He would not stand for it, he told himself, enraged. He would not allow it to happen.

Yet here he was, atop the bluff, walking toward the man in the scarlet dress uniform. The Commander of the Red Slash struck a dominant pose as he watched them approach, his expressionless face revealing nothing. But his eyes spoke for him. There was no kindness in those eyes, no hint of pity or forgiveness, no trace of compassion. He would let them come until they were close enough to be dangerous, and then he would crush them as a man’s foot would a scattering of ants.

“Begin,” Arcannen whispered suddenly.

Without stopping to think about it, Reyn summoned the wishsong, his voice soft and unsteady in its modulation as he brought his magic to life. He did not attempt to employ it yet; he had been instructed to wait on that. Instead, he was to cause it to build within him, to gain strength secretively. He was to gather and hold it at the ready, and, when directed to do so, to employ it against these men and woman in the way Arcannen had instructed.

But already he was having trouble. His efforts were forced and his willingness to act was compromised. The magic spread through his body in jagged lurches, an uneven and uncomfortable presence. He pushed ahead because there was nothing else he could do, but he could tell it was a broken, fragmented summoning and would likely fail him when it mattered.

“Dallen Usurient!” Arcannen called out to the man in scarlet.

“You should never have come!” replied the other.

“You should never have murdered the people in Arbrox! If you had shown even the least compassion, I would not be here.”

“And yet here you are, and you will shortly be the worse for it!”

Arcannen stopped, the boy and the girl at his side. They were perhaps fifty feet away from Usurient, and there were soldiers spread out on either side of them now, all watching closely, their weapons held ready. They would have been told not to act except on command, Usurient confident in their strength and certain of their readiness to act when it was necessary. Arcannen had told the boy he could depend on this.

“It is his pride in his soldiers that will lead him to his death,” the sorcerer had said. “His fall will be of his own doing.”

Reyn continued to build his magic, feeling it spread through him from toes to fingertips until the aura of its still-inaudible sound cloaked him with its vibration. Still, he struggled with holding it together, with smoothing it out and keeping it pure. Still, he fought to ready it for the use he had been told to make of it.

And still, it neither responded nor felt quite as it should.

“If he were to strike us down the moment he saw us, he could save himself,” Arcannen had said to the boy. “But he will not do that. First, he will demonstrate his superiority—to himself and his soldiers and us. He will command the stage as an actor in this play before he brings down the curtain. He will revel in his sense of power. He is obsessed with his need to reassure himself that he remains supreme and that I am vulnerable to him. He will want to make that evident before he acts. Watch closely.”

Now, with the light cast by the torches just beginning to fade along the edges as the sunrise slowly brightened in the east and chased a reluctant night’s darkness westward, Dallen Usurient brought out the handheld flash rip he had been hiding behind his back and pointed it at the sorcerer.

“You are a fool, Arcannen, to believe you could harm me here. Did you truly expect I would come alone? You have overstepped yourself this time. You have thrown caution to the winds of chance and hope, and neither has the power to save you.”

“Do you think so?” Arcannen sounded interested. “Is that really true?”

“I think that and much more. What you thought you could accomplish by coming to me like this …”

Lariana stepped closer to Reyn. She reached over and took his hand in her own. Immediately Reyn felt the wishsong grow stronger within him. Just her touch was enough to steady him, to fuel his confidence and dispel his hesitation. His doubts and fears faded; his certainty in himself blossomed in the space of a heartbeat.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“ … with no other protection than this boy and girl, no weapons save a magic that has limits even for you …”

“Now!” Arcannen breathed at the boy.

Reyn released his magic in a rush, allowing it to spread outward in all directions from where the three stood clustered together at the forefront of the Red Slash command—an expulsion of barely audible sound that passed through the air like the gentle brush of a morning breeze and filled the empty spaces between the soldiers before enfolding them and sliding into their ears like whispers, acting on their bodies in ways of which they were not immediately aware.

“ … remains a mystery to me, one that I expect I will never unravel, even after you are dead and gone and become no more than a fading memory …”

He stopped talking abruptly and his expression changed, revealing that he had sensed finally that something was terribly wrong. His voice faltered, his words turning guttural and vague and the hand that gripped the flash rip slowly lowering to his side.

All across the burial grounds and to the edges of the bluff, an eerie silence descended.

Avelene burned away the locking bar on their cell door and pushed it open. The halls within the blockhouse stood empty and silent, the darkness so complete that almost nothing of either one was visible to the other. She took the Highlander’s arm and led him to the building door, his guide through the deep gloom. He could see nothing, but there was a noticeable decrease in the sounds of the soldiers’ movements and voices without.

Taking him by the shoulders, the Druid moved him to one side of the door and placed in his hand the hilt of his sword, which she had retrieved. Just in case, she whispered, her lips placed next to his ear. His eyes had begun to adjust, and he could see her finger pressed against her lips, cautioning him to silence, and then the slow, rhythmic movement of her hands, barely visible in the darkness, a sliding of palms against the closed door. When she was finished, nothing had changed. The door remained closed; the lock was still intact. He waited for her explanation, but she said nothing. Instead, she brushed him up one side and down the other, bringing together handfuls of air and dust, her movements suggesting that she was covering them from view.

She bent close again. “Walk with me. Say nothing, do nothing but maintain a steady pace. Watch me and only me. No one will notice you.”

He wanted to ask how that could be and what difference it would make while they were trapped in this building. But he knew better than to challenge her. He knew he should simply trust. She waited for his response, and he gave it with a nod.

Taking his hand firmly in hers, she walked him to the ironbound door and through it as if it weren’t there.

Just like that, he was back outside, the night air cool against his skin, the sky filled with stars and moonlight. Guards stood on either side of the prison door, and he blinked to be certain he wasn’t imagining what had just happened. He had passed through a solid door, making an escape that no one had noticed.

Avelene led him through the camp, still holding his hand, avoiding contact with or proximity to anyone. The garrison had been reduced to a handful of soldiers, most of whom were engaged in cleaning up debris or carting off excess stores and arms. Guards at the prison and at the gates leading in were the only ones not occupied by these more mundane tasks. The bulk of the Red Slash was gone, marched out by Usurient to engage in a confrontation with Arcannen and his young charges. They would converge on the Horn of Honor, a place neither the Druid nor the Highlander knew how to find but which they believed must be somewhere close to the city proper. A burial ground for the fallen of the Federation army, Usurient had said. On a bluff overlooking the city.