Etris cocked his head, his arms folding close about his small body. “Who is it you track?”

“The sorcerer Arcannen.”

Etris smiled. “Rumor has it he is already dead. Would you kill him a second time just to make sure?”

Mallich smiled back. “He is not dead; he is alive. And I would kill him as many times as I could for what he did to Mauerlin. But neither of us will speak of that again, will we?”

Etris shrugged. “What of your companion? Does he travel with us?”

“So that you might find an opportunity to kill him? No. He remains here in Sterne. This sort of work is best left to men like you and me.”

Bael Etris pursed his lips, then shifted his gaze to Usurient. “Understand something, Commander. If I am released, I will do whatever Mallich tells me to do to hunt down and kill the sorcerer. But when that work is finished, I will come looking for you. If I find you, do not expect me to show you any mercy.”

Usurient laughed aloud. “You tell me this and still expect me to set you free? Why in the world would I even consider doing so after such a bold statement?”

The little man’s grin was wicked and sly. “You wouldn’t have come here in the first place if you had any other choice. Whatever I say or do at this point, you will free me. You want Arcannen dead as much as Mallich does, that much is clear. Now let me out.”

“Tomorrow, at sunrise,” Mallich interrupted. “I will bring you all the weapons and gear you need. We leave for the coast from here.” He paused. “But let this be a warning. No tricks while we’re out there alone. I’ll have you tied to a crince, Bael. You even look the wrong way and it will rip out your throat.” He smiled. “Just in case you were thinking of trying to rip out mine.”

Then he reached for the sliding steel door and slammed it shut.

In the underground refuge of Arcannen, beneath the ruins of Arbrox, Reyn Frosch stumbled muddle-headed and sleepy-eyed from his bedroom into the central living quarters of Arcannen to find Lariana already busy preparing breakfast. Or was it lunch? He wondered suddenly what time it was. How long he had slept?

“Good morning,” the girl greeted him from the kitchen area. Her strange, exotic features brightened as she caught sight of him.

“Is it morning?” he asked, his voice rough and oddly strange to him.

“You are asking the wrong question. You should be asking what day it is. You’ve been asleep for two days.”

He stopped where he was. “Two days? How could I have slept that long?”

She walked away from what she was doing to bring him a cup of steaming tea. “I gave you a little something to help you sleep. You were in need of rest. Are you hungry?”

He nodded, still in a daze. She took his arm, led him to a small table, and sat him down. A moment later he was eating fry bread, smoked meat, dried fruit, and cheese. He had never been so hungry.

She sat down across from him, watching. He was aware of the whiteness of her skin, its flawless surface radiant. Her green eyes stayed on him as he looked at her, locking with his own. He remembered she had slept with him that first night, but he could not remember her leaving. In fact, he could not remember anything after falling asleep save the warmth of her body pressed close against his.

When he was finished, he cleared his throat in the ensuing silence. “I guess whatever you gave me worked. I didn’t wake once. Two days?” He shook his head and smiled. “Best sleep I ever had.”

“Most snoring, too, probably,” she added. “I had to leave you to it pretty soon after you drifted off.

“Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. It’s worth it to see you looking so much better.”

She cleared his dishes, and he wondered again at how much he had come to like her in the short time they had been together. He had found her intriguing from the first, but most of that was because of her unusual looks. By now, what he was feeling ran much deeper. He felt happier and more settled than he could remember ever being before.

She came back to the table, walked to his side and bent down to kiss him on the cheek. “I liked sleeping next to you. Being with you made me feel happy.”

Reyn grinned. “I felt like that, too.”

“Do you want to go outside, take a short walk?”

“Through the bones of the dead? Charming.”

“No, there’s another choice. Wash and dress, and I’ll show you.”

When he was ready, she took him through the sorcerer’s quarters down the back hall to a second door. This door was ironbound and heavily warded by locks, but she opened it easily and took him out into a stone passageway, up several sets of stairs, and outside into the open air. The day was overcast and windy, the clouds scudding along from south to north, and the taste and smell of the sea filled Reyn’s nostrils.

They were standing on a promontory above the ruins, looking down on the crumbling walls and collapsed roofs, the bones of the dead clearly visible in gray patches within the courtyards and open chambers. Seaward, waves crashed below them against the rocks, and to the west the land spread away in a rocky, barren terrain that ended far distant where mountains rose against the horizon.

Lariana put her arms around Reyn and pulled him close to her, leaning her head against his chest. He reciprocated, and they remained like that for a time, neither of them saying anything as they stared out at the landscape and breathed the salt air.

“This way,” she said finally.

She released him and led him down a path that ran along the ridgeline south, picking her way as she held his hand as she might a child’s, her honey-streaked hair flying out behind her in the wind. They walked for more than a mile, pausing now and then to look out at the sea, to study rock formations, to watch the flights of birds winging their way through the damp haze.

“Where’s Arcannen?” Reyn asked her.

She shrugged. “He took the Sprint to one of the coastal towns yesterday and hasn’t been back. He said he had some business to take care of. Do you miss him?”

He smiled in spite of himself. “Not much.” He paused. “Tell me something more about yourself. You’ve barely said anything.”

She neither demurred nor hesitated. She simply responded, telling him about her life as the child of a Rover chieftain, of her parting with her family when she was barely thirteen and was told she was to be given to a rug merchant as his bride in exchange for certain valuable wares, of her flight east to the Southland cities of the Federation, and of her subsequent education at the hands of various wealthy and influential men who sought to keep her for their own, but could never hold on to her. He was more than a little surprised by her candor, her admission of the harshness and subjugation she had endured and somehow put behind her. She seemed untroubled by what she had weathered to reach this point in her life, and she avoided saying much at all about her arrangement with Arcannen beyond declaring that she intended that the sorcerer should one day mentor her in the use of magic.

“But you,” she said. “You were born with magic. It’s always been a part of you. What must that be like?”

They were sitting on a rock bench, looking out at the ocean, feeling the spray on their faces one minute, the wind the next. He looked at her in wonder, the question so strange he had trouble finding anything to say.

“I don’t know how to answer that. I think it’s wonderful and terrible both. It does good things and bad. Magic is unpredictable. It does things to you, even when you don’t want it to.”

She stared at him. “Are you saying you wish you didn’t have it?”

“Sometimes I feel that way.”

“But it makes you special that you do, Reyn!” There was an unmistakable urgency in her voice. “No one else is like you. Everyone wants what you have. I want it!”

“Maybe you should be careful what you wish for.”