Entreri didn't know if he was supposed to be walking so freely through the corridors of the Vaasan Gate, but no guards presented themselves to block his progress. He had no destination in mind; he simply needed to walk off his restlessness. He was tired, but no bed could lure him in, for he knew that no bed of late had offered him any real rest.

So he walked, and the minutes rolled on and on. When he found a side alcove set with a tall ladder, he let his curiosity guide him and climbed. More corridors, empty rooms, and stairwells greeted him above and he kept on his meandering way through the dark halls of this massive fortress. Another ladder took him to a small landing and a door, loose-fitting and facing east, with light glowing around its edges. Curious, Entreri pushed it open.

He felt the wind on his face as he stared into the first rays of dawn, reaching out from the Vaasan plain and crawling over the valleys and peaks of the Galenas, lighting brilliant reflections on the mountain snow.

The sun stung Entreri's tired eyes as he walked out and along the parapet of the Vaasan Gate. He paused often, stood and stared, and cared not for the passage of time. The wall top was more than twenty feet wide at its narrowest points and swelled to more than twice that width in some spots, and from there Entreri truly came to appreciate the scope of the enormous construction. Several towers dotted the length of the wall stretching out before the assassin to the east, and he noted the occasional sentry, leaning or sitting. Still with no indication that he should not be there, he walked out of the landing and along the top of the great wall, some forty or fifty feet above the wasteland stretching out to the north. His eyes remained in that direction primarily, rarely glancing south to the long valley running between the majestic Galenas. He could see the tents of the Fugue, even his own, and he wondered if Jarlaxle had gone back there but thought it more likely that Ellery had offered him a more comfortable setting.

The curious couple did not remain in his thoughts any more than did the southland. The north held his attention and his eyes, where Vaasa stretched out before him like a flattened, rotting corpse. He veered that way in his stroll, moving nearer to the waist-high wall along the edge so that he could better take in the view of Vaasa awakening to the dawn's light.

There was a beauty there, Entreri saw, primal and cold: hard-edged stones, sharp-tipped skeletons of long dead trees, and the soft, sucking bogs. Blasted by war, torn by the march of armies, scalded by the fires of wizard spells and dragon breath, the land itself, the soul of Vaasa, had survived. It had taken all the hits and blasts and stomping boots and had come out much as it had been before.

So many of those who had lived there had perished, but Vaasa had survived.

Entreri passed a sentry, sitting half asleep and with his back against the northern wall. The man looked at him with mild curiosity then nodded as the assassin strode past him.

Some distance away, Entreri stopped his walk and turned fully to survey the north, resting his hands on the waist-high wall that ran the length of the gate. He looked upon Vaasa with a mixture of affection and self-loathing—as if he was looking into a mirror.

"They think you dead," he whispered, "because they do not see the life that teems beneath your bogs and stones, and in every cave, crack, and hollow log. They think they know you, but they do not."

"Talking to the land?" came a familiar voice, and Entreri found his moment of contemplation stolen away by the approach of Jarlaxle. "Do you think it hears you?"

Entreri considered his friend for a moment, the bounce in his gait, the bit of moisture just below the brim of his great hat, the look of quiet serenity behind his typically animated expression. Something more was out of place, Entreri realized, before it even fully registered to him that Jarlaxle's eye patch had been over the other eye back in the tavern.

Entreri could guess easily enough the route that had at last taken Jarlaxle to the wall top, and only then did the assassin truly appreciate that several hours had passed since he had left his friend in Muddy Boots and Bloody Blades.

"I think there are some who would do well to hear me less," he answered, and turned his eyes back to Vaasa.

Jarlaxle laughed and moved right beside him on the wall, leaning on the rail with his back to the northern land.

"Please do not let my arrival here disturb your conversation," said the drow.

Entreri didn't reply, didn't even look at him.

"Embarrassed?"

That did elicit a dismissive glance.

"You have not slept," Jarlaxle remarked.

"My sleep is not your concern."

"Sleep?" came the sarcastic response. "Is that what you would call your hours of restlessness each night?"

"My sleep is not your concern," Entreri said again.

"Your lack of sleep is," the drow corrected. "If the reflexes slow…."

"Would you like a demonstration?"

Jarlaxle yawned, drawing another less-than-friendly glare. The drow returned it with a smile—one that was lost on Entreri, who again stared out over the muddy Vaasan plane. Jarlaxle, too, turned and leaned to the north, taking in the preternatural scene. The morning fog swirled in gray eddies in some places, and lifted up like a waking giant in others.

Indeed, Vaasa did seem as if a remnant of the time before the reasoning races inhabited the world. It seemed a remnant of a time, perhaps, before any creatures walked the lands at all, as if the rest of the world had moved along without carrying Vaasa with her.

"A forgotten land," Jarlaxle remarked, glancing at Entreri.

The assassin returned that look, even nodded a bit, and the drow was surprised to realize that Entreri had understood his reference exactly.

"What do you see when you look out there?" Jarlaxle asked. "Wasted potential? Barrenness where there should be fertility? Death where there should be life?"

"Reality," Artemis Entreri answered with cold finality.

He turned and offered one stern look to the drow then walked past him.

Jarlaxle heard the uncertainty in Entreri's voice, sensed that the man was off-balance. And he knew the source of that imbalance, for he had played no small part in ensuring that Idalia's flute had found its way into Artemis Entreri's hand.

He stayed at the rail for some time, soaking in the scene before him, remembering the night just passed, and considering his always dour friend.

Most of all, the dark elf wondered what he might do to dominate the first, recreate the second, and alter the third.

Always wondering, always thinking.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE RIDE OF MARIABRONNE

Arrayan had to pause and consider the question for a long while before answering. Where had she left the book? The woman felt the fool, to be sure. How could she have let something that powerful out of her sight? How could she not even remember where she'd placed it? Her mind traced back to the previous night, when she had dared start reading the tome. She remembered casting every defensive spell she knew, creating intricate wards and protections against the potentially devastating magic Zhengyi had placed on the book.

She looked back at the table in the center of the room, and she knew that she had cracked open the book right there.

A sense of vastness flooded her memories, a feeling of size, of magic, and a physical construct too large to be contained within.

"I took it out," she said, turning back to Wingham and Mariabronne. "Out of here."

"You left it somewhere beyond your control?" Wingham scolded, his voice incredulous. He leaped up from his seat, as if his body was simply too agitated to be contained in a chair. "An item of that power?"