Traitor's Moon

22 DREAMS AND VISIONS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps tonight he would learn his own truth.

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

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

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

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

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

He'd avoided this section of the city since their arrival, but he'd come here often as a child. Inthose days the nha'mahat had been an enticingly mysterious place only adults were allowed to enter, and the rhui'auros just eccentric folk who might offer sweets, stories, or a colorful spell or two if you loitered long enough between the arches of the arcade. That perception had been shattered along with his childhood when he'd finally entered the tower.

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

The black cavern.

The stifling heat inside the tiny dhima.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bless you, tali.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Good, good! Sit down."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fleeing.

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

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

Child

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

as his own.

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

The girl's desperation gave way to hope.

Amasa!

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

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

Ireya!

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

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

brothers

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

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

The vision collapsed.

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

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

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

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

"My father—he had no other names?"

"None that he knew."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A blessing."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was no reply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three passages branched from the main chamber, sloping down into darkness. Seregil's guide waved a globe of light into being and set off down the one to their right.

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

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

drowning in darkness —

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

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

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

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

Why didn't someone come?

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

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

Except here. Then.

And now.

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

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

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

Still no one came.

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

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

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

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

"That will leave a lucky mark."

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

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

"I remember you. Your name is Lhial."

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

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

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

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

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

"You cast me out," Seregil retorted bitterly.

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

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

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

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

"How could I not?"

"Do you know why?"

"To be tried. To be exiled."

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

"Why then?"

"To tinker with your fate, little brother."

"I don't believe in fate."

"And you suppose that makes any difference?"

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

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

You have much to do, son of Korit.

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

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

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

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

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

"Not so much now."

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

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

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

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

"What is it?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They are yours."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The light disappeared, plunging Seregil into darkness.

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

The spheres were gone.

Lhial was gone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That I'd never have any children."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Nothing will ever separate us," Alec whispered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They are yours:

"I'm not sure."

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

"It never occurred to me to ask."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"My dear Thero, I send you sad news in secret and at my own risk. By your Hands, Heart, and Eyes«/emphasis·"

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