No way, Master, Shazzelurt, Lauzoril's enchanted knife, sensed his thoughts, offered its advice. Kill her now, Master. Give her to me.

The zulkir quenched the knife's spirit and lifted Mimuay down from the stool. He held her in his arms, rocking her gently. Her neck fit easily between the thumb and fingers of his hand. Lauzoril knew ways to kill that owed nothing to spells or magic; she wouldn't suffer. "I believe you, Mimuay." He rubbed the hard lump at the base of her neck until her shoulders relaxed. "You'll become a good wizard." A bit of irony there: What did a zulkir know about the training of a righteous wizard? "You learn quickly, and I have to think about what I'm going to teach you next."

She wriggled in his arms, stared at him with frightening trust. "Can we protect the boy in the mirror from his enemies?"

Lauzoril thought of Mythrell'aa headed for the Yuirwood and all the stories Thrul's spy master had told him about massacres and awakening powers. If even half were true… "No, my dear."

"Not even with Kemzali? His thoughts are sad, Poppa, like Ferrin's. I don't want him to die. He's not our enemy."

Ferrin again. Lauzoril stroked his daughter's hair and said nothing.

It was nearing sunset when Lauzoril went to his stable. He sent a straw man walking across the Thazalhar hills. From the stables he went to the hen-coop where he stunned two of the fattest birds and carried them to the crypt.

The peaceful world the Zulkir of Enchantment had made for himself in Thazalhar had crumbled. Mimuay's face haunted him. The mongrel haunted him. The damned witch-queen of Aglarond haunted him. His delicately balanced decision to let Mythrell'aa, Aznar Thrul, and Thrul's spy master play their bloody games without him had shattered into weak-willed excuses.

For years he'd been subject to fits of melancholy-the enchanter temperament, some called it; this was different. Lauzoril suspected his thoughts were not entirely his own-the enchanter enchanted. He suspected his beloved daughter, Mimuay; he suspected his daughter's mysterious friend: Ferrin.

Gweltaz and Chazsinal roused as Lauzoril unlocked the door at the bottom of the crypt stairs. Their bandages shimmered. Dead eyes followed the hens he held upside down.

"He brings us supper. Living supper," Chazsinal crooned.

"Ignore him. He wants something. Birds are not enough when a mighty zulkir wants. Let him bring us red meat. Living meat, dripping with blood." Gweltaz closed his eyes.

"Feed on your dreams, Grandfather," Lauzoril advised.

The hens had recovered their wits-such as hens' wits were-and struggled in his hand. The Zulkir of Enchantment could charm most lesser creatures into obedience, but not hens or sheep. He closed the door and released one hen. Unable to escape, its presence, alive and frantic, would madden Gweltaz. Lauzoril held the other above his father's linen-wrapped head and with a knife-not Shazzelurt-slit the bird's throat. Blood pulsed onto the linen and disappeared. When the bird had bled out, he dropped the carcass in Chazsinal's lap. His father began to feed, the suckling sounds obscured by the other hen's squawks.

"How important can a thing be, Grandson, if you're willing to entrust it to a fool?"

Lauzoril settled in his chair behind the table. "Important enough that I will not entrust it to one who opposes me at every turn."

"I do not oppose you, Grandson. I test you. What else can a patriarch do?"

"I'm looking for someone."

"Someone dead."

"Very dead."

"Szass Tam," Chazsinal hissed, irrelevant as always, now that Lauzoril had Gweltaz's interest.

The zulkir pursued the hen into a corner, stunned it as before, and held it above his Grandfather's chair. A luminous golden stalk rose to Lauzoril's hand. It engulfed the feebly struggling bird and drew it whole within the linen bandages. Gweltaz was the more potent, more inventive of the pair. The zulkir returned to his chair and waited.

"Who do you seek?"

"A name. Ferrin."

"One of us?"

"Possibly. He's dead, that's all I know for sure. He might have died when we fought the Mulhorandi. He has achieved influence within the estate."

Gweltaz made a sound like a purring cat. "Release me. I will find him and bring him here."

Lauzoril made a three-fingered gesture. The golden light around his grandfather's linen flickered twice and was gone.

"Send me, too, son. I know where to look for cowards."

Another three-fingered gesture and Chazsinal was gone as well. Then Lauzoril waited, alone in the dark crypt, while his hungry ancestors hounded one of their own. He thought about Mimuay, about Wenne and his second daughter, Nyasia. How much longer could he keep them safely hidden in Thazalhar? How much longer should he try? Should he go to Aglarond's Yuirwood in search of power? In his heart, Lauzoril didn't believe Mythrell'aa was the Simbul's equal. Certainly Aznar Thrul's spies and his spy master were no threat to the witch-queen. The Simbul could take care of herself, her realm, and a mongrel boy, if she chose to.

So, why did he want to go? Why did he hope his ancestors couldn't find Ferrin or, in finding Ferrin, proved that the dead spirit had nothing to do with Mimuay's vision or his own disturbed thinking? In the end, how much was his own curiosity about Aglarond's mighty, Red-Wizard-killing queen? How much was his own yearning to be the hero for his daughter as he had once been the hero for Wenne?

The zulkir had not resolved anything in his mind when a glow returned to Chazsinal's chair.

"Oh, my son," the dead necromancer moaned. "Oh, my son, it is a terrible thing that you've done."

"That I've done? To send you off in search of a haunt named Ferrin?"

"Your daughter, Lauzoril. You're teaching your daughter and you haven't set the mark on her heart!"

Before Lauzoril could extract anything further from his distraught father, light swirled around Gweltaz's linen and, with it, the pale and shrunken spirit of a man. The zulkir expected the spirit of a man his own age or older, cunning, wise, and cruel who'd sensed Mimuay's talent, then exploited it for his own purposes. What he got was an apprentice, no older than his daughter, who dropped to his insubstantial knees.

"Mercy, my lord, mercy, I beg you! I would never harm her or you."

"He lies," Gweltaz hissed. "He spies on us. He pursues your precious daughter, mighty zulkir, and fills her silly head with our secrets." He spoke a necromantic word and Ferrin's spirit writhed on the crypt floor.

"How did you find her?" Lauzoril demanded.

Locked in Gweltaz's torment, the spirit couldn't answer.

"Release him."

"He lies, Grandson. He has corrupted your innocent. What more do you need? Let me have him."

If Gweltaz had been a little less eager. If Gweltaz had not despised Mimuay as female and weak. If Gweltaz hadn't been known to lie more often than not himself. "Release him, Grandfather, or I'll do it for you."

Tiny flames sprouted from the zulkir's fingers: un-subtle reminders of the damage fire could do to linen bandages. Gweltaz retreated. Lauzoril repeated his question to Ferrin.

"My lord, in the spring, Mimuay found my bones, my skull, and called me back-"

"Lies!" Gweltaz shouted. "We scour the bones Thazalhar heaves up each spring. He is from outside, Lauzoril. He is from Szass Tam! And you teaching her wizardry, Lauzoril? And she will teach your secrets to Szass Tam!"

The necromancer surged forward, enveloping Ferrin's far weaker spirit. Again, Lauzoril called on fire to separate them.

"She has a gift, my lord," Ferrin said. "She called me, but she could call others." By which Ferrin clearly meant the likes of Gweltaz and Chazsinal. "I told her to go to you. That is all I did."