man burst into the common room. “There’s a fire burning at Bruxton’s place!” he yelled to the crowd. “The orchard’s afire!” The audience erupted in response.

But the juggler ignored this all, his eyes still fixed on the lute player. The fire was of no concern to him.

She darted to the front of the stage, to him. The bards-woman knelt until she stared directly into his gray eyes. “I need you, Er‘ül of Standi.”

The fires lit the horizon behind Elena. Smoke blacker than the night rolled toward them between the rows of trees, and a crackling roar growled down the ridgeline. She tried to urge Mist to a faster pace, but the horse began to founder, sweating fiercely from its panicked run.

“We need to rest her, El!” Joach yelled from behind her. “Mist can’t keep up this pace.”

“But the fire!”

“We’ve a good lead! The winds here will slow the flame.” He reached from behind her and pulled on the reins. Mist slowed to a walk.

Joach rolled off the mare and swung the reins forward to guide the horse. Mist huffed thickly into the night, her nostrils flaring, eyes wide and frightened. The smoke and the roar of the fire kept her skittish, hooves dancing, wanting to run again.

Elena patted her neck and climbed off the horse, too. Joach was right. Mist would run until her heart burst if given her head. She took the reins from her brother and kept Mist walking.

Joach laid a palm on the horse’s wet flank. “She’s overheated. We can’t ride her again tonight. But I think we made enough of a head start.”

Elena stared back at the fiery heights. She remembered the flames consuming her home, then leaping to the horse barn, and a heartbeat later, burning embers blew from the barn’s roof into the trees, igniting the dry orchard. After the drought of summer, the undergrowth was ripe tinder for the torch, and the fire spread with an unnatural speed.

She had watched her world burn to ash, set to flame by her own hand. Unconsciously, she rubbed at the scant remainder of the stain on her right palm.

Joach noticed the tears that had begun to flow across her cheeks, but he misunderstood. “El, we’ll get out of here. I promise.”

She shook her head and waved to the growing fire. “I killed them.” She again pictured the wall of flame rushing toward her parents.

“No.” Joach laid a hand atop hers on the reins. “You didn’t, Elena. You saved them from horrible pain.”

“Maybe they could’ve survived.”

Joach shuddered. “Mother and Father had no chance. I saw how quickly those snake monsters devoured Tracker. Even if they did somehow survive, I don’t think… I don’t think it would‘ ve been a blessing.”

Elena hung her head, silent.

Joach raised her chin with a finger. “You’re not to blame, El.” She twisted away from her brother’s touch and turned her back to him. “You don’t understand… I…

I…” Her tongue resisted admitting the guilt in her heart. “I wanted to leave… I wished it.” She swung back to him; tears ran hot across her cheeks. She pointed to the naming orchard. “I hated this place…

and now it burns by my hand!”

Joach took her in his arms and held her tight as she shook with sobs. “El, I wanted to leave, too. You know that. All this is not your fault.”

She spoke to his chest. “Then who is to blame, Joach? Who caused all this?” She stepped from his embrace and held up her right fist. “Why did this happen to me?”

“Those are questions for another time. Right now, we need to reach Millbend Creek.” He stared back at the flames cresting the ridge behind them, flames licking up toward the moon. “If we can cross the creek, we should be safe from the fire. Then maybe we can think.”

Elena bit at her lower lip, suddenly afraid of the answers she might yet discover, knowing that Joach’s words of consolation might prove hollow and that what occurred this black night might yet be laid at her feet. She sniffed and rubbed her nose.

As Mist nickered in fear beside her, Elena ran a hand over the mare’s quivering nostrils. “Shh, sweet one, you’ll be fine,” she whispered to the horse.

Suddenly, Mist jerked back, almost ripping the leather reins from Elena’s fist. The startled girl was lifted off her feet as the horse reared, neighing in terror. Mist bolted down the slope, dragging Elena with her.

“Whoa, Mist! Whoa!” Elena scrabbled to get her feet under her. Bushes, twigs, and stone tore at her coat and knees.

“Let her go, Elena!” Joach called in pursuit.

But Elena was not about to let this one piece of her home disappear into the night. She clenched the reins tight in both fists. As she bounced and ran along, she managed to plant a foot on a boulder, then yanked savagely on the leather reins. Mist’s head flew backward, and the horse’s rump flipped forward down the slope. Elena threw the reins around the trunk of an orchard tree and secured them, praying the bridle would not snap. Thankfully, it held. Mist floundered, then fought back to her feet.

Joach slid to a stop next to her. “What was that all about?”

“Shh!” Elena said.

Through the roar of the fire, a new noise grew. At first just a whisper, then more clear. The beating of heavy wings, like someone waving a thick rug, approached.

Mist nickered and pulled against the reins, eyes rolling to white. Elena found herself ducking lower, and Joach crept under the branches of an apple tree.

Both scanned the sky. Smoke obscured the stars, but the cloak of soot swirled as the winged creature beat past. It was something large, with a wingspan longer than two men. Just the tip of one wing—a bony structure spanned by membranous red folds—poked through the smoky shield for a heartbeat, then disappeared again.

The sight iced Elena’s blood. What flew this night was not a denizen of the valley, but something that roosted far from here, far from the view of good men. It flew toward the fire.

After it passed, Joach spoke first, his voice a whisper. “What was that?” Elena shook her head. “I don’t know. But I think we’d better hurry.” ROCKINGHAM PRESSED A HANDKERCHIEF OVER HIS NOSE AND mouth while holding a burning torch as far from his body as possible. His throat ached with soot and smoke. He flipped the torch into a dry hawthorn bush at the edge of the orchard. The bush blew into flame as he danced back to the hard dirt yard of the homestead.

He stumbled to where Dismarum leaned on his staff. The seer held one hand up in the air, testing the wind. “One more.” Dismarum pointed to a pile of dead leaves raked near the edge of the field.

“I’ve lit enough fires,” Rockingham said, wiping ash from his hands onto his pant leg. Sweat and smoke marred his face. “The whole hillside is ablaze.”

“One more,” the seer said again, pointing to the pile. His dark robe, singed black at the edges, swirled in the night breeze.

Damn this one’s cursed eyes, Rockingham thought. He stayed rooted where he stood. “The fire already burns fierce enough to flush the children out of the orchard hills and into the valley floor. We don’t need to scorch the whole mountain.”

“Let the valley go to ash. All that matters is the girl.”

Rockingham wiped his face with his handkerchief. “The orchards are this valley’s livelihood. If these farm folk even get a hint that we spread this fire—”

Dismarum spoke to the fire. “We blame the girl.”

“But the townsfolk, they’ll—”

“They’ll be our net. The fire will force her to Winterfell.”

“And you expect the townspeople to capture her if she shows her face? If these bumpkins think she burned the orchards, you’ll be lucky to get her back in one piece.” Dismarum pointed his staff to the stack of dead leaves. “She must not escape us a second time.” Rockingham grumbled and grabbed another torch. He lit it from a small fire still sputtering in the husk of the burned barn and crossed to the pile of raked leaves. He shoved the flaming torch deep into the mound. As he backed away, rubbing his hands together to remove the grime, the parchment-dry leaves instantly bloomed with flame, snapping and growling hungrily.

He coughed at the thick smoke billowing from the pile. Suddenly, a fierce gust of wind blew toward him, and a tumble of flaming leaves swirled around him like a swarm of biting flies. He swatted at the burning embers, his expensive riding cloak singed in several places. “That’s it!” he yelled, stomping a flaming twig under his heel. “I’m heading back to town!”

Smoke stung his watering eyes. His nose, clogged with soot, itched and burned. He sneezed a black foulness into his handkerchief. Waving an arm through the smoke, he tried to spot Dismarum through the smudged curtain. “Dismarum!” he called.

No answer.

The old man had probably hobbled to the road. Rockingham fought his way across the smoky yard, using the smoldering skeleton of the homestead as a guide through the haze. He coughed and spat into the dirt. Then his foot hit something soft. Startled, he jumped back a step, then realized it was Dismarum.

The old man was kneeling in the yard, his staff dug deep into the dirt. Rockingham noted a flash of pure hatred in the seer’s milky eyes, but the venom was not directed at Rockingham but at something behind him.

Rockingham froze, suddenly awash with the overwhelming sensation of cold eyes drilling into his back.

He swung around. What he saw through the smoke forced him to fall screaming to his knees beside Dismarum.

The beast towered just beyond the flaming pile of leaves, scabrous wings spread wide, eyes stung red in the firelight. Standing twice as tall as Rockingham but thin as a wraith, its translucent skin was stretched taut over bone and gristle. The spasms of four black hearts could be seen in its chest, pumping black rivers through its body. The fires illuminated other internal details, a churning and roiling foulness.

Rocking-ham’s stomach seized in nausea, and even with the fire’s heat, a cold sweat pebbled his forehead. The creature’s wings beat a final time, again sending a flurry of burning embers toward him.

Then the wings pulled back and folded behind the creature’s thin shoulders.

The beast stalked into the yard, its clawed feet gouging the packed dirt. Its bald head and muzzle swung between the two men, yellow fangs protruding from its black lips. Tall, pointed ears twitched in Rockingham’s direction. A hand reached toward him. Daggered claws slid free of fleshy sheaths, a green oil dripping from their razor tips.

Rockingham knew poison when he saw it and knew what stood before him. He had never seen such a creature, but rumors of them were whispered in the halls of the Gul’gothal stronghold: the skal’tum, lieutenants to the Dark Lord himself.

It opened its mouth to speak, baring teeth filed to points. A black tongue lashed out, as long as a man’s arm. Its voice was high and sibilant, with a hissing quality to its words. “Where isss the child? Where isss the child the overlord seeksss?”

Dismarum raised his face, but he still refused to meet its gaze. “She is ripe with power—” He waved a hand to encompass the fire. “—and burned her way past us. She flees through the trees.” The skal’tum lowered its head and lunged closer to Dismarum. It used a talon to raise the old man’s face farther into the light. Rockingham watched the seer strain back his neck to keep the sharp tip from piercing his tender skin. “She ess-caped? Why was the massster not told?” Dismarum’s voice was as thin and whispery as a reed in a wind. “We have laid a trap for her. We will have her before the sun rises.”

“The Gloriouss One wantss her—quickly!” The skal’tum spat in anger, his spittle hissing like a living thing on the packed dirt. “Do not dissplease the masster!”

“She is ensnared in the walls of this valley. We will succeed.” The beast leaned closer to Dismarum, its tongue lapping at the seer’s nose. “Or you will sssuffer for your failure.” The skal’tum retracted the talon at Dismarum’s throat and pulled its hand away.

The seer bowed his head to his chest. “The Dark Lord was wise to send you. With your help, we cannot fail.” But Rockingham recognized the true hatred in Dismarum’s words.

The creature cocked its head back and forth, studying the old man like a bird examining a worm. “I know you, old one, don’t I?”

Rockingham saw Dismarum shudder, whether with fear or rage he could not tell.

The skal’tum then turned to Rockingham, its red eyes bright with mischief. “And you, fresh one. I remember you.”

Rockingham didn’t know what it was talking about. He could not have forgotten meeting such a creature, not in a thousand years.

The skal’tum rested a finger on Rockingham’s chest; he trembled at the touch, fearing the daggered claw.

The creature leaned nearer and cupped the base of Rockingham’s skull. Suddenly it whipped forward, pressing its black lips tight to his. No! Its tongue snaked between his lips as he tried to scream.

Rockingham fought the intrusion, but the skal’tum held him firm as it probed deeper. He spasmed in its grip; his throat constricted, and his heart thundered blood past his ears.

Just before Rockingham’s mind snapped, it ended. The skal’tum pulled back and stepped away.

Rockingham fell to his hands and knees, spitting and gagging.

The skal’tum spoke above him. “I can taste her spoor in you.” Rockingham vomited into the weeds.

The juggler pushed into the room behind the bards-woman. Sixteen coppers did not buy much, he noted.

The sleeping quarters were dark, but the chambermaid crossed to the lantern and flamed the wick. Light did not benefit the small space. The walls were in need of fresh paint, and the sole bed appeared to be the main source of sustenance for the handful of moths flitting toward the lamplight. The only other piece of furniture was a stained cedar wardrobe off to the side. He stepped over and creaked open one of its crooked doors. Dust and moths escaped. It was empty.

The room was also in need of an airing out, as it smelled of old candle wax and unwashed bodies. But its single narrow window, looking out on the inn’s courtyard, had its wooden frame painted shut. Raised voices and the clopping of many hooves rose from the yard three stories below. The orchard’s blaze still raised a stir among the townsfolk.

But the fire was of no concern to him.

The juggler waited for the chambermaid to slip out of the room after he graced her palm with a coin. He swung the locking bar in place and stood by the door until her footsteps faded. No other steps approached. Satisfied that no one eavesdropped, the juggler turned to the bardswoman, who had settled her bag at the foot of the bed. She kept the covered lute in her hand and sat softly on the bed’s rumpled coverlet. She kept her face slightly tilted away, her straight hair a blond drape between them.

“The name you used— Er’ril,” he said, anxious to get to the core of the mystery, “why did you call me by that name?”

“It is who you are, is it not?” The woman, small as a waif, gently placed the lute beside her lap, but she kept one hand resting on the instrument.

He ignored her question. “And who might you be?”

Her voice remained meek, “I am Nee’lahn, of Lok’ai’hera.” She raised her eyes to him as if expecting him to recognize the name.

Lok’ai’hera? Why did that stir a memory? He tried to remember, but he had been through so many towns and villages. “And where is that?”

The woman shrank farther from him, withdrawing inward. She slid the lute from its cover. Again the red wood seemed to stir in whirls in the lamplight. “How soon you forget, Er’ril of Standi,” she whispered to her lute.

He sighed, tiring of this dance. “No one has called me by that name in hundreds of winters. That man is long dead.” He crossed to the window and pulled away the threadbare curtain. Men with torches milled in the courtyard. Many others carried buckets and shovels. A wagon pulled up, and men crowded into the rear. The two draft horses pulling the wagon had to be beat with switches to haul such a load. Er’ril watched the wagon lurch away toward the road. To the west, an orange glow rimmed the foothills.

He suddenly shivered, remembering when he had last stood in this cursed valley. Then, too, he had stared out an inn’s window toward fires in the hills.

He spoke with his back turned. “Why do you seek me?”

In the reflection of the glass, he saw the bardswoman bow her head and finger the strings of her lute. The lonely notes softened the hard edges of the room. “Because we are the last.” Her notes continued to draw him from this room, pulling him to a faraway place. He turned to her. “The last of what?” he mumbled.

“The last whispers of power from the distant past, of Chi.” He scowled. He had come to revile the name of the spirit god who had abandoned Alasea to desecration by the Gul‘-gotha. His voice hardened. “I bear no such power.” She tilted her head, totally obscuring her small face with the fall of her hair. “You have lived for five centuries, yet you doubt your power?”

“It was all my brother’s doing. He did this to me.”

She whispered a word. “Shorkan.”

Er’ril started slightly at the mention of his brother’s name. He raised an eyebrow and looked closer at the woman. “How do you know so much about me?”

“I have studied the old stories.” She reached out a slender finger and pulled aside a stream of blond hair to reveal a single violet eye. “And ancient words: ‘Three will become one and the Book will be bound.’ ”

“Old words from a forsaken time.”

Her eye narrowed at him. “You are no longer like the man described in the stories. That man rescued the Book, protected it. He searched the lands, trying to raise resistance to the Gul’gothal overlord. That man is rumored still to be roaming the land.”

“Like I said, old stories.”

“No, the same story.” She let her hair fall back over her face. “It continues to this day.” Er’ril sat on the windowsill. “How did you recognize me?”

She cradled her lute in her lap and strummed the strings a single time. “The music.”

“What? What does your lute have to do with this?”

She caressed the edge of the lute with the tip of a finger. “Beyond the Teeth, deep in the depths of the Western Reaches, there once stood an ancient grove of koa’kona trees. Do you still know them—the koa’kona, the spirit trees? Or have you forgotten them, too?”

“I remember one that stood in the center of A’loa Glen.” His mind’s eye pictured the sun setting through the tiered branches of the single koa’kona tree, its blossoms like sapphires in the twilight. “It grew higher than all the thin spires of the city.”

Nee’lahn sat straighter on the bed and revealed her face fully for the first time. There was a sudden longing in her voice and eyes. “Does it still flower?”

“No. Last I saw it, the brine of the sea had rotted its roots.” Er’ril noticed his words seemed to wound her. “I believe it is dead,” he finished softly.

Er’ril saw a tear roll down her cheek. She continued, a sadness edging her words. “The grove was called Lok’ai’hera, the Heart of the Forest. It—”

Er’ril stumbled to his feet, suddenly remembering. Lok’ai’hera! Like a river cresting its banks during a flash storm, the memory came to him. He pictured his father smoking his pipe at the kitchen table, one hand rubbing his full belly. The clarity of the memory weakened his knees. He pictured the spiderweb of broken blood vessels on his father’s nose, the way his breath whistled as he pulled from his pipe, the creak of his chair on the plank floor. “My father…” he mumbled. “My father once told me about his journey to such a place in his youth. I always thought it a fable. He boasted of nymphs wedded to tree spirits, wolves as tall as men, and trees as thick around as our house.”

“Lok’ai’hera is not a fable. It was my home.”

Er’ril stayed quiet, picturing his own home. The memory of his father brought back a rush of old images, pictures he had been trying so hard to forget: he and his brother playing hunt-and-seek in the fields, the harvest celebration when he first kissed a girl, the way the plains seemed to stretch forever in all directions. “I’m sorry,” he said to her. “What happened to your home?” Her shoulders wilted. “It is a long tale of a time before your people first stepped upon the land. A curse was placed upon our spirit trees by a foul race called the elv’in.” She seemed to draw inward, away from the dusty room.

Er’ril could hear the ancient pain that still ached her heart. “These elv’in of whom you speak,” he said, speaking into her silence. “I have heard other tales of the silver-haired wraiths. I thought them creatures of myth.”

“Time transforms all truths into mere myths.” She raised her eyes to him briefly before again lowering her face. “You of all people should know this, Er’ril of Standi. To most, you are myth and legend.” Er’ril remained wordless.

She continued her story. “Over countless years, we sought a way to stop the death of our trees. But the Blight, the ancient curse of the elv’in, spread. Leaves turned to dust in our fingers; branches sagged, riddled with grubs. Our mighty home dwindled down to a small handful of koa’kona trees. Even these last few were doomed to die until a mage of your people came and preserved the last of our trees with a Chyric blessing. But as Chi’s power vanished from the land, the Blight returned. Our homes once again began to die. Trees that had thrived since the land was young failed to flower. Strong limbs began to droop. And with our trees, our people began to die.“

“Your people?”

“My sisters and our spirits. We are tied to our trees as you are to your soul. One cannot live without the other.”

“You—”

She brushed her fine hair from her face. “I am of the nyphai.”

“You’re a nymph?”

A tiny scowl scarred her lips. “So your people have called us.”

“But my father said you couldn’t live more than a hundred steps from your trees. How can you be here, half a world away?”

“He was wrong.” Nee’lahn placed a hand on her lute. “We must be near our spirit, not the tree. A master woodwright of the Western Reaches carved this lute from the dying heart of the last tree… my tree. Her spirit resides in the wood. Her music is the song of ancient trees. She calls to those who still remember the magick.”

“But why? The time of magick is long dead.”

“Her song draws others like her, those with traces of magick, to her, as a lodestone draws iron. I have been traveling the countryside playing her music, probing for those with power. Her music allows me to see into the mind’s eye of the listener. I saw what you remembered as I played: the towers of A’loa Glen, the fields of your home in Standi. I knew who you were.”

“But what do you wish of me?”

“A cure.”

“For what?”

“For Lok’ai’hera. I am the last. With my death, so die my people and our spirit. I must not let that happen.”

“How am I supposed to help you?”

“I don’t have that answer. But the oldest of our spirits and her keeper had a vision on her deathbed.” Er’ril sighed and rubbed at his temple with his one hand. “I am sick of visions and prophecy. Look where it has brought me.”

Her voice swelled with hope. “It has brought you to me, Er’ril of Standi.”

“You are placing too much significance on this chance encounter.”

“No, the evening is full of portents.”

“Like what?”

“The elder’s dying vision was of Lok’ai’hera sprouting to green life from red fire—a fire born of magick.” She pointed out the window. “Fire. And now you—a creature of magick— are here.”

“I am not a creature of magick. I am a man. I can be maimed like any other.” He pointed to his missing arm. “I can die like any other. Only… only the blessed gift of aging is denied me. And that bit of magick is more curse than gift.”

“Still, it is enough,” she said firmly. “Fire and magick run the night.” Her eyes glowed the same color as the jewel-like blossoms of the lone tree in his lost A’loa Glen. “It is a beginning.” The screech of the winged beast split the darkness like a butcher’s ax. The creature had been tracking them throughout the night. With the cry echoing in her ears, Elena added her weight to help haul Mist up the wall of the dry gully.

Joach’s arms strained on the lead as he pulled on the horse. “It has our scent,” her brother said between clenched teeth. “We need to leave Mist and run!”

“No!” Elena said fiercely as she slid down the dry streambed to get behind the horse. Mist’s back hooves had sunk to the pasterns in the loose dirt, bogging down the horse. Exhausted, Mist did not even struggle to free herself.

Elena fought her way to Mist’s rump. She ran a hand across the horse’s feverish skin. Sweat dripped and steamed in the cold air from the beast’s quivering flanks. “I’m sorry, Mist,” she whispered as she reached for the horse’s tail. “But I’ll not let you give up!”

Elena gripped the horse’s tail and hauled it back over the horse’s rump, bending it cruelly. “Now move your butt, girl!” She smacked Mist’s hindquarter with one hand and yanked harder on the tail with the other.

Mist snorted explosively and bucked herself free of the dirt, throwing Elena to the bottom of the gully.

Landing on her backside, she watched with satisfaction as Joach, guiding and pulling on the reins, hauled the horse out of the trap.

A second screech suddenly burst across the foothills. It sounded closer.

“Hurry, El!” Joach called to her.

Elena didn’t need his prodding. She was already on her feet and digging her way back up the loose wall of the streambed.

Once up top, Joach pointed. “Millbend Creek is only a few leagues that way.” Elena shook her head. “We need to hide, now! The creature is too near.” She grabbed Mist’s reins from Joach and pulled the horse in the opposite direction—toward the blazing fire.

“El, what’re you doing?”

“The smoke will cloak us better and confuse the nose of the hunter. Now hurry! I know a place we can hide until it loses interest.”

Joach followed, his eyes on the burning orchard. “That’s if we don’t get fried first.” Elena ignored her brother, trying to keep track of familiar markers. The smoke and her thundering heart confused her concentration. Was this the right way? She thought she recognized this area of the orchard, but she wasn’t sure. She searched as she raced with Mist in tow. Yes! Over there! That old stone shaped like a bear’s head. She wasn’t mistaken. This was the place.

Darting to the left, she waved to her brother to follow. Hidden in a wild hollow ahead lay her goal.

Suddenly the blanket of smoke obscuring the stars overhead billowed as something huge shot past just a stone’s throw from their heads. Elena could almost feel its weight pressing down on her as it flapped over them. It flew toward the gully from which they had just fled.

Joach’s eyes were wide in the meager light from the nearby fires as he stared at her. She recognized in them the terror that gripped her own heart. If they had tried to make a dash for the Millbend, they would have been easy targets. Joach nodded for her to continue, no longer objecting to their path toward the flames.

Elena led the way, quickly but as silently as possible. She allowed herself a soft sigh of relief when she spotted the Old Man. Leading Mist, Elena entered the small patch of wild forest sunk in a shallow hollow, an uncivilized oasis among the orderly orchard rows. She pushed through the brambles and led the way to the center of the hollow.

“Sweet Mother,” Joach whispered as his eyes first saw the Old Man. “I can’t believe it.” Hulking before them stood the dead husk of a massive tree—not one of the spindly trunked apple trees, but one of the ancient giants that towered here long before humans first entered this valley. Eight men with linked arms couldn’t reach around its trunk. The top of the tree had long since fallen away, leaving only this ragged stump with a single thick branch pointing toward the sky.

“I found it while exploring,” Elena said. She spoke in hushed tones, not to avoid the ears of the winged hunter but in respect for what stood before her. “I call him the Old Man.” She led the way to a long black split in its bark. “It’s hollowed out inside, a natural cave. We can—” A screeching roar of rage exploded across the valley. The hunter had realized that its prey had slipped its snare.

Without another word, Elena and Joach tumbled inside the embrace of the Old Man. Even Mist didn’t balk at sliding inside with them. The hollowed chamber in the heart of the wood was roomy enough to have allowed a small herd of horses to enter with them.

The first thing that struck Elena as they sheltered within the tree was the Old Man’s smell. The pervading reek of decaying apples under the boughs of the orchard never penetrated the fresh, woody scent of the tree. The air here was redolent with pine oils and a hint of chestnut. Though the tree was long dead, its scent persisted, as if the Old Man’s ancient spirit still hovered within the husk of the once proud giant.

Even the choking smoke wafting now through the orchard could not push away the Old Man’s presence.

Elena reached a palm to rest tenderly against the wood. Somehow she knew the Old Man would protect them this night. As her right hand touched the wood, she felt a cool calmness spread up her arm to her heart. And for just a moment, she thought she heard words whispered in her head, like a voice reaching up from a deep well.

Child… of blood and stone… a boon… seek my children…

She shook her head at her foolishness and removed her hand from the tree. Wrapping her arms about her chest, she dismissed the voice. It was just this night of terror echoing in her head.

Joach stepped beside her, and without a word, they each reached a hand toward the other. Joach squeezed her fingers tightly as they both listened to the night. Eventually the screeches faded in the distance. They had fooled the beast and confused its tracking, and it had apparently abandoned its chase—at least for now.

Joach peeked his head out of the tree’s heart and surveyed the orchard. “We must leave now,” he said.

“The fire is on us. We’ll be trapped in it if we don’t hurry.” Elena nodded, though she regretted leaving the companionship of the Old Man. She led Mist out and was instantly assaulted by the sting of smoke on eyes and nose. She glanced over her shoulder. The fires lit the entire horizon behind her! Its devouring howl rolled toward them from the heights.

“We must hurry,” Joach said, pushing through the wall of brambles. “We still have a long way to go to reach the creek.”

Elena followed. Soon they cleared the hollow and raced across the orchard. Elena kept glancing behind her. They were hunted again, but this time by roaring flames.

Her last sight of the Old Man was its one outstretched branch. It was afire, like a drowning man in a sea of flames, waving for help.

With tears in her eyes, she turned away. Strange words still echoed in her head: Seek my children.

“I can’t believe Bruxton’s boy would do such a thing!” The wagon driver, a gnarled root of a man, pounded his buckboard with his fist. The other men gathered in the back of the wagon grumbled hot words. Several shook shovels above their heads.

Rockingham leaned over the pommel of his winded horse toward the wagon. “His father sent for the seer.” He pointed a thumb to Dismarum, who rode a smaller filly tethered to his mount. The old man bent with his cowl over his face, rocking as if half asleep. “His father sent for us to try to get the boy and girl some help.”

“But those children… you’re saying his father actually caught the two together? He saw the abomination with his own eyes?”

Rockingham nodded. “In the barn. Like dogs, they were, not caring that they were brother and sister.” A satisfying flurry of gasps arose from the rear of the wagon. Rockingham suppressed a twinge of a smile. This was too easy, wicked words to incite the hidden fears of every family. He pulled his riding cloak tighter over his shoulders. Down the dark road ran a cool wind from the mountain heights.

Rockingham glanced to the nearby smoldering foothills. The blaze still occasionally spouted plumes of flame as it stretched through the orchards.

A squeaky voice rose from somewhere in the cart. “And when you got there, what happened?” Rockingham righted himself in his saddle to again face the wagon. “We found the boy with an ax. His mother lay bloody at his feet; his father already long cold on the dirt.”

“Sweet Mother!”

Several townsmen pressed thumbs to forehead in a warding against evil.

“And the girl child, she had already set torch to barn and house. The boy came at us with his ax as soon as we appeared. I was forced to guard the blind seer and retreat.”

“How could this happen?” the wagon driver said, his eyes wide with shock. “I knew those kids—sweet, they seemed, and polite, with nary a mean streak.”

Dismarum spoke for the first time, raising his cowl to face the torchlight of the wagon. “Demons. Evil spirits hold their hearts.”

Now almost the entire wagon raised thumbs to foreheads. One man even leaped from the wagon and ran back toward the distant town. His footfalls faded into the night.

“Bring them to me unharmed,” the seer continued. “Do not kill them, or the evil will flee from their dying hearts— perhaps to one of your own children. Beware.“ Dismarum lowered his cowl and raised a bony hand to wave Rockingham ahead.

Rockingham kicked his horse forward. Dismarum’s filly followed. Rockingham called to the stunned wagon behind him. “Spread the word! Search! Bring the tainted children to the garrison!” As soon as the wagon was hidden by a curve in the road, Rockingham slowed his horse until he rode beside Dismarum. “The trap is set,” he said to the old man.

Dismarum remained silent. Suddenly the beating of leathery wings burst from over the tree line. Both ducked as it passed overhead. It continued toward town. “Pray it’s a snug trap,” Dismarum mumbled as the winged horror faded into the dawning light of the east.

Elena rode behind Joach, her arms wrapped around his waist as he guided Mist across Millbend Creek.

As the horse splashed through the wide, shallow creek, an occasional spray of water jetted high enough to wash across Elena’s calves. The water’s frigid touch reminded her of the winter to come. But Mist nickered boisterously, the water seeming to calm the horse’s fears.

“We should be safe once we’re across,” Joach said, his voice cracking with fatigue and smoke. “The creek is wide, and I doubt the fire will be able to leap the distance. At least, so I hope.” Elena remained silent. She hoped, too. Behind her, the fires spread like fingers of a hand through the orchard, seeking them. At one point the fire had almost trapped them in a dry gully between two foothills.

They were forced to mount Mist and race back along their trail, barely escaping the edge of the fire. But, thankfully, at least no sign of the winged beast had appeared again.

By the time they reached Millbend Creek, the moon had already set, and in the east, a pale glow warned of morning.

“Joach,” she said, “how much farther to Winterfell?”

“I’m not sure. If only I could see some familiar landmarks through this cursed smoke. But I’d still say we should reach the town by daybreak.“

Joach tapped Mist’s flanks with his heel to encourage her up the creek’s bank to the dry ground. “We’d better walk her again from here.” He slid off the mare and raised a hand to help Elena off.

She climbed down and almost collapsed to her knees, her legs so bone tired. Her feet throbbed, and all her joints quaked with exhaustion. She felt raw all over, as if someone had flailed the skin from her body.

Joach supported her. “We could rest for a few breaths, El.” She wiped at her soot-stained face and nodded. Stumbling to a mossy boulder by the creek bank, she sat. Nearby, Mist nosed at some green shoots by the creek and began to pull at them with her teeth.

Joach sighed loudly and plopped on the bank’s edge. He leaned back on his hands, staring at the river of smoke flowing across the stars.

She hung her head. Since last afternoon, all she had ever believed in, the very ground she walked on, had become a treacherous bog. Nothing seemed real. Even Joach and Mist, both only an arm’s length away, seemed insubstantial, as if they might turn to dust and blow away, leaving her alone among the trees. She hugged her arms around her and began to rock back and forth on her stone seat and shiver. Her tears could not be denied.

She was barely aware of Joach rising from the creek bank and crossing to her. He wrapped her in his own arms and held her, halting her rocking. She still shivered in his grip. He squeezed her tighter and pulled her head to his chest. He did not whisper a word, just held her tight.

Her shivering began to quell, and she leaned into Joach.

She knew it was not only her brother who held her this night. In his close embrace flowed the love and warmth of her mother, and in the strength of his arms were the bone and muscle of her father. No matter what had happened this night, they were still a family.

She wished to remain in his arms until the morning sun crested the mountain peaks, but Mist suddenly huffed loudly and danced away from the river, ears perked in confusion. Joach released his sister and rose to his feet, alert for what had startled the horse.

Elena stood and grabbed at Mist’s reins. Joach crouched at the mossy edge of the bank and scanned the creek bed. “Do you see anything, Joach?”

“No, nothing. This night’s got her spooked.”

Elena could understand Mist’s edginess. She crept carefully to stand by Joach’s side. She peered upstream and downstream. The creek gurgled over smooth rocks between fern-shrouded banks.

Nothing seemed unusual. “Maybe you’re right…” she began to say, but stopped. She blinked, afraid it was a trick of her tired eyes.

A silver glow, like reflected moonlight, bloomed in a calm eddy of water at the foot of the bank. But the moon had already set. As she stared, the glow swirled contrary to the current.

“What is that?” she asked.

“Where?”

She pointed to the light as its swirling slowed and spread like spilled milk across the water.

Joach glanced to her. “I don’t see anything.”

“The light in the water. You don’t see it?”

Joach took a step away from the edge and tried to pull Elena back, but she stayed rooted in place. “El, there’s nothing there.”

She stared as the glow thinned to a wavery sheen on the water; then in a wink, it vanished. She rubbed at her eyes. “It’s gone,” she said quietly.

“What? Nothing was there.”

“There was… there was something.”

“Well, I didn’t see it. But considering this night, whatever it was probably meant us harm.”

“No.” Elena spoke before even thinking but knew that she spoke the truth. “No, it was not a danger.”

“Well, I’ve had enough strange occurrences for one night. Let’s go. We’ve still a long walk to reach Winterfell.” Joach peered a final time at the water, then with a shake of his head proceeded downstream.

Elena followed with Mist in tow.

She again pictured the spreading glow. Maybe her eyes had been playing tricks, but for an instant, just before the light had vanished, a single image coalesced, etched in silver: a woman with stars for eyes.

Then in a whisper, nothing but dark water and rock again. She rubbed at her sore eyes. A trick of light and exhaustion, that’s all it was.

But why, when the image had flashed in the water, had her stained hand suddenly burned like fire as if she had touched the sun? Then in an instant, like the image, the heat, too, had vanished.

And why didn’t Joach see the woman or even the glow?

Mist nudged her with her nose. She trudged faster after Joach. There were too many questions. Maybe in Winterfell she would find answers.

Dawn came cold to the tiny room of the inn. Er’ril lay wrapped in a blanket on the floor of the room, his knapsack acting as a pillow. He had been awake to see the first rays of the morning sun stir the dust motes in the room to a slow dance. It had been a long evening. He and Nee’lahn had talked well into the night before both finally agreed that a few hours of sleep were needed to face the morning.

Nee’lahn had fallen quickly asleep on the bed, still in her clothes, the lute held to her breast like a lover.

Meanwhile, Er’ril found only islands of slumber, and even those few naps were beset with terrible dreams. Finally forsaking even the pretense of sleep, Er’ril had watched the sun dawn into morning.

As he stared at the encroaching light, his thoughts spun on a thousand pins, through old memories, questions, and fears. Why had he stayed with this daft woman? he wondered. After her eyes had closed and her breathing slowed, he could have easily stolen away. But her words kept him trapped in the room.

Was there some meaning in his encounter with this nyphai woman, as she contended? Was there some hidden portent in the blazing orchard fire? And why… why did he return to this cursed valley?

But he knew the answer to this last question. In his heart, he couldn’t hide from what drew him back to this valley. Last night was the anniversary of the Book’s binding—and worse yet, the loss of his brother.

Er’ril could still picture Shorkan, Greshym, and the boy—whose name he never had learned— crouched in the wax ring as drums beat in the distance. The memory, like a painting whose oil still ran wet, remained vibrant and bright.

Five hundred winters ago, he had stood in a similar inn, the Book firm in his grip, as an innocent’s blood pooled at his feet. Unknown to Er’ril, the marching of years had stopped for him at that moment. It took him many turnings of the seasons before he realized the curse bestowed upon him that evening: never to grow older. He had to watch those he had grown to love age and die while he stayed forever young. He had seen in each of their eyes the occasional glimpse of ire: Why must I age and you live? Finally, the pain of witnessing this over and over again had become too great, and he took to the road, to call no place home, no one friend.

Each hundred winters he returned to this valley, hoping to find some answer. When will this end? Why must I live? But so far, no answer came to him. As the land aged, he watched the scars of that fateful night’s battle heal in the valley. The people forgot; the dead lay unremembered, their graves unmarked.

He returned each century to honor those fallen to the dreadlords’ march. They deserved at least one person to preserve the memory of their bravery and sacrifice.

Er’ril knew he could fall upon his own sword and end this curse; the thought had passed through his mind many nights as he lay awake. But his heart would not let him. Who would then remember the thousands who had died this night so many winters ago? And his brother Shorkan, who had died giving the Book life—how could Er’ril abandon his own responsibility when his brother had given so much?

So each hundred winters he returned.

Er’ril heard Nee’lahn stir. He watched her raise a hand and wipe the cobwebs of sleep from her face.

Er’ril cleared his throat to let her know that he, too, was awake.

She pushed up on one elbow. “ ‘Tis morning so soon?”

“Yes,” he said, “and if we want to find a seat in the commons to break our fast, we should be about soon. I’ve heard men bustling in and out all night.”

She slipped from the bed, shyly straightening her frock. “Perhaps we could just eat here. I… I prefer to avoid crowds.”

“No. They only serve in the common room.” Er’ril pushed into his boots and stood. He cracked a kink in his neck and peered out the window. To the west, the morning sky was smudged with snaking trails of soot, and a pall of smoke hung thick across the valley roof. Above the heights, thunder-heads stacked behind the mountain peaks. A storm threatened, but rain would be a blessing to the valley this day. Er’ril still saw a few spates of flame licking upward. Closer, the foothills were scarred and blackened, with only an occasional shoal of green life.

Nee‘ lahn stepped beside him and brushed her hair with her fingers. “A foul morning,” she whispered, staring out the window.

“I’ve seen the valley far uglier than this.” He pictured the morning after the Battle for Winter’s Eyrie.

Blood had run red through the thousand creeks, screams echoed off the craggy mountains of the Teeth, and the stench of charred flesh had fouled the nose. No, this was a pleasant morning in comparison. “It will heal,” he said to Nee’lahn as he turned from the sight. He shouldered his knapsack. “It always does.” She collected her bag and strapped her lute to it. She joined him by the room’s door. “Not always,” she said softly.

He glanced at her. Her eyes stared far from the room. He knew she was picturing the blighted grove of her home. He sighed and opened the door.

Nee’lahn slipped out the door into the hall. She led the way down the stairs toward the common room.

The voices and loud talk that echoed up from the inn’s main room sounded as boisterous as when they had left late last night. Something still had the townspeople all stirred up.

As he and the bardswoman entered the commons, a scrawny man with a shock of red hair and ash-stained clothing stomped a foot on the player’s stage. No pan lay at the stage’s foot, so Er’ril knew this was not an early morning performer.

“Listen, people!” the thin man shouted to the crowded tables, his voice high and strident. “I heard this from the captain of the garrison himself!”

Someone carrying a shovel yelled to the man, “Forget it, Harrol! First we stanch the fire! Then we’ll worry about those children.“

“No!” the man argued. “Those young ‘uns are demon spawn!” He spat the last words toward the crowd.

“So what! Demons don’t keep food from my family’s mouth. We need to salvage what we can of the season’s crop, or we’ll all starve this winter.”

The man on the stage was now red faced; his shoulders shook. “Fool! It was them kids that set those fires! If we don’t find them, they’ll keep torching other folks’ orchards. Is that what you all want? The whole dang valley ablaze?”

This last argument silenced the protester in the audience.

Nee’lahn had crept into Er’ril’s shadow. She looked up at him questioningly. He shrugged. “Just wagging tongues. Sounds like they’re looking for a scapegoat.”

A grizzled old man at a nearby table overheard his words. “No, my friend. Word’s come out of the hills.

It was those Morin’stal whelps. Evil’s taken their hearts.” Er’ril nodded and offered a weak smile as he stepped away. He pulled Nee’lahn toward the bar, trying to avoid being drawn into local affairs. He slid two stools close for them to sit on.

The innkeeper manned his post behind the bar, but this morning an actual smile played around his usual scowl. The fire was an obvious boon to the inn. Nothing like a commotion to fill his coffers with coin.

Er’ril caught the eye of the innkeeper, who sidled down the bar toward their seats. “Nothin‘ but cold porridge left,” he said as an introduction. Er’ril saw the innkeeper’s eyes drift to Nee’lahn. As his gaze drifted over her slight form, he licked his fat lips. She shrank from him. Sneering, the innkeeper turned back to Er’ril. “ ’Course for an extra five coppers, I might be able to scrounge up a bit of blackberry preserve for your little lady here.”

“Porridge and bread will be fine,” he said.

“Bread’s an extra copper.”

Er’ril frowned. Since when didn’t porridge come with bread? The innkeeper was obviously taking advantage of the crowd. “That’ll be fine,” he said coldly, “unless you’re going to charge us for the spoon.”

The ice in his words must have reached the portly man. He backed away with a grumble. When their food arrived from the kitchen, it was fetched by a timid maid, her eyes bloodshot and tired as if she had worked through the entire night. Er’ril snuck her an extra coin. At these prices, few patrons would be tipping the maids this morning. He saw her eyes brighten as she snatched the coin and made it vanish into her pocket, her hands as quick as a carnival magician’s.

Behind him, the men continued to argue a course of action. It seemed they were stuck in a stalemate when suddenly their arguments were interrupted.

Two men bustled in from the courtyard, faces flushed from the morning chill. The smaller of the two, gnomish in comparison to his giant companion, walked with a limp and swung his weak leg wide as he marched into the common room. He led a huge shaggy-bearded man with wide shoulders. Outfitted in a heavy, furred jacket and calf boots, the bigger fellow’s coal black eyes searched the crowd warily, his lips thinned with threat. He had a rangy look to him, as if the company of people made him edgy.

Er’ril guessed him to be one of the mountain folk, a nomadic people living among the frozen peaks of the Teeth. Seldom did they venture to the lowlands outside of trading season when the passes thawed. To see one so close to winter was rare.

The smaller man waved a fist into the air. “We have news! News!” Since the previous argument had become a stalemate of grumbles and complaints, all eyes turned to the newcomers, including Er’ril’s. “What have you heard, Simkin?” someone called from the tables.

“Not heard. Seen!” The tiny man named Simkin shook his head and proceeded to elbow his way through the crowd, creating a path for the lumbering mountain man. Once he reached the stage, he crawled onto the platform, waving the larger man forward impatiently. With Simkin’s added height from his position on the stage, he was now almost eye to eye with the mountain man, able to rest a hand on the tall man’s shoulder. Simkin turned to face the crowd. “This fellow saw the demon!” The crowd broke into dismissive hissing, though a few placed thumbs to foreheads just in case. “Quit your tall tales, Simkin!” someone yelled.

“No listen. It’s true!”

“What did he see? Your wife!” The crowd erupted in laughter, though there was a clear vein of nervousness in their response.

“Tell them!” The tiny man poked the mountain man’s shoulder with a finger. “Go ahead!” Er’ril spotted a momentary flash of anger in the man’s eye at Simkin’s poke. One didn’t goad the mountain folk.

Still, the bigger man cleared his throat, a sound like bark being ripped from a tree. Then he spoke, his voice as deep as the caverns that burrowed through the icy peaks. “It flew through the Pass of Tears at twilight, near our home. Pale as the fungus that grows on dead trees and wide of wing as three men stretched. As it flew past, its red eyes glowing, our beasts panicked and a woman of my fire gave birth to a stillborn babe.”

None dared call a mountain man a liar—not to his face, at least. They were known for the truth of their speech. The crowd stayed hushed at his words.

Er’ril sat straighter on his stool during this exchange, a spoonful of porridge frozen halfway to his lips.

Could it be, after so long? None had been seen for centuries.

Someone spoke softly from the back of the room. “You came all this way to warn us?” The mountain man’s voice deepened to a rumble. “I came to kill it.” Er’ril lowered his spoon and was surprised to hear his own voice call to the mountain man. “Was this beast gaunt like a starved child, with skin so thin you could see through it?” The mountain man swung his beard in Er’ril’s direction. “Aye, the fading light cut through it like a knife.

Sick, it looked.”

Nee’lahn whispered at his sleeve. “Do you know of the creature he speaks?” Another man spoke from the crowd. “You there! Juggler, what do you know of this beast?” All eyes were now on him. Er’ril regretted his quick tongue, but there was no way now to take back his words. “It means disaster,” he said to the crowd and threw his spoon on the bar. “You have no-hope.” The crowd became agitated. Only the mountain man stood quiet among the milling men. His eyes remained fixed on Er’ril, narrowed and determined. Er’ril knew his words had not swayedihe giant. The blood of the mountain folk ran with the ice of their peaks and the stubbornness of their granite home. The threat of death seldom shook their resolve. Er’ril turned away from the giant’s stare.

Nee’lahn caught Er’ril’s eye and leaned closer. “What manner of beast is it?” His voice was a whisper, meant only for his own ears. “One of Gul’gotha’s dreadlords—a skal’tum.”

“The sssun risess.” The skal’tum stalked across the dank basement chamber of the garrison toward Dismarum. It shook its wings like a wet hound in the rain. The rattle of the leathery bones echoed loudly in the room. “Iss all prepared?”

Dismarum shied a step back. The stench in the cell of rotten meat and filth drove him away as much as the threatening menace of the skal’tum. “Rockingham is on horseback. He spreads word of the girl through town. She’ll be found soon. She has nowhere else to go but here.”

“Pray ssso. The Black Heart hungerss for her. Do not fail him again.” Dismarum bowed slightly and backed toward the door. He blindly reached for the latch and swung the door open. Morning sunlight, barely discernible with his weak eyes, streamed down the nearby stairway and edged through the doorway, spilling in around him. Dismarum smiled inwardly as the skal’tum backed from the light. Unlike some of the Dark Lord’s minions, these creatures could survive the sunlight’s burn, but the beasts still preferred to avoid its warm touch.

Their translucent skin darkened when bared for long stretches of time to the sun. It was considered disfiguring among its foul kind to be so marred.

The seer kept the door open longer and wider than necessary, chasing the skal’tum to the back of the chamber. How Dismarum would relish the chance to stake the beast in the noon sun and see it squirm.

His hate for the winged beasts had not been dulled by the years.

Finally, the creature hissed angrily and stepped toward Dismarum. Satisfied that he had pushed as far as he should, Dismarum swung the door closed. For now the creature had its uses, but if the seer were given the chance. He knew how to make even a skal’tum howl.

Keeping his hand on the damp stone wall, he followed the hall to the stairway. Torches brightened the stairs enough for him to see rough outlines. Using his staff, he worked his way up the worn steps. As he progressed, his knees ached with exhaustion. He was forced to stop several times to rest. Closing his eyes and breathing hard, he tried to remember what it was like to be young: to see with sharp eyes, to walk without the stitch of pain in his bones. It seemed like he had been old forever, crumbling with hoary age. Had he ever been young?

During one of these breaks, a soldier coming down the stairs almost barreled into him. The officer pushed against the wall to allow him room to pass. “Pardon me, sir.” Dismarum noted the man lugged a feeding bucket for the prisoners in the cells below. It stank of sour meat and mold. Even his weak eyes could see the maggots roiling within the slop.

The young soldier must have noticed the seer’s nose curl in distaste. He spoke up, raising his bucket.

“Luckily, there’s only one prisoner down there. I’d hate to have to haul more of this filth.” Dismarum nodded sourly and continued up the steps, leaning heavily on his poi’wood staff. He wondered who the young officer had crossed to warrant this punishment. There was only one occupant among the labyrinth of cells—the skal’tum. And it wouldn’t be feeding on the scraps in the bucket.

He heard the soldier whistling as he descended into the bowels of the garrison. Dismarum continued up into the main hall. Just as he reached the next landing, the young soldier’s scream rang up from below, only to be cut off abruptly.

Dismarum sighed. Perhaps the meal would put the skal’tum in a better mood. He climbed the remainder of the stairs without stopping, ignoring his complaining joints. Right now, he wanted to put as much distance as possible between him and the creature below.

Leaning on his staff, he pushed into the main hall of the garrison. The high doors were open to the large courtyard, bathed in morning sunlight, where horses and wagons jostled for space. Soldiers milled among the clopping hooves and creaking wheels. The clang of beaten iron could be heard coming from the smithy on the far side of the yard.

Dismarum turned his back on the doorway and struck out across the hall, stomping his staff on the flagstone floor. More soldiers bustled around him. Swords slapped thighs, and the odor of oiled armor clogged his nose. He proceeded unimpeded through the melee. No soldier dared come within an arm’s length of his robed figure. As he passed the three doorways that led to the soldiers’ sleeping quarters, he noted the rows of empty cots. All were on duty. On this morning, the streets bristled with armor and blade.

Suddenly a familiar voice called out from behind him. “Dismarum! Hold up, old man!” It was Rockingham.

Dismarum swung to face the man. Rockingham had changed out of his singed riding clothes and now wore the colors of the garrison, red and black. His polished black boots climbed to his knees, and his red overcoat was festooned with brass hooks and buttons. He had oiled his mustache and finally washed the soot from his face, but as he approached across the stone floor, Dismarum’s keen nose still smelled the smoke on him.

Rockingham stopped in front of the seer. “We may have too many patrols out,” he said.

“How so?” Dismarum asked in irritation, his nerves still jangled by the skal’tum.

“With this much activity, we might spook the boy and girl away from town.“ Rockingham pointed out the door. ”You can’t walk two steps without bumping an armsman. I’d be spooked myself to enter this town.“

The seer nodded and rubbed his eyes. Perhaps the foolish man was right. If he weren’t so exhausted, he might have realized the same. “What do you propose?”

“Pull the soldiers back. I’ve spread the word. The people are inflamed. They’ll do the hunting for us.” Pismarum leaned hard on his staff. “She mustn’t slip our snare.”