“It is in Trayethell.”

“Trayethell?” Kylar remembered the name dimly. Acaelus Thorne had been the Prince of Trayethell. “It’s in Black Barrow.”

The Seraph hadn’t released his hand. “Nameless, the Scepter …Iures gives a mage no additional power, but it gives a thousand times the control. A mage with Iures in hand could unravel anything given time.”

So what was Neph doing? With Iures, he could take apart the shield around Ezra’s Wood and take Curoch. What would he do once he had both? What would he not do? Even Jorsin Alkestes hadn’t wielded both together.

There was no choice. Kylar was the judge. If Neph was invulnerable to magic, Kylar was the only one who could stop him. Kylar might be the only one who knew the full extent of the danger. He had to stop him. God, how am I going to tell Elene?

At the thought of Elene, Kylar felt Vi flinch through the bond. There was a deep guilt there, and fear.

Kylar turned from the Seraph, anger stirring once again. He opened the door to the classroom and strode in, slamming the door behind him. There were fifty senior students in the room, every one of them surrounded with a nimbus of magic. Vi stood in the center of them. She alone didn’t hold her Talent. “What have you done?” Kylar demanded.

“She made me swear not to tell you,” Vi said.

“What the fuck have you—”

“What have I done?” Vi shouted. “What have you done? Breaking in here and treating my Sisters like this? How dare you!” Kylar opened his mouth, but Vi cut him off. “No! Sit down and shut up!”

The words hit him like a whip through their earrings’ bond. The compulsion made Kylar’s mouth snap closed, and he sat instantly. There was no chair: he sat on the ground.

Vi was as stunned as he was. He tried to open his mouth, but it wouldn’t budge. He couldn’t move. Vi had told him that the rings broke her compulsion to Garoth because its bond superseded Garoth’s magic, but Kylar hadn’t appreciated what that meant until now. The earrings’ bond was compulsive—one way. Vi could make him do anything she wanted, and she had known all along, Kylar saw from her expression. She simply hadn’t invoked her power before.

The Sisters stared round-eyed at Vi. A moment before, they all had been terrified of this man who had violated the Chantry and broken the chains their most powerful Sister had laid on him. In the next, Vi had defended her Sisters, and he obeyed her command as if he had no choice. Whatever other repercussions Kylar’s foolishness was going to have, he had certainly increased Vi’s cachet with her Sisters.

A riot of emotions flooded through the bond, but Vi mastered herself quickly. “She went to join Logan’s army,” she said. “She was afraid you wouldn’t fight otherwise.” Aware of the other women listening to her conversation with her “husband,” Vi said nothing more. She handed him a note. “You can stand now, and speak.”

Kylar stood and took the note, but he had no words.

The door on the far side of the classroom banged open, and dozens of Sisters began pouring in, with Sister Ariel at their head. Almost all of them, Kylar realized, were magae who’d trained with Vi.

One of them threw something like a spear of coruscating red and silver light. It flew straight at Kylar’s chest—then dissolved in midair.

Around the room, Sisters began kneeling, mouths dropping open once more. Kylar turned to see who had saved him. The Seraph walked into the room, glowing gold. “I’m sorry if my friend frightened you,” the Seraph said. “Forgive him. We needed to speak about a threat that faces us all. If he fails, all our fighting will be for naught.” The awed Sisters parted. With one last glance at Vi, Kylar left.

78

I won’t watch you kill yourself,” Durzo said. For the last three days, Kylar and Durzo had been traveling west. Durzo was traveling to Cenaria, to see Momma K at last, so he’d joined Kylar. The pass had been muddy and snowy, so they were setting up camp only a few hours from Torras Bend and a few hundred paces from Ezra’s Wood.

Kylar spread his heavy saddle blanket on a fallen log next to the fire and sat. “I don’t plan to die,” he said.

“Oh, so there is a plan? I thought you were making it up as you went. It’s getting dark. Our little stalker will be along within the hour.” They’d been followed, clumsily, since they left the Chantry. Today they’d ridden hard, trying to make it to Torras Bend, and their pursuer hadn’t been able to keep up.

“I don’t think Khali exists,” Kylar said.

“I didn’t realize you were in the habit of having religious epiphanies.”

“I mean, it exists, but I don’t think she’s a goddess.”

“Oh?” Durzo asked.

“She—it—is a repository of magic. The Wolf said magic is strongest when it’s attached to emotions. Khali is filled by the Khalidorans’ worship. As they hurt people for her, they chant a prayer. But it’s not a prayer. It’s a spell. It empties their glore vyrden into the repository. And it’s from that repository that the meisters and Vürdmeisters and Godkings draw their power. Because the talents for drawing in magic from the world and using magic are different, that means they can often use far more magic than mages. It means they can use it at night. Don’t you see? The entire nation chants this spell twice a day. The repository is the key to Khalidor’s power.”

“And this has something to do with why you’re committing suicide?”

“Curoch is anathema to that power. I saw that when I killed a meister with it. Curoch makes the vir explode. It bursts it from within.”

“A few months ago, you assassinated a man who called himself a god; now you’re going after a goddess in truth. Unless you can figure out a way to kill continents, after this you’re going to have to retire.”

“You know it’s not like that,” Kylar said, flushing.

“So you’re hoping to find Khali and put Curoch in her and what? Just see what happens?”

Kylar scowled. “You make it sound stupid.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s a way to win, really win, once and for all. Come on, how many times have you fought Khalidorans?”

“More than I like to remember,” Durzo admitted.

“Look, I lost Iures. That’s a disaster. I know it. It’s also a disaster you helped cause when you never told me what the damn thing was. With Iures in Neph’s hands, we’re going to have a hard time killing him.”

“We?”

“But if we destroy the vir, Neph won’t even be able to use Iures. If he survives the vir’s destruction, even if he has Talent, it will take him a while to think to use it. He’ll be vulnerable. Master, he’s been spending the last three months figuring out how to break into Ezra’s Wood and take Curoch for himself. If one man holds both Curoch and Iures …”

“It wouldn’t be good.”

“It would be a cataclysm!” Kylar said.

“You realize that if you put Curoch into the center of all the vir in the world, it might make a qualitative rather than a quantitative difference?”

“Huh?”

Durzo shot him an exasperated look. “Curoch blew the vir out of one wytch and nothing happened. If it blows up all the vir in the world, something might.”

“If it blew up every wytch in the world, I wouldn’t complain,” Kylar said.

“And if it blows you up with them?”

“At that point, I won’t be able to.”

“It might not obliterate you. It might just kill you and invoke your immortality. You know what that costs now. Are you willing to risk a friend’s life for this? Hell, it might be my life. I don’t know if I’m willing for you to risk it.”

“We were given this power for a reason, master. I don’t want to lose anyone. I don’t want to die, but if my death can change a nation, if I can save thousands, how could I not risk it?”

Durzo grinned ruefully. “You damn fool. You realize, even if all your assumptions are correct—even then, you still have to steal the world’s most coveted sword from the world’s safest place then be pursued by the ultimate hunter until you reach the heart of an enemy country in the middle of a war in which any side will happily kill you as a traitor, a spy, a wytch, or all three?”