

#

Copyright © 2015 by Emily Russell

Design copyright © Cissy Russell

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed,

or transmitted in any form or by any means without

written permission from the author.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental

and not intended by the author.

The foremost art of kings is the ability to endure hatred.

SENECA

# PROLOGUE

The girl had been down in the earth for a long, long time.

She had once—weeks ago, months ago, maybe even years ago—been a bright and chubby little thing, full of laughter and smiles. But they had been traveling through the Mountains of Vigilance—her parents had turned away, for just a moment, to consider the crossing—and she had fallen, playing on an outcropping of stone.

She had fallen into a ravine. She had fallen farther, deeper. She had fallen into this place, this sunken city, cold and dark and lonely. There had been dead brush, to save her from the worst injuries, but there had also been silence, and limitless dark.

She didn't know if they had tried to find her. They probably had—she had been well loved.

There were mushrooms and lichens to eat, glowing faintly in the dead libraries and bedchambers of the swallowed city. There were pools of water, dripping from cracks in the wall and forming in buckets and plates from long ago. There was a constant filth, a mixture of soot and new soil that wouldn't scrub off. There was the sound of her own voice, echoing down the endless stone halls.

There was nobody else.

She was sure of it. Looking and calling had been the first things she had done. Her mother had taught her this, to look and call if she got lost. No one will hurt you, her mother had said. You're only a child. They will help you find the way back to us.

The little girl remembered her mama, and her papa, and in this dark place, lit only by phosphorescent fungus and the eyes of sightless creatures, she wept.

There was nobody else, and no way out. All the paths curved downward. All the doors led downward.

She didn't know how many tons of rock were over her head. She had walked down many hallways here in the dark, gone down many flights of stairs. She could feel the weight of it all above her—crushing weight, impossible to lift or navigate.

All paths led down.

Even when she tried to turn around, go back the way she had come, all paths led down.

Which is why, when she woke in this dark place at some unspecific time—it could have been midday, for all she knew, and she could have slept a hundred years—she was surprised to hear voices.

They were indistinct, these voices. Gauzy shreds of whispers. Barely real. She had to strain her ears to catch them, and her hearing had become very keen indeed.

But they were voices. Up ahead.

She ran. She left her tattered cloak and the handful of mushrooms she had planned for breakfast behind her.

Down, down, down. All the paths went down, but the rock overhead didn't seem quite so crushing, the place quite so airless.

Voices!

And, like her mama had taught her, she called. Her own voice seemed deafening in the darkness, a thing meant for the world of light and movement.

"I'm here!" she screamed. "I'm here! Here!"

The echo came back to her: here, here, here.

The voices—were they louder now? Sibilant whispers. They might have scared her, if she hadn't been scared for so long already.

"I'm here!"

Here, here.

Her little boots were loud against the paving stones, flap flap flap. She ran through what must have once been a great hall, its ceiling extending neverendingly up into the darkness, ornate columns receding with each footstep to her right and left. She passed through a meaner hall, its columns plain, its ceiling low.

The voices were almost deafening now, hissing, whining, cajoling.

There was a door in the hall. There was frieze on the door, a hunting scene, figures so worn they were barely visible. The voices came from behind the door.

"I'M HERE," the girl shouted, with all her might.

From below—though how there could be more below, with all she had traveled, she was not sure—there were cracks and scrapings, as though something vast had stirred from its sleep.

The door creaked open.

Inside, in a room that was dark but not quite as dark as it should have been, it was very cold. The girl wished instantly for her forgotten cloak, for the stout fur vest that existed somewhere above with her parents. Frost coated the walls and the flooring, turned the few furnishings remaining into half-visible lumps.

There was a man in the room, lying on one of the tables. She thought he was asleep, until she crept closer—though he lay very still, his eyes were open. They were the color of old blood. His breath—so shallow it might have almost been her imagination he breathed at all—let wisps of white frost into the air.

She might have been afraid of him, in the world up above. He lay so very still, and the face underneath his long pale hair was as cold as the room around him. Here, he was the only other person she had seen.

She jumped into his arms, buried herself in the ancient blanket someone had wrapped around him. He blinked, once, twice. He raised himself a little off the table. His movements were slow, careful, and filled with terrible certainty.

"Hello, child," he whispered. "Are you, then, the one the earth powers have chosen to wake me?"

"Help me," she said. "You've got to help me. We were going through the pass—through the mountains. I fell. I can't find mama. You've got to help me find my mama."

"Shh," the man said. "Shhh."

There was calm to him. Terrible calm. Though she should have felt comforted, should have been overjoyed, she felt only lightness, only unending cold. His hand twisted through her hair—a hand nearly skeletal, white as frost, thin and long-fingered. She didn't want him to touch her, but it had been so long since anyone had held her, had comforted her.

"I'm looking for someone, too," he said. "A boy. He'd be—about your age, perhaps a little younger. A golden-haired boy."

"I want my mama," said the girl.

The man smiled. It was not a comforting smile, and there was little pity in it.

"Your mama is long gone," he said. "There is no time, in these deep places. There is only the earth."

She began to cry. She had forgotten why, precisely—she had forgotten why she was unhappy. The tears froze to her cheeks. The pale man picked them off, his spiderlike hands gentle.

"Your home is here now," he said. "You are the Waker, and for you to be the Waker there must be something of the old powers in you. Did you hear the voices, little one? Did the earth speak to you, as it speaks to me?"

She nodded. She remembered, vaguely, thinking the voices were something else—human voices. The memory was tinged with white, as though seen through a thin sheet of ice. It was silly, to have thought they were human voices.

They were the voices of the earth—of the hefenta, of the deep powers of earth. And this man—this man was their creature. She knew it, somehow, though she did not know why or what precisely it was she now knew: the earth was a part of her people, the Norchladil people. The cold was in the bones and the blood.

She shuddered.

The man wrapped the blanket around her. She noticed, distantly, how very old it was—the threads breaking with the gentlest touch, something staining it that may, long ago, have been blood. The man's robes were stained as well, their style ancient. Even as she watched he drew the robes closer to him, and they brightened and whitened, as though touched by frost.

"Who are you?" she asked. Though she knew the answer—though her bones, and the ancestral memories inside them, knew the answer.

"I'm a magician," the man said. His mouth twitched. "A Northmage. A relic of a time long before. A ghost. The worst sort of ghost—a ghost that knows your name."

And, bending to adjust the blanket—bending so his cold breath blew right in her ear—he whispered it to her, in the old language of blood and death and the angry earth.

And she was no longer what she had once been.

Some things are that simple.

"Come," the man said, standing and stretching his ancient bones. "If we're to find the boy, we've much work to do—and you've much to learn. Macher tanith ii, they will call you—she who is servant of the dark world."

Twisted up in his hair, a white comb winkled—the warrior's comb, malat ma'a. The man withdrew it, held it out to her—its teeth were sharp and long, and its weight was cold and deadly in her hand.

"You shall hold this, for a time," he said. "You shall learn of its power. But don't grow used to it, for it must go to the boy. We shall pass it along, when the time comes for me to deploy you."

He was almost handsome, creature of ice and frost that he was. His hair like white silk, his eyes the same blood burgundy as the eyes of the carving on the comb.

She could almost love him, almost. After all, who else did she have to love?

"Papa," she whispered. The word died unheard in the airless dark. The man had turned, begun to walk. He didn't turn around or even pause to witness its death.

Her last thought, as the final pieces of her mind that belonged to her dissolved, came to her in a strange woman's voice, a voice she no longer recognized or cared for.

No one will hurt you. You're only a child.

# Fifteen Years Later, In A Warmer Part of the World...
# PART ONE

#### HAMRAT

# ONE

### In Which The First Prince Makes A Well-Meaning But Ill-Considered Decision

In the beginning of the rainy season, as was his annual habit, Jalith Silverhand left the palace of his adopted father to do a bit of holiday shopping.

It was a good time to do it. The weather was, for a few days only, humid and foggy and wet (as opposed to dry and clear and dry, which was usually more the case). He could bind his hair back in a scarf, use a wide-brimmed sun hat to hide his pale face and prominent nose. A plain oilskin rain wrap hid the richness of his clothing. Frayed gloves, bought off one of the men in the scullery for a bottle of cactus beer, hid both his Appointed Scars and his signet ring.

He appraised himself momentarily in a horse trough beside a public stable, smiling at the dirty and thoroughly ragamuffinly countenance that smiled back. A hunk of someone's barely masticated market day sausage bobbed in the trough right beside his reflection. He smiled at it too—a wan, half-wistful smile that might have drawn some attention from passers-by, had there been any to wonder.

He looked nothing like himself today. He was the happier for it. For two weeks, the bright Hamrat desert would be steamy and muddy, and he would not look so out of place in the layers of gear it took to disguise his true nature. He could go out. He could, albeit briefly, be a person and not just a Prince.

He wrapped his scarf a little more tightly around his head and turned down a shortcut alley, past scrubwomen and orphans and a two-bit magician with a cart draped in multicolored and boldly lettered silks ('Fortunes Two For One on Market Day, No Refunds For Tempting Fate'). He smiled at all of them—perhaps, on reflection, an overly optimistic thing to do.

The scrubwomen grunted, the orphans told him to get stuffed, and the magician, with a tip of his threadbare green turban, recommended he seek accommodations with his own kind.

"My own kind," Jalith said, frowning. "Do I look...wealthy, to you?"

"No. Just pale. Like one of the Northmen—like the First Prince almost. You best be losin' some of that white skin in the summer months or you'll be out on a pike in front of the gates like the rest of 'em."

"The First Prince isn't such a bad sort," Jalith said, trying not to sound too indignant. He wasn't certain whether he succeeded or not—the magician eyed him a little too shrewdly from under his turban.

"That may be," he said, almost gently. "But he's Norchladil. Hefenta. The badness runs in the blood there. Would to the Allking lord our Lanon hadn't chosen him as his heir. It's fine while Lanon lives, but when he dies—" the magician shook his head. "This ain't no country to be ruled by a Northerner, laddie, even one as clean-seeming as the First Prince. Never in the six thousand years this city has stood. Never—an' for good reason."

The two men stood, silent for a moment, in the warm drizzling shelter of the alley. Something old and dangerous twinkled, momentarily, in the magician's eyes. From inside the covered cart, something growled: a sound like rocks grinding, gravel sifting.

"Scuse me," he said gruffly. "I've got to feed the herpsicore."

"Herpsicore," Jalith said numbly. "Right."

The magician disappeared into his cart. Jalith took a moment to collect himself, willing his face into an expression of placid indifference. He knew he was an unpopular choice as First Prince. Out of King Lanon's hundred candidates (some of them noble—some of them wealthy—all of them Southern and many born right here in the great desert city of Hamrat) he had been an unexpected and unwelcome front runner. He had, honestly, not even expected it himself. Orphans and charity cases such as himself were occasionally accepted into the House of Heirs as wards of the state—raised and fed with the Princes for a few years before being gently employed elsewhere in the palace. No one had been more surprised than Jalith when, upon his tenth birthday, he was given a Prince's knife, and not a boot brush and can of polish.

So why did the little magician's words hurt him?

"No matter," he murmured to himself. There was shopping to do, there were sights to see. He was no less unpopular today than he had been three years ago, when King Lanon had burned the Appointed Scars into his hands and sealed his choice as final. Hearing all this talk firsthand made it no more real.

Why, then, this stomach-dropping sense of disappointment?

"No matter," he said again, more firmly this time.

When no one was looking, he scraped a bit more mud off the cobblestones and rubbed it into his cheeks. The better to hide his pale face.

• • •

The Great Hamrat Market was teeming with life, overflowing with bedraggled and damp shoppers dressed much like he was. Steam rose from everything, rain evaporating as it hit hot cobblestones and sun-drenched tent silks and hasty Southern backs alike. Salesmen barked their wares, musicians honked and rattled and tinkled. Food vendors offered hot curries and cactus beer and candied dates for prices even Jalith, bred into luxury like a promising dog, hesitated to pay. Children, shrieking the market-day songs at the top of their lungs, jounced and fidgeted and generally got underfoot.

Some of the souvenir stalls, the pricier ones, carried miniatures of the realm's one hundred princes—Jalith was surprised and pleased to see a young boy buying his own image, inexpertly sketched in the Appointed Armor of the First Prince. He wanted to draw closer and have a look at the pictures himself, but he was worried even the badly drawn image was close enough to his own face to draw comparison. He watched the booth from a distance: Second Prince Lukere, he noticed, was selling like hotcakes, and no wonder. It was his image, and not Jalith's own, that was crowned in cactus flowers on the front of the stall.

Suddenly less interested, Jalith began to amble again, letting the sounds of the stall-hawkers fill his ears.

"Cactus beer, cold cactus beer! Relatively cold, anyway."

"Salt-cured olives, come and get your salt-cured olives! Free turkey leg with a pouch of salt-cured olives!"

"Silks, ladies, silks! All the way from southmost Oot, nurtured by the Five Ghosts of Baroness Machertani herself. Softer than a whisper, ladies. Softer than a whisper..."

"Love spells, hate spells, spells to make your garden grow. Spells for taming canaries and oxen, spells for a brighter tomorrow!"

"Swords an' knives, swords an' knives! Careful, now. Some of 'em are sharp."

In spite of himself, Jalith stopped for the sword tent. Every year he told himself he wouldn't—he had yet to see anything worth buying there—but every year he came back.

There they were, same as always—a jumble of weapons, some rusty and some not, some golden, some silvered, some hilted with glass stones Jalith was somehow sure were meant to look precious. In a glass case sat a three-bladed dagger Jalith had seen for at least four years running. A sword, heavily encrusted with tarnished silver, lay to the dagger's right on a motheaten velvet cloth. Next to the sword was an assortment of pocket knives and eating dirks, gathered haphazardly together on another sorry cloth. Jalith cast a casual eye over them, prepared simply to leave, when—

"Allking preserve us, that isn't even a knife," he said, a little more tartly than he intended to. "What is that? Looks almost like some sort of comb."

The sword vendor materialized, in the way of vendors everywhere, right behind him.

"Oh, that," he said. "Funny little thing, isn't it? It's a malat ma'a, laddie—one of the warrior combs those Northern bastards use to keep their hair back in battle. Thought it was an interesting find, I did." The man slid the top of the case back and picked the comb out of its nest, somehow managing not to disturb a single blade in the case. He held the thing up near Jalith's face, pinching it between two callused brown fingers. The teeth of it, long and sharp, glittered in the misty light. Jalith wondered how anyone could put such a thing in his hair without also poking holes in his skull.

"Twould be right pretty, if you took the time to clean it up proper. Maybe a nice gift for a young lady. Perhaps the gentleman has a young lady who'd like to pin it in her hair? Exotic, at least. Don't find many of these in the Souchlad since the Northmen got beaten back to the Borderlands. Five silver, an' that's me robbin' myself."

Jalith took the comb from him, so entranced he didn't even think to ask how, in his current mud-covered form, the vendor had known to call him gentleman. It was heavier than he expected, and cold to the touch—underneath its coat of grey dust it was ivory, or perhaps a white stone of some sort. The teeth of it were long and close together. On the handle, two tiny rubies glittered in the eyes of a worn-down carving that could have been a bear or a horse, or even a bird—its original form was no longer clear.

"Sure," Jalith said. "Five silver. I'll take it."

"Wissht, now. You aren't going to haggle for it?"

Jalith flushed, caught himself. "Oh. Erm. Three and a half?"

"You've agreed to five already, lad." The sword vendor, smiling broadly, held out one huge square hand.

Jalith sighed and counted five silver into his waiting palm. Gods damn palace life. He always forgot to haggle.

"Gods bless," Jalith said politely, slipping the comb into his hip pocket and turning to leave. The sword vendor's delighted laughter followed him out of the tent.

"Allking lor'! A king's ransom in silver, and all for a piece of junk bought from some lady for a beer! Allking lor', I'm rich as a sand salesman in glass country!"

Out five silver and slightly embarrassed, Jalith still couldn't help but smile. A king's ransom, as it had been explained to him in his princely studies, was a good deal more than five silver.

He wasn't entirely sure why he had bought the thing—certainly no one in the palace would want such a tawdry little gift—but he'd think of something. It had called to him, and certainly its recipient would as well. The weight of it was good in his pocket, like the weight of coin or a sleeping animal.

Jalith, whose very ascension to the High Princehood of Hamrat was absurd, was quite used to waiting a while for reason to manifest itself.

He went about the rest of his shopping quickly and efficiently, buying bags of sugared almonds and dried fruits for the boys and girls who served in the palace, cactus beer and little pots of preserves for the adults. He bought a letter opener, shaped like a golden dagger, for his friend Alair, and a little pot of eucalyptus salve for his father, the king Lanon, who lately had been complaining of swollen joints.

It was only towards the end of the market, both arms weighted down with baskets, that he began to feel as though he were being watched.

At first he put it down to market security. Not that there was much of it—so far, in the entire joyous explosion of humanity that was the Great Market, he had seen precisely three city guards—but he recognized that he looked a bit suspicious, what with the head coverings and all the dirt. He shrugged and continued on, making a point of buying a toffee apple and paying for it obviously as soon as he found a stall. He bit into the apple, pausing by a grimy sandstone fountain to chew and swallow.

The feeling didn't go away.

Jalith began to get nervous. He was a prince, after all—the First Prince, an unpopular choice to boot. Someone could have recognized him, could be hoping to further their fortunes with Second Prince Lukere by ushering him early into his grave. It was unlikely: the Princes swore a blood oath to treat each other as brothers, and infractions were punished indeed. Had even been punished, on occasion, with death—though there were worse things than death, and those punishments were more common.

The King and his Lifelaw Courts took such unbrotherly behavior seriously.

Jalith, however, was seriously unpopular. Lukere, the runner up for the throne of Hamrat, was also seriously ruthless.

He propped his baskets by the fountain, his hand going to his waist—where, of course, his Appointed Sword was not currently hanging. Like the Appointed Scars, he had deemed it a bit of a giveaway when he left the palace.

"Damn," said Jalith.

And, as three large cloaked figures detached themselves from the crowd—

"Oh, damn."

As a prince growing up in the royal house, Jalith had been privileged to learn Southern-style fencing, Northern-style knife dancing, the Oot province martial arts, the secret fighting art of kori kori, the aquatic combat style of Markat province, and plain old bare-knuckle boxing. This is not, of course, the same as saying he had ever been in a fight. Or, for that matter, ever even thrown a punch.

He had pushed Alair, Seventeenth Prince, out of the Appointed Playground tree house once when he was seven.

That was about the extent of his combat experience.

So it was with nothing but cold fear and a small bite of toffee apple in his stomach that Jalith took up a stance and prepared to be murdered. He briefly debated calling for help, but what good would that do? Half the people here would probably help his murderers once they got a good look at him, and the other half would look away.

The three men split up, surrounding him in a half-circle. Jalith felt the rough wet stone of the fountain brush up against his back. He felt the misting of fine rain coursing through the mud on his cheeks. He felt, actually, a lot of things he didn't rightly understand, and would, had he been able to understand them, probably have been too timid to describe.

"About time," one of the men said. "You've got a lot to answer f—"

Jalith launched himself, planting an an elbow in the man's craw and a knee in his groin. It wasn't anything like as difficult as he had thought it would be—the big man crumpled to the ground in a quivering heap. He turned to the man on the left—

—and the man's fist hit him square in the face. Hard. Jalith staggered, eyes streaming, and steadied himself against the fountain just in time to miss a second blow more by accident than anything else. He coughed once. A stream of spit flecked with blood mingled with the puddles at his feet.

He dodged another fist from the left, a knee from the right. He tried to rush them, tried to slip between them into the wide market beyond, but it was too late—the two men left standing had closed the gap between them and Jalith was neither strong enough nor big enough to break it.

Two pairs of strong dark hands clasped him on either side.

"You're coming with us whether you like it or not, laddie buck," one of them snarled. "We're getting paid good money to take you back."

Jalith's hand brushed his hip, scrabbling madly at what he recognized was a thinner and thinner window of freedom.

His hand brushed the comb in his pocket.

Before he had even given it proper thought the comb was in his hand.

Then it was in the man on the lefthand side's eye.

"AUGHDHFBLLGR," shrieked the man on the lefthand side.

The shriek was accompanied by a faintly familiar grinding sound as a wagon covered in multicolored silks screeched through the crowd and parked squarely over the man on the right.

"Get in, laddie!" shrieked the magician.

Having no better option, and having attracted the attention of many bystanders, Jalith got in.

• • •

"Keep that cloth on, now," the magician said dryly. "I think it's broken. "

"I know," Jalith muttered miserably from around a faceful of bloody nose. "Trust me, I know."

The magician's cart was surprisingly spacious and neat, given its small and tawdry appearance on the outside. There were two stools, a small bed covered in a faded quilt made, Jalith suspected, from scraps of the hangings outside. The only other furnishing was a bird cage covered in another scrap of silk. A sound came from it, a sound like two pebbles rubbing constantly together. Jalith wondered if the thing was purring.

"Herpsicore?" He asked.

"Herpsicore," the wizard agreed. "Right nasty one, too. Not come into his own yet, of course, but he's still quite a fighter. Hands off."

"What is a herpsicore, anyway?"

"You don't need to know. Not yet."

They sat in silence for a moment as the cart rattled and bounced over the cobblestones.

"Thanks," Jalith said at last.

"'Tweren't no trouble. I hate to see an acquaintance getting offed in the middle of the street with no one doing a thing." The magician shook his head. "It's what's the matter with this city, iff'n you ask me. Indifference."

"Indifference," Jalith said, managing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "Aye. But, erm. Since you were kind enough to rescue me, there's something you should probably know."

"That you're the First Prince?"

Jalith blinked. "Well...yes. Actually, I am. How'd you know?"

The wizard tapped his forehead with one grimy finger. "Wizard, remember?"

"Yes, but..."

"No buts. Sit there and let your face cool off for a minute or two. You're going to have some nasty bruises for a while, but there shouldn't be any obvious damage otherwise. You'll find that cloth can do a lot more than most ordinary cloths." The other man's eyes twinkled. It was not necessarily a good-natured twinkle.

For the first time, Jalith really looked at his rescuer. He had thought the man was old—had assumed, to be accurate—but under the grime and smudged stage makeup was the face of a man barely into middle years, with Southern skin like milky coffee and a pair of almost reddish brown eyes. Though his face was young, those eyes were dark and hard like gleaming burgundy stones. Jalith had the strange and inexplicable feeling that this face, save the eyes, was little more than a mask—a thin layer of skin, to be sloughed off and remade as it suited the man.

Looking into those eyes, Jalith felt suddenly both very young and very foolish.

"Thanks," he said again, unnecessarily.

"Don't thank me too much, you were doing fairly well on your own. I saw that jab with the comb you made, boy. 'Twas proper vicious." A brief smile twitched the corners of the other man's mouth. It did not reach his eyes. "Bet they didn't teach you that in prince school. Where'd you learn to fight so, then?"

"I didn't, really. It just kind of...came out." He remembered, with an unfortunate plunge of stomach, the ease with which the comb's sharp teeth had penetrated the man's eyelid. He barely stopped himself from vomiting.

The wizard chuckled. "Northern in face, Southern at heart, is it? You have a hatred of violence only proper and right in a Souchladil prince ."

"I suppose I do. I mean—I am." Jalith shook his head. "I am a Southern Prince. People don't understand. I was taken to the House of Heirs very young. I've never had a father, other than King Lanon. I don't even remember—"

He stopped. Didn't he remember? He never talked about his origins with anyone—not even his father, not even the few friends he had. Just mentioning them made him feel strange, as though he had forgotten a word he usually knew. It was there inside him, somewhere in his bones—a memory of cold and ice, of snow and deep winter.

"The North stays with you, even when you don't know it," the wizard said, almost kindly. "You are hefenta, Jalith of the Silver Hands. Try as you might, you will never be otherwise."

"What did you just call me?"

"You are Jalith Silverhand, marked in the way your King marks his successors. You have title, but you have no land. You have the soul of the North, the knowledge and temper of the South. You will be amazed, I think, by what you can do. I know of it. I have seen it."

"No. You called me hefena. I know what that word means, you know. And, though it was kind of you to rescue me, I won't stand being called—"

"It was not an insult."

The magician's voice had changed. The inflections of the Hamrat peasantry had left it, to be replaced by an accent hard and sharp, which Jalith did not recognize. For a moment—just a moment—his memory stirred. Pale hair, white-blond. Eyes like poison. The face in front of him rippled, almost as though someone had dropped a stone into it. When it settled, it was not the same face. Not at all.

"Who in the Allking's name are you?" Jalith snarled, suddenly frightened. The magician put his head back and laughed long and hard.

"Just a magician, my prince. A very fortunate magician, with an eye for the happenings of this age. You have something of mine, my prince."

"I have nothing—"

"Oh, but you do." Burgundy eyes glittered. "A gift, perhaps, for one who saved your life? A small thing. It is in your pocket."

Jalith stood.

"I thank you for my life," he said, "but what is in my pocket is mine, bought with my money."

The magician was standing right next to him now, eye to eye, metallic cold breath in his face. "Do you remember me yet, Jalith?"

The eyes, blood burgundy.

There was a castle in a mountain and a door in a wall. There were six doves. Trailing robes, silver and white, soft and furred. There was a blood-red burgundy light.

"No," Jalith said. Louder:

"NO!"

With an enormous effort he pulled himself out of the past and threw himself out of the silk-hung cart, onto the mud-stained cobblestones below. As he ran down the street, the magician's cold laughter followed him, and a single word, uttered with all the chill of glacial ages:

Hefenta. 

# TWO

### In Which Justice is Meted, and Jalith has a Strange Dream

"Not Jalith," the Seventeenth Prince said, shaking his head vehemently. "Never Jalith. The men must be mistaken. It's simply not in his nature to do such a thing."

"While I applaud your sentiment, I doubt the logic involved," Lanon said dryly. "These guards noticed the First Prince's absence, tracked him to the Market—where, I may add, we know he goes every year around this time—and were confronted there by a pale-haired, pale-faced gentleman who broke three of one man's ribs and blinded the other man in one eye. Ergo, it was Jalith. How many Northmen make it this deep into the Souchlad? It had to be him. Trust me, I am less than pleased by it. But it had to be him."

"Well..." Alair chewed his lip. "I'm just saying, my Lord. Jalith is my friend, and this isn't like him. There had to be some reason for him to do it."

"Doubtless he thought they were attackers. Alone in the Great Market, conscious of public opinion—he must have been on his guard. I've explained this to the men, but they are understandably still unhappy. Jalith will have to pay recompensation to them for their injuries. And if he's very lucky—if the men have wit enough to be silent—that is all he'll have to pay. Unpopular princes have been mobbed for less than this. And the people don't trust him already."

The two men walked together in the King's Gardens, watching the sun set over the dunes in the distance. The Gardens were the highest point of the palace, built over what had once been the peak of the great desert mountain Setsuma. The rest of the palace fell away below them in a series of sandy terraces and towers, blending almost seamlessly into the sandstone jumble of the city below. Lanon had lived here all his life—since he was a little boy, taken from his birth father and mother in the province of Oot and delivered into the house of King Lukan fifty years ago. Fifty years—it might as well have been fifty thousand. He didn't remember ever feeling out of place here, feeling the other nintey-nine boys who made up the House of Heirs were anything but friends. Even once he had been Appointed, the other princes went to their court jobs and cushy pensions with little complaint.

His had been an easy succession, approved by both the people and the courts. The people had liked his square brown face and honest simple manner. The courts had liked his sharp wits and his diplomatic skill. From the taking of his Appointed Scars, even before his coronation, Lanon had been just fine with the thought of being a king.

He knew it was not the same way for Jalith. He knew the boy was, at twenty, just as uneasy with his role as he had been at four. His superficial differences made him unpopular. If he didn't know better, he would have even doubted his own decision in making the boy First Prince.

But Lanon was not the sort of man who doubted a decision once he made it. Lukere would have been acceptable—could have scraped by as King with little damage to the people or the land.

But he loved Jalith. He did not love Lukere.

Yet it was not an irrational decision. When he had seen Jalith for the first time—a little boy, muddy and bloody and infested with lice found in a state of half-collapse at the palace gates—he had somehow known. This half-dead child, who barely spoke the Southern tongue of Mendelefa, had faced the king on his throne with dignity and grace, with gratitude and yet also with a firm request. Would the king give him asylum?

Yes. Yes, the king would. Lanon was a kindhearted man, and it was not such an uncommon thing to do, though the children didn't usually present themselves at audience and ask for it.

The child's beauty had been a pleasant surprise, once he had been cleaned and fed and deloused, and his intelligence even pleasanter. But Lanon had known before that. He had known the instant he saw him.

Time had changed him, of course. The pressure of the courts and the hatred of his fellow heirs had made him more cautious, more timid. But that bright, hard nature was still there underneath. Lanon had made him First Prince in his seventeenth year and gods damn the consequences. He was not well liked, true, but he loved his people. He was capable of making good decisions quickly and with little fuss. And his few friends—like Alair here, the Seventeenth Prince—had shown him unswerving loyalty. In time, when they got the true measure of the man, so would all his kingdom.

Reminded thus of the Seventeenth Prince's presence, he turned back towards him. The boy was looking at him expectantly. He had just said something.

"I'm sorry, Alair. My mind wandered. What is it?"

"I was wondering what you would do for him, my Lord. He shouldn't be in the city for a while. The other princes don't need much provocation to try for his life, and this? This'll about do it."

"Are you telling me what I should do, Alair?" Lanon asked gently. The younger man swallowed.

"Oh, no, Sire. I beg your pardon. But I do think—"

"No matter, no matter. You're right, as it happens. He needs to be somewhere safer than here for a while. I'd like to think my guards are loyal to me above all, but some of the princes have money, and the right amount of money can buy loyalty surely. I have perhaps allowed Jalith to fend for himself for too long as it is, though he has done an admirable job of it."

The sun was almost set over the desert. The first cool breezes of night stirred the king's grey hair. And, in the middle of the carved cedar arch that led into the gardens, a very muddy and bloody Jalith was standing.

"Father—" he began.

There were runnels of blood caked under his nose, drying into a nasty brown over his chin and neck and chest. Every visible inch of him was covered in some form of filth except his hands, ungloved now, with their delicate whorls of silvered scar shining in the low light.

Lanon was worried. Any father would have been. But he choked it back.

"My son," he said sternly. "Do you realize what it is you've done today?"

Jalith sighed. "Not until I got back to the castle. I thought they wanted to kill me."

"I'm sure you did. But that does not excuse you—one of those men may lose his livelihood for this. He has certainly lost his eye. I only sent them back to fetch you. These disguised parades in the Market have gone on long enough."

"I'll pay restitution. I'd be glad to do it. Lifelaw requires it." Jalith spoke slowly, carefully. "I'm ashamed of what I've done—but you know that already, don't you? I am sorry I hurt innocent men. But you must understand. I thought my life was in danger."

"If you had been thinking, Jalith, you wouldn't have gone to market at all. It was a foolish and unnecessary risk, and it is directly because of this decision that three men were badly beaten, and your own position in these courts is now endangered. I have told you not to leave the palace without a guard. You have disobeyed me, even if it was with the most innocent of intentions. And because of this I am obliged—and mind you, it gives me no joy—I am obliged to punish you."

Alair left his place by the king's side and went to his friend.

"He didn't mean for any of this to happen, my lord," Alair said hotly. "You know how stifling this place is for him! He just wanted to—"

"Alair," Jalith said.

"—get away and maybe find somewhere he can just be himself for once, and not the damned First Son of—"

"Alair," Jalith and Lanon said together.

Jalith touched his friend's shoulder. "The king is right," he said. "I was foolish to do what I did. Let him speak."

What Lanon wanted to do was hold his son, comfort him, tell him he was the best of all of them, the brightest and the strongest. He wanted to brush his golden hair, carry him to his bed and tuck him in as he had when the boy was small and ill. He remembered those few times the child had been sick—how he had paced back and forth in the tiny room with its low child's bed, built up and damped down the fire at each little change of temperature. How the healer had, on several occasions, nearly lost his temper and thrown the king out of the room. How the other princes had clustered by the door, jealousy and disapproval plain on their faces.

How little he had cared. How good it was, sometimes, to simply give in and allow himself to love, to be a father.

"You will pay all three of these men twice what Lifelaw demands," he said at last. "From your own pocket—not from mine."

"Yes, Father."

"This is not your whole penance, my son. You are banished forthwith from this city for your crimes against your fellow citizens for a period of exactly one year—I shall see you again on the first day of the Festival of All Children. In this time you will be provided with food and housing and a Writ of Passage, as is proper for a prince and my Appointed Heir. In your time away you will be expected to complete this year's Census, taking count of livestock, grain and working man in every province from Borderland to Coast. May the Allking protect you, and the gods aid you in your task."

"My lord," Alair growled.

"Alair. If you say one more bloody word, you're going with him."

"Then I'm saying something. Why not? It's just as fair."

"Seventeenth Prince, the sentence goes for you as well." Lanon tried to glare at him in a kingly fashion, but couldn't keep a faint hint of a smile from showing around his lips. "And well done, at that. You are a brave boy, to share your friend's exile—had you been better able to keep your temper, you could well have been one of the Appointed Ten yourself. And as for you—"

His eyes met Jalith's. There was no blame there, or anger—only weariness, sadness too. Lanon embraced him. The boy was tall now—his Northern blood gave him at least half a head's height over his father-and he had to bend awkwardly to receive the royal kiss on his cheek.

"You fought well today, my son. And yes—yes, I do understand. But I am King, and this is what I have to do. Always know that I love you."

"I know it," Jalith said. And for a moment he held his father's hands in his own—old silver scars surrounded by new ones. "We'll leave tomorrow. "

"I think that's best, yes. I'd recommend starting in Oot, then Rekhani, then Horsa, then Furst. After that, skirt the city and do your Census-gathering in Dalma for Sharat-Ur. Drift slightly to the west to take Census in Markhat. End in the Vigilance Mountains—they, I fear, will be the most difficult place to collect. They've had heavy losses from raiding parties this year—the Northmen, they say, are gibbering some nonsense about the Northmage returning, and an evil frost. Allking guide you."

"You as well," Jalith said. He squeezed Lanon's hands, dropped them. "I'll be safe, Father. I promise."

"And I will do what I can to make your situation better here, in your absence. I fear I owe you an apology, my son. I didn't know it had gotten so bad."

"Perhaps it hasn't. They weren't Lukere's men, after all. They were yours."

"It is bad enough, if a First Prince should even fear such a danger from one of his Appointed Brothers. I will do what I can." Lanon smiled. "Now, go. Bathe and pack, both of you. Your carriage will be waiting by the Gate of Sidhenna tomorrow."

Both young men bowed and left. Lanon was alone now, alone amongst the desert flowers and succulent plants. Among the aging fountains and crumbling statues that made up the lives of his forebears.

He walked a distance, sitting down at last on an intricate knotwork bench that had been commissioned by the Allking himself over six thousand years ago. His fingers ran over the familiar carvings there, the stone loops and whirls. When he was a child, still First Prince, he used to sit here and wonder what the Allking was thinking when he ordered it made.

Now, an old man himself, he understood. It was comfortable. And here, under the shade of climbing vines, he could almost forget those things he had to do which Lanon the man hated, and Lanon the king knew were necessary.

• • •

Amidst packed bags and rolled bedding, with Alair snoring soundly in a chair beside him, Jalith Silverhand dreamed.

He dreamed of his seventeenth birthday, the day he took his Appointed Scars. It was all much as it had been—he stood before the throne in the Hall of Telhir, dressed all in itchy white ceremonial wool, sweating for the heat of the day and a little for nervousness. The sun blared down brightly through the glass ceiling, glanced off the copper buttresses and eaves that held it up nearly fifty feet from the floor. The Dragon Throne, cast also from copper, gleamed and flashed. It was hot to the touch, and his father had placed several furs between it and his backside for sitting comfort. (Never a big one for ceremony, Lanon had waved off the critics of this move earlier— "Bosh. It's my son being honored today, and I'll have just as many furs on my chair as any old granny. Besides, I'm King. Try and stop me.")

On his way up to the throne Jalith had touched it accidentally, brushing it with his fingers when he went to kiss his father's cheek. He had nearly yelped from the pain, had held it back with great force of will only. He was a true prince today, heir to a kingdom. He refused to scream like a schoolchild because of hot metal.

In the background, accompanied only by a droning flute, the Caller of Ceremonies chanted the Lineage of Kings.

From Telhir, Talan.

From Talan, Uruktan.

From Uruktan, Toltok.

From Toltok, Azibir.

From Azibir, Aktar.

From Aktar, Sidhenna—

The chanting droned, and droned, and droned. Six thousand years of princes. Six thousand years of coffee-brown Southern faces. Jalith itched and sweated, sweated and itched. Some of these names he recognized. Some had stories and tales attached to them, legends he had begged his father to tell him before bedtime as a child. Some were no longer anything but names. These men had been kings in their time, no one higher in the Southern lands. Now they were just words, no longer even translatable, engraved on the Successor Tablets and taken out only at Appointment. Someday he might be such a name.

From Markat, Urdustiri.

From Urdustiri, Hanon.

From Hanon, Diritar.

From Diritar, Mortan.

He thought of the great kings. Telhir Allking, who had united these lands and fought the Northman Anmar Sedat. Talan the Warrior, who had fallen carving out the Borderlands for the South, and whose wife had thrown herself from a window at the moment of his fall. Sidhenna the Mageking, who had taken the Glass Lotus from the Wilderlands and founded his school of magic with it on Barren Isle. Markat Urborn, who had beaten Aychari the Deathgod at cards and carried Alani his wife from the Deathlands on his own back.

He could be one of them.

The chanting droned on. The entire court was assembled, all dressed in Appointment white. Lanon, on his gleaming throne, did not move a muscle. Jalith envied his perfect calm.

From Farir, Halaal.

From Halaal, Dorminat.

From Dorminat, Russar.

They were entering the current century. On cue, Jalith stepped up to the throne and knelt before the copper basin placed there, clotted with almost six thousand years of unwashed kingly blood. He held out his hands, backs up.

From Russar, Ubitari.

From Ubitari, Lukan.

Jalith readied himself. The Appointer, face hidden deep in a silver-embroidered hood, took the brand from off the fire.

From Lukan, Lanon.

The brand hovered over his hands now, so close he could feel warmth emanating from it. He kept his breaths deep, slow, even. He met Lanon's eyes and held them, trusting their strength and their love.

From Lanon, Jalith.

"I name you Silverhand," Lanon said, standing. "As this court witnesses, on this first day of your seventeenth year, I place the Marks of Succession upon you, so that when I die you shall rule in my stead. May the Allking Lord bless you, and make your reign long and prosperous."

When the brand came down, so quietly none but Jalith could hear, Lanon added: "I'm so proud of you."

The pain was like lightning. It was like ten thousand fires burning ten thousand buildings. It was the agony of every little wound and tiny cut he had ever had, sharpened like the blade of a knife and pressed into his fingers.

He did not cry out. He watched, stupid and voiceless in his pain, as a few drops of his own blood trickled down and joined that of all the princes before him.

The Appointer raised him, helped him to his chair on the dais to the right of the Dragon Throne. He took a small crystal vial from the depths of his robe and shook its contents over his Prince's maimed and blistering hands. The powder cooled and healed, shone silver in Jalith's new scars.

He tried hard not to shake.

And now the dream changed.

During his actual appointment, the Caller of Ceremonies had announced him, and there had been polite if not terribly enthusiastic clapping. There had been a feast, at which Lanon advised him to do nothing but drink water ("Otherwise, my son, you'll upchuck all over your Appointment clothes."). Then he had gone back to the House of Heirs for the last time, gathered his things, and gotten good and proper drunk on cactus beer with Alair. He remembered the feeling in his stomach as dread rather than pride. He remembered his first view of his new Appointed Rooms—big, bright. Insufferably clean.

But this time, Jalith noticed an unfamiliar figure in the front row of courtiers. Dead center, where Lukere's wife had actually sat, was a man with eyes the color of dried blood and a terribly unpleasant smile. When he stood up, everything else in the hall froze or faded away.

"No," Jalith whispered. "Not you."

It was the magician from the market. Or, more accurately, it was what had once been the magician at the market. The face and hair changed, shimmered dizzily from one color and shape to another. Only the eyes remained the same.

"You shouldn't have run from me, my boy. I mean you no harm. In fact, what I intend for you will be nothing but good. Do you truly think you belong here, with these people? They're stuck as deep in their own history as a wagon wheel is in a rut. You have heard their story every day of your life. You must know you aren't a part of it."

"I am the Appointed Heir," Jalith said. "I carry the scars. My birth might have mattered once, but it doesn't any more."

The magician laughed, a little unpleasantly. He patted the cheek of Lukere, whose face was frozen into a mask of hatred and envy. "Really," he said. "Perhaps to you. And frankly, dear boy, I doubt even that."

"It doesn't to him, either," Jalith said, and pointed to Lanon.

The magician crept up the pedestal to the throne, moving so smoothly he seemed almost to glide. He looked deep into the shining eyes of the frozen king.

"That is true," he said softly. "This poor fool loves you. In addition, he recognizes your worth. Many children are not born with such a father. It's a shame, really."

"Why a shame?"

"Because soon you will leave him."

"I'll do no such thing!"

"Really?" The magician raised his eyebrows. "I'll be waiting for you, Jalith. When you are ready you'll know where to find me. Bring the comb with you when you come."

"I'll do no such thing. With any luck, I'll never see you again in my life."

"But luck, dear boy, is one thing you don't often have."

"Go to hell," Jalith said.

"I'll be seeing you."

Jalith awoke covered in sweat, with the magician's unpleasant laugh ringing in his ears. 

# PART TWO

####  OOT

# ONE

### In Which Something is Definitely Rotten

"Blast," Alair said. "This is going to be boring."

The two men were traveling at a brisk speed over a bumpy cobbled road, one that felt like it hadn't been repaired in centuries. They jounced and bounced. The lanterns hung at the corners of their coach had long since been jostled off their hangers and lay smashed a few miles back on the road. A dreary succession of dry brush and the occasional stunted tree flowed by outside, almost unnoticed by the two young exiles. The sky, fading slowly into sunset, was so grey Jalith wondered if someone had stolen its color.

"I was thinking we'd have some adventures, you know," Alair continued. "Like heroes in the old tales. But I guess if we're busy counting bushes and peasants there's no time for adventuring. More's the shame. I brought my nicest sword along."

"Well, maybe you'll get to carve a turkey with it," Jalith said comfortingly. "And I'm sure you'll get some wenching done as well. I know how you love wenching."

"Aye," Alair said, winking. "And the wenches don't mind it, either."

"You're a lucky man."

"Why do you always say that? You aren't bad yourself."

"I'm too pale. Too blond. It frightens them."

"Nothing a few sweet nothings and a promise of a bastard in the House of Heirs won't cure."

"It still wouldn't make them like it."

"Posh. They'd like it. Screwing a foreigner is exotic and fashionable. Don't tell me you haven't noticed Lukere's wife looking at you at banquets. She's positively dying for it."

"And I, if I touched Lukere's wife, would indeed positively die."

Alair waved it off airily. "I'm just saying. You know, that's part of your problem. Your reputation's too good. Not a single bastard son, no scandals with some province lord's wife, no drunken tavern brawls. People don't trust a Prince like that. We need to get you up to something."

"I did just get exiled for a year for nearly beating three men to death, you know," Jalith said, a trifle bitterly.

"Yes, but that's...that's creepy bad. You need some cheeky bad in there. Perhaps, when we get to Oot City, you can glue Baroness Machertani's train to her chair. That's always a good one. Or wenching. There's always wenching. Again, I promise you, there are some bored and beautiful girls in the provinces."

"I think my reputation's been damaged enough, creepily or cheekily, for a long time to come, Alair."

A particularly rude jounce sent Alair bumping into Jalith. The two men righted themselves and their possessions with some irritation.

"Allking Lord, these roads are terrible," Alair grumbled. "We need to make a note of it for your father."

"They were repaired less than three years ago. I've heard it's the shrubs here—their roots are longer sometimes than five men lying head to toe. Thick and tough, to boot. They uproot the cobbles and break up the mortar."

"Is this from the guidebook again, then?"

"Of course." Jalith brought a small leatherbound volume out of his hip pocket, labeled in flowing gilt letters as The Pryde and Joye of Travelle in the Southerne Lands—The Rightye and Usefull Guide, by Forn Courtbedder.

"Courtbedder," Alair snorted, flipping through the book. "Wonder what he was known for." Then, as he found the right page—

"Here we go.

'Of alle the Southerne Lands, Oot is the leaste impressyve naturally, but is Fulle of buildings of the Loveliest and Moste Harmonious Desyne. The men there are Industrious and Able, and Defende Themselves mostly with the Darke Magicks and Runes caste longe ago by Genna, Firste of Oot. It is a Peacefull Countryside, and One Feeles here as far from Harm and Bodilye Damage as one can.'

See? What'd I tell you. Boring."

"Dark magic and runes sounds pretty good."

"Yeah, but I bet there's nothing to it. There've always been weird rumors about Machertani, of course, but one hears weird things about all these country rulers from time to time, and no one I've met from Oot has ever seemed very magical."

But Jalith was barely listening. The mention of dark magic had reminded him of his dream—and of the strange cold object that rested still in his hip pocket.

"Do you believe in magic, Alair?"

"Sure, I suppose. They say Telhir Allking was a mage, and that other one—you know."

"Sidhenna."

"Yes. Sidhenna. Sorry, I'm only Seventeenth Prince. I wasn't expected to know all the bedtime tales like you were."

"I suppose you're right, though. Sidhenna was a mage. And Barren Isle, they say, was once a true Mage's College—people learned real magic there, not just how to act like court magicians and fill out official curses and blessings for the king. I wonder what changed? I've never seen any real magic done before. It's like it doesn't exist."

But, even as he spoke, Jalith wondered if he was lying. His nose—which had of a certainty been broken in his fight—was just as straight now as if nothing had happened. And his dream—well, Jalith never remembered having another dream like it. He still heard the word the magician had shouted at him in his head, when all was quiet. A damning word, this far South.

Hefenta.

Almost as though reading his thoughts, Alair said:

"I guess there's still magic in the Norchlad, right? All the old soldiers who've served time in the Borderlands talk about hefenta. People turning into animals, animals turning into people, buildings turning into animals and people. Powers over ice and fire and water and earth. Strange things, really." Alair whistled. "Wouldn't worry about it, though. We're starting our boring Southbound holiday even farther south than we usually are."

"I suppose you're right," Jalith said. "Prepare to count."

Alair was about to say something despairing back when a particularly large bump sent both of them off their seats and into each other's luggage.

"Allking on the pisspot," Alair spat, as the carriage stopped abruptly. He dodged a last rucksack, filled with camping gear, which fell down from the shelf above. "What was that?"

Jalith was already out of the carriage, pulling his hood up about his face in case he should be seen on the road before he was ready.

The coachman was kneeling next to something in front of the carriage.

"Shit," Jalith said, for the second time in as many days.

It was a child. Or, more accurately—it had been a child.

"I'm so sorry, my lord," choked the coachman. "She was just lying there in the road and it's—it's so dark...I didn't see. I just didn't see. I'm sorry."

"Shh, now," Jalith soothed. He bent down beside the prone bundle, checking a pulse. "No one blames you. Calm down." He removed some of the layers of burlap rags that seemed to amount to the child's clothing, examining bones and limbs underneath.

The coachman got ready to run.

"Alair," Jalith said over his shoulder, "would you hold that stupid bastard for me?"

Alair grabbed the coachman and held on for dear life. He had always come in first in wrestling in the House of Heirs: the coachman shrieked, wept and struggled a bit, and went limp. Alair loosened his sleeper hold and brushed himself off.

"Thank you," Jalith said. "When he comes to, would you explain to him that he didn't kill this child?"

"He didn't? Sure looks like he did."

Jalith shook his head. "No...pop him in the coach and light me a torch and I'll show you."

Jalith heard a creak and a thump as Alair did as he was asked, accompanied by a sudden flaring of light. Jalith took the torch and held it over the body.

"Sure, we hit her...but she was already dead. Look at the chest." He pulled down the rags to reveal a sad bloodied mess—and, interestingly enough, a hole.

"Someone took her heart."

Alair turned slightly green. "Gods," he said. "Poor little thing."

"Indeed." Jalith was frowning. "This is monstrous. Who would do this to a little girl, and why? I'd heard strange things about this land—I think we all had—but this. "

"What're we going to do?"

Jalith took off his cloak and began wrapping the light little body in it. "I say it's fairly simple, Alair. We take the child with us to Oot City. We're only an hour or two away, and I'm guessing that's where she came from anyway. We let the Baroness know this has happened, and if no one has claimed her in a day or so, we bury her."

"We don't even know her name."

"Yes. But an unburied spirit wanders, they say—especially one with. Erm. Missing parts. Besides, it's really the only decent thing to do, isn't it?"

"I guess it is."

Jalith picked up the child and carried her to the coach, where he laid her gently down on the plush seat across from the inert coachman.

"I'm driving," Jalith said. "Want to ride up front with me?"

"She smells, doesn't she."

"Yes."

"Then I suppose I don't mind a bit of air."

• • •

Oot City proved to be, as the guidebook promised, a place of Loveliest and Moste Harmonious Desyne. In the harsh moonlight the buildings rose and curved like beautiful white sails from the gorse around them with hardly a right angle in sight. There was something oddly structured and planned about it—especially to Alair and Jalith, who had been raised in the hodgepodge sandstone chaos of Hamrat.

"Wow," Alair breathed. "It's like someone drew out the whole city beforehand, every building and outhouse and well, and just never built anything else."

"The city was builte in the reigne of King Telhir," Jalith quoted, looking at his guidebook, "and was Intendede as Proofe of Human Ingenuitye. Sometimes called The Perfecte City, and The City of Telhir's Dreeme, it was built Entirelye with the use of magickal Numerals, believed to Represente Perfeckt Proportions."

"Yes, perfect," Jalith murmured. They both stared at the upcoming city with dislike.

The truth was, it was a little too perfect. The buildings' smooth curving sides and organically shaped windows left one hungering for a square door, a broken shutter, a midden heap. The stone was too white, too clean.

"There would be a horrible murder here," Alair said.

"Shh. They can probably hear you from here."

"Who?"

"All those city guards."

And, indeed, there was an unusually long line of soldiers at the gates, all dressed in identical clean white tunics blazoned with the black dove of Machertani. Their axes, much like the buildings, were long and deeply curved, beautifully designed.

"State your business," the first guard in the line said briskly. "It's after eight o'clock. Don't you know the gates close at eight?"

"Actually, we don't," Jalith said pleasantly. "We're from Hamrat, in the Sharat-Ur province. We're here to begin the Souchladil Census."

"We've received no word from the King."

"Is this word enough?" Jalith held up the backs of his hands for closer inspection.

"As if the stupid bastard doesn't know who you are already," Alair muttered in his ear. "He's just being bloody difficult."

"If you need further proof, I have the signet ring and the Census papers in the coach," Jalith continued. He was used to people like this making his way difficult, and expected nothing less.

"My Lord," the guard said, after examining his silvered scars. He inclined his head just as far as was traditionally respectful, and not an inch more. "The House of Oot is in the center of town, directly down the road. The Baroness will be wanting to see you."

"Thank you," Jalith said. And, as the gates opened:

"For goodness' sake, Alair. The man's just doing his job. Doubtless the Baroness has good reason for all this heightened security."

"I'm just glad you didn't have to open the coach, Jalith. Even with who you are—no, wait. Especially with who you are, it would be difficult to explain a dead child and an unconscious coachman."

"Given the number of guards at the gate, it might not be difficult to explain at all. Something strange is going on here. Hopefully the Baroness can tell us a little more."

"You want to know more? Allking lord, we're just here to take Census. I don't know if it's wise to get all involved with this. I mean—" he lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Look at these streets. It's only a little after eight, and there's no one in sight. The whole thing stinks like a midden heap to me."

"Me too," Jalith admitted. "But that's what the Census is for, isn't it? To show what precisely is going on in the kingdom, and what needs to be done. Well, something is going on, and something needs to be done."

"I guess this is why you're First Prince and I'm Seventeenth. I'd be riding out of here faster than horses could carry me, if you weren't with me."

Jalith smiled his shy half-smile. "I don't for a minute believe that, Alair. But look—this must be it."

The palace, like a colossal filigree cake, rose above them in tiers. Stablemen were already exiting from one of the curved white buildings that surrounded it.

"Get ready," said Jalith. "The next few minutes are going to be awkward."

"Oh, I know."

* * *

 In the third year of the reign of the Allking, when the dark forces of the North still pressed the new Southern kingdom, a mysterious gilded chamber pot was sent to the Hamrat Palace, engraved in golden gilt and studded with diamonds and aquamarine. The Allking never used it—being a king, he had plenty of chamberpots—but his royal steward once, after drinking too much cactus beer the previous night, sat upon it to relieve himself. The mysterious pot, which had been cursed by the Sedat himself, stuck to his arse. No one, not even the King himself, could remove it, and the steward was known for the rest of his life as Prenna the Pisspotted.

# TWO

### In Which Things Are Even More Rotten

The Audience Room, where the Baroness held court, was a vision in black and white. A mosaic behind her white chair, executed in tiles barely bigger than a little toenail, showed geometrically perfect repeating black doves all the way up to the ceiling. The carpet on the polished black marble floor glowed plush and perfectly white, stainless.

It looked, Jalith thought, like a room where absolutely no one had lived for a geological age. There was a coldness to it, a coldness of absolutes and geometry, that he wasn't sure he cared for. It reminded him of his own grand Appointed Rooms, in which he had lived cautiously, like a pauper moonlighting as a prince, for three years.

There was nothing on the venerable white table in front of Machertani, not even a glass of wine or a plate of cheese. The floor was unscuffed and unworn. Even the candelabra above them, groaning under the weight of many thousands of candles, was gleaming and black and completely free of wax.

Jalith and Alair both bowed respectfully towards the throne, and then towards the court, as was the custom of visitors of any rank. The court bowed respectfully back. Machertani came forward, inclined her head, and gave each of them one sweetly-scented kiss on the cheek.

"Prince Jalith," she said. "Prince Alair. You honor me with your presence in my beautiful city. And the Census, you say! My, how the years do go by. I hadn't even realized it was coming up again—certainly hadn't anticipated the honor of having the First Prince in my halls. It is a pleasure to see you."

The woman's hand lingered on Jalith's cheek, and Jalith—though he did not trust her—almost melted. There had been some beautiful women in Hamrat but this woman was more than beautiful—she was exquisite, fabulous, a beauty like a cold dark doll.

It was a beauty of opposites, framed and enhanced by the contrast of black and white. She had rich dark hair, held back by an ivory comb, skin so white and pale it almost seemed translucent. Her face was narrow, almost gaunt, but the largeness of her dark eyes and the faint glaze of flush on her cheeks made it delicate rather than haggard, feminine and girlish save for lush red lips, which bespoke a hidden nature—something lustful and dark, maybe even a little bit cruel.

It was the lips he noticed most.

Jalith's heart hammered in his chest. He thought, for a brief moment, of kissing those red lips, pressing himself into her, of—

"Jalith," Alair muttered. "I believe the lady asked you a question."

"I'm so sorry, Baroness. My mind wandered. How can I help you?"

"No apologies needed, my prince! It happens to us all, from time to time." She smiled, and—perhaps he imagined it?—the smile had a bit of a look of satisfaction to it, something catlike. "I was simply warning you. We've had some strange things happen here lately. You are of course welcome to wander the city as is your privilege, whenever you want—but I recommend taking my men with you for added protection. Even your men, perhaps, as they complete their Census duties, should seek protection. Danger strikes strangely here—especially at night."

"That reminds me," Alair said. "When we were on the road, not far out of here, something happened."

"Something?" The Baroness said, looking perfectly puzzled.

"Let me show you."

Alair exited. In a moment he returned, carrying a familiar bloodstained bundle.

"We found a girl-child on the road, crudely dressed. As you can see—" he removed some of the bundling— "her heart has been torn out. Is this, madam, part of your strangely-striking danger?"

The entire court, almost in unison, shrieked. Machertani staggered back a few steps and sat down, hard, on the steps leading up to the throne. She looked much less unearthly this way. Her skirts had drawn up enough to reveal two perfect black slippers, an inch expanse of pale ankle.

Jalith wasn't sure he didn't prefer her this way. Her eyes met his for a moment, reproachful.

"You always were the subtle one," Jalith murmured to Alair.

"'S why I'm only Seventeenth Prince," Alair replied. He didn't look particularly concerned.

In the shocked silence of the hall, one could have heard a pin dropping, and all its resulting echoes, with perfect clarity. What one did hear, in fact, was a high unearthly wail coming from the wall behind Machertani's chair. A door, hidden in the mosaic confusion, swung open, and a woman wearing Machertani's black and white livery rushed out and grabbed up the sad little bundle. She held it close, rocking it and weeping.

"My baby," she wailed. "My baby, my baby, my baby."

"Bercher," Machertani said sharply. Then, more gently: "I'm so sorry, my dear. Please, feel free to arrange for the burial. I shall not refuse you anything I can provide."

But the woman did not hear. "My baby," she said again. "My baby, my baby, my baby."

"Bercher," Machertani said. Her voice was sweet, but there was steel not deep underneath it. She stood, composed once more. "Such a fuss, in front of my entire court."

The woman only stared at her, eyes glassy. Machertani signaled, and four black and white liveried men tramped out from the little door as well.

"Please take her somewhere safe for the night," she said. "She may pass vigil with her child, if she so wishes. Give her soup and some calming herbs."

The guards nodded, and the woman and her sad bundle were removed.

"First Prince," Machertani said, "we have much to discuss. After you and the Seventeenth Prince have eaten and bathed, please come to my chambers, and I will make the whole of this situation clear to you. It is best, perhaps, after this disturbance, if we do it in private."

Jalith and Alair both made their bows, and followed two more mysteriously appearing guards down a gently curving corridor to their rooms, where covered dishes and stoppered bottles awaited them, bright foods glowing in a sea of black and white.

"Wow," Alair said quietly, after the guards removed themselves. "Just—wow."

"I know." Jalith toyed with a few salted olives, pushing them back and forth on his plate. "This whole thing has a stench higher than a jungle slaughterhouse. Do you think she did it?"

"I don't know. Probably. It's hard to say, though. Her reaction was...odd." Alair smiled a lopsided smile. "She certainly seems interested in you, though. Powerfully so."

"Powerfully." For a moment, Jalith remembered the woman's warmth pressed up against him. Those red lips. "Alair...I think I should go see her alone tonight."

Alair choked, sprayed wine. "What? You're bloody insane. She probably wants to kill you."

"Probably. But I think—how can I put this? I think it's best to do what she wants, at least for a little while. I think, if she is responsible for this, it's the only way to catch her. We need to keep her comfortable, possibly catch her off guard."

"That's not the only thing you're thinking. Be careful, Jalith. That's a beautiful woman, and to do this alone...I should go with you. It's better if there's someone to pinch your arm when you fall too deep into those big black eyes."

"Posh. You and all your ladies—you'd be in bed with her before I've even said good evening. It's best this way." He tossed off the rest of his glass of wine and ran his fingers through his hair. When it was in passable condition, he turned to the door.

"I'm not an idiot," Alair called after him. "I know where I'm not welcome! I hope you know the same, Jalith. I hope you know the same."

• • •

"Ah," Machertani said, answering his knock. "You're alone."

"I thought you only wanted me." The woman's rooms were as well appointed and elegant as she. The bed was quite large, covered in sumptuous black silk. The coverlet was just a little rumpled: the sheets peeked out from under it in a hint of rich illicit red.

Jalith tore his eyes away with effort. "So what's all this about? It seems very strange. No one in your court looked too terribly surprised to see a dead child without a heart in my carriage."

"You're a perceptive man, then. They weren't." Machertani had a carafe of wine out on her table, and poured them both a glass. The red of it was deep, restive, ancient. Jalith sipped it and tasted old worlds, airless time.

"This has been going on for five months now—the children, missing and then found dead. But as much as we try to prevent it—as many guards as I put on the walls—it keeps happening. The patch of trees you drove by on your way here is known as The Weeping Wood. It is named for the children: they are always found there. There has been nothing I can do for it. Nothing." There was an edge of bitterness to her voice.

"You must understand, my lord. I am Baroness in these lands only because my husband, the Baron, died years ago in a scuffle on the borders. The people here have never loved me as they loved him. Those who might have been able to tell me something have not come forward. And little does it surprise me—they barely trust me with their taxes, let alone a murder!" She sipped her wine. "You must pardon me my bitterness, Prince. I tell you this because it bears on the case, and also—why not? I hear you have similar problems in court at Hamrat. Perhaps you may understand, where your friend Prince Alair might not."

"Alair might surprise you," Jalith said, smiling a little. "But yes—yes, I do understand. And thank you. It makes things much clearer. From the little you know, have you any ideas as to what's going on?"

"I do. I don't like them, but—well. You know some of the stories of this province, of course."

"Dark magicks," Jalith said dryly. "Certainly."

"Well. Did you know that the Feast of All Children originated here?"

"No, I always thought...I thought that was an Allking story. A tale of Telhir."

"It is, as a matter of fact. It happened when Telhir was here, building Oot City. Keep in mind, there was real magic in those days, and real magic—it was dark, sometimes. Even terrible. A great spell required a blood price.

It used to be that Oot, though it is a very Southern province, had a high percentage of Northerners living in it. They would come down the coast in their high ships and plunder their way here, where the population was sparse and they could eat their stolen provisions and enjoy the use of their captives with little interference.

But then Telhir came. And the blood he spilled, driving them out—it was lakes of blood, my Prince. Oceans. The few Northmen allowed to live in the Allking's fancy newbuilt Oot City were very angry. One or two of them were hefenta—Northern sorcerers, full of the wild magic of the North. And they made a hefenta-stohl, a binding of blood, which they planned to use to open a portal from the Wild North directly into Telhir's new city. But for this great spell, they needed the most powerful blood of all. They needed the blood of innocents."

"So they slaughtered the children," Jalith breathed. "I never realized."

"Nor did I, until my husband told me the story. They rounded up as many little children as they could find and they murdered them, in cold blood, here in the heart of this city.

But Telhir found them, before the spell was fullcast—they say he had some magic himself, you know. And he was furious. He drew his sword and cut the assembled Northmen down. He took the spell they had made, and his anger was so great that even by himself he managed to turn it. The innocence and the goodness of those poor slaughtered children shone out of it, and in Telhir's hands the spell became one of protection—an everlasting reminder to the people of Oot that a terrible price is sometimes paid for safety and prosperity."

"And you think perhaps a Northman is here, and is trying to open that portal again?"

"Goodness, no! There haven't been any Northmen here for centuries—well, save you, begging your pardon. I think some poor fool is trying to strengthen the protection spell. You see, I believe it's been—decaying. Even great magic does, over time."

"What would make you think that?"

The Baroness's eyelids flickered. The movement of her thick dark lashes created a wave of shadow against her cheeks. "I'll show you," she said. She took his hand. "Please, come with me."

They went through several curving white corridors, several pleasantly arched white rooms. At last they stood in a small garden somewhere near the center of the house—white walls curved all around it, and the moon shone down as though in a high tunnel. The garden contained only a simple stone bench, and the smallest of decorative fountains.

It wasn't much, as far as sites of terrible atrocities went. But Jalith, more than most people, knew how deceiving appearances could be.

"Try to enter it," Machertani said.

Jalith did. At first, it was difficult—strangely difficult. He kept trying to step through, but the world would move sideways, and he wound up stepping backwards, or to the side, or not stepping altogether. At last, with a great effort of will, he concentrated and stepped forward.

The Baroness followed him. "This was the place they slaughtered those children. Telhir's protection spell should have kept a Northman out of it forever—should have, in fact, blown him to pieces should he even try to enter. But you, though a Southern prince, are Northern by blood. And yet here you are."

For a moment Jalith stood still, listening to the lonely drip of the little fountain. He contemplated, uncomfortably, the fact that it might still have blown him to pieces.

But she wouldn't have told him to do it if the spell was still dangerous, certainly. One didn't kill the First Prince in cold blood in one's own home. One simply didn't.

And, even if one did, she wasn't that kind. He wanted, desperately, to believe this. So.

"I believe you," he said at last. "Allking Lord, there are people existing who would be foolish enough to do what you say. But who? Who would care so much about the safety of this land, yet so little about its children?"

"I don't know," Machertani said shortly. "I was hoping that was the part you might be able to help with. When you're doing your Census duties, ask a few questions. See what answers you get. Perhaps someone will say something to you they would not say to me. I, after all, am not trusted."

"And you think I'll get better treatment? Machertani, I am Northern. I am everything these people hate, through blood and bone."

Machertani shook her head. In the moonlight, Jalith noticed, her coloring was especially lovely—marble and pink, death and health all in one.

"You forget, my Prince. Telhir was as fair-haired as you. And these people have not had to fear the North in many a year. They might surprise you." She smiled up at him. "As I hope I have done. I know what you must have thought when I sent that poor woman away, but please understand—this is not the first such scene my court has witnessed. Any more like it and they may all run like gibbering idiots out into the night and never be seen again."

Jalith smiled back. "No, madam. I understand. It is as you said—I am no stranger to the mistrust of my own people. I hope we find the killer soon."

"I can only hope so." She reached for his hand, covered it with her own small white one. With the silver scars so eclipsed, and darkness almost complete, Jalith could almost pretend he was no one in particular, except perhaps a man swiftly falling in love with a beautiful woman.

You're insane, the small but terribly insistent voice of reason said, somewhere deep in his skull. She's not half so helpless as she'd like to look. Why're you getting all giddy? Why're you blushing?

The answer was slow in coming to him. It took several minutes of holding her small pale hand in his own to figure it out.

Because she is like me. In some ways, ways I can understand, she is more like me than Alair or even Lanon. And she is beautiful. And I like the way she looks at me. Allking help me, I like it a lot.

What did it hurt? What did it hurt, just this once, for him to enjoy someone's company?

"I should probably get back," Jalith said, after a long and uncomfortable moment. "Alair probably thinks you've murdered me by now."

Machertani laughed. "Was I that harsh to poor Bercher?"

"No, no, just—suspicion. We apologize—he'll apologize himself, once he hears what I have to say. But for now, I don't want him charging after you with his best ceremonial saber. I'll...I'll come see you again." Jalith smiled. "Maybe we can talk about this more later."

"Of course, my dear Prince." Machertani leaned in and kissed him, so gently and softly he barely felt the pressure of her lips against his. "Sleep well."

"I will. You too. Allking bless."

"Allking bless."

# THREE

### In Which Things Reach a Surprising Height of Rottenness

"So she's all right? Really and truly all right?"

Alair's eyebrows, under sleep-mussed hair, were raised so high they almost disappeared into his scalp.

"I think she is. Everything she said made perfect sense. Were our situation the same, there's not much I would have done differently." Jalith shrugged. "Honestly, Alair, what does it hurt us to take her at her word? We're going to be here for some time anyway. We might as well have her friendly as hostile."

Alair looked at him for a long minute.

"And you," he said after a moment, "will, I'm somehow certain, be more than happy to take on the gargantuan task of keeping her both friendly and out of my hair."

"I was considering it," Jalith admitted, flushing a bit.

Alair's face, writ large in letters Jalith had been able to read since he was six, said loudly that this was the stupidest thing he had ever heard, and he couldn't believe Jalith was actually going through with it. His voice, however, said:

"Okay. If you believe it, I do too. Or I'll try."

"Thank you, brother," Jalith said. Alair's face softened.

"It's a brother's place, isn't it? If it makes you happy, Jalith. It doesn't displease me to try and make you happy. Allking knows, you haven't seen it often enough." He clapped the paler man's shoulder briefly. "Keep her distracted. I'll start asking some questions tomorrow."

"Sounds good."

"Good night, Jalith."

Jalith yawned, looking at his own small bed. He kept thinking of silk coverlets, black and white and red. White skin. Red lips.

"Good night," he said faintly.

He had difficulty falling asleep. He had known he would.

• • •

The Census proceeded.

Jalith had never conducted the Census before. Usually, there were specially trained diplomats for this sort of thing. But the situation, as he told Machertani, was unusual.

He told her about the men. He told her about his father's punishment.

"I know he's trying to help me," Jalith said. "Staying in the city would have been death, after what I did."

"Sounds like you could take care of yourself to me," Machertani said, smiling.

They were at breakfast. The Census of Oot province was nearly half completed. In spite of the lack of answers to his questions, in spite of the uneasiness he still felt at the perfection of the city, he was beginning to wish it would never end. He planned to find storerooms to count, workers deep in the country to be interviewed and recorded. If he had to, he planned on counting every blade of grass and twig of juniper in this stunted country.

"You know," he said thoughtfully, "the wine's very good here. Almost..."

"...sour?"

"Yes, sour! I wouldn't think I'd like it, if someone described it to me, but there you go. Sour and good. This is such a strange place."

"But you like it here. You keep telling me."

"Well...yes. I suppose I do." Jalith smiled, looked down into his wine cup. "I just wish...I wish I knew the answer to this problem. I wish I could solve that child's murder."

"You've still got time. We thought it might take a while—who knows where these people even live? Some of these children have not even had homes to trace back to. Not all of them were as fortunate as this little girl, with a mother who loved her and a place at the courts."

"You know, I've been thinking. That Bercher woman. Is she well enough to talk to yet? I hate to intrude on a mother's grief, but she might have some answers. She's the closest thing to a witness I have right now."

Machertani shook her head. "She's mad from grief, Jalith. Simply mad from it. If I thought it would help us I would say yes, but honestly? The state she's in, it might be better to give her another day or two. I hate to stress her when she's like this. It might send her over the brink permanently."

"Of course you're right. But still, perhaps we could—"

"Jalith," Alair said. "Could I talk to you for a second?"

Alair had been taking a shift in the audience room, questioning and counting the townspeople while Jalith and Machertani had breakfast. He was rumpled and dirty, and sported a few days' growth of beard. He had been working very hard—hard enough for two, as it happened.

He had been working for two a lot lately. As Jalith promenaded with his new favorite person, eating glorious sugar-glazed breakfast confections and admiring the various positioning of black and white drapes in black and white rooms, Alair had been spending the little spare time he had investigating.

Jalith knew this constant prodding was irritating Machertani. He had tried to talk Alair out of it. This was why, at his friend's rumpled and somewhat foul-smelling appearance in the Audience Hall, Jalith sighed. He knew questions had to be asked, but gods, did they have to be asked so often?

"Is it important?"

"Yes, please. Right now."

Jalith sighed again, bowed apologetically. "Baroness, please excuse me for a moment."

"A moment only?" She asked, smiling.

"Of course."

He followed Alair down the corridor, through the busy throng of servants bringing dishes and linens to and fro from the dining area. He waited until they were far down the corridor, where it was almost empty, to speak.

"Jalith. Remember that woman, Bercher?"

"Yes. Machertani and I were just talking about her. Machertani says she's positively mad with grief still. It's a shame, I'd like to—"

"I know what you'd like to do, but you won't be doing it. We just found her body in the side gardens, stuffed in a fountain that looks like it hasn't been used since Telhir built the city. Guess we won't be getting any answers out of her, will we?"

"What?" Jalith said.

"I know. What is right. Please pull your head out of Machertani's arse and think with me. I don't care how you feel about her right now, something is seriously rotten here and it begins and ends with that woman. Think about everything she told you. Think. Something won't check out. What is it?"

"It was all fine," Jalith said, bewildered. "We've been through this. The story about All Children's is true. Her husband really did die in a border skirmish several years ago. When we went into the garden..." he trailed off, thinking about the silver of the moonlight that night—the paleness of it, glancing off her pale shoulders.

Pale shoulders.

Pale.

Because she is like me.

"Allking punching a donkey," Jalith snapped, as several days' worth of well-fed confundity fell away from him. "She's Northern."

The two men looked at each other. "How did neither one of us not notice that?" Alair asked. "You're absolutely right. She's paler than milk. Paler even than you. How could we just...not notice?"

"Because," Jalith said, pieces falling into place, "because she's not only Northern, she knows the wild magic. She is hefenta, like the Northmage himself. We didn't notice because she didn't want us to. Gods, we've been kept here like cows in a stable. And all these people—why, I'm willing to bet not a person in this territory has noticed. She walked into the garden after me, Alair. After. That must mean—"

"—that you, my Prince, broke the spell? Yes, my love. Yes, it does. And now, thanks to you, the armies of the Norchlad will enter this country right in its sweet center."

This time, Jalith didn't have enough breath in him to say anything.

Gracefully, one mincing step at a time, Machertani floated down the steps to them. Jalith stood rooted in place, petrified by fear—or, he realized, as he tried to move, by something not nearly so natural. Next to him Alair stood just as stiffly as he, fear shining in his eyes.

"Alair will be having an accident very shortly," she said. "I think he'll fall down these steps. Or perhaps I'll take his heart as well—it's innocent enough. And my, how full of love it is!"

She touched Jalith's face, ran her fingers gently over it. She ran her fingers through his hair. She kissed him—not gently, as she previously had, but hard, greedily. Even disgusted—even paralyzed—Jalith felt the heat of that kiss, and some small part of him responded.

"But you," she murmured, almost directly into his mouth. "You I like. And the power in you—for you to break a six thousand year old protection spell, there's a good deal. Forget these Southern paper-pushers, my love. Come with me to Mourninghall."

Mourninghall.

Again, he felt a cold strange air, a cold so intense and sharp it made him burn.

Six doves. A castle in the mountain.

And somewhere deep within him, a thread of memory stirred.

Castle in the mountain,

door in the wall.

All shall fade

in Mourninghall.

Bind me up with shadow,

bind me up with silk.

I shall go to Sixdoves

to sup on milk.

He was bouncing a ball. It was shiny and red, so perfectly red. His mother, beside him in her robes of white fur, caught the ball, bounced it back to him.

There is a man—his father?—just a pair of fur leggings, huge boatlike feet.

"They are coming," he says.

There is a burgundy light.

Jalith woke to the present to feel the teeth of the almost-forgotten comb pressed into the palm of his hand.

"You," he said. "You know him. The magician."

"What if I do?" Machertani's face was flushed now, almost ugly. "He told me I would be able to control you. Quiet!"

Jalith felt her power pass over him like an avalanche of snow. He grabbed the comb, dug his fingers in. The pain, bright and sharp, kept him from going under. The comb was strangely warm.

"Who is he?" Jalith yelled. "Who is he?"

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Machertani began to back away. "I don't know. He's just a magician. He helped me—he raised me, in the dark places. I was his Waker, and he protected me for that reason. He taught me about the hefenta-stohl. He helped me weaken it. He's powerful. More so than I."

"What's his name? I know you know. I see it in your face. Tell me his name. Tell me."

Machertani's face, so haughty only moments ago, began to show traces of a dark and animal fear. Her red lips glistened like a bloody wound in the white expanse of her face. "He told me you'd ask. He told me not to tell you. He'll kill me."

"Like you killed all those children?"

He had been edging her forwards along the corridor, down the steps there. He didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to where they were until they stood almost in front of a very familiar doorway, exiting out into a very familiar garden.

But something was different. The doorway glowed now in the light—hot and bright, like a shield in the sun. The comb in his hand glowed hot and bright as well.

Machertani must have only realized what had happened as he did, or certainly she would have tried to stop him. A distant part of Jalith cared. A distant part of Jalith was even a little frightened of himself.

It was a very distant part. Mostly he felt fire running hot in his blood. Mostly, he was angry. Mostly he looked at the woman—black and white and red, eyes cold as frost—and knew what had to happen here. Just as she must have known it.

"No," she said. "Please, no. What I did I did for our people, Jalith. The Northlands are dying. The Frost is killing them. Our people must live. Jalith—"

"Enough," Jalith growled. Mercilessly, he pushed her onwards. "They aren't our people. They're your people, and they'd kill mine given half the chance!"

"No, no, no. Jalith—"

He held the comb up right in front of her face. It burned, it smoked. It pulsated, its own tiny galaxy of heat. The heat of it funneled outward into the doorway beyond Machertani, curling and singeing the ends of her silky black hair.

Machertani took a last deep breath. She swallowed, closed her eyes.

"That is no portal, son of Lanon," she said. "Whether you admit to it or not, you have powers of your own. You are strengthening the protection spell. You know what that means, don't you?"

In answer, Jalith pushed the comb even closer to her face. It brushed her long dark hair, which sizzled as though caught in lightning.

"I would not have hurt you, son of the North," she said, with a strange gentleness. "This death will for you be unlucky."

Forced by the brandished comb, she stepped back into the doorway.

The reaction was instantaneous. One moment there was a figure of a woman there, outlined in bright light. The next there was the silhouette of a woman, outlined in black ash, on the opposite wall.

When Alair came for Jalith, moments later, he was on the floor clutching a marred and blistered left hand, weeping as though his heart would break. Alair tried to separate him from the comb, and found he could not.

"Hefenta," Jalith whispered. He was crying. He was laughing. He was doing both, somehow, at the same time.

"Hefenta!"

* * *

 The Southern Provinces, especially those closest to the Northlands, often had problems with demonic possession. These demons, more often than not, were weak little things, created when the minor hexes and geas of lesser Norchladil sorcerers were allowed to age and run amok. For many years, the Allking held a weeklong festival, The Feast of Demonpurging, in which he would visit amongst the people and, upon request, punch any livestock believed to be inhabited. The Allking's punch was held to be better for this purpose than an exorcism: therefore, as is only natural, many purported healing elixirs in the Souchlad are still marketed under the name 'Allking's Fist of Magic Medicinal Purpose'.

# PART THREE

####  REKHANI

# ONE

### In Which Jalith Is Purged of his Demons

Jalith woke in a room with bare whitewashed walls to the faint scent of honeysuckle wafting over him from an open window. When the curtains blew apart he could see nothing outside but clouds. The clouds were heavy-bellied, white and clumsy. The sky behind them was cerulean, empty and pure.

"Hmm," he said. It was a pleasant place.

He no longer trusted pleasant.

"You've been here for about three days," said an altogether too familiar voice beside him. "Sometimes shouting, sometimes weeping, sometimes singing in a tongue none of these simple fools recognize. It's probably good you woke when you did—they were about to give up on you and call for the King."

The magician, wearing a fur-trimmed coat the same color as his eyes, sat in the plain wooden chair by his bed. He propped his chin on his hand and cast a speculative eye on Jalith. His face seemed longer now—paler, sharper. It tugged at the barest borders of memory. The man's breath misted faintly, though the air did not seem to be cold.

"It was a shame you chose not to walk through the door," the magician said. " It would have become a portal for you, would have recognized your right to it. Much time and effort would have been saved. For you will come to me, my boy. You will."

Jalith shut his eyes, hoping that, when they were again open, the irritating presence would be gone. When they were, it was not.

"A shame about Machertani. She was not perhaps as evil as her end deserved. Her people were dying—our people were dying. The Frost is almost permanent now. I had her marry the Baron of Oot for access to the hefenta-stohl, which we saw as the least dangerous means for her people's transportation. She was desperate to save her lands, poor girl. Would you not have done the same? The lives of your enemy for the lives of your people."

Jalith turned his head to the wall. The man was baiting him, trying to draw him out. He would not be baited.

"Poor boy," the magician said at last. "It is hard for you."

"No," Jalith ground out, unable to take it any longer, "not nearly as hard as your death will be, when I find you."

"Tsk, tsk." The magician touched his brow—the touch was as light and cool as winter frost. "At least you now recognize that you want to find me."

"I think you killed my family."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. The truth is never so black and white."

"You lie."

But the magician only smiled. "Truth to those who seek it," he said dismissively. "Lies to those who seek lies. You will learn the difference in your own time, Silverhand."

Summoning what little strength his sleep-addled body possessed, Jalith raised himself upon the pillows with one elbow. "Leave now."

"Or?" The magician's smile was nasty. "My dear prince. I'm not really here."

"I didn't think you were." He fumbled in the pocket of his cloak, folded on the foot of the bed. "But with this thing, I get the funniest feeling it doesn't matter."

The magician watched him brandish the comb with cold and unfrightened eyes. "It's saved you in the past, hasn't it?" He said. "But not against me. And it has branded you, as certainly as your poor false father has. Look at your hands, my prince."

He looked down.

On his right hand were the familiar silver whorls of his Appointment, ancient words of power and protection in Mendelefa, the oldest tongue of the Souchlad.

On his left hand, blistered and lumpy and hideously ugly, were the horizontal marks the comb had burned into him before the Allking's hefenta-stohl.

"Now," the magician said, his voice fading into the sound of the breeze outside, "you belong to both lands."

There was another sound, thin and strange, in the air. It became louder and louder. It wasn't until people began rushing in that Jalith realized the sound was himself, screaming.

He heard Alair's voice:

"I'm sorry for all the fuss, Rekhat. He's not in his right mind. You see, he had to kill someone. It was the first time. He thought he loved her."

And then, white silence.

• • •

When he came to again, the room had not changed. There were more blankets, perhaps, on the bed. His scarred hand had scabbed over, would soon be healed entirely.

Too quickly. Quick as magic. Quick as hefenta.

A stocky woman, white streaking her curly black hair, sat beside him. She wore the dusty black tunic common in the South to fieldworkers of either sex. On her left hand, the hand that rested gently over his own, was the signet ring of the House Rekhat, featuring a lotus crowning the azure dragon of Hamrat.

"Good to see you awake and not screaming," the woman said. Her voice was hoarse and deep—a voice that had shouted many commands. "I'm Karloi, the Duchess Rekhat. You're in my house, deep in the fields of Rekhani. We were worried, my Prince, that you might not live."

"The Census?"

"Is being completed as we speak. Prince Alair has temporarily taken over your tasks. I've been watching over you while you heal—you've been saying some very interesting things in your sleep."

"Interesting," Jalith said bitterly. "In what fashion?"

"Well, I'm not certain. As near as I could tell, they were entirely in one of the regional dialects of the North."

Jalith stared up at the ceiling. There were cracks there, and water spots—the Rekhat's house, evidently, was not a new one. Looking at this homely ceiling Jalith decided, for reasons he could not quite explain, that he did not want to know exactly what he had said in his sleep, not even if a hundred thousand of the world's best Norchladil translators told him in perfect unison.

The woman raised two fingers to his brow and stroked it gently, calmingly, much as he remembered his father doing when he was sick and a child.

"Never fear, young one. Cease your screaming. You're safe here with me. Wishht, now. Sleep."

He slept.

• • •

He awoke this time to droning, the sound of many voices languishing over a single note. The air smelled of spice and vetiver and earth. He was conscious of descending, descending, descending. It was dark all around him, but the darkness was warm and inviting. There was pressure over his lips. After some experimental movement, he realized he had been gagged.

"I apologize for that, young one," said Karloi's hoarse voice. "Your screaming was disturbing my household. You shall find your peace here. I am tired of waiting for those powers which hold you to release you and now together we shall force them out. Do you know the secret of the Rekhat, Jalith? Nod yes if you understand me."

Jalith shook his head. His body felt weak and soft, as though it had been crushed to a pulp and put together again. He knew very little about Rekhani, save that the descendants of the house were in some way related to the Allking, and he didn't currently feel much like a history lesson The slightest movement was pain. Very gently, Karloi pulled the gag from his mouth.

"The Rekhat is an ancient house, nearly as ancient as your own. Hort of Rekhani, our first Lord, was the blood son of Sidhenna, got upon a farmer's daughter out of wedlock. Though he could never take him into the House of Heirs, as he was a blood son, the Southking loved Hort and admired him for his wisdom and even temperament. So he gave him land in the fields west of Hamrat and in turn this son had a son, and so on and so on, down now unto me, last daughter of the house. We are the children of the Mageking, and his blood is our blood. It comes, perhaps, with a bit of the old magic, lost in all other places of the Southlands. I ask you, prince—how else do our fields, small as they are, coax out enough grain to feel all the arid Southern provinces? This is the tomb of Sidhenna, and as long as it is here his spirit helps to keep us safe from harm. Perhaps, Prince, he will help you as well."

A torch sputtered and flared into life.

Jalith was on a palanquin made of striped silk, loaded with pillows and blankets. His left hand, he noticed, had been tightly bandaged, though he felt no pain from it. The palanquin bearers set him down gently beside Karloi, who stood before an enormous oblong black monolith. There were no ornaments in the tomb, no jewels or withered garlands. There was only Karloi, dressed in her shabby black tunic, and, when the bearers exited up an endless-seeming stone stair, Jalith.

Perhaps seeing his face, Karloi said:

"You are understandably leery of magic. I hear you put Machertani, Baroness of Oot, to her death with it—a death not undeserved. They sing of you there already. You are a hero now, my Prince—a protector of children and the poor, a man who can see through the wicked magic of the North. Is this not what you wanted?"

"No," Jalith said. It had been so long since he had heard his own voice that the sound surprised him. "Not at this price. And as for your magic—I have seen enough of magic in the past few days to last me the rest of my life. I want none of it. I thank you for your offer. It seems genuine enough. But I'll battle this out myself."

The grey streaked head dipped in a single nod. "I thought you might say that. But may I ask a favor?"

"Of course."

The Duchess knelt beside him and placed one hand on his chest and one hand on the impassive black surface of the tomb. "I do not ask it of you," she said, "but of Sidhenna." And, before he could pull away:

"Mageking, hear my prayer. Take the Northern evil from this man and give it unto me. "

For a moment, in the flickering half-darkness, it looked almost as though her hand sunk straight through into his chest. But there was no pain—only a light feeling of pressure, and then one of tremendous relief.

Karloi withdrew her hand. In it was a small glass vial, full of a cinnabar liquid.

"I understand, Prince, that my life may be forfeit for what I have done. But this evil does not effect just you, but your whole land—the lords and ladies of the court, your provincial rulers, down to the lowest farmer and midden mucker in the Souchlad. It is well worth my life to see you rid of it. May your reign be long, my hero prince. Long, and untroubled."

The woman's plain square face was shining, her jaw set in a grim yet joyous line. The word that came to Jalith's mind, uneasily, was fanatical.

"I would not hurt you," he said stiffly. "I've hurt enough people this week."

But who had he hurt?

He could no longer remember.

In its vial the liquid glowed redly, tugging at his memory.

# TWO

### In Which Alair Once Again Proves His Worth

"So you like the country?"

"Of course I do. It's beautiful. More green here than I've ever seen in my life. More water."

"And the Census is continuing as planned."

"Exactly as planned. Thank you again for starting it while I recovered. Otherwise we'd be days behind."

"And you feel better."

"Much better. Better, I think, than I've ever felt."

"Then what's the problem?"

Jalith sighed. "That's just it, Alair. I don't know what the problem is. I feel fantastic, I spend hours at a time wandering in this beautiful country. I'm apparently a hero to the people in Oot. My day is filled from sunup to sundown with useful work and beautiful free time."

"Is it Karloi?"

"No...and yes. Something about her."

"Like the Baroness' type of something?"

"Like the what, now?"

"The Baroness." Alair eyed his friend solicitously. "No, nevermind. If you don't want to talk about it we don't have to. We'll figure whatever it is out eventually. In the meantime... seriously, Karloi? She seems all right to me. A little strange, but she's had a lot on her plate. Right after the rains is a busy season here—all the wheat is starting to sprout."

"It's probably nothing."

Alair just raised his eyebrows and leaned back.

The two princes had seated themselves beside a stream, under a bower of birch trees laden with honeysuckle. They had shucked off their boots and rolled their leggings up past their knees. The cool water—the brightest and coldest they had seen in their lives—rolled over their desert-born feet. The air was rich with moisture, almost unbelievably so. Both desert boys, they felt that every breath they took was bursting with it. There was no such thing as being drunk on humidity, of course, but they were close to it nonetheless.

There was a river through Hamrat—this same river, as it happened—but by the time it reached the city it was deep underground, reachable only through twenty feet of sand and gravel. Both of them, in spite of their important princely duties, retired here in the evening just to watch the intoxicating cascade of water over rocks.

Nearly asleep, sunning himself on his rock, Alair leafed lazily through the Righte and Usefull Guide.

"The Lande of Rekhanti," he read, "is the Fertile Hearte of the Souchlad. Enough Croppes are Growne Here to feede the Entiretye of the Landes. It is Worthy of Visitation for those who Seeke Greate Peace, and the Tombe of Sidhenna provides—"

"Tomb of Sidhenna," Jalith said, frowning. "I was there, with Karloi."

"Of course you were. It's where she cured you. You were screaming and hurting yourself, biting your own hands, before she brought you down there."

"I know," he was still frowning. "But there's something else."

Alair shrugged and settled into his seat, guidebook dipping into his lap. "Don't worry about it," he muttered. "It's sunny, and for the first time in my life I am simultaneously enjoying the sun and not frying. Allking slicing a hamsteak, how did this wonderful little nugget of a country ever come into being?"

"Not too many pretty girls around, though," Jalith said. He too settled back against his tree, honeysuckle vines cushioning his head, his golden hair fanned out like a halo.

"Who cares?" Alair smiled. "There's sun, and cool breeze, and water."

"I suppose." They were silent.

Just as Alair's head began to nod, Jalith said: "Alair?"

"What?"

"I'm—I'm unhappy. I don't know why. I don't know what's happened. But I am. I'm—I'm so unhappy!"

Alair moved closer to his friend, putting an arm around his shoulders. "Oh, Jalith. My friend. It's been a trying week for you. It's perfectly normal."

"I know it is. I know something happened. But Alair—I don't remember what. Nothing makes sense. Nothing is right. I feel...cut loose. Adrift. Just as though I were floating in that river. I can't take much more of it. I enjoy the scenery, I enjoy the work, but something is wrong. Something is missing. I know who I am. I know I am a king's son, chosen First Prince of this land. But—but that's it. That's all. I feel like there's so much more."

"There is!" Alair smiled. "You are Jalith Silverhand, heir to the throne, yes. But you're also a kind friend. A fair judge. You think quickly and well, even in the most stressful situations. You're a hell of a card player. You can't hold your beer worth two shits. You're a good man. Hells, you're the best man I know. And, in spite of that yellow hair of yours, you're a true Souchladil prince."

"Wait," Jalith said. "What was that about my hair?"

"Hm? Oh. Figure of speech. You know, it's blond."

Jalith just stared at him.

"No it's not," he said.

"You're taking this too far, my friend. I know you're confused. But come on."

"Why would I have yellow hair? I'm a southern prince. No, Alair. It's you who is taking this too far."

"Look in the river, Jalith. Look in the bloody river. You're starting to really worry me."

Jalith looked over the bank. He looked for a long time.

"It's just the way the light's shining on it," he said, irritated. "Really, Alair."

But Alair motioned him off. "I think I need to have a talk with Karloi," he said darkly. "A very long and very productive talk."

• • •

Karloi's house was, indeed, small and unassuming. Much of its stone had worn over the years to a smooth and windblown finish, and much of the wood was so old it looked just like the stone. It didn't look like a very wealthy place, but there was cheer there, and warmth, and an abundance of good food. Karloi's family, the princes found via the Righte and Usefull Guide, spread a legendary table. This impression was confirmed at mealtime by their own stomachs.

"Allking smoking a cornhusk," Alair pronounced gravely. "I can hardly move."

"Me either," said Jalith. For the first time in his life, he was gaining some weight—Alair thought his belt might even be on a slightly higher notch. "What were those little pocket things, again? I didn't quite catch it."

"Cinnabar pockets, Karloi said. They use some sort of red flour in them for the color. And like four types of fowl."

"Cinnabar," Jalith murmured. The word seemed to unsettle him. "Cinnabar. Hmm. What else?"

"Green stuff."

"What was the green stuff?"

"I don't know. It was green."

Even at the king's table, foodstuffs in Hamrat were somewhat limited. Generally, the three crops that could be gotten out of the arid sand-blasted land around the city were olives, cactus, and dates. These, combined with wheat that Alair supposed was grown here and shipped to the capital city, comprised ninety percent of the princes' diets. Green vegetables were a rare and miraculous oddity to them still.

Karloi was seated at the head of the table, chatting with her young steward on the left. Jalith was directly to her right seated with her on the raised dais that supported her chair, while Alair sat to his right at a slightly lower level. This gave Jalith the opportunity to pick a few scraps from his friend's hair.

"Table manners!" He said, grinning. "Allking Lord, one would think you'd been raised in a barn."

"Posh, I might as well have been. Scrabbling for food with ninety-nine other princes—I'm afraid the subtlety of table etiquette escaped me."

Jalith chuckled, but his face quickly fell. "It was different for me," he said. "I don't remember why."

Alair just looked at him for a moment—his friend's face, familiar to him since early childhood. The gaunt cheeks, long straight nose, clear grey eyes, all familiar—but these past few days there had been something different in those eyes. A great emptiness.

Alair made up his mind. "I'll be back in a few minutes, my friend," he said. And, to Karloi: "Rekhat. Do you mind if we have a few words in private?"

She nodded. "I've been waiting for you to ask, Seventeenth Prince."

• • •

Alair had never been good at confrontation. It was one of the many reasons he was Seventeenth Prince and not Second, or Third, or even Tenth. He tended towards one of two confrontational directions—either loud, mouth-frothing anger, or shy silence. Generally, he didn't even pick the appropriate reaction for the circumstance.

He had left most of the correcting in his life to Jalith. Jalith had the talent, rare enough amongst the nobility, of knowing when a correction was actually important, and when it was simply blowing hot air. He had, in addition to this, the bravery to correct it when it mattered, and the wisdom to let it stand when it didn't. Alair had long envied him this skillset. For all his bluster and derring-do, Alair spent very little time feeling certain of himself.

This is perhaps why no one was more surprised than Alair when, upon entering the Rekhat's study, he immediately slammed a fist down on the desk and said:

"What in Aychari's hells did you do to him, woman? I could have your head for this. Matter of fact, unless you start talking very fast and it makes very good sense, I think I will. I'll put it up on a pike by the gates of the House of Heirs, and I'll tell the younger boys who walk by to laugh at it. I'll tell them to laugh until their sides split. Because you—you awful soon-to-be-headless creature—have been a very stupid woman."

Karloi watched him, her eyes opaque.

"Your loyalty," she said, "is commendable."

"You wouldn't know commendable from the hole in your arse. Start talking. Now."

"I did what I had to do, for my lands and my people."

"You know who else said that this week? Machertani. You know what she is right now? A thin coating of ash on a garden door."

"Well," Karloi said dryly, "if you plan on taking my head, may I at least sit down first? I promise, it will put me at a better height for you."

"Don't tempt me," Alair growled. He touched the hilt of his (never used) best ceremonial saber. "Tell me what you did."

"First, Prince, let me tell you what I did not do. I did not harm him in any way. I did not alter his basic self—save for a few minor details you will find him exactly the same man you've always known. I did not cast him from my house when he screamed, or allow any of my men access to him who I thought might mean him harm. I am, in fact, a loyal subject, and would be just as willing to swear fealty to him as to King Lanon. To survive as a Northman in a Southern court shows great strength of will, and the mercy and goodness my spies in Oot whisper of suggest the makings of a great king. No, my prince. I have not harmed your friend. I have, in fact, done him good."

"He's in pain, Karloi. He's empty. Whatever you think you've done for him, I don't see much good in it. He's forgotten much of his childhood, much of his past. How long, precisely, do you think he'll remain the same man when he can't remember the things that made him who he is?"

"And how long, Alair, do you think he'll remain the man you know with the blood of the North eating at him every day? That blood is corrosive, all-consuming. From what I hear, it has already begun. He killed a woman—"

"A murderer of children. And it nearly drove him mad to do so."

"—and this whole Census is taking place three months early because of something he did in Hamrat, is it not? The blood speaks, Alair. It may hold its tongue for a while, but in the end it always speaks. The North is a violent place, and its children are violent people. Jalith is no different. He has struggled against it, true. I merely want to help him win that struggle."

She looked up at him from her desk, her jaw set. "I will not have a Northman rule these lands. No matter how brave, no matter how strong. But the First Prince is not Northern, is he? Not entirely. The wild magic has lain dormant in him for a long time. He has the civility and the innocence of a Southern prince, thanks to Lanon's long guardianship. I have hope for him, and hope for his great reign. There are legends in this place, prophecies even, that speak of a man like him. Children's rhymes now, of course, but still."

"Then what did you do to him, you interfering bitch?"

"I did what any good wheat farmer would do," Karloi said. "I separated the grain from the chaff."

Comprehension dawned slowly. "Allking Lord. You took the Northman out of him. How did you do it?"

"It was simple enough to do. With the help of my great ancestor I took the memories and emotions of the North from him—anything, in fact, that could lead him to remember."

"And now, in place of his childhood, he has a great big hole. In place of his memories of Machertani, he has nothing. He knows he has killed, knows he has hurt, knows he is different—but he has no idea why. Karloi, he does not even know he has yellow hair. How does this better him, to know the poor things in his life with no justification, with no greater understanding?"

"He knows he has a father who loves him dearly. He knows he must be king. He knows he must treat his people gently, must listen to their wishes as if they were his own. These aren't small things to know either, my prince.

They say there is a frost in the North now—a great Frost, such as no man has seen since the days of Anmar Sedat the Northmage. It kills children and animals, blights crops so that they die even before they sprout. Do you want your king to think of this, or of the health of his own people?"

"I see no problem with a king who cares about the health of all," Alair said. "And perhaps, were he concerned, there would be less fighting in the Mountains of Vigilance, and no more bodies blocking the Grateful Pass. I have known Jalith for most of my life, Karloi. What you are seeing now is only a shell, a sad half-alive construct of your own making. I would not want him on a throne as he is now. I want him to be my king as he was—part Northern, part wild, part demon even. Whatever it is he was. I want it back."

"But what about what he would want, Alair? There was pain in him, deep pain. There is none now. "

"That is a lie," Alair snapped. "He is just as pained now as he ever was. Only the kind of pain has changed. But if you will not listen to me—very well. I will have the secret of his cure out of you one way or the other. You have until sunrise tomorrow to consider it. After that, if you haven't changed your mind, I will kill you. Perhaps that will release him. And I want you to know that my hatred will go with you into the afterlife, even into the judgement halls of Aychari. Would to the gods it could burn you and ruin you forever!"

For the first time in their conversation, Karloi's face softened. "You love him, don't you," she said.

"Of course I do. He's...he's my brother."

"Hmm," Karloi said. Her smile was not quite kind and not quite cruel. "Seventeenth Prince—so far down in the House rankings—have you ever asked yourself why you are so willing to follow in his footsteps, finish his work, dog him to the ends of the earth? He's done little enough for you."

Alair shook his head, swallowed dryly over the sudden lump in his throat. "He...he has been my friend. And one day—one day I will be his subject. I do what he asks me to do."

"Ah. But he hasn't asked for this. And you are Seventeenth Prince, without the power of jurisdiction your friend holds. You could wind up in serious trouble, Alair. What is it that makes one man worth so much pain, so much suffering?"

"You don't know him," Alair snapped. "I do. He's worthy of love. Worthy of faith. Maybe I do it for that reason. Maybe you aren't aware of it—maybe you've never had cause to be—but that's part of love. Doing what's right. Sacrificing for what's right."

Karloi only smiled. "Then take the advice of a dead woman. Do not lose that brotherly love. If, indeed, that's what it is."

Alair left with the feeling that he had won the argument, but very much lost the war.

• • •

When Alair did not come back in the few moments promised, Jalith drifted out onto the terraces.

These, he had learned from the Guide, were 'amonge the moste amazing of Architectural Feates...builte in the Beginninge Days by Sidhenna himself, it is said to be a Magick of Greate Power that holdes them Aloft."

The terraces were indeed amazing, though Jalith saw no reason to believe magic was their cause. That, he supposed, was the way of the old legends—if it was beautiful, inexplicable, it had to be magic.

The terraces were a series of small platforms, some large enough for four or five and some small enough to hold only one man, connected in random ways by a series of sliding pierced copper screens and cedar steps. Once he had begun walking them Jalith realized quickly that they were labyrinthine in the extreme, and the sliding doors—which people more used to the place had a habit of leaving open or shut at will—only confused him further. He had to judge where he had been by the random items of decoration—sometimes a bench, sometimes a stool, sometimes hanging baskets with plants in them—which were left out on the terraces.

By the third time he passed the terrace with the small pond covered in lilies, he realized that this too was futile. But he did not panic—being lost had never disturbed him, and these past few days it seemed very appropriate. He dropped at last down onto a great woven bench and pulled out the Guide, thinking to at least get some reading done while he was here.

He was disturbed moments later by a very polite but very pronounced cough.

There was a man—how had he failed to notice him?—standing in the corner of the terrace, not five feet away. He was tall, handsome, in the full flush and power of middle age, with ochre robes and long dark hair barely touched by threads of grey. When he smiled, his teeth were even and straight and white. For reasons Jalith did not entirely understand, he felt himself bend in a deep bow.

"Greetings, Silverhand," the man said. "It's good to finally see the face behind all the fuss. You should hear them, where I live—all the gibberings about you! You'd think you were already written in history." His glance was summing, and there was deep power in it. "I owe you an apology, young Silverhand. Without meaning to, I took something from you—something no man, living or dead, has the right to take."

The man offered a hand, and Jalith almost shook it. Then he looked down.

"That can't be," he said.

For there on this stranger's hands were the silver marks which only two men living ever wore at the same time.

"It can," the man said gently. "You know it can be because it is. My name is Sidhenna, called Silverhand just as you are, and I bear these marks because I bore them in life. I have only a short time, kingdom's heir, granted me by the gods from my sleep of death. And you have a decision to make."

Suddenly Jalith felt cold. "I know I do," he said. "I just—I wish I knew. I'm missing something, and I don't even know what it is."

"But you miss it," Sidhenna said. He sat down on the bench, motioning for Jalith to do the same. "I will tell you, young man. It is a part of your soul. If you do not wish for its return, much agony will be spared you. But all the same, you will never feel quite yourself. And your ending—well, it will be peaceful. But I know very few young men who wish for a peaceful end."

"All I know about it is that I hated it once. More than anything. It got in my way. Made me different."

"Then perhaps you do not need it," Sidhenna said neutrally. "Though, if you must know, being different is not always such a bad thing."

"No," Jalith said. "You were different, weren't you?"

"And I hated it," Sidhenna said, smiling. "Until I learned to use it. Magic is a rare gift in the House of Heirs, more so now that you bastards have bred it so neatly out of yourselves. But that is neither here nor there."

Jalith closed his eyes, struggled to remember something—anything—pertinent. He remembered his father, picking him up and tossing him into the air in the Appointed Gardens. He remembered learning to ride a horse with Alair, how many times he had fallen and gotten up and fallen again. He remembered the dormitory hall in the House of Heirs, dusty and golden with morning sunlight. He remembered dancing in and out of the beams of light, soaking up the strength of liquid gold. He remembered the voice of his father, deep and flat but strong, singing a lullaby as he drifted off to sleep.

These were good things. He would always have them.

But there was something else. And it was not good—not entirely, at least—but it had been a part of him then. And these people—his father, Alair, his few friends amongst the servants' boys and the princes—they had known what it was. And they had loved him still.

"Be warned," said Sidhenna. "This missing thing—it will not make you happy. But it will make you whole."

"Then I want it," Jalith said suddenly. "I want this thing. It was a part of me. And if it isn't again, I will always know it."

Sidhenna nodded. "I am not supposed to give you my opinion," he said, "but I think you have chosen well. No man deserves to be king who hides from a part of himself. Now take my hand, son of the North and the South, and I will give you back what you have lost."

Jalith held out his left hand, bandaged and mangled as it was, and the king took it with great gentleness. A faint breeze blew through the terrace, bringing with it an odor of honeysuckle and earth.

"With this," Sidhenna said, "I will also give you my blessing and my gift." He stood straighter, held Jalith's hand high. He intoned a rhyme Jalith half-remembered:

"Castle in the mountain,

door in the wall.

All shall fade

in Mourninghall.

Bind me up with shadow,

bind me up with silk.

I shall go to Sixdoves

to sup on milk.

In Sirili, in Sirili

all the bells shall ring.

The Northmage bows and Telhir smiles

in welcoming the king."

And Jalith remembered.

He really remembered.

Barely more than a murmur on the breeze, Sidhenna's voice followed him.

"Telhir, our great progenitor, had a vision of a united land. He believed at the time it was up to him—now, years after his death, even he is not so certain he achieved everything he saw. We watch you, you know—your dead predecessors. We have hope for you. Blood of the North and soul of the South—this is the true king's might. I wish you luck, young man. Nothing more and nothing less than luck."

Jalith fell to his knees and bowed his head, bourne down by the weight of memory and sudden knowledge.

"How stupid I've been!" he whispered.

There was no one there to reply. The terrace, just as it had always been, was empty.

• • •

That night he dreamed of a cold white sun, high up in the sky. He dreamed of halls of white stone.

The magician walked beside him. He did not seem nearly as threatening as usual, or as mocking. Jalith looked once more into that slender pale face and wondered where he had seen it before.

"I will come to you, magician," Jalith said. "Of my own free will, and in my own time. But I will come to you."

"I know," the magician said. His eyes glittered—was there something like pride there, or was Jalith imagining it? "You are a king's son, and what I have to show you—it is in your blood."

"I thought what was in my blood was precisely not what made me Lanon's son."

"Wrong father," the magician said. He smiled. "You've a long way to go yet, my boy. But I now believe you'll get there."

"I'll see you," Jalith said.

"Soon. In Sixdoves."

* * *

 Throughout his reign, Telhir is written to have had a particular dislike of pigs. For reasons lost now to history, he believed them to be strong conductors of the wild magic of the North. It was Telhir himself who first came up with the idea of eating a slaughtered pig, insisting that, though the meat was cursed, a special smoking and curing process could be used to cleanse it of evil. In honor of this discovery, pink has ever afterwards been the color of purity in the Souchlad.

 During the Allking's passage through the Mountains of Vigilance on his way to his new southern lands, rations gave out. The passage was long, cold, and barren, and all the men had to do without things such as smoking tobacoo, meat, fresh vegetables, or, in the end, pretty much anything except wayfaring bread and stale beer. Though his men were willing to go without so their king wouldn't starve, Telhir wanted to suffer the same privations, and led his army through the Grateful Pass on a diet of biscuit and bootleather. Swears dating from this time period also include 'Allking biting a boot', 'Allking vomiting leather,' and the popular but difficult to translate 'Allking punching his boon companions in the face because he's so bloody tired of horsemeat and snow-water'.

# THREE

### In Which There is Some Confusion, and Several People Narrowly Escape Summary Justice

Morning dawned.

For Alair, Seventeenth Prince of the Souchladil empire, it was a very heavy morning. He did not look forward to what he had to do. He was not a killer by nature, and he did not take pleasure in the pain of others.

But he took even less pleasure in Jalith's pain. And what the woman had done had been a crime—one of such magnitude and unthinking evil that it deserved to be punished.

When he had threatened to kill her he had merely been angry. Hammering, unstoppable rage—he would never truly have Jalith near him again. All the memories, the good and the bad. All changed forever. How dare she?

But lying in bed that night—for he certainly could not sleep—he began to think of the thing itself. Treason it certainly was, of the worst and most innocuous kind. Treason disguised as help, disguised as patriotism even. Many in the land would probably have thanked her, if they had known what she had done.

It was the thought of what kind of people would have thanked her that made him decide to go through with it. He remembered the processions of the Day of All Children, which all the young Heirs had been forced to go through—the hot march down steaming city streets, tunics damp and boots wet through with sweat before the desert sun had quite dried out the air from the rains weeks before. He remembered the drone of the chanters, the cheers of the townspeople all around them.

But those cheers had changed, as the boys grew older. As Jalith was placed more and more prominently in the front of the procession, as it became more and more obvious what Lanon planned to do, the cheers turned to boos, the boos to jeering. The people no longer threw flowers and sweets to them—now they threw pieces of cactus, bits of midden, muck. Jalith had once been struck on the temple by an errant stone, and it had taken him three days to recover his faculties fully. That was the year he was named First Prince, and the processions stopped. Alair sometimes wondered if Lanon had timed it that way deliberately.

It was those people, he thought, who would be thankful to Karloi. People who claimed to be great patriots, but threw stones at their future king. And he, for one, refused to give those people anything. If it had to be like this—if there was no way what she had done could be undone—she needed to die for it.

Everyone needed to know it was wrong.

He took longer than he needed to bathing, selected a tunic with more than usual care. He tried not to think about the fact that he was eating the food and using the bath houses of the woman he was about to kill in cold blood. He sharpened his saber until the blade was so fine he could not tell where it ended and the air began. In the hallway outside someone was playing a rustic wooden flute. His hands shook as they fastened a warm grey cloak around his shoulders. He was not cold—not outwardly, at least. He needed the weight and reassurance.

You are about to kill someone, he told himself. And:

She deserves it.

His good felt boots tapped a rhythm of it out on the stairwell: she deserves it, she deserves it. The servants, passing him with baskets of good food and pitchers of wine, seemed to murmur it to one another. He imagined, briefly, that he would say it someday to the deathgod himself.

"She deserves it," he said, trying it aloud. Nobody in the hallway seemed to notice.

Long before he wanted it to be, the door to Karloi's study stood before him. He did not dare pause.

Karloi sat at her desk inside, wearing a clean black tunic, hair freshly washed. She smiled faintly. "You're late."

"I know."

She stood. "And there will be no witnesses, no statement in the books of Hamrat? This is against Lifelaw, as you well know, and to kill a Duchess is no small thing. You and Jalith will be excused Machertani—once their eyes were opened, the Council of Lords in Oot saw much against her. But now—as you have seen, I am well liked. They will likely hang you, when you return to court."

"I know." He had debated this himself, tossing and turning in his comfortable bed. "But you know the popular opinions. No council would convict you, or punish you as you deserve to be punished. I have to do this. For Jalith—though he may never understand why." He tested his grip on his saber. It was good, though slick with sweat. "If you have any words, I suggest you say them now."

"Only that I die willingly. If this is the price for the health of my lands—" she shrugged. "I am a farmer, my prince. When a plant is sick, the sickness is cut away. I only hope that you are willing to pay the same."

"He wasn't a plant, woman. He was a man. And you're right—you cut a part of him away. And for that, you deserve this death."

Karloi knelt before him, parting her grizzled hair to lie on either side of her neck. "Then do it."

Alair raised his saber.

"Please," said a voice behind him. "Don't."

Alair stopped, whirled around. He had not counted on someone walking in on this. Nor on the person who did—for behind him, leaning coolly in the doorway, was Jalith. He wore a long fur-trimmed tunic, far too warm for the weather, and a dark cloak also trimmed in fur.

Alair looked into his friend's eyes and knew.

"This is a lucky day for you, Duchess," Jalith said lightly. "It seems the ancestor from whom you drew your power did not agree with your methods. Check the vial you have hidden in your pocket. You will find it empty."

And Karloi, ashen-faced, withdrew a small and very empty glass vial from her tunic pocket. Without a trace of expression, she laid it on the table.

"Now, perhaps," she said, "I am not so glad to go to my death."

"You will not have to. I think living is more than punishment enough, knowing what you have done and how badly you failed. But be glad, Rekhat, that you did."

For the first time, the woman's voice trembled. "And why, my prince, should I be glad? Knowing what you are—how you are—"

"How I am is how I am, no more and no less. I was chosen by my father long before you set your schemer's eyes on me—are you truly such a loyal patriot, to gainsay your king? Be glad, Rekhat. For your failure has saved your kingdom, and taught me much."

The woman bowed her head. For a long time, Alair thought she would say no more—he certainly felt himself incapable of speech.

"Rekhat," Jalith said gently. He raised the woman from where he had knelt frozen, helped her with gentle pressure down into her study chair. "Your great ancestor himself wanted me to remain who I am. Who are you, to gainsay that?"

"A stupid old woman, it seems," the Rekhat said dryly. "You must believe me, my prince, when I tell you I meant you only good."

"I believe you." Jalith touched her shoulder. "It is why I would not have you hurt. But now you must believe in me. For you are able, and good, and a fair Duchess. You feed the Souchlad well, and your house is always open. When my time comes, I will need you far more than you will need me."

"I don't know that that will ever be true, my prince," Karloi said, with a tired smile. "And I will not lie to you and say that I do this with gladness. I wish your blood were other than it is. But because you ask me—and so politely—when you could simply have me killed, I will swear my fealty to you as you are. You are a stronger man than I thought, and now it seems I owe you a life. If you wish I will swear tonight, in the dining hall, in front of all my court."

Jalith nodded. "I would very much wish that, Rekhat. But perhaps later."

"Then it will be done. And the blessings of House Rekhat will go with you." She eyed his cloak and his tunic, his high leather boots. "For it seems you're going somewhere."

"I'm going North." When both Alair and Karloi made to speak, he raised his hand. "This once, please, let there be no arguments! I am called, and I must answer. If there is to be this part of me—and I welcomed it back, gladly—I must periodically listen to it. And it has told me to go North, to Sixdoves."

The chamber's heavy silence was broken by a brief bark of laughter from Karloi. "Prince," she said. "Sixdoves is a children's tale. A make-believe burrow for a make-believe monster. It does not exist. Next you'll be telling me you're headed to Mourninghall, or—Allking pinning up his wimple, why not? Sirili."

"Those places, too, I intend to visit."

"Then you will wander in the cold and snow, starving, with nothing to show for it. Even as far South as we are, we have the occasional meeting with a Northman—and much lore of the North in our libraries, besides. There is no real fortress named Sixdoves, and never has been. Nor Mourninghall. Nor Sirili."

"But they exist nonetheless," Jalith said evenly. "And in one of them, I believe, I was born. "

"Then you are worse than a Northman—you are a moonchild, one of the eldritch race. And ancient—those places haven't even been mentioned in tales in six thousand years."

Alair cleared his throat. When they both looked at him: "I'm sorry. I'm only Seventeenth Prince. Could someone tell me where in the bloody bleeding mess of Aychari's hells you two are talking about?"

"Sixdoves," Karloi said, somewhat contemptuously, "was the legendary fortress of Anmar Sedat, the Northmage. Mourninghall was the fortress of Halil Sedat, his brother, taken by the Northmage after his death and sunk under the earth's crust. And Sirili—though how you have made it through fifteen years of the House of Heirs without knowing this is beyond me—Sirili is the legendary fortress of Telhir, our Allking, before he rode down from the Mountains of Vigilance and founded Hamrat. It is not even confirmed historically that such a place existed. It certainly does not now—I looked myself as a young person, when the borders between the lands were less difficult to pass. Many of the provincial nobles used to do a brief tour searching for it, before they came into their lands and titles—it was considered a good journey for a coming of age. Where the Tale of Telhir says Sirili should be there is nothing but mountain, and none of the thousands who've looked have ever seen it to be otherwise."

Jalith only smiled, and quoted the Tale of Telhir.

"In white Sirili

the King made ready.

He sharpened his swords

and saddled his horses.

In Sirili where

the snow is polished

like a stone, in Sirili

where ivory towers

gleam like bone

the King made ready.

I've seen it, Karloi. In dreams, in memories. Trust me. It does exist. Sixdoves as well. All of them. They have simply withdrawn from the world around them. And I am going to them, to wake them up. Goodbye, Rekhat. I suppose your doubt will be punishment enough, until I return."

Without another word he left the room. Alair, with barely a backward glance for the woman he had planned to kill, followed him.

"I suppose you know this is stark raving mad," he said. "Traveling North, with a whole retinue of Souchladil court servants in tow! We'll be slaughtered before they even see your hands. "

"You're right—it would be mad. And that, my friend, is why I'm going alone."

Alair stopped. "Jalith. I'm glad to see your purpose returned to you. I'm glad to see you whole once again. But that's even madder. You're First Prince, for the sake of the Allking! I'm willing to bet you've never so much as made yourself a sandwich. Do you even know where these mythical places are?"

"No," Jalith admitted. "But I very much suspect they'll find me, rather than the other way around. Alair—you love me, do you not?"

Even Alair was surprised by the swiftness of his response. "More than anything," he said. "More than our father, more than the kingdom, more than all the pretty wenches in all the pretty world, I love you."

"Then you have to trust me." Jalith put his hands on his friend' shoulders. Alair breathed in, for what he desperately hoped was not the last time, his familiar scent of spice and desert air. "This isn't suicide. This isn't even mad. In some way, it's just right. And I have to do it."

From the pocket of his furred tunic he presented a folded letter, sealed with the dragon signet from his ring in azure wax. 'You must complete the Census for me. I will join you again, as soon as I am able. When you have the chance, send a messenger back to Hamrat with this letter—it is for our father. There are some things I think he needs to know."

"Am I now to be your messenger, then?"

"Yes." Jalith sighed. "And for what it's worth, my brother—for what it's worth. I recognize that much of the past month has been on your shoulders. That you've done the work, carried the burdens. Allowed me, in short, to wander when I needed to wander. And I thank you for it. Otherwise, I would still be just as confused and broken inside as I was in Hamrat—a prince with no place in his own kingdom. I thank you—and I'm sorry. Sorry I can't give you a better reward for my life, which you've saved several times over. Just a little while longer. Please. Have faith in me. I need it."

"Of course I have faith in you," Alair said. His lips twitched upwards. "You're First Prince, aren't you? It makes sense that I'm doing the pencil-pushing. Hells. There's no one I'd rather do it for. Whatever you have to do, do it. Make us proud."

The two friends stood together, uncomfortably, in silence. The hall was empty.

At last Alair, unable to stop himself any longer, threw his arms around Jalith. "I would have died to avenge this part of you," he said. He tried to convince himself his voice was hoarse through overuse, or too little sleep. The tears broke anyway. "I thought it was gone forever. And now here you are—and you're leaving."

"I'll return, Alair. I promise. For now, tend to our Census. I think you will find Karloi quite cooperative. Tend to the Census, and keep yourself in the light. My brave friend," he said fondly. "What you would have done for me will stay in my heart—this at least I can promise you." He slipped something into Alair's hand, folded his fingers around it. "A gift for you, given with my full authority. I think it will be more useful to you than me. And now, my friend—goodbye."

"Allking bless," Alair whispered, almost automatically.

"He does, I think," Jalith said, with a strange half-smile. "You as well."

Alair's last sight of his friend was a straight back and a fur cloak, retreating briskly into the early morning sun. He opened his hand. In it, polished and shining, was the signet ring of a First Prince.

* * *

 Once, in a small village named Thorrihall on the outskirts of Rekhani, there was a prominient citizen who terrorized and abused the womenfolk of his household. Telhir heard tell of it on the road out from Rekhat House, and resolved to keep the situation from happening again. He put on a deep white wimple and grey robes, such as were common for country women of the time, and slipped into the man's household through the back door. When helping to serve dinner, he happened to drop a dish, and the lord of the household seized his wrist and made as if to strike him with the flat of his saber. Telhir cast the wimple from his face, revealing himelf, and the lord tried to rein in his blow—only to overbalance, and fall backwards into the roaring fire. Telhir paid for a state burial for the man, and internment in the pricy Cemetary of Lords in Hamrat—provided he should be buried in full woman's dress. This lord's name has come down to us over the years as Sadith Frillyskirts, and is inscribed as such on his tombstone.

# PART FOUR

####  BORDERLANDS

# ONE

### In Which Jalith Learns A Lot About Traveling

Jalith had not picked the fastest horse in the stables—that he had possessed enough foresight to do this was a source of great relief over the next few weeks. He had, instead, picked the strongest and hardiest, a horse that looked more like a sausage with legs than a living creature. This venerable animal, though it did not look like a prince's mount, did Jalith the great favor of not dying through weeks of travel, not even when the roads were bad and food was scarce. Though its gallop was more like a trot, and its trot more like a walk, the horse accepted its lot with dignity and took its new owner through strange scenery and stranger climate without batting an ear about it.

Jalith assumed he was traveling through Horsa and Furst, though with no boundaries marking the delineation between them he could only assume. They were rocky lands, full of twisted short trees and dangerously steep hills. He saw few people on the road, for which he was grateful—though he went steadily North he suspected men of his coloring were still scarce enough to require an explanation. Once or twice he passed villages, sad little rows of stone in the misty grey horizon. He ate what little game he could trap, handfuls of berries and mushrooms, water from the clear little streams that trickled down through the hills. He had never been responsible for his own upkeep before, and what little weight he had gained in Rekhani he quickly lost. He was a poor trapper, and the farther North he went, the fewer berries and fungi he found.

Though the weather was still damp, as it had been in Rekhani, it grew colder and colder every day. Jalith grew very fond of his furred cloak, and the blankets he had brought with him in the horse's saddlebags. He became good at making fires from even the smallest mounds of twigs, the most sodden heaps of leaves. He chipped through ice with his short sword to find fresh water, melted it in a sad battered pot over his little fires. His skin became browner, his hands harder. His beautiful yellow hair became streaked with the dirt of travel.

The magician was with him every night.

They were no longer precise dreams—more a sense of being watched over, of a vague protective presence in the cold and dark beyond his little fire. Every once in a while, upon waking, he would have a memory of a narrow white face, pale hair, a straight Norchladil nose. He would remember walking in a high white hall, marvelously bright, with the world spread out below him like a jumble of children's toys on a nursery floor. The names came back to him over and over, sustained him in rain and later in snow:

Sixdoves. Mourninghall. Sirili.

Names like bells. Names like fate.

Each night, the magician whispered the story. The Sedat and his brother Halil, their fortresses alike as icicles in the frozen wasteland. Telhir, a blond Northern lord same as the rest of them, a rebel and a traitor. Fighting the Sedat for Mourninghall, fortress of the dead Halil. Defeating him, finally and bloodily, at the gates of Sirili itself: watching Mourninghall sink under the earth from far away, a memory of the dead Halil never to be seen again.

Telhir moving South at last, the gates of the Northmage's magic broken open. Creating a new history, a history now old and dead as any history. The Northmage alone and strangely saddened. Barely human. His heart was the earth's broken heart.

This story entwined itself with the story Jalith had known since he was a child—he got them confused, sometimes, in his aimless walking. The Allking as hero, Northmage as hero. Sadness, betrayal. Yearning. It was nothing he could place, no story he could arrange clearly for himself in his waking mind.

He felt he was beginning to understand something vital. He didn't know what—not yet—but it was there.

It was not that he trusted the magician. He simply no longer cared if he trusted the man or not. For now their ends were similar enough. The rest could be sorted through later.

He had become very thin, very silent. His hearing was as sharp as a cat's. He occasionally thought about Alair, thought about his father. The thoughts made him smile slightly, as though recalling something that had happened a long time ago.

He rode for one month, then for two. When, at one village, he was obliged to stop in and buy new blankets, the shopkeeper almost threw him out of the store.

He had been on the road for nearly three months when, for the first time, he noticed somebody following him.

He was in the Borderlands, or near them. The road rose up before him in high rocky swaths, and the wrecked and cracked cobblestones were hard with frost. His breath fogged the air before him like a great white cloud.

He had heard the hoofbeats of another horse, but had paid them no mind. More folk had been passing him of late, probably on their way to the Holdings of the Borderlands or the Grateful Pass they protected.

But then someone hailed him.

"Hai!" the voice cried. It was deep and harsh. "Hai, Northman!"

Warily, Jalith reined in his horse. The other rider drew abreast of him, a faceless figure wrapped in bristling dirty furs.

"What's a proper Northman doing riding that sissy Southern horse?"

"He was given me," Jalith mumbled. Then, more curiously: "How did you know I was Northern?" He was wrapped almost as deeply in furs as the other rider.

"Your saddle-stance, of course. Only a Northman can ride a horse like that." The rider dismounted, led his horse to the side of the road. "Won't you break bread with a countryman? I've reindeer meat, freshly killed. I've more than enough. I'd be happy to share with you."

Even now, Jalith hesitated. He had been taught his entire life than Northmen were evil, that their blood was foul, that they were murderers and laggards and thieves.

But he himself was Norchladil by birth, he reflected, and he was none of these things. He dismounted beside the Northman, tied his horse to a stunted tree.

It was the first time he had seen a true Northman up close, save in ponds and mirrors. The man, having shed a few layers of outerwear, proved to be tall and wide, with a good roll of fat around his middle and a mangled mat of hair that was slightly darker than Jalith's own. His eyes, icefire blue, peered out under craggy brows with an expression of surprising cheerfulness. His horse was even more barrel-shaped than Jalith's own—a hearty looking horse, strong but small. It cropped through the grasses beside the tree as though the happiest thing in the world was not having this bristly giant of a man on top of it.

The Northman asked him in something he presumed was one of the Northern dialects, a language which sounded more like a series of harsh barks than any proper tongue.

"I don't speak it," Jalith said, somewhat embarrassed. The Northman gave a surprised shout of laughter.

"Sedat help us! You were raised in the South, weren't you?" More kindly: "No fear, my boy. There are many of you in these parts. More's the pity. I'd recommend a trip over the borders someday, when you're feeling brave."

"That's where I'm headed."

"Good! It's good for a boy to know something about his people."

Together they built the fire and stoked it up. It let a thin trickle of smoke out into the clear cold sky. The Northman took a big bloody bundle of cloth out of his saddlebags, unwrapped it on the frozen ground—Jalith had never thought to find slightly gamy raw meat so appealing. With skill that spoke of long practice, the Northman speared a chunk of the meat on a stick and set it over the fire. He took a vicious-looking longknife out of the depths of his clothing and laid it next to him when he sat.

"Can't be too careful," he said apologetically. "Business being as it is along these roads. The bandits here don't much care if you're dark or light or green, so long as you might have something worth taking."

Jalith was not capable of reply. The smell of roasting meat had hit him, and his mouth was suddenly so full of saliva he couldn't talk around it.The other man noticed, chuckled.

"I suppose I can't expect much talk out of you until you've eaten, eh? Poor half-starved thing. What've they been feeding you down here? Red meat's the only way, for a growing lad. Feed my boys at home on it—meat and beer and bread. Course there ain't much else these days, what with the Frost—hells, we're even lucky when bread happens! But we manage all right. The farming villages've gotten hit the hardest, really—thank the Northmage we aren't one of them. I'm Gorakh, by the way. Headman of Ghereon's Steel, best fishing village in the Northern Territories. Can you talk well enough to give me your name, laddie?"

Jalith was just as glad to nod his head no. This particular difficulty had not occurred to him. He had seen few people during his trip, fewer still who took any interest in him, a young man traveling alone.

The Northman shook his head. "That's all right, boy. We'll have you fed soon enough, and then I expect you'll be talking long into the night." He checked the meat on its spit, turning it. A few drops of fat splattered into the fire, sizzling and hissing in a most appetizing way.

"I'm headed to Northold, Chari Ironstar's holding, before I make the passage back over the mountains. It's right there near the Grateful Pass—old Chari's a war horse from way back, she can hold that fortress until your Allking himself comes calling for it. Maybe you'd like to travel there with me? You look like you could stand to repair a few supplies. A few decent meals and a talkative old man wouldn't kill you either."

Jalith only nodded noncommitally. The man seemed nice—very nice, in fact—but what did Jalith really know about him? This could all be some elaborate ploy to rob and murder him somewhere off the roads. He suspected he no longer looked much like a prince—in fact, he suspected he no longer looked much like anything human. But there was an undeniable sack of gold, small but fairly heavy, in his hip pocket, and he didn't much want to lose it.

The Northman, seeing the hesitation on his face, sighed. "Come, boy. I don't know what these Southmen have been telling you, but we're not all murderers and thieves. When the Sedat calls us, we must fight for him—this is a simple truth, because he is Northmage and the closest thing we have to a king, since you bastards stole our Telhir over the mountains six thousand years ago. But until then, boy, we're nothing but men, and even then we're just men with interests at odds with your own.

For instance, I've three sons living and a wife, whom I love dearly, and a very respectable fishing business. No disembodied heads on my belt, no blood painted on my face. Two sons dead to the skirmishes across the Mountains, but who doesn't have such in these parts? It's sad, in this part of the world. These people I trade with, up in Northold—we may be murdering each other tomorrow, and tonight we'll drink dark beer together and complain about our families. Keep your friends as friends for as long as you can, I say." He looked meaningfully at Jalith over the spit. "And son, I am your friend."

Jalith accepted a hunk of the meat and gulped it down, barely chewing. It was so hot the grease was still crackling, and he burned his tongue and lips and his own throat. He didn't care. The Northman, chuckling, handed him another piece. Jalith wolfed it down and stopped, wanting to be polite. He could have eaten the entire spit.

He was not so polite, however, as to refuse the third and fourth chunk when they were offered to him, or the flagon of dark beer that tasted almost like chocolate. He had never had Northern beer before, and found it heavy and satisfying and good. He also found, when he tried to stand up, that it was very alcoholic. He sat back down again promptly.

"That's quite an appetite you have," the Northman said, smiling encouragingly. "Good, good. Feeling better now, son?"

"Yes," Jalith admitted hesitantly. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid I didn't leave much for you."

"Aychari's hells, it filled me up just to see you eating! Have another flagon of beer, there's a good boy."

Jalith, this time, sipped politely. He recognized that if he did not, he would soon not be able to stand at all.

"So now that you're fed I think it's time to hear your story. I expect it's a good one—in my village, boys your age are usually wedded and landed, and have no time to go traipsing here and there around the country like half-fed madmen." The big man stretched out before the fire, using a rock as a pillow. "Come, boy, I'm tired of talking: it's your turn. How're things in the Souchlad? Are your folk hit as hard by this Frost as ours?"

Jalith started slowly, feeling he owed this man a modicrum of truth. "I am the heir to one of the Souchladil landholdings—I hope you understand that for this reason, and through no lack of trust, I cannot give you my name. My father is childless, and he adopted me—I have been in his house almost as long as though I had been born to it. For my birth and my blood I was not well loved by most but my father and a few close friends. But not too long ago, I began to hear a calling of of sorts. I believe it is the calling of my blood. And I also believe—though I do not understand why—that I will be a better ruler if I go to it. I search for Sixdoves in the mountains, and Sirili by the sea."

Jalith had been playing with a twig, choosing his words slowly so as not to give everything away. But when he looked up the man was staring at him.

"I see," he said slowly. "Well, lad. I will say no more, except that I think you have made a wise choice. And for your friendship—for I do believe you are my friend—I won't ask you which Souchladil heirling seeks his birth in the mystical keeps of the North, cannot give out his name, and wears his gloves while he eats greasy meat."

Jalith looked down at his gloves, now horribly stained, which he had through fortune only forgotten to take off.

"Thank you," he said, after a long moment.

"We'll just call you Lad, then," Gorakh said comfortably. "If anyone asks, we'll just say you haven't passed your Naming Test."

"I don't even know what a Naming Test is."

"Perfect." The Northman patted his shoulder. "Nobody does, until it happens. Quite forbidden to speak about it. Well! This is a chance I don't get every day. We'll get you through Northold, fix you up with food and supplies. Then we'll worry about the Pass. You'll look Norchladil enough, with a few minor changes in costume—I imagine you shan't have too much trouble."

"And in the North?"

Gerakh shook his head. "I think, Lad, that you don't understand who your enemies truly are. In the North they'll welcome you like a prince."

Jalith just stopped himself from blurting out that he was in fact a prince. He had never been very good at lying.Though the man seemed safe enough, the miles and miles of open air all around them gave Jalith a cagey feeling, as though any words he spoke would simply float on the breeze to the next open ear.

"Lie down now," Gerakh said, waving a lazy arm. "Close to the fire. I'll take care of you, Lad. My promise—I raised five boys to adulthood. I can manage you for a few days."

Jalith did not need to be told twice. He curled up in his ragged bundle of furs, raising his hood over his head for maximum warmth. He fell asleep, warm and full and slightly drunk, listening to the horses munch on a tuft of frozen grass.

• • •

Later, in the night, the sound of the horses running off woke him up.

He jerked from his sleep, dreams of the North still swirling in his mind. It was completely dark—the fire had long since gone out, and only the feeble light of the stars showed off the scene. Where there should have been two black horse-shaped lumps there was nothing. Hoofbeats receded down the road.

"Gerakh," he said, rolling over to nudge the big man's shoulder. "The horses got loose somehow."

To his surprise, Gerakh was already sitting up. An unsheathed blade glittered dimly in his fist. "Got loose, or were set loose?" Gerakh muttered. "Keep low and quiet, lad."

Jalith tried to reply, but a firm hand clamped over his mouth kept him from doing so.

"Hai there!" Gerakh called. "Who's got business with my horses at this hour of morning?"

There was no answer. Gerakh did not relax his grip on Jalith's face.

"Hai!" he called again.

Then:

"Hai, you bandit bastards! At least have the courtesy to answer!"

In the next few seconds, a lot of things happened very quickly.

First, Jalith saw several dark shapes peel out of the low trees by the side of the road. He heard his companion grunt in pain. He smelled leather—old leather, leather that had been left to moulder and mildew. He smelled blood.

Almost instinctively, released from the pressure of Gerakh's heavy hand, Jalith rolled to the right. He felt something—doubtless something sharp—miss his ear by inches. He heard muffled cursing. Drew his own short sword, borrowed from Karloi's dusty armory, and struck out in the direction of the cursing. The cursing turned into muffled shrieking. Jalith struck again, sword sliding into something soft. The shrieking stopped.

From behind, somebody stabbed him.

Jalith had never been stabbed before. His very first reaction was to be surprised—it did not hurt anywhere near as much as the maiming of his hands. He turned, struck out behind him. His own blade met flesh.

There was silence, and stillness.

Jalith knelt beside Gerakh, though he already knew what he would find. A pass of his hand over the man's face revealed the rigidity and stillness of death. His hand came away sticky and wet. Disgusted, he stripped off his glove.

He stood then for some time, surrounded by carnage and senseless violence. Wearing only one glove. Little more than a boy once again. He blinked back tears.

"Well," he said at last. He began walking in the direction he had been going before.

It was towards sunrise, in the purple shadow of a large and unwieldy stone keep, that Jalith realized that actually, being stabbed hurt quite a lot. He collapsed, streaked with his own blood and the blood of others, directly in front of the walls of Northold, keep of Chari Ironstar. 

# TWO

### In Which Jalith Wakes Up, Again

"—asks only for the use of a few weeks. He understands that—"

"I don't care what he understands. He can't use it because he'll wind up keeping it."

"And why not? He'll wind up doing that anyway. This way there's little loss to you or your people. No fields torched. No villages axed. You wouldn't even have to explain your surrender to the Southking."

"He can't keep it," the second voice said firmly, "because it's mine. Is that enough of an answer for you, Rakarek? Tell your Northmage to go stuff himself. I'll hold these lands against him for as long as I damned well can."

"So you've chosen to ally yourself with the Souchlad."

"Southking can stuff himself too. I'm allied with me, myself, and I."

"Why? You, yourself, and you don't have a very big army. There's no one to protect you out here, Chari. Even the other Holders won't lift a finger to help you. Lifelaw only holds for so long, and the Southking's too far away to do anything more for you."

"Then I'll have to do something for myself. In the meantime I suggest you leave."

"Why?"

"Because it'll be much kinder on your backside than me throwing you out."

Jalith listened, dazed, to the voices that came faintly from the other room.

After a moment of silence, his door opened, and a tall woman of indeterminate age entered, dressed all in dark mail. Her hair was shorn, barely a bristle over her head, and her eyes were pale grey. There was something unusual about her appearance—even more so than the mail and the short hair—but it took Jalith a moment to figure out what it was.

This woman had the dark skin of the Souchlad but the light eyes of the North.

She watched him impassively for a few moments. At long last she said:

"I know you're awake, king's son."

Jalith opened his eyes, a little sheepishly.

"We found you at the gates, bleeding your stuck guts out over my cobblestones, silver hand lying out for all to see. And you're lucky it was me—I'm sure you know, there are many in this land and the next who wish you ill. But right now I would like some explanations, king's son."

"As to?" Jalith was still very much unused to being talked to in this manner.

"As to how the missing Silverhand, rumored to be safe at Hamrat but who obviously is not, wound up at the gate of Northold the month the fighting starts."

"I'm going on a journey. My companion was killed by bandits. I was nearly killed—I rode here without knowing where I was going." The woman's clipped, authoritative sentences had a tendency to rub off. "This was suggested to me as a place to stop and resupply. May I do that, your ladyship?"

He had not intended the last words to come out sarcastically. Chari Ironstar put both hands on her hips and glared at him.

"Do you have any idea—any idea at all—what sort of trouble I'll be in if the Northmage's messengers find you here? This is a neutral post now, prince. I have fought long and hard to keep it that way—your father would be impressed and amazed by the amount of dancing between the tenets of Lifelaw I've had to do to keep my little outpost, if he weren't so pissed at me for renouncing him in the first place. If the bastard Northmage finds a single reason to take my hold, he will, and I'll be hung out to dry with yesterday's laundry. You're lucky I saw fit even to stop your bleeding."

"I thought this was a Southern posting. You've always sworn fealty to my father—I've even seen you there, at the Long Council."

"That," Chari said tightly, "was before the war."

"Before the what, now?"

Chari whistled. "Where've you been the past month, under a rock? Put that cloak over there on, and come with me."

Jalith rose with difficulty, feeling the stitches in his side as he did so. They were tender and puffy, new. He slung the fur cloak she indicated over himself, raised its hood to cover his hair and shade his face. He could not walk as fast as she could, but she would not slow her pace. He was forced to limp and to jog a little just to keep up. His wound sent a bright flowering of pain through his gut every time he moved. Though Chari had seen fit to bandage him, it didn't feel like she'd seen fit to provide any anesthetic.

The keep was ugly. Walls and bare lintels and utilitarian slits for windows. Jalith had a distinct impression of endless stone walls, coated with a sheen of frost even on the inside. The stones in the walls were massive, thick enough for Jalith to hear nothing of the world outside through them, but unevenly laid. Northold had been created for great strength and little else. There were no carved screens or decorative fountains, as one found in a Southern house. The place lacked even the studied neglected elegance of Karloi's Rekhani home.

It was, Jalith decided, a large stone box.

But there were people here. Lots of them. On their way down a few corridors and up a stone staircase, Jalith saw the long linen tunics of the Souchlad, their pressed felt boots and brightly coloured trim. He saw also the woolens and furs of the North. He saw mail and weapons, sacks of goods and books and food vendors even, calling along the corridors as though they were at market. It was a strange and confusing mix of things. The place looked exactly like a trading outpost thrown suddenly into war, which is what he supposed it was. The faces of most of the people he passed were very worried. Their voices, even those of the vendors, seemed small and afraid.

They reached the top of the stairs, and Chari fiddled with the lock on a trapdoor. When it opened, and the ladder came down with a resounding crash, they went up.

"Understand I am doing this for your own education," Chari said.

They were on a high tower. Jalith looked north and saw mountains—the Mountains of Vigilance, traditional border of the Northern lands, tall and snow-capped, so tall that even from the tower the tops were lost in the clouds. He saw the slim break in the mountains, directly below them, that was the Grateful Pass.

And on either side of the pass, jammed in so tightly they looked like a carpet of little metal glints, were men in armour.

"Allking dancing a Bruinisti hornpipe,"  Jalith swore, forgetting himself. "There's a bloody war on?"

"The Northmage has awoken," Chari said grimly. "I don't know how long ago—a few months, perhaps. There were always legends among the Norchladil—and here you can be sure we heard all of them—legends that he had only slept, encased in ice, waiting for the wounds Telhir dealt him to heal. We always laughed them off as legends only. But that is his white banner, raised above those men—the banner of six doves, plain enough but for the smears of Southern blood that cover it.

I thought at first it was a trick, some Northern lordling's bid for power and the South under a banner all his people would respect. But there have been strange things happening on that field. Men disappearing, men returning changed out of all recognition. Bodies maimed in ways no sword or axe could maim them. And there's the weather as well. I feel I hardly need to tell you this, but it has never been so cold here so early in the year. And the cold is...sapping. It takes the warmth straight from the bones. There is frost on the walls inside, and we keep the fires roaring constantly. Soon there will be no trees left to fuel them with. I am afraid, my little Souchladil princeling, that you have come to us at a very dangerous time. It is never quiet here—there is always some small skirmish being fought in the Pass—but this. There is nothing I can call it but war, and I suspect worse is coming. I suspect we will see a war such as we have not seen for six thousand years. The peace of the Souchlad is broken, First Prince. And soon this Pass will fall."

Jalith looked down at his hands. The silver scars glittered there. "And my father? Has he sent no men to help you?"

"Those are his men, prince. What few of them are left. They fight bravely and well, but they are outnumbered and outclassed. The South has forgotten its magic, during its long sleep. And soon you will lose your kingdom because of it."

"I note you say you," Jalith said bitterly.

"So you heard all that with Rakarek, did you?" Chari grinned darkly. "Yes, I withdrew from the fighting. Otherwise all my men would be dead, and this fortress overtaken months ago. Even the North must respect Lifelaw, my boy, and the Lifelaw states a neutral power cannot be bothered for a certain number of days—of which, I hardly need tell you, we are nearing the end. Your father understands that I am doing what I must, for my own people. In the end I suspect it is what we all do. But soon I will be forced to fight. And when I do, mind you, it will be for your father."

"Why?" Jalith turned from the carnage below, better able to face this grim dark woman than the sight of all that death. "You seem to be of two lands, here. Your people, just the same as you. And if what you say is true—if the South is about to fall—why not protect them even then and deal with the North?"

Chari laughed. "I see you know nothing of the ways of the Northlords, those who wear the malat ma'a. I've held this fortress against the Northmage and his messengers for months. I turn Rakarek away every day he comes. And this fortress—without it, they cannot hold the Pass. Even should I join them at the end, they will slaughter my people and burn out my lands for the inconvenience I have caused them. And besides—Lanon is my king. He recognized my right to this Holding when few others did, saying a fortress so constantly under siege should be guarded by a man. In the end, make you no mistake. I will fight for him."

"So good," said a harsh voice behind them, "to hear it from your own mouth at last, Chari Ironstar. Sedat will rejoice."

The Ironstar whirled. "But I have not done so yet, Rakarek. And will not, for some time. What have I said here that you did not already know? Lifelaw holds. Your Mage can do nothing."

The Northking's messenger was not a tall man, for a Northerner—shorter by half a hand than Jalith, he barely made average height for a Southerner. But his face, wide and pale and cruel, was pure North. He wore heavily furred robes, white as the snow around them, and in his hair was a jeweled comb not so different from the one Jalith had in his pocket. The malat ma'a, the warrior's comb of the North. This little man was a warrior, good enough to receive such an honor.

"Greetings, Jalith Silverhand," he said, inclining his head in a mocking half-bow. "I suppose I should not be surprised to find you here—but does your father know, I wonder? So close to danger, for a young prince. So very, very close."

Chari stepped in front of him before Jalith could say anything. "Lifelaw holds, Rakarek. For me and all in my halls. You cannot harm him here."

"Ah. But you are harboring a Southern prince."

"A Southern prince who has done nothing to harm you. He is, in these halls, as neutral of purpose as any other. Lifelaw holds." Chari's hand went to the sheath on her back, where a spiked morningstar rested.

The Northman only smiled. "Neutral, is it? The man slew Machertani, the Northmage's handwoman and the mistress of Mourninghall under the earth. He is a murderer of nobility."

"A crime which happened deep in the South—where, I understand, she was passing herself off as a Souchladil landholder and murdering children. Lifelaw holds. Begone. For Lifelaw will not hold if I have to kill you to protect the prince."

"I should be so lucky." The Northman smiled, this time at Jalith. "But from what I hear, you are perhaps not such a traitor to our cause as you are drawn to be. What is that glowing in your pocket, I wonder?"

Jalith looked down. The comb, surely enough, was glowing through the layers of fur and wool he wore like a small bright star. The Northman's laughter was nasty and harsh.

"Never fear, Chari. I will leave you for tonight with your so-called Southern prince. And you, young whelp—someone waits for you, though I think you know it. If you wish to find him, simply follow the comb."

The man was gone, as suddenly and silently as though he had never been. Jalith and Chari were left alone, watching the carnage below. The comb was dark now.

Chari was silent for a long time. She leaned over the balcony, watching the battle as though expecting it, too, to suddenly disappear. Her knuckles were white.

"You must leave," she said suddenly. "Tonight. The Northmage will not long be able to resist such a temptation, Lifelaw or no, if you do not. If you seek Hamrat, I can give you a small guard. If not— well. I do not know I would wish to guard you, even if I could."

"I am not going South," Jalith said simply.

"I didn't think you were." Chari shook her head. "I can only hope you know what it is you're about to do. May I ask you a question?"

"Of course. You saved my life—and at no small danger to yourself."

"I suppose I did." Chari frowned. "And you will answer it honestly?"

"If I know the honest answer, yes. You speak of Lifelaw—it holds here too. For my life I owe you whatever you ask."

"I have heard stories of you. Even this far North of Hamrat, we have heard stories. You have injured Southern men. You slew the Baroness Machertani. You have made something of a friend of the Rekhat—though how, with your blood, I am not certain. Your father trusts you to the ends of the earth, but the Second Prince would just as soon see you dead. Whose side, precisely, are you on?"

It was the question Jalith had been fearing. When he asked it of himself—as he sometimes had, in the darkest part of the night, traveling through the Borderlands—there was no answer save formless whispers, the half-heard language of the earth.

He spoke slowly, trying to make his answer as honest as possible.

"On the road here, I ran into a Northman— Gerakh by name, headman of a small village called Ghereon's Steel in the North. He was very kind to me, though at first he did not know me. He said he had three sons and a wife in his little village. He was slain on the road by bandits, and I do not know where his body lies.

I have a friend—the Seventeenth Prince, Alair. He is brave and kind and good, and he would have given his life for me without a second thought. He would have even killed for me, though it is utterly against his nature. I thank the gods every day that he did not have to do it, and so ruin himself.

I met a servingwoman whose child had been brutally slain. She was out of her mind with grief, alone and in darkness, and in such a state she too met her death.

I have met you, a landowner in a besieged fortress—a woman whose reputation for violence has reached even the peaceful desert lands of Hamrat. I have seen the iron star upon your back. And I have seen you take the way of peace, and neutrality, to save your land.

The answer, my dear Ironstar, is that I am on the side of these people. I am on the side of peace—the side of the land. And I do not think that is the way of the North or of the South. I think it is my way. Karloi saw it. I hope you can see it too."

Chari stepped forward. Close to her, Jalith saw that she was almost as tall as he—of mixed breed, even as he was. She kissed him, gently, on the brow, taking his golden head in her hands and lowering it as though it were something precious. The kiss lingered on his brow with a warmth even the freezing air could not take away.

"At last," she said, smiling, "I think, my king, I have waited a lifetime for you. These lands are not so different—these people are not so different. It is time to bring them together." She touched his cheek. "Do what you must do. I ask you only to be swift—there isn't much time left before your father's men are overrun. And then there will truly be no peace in these lands, not for anyone. The Northmage cannot be turned away, though perhaps those who fight for him can. I will hold as best I can, for as long as I can. Be swift!"

And Jalith left her, tall and straight-backed, overlooking the wreckage of her lands.

• • •

Halfway down the stairs, he took out the comb. He had an idea now of what he had to do, true. Only he had no idea how to do it.

He really looked at the thing, for the first time in months. He had an idea the comb was some ordinary material—ivory, perhaps, or even wood. It was the strength of its owner that imbued it with ice and frost, with the coldness of the North.

He thought of what he knew of the hefenta-stohl, the bloodspell, the deep magic not practiced in the South for thousands of years. Telhir had used it. Sidhenna, the Mageking, had used it to open a portal onto the Barren Isle. He had seen it himself, though it hadn't looked like much.

He thought of the magician.

He thought of the man's cold pale face, sharp as though carved from ice. He thought of burgundy eyes, like two pinpricks of ruby light on an ancient comb. He thought of long robes of white and high white halls.

And he thought, not for the first time, of the events of his birth.

"They are coming," said the man in furred leggings. "We must be ready. Sedat wants the boy. We must send him away—far away. Far away in time and space."

He felt his mother's fingers in his hair, caressing his face. "Must we? He's so little, so very vulnerable. Certainly we could keep him safe for a few more years at least."

"It must be now. You know it as well as I."

"And the portal?"

"We have called it into being. "

His mother took his hand, her fingers slender and white and beautiful. Jalith walked with her, his little feet unsteady, the tables and shelves passing about him like a series of giant islands in mist.

Behind them there was a great thundering.

"Don't be afraid, little one," his mother whispered. She crooned a nursery rhyme to him.

"Castle in the mountain,

door in the wall..."

The noise grew ever closer, a terrible chaos of sound. They led him through a small door, shut it.

"Here," the man said.

Beyond the door was another door, small and ordinary. On the other side of the door was a desert.

His mother's hand fell from his. "Go, little one," she whispered. "Be safe."

As he walked through he caught a glimpse of the fur legginged man's face. It was neither young nor old, golden even as his own was, furrowed with care and worry. On his head was a copper crown, topped by two azure dragons locked together in battle or embrace.

As he passed through, and the scene dissolved, the door behind them burst open.

Red light!

"Anmar Sedat," Jalith called. The comb glowed hot and heavy in his hand. "Magician King! I call upon you, based on the blood of our shared men in these fields below, to OPEN YOUR DOOR."

At first he thought nothing had happened. He felt something strange move within him, as though some inner wave had swelled and crested. The comb was dark. The whole world, in fact, seemed a little darker.

There was a door directly before him.

He was certain there had been no door before. And this door was especially peculiar in that it was only a door, standing without lintel or wall, in the middle of a corridor.

Jalith opened it and stepped through.

"At last," said a familiar cold voice. "Welcome home, Silverhand."

* * *

 The Bruinisti hornpipe is regaled in both North and South as the most difficult dance of the land. Legendarily, on Telhir's one stay in the seaside province of Bruinisti, there had been a warm winter, and thus the province was plagued with a horrible infestation of fleas. When Telhir sat in his chair at banquet, all the fleas, sensing sweet new flesh, rose up and bit him at once. The resulting series of motions made by Telhir lives on as the Bruinisti hornpipe.

# PART FIVE

####  HAMRAT

# ONE

### An Interlude of Sorts

"—with four centuries, stationed here, here, here, and here. I've sent another two legions up, and they should be arriving within the week. We can only hope they aren't too late. We need to start calling up the draft, Sire. Karloi is ready, and the Council of Lords in Oot has done what it can without a leader. The other provinces..." Alair shrugged. "Well, they've done what they can as well. It was fortunate I was out on Census when I was or we might not have reached them in any time at all...Sire? Father."

And, more sharply. "Father, you aren't even listening."

Lanon shook his head, trying to clear it. "It's awfully cold out here, Alair. Awfully cold."

"I know." Alair touched the King's arm gently. "Cold, and grim. But it's cold everywhere now. Northmage's Breath, they're calling it in the city."

"I've heard." Lanon looked out over the jumbled roofs of Hamrat, sighing. Though the desert sun beat down just as it always had, no heat came from it. He felt the cold in the marrow of his bones. "I am sorry, Alair. My mind wanders often now."

"Mine too, my lord." Alair took a seat on the bench next to him. "Jalith will come back. I promise you."

"But he goes North!" The words were ripped out of him. "He goes North, even while our people die to keep the North from coming here. My own son! What am I to think, Alair? His blood—"

"His blood calls to him," Alair said. "It doesn't control him. Have faith, Father. He has great love for you and for these lands. If he goes North it is because he must."

"I fear for him."

"I do too." The two men exchanged looks. "I'll keep using the seal, I promise. It's for the best if everyone thinks he came back with me. I understand it all too well."

"I know you do, Alair. I know." Lanon took his hand. "You've been good to me, to come back when you did—even after I sent you away."

"You're my king, and my father. I had no choice." He pressed the older man's hand. "Besides, I too love these lands. I know well what would happen if faith in the First Prince is broken entirely."

"Then let us stop talking of what we already know, and talk about what might happen," Lanon said, with the ghost of a smile. He bent over suddenly, coughing. Alair steadied him.

"That cough's not sounding any better, my lord."

"It's this blasted cold. It seeps into me." Lanon coughed again, fist over his mouth. "It'll pass, I'm sure."

"Not soon enough," Alair said, smiling slightly. "I don't enjoy hearing you cough your lungs out day after day. The racket keeps the princes in the House of Heirs awake, even."

"As well it should! If I die of it, one of them might have to be King."

The smile dropped from Alair's face. "Don't even speak of it," he said sharply. "I won't hear it."

"And who are you," Lanon reminded him gently, "to tell me what I can and cannot say?"

Alair said nothing.

"So," Lanon prompted. "We must raise a great army, and lead it North. Chari Ironstar has long sent word that she is ready—I only hope we can reach her in time. What of the other Lord Holders?"

"As many with us as against us, they say. We knew some would ally with the North, should it ever come to war."

"Don't judge them too harshly, my son. Their lands are threatened." Lanon closed his eyes. "And I am so very far away from them. Some of them have never even seen me, and swore their oaths of fealty through messengers. I let them do it, because of the great distance between us—perhaps I was wrong to do so. Perhaps it is time for all of them to see me once again."

"Allking jumping up and down on a packhorse," Alair muttered. "Tell me you don't mean what I think you mean."

"But I do, my boy. If there is to be a great army going North, it's only fitting that I should lead it."

"With the First Prince missing? You could die, my lord. You could actually die doing this."

"The great kings of old led their armies. Telhir, Sidhenna, Talan. I think it would do our people some good to see their king taking up the mantle. Besides—you are the one whose faith in Jalith is so neverending. He will come when he is needed, and in good time." More gently: "I will have a good guard with me, and I will stay at the back. I promise. But I think it is the wise thing to do."

"And the Second Prince?"

"He will be glad of my presence, I should hope. I think you do Lukere some discredit—he has led my armies well, and he is loyal to me, though he hates Jalith with a passion. Should the worst happen—" Lanon waved an arm. "Well, should the very worst happen, I don't think we need to worry about the succession at all. Do you?"

Alair was silent, mostly through pressing his lips and biting his tongue.

"You're a hotheaded one, my son," Lanon said fondly. "Though I love you dearly. Send out the orders to Karloi and the rest. Seal them with Jalith's seal. We shall see, in this great war of ours, who is loyal and who is not."

"And if some do not come?"

"I have a feeling it shall go very much the same way if we have ten men or ten thousand. Let them cower in their carved houses. I shall deal with them afterward, or Jalith will." Lanon stood, covering his cough. "These are your orders, Seventeenth Prince. Make ready."

"And I shall go with you?"

"I don't think I could stop you even if I wanted to," Lanon said. "Yes, you shall go with me. May you never have occasion to draw that pretty saber of yours!"

• • •

At night, in his rooms, Lanon stayed up and coughed. The cough was beginning to worry him, dry and neverending, rattling like small stones shut up in his chest. It had long ago ceased to pain him, but it sapped his strength. He was hard put not to stumble, or grasp Alair's arm like a much older man, when they appeared in public.

Coughing now, his shoulders jerking, Lanon went to his huge carven desk and sat down at it. The letter sat, as it always did, atop whatever papers of state littered the desk's surface. He opened it for the fiftieth or the hundredth time, fingered the azure seal. The sight of Jalith's straight narrow hand send a bolt of comforting warmth through him.

My Dearest Father,

I am going North. I am sorry to so abandon your Census, and my dear friend Alair, but I think what I have to do is both necessary and right. I can only hope you find it in your heart to forgive me for this change of plan.

"Forgiven, my dear boy," Lanon murmured, as he always did at this point in the letter. "Forgiven."

You have tried very hard to raise me as a Southern prince, and for the most part I feel what you have given me is a virtue and a blessing. I will never forget the Lifelaw, and the order and beauty of our Southern lands. But there is a wild part of me, a part I have long ignored and parceled off, that must go North and find whatever it is I need there. I do not think I came to you by accident all those years ago, nor do I think it was an accident that you made a Northern boy of unknown parentage your heir. I think fate, as well as love, has held me to you. I regret only that both of these must now be put to the test.

Telhir Allking, our greatest ancestor, had a dream of a united kingdom. He dreamed of the order of the South and the wild magic of the North brought together, the lifeless White Peace of the Northmage laid forever to rest. I believe it is left to me to do these things. In your name, and in the name of all the innocents who have died in this foolish conflict, I will do them.

All of my love, until the ends of the earth.

Yours,

Jalith

Lanon's fist contracted, as it always did: the letter folded into itself along familiar lines.

He understood. He was a king. He had done many things in his life that Lanon as a man would not have done.

But the thought of his son, his golden-haired boy, alone in the cold and snow of the North, terrified him.

He would lead his little army. He would fight, to the death if he had to, at the gates of Northold, at the foot of the Grateful Pass. He would fight because there was nothing else to do, because the alternative was wholesale slaughter. He had been a prince in the House of Heirs once, he too had listened spellbound to the tales of the Northmage's cruelty and love of Southern blood before his bedtime. His father, the king Lukan—his favorite tale had been that of Sirili, the great battle between Northmage and Allking before the dawning of the modern world.

He whispered it now, the words still perfect within him after all these years, redolent with the memory of Lukan's pinched brown face, the kingly robes anointed with myrrh and balsam.

"And to Sirili he came,

to the white fortress,

his banners bright waving

swords bright-shining.

He wore spurs on his boots

and a comb, white and ruby,

laced with the wild North-magic.

There the great armies

clashed like waves breaking.

There under the cold sun

many men lay, lives taken.

There the earth boiled,

sown with blood

and salt

and bitterness.

In the fortress,

high upon the mountain,

the two fought: dragon

and dragon,

pale Northern lords!

Swords were whetted,

time taken away.

Together they fought, locked

as though embracing.

The battle waxed and waned, blood ran

in red rivers.

For ten days and ten nights the lords fought,

locked in hatred!

On the tenth day one emerged,

alone and bloodied.

Telhir, now Allking,

Telhir who fought

but dreamed of peace."

It seemed unsatisfactory now. The great story, the Tale of Telhir, should not have ended on such an ambiguous note.

Then again, it had not seemed so unsatisfactory when he was a child—when Anmar Sedat, presumed dead, was only a name with which to frighten children. When his father's hands—Lukan's arthritic old hands—had sent the shadow-puppets whirling in their theater. Telhir's noble profile. Sedat's paper leer.

Lanon sighed, held in a wracking cough. He, too, would fight if necessary. He too dreamed of peace. The tale meant something different now that he, an old man, had seen its insufficiency.

"Telhir, who fought but dreamed of peace," Lanon murmured. "Good luck to you, my son. Oh, good luck!"

* * *

 The origins of this particular swear are, thankfully, uncertain. One can only hope the packhorse in question was dead when it happened, or of unusual strength and fortitude.

# PART SIX

####  SIXDOVES

# ONE

### In Which There is A Much Belated Test of Naming

The magician treated him kindly, or at least with little unkindness.

Jalith was mostly left to himself, for which he was just as grateful. The peace of the place, the endless white halls and the endless white snow outside, was lulling. He found himself drifting, as if in a dream, from one corridor to the next, from one sparsely furnished chamber to another. Days passed. Jalith, studying the fine and crystalline layers of ice that made the place up, barely noticed them.

He had been led first to the bathing chambers underneath the palace, where the ice was eroded somewhat by steam from the hot springs there. An unsmiling attendant had toweled, soaped, and toweled him again, until his hair glistened like silk and his skin like polished stone. He had been given a tunic of solid white, furred and unadorned. The comb, which had never been taken from him, had been cleaned and polished, and placed in his hair.

"I thought you wanted that," Jalith said to the magician.

"It has performed the task it was meant for in bringing you to me. You may keep it, if you so choose. " The magician's eyes glittered. "Do you enjoy it here?"

"Yes," Jalith said. His heart felt made of ice, so peacefully and heavily did it lie in his chest. Behind them a man played on a harp, slow glacial notes that melted into the walls as though they had never been. They were eating, or Jalith supposed they were eating. He did not really notice the food.

"As well you should. It is in your blood." The magician smiled his slow cold smile. "And my kingdom? Do you like it as well?"

Jalith had wandered outside, finding none to stop him. There had been nothing but white, endless and cool, for miles around. "It's...peaceful."

"Yes. Yes, it is." The magician leaned forward. "You see, I too desire peace. This peace, the white peace. The peace of a million million years. Peace unto the world's ending. Iron peace. Peace without emotion, without sore hearts and shattered dreams. Unbreakable peace."

For a moment, something like disagreement rose in Jalith's heart. Disagreement with what, though, and why? The notes of the harp droned onward, onward, onward. The moment ended.

"Yes," Jalith agreed. "Peace unto the end of the world."

He walked sometimes with the magician, sometimes without him. The man rarely spoke. Sometimes he put a cool white hand to Jalith's cheek, almost affectionately.

"You are mine now, Southern prince," he would murmur. "Mine, mine, mine."

At these times something would well up in Jalith, something almost like love.

Jalith's bed was large and soft, laid with many white blankets. His pillows were soft and cool. Though no fire burned in his rooms, he was never cold—the coolness of the place lay soft and gentle on his skin, agreeable in all aspects.

He had come here for some reason. But why had he come?

For the first time in his life, his heart was full of unchanging peace. His scarred body, reflected in the bathing pools, no longer seemed ugly or out of place. Even the scar on his hand, which he had once found lumpish and ugly, seemed ordinary. He remembered his life distantly and fondly, as a child recalls a broken toy.

Even when he was not nearby the magician was with him. His voice followed Jalith down the endless white corridors.

"I control the wild magic," he whispered. "The white magic, which your people call hefenta. This is the peace deeper than any man, than life or love or even death. Telhir did not understand this peace. Even many of my people have not understood it. You understand it. It is in your blood."

His blood, which flowed sluggish from him like a river of ice. His blood, which was like a warm red blanket. His blood.

People came to and fro from the castle—Northern men and women, dressed for war. The magician spoke to them, sometimes Jalith even spoke to him. They were like distant silver stars in their mail and metal, pulsing with cold and power.

Why had Jalith ever doubted this peace?

Late at night, when the food had been cleared away and the great table, there was dancing in the magician's white halls. The men and women whirled in silver mail, in dresses and tunics made of silver and light. Jalith danced too, until his back was sore and his legs ached. He never questioned the dancing, though he sometimes saw shapes in it, shapes of old magic and the color of blood.

In these times, sometimes, he would see faces. He knew their names—Lanon, Alair, Karloi. Lukere, Chari.

Sedat.

He did not care. He knew the magician's name, knew the horror in it.

He did not care.

Why had he come?

One day he woke to find the magician sitting beside him, a silver-furred cloak in his lap. "It is time for your Test of Naming, my boy," the magician said. "Time for you to join the white peace."

"But I have a name already," Jalith said. His puzzlement came to him as if from a great distance. "I'm Silverhand."

"This is not your true name." The magician's hand lingered, affectionately, on his cheek. "You must find your true name, hear it spoken to you, if you are to help me make the peace supreme. Then you and I shall ride out, and there shall be peace. Two lands united. Just as you have always in your heart dreamed."

The magician dressed him, wrapped the silver cloak around his shoulders with gentle hands. Jalith felt like a little child being dressed for Festival.

"It shall be you and I," the magician said. "You and I, you and I, you and I. Unto the end of the world."

In the mirror, two white faces stared back at him. The magician twisted up Jalith's hair, secured it in its comb.

"There," he said, with a trace of pride. "A true prince of the North, of the white peace."

Jalith studied his own reflection, the pale face with its familiar sharp angles hovering above white tunic, silver cloak, silvered hands. He looked into his own eyes, grey as the sea.

"Something is missing," he said.

"Only your name." The magician took his arm, led him out into the white. "Come. No harm shall befall you."

He led him down, down, down. They were beneath the earth, deep beneath it. The caverns were snug and dark, sightless and dumb. Jalith had a strong feeling of another presence, of cold eyes watching him that were not those of the magician.

He felt the magician bow low beside him. He bowed as well.

I AM THE EARTH, a voice said somewhere within him. I AM THE NORTH. WHO DISTURBS MY SLEEP?

"It is the Sedat," the magician said. "Your servant in the world of men. I bring with me a boy who needs a name."

THE BOY.

There was a low rumbling. Jalith felt the earth all above him, endless miles.

I GIVE YOU THE HEART'S WATER. DRINK OF IT.

Suddenly in Jalith's hand there was a hollowed rock. There was liquid within it. Jalith paused with the rock to his lips. He did not want to drink. He feared to drink.

"Drink," the magician murmured. "It is time."

The liquid tasted of nothing, except perhaps of cold.

• • •

He saw his mother.

Only she was not yet his mother—big with child, belly like a round stone, she sat upon a white chair in white halls. One hand rested on this belly, limply.

The man with the fur leggings held her other hand.

"You must come with me," he said. "If the child is to be saved. If our lands are to be saved."

"But the lord my husband—"

"He will have no mercy on it, just as he will have no mercy on you. Do you think he will soften, because of the boy? Change? He is past change—has been, since the death of our brother Halil. Come with me to the summer lands in the South. We will live there together, and no more of this poor frost! I will love you, Arienhel. I do love you."

The woman's eyes flickered. For the first time, something like a spark rose up in them.

"I love you," the man said again, insistently. "He does not. He has forgotten how to do it. His heart is the earth's heart now. It is a stone heart. Come with me, for you are the most beautiful woman in the living world. The most peerless, the most perfect, the only woman—the only woman I can imagine, even when other women stand right in front of me. Come with me!"

And the woman, tears welling in her eyes, took his hand.

"Telhir—"

• • •

"Once he was a mortal man," Telhir murmured. He caressed the hair of the woman beside him, gentle. "It was that man who loved you, that man who fathered a child on you. He is dead now, gone forever. It is only the shell of a man you see."

The woman was weeping, always weeping. Her eyes were reddened and swollen, their lashes stuck together with tears like small ebony spikes.

"We must go South, away from the frost that spreads from Sixdoves. There is nothing but death in this frost. Our people deserve a chance at life."

The woman nodded through her tears. "He'll come for us. You know he will."

"He shall not have you."

"I don't care if he has me! But the boy—he must not have the boy."

"The boy is his own son. He will claim him someday, and well you know it. It's his right."

"Then let it not be for many years. Let him grow. Let him find his own heart."

"Yes," Telhir murmured. Somewhere behind his eyes, an idea flickered. "Let him grow, indeed!"

• • •

There was a castle in the mountain, white Sirili shining with the banner of Telhir's two dragons.

There was a door in the wall. The door was a hefenta-stohl, one of the most powerful ever attempted—drawn, through love and necessity, to cut through space and time.

Jalith watched his own little back retreat, into the desert, into a time far removed from his own. He watched a door burst open, a burgundy light flood the room.

The Sedat stood, cold and furious, behind the light.

"Telhir Silverhanded," he hissed. "You have taken what was not yours to take."

"I have taken nothing." The door into the desert flickered, shivered, closed. Its rough outlined remained— Telhir's hand, wet with his own blood, still trembled with the power of it. "The boy went of his own accord, at his mother's urging. Lifelaw is upheld. I have taken nothing."

"No," the Sedat said, cold once again. "You have not. She, on the other hand—"

He made a dismissive gesture at the woman to his right. She was smashed against the wall as if trampled by a thousand horses. Blood, bright burgundy, slid down the wall after her in a great swath.

Jalith watched the Allking's knuckles clench on the hilt of his sword.

"I didn't think you would," he said at last. There was helplessness in the man's voice, anger beyond speech or even inflection. "Even now."

"And now, if you don't mind—I would like my child back."

For just a moment—just a moment, Jalith reminded himself, of six thousand years before—the Sedat's face betrayed his emotions. Rage. Terrible rage. Desperation. Betrayal. And something that was not love—the man, Jalith thought, could not feel love—but close enough, almost close enough to count.

"He's gone," Telhir said. "Gone beyond hope of retrieval. I wish you much luck in the searching, brother." A smile lingered on the Allking's face. "May it take you a thousand years."

It would take him six thousand.

Screaming, the Sedat lunged.

• • •

In the dark cave, filled with an ancient magic, Jalith spoke. The words were not his own, but nor were they the words of the earth. They were the words of truth.

"I will tell you a story.

It is the story of three brothers, kings of the Northern lands. One brother died young, leaving a fortress undefended. The other two united to take it, and thus the North was left to two kings, one cold as ice, one hot and bright as the sun. Together they sunk it into the earth, where no man living could find it, to remain forever as a memorial to the dead brother Halil.

The cold king, the eldest, had a beautiful wife, kept like a prized jewel in his white halls. The younger king, who was unmarried, greatly loved the wife of his brother, and she at length came to love him in return. Though she was big with the elder brother's child she came away with the younger brother to his fortress of Sirili, and there birthed the child and lived a few happy years.

But the North was no longer safe for either of them. The elder brother, in his love of power and knowledge, had allied himself with a dark thing to take the undefended fortress of Mourninghall, and when his wife left he allowed it to consume him. His heart became the earth's heart, made of frost and stone, and he became a creature of hefenta, dark magic of the deep places. With this great power unfurled inside him he set out to Sirili to reclaim his child.

But Telhir, the younger brother, had some idea of what would happen. He sent the child forward into a distant future, into a land untouched by frost and cold. I do not know if he knew this land was his own, but he had long sought the peace of the South, and it was to this place he sent the boy.

At the gate of this distant future, the two kings battled, and the queen lost her life. Telhir wounded his older brother, wounded him so badly he had to retreat to the sunken fortress of Mourninghall and the powers that controlled him to heal.

The young king made it to his desired Southlands, and became the Allking there. So great was his grief for the woman Arienhel that he never remarried, never produced an heir. Thus began the tradition in the South of adopted kings, a tradition that would hold unbreaking for six thousand years.

And the elder brother, the Northmage—his influence never left his lands, for he was not dead. As time passed, and the earth healed him, it became greater and greater. Sirili, the Allking's Northern fortress, was taken by the white frost. Mourninghall, the sunken fortress of the brother Halil who died, became a place of great evil, where the hefenta magic was worshipped and sought. And at last, when the boy in his far kingdom was matured, his father emerged from his sleep. He could not be sure of the boy, having never seen him, but he set a trinket in his path—a trinket that would, eventually, lead the boy to him."

Jalith took the comb from his hair and held it out to the Northmage, who stood as though carved from the stone of the cavern beside him.

"I am Jalith, named Sedat. My father is the Northmage himself, Anmar Sedat. "

In that place of deep death there was only silence. The Northmage did not move, not a hair, not a whisper.

"My father," Jalith continued, "is also Lanon, called Silverhanded, the king of the Southern lands, who has loved me without knowing me, without question and without pause. Can you, Northmage, say the same?"

The man's mouth worked. "I cannot lie," he said at last. "Though I would like to. This is a deep place, where no lie can be spoken. No, my son. I have not loved you. Though I wished to—though I tried to."

"Then I claim, as is my right through birth and through breeding, both the kingdoms of my fathers. Let this land be united, through love, in the dream of Telhir. I choose Silverhand as my name, and the land as my birthright." Jalith took his father's hand, felt the cold fingers underneath his own tremble.

"I believe there is still something of a man in you, my father. I believe it is that which has held you to me, to this timeless dream of finding me. Which made you wait years before searching out your wife—before allowing the dark powers to consume you. I want you to join me now. Leave this frost and this cold white death, which will never be true peace. True peace is a living thing, growing and changing; you were wronged by your brother, long ago, and it is part of a growing and changing peace that I should try to redress that wrong. Come with me to Sirili, where they will honor you as father to the high king."

But the Sedat shook his head. "It is too late, Jalith. Too late. You have seen too much. And I—I have done too much. I will see you in Sirili, but it will not be for honor. For what little it is worth, I am sorry this thing failed to bind you to me. Goodbye, my son. Goodbye."

As though they had never been, the Northmage and the cavern vanished. Jalith was left alone in white halls, bitterly cold and echoingly lonely.

In his hand, still outstretched, was a comb.

"Well," Jalith said numbly. He tucked the comb back into his pocket.

He began to walk.

Up above, a dark shadow momentarily obscured his path. Rising from the depths of Sixdoves, vast and cold and unidentifiable, the shadow roared so loudly the ground shook. Rocks ground on rocks, as though the earth itself were giving birth.

Jalith had a momentary vision of a cage left open.

"Herpsicore," he said, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world to say. "Of course."

He began to run.

# TWO

### In Which Nothing Much Suits Lukere

"Aychari's hells," Lukere swore, banging the hilt of his sword on one of the few remaining stones of the keep. "I applaud your fine sentiments, but you're too bloody late. Look at all this destruction! And not a Northman in sight, mind you. Not a one. Not even the First traitorous twice-damned bloody Prince."

"Mind your tongue, my son," Lanon said mechanically.

But there was no denying it: Northold had been razed, and razed most terribly. Rare was the place where stone stood upon stone. The road which had led to it had been crushed to rubble. Smoke, in places, withstood even the bitter cold of the Borderlands—deep fires glowed redly in the devastation, fires of coal and metal and molten rock.

"They didn't come forwards," Lanon said. "We saw not a soul on the roads. Where on earth could they have gone?"

"Backwards," Lukere spat. "Back into their own damned country. As for why, I have no idea. I sat here like a wart on a toad, waiting for you. I didn't dare pursue without your permission." His proud and sullen face was streaked with grime. He banged the hilt of his sword against the rock, more forcibly. "I don't know how many of our people are dead, royal Father. Enough to fill charnel houses for all the provinces, I'm sure. And for what? For nothing. For fuck-all. For fuck-all, Sire," he corrected himself sarcastically.

"And the Ironstar? Did she burn with her fortress?"

"No. She's a sly one, that Ironstar. They fought their way out right before it burned. She's suffered heavy losses, but she herself is still very much alive, along with a handful of her folk. " Lukere, in spite of the deathly cold, was sweating. He wiped a handful of sweat from his brow, splattered it desultorily over the bloodied scorched ground. "For all the good it does her. So what do we do? Do we follow them?"

"I think we do." Lanon surveyed what remained of Lukere's forces, sitting in hodgepodge groups around them, their eyes filled with a bone-weariness that chilled him even more than the air, their armor steaming from recent exertation. "Whatever the reason for their leaving so close to victory, I can't imagine it bodes well for us. We've fresh forces now, at least. Perhaps you should keep to the rear."

"I'll do no such thing, begging your pardon," Lukere snapped. "Sire. My men might enjoy the reprieve, but I've come too far in this to back out now. I'll be right there with you at the front of the lines where I belong. And when I see Jalith—if I see Jalith—I'll bloody well kill him."

"Lukere," Lanon said wearily. "You'll do no such thing. He is still your brother."

"He is a traitor. Where was he, I ask you, when Northold burned? When Third and Fourth Prince were slaughtered on the field? He was somewhere up north, toasting his boots at the hearth of the bloody Northmage."

"He will come when it is time," Lanon said, though he was no longer sure if he believed it or if he just said it out of habit. "And Lukere. You must not speak that way."

"My men are dead. I'll speak however I want, Sire."

"You must not speak that way," Lanon reiterated, "or I'll have you up on a pike with the Northern footsoldiers you're so proud of killing."

There was a long and pregnant pause.

"As my lord wishes," Lukere said sullenly. "Where, may I ask, is Seventeenth Prince, who you've lately been keeping so near?"

"He's with the rest of the men, speaking to Karloi.The two of them seem to have become close." Lanon shook his head. "It's just as well—that woman frankly gives me the shivers."

"Aye." Lukere nodded. "Me as well. At least this land has seen about the worst it can see. I feel we can leave it in safety—after all, there's no longer anything here anyone could possibly want."

Both men looked with some trepidation towards the Grateful Pass, where not a leaf stirred.

"It's eerie," Lukere said at last. "Very eerie. I think you're right, Father. I think we need to press on, and see what's going on up there. It shouldn't be too hard to follow the tracks of an entire army, even days later."

Lanon felt a wave of fondness for his second-chosen son swell up in him. These had been the qualities he had seen and cultivated in Lukere—decisiveness, ruthlessness, a certain cold curiosity. In his younger days, Lukere had been known to dissect his toys to find out how they worked. There were rumors he now did much the same with prisoners of war—Lanon did not put much stock in them, but he thought this son of his might not be above autopsying a curious body or two.

Lanon did not much like him, nor care for his harsh ways, but he was glad he had the man on his side. And, while he did not much like the thought of him as a king, he would do well enough. Though angry, there was no cruelty to him.

Except, of course, where Jalith was concerned.

"First Prince has certainly led you on a merry dance, Father," Lukere said bitterly, as though picking up on his thoughts. "Should we find him—should the treachery I suspect prove true—I ask permission to be the one who kills him. It is my men who died. I have the right."

"Shut your hole, Lukere," Alair said amiably, threading his way through the clumps of men to reach them. "Shut your worthless bloody hole, and have some faith."

Lukere swore and unsheathed his sword a few inches. Alair, still smiling, did much the same.

"Enough, you two," Lanon snapped. "Or you'll both wind up on pikes. Let's deal with the situation at hand, instead of possibilities. Northold is gone. The Northern army is gone, somewhere back in the North. We can agree on these things, yes?"

"Yes, Sire," both princes chorused.

"They seem to have abandoned their objective, just when it would have been most prudent to press on. Ergo, there must be something more important for them to deal with in the North. This is no mere regrouping, not at such a moment. Following me?"

They nodded.

"Jalith is also missing, our First Prince. As far as we know, he is also in the North. Good so far?"

Alair nodded. Lukere, with great difficulty, nodded as well.

Lanon brought his hands together, holding back a cough with the greatest effort of will. "Thus, I would posit that this pressing matter the Northmage peeled his army back from the brink of victory to deal with has something to do with Jalith."

It was through force of will only, Lanon suspected dryly, that Lukere did not combust right then and there. "It could be anything, my lord. Anything. We don't know a thing about the Northern lands, our maps haven't even been updated in thousands of years. For all we know, Aychari Deathlord could be tapdancing through tulips on the glaciers of the Far North, and he could want an audience."

Alair opened his mouth to protest, but Lanon shushed him. "Lukere," he said, "is right."

Stunned, both Lukere and Alair stopped trying to speak.

"I'm right?" Lukere ventured at last.

"You most certainly are, Second Prince. We've no idea what exists beyond those borders. I have a strong suspicion that it has something to do with Jalith—something good. But I don't know that for sure. We must be prepared for any eventuality. And that is why you, and by you I mean both of you, will be riding directly beside me. At the first sight of him, one of you will try to kill him and the other will try to kiss him, and you'll more than likely try to kill each other as well. When we see him—and I strongly suspect we will—you are both to remain exactly where you are."

"Or?" Alair pressed.

"Or pikes for both of you."

"Of course," Lukere muttered. "Always with the pikes."

Alair said nothing.

"If the worst should happen—for we must prepare for the worst as well—if the worst should happen, and I should die, I want the two of you to lead this army together. Second Prince and Seventeenth, no pulling of rank, no muttering about differences. You will lead this army for Jalith, who in the event of my demise is your rightful King, until he should appear and lead it himself. Am I understood?"

"Crystallinely," Alair muttered.

"Clearer than a four year old's complexion," spat Lukere.

"Good. Now hug."

The hug was brief, sour, and horrible. Lanon smiled a little bit in spite of himself.

"Allking pissing on a biscuit, it's like dealing with a pair of children. Well, now that we all understand what's going to happen, are we about ready to ride? I'd just as soon deal with this now, before the cold steals the warmth from our bones altogether."

• • •

They plunged into the cold and dark of the North.

Lanon was the first king to cross the Mountains of Vigilance since Talan, Telhir's heir, had won the Borderlands nearly six thousand years ago. Of Lanon's ten thousand soldiers, perhaps four hundred had ever even seen snow before. Had more from the Borderlands survived, that number would have been more impressive, and Lanon's army would have been better prepared for the back-breaking cold it now faced.

There was little enough snow, however: perhaps an ankle-length of it on the roads. It was too cold even for snow. There was nothing but sullen chill, white, endless. There was nothing but the lung-searing silence of the Far North.

Lanon, flanked by his two sons, rode at the front of the column. Behind him, her band injured but determined, rode Chari of Northold, her famous morningstar strapped to her back. Behind Chari rode the armies of the provinces, Karloi and the banner Rekhat at their head. Behind them, bloody and tired and led by the remaining Princes of battle age, rode what was left of Lukere's forces.

It was a sad little army. Lanon was acutely conscious of its inadequacy, and of the horrible odds he faced. He was conscious, in fact, of not knowing what he faced at all. He was conscious of the burning in his mouth and throat, which grew worse and worse as the air grew colder.

They followed the swath of broken branches and stomped bloody frost left by the Northern army. Lanon wished dearly he could tell whether it was a path of retreat, or regrouping, or something else much more dangerous. The cold deepened, and the world became swathed in white. Lanon's blood, bred as it was for desert and sand, cried out against the unchanging sameness. The Mountains of Vigilance, which for six thousand years had marked the boundaries of his kingdom and knowledge, towered behind them, fading away into the clouds.

Lanon felt as though he were trespassing on an alien land, a land which rejected even the step of his horse. The army was quiet, nearly silent, in the snow. Alair had dropped back to speak with Chari, and their voices were the only sound save the tramping of mailed boots to be heard.

"Hrm," Lukere said. "Looks like we're on the right track."

They obviously were. An army's tracks weren't an easy thing to miss. Lanon looked at his son's face, the wariness there, and realized this was not what Lukere had been sticking around to tell him.

"Father," Lukere said, with the air of someone uncertain how to proceed. "I wanted to talk to you about Seventeenth Prince, and his attachment to your Appointed Heir."

"Tread carefully," Lanon said. "I know how you feel about Jalith. I don't think twelve layers of iron and pitch darkness could keep how you feel about Jalith a secret, as a matter of fact. And I'm tired of hearing it. It doesn't do anyone any good."

"That's not it. Not quite." Lukere wet his lips, chapped to rawness by the constant cold wind. "Father. I know this is a delicate subject. But have you heard some of the rumors...the court rumors...about Alair?"

Involuntarily, Lanon glanced over to where the Seventeenth Prince was engaged in deep conversation with Chari Ironstar. He didn't seem to have heard his name mentioned, and Lanon doubted their voices, low as they were, would carry so far on the breeze.

"Perhaps I have," he said at last. "There are many. There are even some about you, Second Prince. I believe, in fact, your own wife spreads them."

Lukere flushed, his cheeks taking on what was, for him, an unusually ruddy hue. "I'm aware," he said. "And, Father. Please understand, though we argue often, I've nothing against the Seventeenth Prince. He's a good man. Kind. Fair to his friends, and of a naturally sweet disposition. But he is perhaps a little too easily led by his own heart."

Lukere wet his lips again. Nervous, obviously. Lanon, who had thought to silence him when he began, let him take his time—this was important to the younger man, and though Lanon had little love for him he recognized that Lukere's loyalty to himself, at least, was impartial.

"I beg you," Lukere said. "Father. Take whatever counsel you like, but I beg you—consider the reasons Alair may have for his faith in Jalith. And that those reasons may be...blind."

Lanon stared at him. In spite of the bitter cold, there were drops of sweat on his brow.

"This has occurred to me," he said at last. 'And I assure you, Lukere. Alair's words sway me no more than I allow them to, and, much as I love Jalith, my first love is for my kingdom and my people. For whatever reason, it took some bravery for you to say this to me, and I see it in your eyes. So. Thank you."

Lukere bobbed a brief half-bow in the saddle, noticeably relieved.

"And Lukere?"

"Yes, Royal Father?"

"These rumors you hear—don't put much stock in them. Even if they are true—" and here Lanon smiled, as wide as his own cracked lips would allow him— "these are things of which we do not speak. And they are things, furthermore, that are very much none of the business of the courts, or the people in them. Don't mention them again, or I shall mention some of the ones I've heard about you."

Lukere's flush deepened. "Yes, Father."

"And," Lanon added. "Though this is, again, no business of mine. If Alair is too easily led by his own heart, as you say—it occurs to me to wonder if, just possibly, you are not led easily enough by your own."

Lukere evidently inhaled a piece of debris or snow, for he began to cough violently. Lanon waited for him to finish before speaking again.

"Will you ride with me a way?" he asked. "I think I should enjoy your company."

"Yes, Father."

For several miles, they rode in silence, their shoulders hunched against the frigid wind. A steady shower of snow fell upon them, knocked from the branches above their heads, and for a long time Lanon was conscious only of this, and the worry and dread deep in his heart.

"Father," Lukere said, after a moment. "You might want to look left."

Lanon looked where his son pointed. In the snow, in several pieces, was a corpse. The head of the corpse, some distance away, hung in a tree by its dirty yellow hair.

For a moment, at the sight of that yellow hair, Lanon the father's heart stopped. Lanon the king reigned in his horse and dismounted as Lukere shouted stopping orders down the line.

It was not Jalith. It was a young Northman, of about Jalith's age and build, with similar long yellow hair. Looking into the dead face, Lanon's heart twinged. This, too, had been somebody's young son.

"What did this, I wonder?" Lukere, dismounting after his father, was examining the head with a little too much clinical interest. "It's messy work. I don't think this was a sword or an axe. If there were rocks around, I'd say maybe a rock slide. Look at the neck, there."

"I'd rather not."

"Well, just trust me then. It looks...pulpy."

"There are wolves here, I suppose. Bears."

"Unless it was a monster of an animal, I don't think it was either."

"Bury him."

"What? Why?"

"Because he was someone's son, just as you are. Bury him."

"With all due respect, my lord, the ground's frozen solid here. I don't think we can."

"Then we'll burn him. That's what they like anyway, isn't it? Burn him."

Alair dismounted, ran to help them. They chopped at bushes and saplings with their sabers, created a pile of half-frozen kindling. They put what pieces of the body they could find on top of it. Alair struck his flint, carefully guarding the spark until the kindling blazed, a process which took nearly an hour.

Lanon stood and looked at the fire. It had not occurred to him somehow, until he saw the boy's body, that Jalith might be dead.

He watched until the fire burned low, until the body was no more than a heap of charred bones and a faint scent on the wind. They had lost a good deal of time, but Lanon could not feel its loss as a terrible thing.

Whatever waited for them would wait a little longer. Would wait, as was right and proper, for the burial of one who was little more than a child.

Lukere, he thought. If you think it is only for Alair's counsel that I follow this road, you have truly never been a father. I would follow it for any of you—even yourself.

"We'll march through the night," he said aloud. "Whatever did that can get us just as easily during the day as it can now. And I think closer is better. I think we're coming near the end."

His two sons, who had worked together in blessed silence for what may have been the first time ever, nodded. Lukere reached a hand out, touched Alair's sleeve: in the silence of the moment, grim and cold, Alair didn't even bother to brush it off.

* * *

 This swear, in addition to the earlier mentioned 'Allking smoking a cornhusk', legendarily dates back to the first days of the Allking's reign and his passage through the Mountains of Vigilance. According to the Venerable Boswain, Sidhenna's court Historian, it originated with this story excerpt:

"Thou arte foolish, myne Kinge, to expeckte such thinges from us," the Captain saide. "For we are but myrest menne, and our stomachkes are emptie, and we have notte the Meanes to go Further."

"Pisseth on this Biscuite," Telhir declayred, "And thou shalt findeth it muche saltier, and that it stretcheth twice as far."

# PART SEVEN

####  SIRILI

# ONE

### In Which There is Rejoicing, But People Are Very Confused

They found the Northern army easily. An entire army is, after all, a hard thing to miss.

The road they walked on, following steadily more recent footprints, became bad. Not the sort of bad where a few cobblestones were pushed up and the horses had trouble finding their footing, but a nearly obliterated bad—as though the road itself had not been in use for a very long time. The trees, which had grown bigger and bigger since they crossed out of the Southern territories and through the Mountains, were now giant evergreens, twisted and bifurcated trees that looked from a distance almost like huge sleeping animals. The army was forced to walk ten abreast, then five, the calvalry following one rider at a time. Seeing the long train of it stretching out into the distant snows behind them, Lanon was acutely conscious of the possibility of ambush.

As was Lukere. "This is madness," he muttered, pulling his cloak further over his frozen face. "A bad, narrow road, trees and hills on either side—we might as well be advertising for someone to come down and break us. The tracks are undeniable, but I just can't believe someone as experienced as the Sedat would lead men this way."

"I don't think the Sedat is out on the field, leading armies," Lanon said. "He's probably holed up somewhere snug and warm, casting spells and having his dinner. This is a general's work, a lieutenant's. I'm guessing whatever is at the end of this road was worth the risk to him. Therefore, it must be worth the risk to us."

"Probably worth the risk because he knew we'd follow him."

"Stop being so dark."

Lukere only grunted from the depths of his hood.

But Lanon was beginning to fear the worst as well. They had come prepared for cold—it would obviously be, in the lands of the Northmage, cold—but not for cold of this magnitude. Not bone-chilling, uncompromising, glacial cold. The men, wrapped up in their cloaks and puffing jets of white steam into the still air, were beginning to grumble. Their felt boots, the only kind really worn in the Souchlad, were sodden. If they continued to be sodden, toes would be lost. And then, Lanon suspected—then, a morale problem would really begin.

"I think it's beautiful," Alair said. "The snow, I mean. So much white."

"Sand's white too, you know," Lukere said darkly. "Or it's close enough. You won't think this is nearly so pretty when you have to sleep in it."

"Posh, because you've had to sleep on the ground so much. I've seen those silk tents you sleep in on campaign."

"Not in this one. The wind was too high through the Pass—kept blowing them down. We slept on rocks and between rocks. On snow, in the bloody wind. It hasn't been a lot of fun, you know." Lukere grimaced bitterly. "I know you hate me, Seventeenth Prince. But give me this: I have done well by Father. I sleep on the ground when I need to sleep on the ground."

"Aye," Alair said, brushing back his frost-lined curls. "I'll give you that, you're a hell of a campaigner."

"I know I am." Lukere frowned. "And as for you—that saber of yours looks just a little too new. It looks, in fact, like it's never even had a notch taken out of it."

"Of course it has," Alair snapped, scowling. "What're you trying to say? Are you trying to insult my skill with a blade now?"

"No! No, Seventeenth Prince." The Second Prince wasn't smiling, but there was something Lanon didn't recognize in his eyes. "You've received the same training as the rest of us. I'm just saying—you've had less occasion to test it. Be careful. Please."

"As if you gave a damn!"

Lukere remained silent. The expression on his face, which could, on any other face, have represented deep worry and concern, didn't flicker.

Alair shuddered, shivered. The silence stretched on. "No wonder they keep pressing the borders," he said at last, brushing the frost from his shoulders. "It's too cold to live up here."

"I don't know. I heard some things, down in the Borderlands...strange things. This is an unnatural cold. The Sedat's cold. Apparently it's never like...well, I think it's supposed to be more like that."

Lukere pointed in front of them. Suddenly, inexplicably, the snowline stopped.

"Huh," Alair and Lukere said together. A few minutes later, Lanon said:

"I think this is it."

The road widened, deepened, and dropped off abruptly into a deep valley. By all rights there should have been more snow there, but the ground was clean and dry, the trees almost cheerful in the sudden influx of green. At the far end of the valley, ringed on all sides by mountains, a high white fortress stood, towers crumbled and ramparts collapsed by the slow movement of time.

In front of the fortress, spread out over the valley like a living blanket, was the army of the Northmage.

"Halt the army," Lukere said instantly. "Right the hell now. I mean—sorry, Father."

"By all means."

"Halt the army. Chari, you and your company come with us. They don't—well, they don't look like they're doing anything very military. In fact..."

Lanon saw what his son saw. The entire blanketing field of men were making noise and moving. Which wouldn't have been unusual, except that even with the echo over the valley it sounded like they were singing, and it looked an awful lot like they were dancing.

"They're rejoicing," Lukere said, nonplussed.

"Over what?" Alair frowned. "Certainly they don't think they've beaten us yet."

"Maybe they're rejoicing preemptively?"

"No," Lanon said. He frowned. "Be quiet for a minute, so I can hear."

He listened for a few minutes, lips moving as he translated the words to himself into his own tongue.

"That's very interesting," he murmured to himself. "I wonder—"

"What is it, Father?"

"They're singing an old nursery rhyme. We have it in the South, too, only the words are changed—"

As if in answer to Lanon's statement, a single cracked bell rang out over the valley. The Northmen below, in their various harsh dialects, shouted encouragement.

The bell rang again.

Lanon murmured, half distactedly:

"In Sirili, in Sirili

all the bells shall ring.

The Northmage bows and Telhir smiles

in welcoming the king..."

The gates of the ruined white fortress cracked open. The din of the Northmen below was almost unbearable.

Before he knew what he was doing, Lanon was urging his horse down a narrow path into the valley.

"Shit," Lukere hissed. Having little choice in the matter, he followed. Alair, shrugging, followed suit.

As soon as they entered the valley, the weather became warmer. Lanon, not wanting to slow, unclasped his cloak as he rode and threw it on the ground. He shucked off his shearling gloves and threw them without a second thought after his cloak. His long woolen scarf, wrapped securely around his head, soon joined the gloves and cloak.

"Hai!" one of the Northmen below said, spotting them. His Mendelefa was creaky and heavily accented. "Look! It's some Southerners!"

Before either prince could draw a sword they were surrounded. Big square hands touched their horses, ran over their cloaks. Alair was the first to sheath his saber, uneasily. Lukere did not so much sheath his as hook the tip of it in its scabbard.

"Southmen, hai," one of the men said, grinning broadly. "Glad to see you could follow us easily. Have you come as well to welcome the new king?"

"Yes," Lanon said, breathless. "Yes, we have. Where is he? Where is my son?"

"The king rides from Sirili. Gods be praised!"

Lanon did not waste time making polite reply, or worrying about the strangeness of the situation. He rode through the crowd as though driving a machete through wheat. When the going got too tough, he dismounted. His horse, left alone in the crowd, whinnied once, and was lost from view.

There was a sea of people, strange people who smelled of leather and sweat and cedar, all around him. They were not hostile—but he had sensed that from the beginning. They danced with each other, men and women and children, in spaces so small they should have rightly not been able to move.

Hands touched him—more hands than had ever touched him before. They were gentle hands, kind hands, hands callused and roughened and hardened like the hands of his own people. There were kind words, welcoming words.

And there at last, surrounded by a knot of people so thick Lanon nearly had to climb over them, was Jalith.

For just a moment their eyes met. And then there was Jalith—Jalith's young hands, his smile, his golden hair—there was his beloved son, dressed all in white, with a golden crown over his brow in the shape of two dragons embracing.

"Northking," Lanon said softly. "Hail!"

Alair and Lukere broke through the knot some moments later to find their father embracing a golden-haired man they barely recognized as their brother. The past few months had aged him, brought a weathered and long-suffering calm to his face, lessened the shyness in his smile.

"Well, well," Lukere said at last. "Someone's looking pretty."

He drew his sword from the sheath it had half-rested in. Before Lanon could speak, the tip of it was at Jalith's throat.

The press of Northmen all around them suddenly bristled with weapons. Something not terribly polite-sounding was screamed out from the crowd in Norchladil.

Jalith waved his sudden cluster of bodyguards off. "Hello, brother," he said.

"You," Lukere began. "You—" his mouth worked. His words, choked by rage, issued from it in a whisper. "A King of the North? You? Where were you when Northold burned? When your brothers fell? When this blasted Frost crept even into Hamrat? A King indeed! Here you sit, in your pretty glen, waited on by the very army that blasted your countryside! Perhaps you've even been controlling them the whole time. A true prince of your country you are, displaying the cowardice and treachery inherent in your lands."

"If you say one more word," Alair said, smiling pleasantly, "I shall deeply enjoy both your slow and untimely death, and the after-dinner activities I have planned with your widow."

"Alair," said both Jalith and Lanon. Alair continued to smile, hand at his hip. Jalith spoke.

"You have some cause for anger, Lukere. I know this has not been easy for you. And I know how it must look—many of these men and women are indeed the remnants of the Northmage's army. They came to me from the Pass, where I am sure even you are willing to admit they would have trounced you, and have been waiting for you to follow ever since. I called them off, Lukere, as soon as I knew how. It is because of both of our efforts that our home does not lie right now in ruin."

Lukere's sword stayed firmly pressed against his brother's throat. "You always had a pretty way with words. How, precisely, did a Southern prince call off the armies of the Northmage?"

"That's quite enough!" Lanon stepped between them. "I can't watch this any longer. Lukere, give him a chance to explain himself not at the point of your sword. And Jalith—even I will admit, you have some explaining to do. Let's go inside this pile of stones, and let's talk, seated and preferably with some beer, like human beings. These Northmen seem little enough disposed to harm our kind, and perhaps they have some provisions they would be willing to share with our men. We've had a long and hungry crossing, Jalith, to find you here, and I am curious to know why it was necessary."

Lukere sword wavered, finally dropped. "Fine," he growled. "But I expect answers, and not just pretty words."

Alair pressed Jalith's hand, briefly, and smiled. "Northking, hail," he said softly. "I'll go get the others."

And so it was that, for the first time in six thousand years, the armies of the north and the south met at Sirili, ancient home of the king Telhir. They shared beer, and traveling bread, and stories of their kingdoms and rulers and ways of life. They compared sword lengths and fineness of linens. They swapped songs and jokes, wise quotes from their fathers and mothers. And through the night, happy and drunk, they linked arms and sang of the new king in the North—for, though they may not quite have trusted each other, they recognized well that fighting here would win them little, save mutual death.

The new king and the old king sat together in the ruins of the throne hall, with their family and advisors. And, slowly, the story of the new king unfolded.

# TWO

### In Which There is Confusion, Swearing of Fealty, and Alcohol

Jalith had set up his camp in the throne room, as was only appropriate. His little tent, patched together from spare cloaks and his own threadbare blankets, kept most of the wind and still-chilly air of the valley off him when he slept. Old pine needles formed banks under the glassless windows, made angular sketches over the filthy white floor. Various clothes items and weapons, and such little gifts of food as the Norchladil soldiers were able to provide, covered almost every available surface. Jalith had not had the time to be neat.

The throne room had once been constructed very much like the one in Hamrat—Lanon recognized the vaulting ceilings and columns along the wall instantly, in spite of the snowdrifts and birds' nests that decorated them. The throne, which time had weathered into a bare mounded shape, stood much in the same place along the back of the hall. He supposed it made sense—Telhir had built Hamrat in the image of Sirili, his abandoned ancestral home.

And there was history here. The air was damp and heavy with it. There had been history in Hamrat, of course—six thousand years of it—but it had been a living history, a history still in the making. This history was coffinlike, closed, dormant. It was, Lanon thought, just beginning to return to life.

The throne against the back wall, high and white, waited. Looking at it, Lanon felt a sudden shiver of fear for his son: this was not a mortal place, not any longer. Jalith's presence in it, golden and warm, caused only the smallest of remittances, like a breeze through a crack in the door.

Jalith sat on the floor with the rest of those assembled, making a rough half-circle around the fire blazing in the firepit before the throne. It was as though he too recognized the forbidding age of the place and bowed before it.

The only sound for a long while was the echoes of singing from outside and the crackling of branches.

Jalith had just told his story, and sat cross-legged and composed by the fire as though awaiting a verdict. Lanon could not help but look at him—tall and proud he seemed now, no longer the gawky ashamed boy who had left his court just months ago. His white clothes, on closer inspection, were dirtied and ragged, but he wore them with the carelessness of a true lord. The crown, which he had discarded as soon as he left the mob outside, rested on the seat of the throne, a gleaming reminder to Lanon of all the things this son of his no longer was.

"I found the crown," Jalith said, when asked. "It was just sitting on the throne, covered in dust. Waiting for me, I suppose."

The whole place, Lanon thought, had been waiting for him. There had been legends of Sirili, Telhir's old Northern fortress, in the Souchlad for as long as there had been kings, but Lanon had always thought it a fairytale place, created by some ancient storyteller to fit the legend. No explorer, no matter how bold, had ever found it.

Yet here it had been, mysteriously well preserved, at the end of a road in the middle of the Mountains. Had it been here all the time, someone would have found it long ago.

It had waited for its prince, true heir to its powers, for thousands of years. Jalith, he suspected, had not so much had to find the place as stumble into it. And when he came, it had given him a crown and an army.

"I don't know how I called them to me, exactly," Jalith had explained. "I got here, and suddenly it seemed like the easiest thing in the world to do—to banish the snows and the frost, to call my people here. I think it's the place more than it's me. There's magic here, hefenta magic."

"Right," Lukere had said. "So, evil."

"Not evil, my lord," Chari Ironstar had corrected. "We in the Borderlands have long known it. Hefenta—the word itself meant blood drawn from the earth, in the long-ago tongue. The magic itself is not evil. But the earth powers are no friend of men, and it can be twisted to evil very easily.There was hefenta in our country once too, or have you forgotten your lessons? The hefenta-stohl of Telhir, the blessing-spells Sidhenna placed over Rekhani. These were not evil things. Anmar Sedat has made it a word to be feared, but it was not always so. This was Telhir's place, and he was not evil. Northern, yes—the Souchlad has long known it could trace its roots back to the North. But not evil."

The group had listened, spellbound, to Jalith's tale of Sixdoves, of his revelations there and of the white peace the Northmage was creating.

"How sad," Lanon had murmured. He wondered now about this man, his son's blood father—what had he been, long ago, to think this terrible white silence was peace? Yet he had had a wife once, and a fortress, and lands to tend, and people to look after. He had fathered a son, taken from him by his own brother and cast forward in time.

It would drive any man a little mad, Lanon decided. Perhaps, if the man were fragile enough, it could even turn him into a monster.

Now they all sat, alone with their thoughts in the fire's flickering light.

"I know what you would ask of me, my son," Lanon said slowly. "And in this matter I cannot speak for all my people. I love you, and I trust you to the ends of the earth, but I understand that it's a lot to ask of my countrymen to trust a Northman with so frightening a pedigree as their First Prince. Sharat-Ur, province of Hamrat, votes yes. What of the other provinces?"

It was Karloi, the Duchess Rekhat in her dull black armor, who spoke first.

"First Prince," she said stiffly, "you have just told me everything I ever feared to hear from your mouth. A son of the Sedat—the ancient enemy of our people. A bearer of the wild magic, commander of the Sedat's armies.This is, in a package, everything I desperately did not want you to be. And yet.

And yet, you once showed me mercy. If you did indeed call off this army, you have shown our land great love. And I will forever remember what you once told me—that Telhir, your uncle, desired peace between these lands. If the Sedat is in your blood, and Telhir was his brother, then our great progenitor is in your bloodline as well. I have made my decision. The lands and men of the Rekhat will follow Jalith."

"I have heard you slew our neighbor, the Baroness Machertani, in Oot," said Branith, the old lord of Markat. "Is this true?"

Jalith's lips twitched. "It is," he said simply.

"Then the Souchlad is already a better place for having you in it. Markat follows its First Prince."

"The Borderlands have, and ever will," said Chari Ironstar, smiling. "Though my keep is fallen and my men are tired, you will find us ready to follow you always."

One by one the lords of the South stood and swore their allegiance. Lanon simply smiled—for he, who knew his son better than anyone else, had known this day was long in coming.

At last only Lukere was left, of the assembled lords. He, too was allowed a vote in such matters—for, Lanon remembered, the House of Heirs was purposely provinceless, and he was its highest-ranking member.

"My brother," he said slowly. "I have hated you in my heart for many years. I'm sure it's been obvious at times—probably all the time. I'm not much good at hating in secret.

But I have known for a long time I would never be First Prince. Not unless something terrible should happen to you—and, brother, I am not that much of a monster. For our royal Father loves you dearly, and treasures you above all the other princes in his House.

For a long time I did not understand why. I stayed away from you, tried to have as little as possible to do with you, so that my anger would seem less. And when I saw you today, standing warm and dry in furred robes while my men lay rotting and our brothers lay rotting in the Borderlands—that anger ruled me. I am sorry, Brother, for what I nearly did to you.

But in the face of my anger, you stirred no more than a tree does in a summer breeze. You were not frightened of me. My temper meant as much to you as the whining of a small child. And it was then, I suppose, that I realized. My anger is a small thing. It is petty, and useless, and spiteful. And if the other leaders of our land trust their men and their lives to you, it would only be petty and spiteful if I did not give you the support of your brothers. Hail, Northking. The House of Heirs rides with you."

Alair, who had been sitting nearby with both fists clenched and a seriously intent expression on his face, gave a small whistle.

"Allking frying a witchwoman's eyebrows," he swore. "That's a thing I thought I'd never hear."

"Alair," Lukere said. "Please. Not now. I can't handle it now."

But Alair was already sitting next to him, one arm draped over his shoulders. "You know," he said, "you're almost all right."

"I still hate you a little," Lukere said to Jalith. But there was a smile on the corners of his lips—a smile which, to everyone's surprise, made him singularly handsome. "Just so you know."

"I'd expect no less, my brother," Jalith said, the corners of his own mouth twitching upward. "But your support is appreciated—all of your support means very much to me. And the next battle we fight, I promise you, will be side by side. Now, if you'll excuse me. I'm going to go inform the men."

He left the hall through a side door, the murmurings of those in the Throne Room following him. Alair gave the sheepishly smiling Lukere a jocular pat on the shoulder. Lanon, who after all knew his son better than anyone, followed Jalith down the corridor.

He found Jalith in a small side chamber, sitting on a dirty chunk of rock from the wall. He was weeping. Lanon put a hand on his shoulder.

"What did I tell you, Jalith? After all these years—all these long years—they see in you what I see in you."

"I know." Jalith wiped his face with a corner of his cloak—the part of Lanon that was an unreasoning father wondered if this son of his, now a king, would ever learn to carry a handkerchief. "And I'm so glad—so glad. I thought when you put it to a vote—well. You know what I thought."

"I think the person you surprise most is frequently yourself," Lanon said, smiling. "You are a king—born to it and bred. There is a power in you that works against even six thousand years of prejudice. This place, where our ancient enemies in the North received us with such gladness and kindness, has gone a long way toward your cause—you showed our men and women a different way, a way without bloodshed. You've impressed them. Even Lukere."

"But I know what they expect from me. They expect the impossible. And they think—they think, from now on, everything will be right. But it hasn't even happened yet."

"What hasn't happened?" Lanon crouched down beside him, put an arm around him.

"The final battle. The battle which will decide the fate of these lands. My father—the Sedat. The Sedat hasn't even shown his face. But everywhere, even in this valley, I feel his presence. And I saw something on my way here. Something that worries me."

Lanon thought back, briefly, to the dismembered boy they had found along the road. To the wounds that looked almost ground, as though he had been pulped between two rocks.

"Father, do you know what a herpsicore is?"

"I think you mean herpakor," Lanon corrected automatically. Then, realizing what he had just said: "Oh, no."

"Oh no isn't good."

"Let's talk and walk, my son. There's an old story I need to tell you. And we need to warn the men."

• • •

Alair and Lukere sat with Chari Ironstar and three Norchladil farmer-soldiers around a blazing fire, drinking beer. In the frosty cold of the night they huddled together, talking. Chari, who spoke most of the Norchladil dialects, translated.

"We've got the Allking in the South, too. We call him Telhir, though."

There was a pause as Chari related the information, and the Northmen barked gleefully back at them.

"They say Telhir is Talliro in their tongue, The White Lord. He was greater in his day even than the Northmage. They are pleased to again follow a king, and not just a piddly mage."

"But they followed him into battle!"

"They say there was a great fear placed on the land. Something like a spell. They were led to believe that if they fought for the Northmage the frosts would abate. They say as soon as they saw this place they understood they were wrong—that the Northmage himself caused the frosts. The Northmage is famous in their legends, almost a hero, but no hero freezes the land so his people cannot eat and remains beloved. Dakar here is a farmer," she added, in an aside. "Hisolt and Franulf are both fishermen. The ice would've hit them hard."

"We just didn't like the bloody cold. Tell them to come down to Hamrat some point, see what real living is like."

Chari frowned at the reply. "They say you can stuff your desert up your arse. They're warm enough right here as it is."

"This is warm to them?"

"Midsummer," one of the Northmen said thickly. "Air is like boiling." Having exhausted his supply of Mendelefa, he went back to his beer.

"Man's got the right idea," Alair slurred, refilling his own cup and tipping off Lukere's. "Hey, Chari?"

"Yes?"

"What'll you do, now that your fortress is ruined?"

She shrugged. "I suppose we'll start afresh. Find more stones, more mortar, more glass. It's been done before. It can be done again. The Silverhand fulfilled his promise. He came as soon as he could."

"You're awfully practical."

"I live in the Borderlands. Fortresses get torn down and rebuilt a lot."

Lukere, who was a little more used to the fortunes of war than Alair, nodded. "Well. Maybe we'll come help you, now that my esteemed First Brother has restored the peace and brought midsummer back to the North with magic and fluffy good feelings. But Alair. My friend. If I could have a moment of your time, there's something I would like to tell you—"

"Lukere," Alair said tiredly. "Ordinarily, my answer would be yes. But I'm tired right now. And—well. Not terribly sober. Could it wait until the morning?"

"It shouldn't," Lukere said. "But if that's what keeps you comfortable."

"It is," Alair said. He stretched. "I'm not up to your bickering about Jalith tonight. I'm sorry. I'm just not."

"Yes," one Northman said brightly, using new Mendelefa picked up from Lukere himself. "You should yourself get fucked."

Lukere stood, and was about to say something he would probably have regretted when sober, when a great racket from the direction of the castle silenced him.

It was the sound of horses trampling, and mail clanking, and Jalith's voice louder than anything else, screaming:

"Herpakor! Herpakor!"

And this was not the most amazing thing, though neither prince understood why their brother should be shouting such a strange nonsense word at such a late hour.

The three Northmen they had been drinking with, who seemed like stolid and sensible fellows, immediately began screaming, clawing over each other to get to the keep. Even Chari, whose grim bravery no man could doubt, had turned a nasty shade of chalk.

"What's going on?" Alair asked. The entire camp was beginning to move rapidly backward, into the Keep. Everywhere, in air that had previously been occupied by song and laughter, was screaming.

"It's an old story," Chari said slowly. "Older even than the tale of Telhir and Anmar Sedat. Herpakor—it means, roughly, the one who slumbers in earth. The powers of earth that rule this land created it—long ago, before men even lived. It is a creature made out of stone and the magic that rules stone, and legend has it the earth powers sent it away at the dawn of the age of men, sent it to sleep under these mountains until great need awakened it."

"Wonderful," Lukere said. "So now we've got monsters in this story. I'm too drunk for this."

"But there's no great need here," said Alair, puzzled. "We've a king in the North, a King in the South, and two lands united. I mean, we're in the opposite of great need."

Chari gave him a sharp look. "Not our need, I think," she said at great length. "The Sedat has lost his army and his spell of frost is fading. His son is turned against him. And if there ever was a mage who could awaken the herpakor..."

"Oh," Alair said. Then, faintly: "I think I'm too drunk for this, too."

"So are ninety percent of these men," Jalith said, from somewhere behind them. "Get up, all of you. We need to get all these people into the keep. Come on. Go!"

The First Prince and newly-declared king of the North was riding a decidedly ordinary looking brown horse of sturdy barrel-like build, and was wrapped in a very tatty saddle blanket of indeterminate color. Chari and the two princes stood to begin spreading the message.

"What happens next, brother?" Alair called.

But Jalith was already gone, his hoarse voice shouting after them: "Herpakor! Herpakor! To the keep, if you value your lives!"

The shout was being taken up all over the field, in varying languages and dialects. It was only then, looking out over the chaos, that the princes noticed the wall of frost waiting beyond the valley, and that the mountains, infallible for millions of years, had begun to move.

* * *

 This witchwoman was Ahalla Lololla, the long-ago Cypress Queen of Shoredich Swamp at the eastern boundary of Ur province. She was supposedly a very attractive woman, but cursed by the weight of facial hair that never stopped growing. While it is not told how this curse was received, it was ended by the coming to those swamps of Telhir, who sang her a song so beautiful it charmed her facial hair right off. Though she lost her eyebrows and lashes as well, she was quite happy to lose the beard and moustache. Telhir stayed with her for four days and four nights, and the children of that union are the Swamp Children of the east, feared by the Souchladil for their magical skills. Southerners in Ur province still make a soup—Witch Brow Soup—out of brown fried noodles and broth to commemorate this unlikely legend.

# THREE

### In Which There Is, Finally, A Herpsicore

From inside the ancient stronghold of Sirili the remainder of Jalith's combined army watched the devastation bloom in the valley.

Relatively few had been left outside—thanks to Jalith's quick response and the labyrinthine tunnels under the fortress, most of the men had found their way in, and space to keep them. Jalith caught himself wondering, a little bitterly, if Telhir himself had once had to do something very similar to what he was doing now. The presence of the tunnels suggested it.

The keep, in spite of its dilapidated condition, held well. The walls, though full of chinks and cracks, were thick and strong. And something—the deep magic Jalith had sensed in the place before, he supposed—seemed to repulse these strange creatures.

Knowing this did not make it any easier to watch the deaths of the men outside .

On the ramparts with the remnants of his team, Jalith forced himself to watch the mountains all around them shudder and tremble, watch parts of them come to life and separate from the living rock. The creatures—man-shaped, he sometimes thought, gruesome in their half-hewn incompleteness—the creatures descended with a rapidity hardly to be believed from something as solid as rock. Their arms were thick and long, their rough fists hit the ground harder than canonballs as they threw themselves forward.

They had no faces. Only pits for eyes, mouths full of teeth like sharp pebbles. In a shower of earth and small stones they moved in, jaws grinding.

The screaming began.

Jalith forced himself to listen. Below, the luckier of his men pulled the stone gates of Sirili shut with a grinding crash.

"Herpakoril," Chari murmured from somewhere beside him. "Not one, but many. This is strong magic, even for the Sedat. What did he sell, for such power?"

Watching the creatures outside rend and grind, Jalith knew the answer. "The last part of his soul that was human."

Jalith felt numb. The air was growing colder by the second—the white frost, so briefly absent from this piece of land, crept forward in tendrils over the bloodstained ground outside. He felt the comb, Anmar Sedat's token, twisted into his yellow hair. It was as dead and cold as it had been the day he found it. There would be no more help from that quarter, he realized, if help it had ever truly been—the Sedat had bent his will against him. His father, at last, had chosen his cold White Peace.

Even Jalith, not primarily a fighter, knew that no matter how well this fortress held, no matter how many charms of protection had been draped around it, they were now under siege. People under siege need supplies, and they had none. Not enough, Jalith guessed, to feed all these people for even one night.

There was death outside, and death inside. There was nothing waiting for them but death.

The terrible creatures below had finished chewing up his men, and were now circling the castle in a lithe and predatory fashion. One of them picked a stone from the walls, as easily as a palace lady plucking a leaf, and began to chew on it. Jalith had never heard the sound of stone splintering before; had not even thought it possible. He was hearing it now. It was awful.

There was a hand on his shoulder, gauntleted in black. "My lord," Karloi said. "You can't let it end like this."

"No," Jalith said. "But how do we fight them? A sword won't touch them. Fire won't burn stone, water won't drown it. Give me a way, Rekhat, and I'll gladly try it."

"Herpakoril," Chari whispered, almost dreamily. "The creatures of hefenta. They are said to be unkillable."

"Nonsense," Lukere said grimly. "There's a way to kill everything."

Jalith tuned them out, looking down at the creatures swarming below. There were thousands of them now, more rising every moment from the cannibalized rubble of the mountains. They were dark, strong, ugly things, slick with blood. Their almost man-shapes were so offensive, Jalith realized, because these things possessed none of the fire and spirit of an actual man. They were sad little dolls, designed to kill and kill only. Their movements, though lithe, were mechanical. They were puppets of hate, controlled and eaten by it.

Sedat's hate. His bitterness. How it must burn him.

Jalith thought about this. He thought about his birth-father, about the dead white peace of Anmar Sedat. He thought about the stillness of Sixdoves, how close he had come to succumbing to it. He thought about what had been missing there.

"Love," he said suddenly.

"Surely," Lukere said dryly, "you're not suggesting we kill them with kindness."

"No," Jalith said, frowning. "And yes. There's no magic in this place—I'm a fool, to have just now realized it. What's keeping them away is us. The new friendship between these lands, small though it is, has power against the old earth. Love softens the magic of the North, makes it pliable. Anmar Sedat's Test of Naming broke his spell because, in seeing the events of my creation, I knew him for my father and loved him. It was a love he could not return. He is incapable, I think, of love."

"Be careful, my son," said Lanon. Newly come from a nap, wrapped up in an old cloak, he looked tired and ill, much thinner and paler than he ever had before. He put a hand on Jalith's shoulder, stifling a cough until he could speak through it. "Love might soften the magic of the North, but it can also weaken you. It was your love for the Sedat that held you to him—that still holds you to him. Your love for Machertani nearly destroyed you, when you had to kill her. This is a lesson I perhaps should have taught you long ago. Sometimes, it takes more than love to win a war."

Jalith was putting things together, two by two, in his skull. "No," he said finally. Love doesn't weaken a thing. It wasn't love that held me to Anmar Sedat. It was doubt. Doubt in myself—perhaps even in you. If I had loved him truly, loved the man himself, I would have killed him. I think I understand it now. Lukere," Jalith added suddenly. "Lend me your bow."

"Don't hurt yourself, brother," Lukere said, shrugging and handing it to him. "Arrows're just going to clatter right off, you know."

Jalith drew the bow and notched the arrow to the string. 'Not this one," he muttered. "I hope."

Jalith thought of his childhood. He thought of Lanon, young and dark-haired, picking him up and swinging him, tossing him up in the air until the whole world spun, until the air around him had seemed suffused with the golden midmorning light of joy, until he stumbled and fell to the ground and laughed at his own dizziness, his own human frailty.

He thought of climbing stunted desert trees with Alair, of shooting imaginary enemies with twigs and rocks. He thought of camping out in the Appointed Gardens late at night when the desert grew cool, whispering of the beautiful court ladies, swearing children's promises, sealed with a few drops of blood and the bonds of brotherhood.

He thought of Karloi, the Rekhat duchess, willing to sacrifice her life and injure a prince to keep warfare from destroying her lands. He thought, briefly, of Machertani—the cold beauty that had so fascinated him, the smile which, even with death behind it, he would have gladly fallen into.

He thought of the thousand small kindnessess done to him by palace servants, who had loathed the North and its presence in a Southern palace, but who had reacted kindly all the same to the sight of a small lonely boy.

Jalith saw the dark creature below, knawing on the stone of the fortress with sick animal hunger. With love inside him, suffusing him, he let the arrow fly. The arrow did not rebound, as all previous arrows had done, but burrowed deep inside the stone. There was a flash of light, so brief it was barely visible, and another pile of rock stood beside the fortress.

Beside him, with a wild shout, Lukere raised his spear.

"Love!" he shouted to the men on the ramparts. "Think of what you love!"

And a thousand arrows flew, armed with thoughts of wives and family, holdings and green pastures. Lukere let go of his anger for a moment and, for the first time in many years, reached for the love hidden deep inside him, and was surprised by what he saw. Chari Ironstar thought of the warm stone halls of her keep and of the people, Northern and Southern, who traded through it. Lanon saw a map, labeled and perfect, of his lands—and through it all the people, great and small, who swore him allegiance.

Alair, whose arrows always flew true, thought of Jalith.

Amidst the wild war whoops and battle cries of the folk on the ramparts, Jalith stood silent, concentrating furiously on love as he drew one arrow after another from the quiver. His fingers were raw now, his arm aching. He concentrated because he knew, in the end, that Lanon was right. Love alone was not enough.

Just behind his thin mask of concentration, he heard the Sedat calling him.

My son. My son.

It was the pure voice of longing. It was the voice of six thousand years spent in arctic slumber. It was the voice of raw loss—of a man whose pregnant wife had been ripped from his arms, who had not touched his own child until he was twenty years old.

Slowly, Jalith's hand stopped reaching for the quiver. From the rubble of the mountains, barely more than hills now, more herpakoril continued to emerge.

My son.

Jalith knew the danger in that voice. He knew its falsity and it deception.

But his father had, after all, been betrayed. It had been the Allking's sin, and not the Sedat's, that had begun six thousand years of conflict.

It needed to be fixed. Reconciled. The sins of Telhir, if sins they were, had become the sins of a people.

My son.

Gently, Lanon touched his arm. "Go do what you must do," he said. "We can hold here, until it is finished."

The old king gave Jalith, for the last time, the kiss of the king's peace.

"Love is the king's might," he said, smiling faintly. "But there are times, my son, when you will need more than love. I wish you luck."

Jalith began the descent down the stair to the gate. From behind him, he heard Alair:

"Father? Where's he going?"

But he was gone long before he could hear the answer. He was through the fortress, full of people, and out a side door.

On the field below the herpakoril turned to attention as he passed, recognizing perhaps that a son for the last time went to his father.

• • •

From the battlements, Alair saw Jalith head below.

"Father," he asked, a little nervously. "Where's he going?"

"He goes to the Sedat." Lanon put his own bow down—though he had been shooting with the rest of them his arrows had lacked strength, had sometimes even missed their targets entirely. In the half-white light of the frost Lanon looked drawn and pale and tired. "Probably to kill him. it is the only thing that will truly end this, I think. Love has a lot of power, my dear boy, but it's never the thing that ends a war."

"He went out there alone?"

"He's a grown man, Alair. This is something you can't protect him from." Lanon sighed. "You heard him earlier. The Sedat is his father. He calls Jalith to him still—will always call him, unless something is done to stop it." Then: "Oh no. Alair, don't even."

For Alair had sheathed his bow and had drawn his sword. "No," he said. "I'm sorry, Father, but not this time. He'll need me."

With Lanon yelling after him, Alair descended the stairs after his brother. He found the side door beside the gate, opened it. He slipped out into the chaos below.

All was cold. All was white.

The herpakoril, passing by him on all sides like moving mountains in the mist, were coated with thick white frost. The ground had iced over, and when the stone creatures stepped upon it it crackled and creaked and groaned. The air was silent, save for the sounds of crunching rock and heavy footfall. The taunts and battlecries from the castle barely even registered in the vast white cold all around him.

For the first time, lonely and freezing and small, Alair got a taste of the true majesty of Anmar Sedat's white peace. His breath streamed out from his mouth and nostrils in white tendrils of fog. He felt as though his spirit could go with it, could rise and rise with the warm air until it reached the ultimate quenching cold of space.

But no.

Not now.

For there, not fifty paces in front of him, silvered scars glinting in the air like hot coals, was Jalith.

And in front of him was a mountain that had ceased to be a mountain, a mountain that had uprooted itself from the earth and walked now almost as a man.

It was taller than Sirili, taller than the white towers of Oot Town. Taller even than distant Setsuma, little mountain of the Southkings. From its rough jaws earth poured, black rich earth buried in a mountain's heart for millions of years.

"JALITH," Alair screamed. Did he not see it? Was it so large that he had somehow missed it? "JALITH!"

Jalith stood as though spellbound—much as, Alair realized suddenly, he himself had been standing moments before.

Alair's heart began to pound. Piece by tiny piece, muscle by muscle, Alair forced himself to move. One foot, then another. Stumbling, then walking.

The herpakor raised a stone fist the size of a battlement above Jalith.

Running!

Alair did not stop running until he had run into Jalith, crashed into him so hard they both went skidding across the ice with the power of it. Alair's sword jerked out of his hand and went skidding across the ice as well, far out of his line of sight and into the mist.

"Alair," Jalith said puzzledly. "Why did—"

He looked up.

"Shit," Jalith said.

The fist came down.

There was a sound so loud Alair had difficulty telling what was sound and what was the ringing in his eardrums afterwards. A geyser of earth and browned frost spouted skyward, scattering almost gently back down over the mountainous fist that had dislodged it. Jalith lay in front of him by some length, his yellow hair black now with mud. He reached out a hand. Alair, regaining his feet, took it and helped his brother up.

"That was stupid," Jalith said. He was smiling. He was a mess, covered in mud from head to foot. Alair had an idea he looked about the same.

"Yes, well. Lucky for you I'm stupid, or you'd be dead right now."

Jalith grinned. Up above, the herpakor roared: a sound like a river of gravel being dumped into the sea.

"Do you know where you're going?" Alair asked.

"No, but I have an idea. Wait until it tries to smash us again."

"I already think I don't like this idea."

The creature was large, and for its size fairly agile, but there was only so fast something made from the tail end of a mountain could move. Jalith and Alair watched frozen from their spots. Just as the creature made another fist, swinging it downward like a hammer, they moved again. The fist fell just beside them with another deafening crack.

Jalith grabbed onto the thumb and slung himself upwards. "Climb up!" He shouted.

"You're joking."

"Trust me."

And Alair, praying to the Allking and all the gods he could remember, tried very hard to do so. He slung himself up over the thumb and followed Jalith along the jagged surface of the arm. It was not too difficult to climb the creature: its stony skin was still rough and jagged, just as the mountain had been, and from this height the movement felt just like wind against a rock face. They had both climbed the ragged shale mountains of the Sharat-Ur desert as children, and aside from the cold this was not so different.

"It has no neck," Jalith shouted downwards, from a few handholds above Alair. "It's just a stone thing. It can't feel us climbing it, can't see where we are past its arm." He pulled himself up the shoulder, balanced nimbly along the rough line of rock until he came to the back of the head. Alair, somewhat less certainly, joined him and clung on for dear life.

"Well," he managed at last. "Now we're on top of the giant mountain creature. Where does this get us?"

"Everywhere." Jalith pointed down, down below the creature's neck to its massive stone chest. "You hear that sound, that rushing? That's its heart. Heart's water." He laughed harshly, though Alair didn't quite understand what the joke was. "I'm lighter than you are, my brother. You're going to take my arm and anchor me while I swing down there and stab it."

It took Alair a moment to hear it at all—the steady trickling sound, like a mountain stream, coming from deep inside the creature's body.

"Oh no," Alair said. "That's dangerous work. You might get crushed. Let me do it, Jalith."

Jalith smiled. "Brother, you once told me you loved me."

"Of course. Of course I love you."

"Then I need you to take my hand. And whatever you do, don't be frightened. For me or for yourself. Just think about how much you love me. How much you love Father. Just...just think about love."

"And I can't think about love and swing from your hand because...?"

Jalith's smile was distant, a little sad. "Because you're stronger than me in more than one way. You've always known how to love better than I have—and, in spite of what you'd have me believe, I've always known how to kill better than you. Please, Alair." He held out his silver-scarred hand, nails broken now and rimmed with dirt. In his other hand, red and white with ridged scars, he held a long knife. "I need you to do this. I need you."

Alair took his hand. "I'd still rather it was me," he said.

"And that's why it can't be," Jalith said. He gripped his brother's hand tightly. "I love you, brother. Hold on!"

Jalith didn't exactly brace himself against Alair's arm—it was more, Alair thought, like he just let himself fall. He trusted Alair's grip and his weight, his hold on the rough stony surface of the herpakor's neck. Alair felt his arm twist and pop under the sudden strain of Jalith's weight. He leaned as far out as he could—as far out as he dared.

The herpakor must have felt something, or heard it. As Jalith dropped it let out another grinding howl and shook itself as though trying to dislodge the strange soft creatures from its body.

Alair heard a soft thump from below as Jalith connected solidly with the creature's stone chest, a screech like nails on glass as his dagger scraped its first unwieldy arc.The pain in his arm as Jalith swung to and fro made Alair moan audibly.

"Alair," Jalith said, his voice strained. "Think about something you love. Please."

At first it was more than Alair could do to think about anything except pain and the shape of Jalith below, more distant than he would have thought two arms' lengths could make him.

Jalith. He tried to think about Jalith.

He thought about his childhood friend, the pale narrow-faced boy with the long nose and the yellow hair. He thought about how this boy had defended him in his first days in the House of Heirs—had stood between him and the little princes who had called him a peasant boy, province boy. Sea-drinker, piss-drinker, son of a dockworker (which he was). He remembered how Jalith—poor brave little soul—had only made the taunting worse by his presence.

The names had changed then. Northboy. Ice lover. Hefentakoril.

"What does hefentakoril mean?" Alair had asked Jalith, who ignored the taunting boys as blithely as though they had never been born in the first place.

"I don't know," Jalith had said seriously, frowning. "I don't remember much. Hefenta's the North magic. Kora usually means something sleeping—it can also mean loving. I think they're calling you a lover of Northern magic. One who loves it so much he could fall inside of it, sleep in it forever. Kora's complicated," he had added sheepishly. "I'm already forgetting the language. It's an old slur, though—probably the only bit of the language they know."

"Do you remember any swears?"

"Of course I remember swears!"

And the two of them, boys sitting on a sun-baked wall long ago, had proceeded to do what boys do best—trade swears. They had been fast friends ever since.

And for so long—for so many years—Alair had thought about that word. Had fallen asleep with it on his tongue. Hefentakoril. One who loves the Northern magic—one who could become one with it. Fall into it.

He did not know at what point in his boyhood he had realized that his bluster about court women was just that—bluster. He liked women, liked their company and their occasional pretty ways, shining through the mahogany luster of the courts like pearls or sudden crystal drops of dew in the Appointed Gardens. He was not shy of women or rude to them.

But his love had ever, would always, belong to Jalith.

He knew Jalith did not feel the same way. He didn't know if anyone else in the world did. There were legends of the kings of old—Talan, the Allking's heir, came to mind in particular—preferring the company of men, but they were seldom spoken of and no stories about it were woven into the tales. Kings were allowed it, it was said, since they did not have to produce heirs of the blood. But it was never written into history, and only the bawdiest of ballads hinted at it. No epitaph in the royal graveyard existed to tell him whether or not the ballads were true.

It was simply not done. It was simply not spoken of. So Alair did not do it. He didn't speak of it.

It was weight like a stone inside of him.

Alair had made a decision long ago. If it could not be—and it could not, for Jalith loved him as a brother and nothing more or less—then it simply could not be. There were no substitutes that weren't disappointing, no middle ground that would leave him feeling good about himself. Alair would be there always, a brother, a friend, a comforter and a counsellor. For, even if it could never be quite what he wanted, it was still love. It was still Jalith.

He wanted nothing else. Could imagine a life with nobody else.

Better at loving, Alair thought wryly. Oh, my dear friend. If only you knew how bad at loving I was.

The pain in his arm lessened slightly. He looked down to find that Jalith had gotten his footing against the stone and was standing, legs braced, with his dagger raised over the creature's chest. The pain in his arm was much duller now. Barely a whisper.

Jalith raised the dagger slightly, nodded at him. "Keep loving things, please!" He shouted.

Always.

Alair nodded back.

Jalith, he thought, clearly as though he were speaking aloud. When you were a little boy, my brother and friend, I loved you. When you were a teenager, aware of your own fate and hating it, I loved you. And now—you are a king, a hero, a messenger of an ancient time. You carry the burden of six thousand years like a yoke of love on your shoulders. I forgive you, Jalith, my dearest heart. I forgive you for not being like me. I think I would not love you so much if you were. I think then you would seem human. And I do not think you were meant to be one of us. You were meant to be better.

And inside him, a dam that had long held broke. He felt his love, all his years and years of unrequited hopeless love, pouring out of him like a bright glad river. He fell into it, helpless and smiling, his fingers bloody and white where they gripped the stone.

Hefentakoril. A love so deep it drowns you. A beautiful dream, from which you will never want to wake.

"Northking," he murmured, smiling, thinking how glad he would be to live in this moment forever, even to die in it. "Northking. Hail!"

Jalith plunged his dagger deep into stone, into rock suddenly malleable and soft as butter. He plunged deep and clean.

The creature roared once, an agonized and awful sound, and was still. Alair saw water, clear and cold, pouring out from what had once been its chest and was now a small cave near the top of a stony hill.

Jalith dropped onto the ridge that had once been a collar bone. He was soaked, and the water that poured from him was brown with mud.

Alair felt something wrench inside him, and the scene seemed suddenly whiter, clearer, as though suffused with some inner light. He smiled, tried to wave to Jalith. His hand would not obey him—was clenched to the rocks that had once been a neck. He could not unclench it. He felt, somehow, that it did not matter.

Hefentakoril.

Brother, I loved you truly and well all my days.

Jalith turned to him, and the smile went out of his face. "Alair!" He shouted. "Alair!"

But his voice was already distant, little more than a murmur in the river Alair felt flowing all around him. He heard the rocks clatter down as Jalith reached up to him, took his free hand. The pressure, which would have meant everything to him a few minutes ago, was little more than an afterthought now.

"Alair—"

But the Seventeenth Prince was gone. Jalith released his hand, kissed his brow, closed his eyes. It would take him a very long time to understand the smile, unearthly and perfect, that lit up his friend's dead face. 

# FOUR

### In Which Things End

Jalith entered the cave.

He did not know why he had to do it, only that it was the way, and he had to follow it. When the light from the outside was lost he followed the trickling of the little stream. It wound down and down, down and down and down, down into darkness older and crueller than any he had ever known.

He had opened a gate somehow, or Alair had opened it. The hefenta-stohl. What was it Machertani had said, so long ago?

Perhaps I'll take his heart. It's innocent enough. And my, how full of love it is!

Jalith did not know if it had been a sacrifice, or an accident, or simply the way things had to be. He knew he would grieve for it for a long time, perhaps for the rest of his life.

But now—but now.

He followed the stream.

He plucked the comb from his hair—the old warrior's comb, the malat ma'a of his father. It glowed sullenly in the dark, as if unwilling to give up its secrets. In its low red light the corridors and twisting tunnels he followed seemed arched, and the deeper he got the more certain he was they were man-made. The doorways had markings on them, scratches he knew were no longer decipherable in any language known to man.

This deep place, this ancient dark-ridden hell, was a place of the Earth, of hefenta. He named it, without knowing how or why.

Mourninghall.

The stream, unchangable, trickled onward. Jalith was almost running now.

Mourninghall!

The home of the dead brother, his uncle, no more than a ghost and a cause of contention even in the oldest of songs.

All shall fade, in Mourninghall.

Once this had been a bright place, a place of learning and power. The Sedat had sunk it underground when his brother had died—had preserved it as a huge masoleum, in the death-silence of the deep underground. Had he loved his brother, wished to honor his memory? Or had he known, somehow, that he would soon need a bolt-hole of his own?

It was here, after all, his father had first opened his heart to the earth—had first become something other than human, something so much less and so much more.

It was here the sorceress Machertani had grown up. She had claimed this place as her home—had she wandered it alone, afraid? Had it been a hell for her, or had it grown comforting? And the Sedat, who had taken her into his service: it had been just the two of them here, or must have been. Had he been a kind master, a good one? Jalith doubted it deeply. He wasn't sure the Northmage understood 'kind', or ever had.

He imagined Machertani here, learning her arts in the service of the earth. He imagined bones grinding, flesh rending, tendons tearing. He remembered her red lips, their pressure and need against his own.

He understood her at last, perhaps, the Norchladil sorceress. He felt her cold presence in these halls, her darkness in their darkness. He imagined her going slowly mad here—realizing how easy it would be, in the dark silence, to think a few children's lives an acceptable bartering chip for light, breeze. An end to this endless maddening maze.

He did not know how long he had been running when he came at last to a door. It was the only door he had seen so far, and it was made of ivory, or something very like it. The scene carved into it was a hunting scene, figures softened by age and wear into near anonymity. There were horses, trees, men on the horses whose faces were now little more than indentations.

In the entire scene, in fact, only two of the figures were still clear. Two men, at the forefront of the party—Jalith knew who they were without having to look. Two brothers, raising their spears together in the kill. Telhir and Anmar. The great lords of the North.

Beneath them, where an animal should have been waiting for slaughter, was an empty slot pierced with holes. Jalith fit his comb into them, pushing down until he heard a click, and the lost animal on the comb's head was reunited with its destiny as prey—for, in context with the frieze, it was now obviously neither bear nor dragon, but a white hind.

The door slid open.

Behind it, waiting with his robes drawn up around him against the darkness, was Anmar Sedat.

"So you've come," he said at last. "I thought you might not, this time."

Had Machertani found the comb, originally? Lost love, impossible love. Had it been her slight presence here that woke the Sedat from his sleep?

Jalith faced him.

The man had changed much in the few weeks since Jalith had seen him last. The face, now more obviously Jalith's own, was haggard and ugly with anger. The robes, once impeccable white fur, were stringy and yellowed.

Where there had once been burgundy eyes there were now two gaping holes, rimmed round with blackening flesh. The Northmage groped forward, seeking his son's arm. Jalith gave it to him.

"Your eyes," he asked, his voice sounding dry and businesslike in the deadening underground silence. "Was it the price for your power?"

"No, no." The mage shook his head. "My power has never had the sort of price you imagine, and what I've done has been my own doing. I used them—I used the pain. To call you."

"To what purpose?"

The mage laughed dryly. "Purpose? There was none. My purpose is finished—the herpakoril summoned from their deep sleep, the white peace awakened. I wanted to see you. I wanted to see my son, one last time."

"Well," Jalith said.

He wanted to say: your son did not want to see you. You've caused me more grief, more pain—my brother lies dead outside, killed by your evil creatures. Your white peace nearly killed me. I did not want to see you. I wish I could turn my back right now.

He wanted to say: Do you know how many years I wondered who you were, dreamed of you? I imagined you as a village farmer, a fishmonger, a poor lord of some rocky Northern pocket of land. And you were this. You were a monster.

But instead he reached out his other arm, steadied the blinded man as he sank to the ground. In the deep places of the world one could only speak truth, and his hatred was not truth, or at least not the whole of it. Jalith sat with him.

"Well," the Sedat said at last, sounding eerily like Jalith himself. "Here we sit, at the end of the world. Father and son. After six thousand years of sleep—this."

In the dark place, this place of earth, there was no sound save the burble of the stream. Jalith sat numbly, watching it trickle down from the wall at the end of the room. Beside him the Sedat sat just as quietly.

"You wanted a battle," he said gently. "I know. You wanted a fight, an armored mage with vengeance in his heart. And instead you found me—or what's left of me. I have given the dark powers of earth everything I had, Jalith, for a peace I thought I understood. A peace without loss, without betrayal. And now—" he shrugged. "Well, and now. I have seen you, perhaps too clearly. I wanted you perhaps too much."

"I don't understand," Jalith said.

"Then I'll make it simple, Jalith Silverhanded. Kill me. The herpakoril—I summoned them, made them with all the power I could muster. If I die, they will die as well. To save your lands, North and South, you must kill me."

They looked at each other.

"I never wanted to kill you," Jalith said softly.

"But you must. For what I have done—for the six thousand years I lay dreaming! The world is very different now, Jalith. And I, though I have slept unchanged—I am different too. I would to the gods I had never seen you, never touched your living hand. I might have covered the whole world in frost, in clean white peace, and never known anything better."

Urgently, the Northmage pressed his hand. "I will not lie to you, my son. I do not love you—though I wish I did. But you love me. You loved me enough to come to me in this prison of earth I have made for myself, even after the things I have done against you. You love me, I hope, enough to kill me now. "

"I don't know," Jalith said numbly. "I'm sorry, my father. I just don't know if I can."

The Sedat stretched full length on the ground, his white-blond hair fanning out below him like glistening frost. "You must, Jalith. If only because I was once a man—a man with a wife and a child and a keep, with taxes to pay and wheat to harvest, with men who looked up to him. This man, the man who helped conceive you, has been dead for thousands of years. I would like to be that man again, but I have done too much. Too much."

He crossed his arms over his chest. He looked so peaceful lying there, so still and serene, that for a moment Jalith forgot everything he had done, and went to him, and put his arms around him. He felt the matted roughness of his fur robes, the strange cool softness of his hair.

"How?" he asked at last, numbly.

"Take the comb from the door, and drive it into my heart. Be swift, and do not hesitate. I do not wish to feel any pain. Just—cold."

Jalith rose, took the comb from its slot in the door behind him.

"And this will end it," he said. "I know you cannot lie here. If I kill you, the herpakoril will go back to the earth?"

"Yes, my son. As will I."

Still Jalith hesitated. The comb, raised over the Sedat's chest, wavered.

"Why?" he said at last, simply. "After all you've done—all your power. All the time you called to me. Why this?"

The Northmage laughed. In the dry heart of the earth, it sounded almost human. "This is what you were born to do, my son. Perhaps I fought it for as long as I could. But in the end all of us, even I, must bow to a higher will than our own—and when I saw you, child of my blood, I could no longer be both monster and father. No principle, no peace, is more important to me than your life. Do it now, Northking. Quickly!"

Jalith struck downward with the comb, struck with all his might.

Through the tunnels and carverns there echoed a strange sound—almost like a sigh.

A few drops of blood, first red and then purple, flowed over the rock and into the stream.

Jalith felt nothing.

He stood, sheathed the now bloodied comb back in his hair.

He walked away.

When they saw him from the parapets of Sirili, they cheered. He could not cheer with them. He had killed too many, done too much. There was love in him, yes—and more than love. Something dark and cold, smooth and polished, rested now in his heart. He felt the weight of his losses inside him like a stone.

He was, at last, a king.

# EIGHT

####  THE UNITED KINGDOM

# ONE

### In Which A Ring Is Passed

White Sirili, bastion of an ancient king and in no way a home, rang with the sounds of rejoicing. Its current occupants had festooned its walls, crumbled and scarred now in battle, with evergreen boughs stripped from the surrounding forest. The remains of the herpakoril—stones of varying sizes, mud, handfuls of gravel—they used to patch the most obvious holes, the most gaping cracks. Even bustling with life, surrounded by people, the fortress looked remote, looming over the goings-on below like a thing out of time and place.

Which, Jalith supposed wearily, it was. Much like himself.

The two peoples, Northern and Southern, danced and joked and drank long into the night. They were, after all, not so different—their cultures had come from the same family, from two brothers different as night and day. All they had needed, perhaps, was the one thing they had never had—someone they could all believe telling them to get along.

Brothers are still brothers. Family is still family. And, if the Northerners loved their new pale King, the Southerners had learned to love their own First Prince. Once reviled, the promise of so many good things now sat heavy upon him. They spoke his name and they meant peace. They spoke his name and they meant a golden age, six thousand years of hostilities laid to rest. They spoke his name in the tone of history, though he walked among them, living, breathing, and sick of heart.

In the weeks that followed the breaking of the White Peace, Jalith was courted. There was no better way to describe his peoples' behavior than courting: they left little gifts in front of the rooms he had taken, so many that sometimes he had trouble opening the door. They touched him when they thought he wasn't paying attention: light touches, soft and hopeful, reverent. He became used to fingers of all colors brushing his hair, his arms, his back.

Those who were musically inclined wrote songs. They were noble songs, heroic and pure and full of promise. They called him Peacebringer, Frostbreaker, Golden King. They made him a warrior, seven feet tall and broader than a barn. They made him a hero, step-sure and confident.

Jalith didn't feel much like a hero.

He felt, in fact, like a murderer.

And they were already coming to him—already, so few days away from the death of the Sedat and the breaking of the White Peace—with their little problems, their hints and hopes. One soldier was headman of a village called Insuriaga, and he thought the fishing in the river there would be much improved by a solid dam. One woman, a healer with a face like a hatchet, had been declared Clanless by those of her village (because, she hastened to explain, some violence was out and out necessary), and perhaps, due to her service here at the gates of Sirili, the new King could see his way into granting a sort of general clemency...?

They were like children playing at the feet of a favorite uncle. They had been given a new toy—a High King—and they were eager to figure out how he worked.

Their King, for his part, had never lived in the North. He understood maybe a third of the requests whispered with various degrees of obliqueness in his ear. He didn't know their Clan system, their rites of passage, their cobbled-together forms of government. He knew only that they were warm to him, and friendly, and for the most part understanding.

It was funny, really. Now, after so many years of struggling to fit in as the yellow-haired prince of a dark people, he would have to learn to be what he had been all along.

"I'll stay by you, of course," Chari had said gruffly, clapping him on the shoulder. "You'll need someone to tell you whom among these sods you can trust and whom you can't. Nobody better than I, way I see it—I've seen many of them, passing through the trade routes. Might as well stay, until Northold's rebuilt—they can manage that much on their own."

Jalith appreciated it. He appreciated it, in fact, much more than he felt it was Kingly to say in public.

Bit by bit, the Southern army was leaving. The Rekhat left first, hoping to get her men back home in time for harvest. The other territories were not far behind. Lanon and his retinue left sometime in the second week, the last to go. Lanon had embraced him, held him at arm's length, tilted his face up to look at Jalith in his heavy crown.

"My son," he had said fondly. "Allking knows, I wish I could invite you to return with me, as the First Prince should. But you'll get a better education in Kinging up here, I think. And these are your people now. We're all your people."

"I'll miss you," said Jalith. There were no words large enough for the feeling of loss in his heart. Even now, standing so close, he felt his father had never been farther away—eclipsed, in some ways, by the vision of the Sedat, ivory hair and burgundy eyes and bloodred robes.

His true father, maybe. His blood father. The father of what was cold inside him, wild, the father of the blood that listened to frost and snow and the cracking of deep ice. The father of his pride and his courage. The father of sleep and slow time.

Jalith clasped Lanon's gnarled hand in his own. There was sleep in him, and slow time, and deep magic. Yes. But there was also this—a clasped hand. The endless paperwork of peace.

Love.

"You made me," Jalith said at last, the words coming out like syrup over a thick tongue. "Sedat may have begun me, but you made me. Your touch. Your teaching. And for this, I have no words. I have a bond deeper than debt. I—"

Lanon watched him, a tired smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. "You can say it, boy," he said.

"I love you," Jalith said at last. "I love you, Father."

And he knew, somehow—perhaps through the bitter streak of frost that curled in his blood—that this would be the last time he got to say it. He saw the lines on the old King's face, the blankness to his eyes, the stoop of his shoulders, and he knew.

"My cough has been worsening," Lanon said, as though he could sense his son's thoughts. "It won't be long, I think. Not now that I've no reason to stay alive. I plan to retire, live out what's left of my years doing only the things I want to do. Promise me something, Jalith."

"Of course."

"Promise me you won't forget the Souchlad, reigning here on your white throne." His eyelids flickered. "Perhaps, when you rule both lands, it wouldn't kill you to take census yourself every once in a while."

"It nearly killed me to do it once," Jalith muttered.

"Pfft," Lanon said. "And look what you gained from it. Take the Census. Know your people, light and dark. And be brave." He squeezed the younger king's hand, released it. "Always be brave. A king must be that, at least, to do his people any good at all. I tried, and I think I did as well as could be expected. You can do more. And your successor, if you train him well—he'll be better than both of us. Time only moves forward, my son. Never backward. Move with it."

Jalith couldn't bear to watch the King's Party leave. He sat in his rooms, leafing idly through a book of Northern etiquette, until the hoofbeats had faded, and the valley was quiet and lonely as a stone. When he went to leave he found the door barricaded with gifts and had to, quite rudely, kick and push his way through them.

He would have missed the ring altogether, if it hadn't fallen from its perch on top of a poorly proportioned wooden statue and hit the floor with a noticeable ping.

He bent, picked it up. Gold and azure, the dragon crown. Flawlessly polished, buffed for thousands of years until the carvings were quite indistinct, the weight of it the formless weight of history on an upturned palm.

Lanon's signet ring.

The ring of a Southern king. 

# TWO

### In Which Truths Are Spoken

Jalith had, after that, supposed himself a lone Southerner in the Northern world, save for Chari, who after all barely counted. He had felt very alien at first, but with her tutelage he was beginning to feel more at home here—the rules and customs of this place came more easily to him than they should have, songs half heard and picked out a little more quickly every day. The people forgave him much. For what he had done, and the hopes they held, they were willing to forgive.

Bit by bit, these new people of his—these Northern people, stranded with him by hope or belief or lack of anywhere else to go—began to humanize his citadel. One morning, taking a walk before breakfast, he found goats grazing in a pen beside the hilly remains of a herpakor. The next morning, he found a chicken coop in the spot where Karloi's soldiery had camped. The kitchens belched white smoke and tantalizing scents with regularity, and the high halls rang with voices.

His people patched and mortared the cracks in the foundation of their ancestral home. They began to erect, on Chari's orders, a fence of wicked sharpened sticks around the compound—for the battle, she told him, was very much won, but if he thought those great lords like Rakarek who had benefited from the reign of the Northmage were going to come over and dance with his people and make daisy chains of love to hang all over him, then he was a great fool, and would never live to make a decent Allking anyway, and she might as well not waste her time with him, because nobody with half a brain bet on a dead horse.

So there was the sound of axe-grinding mixed in with the laughter of children, and the smithies stayed hot, and all in all it was very much what he had expected, for Jalith was no fool, and knew peace took as much upkeep and maintenance as any garden. Knew, better than most, that peace had many faces, and no few of them were ugly.

It was on a bright sunny morning, with clouds like spoonfuls of cream dotting the sky, that the first of these skirmishes was fought. Jalith would have headed it—came running to the walls, in fact, as soon as the messenger found him—but it was over too quickly, and by the time he reached the gates there was little to be seen but black smoke, broken timber, and a few broken bodies on the other side of the wall. Chari was there, dirt-smeared and grinning fiercely. Her Ironstar, loose in her left hand, was dark with blood.

"You missed some fun, little King," she said. "Lasted a total of twenty minutes. We smoked 'em, of course."

"Well," Jalith said, blinking. "Could you take a bit longer, next time? So I have time to get to my own skirmishes?"

"I saw no reason to trouble you. It'll be this sort of thing from now on—a few sporadic attacks, until we kill them all off. A numbers game, really." She shrugged. "You killed the Northmage, little King. You won the war, singlehandedly. Let some of us common folk have a little bit of your glory, eh?"

"Any injured?"

"A boy from Barker's Dahl sprained a shoulder trying to fire Lukere's bow. Idiot."

"Well," Jalith said, relieved. "That's not too—wait. Lukere?"

He could feel Chari's eyes on him, North-pale and canny and none too surprised. "He's here," she said. "He's been here since the Frost broke. He never left. Hasn't he spoken to you? I know he wanted to."

"He—" Jalith made an incoherent gesture, and followed it with some equally incoherent and definitely unkingly noises. Chari waited patiently, her eyes like the sea.

"He's at Alair's tomb," she said at last. "Should you choose to speak to him. Sire."

Jalith didn't precisely choose to. He had never gotten along with Lukere—wouldn't have, he thought, even if they hadn't been princelings in direct competition for most of their lives. Lukere was too dark for him, too dour. He overwhelmed. His presence had, through many gatherings in Jalith's childhood, felt like a blanket of anger and frustration over even the happiest of occasions.

So it was to Jalith's own surprise that he found his feet moving, briskly and purposefully, towards the stone cairn they had erected for Alair. This, he thought, must be the nature of kinghood; doing things you didn't want to do, because somebody had to do them.

Lukere was, as promised, standing alone before the hip-high pile of rocks, surrounded on all sides by dead grass and whistling silence. There was a sheen of sweat on his brow and hard hawked nose. He carried his helmet, lightly as some other men might carry a lunch basket, under one arm. His head was bowed, and his lips and fingers were moving—Jalith thought, until he got closer, that the man might be praying.

He was not. He was, instead, mouthing these words:

"Mica. Gypsum. Flecks of basalt. Granite. Shale. Slate."

"Excuse me," Jalith said.

Lukere didn't even turn around. Jalith, who knew his brother's hearing was keen, thought he might have been expected.

"It's funny," Lukere said. He tossed the pebble he had been fingering back onto the cairn. "Over thirty recognizable types of rock in that one pebble. Melded together. Flowing together like water. What kind of magic is that, I wonder?"

"Hefenta," Jalith said. "The magic of the old earth. A type of blood-binding, rooted in pain and longing. Hopefully, we'll never see its sort again."

"If you think that, brother, you've a long way to go until you reach wisdom," Lukere said flatly. He picked up another stone, hefted it experimentally. "Some marble in this one. You can see the veining."

Jalith looked at the extended rock, and the blunt-fingered hand that offered it.

"Very interesting," he said carefully. "But I heard you wanted to see me."

"I did." The rock was tossed against the others on top of the cairn. "I was wondering, Jalith. Northking. Do you know why this man died?"

Jalith could have answered a lot of things. For love. For hope. Because he had to. But each answer, as he examined it, struck him as wrong—struck him almost as a betrayal of the soul who slept now silently under the stones.

"I don't," Jalith said at last. "Only he knew. And he can't tell us."

"I could tell you," Lukere spat. "I could tell you the thing everyone in the courts knew but you and Lanon. I could tell you the rumors. Your dear friend Alair—did you know he was more likely to grab the arses of stableboys than the girls in the kitchens? He liked them tall and thin, brother. He liked them with yellow hair. He was a toss. A poofter. A faggot."

He must have glanced up, seen something rewarding in Jalith's face, because he went on. "How pure does that love seem to you now, Jalith? How clean of spirit, worthy of song and splendor? He was a nancy little bastard and he never cared for anyone but your fine pale self. He never looked twice. He only saw you. And you—did you even notice? Did you even ask yourself why he followed you so unfailingly, why he finished every task your pretty white hands abandoned? He loved you. He loved you so much, so completely, that his heart broke from it. That, Oh Hallowed King, is why your friend is dead. He died for love of you. He died—oh, gods—"

And, to Jalith's crystalline amazement, he began to cry.

Jalith had never seen Lukere cry. He had never, for that matter, even imagined he could. But here he was—sweat-soaked and blood-spattered, crouched on one knee before the grave of the Seventeenth Prince, weeping as though the whole world had broken, and he was the only human being left alive. His hands raked great useless trails in the loose earth beneath the stones.

Jalith, not knowing what else to do, knelt beside him, and put a hand on his heaving shoulder.

"I'm an idiot," he said at last. "I didn't know. I truly didn't. But now that you say it, I don't know how I couldn't have. It doesn't matter to me. His sacrifice—"

Lukere punched him. Ringingly, resoundingly. In the face.

His gauntlet missed Jalith's nose by inches. It tore through the flesh of his cheek, split his lip, left a ringing in his right ear. It also left him sprawled, in quite an undignified position, on the barren ground.

"His sacrifice," Lukere snarled, "was his entire life. I don't love you, Brother. I don't think I ever could. I came close, before this—before this stupid faggot bastard decided to up and die. But I just can't forgive you this. You and your stupid storybook life. You and your sweet words, with death and cold just underneath. You killed him. You killed him." He took a deep wrenching breath. "And you didn't even bother to wonder why."

Lukere struggled to his feet. Jalith heard the movements, rustlings of chainmail, but was unable to move. Not even to avoid the gob of spit, flecked with dark earth, Lukere landed straight on his face.

"Rest assured, brother. I'll see you crowned, and I'll see your fealty kept in the Southern lands. You'll probably be a magnificent king, just as you were groomed to be. But I want you to remember Alair, my brother. I want you to remember how quietly, how skillfully and carefully, he lived for you. And I want you to never pass a moment—not a single moment—where you don't wonder how many others are willing to do the same.

There is no King's might. In and of yourself, Brother, you're as mighty as a fucking dandelion. You're nothing. You're a shell, a vessel for others to pour their hopes and dreams inside. Your might, if anything, is what people make of you. What they see in you. What they do for you, what they need from you. And I will do, for my part, what you ask of me, and I'll only do that because a far greater man than you saw fit to give far more. You think you're the only one to hide? The only one with a secret self? Even your father, the Northmage Sedat, had a secret heart, one that loved you and saw hope in you. And in the end, it was that secret heart that killed him. Don't disappoint your friends, Jalith. They're the best thing you've got."

Lukere sniffed, wiped his nose on his sleeve. "This man here," he said. "This faggot. This fop. This fish-diving curl-tossing scum. He was fifty times the hero you are. And if you want to wear that pretty signet ring you're flashing, you'll accept it, and know it, and keep it as your own secret shame. As Alair kept you as his."

He wiped the last of the tears from his eyes, flicked them out over the cairn. "As I kept him as mine."

Then, just as abruptly, he was silent.

"Help us," he whispered, at long last. "Those of us who look to you—who need you and your bright legend. Help us."

Jalith could feel his footfalls receding through the grass, until they were a whisper, a trembling, and finally, nothing at all.

Jalith sat up, leaving a fairly good amount of his blood on the dry grass. He wiped the spit from his face. His head throbbed with every movement. He could feel his cheek swelling, moment by moment, like some sort of pulsing balloon.

Someone, at least, understood him, and knew him perfectly well for what he was. Nature's pale chameleon. A nameless creature, out of time and place, who now must act the king's part as he had acted the parts of a son, a prince, a hero.

His first action, when he returned to Sirili proper, was to wave off the worried questioning of his personal scribe. His second, once he could speak over his swelling lip, was to dictate a letter to Hamrat, asking for Lukere, formerly Second Prince, to be promoted to Southern Regent, and for him to be consulted first in all matters of the Southern kingdoms, answerable only to himself, and whatever gods watched over their universe.

Help us.

He was horrible, Lukere. A human monster. A creature of rage and confusion and suppressed longings, deeper and more terrible than any bowel of the earth.

But Lukere was right. In the end, it was his duty to help. To change things for the better. And how he felt about it—the part of him that was heartsick, that had done far too much—mattered not at all, not at all.

# EPILOGUE

### Forty Years Later

It was midnight in the House of Heirs, and the night bells rang over the complex in soft somnolent waves. Of the prospective hundred princes, seventy-eight were asleep, as was right and proper.

The other twenty-two were spread out about the city, employed in their various chosen tasks. Eight—as it happened, eight of the eldest—were drinking in a city tavern under wildly improbable assumed names. Six were involved in secret trysts of varying caliber, with ladies of also varying caliber. Two deeply serious young princes had snuck a lamp into the library, and were decyphering what they very much hoped was forbidden lore. Four, having partaken of the same sour batch of tapenade, were in the restrooms.

One was simply awake, sitting by his window and staring.

He was not so old that one could call him an adult—he was, in fact, seventeen summers, trapped in that curious stage between boyhood and manhood where all things seem possible, and none seem probable. He was handsome, as far as these things go, with straight dark hair and skin the golden color of autumn sunlight. The body nearly obscured by his loose night-robes was well-formed, but he had not yet grown into the muscle it promised. His eyes were thickly lashed, bright, and too wise.

This young man was doing nothing more than gazing out at the Appointed Gardens, where he had spent many evenings playing as a child. He was observing the starkness of these familiar forms lit by moonlight, the arcane silver glimmer of the water cascading downward from a fountain.

There was a knock on his door, so soft it was barely audible even in the night's stillness.

A smile touched the lips of our observant prince.

You may have noticed, if you care for arithmetic, that only ninety-nine of one hundred possible princes are accounted for.

The hundredth prince—a boy of roughly the same age as our seated prince, dressed in a rough tunic intended for sparring, curly brown hair awry—burst in through the door.

"Gods," he panted. "The hall watcher almost caught me. I had to run halfway down the hall, take the kitchen exit, and run back through the building from the other side. I'm about stitched. This better be good, Andrian. No boring stuff tonight!"

The seated prince—Andrian—stood, and took his friend's hands in his own. "Nothing boring," he promised, smiling. "Look at you, Rueh! You're half sweat."

He was. The boy named Rueh—who could charitably be described as solid, a stocky round-faced creature with large cheeks and an upturned nose, was soaked. He grinned—a likeable sort of grin, easygoing and serene, with only the smallest hint of mischief inside it.

He promptly embraced his friend.

"Augh!" said Andrian, laughing. He shook himself. "The smell of you! Come, let's go. I asked Horren from the kitchens to put a jug of cactus wine out for us by the ovens. If we aren't too late, no one will've knicked it."

The two boys busied themselves, removing a spare length of rope from Andrian's closet and tying it to the bedpost. They threw it out of the window and shimmied down it with the ease of long practice. Together they raced through the gardens, slipped over a low gate into the palace proper.

The palace was hung over with white banners, and bunches of white desert lilies wilted on the banisters and torch brackets. They were silent, creeping through the halls, and swift as thieves—the Lord Regent of Hamrat, Lukere Swifthearted, had passed away a week ago, and the entire household was in official mourning until his funeral the following evening. There was a strict proscription against merrymaking, and frequent smiles had been sternly cautioned against by the Master of the House.

"It would do you credit," the Master had said to the assembled Princes, "in this time of mourning, to consider the sacrifices those above us have made for our united lands. The death of Lukere is a great tragedy, and you, as the future of this land, should reflect that in your bearing and comportment—for, I feel I need hardly remind you, the Golden King has come for the funeral from Sirili, and he has not yet Appointed a successor."

The Regent had, unfortunately, had the bad grace to die at the start of the rainy season, when the desert air became wet with mist and the townspeople below it were near bursting with anticipation. The House of Heirs was not nearly as somber and solemn as the House Master would have liked, promise of kingship or no.

These two princes, after a few hours of wandering, were, in fact, quite drunk, and having difficulty keeping quiet. They slipped at last out into the King's Gardens where Telhir had long ago taken his relaxation time, and where, in the present, the two boys were crammed together in an ornately carved chair, singing old drinking songs and laughing until tears streamed down their cheeks.

"And so then I said to him," Rueh finished, hands carving illegible shapes out of the air. "I said to him—so! If you don't feel that way about Karenet, then why is her scarf on your bedside table? And he made this angry face—" the face Rueh made to denote it, cheeks puffed and eyes bulging, was entirely too much for either of them.

Andrian guffawed, cramming a hand over his mouth to keep the worst of the sound from escaping. "Those Norchladil princes!" he said at last, shoulders shaking. "Always so touchy about the honor! Honor this, honor that, fate this, fate that."

His hand had, at some point in their ramblings, landed on his companion's shoulder. He had not removed it, and Rueh had not seen fit to, either. Though they were having a good time—a good drunken time—they could feel the knowledge of that hand as a burning bridge between them, a statement of how things were in a time when such things couldn't be clearly stated. In their rare moments of silence, they just looked at each other.

Rueh smiled his shy smile.

"You're so kind," he said, after the laughter had passed. "So kind, and fair, and full of grace. How do you do it, Andrian? How do you stay the way you are?"

The other prince flushed. "I'm not as good as you see me," he mumbled. "It's the beer talking. You'll wake up tomorrow, head full of ale, and you'll curse my name."

"Probably," Rueh agreed comfortably, stretching his legs. "Do they make a powder for that, in the infirmary?"

Andrian chuckled. "Yes, Ru. I have my own pain remedy."

"I knew it!" Rueh raised the jug of wine to the misty sky, toasting his companion. "Since they inducted you, and I've been forced to spend all this time with you, you've certainly been a pain in my—"

"—you boys," said a dry voice from the shadows, "should consider your language choices more carefully. The walls have ears, you know. And they still house the King, when he comes down from Sirili, in the Garden House."

The two boys quieted instantly. Andrian snatched his hand from Rueh's shoulder and sprang up.

"Who goes?" Andrian asked.

When the figure in the darkness moved into the moonlight, he wished he had said nothing.

"Ohshit," Rueh mumbled. Both Princes knelt, bowing their heads as far down as they could. "My Lord. We're so very, very sorry, if we have disturbed—"

"None of that," Jalith said impatiently. "You were having a good time. I like a little noise in my garden, on occasion."

For the figure who confronted them was, indeed, that of the legendary Golden King.

They had seen him, of course, from a distance—when business called him back to the Souchlad the hundred heirs were required to greet him as a group. And there had, somewhere back in their childhoods, been their initial induction, where they supposed they had both seen him up close.

He was not as terrifying as they had imagined. A tall, thin man, in late middle age—his hair long and almost completely white now, frown lines bracketing his mouth. He was not a man who looked like he smiled very often. In fact, the only thing that suggested he was smiling now was a quirk to his lips, and a certain glitter of humor in his eyes.

"You've been caught," he said. "Don't go trying to pretend otherwise. What're your names and ranks?"

"Rueh, called Softbody," Rueh said. "Eighty-fourth Prince."

"Andrian, called Brighteye," Andrian muttered. "Fifteenth."

The Golden King nodded, as though this was very much what he had expected. "And what brings you, on the eve of my old friend Lukere's funeral, to the King's Garden?"

"Just boyish spirits, my Lord," Rueh said, flushing uncomfortably. "Uncontrollable boyish spirits. They're, you know. Difficult to control."

To the infinite surprise of both princes, Jalith chuckled. "Believe it or not," he said dryly, "I was not born an old man. I am well aware of the boyish nature of boyish spirits. But certainly that isn't all that drives you to such a remote location, at such a remote hour."

The two princes looked at each other. They looked for a long time.

"Well," Rueh began. "The cactus beer might've had—"

"No," Andrian said. He laid a hand on his companion's arm. "I mean, yes. But no. I'm tired of lying, Rueh. I'm tired of running around, and hiding, and not telling anybody how I feel. I was going to start tomorrow—I was going to tell Axier and Ferrin about us, and those of the princes who've seemed most kind. But I might as well start now. I might as well start with the King."

He turned to face the older man, arms crossed, eyes defiant. "Rueh Softbody and I love each other," he said. "We made a pledge to each other when we were just fourteen summers. And I know it isn't how it's done, and I know it isn't how I'm supposed to feel. But it is how I feel, and it's the way of it. And it has been the only thing, other than the guardianship of your Royal Self, that's been worth a damn in my life. And I can't bear—not for one more night—for this thing to go unspoken. I won't bear it as a shame, when it's been nothing but joy."

The king, his pale grey eyes unreadable, looked from one young man to the other. "Rueh," he said at last. "Is this true?"

Rueh swallowed. "What the hell," he said at last. "Yes. It's absolutely true. And if Andrian wants to tell the world, then I'll stand there telling it with him."

"You understand, of course, that such things aren't spoken of in the Souchlad," Jalith said gently. "And that such a revelation will cost you many friends, and perhaps your positions at court?"

"Yes," said Andrian. He looked over at Rueh.

"And you, Rueh?"

"It's worth it to me, too."

The king folded his arms, adjusted the sleeves of his night-robe over his knotted pale hands. "Perhaps," he said, to no one in particular, "I can do this one thing. Perhaps then, old friend, you will stop haunting my dreams. Perhaps then, in spite of my many failures, I can feel I've achieved something like success."

"Failures?" Rueh said, thinking the words addressed to him. "You united the North and the South, my Lord. You're, like. The best king ever. Since Telhir, at least."

Jalith only smiled. "Go back to your rooms, gentlemen," he said, not unkindly. "I'm an old man, and I need to sleep." And, to the surprise of both boys, the King bowed to them—a short bow, barely a dip of the head, but a bow nonetheless. "You may wish to go to the funeral of Lord Lukere tomorrow. I think he would have been proud to have two such as you thinking about him. You're dismissed."

The two boys shot out of the gardens even faster than they had arrived in them.

• • •

For a long time the King stood, looking at the chair they had vacated. After a while he lowered himself into it, with the slowness of approaching age. He stared, then, into the distance.

"Is this what you would have me do?" he asked. Whether he was asking himself, or the ghosts of those long dead, even he could not be certain.

He shifted his gaze to the small fountain pool beside the chair. In the moonlight, he could see his own face reflected there—hair a uniform and unremarkable white now, true, but skin still so pale, eyes still grey and not the expected brown.

How long had it been, truly, since he had looked at his own face and seen something limiting in it? How long since he had seen his pale eyes and strange nose and pale skin and thought of them as obstacles to be overcome?

Kinghood had changed him. The love of his people had changed him. In the end, his people on both sides of the Mountains had overcome much to love him—thousands of years of prejudice, melted away by necessity.

But when he looked at his reflection, he still couldn't escape the reminders in it of everything he wasn't supposed to be. Of the north, wild and cold and uncompromising. Of his father—his true father, the Sedat, whose features he saw every once in a while, like a ghost's, in his own.

There had never been a time when he hated himself. For all his introspective nature, he wasn't given to self-loathing or self-pity. But there had been times when he wished what was different about him gone, when he had hated the necessity that made him cover his hair and shade his face to go outside without a guard.

He wondered, not for the first time, how much kinship his old friend Alair had felt with him for this reason alone.

"I'll do this thing," he said to the empty garden. "By gods, I'll see it done, or I'll die in the doing."

• • •

The next morning, the King dined with the courts. He visited his Souchladil territories often enough that they were quite comfortable with him, and had a chair for him on constant reserve in the breakfast hall. He was dressed immaculately, as was his practice, in white, and wore the Dragon Crown of Sirili on his brow. He looked as official as anyone eating oatmeal and eggs can look.

The court buzzed around him, gossiping and talking. He paid little attention to it, being a silent man by nature, until a throat-clearing to his left caught his notice.

"Excuse me, my Lord," said the Master of the House of Heirs.

"Yes?" Jalith gestured at him, vaguely, with a fork. "Pull up a chair, man. Try the tomatoes."

As Jalith was his Sovereign Lord, the House Master did as was ordered and pulled up a chair. A servant handed him a plate overflowing with red tomatoes brought in from Rekhat, and the House Master took two and tried them.

"Very good," he said. And, his lord's order fulfilled, he launched into his request. "My King, these boys you've so suddenly promoted to First and Second Prince. The House Masters have—they have some reservations."

Jalith helped himself to another tomato, another egg. "Their reservations," he said, "shall, of course, be carefully considered. What are they?"

"The boys are...attached, my Lord. As young boys sometimes can be. In a way that provokes only the worst sort of rumor and gossip amongst the courts."

"Hmm," Jalith said. He found the salt cellar and sprinkled a few grains of salt on the tomatoes. "Rumors and gossip, or undeniable fact?"

"That's the worst of it. They stood up together in the dining hall this morning, holding hands, and told everyone precisely what nonsense they were getting up to. It's madness, and it suggests great recklessness in their persons."

"Did you tell them I promoted them?"

"No. Not yet. I assumed, once you heard of this, you might have appreciated an opportunity to withdraw the documents."

"Hmm," Jalith said again. He tasted the tomato, shook his head, salted it more heavily. "Very interesting. What if, House Master—what if I told you it was precisely because of this that I promoted them?"

In spite of all decency and decorum, the House Master dropped his fork and stared, open-mouthed, at his King. "What?" he said.

"I met these two boys in the King's Garden last night. They told their sovereign king, who they as minor Princes have barely seen—with no one to support them, and nothing but love for each other to sustain them—how it was with them. And they didn't apologize. They understood the danger of it.

I have always said, my dear House Master, that I looked for bravery above all things in a successor. Bravery, honor, truth, and loyalty. I did not lie, though you may have misunderstood me. Bravery is not always fierceness in battle or simple acceptance of consequences. Bravery—the best kind—is knowing yourself, and being honest with yourself and those around you. Last night, I was witness to one of the most awe-inspiring feats of bravery I've ever seen. I saw their honesty, their loyalty to the truth and to each other. If those two young men can be as honest and open in all things as they were with me, well, I should like to see either one of them as King."

"My lord," the House Master said thickly. "I don't think you understand the stir this will cause in the courts."

"I hardly need to remind the House Master," Jalith said, swallowing a bite of tomato, "that I myself was a hated First Prince. It took many years, and the deaths of many more worthy than myself, for me to understand that the part of me that made me different, the part of me I hated the most, was perhaps the best part. I should not wish such suffering on any others, and I certainly would not wish it on two young boys. Luckily for us, they seem to have figured it out quite well on their own, and in much quicker time than I did."

He smiled. "Give them the documents, House Master. Give them the documents, and if you have any piece of worth left in your soul, do it with pride, and help them. For they'll need your help. Just as they'll need mine."

The House Master shook his head. Jalith, seeing the younger man's discomfiture, smiled again.

"You don't need to finish the tomatoes," he said gently, "if they aren't to your taste. Consider yourself dismissed. Oh—a moment. Add these to the documents, one for each boy. Thank you."

The House Master took the sheet of paper and left the table, walking slowly, as though he were still dreaming. It was only halfway back to the House of Heirs, in a narrow corridor with no other traffic, that he thought to look down at the unsealed notes.

They read, in the king's own narrow scholarly hand:

This is not a reward, but a responsibility. Your people will, in time, come to love you—just be as honest with them as you were with me, and if you remain half so true you will not disappoint them.

Love is the king's might. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.

Yours,

Jalith (Silverhanded)

Proud Father, and always your Humblest Servant.

Wrapped up between the papers, dingy with years but still graceful in form, was a white comb.

#

####  About the Author

Emily Russell is a young American writer who spends a good deal of time inside her head and as little time as possible outside of it. She writes legends, folk tales, fairy stories, and fantasies of all varieties. She has no great achievements or interesting side stories, and, if you passed her on the street, you wouldn't think twice about it.

She lives in North Carolina with her boyfriend, several carefully tended plants, and a kitchen bristling with cooking utensils. Someday, God willing, she'll write a cookbook, and it'll probably be her best seller.

####

Also by Emily Russell

Aurian and Jin: A Love Story

The Antidote: A Sundering Novelette

## Contents

  1.  
  2. PROLOGUE
  3. Fifteen Years Later, In A Warmer Part of the World...
  4. PART ONE
  5. HAMRAT
  6. ONE
  7. In Which The First Prince Makes A Well-Meaning But Ill-Considered Decision
  8. TWO
  9. In Which Justice is Meted, and Jalith has a Strange Dream
  10. PART TWO
  11.  OOT
  12. ONE
  13. In Which Something is Definitely Rotten
  14. TWO
  15. In Which Things Are Even More Rotten
  16. THREE
  17. In Which Things Reach a Surprising Height of Rottenness
  18. PART THREE
  19.  REKHANI
  20. ONE
  21. In Which Jalith Is Purged of his Demons
  22. TWO
  23. In Which Alair Once Again Proves His Worth
  24. THREE
  25. In Which There is Some Confusion, and Several People Narrowly Escape Summary Justice
  26. PART FOUR
  27.  BORDERLANDS
  28. ONE
  29. In Which Jalith Learns A Lot About Traveling
  30. TWO
  31. In Which Jalith Wakes Up, Again
  32. PART FIVE
  33.  HAMRAT
  34. ONE
  35. An Interlude of Sorts
  36. PART SIX
  37.  SIXDOVES
  38. ONE
  39. In Which There is A Much Belated Test of Naming
  40. TWO
  41. In Which Nothing Much Suits Lukere
  42. PART SEVEN
  43.  SIRILI
  44. ONE
  45. In Which There is Rejoicing, But People Are Very Confused
  46. TWO
  47. In Which There is Confusion, Swearing of Fealty, and Alcohol
  48. THREE
  49. In Which There Is, Finally, A Herpsicore
  50. FOUR
  51. In Which Things End
  52. EIGHT
  53.  THE UNITED KINGDOM
  54. ONE
  55. In Which A Ring Is Passed
  56. TWO
  57. In Which Truths Are Spoken
  58. EPILOGUE
  59. Forty Years Later
  60.  
  61.  About the Author
  62.

## Landmarks

  1. Cover

