One night, after the magician had drunk too much during a particularly well-received performance in Lantern on the East Road, he had pridefully shown Lyim his most prized possession: a spellbook written by the great mage Belize. Fendock's good mood caused him to confess with arrogance that he'd stolen the small tome from a patron some years back. He was in such a good mood, in fact, that he let young Lyim open the book, confident that the contents would be beyond the urchin's understanding. But Lyim's natural magical abilities had allowed him to read one or two of the words in the magical books before Fendock had furiously slammed the book shut and told him to never touch it again.

Lyim had seen the jealous look in the man's eyes, and he quickly realized that the magician didn't have the skill to read the book himself. Fendock was like a man who could appreciate fine music but was totally without skill to play it. Lyim's punishment for demonstrating that he possessed the ability Fendock lacked was the cessation of even the pretense of magical lessons.

When, on one dark night after a year of intolerable servitude, Lyim slipped away from Fabulous Fendock's wagon, he took with him Belize's writings. The young man reasoned that the magician could never utilize Belize's work properly and that he had served Fendock beyond what he had received in magical training.

"Never explain, never defend," had become Lyim's motto ever after. It was why he'd lied without remorse to Guerrand about getting the book from some elves. He had no shame about lying, but plenty concerning his blood and magical heritage.

Lyim came to the Castle DiThon's portcullis and was surprised to see it closed, as well as the vast double door behind it. He had never seen it so, even when the residents should have been expecting an attack from the family whose land Cormac DiThon had confiscated.

Puzzled, Lyim looked up to his right, to the guard tower. "Hallo? Who defends Castle DiThon this day?"

After a time, Lyim heard a squeaky voice that sounded vaguely familiar coming from the ramparts above and to his right. "What is it? Yes? We're not having any merchants from the village."

Squinting skyward, Lyim recognized the befuddled chamberlain who'd thought to dispatch an entire army of Knights of Solamnia with the announcement that he hadn't the authority to recognize their siege. The old man's face was even thinner and creased with more worry lines than when last Lyim had seen him, his eyes more milky with cataracts.

"Good chamberlain, I am no merchant with wares for sale. I am an old friend looking for Kirah DiThon," Lyim called up to the man in his most persuasive tones. "I heard there is plague in the village and was concerned for her welfare."

"Kirah is well, as far as I know," said the chamberlain, his tone eased.

"As far as you know?" repeated Lyim, puzzled. "Have you not seen her in the castle with your own eyes?"

"How would 1?" asked the chamberlain as if the answer were plain. "I see little enough with these eyes. Even still, Kirah has lived in the village since shortly after she refused to marry the husband of her mother's choosing."

"Where does she live?" he asked the chamberlain.

"Above the baker's, I've heard," said the old man. "He's just died of the sickness, if Gildee the cook has it right from the gossips."

But Lyim was already on his way back to the village. * * " * *

When Kirah heard the knock at her door, she thought it must be Dilb with some wood for her fire. With Bram gone to parts unknown, the baker's son was the only one she would trust to enter her little room. Still taking no chances, Kirah opened the door slowly and slightly, then pressed her right eye to the crack. Her breath abruptly caught in her throat, and her heart skipped a painful beat.

It could not be him. After all these years, and all her wishes, it could not be Lyim. The world was too big a place, her dreams too inconsequential, for Lyim to arrive to help her twice in a lifetime. And yet there he stood on her stoop, beyond the crack in her door.

"Hello, Kirah," the mage said. "Is this how you welcome an old friend, peering at him like he's a robber in the night?"

Kirah primmed her mouth in superior fashion, then spoiled the effect by laughing girlishly. "Yes-I mean no! I mean, hello and come in!" she managed at last, flustered beyond all reason. Kirah opened the door with one hand and pulled closed her ragged wrap with the other, suddenly self-conscious. It had been so long since she'd been expected to behave like anything but a crazy hermit.

As Lyim walked into her room, Kirah noticed that something about him was different, yet she couldn't quite put her finger on it. It wasn't just the simple, oversized brown robe that seemed to engulf him, or the odd leather mittens, although they were uncharacteristic. His face and hair were essentially unchanged, no early gray at the temples. Maybe it was the eyes, she thought, looking for the sparkle of humor she remembered there and not finding it. Perhaps it was the man's stride, slower and more contained. His was no longer the strut of a peacock proud of his plumes.

Unlike Lyim, Kirah had never cared what she looked like. Until this minute, anyway, when a recent memory of her visage in a street puddle made her shiver. Her unwashed hair was dull gray instead of blonde, and flat against her head, as if she wore a cap. Kirah felt well enough, but her eyes and cheeks were sunken so that she appeared far older than her nineteen years. She looked beyond bony in the sacklike dress and wrap the baker's robust wife had given her some months ago when her previous raggedy shift had disintegrated at the shoulders.

Kirah made herself as small as possible in a reed- backed chair by the hearth. "Have you come to save the village again?" she asked more caustically than she'd meant. "There's a plague here."

"I know." Lyim removed his left mit and set it on the small table by the door, as if he had done so for years. "That is why I've come. I was hoping you'd know where Guerrand is."

She looked up, mildly surprised. "You've come to the wrong place, then," she said. "Guerrand came to see me just after we prevented the Berwick siege, but I haven't heard from him since."

"You sound as though you're still angry with him after all these years," observed Lyim.

Kirah thought about that briefly. "No, I don't suppose I am," she said at last. "We made our peace, Guerrand and I. He had to leave Thonvil." Kirah leaned forward in the chair to add her last meager log to the coals. Brushing off her hands, Kirah stood and took two chipped pottery mugs from the narrow mantle. "I can offer you rainwater tea, but I'm afraid I have nothing else. I get my meals after the baker's family below, and they're not coming regularly now, what with Glammis's death."

"Did you know him well?"

"Glammis?" She shrugged thin shoulders. "You know everyone in a village the size of Thonvil, even if you don't live above them. Glammis was kindly enough, a hardworking man with a wife and young son to support. I don't know how they'll get along without him." She dropped a pinch of tea leaves into one of the cups. "If they don't catch the disease themselves, that is."

Kirah poured heated rainwater from a kettle onto the brittle green leaves in both mugs. She stopped abruptly, her head cocked as she regarded Lyim. "It's funny that you should be looking for Guerrand now. Have you heard the rumors, too?"

"Too?" he repeated, taking in his left hand the hot mug she held out to him. He settled his bulk into the chair Kirah had vacated and took a tentative sip. "Who else is looking for him?"

Kirah whipped back dirty strands of hair from her face. "My nephew Bram left Thonvil in search of Guerrand because he thinks Rand may know something about curing this plague. I'm afraid my brother helped stir up Bram's suspicions, since Cormac believes everything that is wrong in and around Thonvil is Guerrand's fault. In the stupor that is his conscious state," Kirah said with great deliberateness, "Cormac has rewritten history to exonerate himself."