Eresken could hear other voices down on the road. “Is that Bryn?”

“And Ceris,” Aritane replied. “Rest easy, my love.”

“No,” Eresken forced himself up out of her embrace. “I must help, I must see what has happened.” He got to his feet, careful to lean heavily on Aritane. This series of shocks left her ready to accept any offer of leadership, Eresken realized. Good. Now he must ensure that the rest of these half-trained hopefuls saw events as he wished. With Aritane struggling to support him, Eresken saw Bryn and Ceris walking slowly from corpse to corpse. Farther down the road were a couple more of the gray-clad fools whose names he had not bothered with.

Ceris stopped for a moment beside Teiriol’s corpse, hands going to her face as she saw the dagger in the back of his head. “Treachery! Murder! Stabbed as he tried to flee or sue for mercy!” Her thoughts may as well have been shouted aloud, weak-chinned face bloodless beneath her head of golden curls.

“We met the wizards to ask for a parley,” Eresken told them, barring his mind to their questing thoughts with a pretense of grief and pain. “We appealed to them to allow the Men of the Mountains to redress their grievances against the lowlanders in fair combat. They seemed to be listening courteously enough, so we relaxed our guard. We didn’t wish to insult them with any suggestion of mistrust. Then they attacked us; the mages turned nature itself to wreak evil upon us.” He ripped a few holes in his façade, giving them glimpses of apparent memories within.

“Tell us everything, from the beginning.” Bryn strode toward them, intent darkening his eyes.

Eresken felt the force of the man’s determination to wrest the truth from him and allowed his knees to buckle. Letting his arm slide from Aritane’s shoulder, he slumped to the ground, the woman unable to support the burden of his dead weight. “Let him be,” she snapped. “Can’t you tell? They poisoned him!”

As she pillowed his head on a bundle of her cloak and straightened his limbs with gentle hands, Eresken wrapped himself in a cocoon of deception and lurked within, listening intently. Aritane’s voice was as hard as diamond, he noted with satisfaction. The vulnerability he was exploiting remained unseen by anyone else, schooled as she was in the unflinching mask of the Sheltya.

“Look carefully, mark every death and the manner of it,” she commanded coldly. “We will let every soke know how their sons spent their lives.”

“To kill from afar and with such violence…” words failed one of the younger Sheltya, Remet. Eresken picked his name out of Aritane’s mind unnoticed, matching the voice to a face still waiting for the strength of manhood, full of youthful appeal but without substance to either wit or convictions.

“That’s what these mages do,” spat Bryn. “Why do you suppose the lowlanders drove them into the sea so many generations ago?”

“What of Jeirran and his men?” the other woman gasped. Krelia, that was her name. Eresken recalled a nervous face and hands with nails chewed to their quick, a mind worn thin by endless demands, never taking time for herself.

“Who will tell Jeirran that his sister’s brother was so foully slain?” asked Ceris of no one in particular, a sob in her voice.

“We must keep the Suratimm out of the battle,” said Bryn with grim determination. “If they are truly working with the mages of Hadrumal.”

“Of course they are! One of their spies struck down Eresken!” Aritane slapped all four with a sudden vision of the redhaired slut. “She was up in the Hachalfess trying to cozen Cullam, along with that wizard. How much more evidence do you need?”

Well-concealed satisfaction warmed Eresken. Aritane would do his work for him without need for further prompting.

“Then it is war?” Realization strengthened Remet’s voice.

“We didn’t want it and we didn’t start it but we cannot let an outrage like this go unchallenged,” Bryn answered him dubiously. “If we do, this slaughter could be visited on innocents in every soke, if lowlanders seize land with false magic at their back.”

“We should fight,” declared Aritane. “This is not just a struggle for the men of the sokes, not just a fight of swords and axes. We must support them against the false magic with every power at our command.”

So the seeds he had planted and nurtured were finally coming into bloom, Eresken thought with relief.

“Sheltya are sworn to be impartial,” Krelia whispered.

“In conflict between soke and soke, between fess and fess,” agreed Aritane. “Where is the oath binding our hands when our people are to be driven naked into the snow?”

“The Elders—” Remet choked on a strangled objection.

“I will answer to the Elders,” said Aritane defiantly. “As Sheltya loyal to no single bloodline, I must be sworn to the service of all or to none. I will either die in defense of my people, of all my people, or I will stand proud at my brother’s shoulder when he has led us to victory and I will claim him once more as kin. Let the Elders judge me then. If they condemn me, then I will go north into the ice as the Alyatimm once did and face Misaen’s judgment.”

Inarticulate protest from Bryn escaped Eresken.

“You think they did justly?” Aritane was scathing. “To exile those who would use true magic in defense of their rights? What price Misaen’s judgment now? The Alyatimm did not freeze and die, I can tell you that now. Eresken is of their blood, of their lineage. He brings word from far islands where his people live free and unchallenged. They are not afraid to use the true magic they have kept pure and strong. Even as we speak, they are defying the wizards and the Tormalins who stretch their greedy hands out over the ocean to seize yet more land.”

Curse the woman, why couldn’t she keep her foolish mouth shut? Eresken waved a feeble hand, instantly diverting Aritane.

She knelt beside him. “Are you with us?”

“Some water?” he asked breathlessly.

Bryn held a bottle to Eresken’s lips as Aritane raised his head. “So you are of Alyatimm blood?” Mistrust hovered around the edges of his mind.

Eresken gazed deep into the man’s eyes. “My forefathers’ forefathers followed the men who called themselves such and went into the ice to face the judgment of Misaen. We call ourselves Elietimm and use the powers of true magic to survive in the cold islands of the northern ocean. We are assailed by Tormalin greed backed with the false magic of Hadrumal. I came looking for allies to help save my people and I found brothers in blood whose plight echoed our own.”

Bryn nodded slowly and Eresken let fresh blood flow from his wounds to stain Aritane’s dress and hands. “We have to get him back,” she insisted.

Eresken relaxed in her embrace as the five wove power of mind over matter to carry them back to safety. Once this story was told and retold, reinforced with appropriate nudges from him, these pitiful Anyatimm would howl down from their mountains as if their forefathers had never been the cowards of legend. War in the Forest would spill out to crush the farmers of the lowlands after a few judicious incidents managed by himself. With all Tormalin eyes and arms drawn westward before the summer was out, his father could choose his moment to strike. Eresken relished reward and adulation to come, to be savored just as intensely as wrath and punishment were dreaded.