"You should have said something."

"You haven't exactly been approachable lately," Alec replied quietly.

"Ah, well—" Seregil pushed his fingers back through his hair. "I never was very gracious in defeat."

"I'm sorry about the map." The thought of it had plagued Alec through the long, unhappy week. "I should have taken it when I had the chance."

"No, you did the right thing at the time," Seregil assured him. "We just seemed to have a lot of bad timing with this business. If I'd gone after Rythel sooner, or if he'd held off getting killed another half an hour, we'd have had him. There's no changing what happened, though. Now tell me about this dream."

Alec took another sip of brandy, then set the half-finished cup aside and recounted all the details he could remember.

"It doesn't sound so bad, just telling it," he said when he'd finished. "Especially that last part. But in the dream, it always feels like the worst part. Even worse than my father—"

He broke off, surprised at the tightness in his throat. He sat staring down at his hands, hoping his hair veiled his face for the moment.

After a while Seregil said gently, "You've had a lot to contend with lately, what with finding out the truth about your birth and then this. Seeing Rythel all mangled in that cell must have dredged up some unpleasant memories. Maybe this is your way of finally allowing yourself to mourn your father's death."

Alec looked up sharply. "I've mourned him."

"Perhaps, tali, but in all the time we've been together you scarcely ever mention him or weep for him."

Alec rolled the edge of blanket between his fingers, surprised at the sudden bitterness he felt. "What's the use? Crying doesn't change anything."

"Maybe not, but—"

"It wouldn't change the fact that I couldn't do anything for my own father but sit there watching him shrink like a burnt moth, listening to him drown in his own blood—"

He swallowed hard. "Besides, that's not even what the dream was about, really."

"No? What, then?"

Alec shook his head miserably. "I don't know, but it wasn't that."

Seregil gave him a rough pat on the shin and stood up. "What do you say we scrounge breakfast with Nysander tomorrow? He's good with dreams, and while we're there, you could talk to him and Thero about this life span business. With all the uproar over Tym and Rythel, you haven't had much time to absorb it all."

"It's been easier, not thinking about it," Alec said with a sigh. "But I guess I would like to talk to them."

In the darkness of his own bed, Seregil lay listening to Alec's breathing soften back into sleep in the next room.

"No more dreams, my friend," he whispered in Aurenfaie, and it was more than a simple well-wishing. He could almost hear the Oracle's mad whispering in the shadows, echoing over the weeks and months with increasing insistence and clarity.

The Eater of Death gives birth to monsters.

Guard you well the Guardian! Guard well the

Vanguard and the Shaft!

The shaft. An arrow shaft, like the one Alec clutched in his dreams night after night—useless, impotent, without its broadhead point could mean a thousand different things, that image, he told himself, struggling angrily against his own instant certainty that another fateful die had been irrevocably cast in a game he could not yet comprehend.

The storm blew itself back out to sea before dawn. The soaring white walls, domes, and towers of the Oreska House sparkled against a flawless morning sky ahead of them as Seregil and Alec rode toward it. Inside the sheltering walls of the grounds, the scent of new herbs and growing things enveloped them in the promise of a spring not far behind in the outside world.

Nysander and Thero had other guests breakfasting with them. The centaurs, Hwerlu and his mate Feeya, had somehow navigated the maze of stairways and corridors, not to mention doorways not designed to admit creatures the size of large draft horses. Magyana was there as well, sitting on the corner of the table with her feet propped on a chair next to Feeya.

"What a pleasant surprise," Nysander exclaimed, pushing another bench up to the impromptu breakfast spread out on a worktable. Most of the regular victuals were laid out—butter and cheese, honey, oat cakes, tea-together with a huge platter of fruit. The usual breakfast meats had evidently been banned for the occasion, in deference to the centaurs. Giving Seregil a meaningful stare from under his beetling brows, he added, "I do hope this is a social call."

"More or less," Seregil said, piling a plate with bannocks and fruit. "Alec's feeling a bit lost about living for a few extra centuries. I thought you wizards could give him some helpful guidance, since it takes your sort by surprise, too."

"So he finally told you," said Magyana, giving Alec a hug. "And high time, too."

Hwerlu let out a snort of surprise. "Not until now does he know?" He said something to Feeya in their whistling language and she shook her head.

Turning to Alec, Hwerlu smiled. "We saw it that first day you came here, but Seregil says not to tell you. Why?"

"I guess he wanted me to get used to him first," Alec said, shooting Seregil a wry look.

"I suppose that would take a long while," Thero threw in.

"Yet, as things have turned out, I now believe Seregil may have been wise to wait," said Nysander. "It is more than a sense of obligation or fear which keeps you with him, is it not, Alec?"

"Of course. But the idea that I could be sitting here three or four hundred years from now—" He stared down at his plate, shaking his head. "I can't imagine it."

"I sometimes still feel that way," said Thero.

Seregil looked at the younger wizard in surprise. In all the time he'd known him, he'd never heard Thero reveal a personal feeling.

"I'd guessed it when I was a boy," Thero continued. "But it was nonetheless overwhelming to have it confirmed when the wizards examined me. Yet, think of what we'll experience in our lifetimes—the years of learning, the discoveries."

He's almost human today, Seregil thought, studying his rival's countenance with new interest.

"I made a poor job of telling you," he admitted to Alec. "I was feeling a bit shaky that night myself, after seeing Adzriel and all, but what Thero says is true. It's what has kept me sane after I left Aurenen. Long life is a gift for those with a sense of wonder and curiosity. And I don't think you'll ever have any shortage of those qualities."

Nysander chuckled. "Indeed not. You know, Alec, that for over two centuries I have studied and learned and walked in the world, and yet I still have the satisfaction of knowing that should I live another two hundred years there shall still be new things to delight me. Magyana and I have gone out into the world more than many wizards and so, like Seregil here, we have seen many friends age and die. It would not be truthful to tell you that it is not painful, yet each of those friendships, no matter how brief, was a gift none of us would sacrifice."

"It might sound hard-hearted, but once you have survived a generation or two, it becomes easier to detach yourself from such feelings," added Magyana.

"It isn't that you love them any less, you just learn to respect the cycles of life. All the same, I thank Illior the two of you found each other the way you did."

"So do I," Alec replied with surprising feeling. He colored slightly, perhaps embarrassed by his own admission. "I just wish I could have talked to my father about it, about my mother. Seregil's spun out a good theory about what must have gone on between the two of them, but now I'll never know the real story."

"Perhaps not," said Nysander. "But you can honor them by respecting the life they gave you."

"Speaking of your parents, Alec, tell Nysander about that nightmare you've been having since Rythel got killed," Seregil interjected, sensing the opening he'd been hoping for.