"What's wrong?"

"You haven't heard?" Those blue eyes of his, flecked with gold, showed white all around. His complexion tended toward the pale, but now his face looked almost bloodless.

"Let's presume I haven't," she snapped. Until recently she wouldn't have dared speak to him in such a tone. That stage of their relationship was over.

"I sent a messenger to tell you. A first-phase student. It's Master Honnis—"

That got her up from her comfortable chair a second time. She grabbed her robe from its hook by the door, twirling it onto herself. Whatever this was, it wasn't a prank.

'Tell me on the way," she said.

THE UNIVERSITY'S FACULTY was housed at the center of the campus, within a separate complex of structures dating back to the institution's founding. These interconnected and quaintly aging buildings were encircled by shrubbery and overgrowing trees that had supposedly been manicured gardens once. The semi-wild growths served to isolate the compound.

Praulth hesitated on the path that bridged its way onto this island. The autumn night was cool, and a rising and falling wind rolled through the turning leaves. The way ahead looked ominous.

With Xink at her side, she crossed the path and entered the complex. Inside, they hurried through passageways. The interior was much shabbier than she would have guessed, but the antique buildings had a charm that the rest of the University's structures lacked. There was a warm penetrating scent of age here, and of paper, ink, knowledge, perhaps even wisdom.

She had never visited this place, but she knew where Honnis's quarters were. An upper level—she'd had the circular window pointed out to her once. Praulth found stairs and bustled upward, her heart pounding hard in her chest.

A trio of instructors passed murmurs among themselves before a door. The door was ajar, and from within a sharp unpleasant voice barked.

At last Praulth checked her headlong dash. Master Honnis was alive. So Xink had assured her.

The three instructors turned with deliberate slowness to regard her. It was likely she wasn't terribly popular among the faculty nowadays. She had been an exemplary pupil once, blazing a diligent trail toward a rare kind of academic excellence. Now she was ... what? Someone else.

Only a small part of her—the younger, innocent Praulth—still cared about pleasing the University's faculty. That individual seemed to disintegrate a bit more with every passing watch.

She pushed through the robed instructors, hearing Honnis's snarl beyond the door. It was usual for the elderly man to be disagreeable; it wasn't normal for him to be so energetic about it. He had always been one to favor the icy glower over the shrill reprimand.

His quarters were, in their way, as austere as the student's cell she had occupied before relocating to the Blue Annex. It was a small space, the ceiling quite low. There was a lamp, cot, stool, a simple square table. Dense pebbled glass in the circle of the window.

The room was also thick with paper. Parchments were everywhere, in stacks, in drifts, obliterating every corner. Some were pages, some were in the form of the scrolls that were favored in the north. Not a single sheet of any of it could possibly be organized, it was so scattered.

Xink waited outside. Praulth saw Master Honnis on the cot. He was arguing with the campus surgeon, a man named Chiegel. Chiegel, with perfect aplomb, was lecturing Honnis on the value of bed rest, and the University's war studies head was telling him what practical methods the Skrall No't tribe of barbarians in the Northland used to dispose of their wounded. Chiegel responded to nothing Honnis said. That made the exchange equal.

Finally it was done. Chiegel exited the chamber, and Honnis's eyes fell on Praulth.

"I see now what is required to merit a visit from you."

Honnis's dark features settled into a cast she didn't quite recognize. Now that Chiegel was gone, the ire had gone out of him. Something had happened, obviously. Something dire.

She had not seen or spoken directly to him since the night of Premier Cultat's secret visit. That night Praulth had learned those awful truths about how Honnis had exploited her.

"Are you well?" The cliché was out before she was aware of speaking it.

It was a display of vast uncharacteristic politeness that he ignored it. "I have things to tell you, if you'll hear them. They are important. Some perhaps only to myself."

Xink had told her that Master Honnis had collapsed suddenly in a corridor. It had happened only a watch ago.

"I'll hear." She closed the door and came to the foot of the cot, being careful where she stepped. The quantity of paper in the room truly was astounding, more than most individuals of wealth could comfortably afford.

Honnis's inner irascible fire had always lent him figurative size. Lying on the cot now, though, he seemed to inhabit only the meek bodily dimensions that his great age had left him.

"I am at least as old as you imagine I am," he said, cutting into her thoughts. "Likely I'm much older than what you'd guess. I have, for several years now, been sustaining my existence with the aid of

rejuvenation magic."

Praulth bunked. Obviously Honnis had been laid low by some attack or seizure. But... had his mind been affected as well? It was a deeply disturbing thought.

"Who has been practicing this ... magic ... on you?" she asked.

"I have been doing it myself."

She drew her lower lip softly between her teeth.

"Your next question is, am I a wizard? Perhaps. I have some knowing, a knowledge that once, long ago in other lands, would have been fairly commonplace. But we live in a fearful age here on our sad little Isthmus."

There was sorrow in that gaunt, aged face. How sad he looked, how pitiful. Praulth felt something wrench in her chest.

"But I am past a fixed point. Rejuvenation magic is-dangerous, and I've cheated that danger some while now. It's fair and right that it should be satisfied soon. Don't grieve me!"

The twin tracks of Praulth's sudden tears seemed to freeze on her cheeks at his command.

"I didn't waste my life," he explained, his voice now assuming an unfamiliar gentleness. "I have lived long, and I have done many things. Accomplishments that preceded my arrival here at Febretree. I've known pity and arrogance and anger and love. I have grown concerned these past few years over the rise of magic in the north. I... secretly feared what has come to pass."

"The Felk war?"

"A war of magic." His white-fringed head shook once, sharply. "I made Cultat aware of these doings some time ago. Of Matokin, a powerful mage, rising to power in Felk. Of the founding of the Academy, where wizards were trained to be part of an army. All the indicators were there. This war has been inevitable for several years."

Praulth furtively wiped her eyes.

Honnis's hand moved beneath his bedclothes. He was now holding a single glove in his lap.

"I am still in contact with the premier. And with the scouts I convinced Cultat to deploy into the field to observe the Felk advancements. Those scouts come from a particular noble house in Petgrad, traditionally and clandestinely trained in arts that have, with time, fallen out of favor."

Praulth gazed at the glove.

"You don't believe me," Honnis said.

"Master—"

"Why should you?" Some of his normal vehemence returned. "You know nothing of magic. You're as ignorant as everyone else on this miserable Isthmus of ours. Everyone, that is, except one wily wizard in the north, who tapped into a power that has gone witlessly neglected and nearly forgotten for hundredwinters and more."

Praulth chose her words carefully. "It is true that I don't know much regarding magic. But I accept that the Felk military is employing it." She had seen detailed maps of what had happened at U'delph, how General Weisel used the transport portals to move his forces.