The first thing Ivy did at the sight of me, unfortunately, was throw herself at me. I thought to hold my arms clear of her, but since she'd already sullied her clothes I gave up and pulled her close, resting my nose against her clean hair.

"We brought him back, as you can see," Chester said, satisfied. "Only a little worse for the wear."

"A little worse!" Radburn exclaimed. "It looks like you dipped him in—”

“We know what it looks like,” Chester interrupted. “But he’s fine.”

“Oh, Master!” Almond said from behind Ivy. Kelu was trembling at her shoulder, and Emily wide-eyed, but none of them moved toward me... save Almond, who darted to me to capture my hand. “Master, we are so sorry we didn’t save you! We ran away! We shouldn’t have... I shouldn’t have!”

“You did exactly as you had to,” I said, pulling her into my embrace with Ivy. “Had you stayed, they would have killed you and then no one would have survived to lead Chester into the hall to rescue me.” I kissed the top of her pale head. “I am grateful that you did run.” I looked around. The camp my friends had made was ruder than the ones we’d enjoyed on the road, for they’d dared not light a fire, and we lacked many of the conveniences we’d found on our travels, like trees we could sit on or use to make lean-tos. Fortunately we seemed to still have all our gear and mounts, but—

“I suppose it’s much to ask that I might have a bath.”

“Not unless you want us pouring canteen water over your head,” Guy said dryly, arms folded.

Ivy looked apologetic as she drew away from me. “We could escort you down to the stream, but... it’s not really big enough for washing in. It’s less a stream and more... well, a trickle.” She pinched a small area off with her fingers to demonstrate. “You could fit your foot in it, maybe.”

“If you turned your foot parallel to it,” Radburn muttered.

“Then if you will give me a little privacy,” I said, “Perhaps the genets and I can solve my problem.”

The genets were more than willing, and my friends turned their backs on us and went far enough that I felt comfortable sitting and gathering them close. “I meant it,” I murmured. “I am not angry at any of you. And if licking what’s left of my blood off me strikes you as unpleasant—“

It didn’t. And it took longer than I anticipated and was an imperfect solution, but they did well by me, and it was good to take care of them. While there were parts of me I preferred not to expose, they managed everything else, save my hair; Emily tried and wrinkled her nose, saying it was like sucking on a rope, and after that none of the others were especially eager to abrade their tongues on it. So Almond was trying, and failing for the most part, to pull a comb through it in preparation for an attempt at using Guy’s canteen when Eyre joined me. His face was composed, but his eyes revealed him.

“I don’t blame you either,” I said, quiet.

“My own colleagues—”

“Think I am an unnatural creature who trucks with demons, and who can blame them? Particularly since they’re not incorrect. What afflicts us is sourced in demons.” I shook my head, tugging against the comb. “What experience do they have of creatures that cannot die? Be reasonable, sir. They are operating on what little evidence they have.”

Eyre said, “Chester is being cagey, Morgan, but I am also capable of operating on the evidence of my senses. They didn’t just detain you out of a sense of duty. They tortured you.”

Almond’s brushing paused, just a little hitch in her movements. I said, “It wasn’t intentional. They’d read that blood makes magic possible, so they were trying, and failing, to drain me of it so they could successfully execute me.”

Eyre pinched the bridge of his nose against what was no doubt an incipient headache. “They tortured you.”

“It hurt,” I said. “But I have suffered pain before, and I healed from it. What concerns me more is that we no longer have access to the library... so now, how will we find the answer?”

“It’s your library, Morgan. They have no right to it.”

“But now I’ll have to kill them to take it from them,” I said with asperity. “And I have no desire to kill people whose sin is arrogance and ignorance, because if these qualities deserve a death sentence than we might as well slit our own throats. They’re wrong and I’m angry at them, sir, but killing them in the place where humanity betrayed the elves is setting up the wrong pattern for the closing of this tale. We want ‘and then humanity saves the elves’ or ‘and then the elves save humanity,’ not ‘humanity betrayed the elves and now the elves betray humanity.’”

That made him smile despite the shadows in his eyes. “Ever the folklorist.”

“We are writing our story,” I said. “I’d prefer it not to have a dire ending.”

“My student, the optimist!”

I eyed him as he sat in front of me. “A jest, surely.”

He grinned. “Yes. Or at least, the old Morgan Locke would never have admitted to optimism. I find I like the new Morgan Locke somewhat better for his willingness to be vulnerable.” He glanced at the crown of my head. “Speaking of which, I don’t hold out much hope that Miss Almond’s efforts will be of any help.”

“Neither do I,” I said. “So perhaps I haven’t completed my transition to vulnerable optimist yet.”

“Maybe the professor can help you,” Almond said from behind me. “Or Mistress Ivy.”

“Are your arms tired, dear?” I asked.

“Oh!” I could hear her blush without seeing it, just from the exclamation. “I meant with the blood, Master. Blood comes from living things, so perhaps Mistress Ivy can call it out? And hair is... not a living thing, so perhaps the professor could inspire it to shake itself clean?” She paused. “Is blood a living thing or a dead thing, sir?”

Both of us were struck wordless at her innocent question, and at the reasoning that had taken her to it. We were too accustomed to thinking of the genets as childlike because of their size, and the lives that had deprived them of the chance to learn responsibility. But they were not stupid.

“I imagine,” Eyre said slowly, “that blood is a living thing, even when dry, because of what it represents. If magic is indeed a system of symbols made manifest, then the symbolic genesis of blood matters more than its state. The matter would need a test.”

“Maybe we should try,” Almond said. “Master would not want to see his brother like this. It would grieve them both. Shall I fetch Mistress Ivy?”

“Or the Vessel... is she—”

“Gone back down the road to meet the knights she sent earlier,” Eyre said. “She told Roland and Powlett she would send for more men to help them hold Vigil against your forthcoming incursion of demon-ridden elves, and they seem to have believed her. The moment she was free, she was on her way. Nothing less would do but that she meet her king at last. Given how long the Church has been waiting, I find it hard to fault her eagerness.”

I imagined losing me to the madmen who’d imprisoned me had galled her as well. Her sacred duty had been to protect the returning elves, and a group of untrained academics had taken one of her charges? That it had been treachery had hardly mattered.

“Shall I fetch Mistress Ivy?” Almond asked.

“Please.”

Ivy’s arrival brought everyone else, perhaps unavoidably; hovering this close to Vigil, knowing that the people in it wanted to kill me and had the numbers to make good on that threat, had agitated us all. After hearing Almond’s tentative suggestion and Eyre’s consequent explication, Ivy tilted her head and said, “That would seem a straightforward task.” She sat behind me and produced a handkerchief. “The Vessel has been teaching us that magic is a thing primarily of language. But I like this notion of magic as symbol. And if that’s so, then I should be able to wipe you clean.”

“I don’t think it’s a wiping,” Serendipity whispered, hesitant. When everyone glanced at her, she flicked her ears back and said, “You are a woman, Mistress. You call the blood to you.”

“Right,” Ivy murmured.

I could not see her face, but I could sense her concentration, and with it the intensifying of the magic in her. For several minutes nothing happened… and then she gasped. My head felt lighter; when I looked over my shoulder, I found her framing in cupped hands a quivering crimson globe.

“Well!” Eyre exclaimed. “That certainly goes a long way toward proving that blood is a thing of life magics!”

“But what do I do with it!” Ivy looked at me, startled. “Shall I give it back?”

“I don’t need it.” I reached over and touched the ball, came away with a finger streaked in red. “Perhaps…” I looked at the genets, but even Kelu shook her head.

“I’ve had my fill,” she said. “And I’d rather have it out of your vein, anyway.”

“Obviously we take it with us,” Guy said. He opened his canteen and poured it out, then handed it to me. “Hold it under the blob there. Ivy, can you guide it in?”

“I think so.” She rolled her lower lip between her teeth and concentrated, and the sphere deformed. It reached toward the mouth of the canteen as if it had developed a questing arm, and I was not the only one who shuddered at the sight. But with the abruptness of a popped bubble, the ball emptied itself into the canteen, and I screwed the top back on quickly and handed it over.

“Well done!” Radburn said. “You have much better control over it than I do!”

“Thank you,” Ivy said. “But now perhaps Guy can tell us why we should keep it?”

“If blood is power, then we’ll find some use for it.” Guy grinned. “The way things are going, sooner rather than later.”

“Give it to me,” Kelu said. “I’ll probably need it before any of you remember we have it.”

“Sound reasoning,” Guy said, and handed it over to her.

“I’ll get some clothes for you now that you can wear them,” Ivy said. She looked down at herself. “And perhaps I should change as well, if we are to meet the king.”

“He’ll be here soon,” I said, quiet, because I could feel him like the sun on my face. “Not long now.”

“And then we can move,” Radburn said. “Before someone finds us that we don’t want finding us.”

“Soon,” I said again.

But the next person we saw on the road was not Amhric, and not alone. Three horsemen darted from the ruined city, pounding down the bridge, hooves kicking up sprays of dirt. They were heading south, and they had remounts behind them with supplies.

“Sending away for help?” Chester said, frowning. “After the Vessel promised her aid already? Have they decided not to trust her?”

“Perhaps they are sending warnings,” Samuel said. The Vessel’s ebon-skinned second in command, who’d been left with the knights she’d designated as our protection, had kept his distance from us. I’d assumed it to be the same reserve Last showed: he was on duty, and interruptions to that duty were not welcome. Seeing his face, I thought it the right assumption, and felt sympathy for his frustration. “There are more countries represented here than just Troth. The others might want to tell their nations what has passed here, alert them to the possibility of invasion. Or they might be heading for the capital, with similar news.”

“Should we stop them?”

Samuel bared his teeth. “We could ride them down, yes. But that would leave you with even fewer of us as safeguard. And they can’t come back with reinforcements in time to stop us.”

Stop us from doing what, though? That part, I didn’t know.

“I suppose this is the end of your secret society,” I told Eyre. “If those riders make it all the way to Evertrue, they will indubitably tell someone that elves live.”

“And are the servants of demons!” Ivy said. “Ridiculous!”

“Hopefully by the time we speak to them we will have ample evidence otherwise,” I said. Though how we’d manage that without the library guiding us, I had not the first notion. All I knew was that Amhric’s coming would make a great number of things clear to me, and how I knew that…

Magic, perhaps. Royal magic. But I trusted the instinct all the same. Amhric would arrive, we would confer, and between the two of us we would win ourselves and the elves clear of their curse. After that… who knew? Perhaps we could ride to Evertrue in state and introduce ourselves formally.

“Stay under the bridge,” Samuel said. “They probably won’t turn back, but they might send out more riders.”

For how long we remained, tense and attentive, I could not say. But long after our nerves had begun to fray, we heard the scuff of someone’s passage. Not horses this time, but people on foot. Samuel held out a hand to stay us—as if we would think of breaking cover, when footsteps suggested someone had been sent in search of us! I held my breath, stretching my senses out, feel the cool earth of the embankment, the hard stone of the bridge... the slight weight of those passing overhead. We waited, watched, hoped to count our opponents.

And found only three. Three figures, furtively hurrying from Vigil, bent low under packs. I squinted into the dark at them and would not have known them at all had not the person leading them whispered, “Hurry, we don’t know how much time we have.”

Startled, I said, hushed, “It’s Doctor Carrington.”

Eyre said, “What?”

Samuel gestured for quiet and Eyre leaned closer to breathe against my ear. “What’s she saying?”

I strained my hearing, but Carrington spoke no more. “She wants them to make haste.”

“She’s running?” Eyre said. “Is she in trouble?”

Even in the dark I could sense the looks Guy, Radburn, and Chester were exchanging. As one they started to rise, but Eyre was already moving. Samuel hissed and grabbed for the back of his coat, but fell short. All we could do was watch as Eyre scrabbled out from beneath the embankment and started up the narrow path leading to the bridge.

“Mary!”

A long, far too long pause. Then, hesitant: “John?”

“Mary, what are you doing?”

I started up after him, and this time Samuel’s fingers didn’t miss. “What do you think you’re doing, my lord?”

“I’ll stay in the shadow of the bridge,” I said. “But I’m going after him. What if the other two are armed?”

“Yes, what if they are—”

“Then they can kill him,” I said. “But they can’t kill me.”

That, at last, pierced the knight’s intransigence. His grip relaxed. “You will betray our position to everyone.”

“Eyre’s already done that,” I said. “Now release me.” When he hesitated, I said dryly, “Don’t worry. If they kill me, you’ve still got an elven king to do the work of the Church for you.”

“You wrong me if you think I have so little honor,” Samuel said, quietly.

I looked away until the burn on my cheeks faded, then said, “You’re right, and I apologize. But I must go.”

He searched my gaze, and found in it... something. My desperation? My determination? I had both in equal measure. Whatever the case, he released me, and I scrambled up after my mentor.

Eyre was already on the surface of the bridge, tensely facing his former colleague. She was followed by two striplings, a youth and a maiden, both burdened with heavy packs; like them, Carrington carried a pack, along with several books tucked into the crook of an arm.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Carrington said at last.

“Hang that,” Eyre replied. “Where are you going? Did they cast you out?” When she didn’t reply, he said, irritated, “For God’s sake, Mary. Do you truly distrust me? Should I prick myself and bleed red to prove there’s no demon blood coursing my arteries?”

Alongside me, Ivy whispered, “There’s Eyre’s hidden flame.”

I glanced at her. She’d inched up alongside me and was watching the tableau intently.

“Your compatriot didn’t bleed black either.”

“And she’d know it,” I muttered.

“Because he’s no demon-servitor, but a victim. You’ve known me for over two decades, Mary. Do you think I would let myself be taken in by a fair face?”

Her sigh was just audible in the dark. “I’d like not to think it, no. But I’ve seen ambition do worse things to men.”

“And my ambition is... what? To make the breakthrough that Hugh was hoping for?”

Carrington’s breath hissed from beneath her teeth. “Now is not the time, John. I have too little of it to disinter old hurts.”

“My old ones, you mean.” Eyre folded his arms. “So what errand is so urgent that you need sneak out before dawn?”

“We’re hiding books,” the youth behind her said unexpectedly.

“Books?” Eyre repeated.

“Because they want to burn them!” the maiden finished urgently.

“Burn them!” Eyre cried.

“Burn them,” I whispered, horrified. I joined him, unable to rein in my dismay. “They are going to do what?”

At the sight of me Carrington’s two followers backpedaled, eyes wide. Fear? No, perhaps merely weathering the brunt of my unearthly presence.

Carrington though. She paled. “You... you....”

“Should be bleeding to death in the cell where I was impaled with every sword you and your companions could scour from the elven palace?” I said with asperity. “What’s this now about the books?”

Cheeks flushed, Carrington hugged the ones in her arm to her chest. “Hugh and Emery have decided that the library is too dangerous to be allowed to fall into enemy hands, particularly if—” Her eyes darted to me, then back to Eyre, “—if there really is an elven nation coming on the heels of their outrider. They’re debating whether to destroy the whole library or to select only some number of works to consign to the flames along with the elf they think is still in a cell at this moment.”

The disaster was so inconceivable that I saw nothing but fire, and with it, the ash of all my hopes for the liberation of the elves.

“It’s patently ridiculous,” Carrington continued. “But they’re not going to listen to me about it. So while they’re off discussing whatever preposterous thing it is they’re planning, I’ve decided to rescue at least some of the treasure they’re plotting to destroy. Eliza and Oliver were the only two I knew I could trust, so I enlisted their aid. We were planning to find someplace to bury these....”

“God in the firmament,” Eyre said. “Mary! Can’t you see what they’ve become? In what universe is it a virtue to burn books?”

“In a universe where there are demons, apparently,” Ivy said from behind me. “Do you believe in demons, ma’am?”

“Maybe the question is whether we can afford not to,” the young woman accompanying Carrington said. “Though... I would have thought demons would seem... overripe.”

We all stared at her now. I found my tongue first. “Overripe. Like a rotting apple.”

“Exactly like that, actually,” Eliza replied, nodding. “Like something delicious and beautiful, but you can tell, somehow, that it’s off.”

“He can fall from ten stories and not die,” Carrington said, acid. “Surely that is enough.”

“I’d guess if God’s messiah fell off a balcony, she would survive too.” Eliza stepped toward me, curious. “Are you a demon?”

“No,” I said. “I am, however, demon-cursed.”

“Now that’s a good story!” the youth behind her exclaimed. He joined her, and standing alongside her one could see the stamp of some mutual relation. Not in anything as obvious as their hair color or eyes, for she was a brunette with gray eyes, and he was fair with dark. But something in the hairline, and the shape of their wrists, and the way their collarbones formed at the base of their throats. “Is it true?”

“Happily, I am no messiah,” I replied. “You are as divine as I am.”

They glanced at one another, and I saw the pulse leap in their necks. “We are?”

“I can even show you,” I said. Looking past them. “And you also, Doctor.”

“I’d thank you to keep your uncanny magics away from me, thank you,” she replied stiffly. “Eliza, Oliver, I strongly suggest—”

“Yes, please,” Eliza said, heedless of Carrington’s protest. “I want to know.” She added to her professor, “You’ve always said that there’s no substitute for direct experience.”

“If we’re going to do this,” came Samuel’s voice, “Can you at least bring them off the road, my lord!”

Bringing them off the road would require us to trust them with our location... or to hold them fast until we ourselves left. Either way, I was certain we could handle them. “As you say. Come.”

“Don’t!” Carrington held out a hand. “For God’s sake, don’t go with him. If he’s a threat to you—”

“Then it’s not like anyone’s going to find us in time, is it?” Oliver pointed out. “They’re still hiding in there.”
            “Plotting their empires,” Eliza muttered. “And leaving us out of them!”

That, apparently, was sufficient for the two students. Whatever politics had ensnared their professor had left them far too cynical about the machinations of academia, and they plainly loved Carrington well. I walked off the road, and the twain followed me. Inevitably, Carrington did as well, and Eyre circled around her. Now that Ivy had made her comment I could see the friction between them, born of too long a knowing with too little consummation.

“Here.” I stopped in the shadow of the bridge. “We’re not visible, but we’re not so far that you can’t run. Does that suit you, Doctor Carrington?”

“I wish you’d—” She cut the words off, baring her teeth as she looked away.

“Stop being polite to you though you hurt him?” Ivy said. At the other woman’s sharp glare, Ivy said, “Whether or not you were one of the ones who tortured him, you’re still responsible for letting other people torture him.”

I rested a hand on Ivy’s arm and she quieted, though not without resentment. I considered Carrington’s two students. Young, I’d thought them, but they weren’t all that much more so than my friends. It was the callowness in their eyes that had fooled me: they had seen so little of life, and all of it apparently cloistered.

Well, that would certainly change.

“You are ready for your proof?” I asked them.

“Proof that we have divine blood?” Eliza grinned. “Absolutely. This we want to see!”

“Feel,” Eyre murmured. “You’ll feel it.”

They looked over their shoulder at him, then turned to me in concert and said, “We’re ready.”

I held my hand in front of me, open. Concentrated. And pulled gently, until I could feel the tender cores in them, just waiting for water to flower. They gasped when I tugged at them, and then again when I poured just a little into them, enough to wet the soil. “I am,” I said, soft, “a little dry...?”

Radburn said, “I’ll donate.” He stepped up alongside me and grinned. “No hard feelings, after all.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” I smiled at him, then pulled a thread of magic from him and fed it into the two students, until they held enough for use. “There. The gift of angels, bought for humanity by Saint Winifred and held in trust all these many years by the Church against our need.”

“What... what did you do?” Eliza asked, shocked. She glanced down at her chest, rubbed it. “Am I glowing?”

“And what did he do?” Oliver added, staring at Radburn.

“Magic can be used up,” Radburn said. “I had some extra, so I let Morgan give it to you.”

“We can’t give it directly,” Chester added, joining us. His voice was quiet. “Only the elven king and prince can do this. Usually.”

Carrington had come closer, scowling. “Do what? What did you do to my students?”

“Do it to her!” Oliver exclaimed.

“Oh, ma’am, you must let him!” Eliza agreed.

“You’re mad if you think I’ll let him touch me.” Carrington advanced on them, turned the youth to face her first and scrutinized him. “You don’t look any different.”

“It’s not a ‘look’,” Eyre said behind her. “It’s a feel. You can feel it on the skin. Under your fingers, Mary. That’s where you’ll sense it.”

“Preposterous,” she muttered, but I noticed her flexing her hands.

“What can we do with it?” Eliza was asking, still looking at her chest as if to find visible evidence of her change. “Magic… that’s the stuff of stories.”

“Folklore, certainly.” Ivy shared a warm glance with me, then returned her attention to the girl. “But as you’re a woman, you will command all that lives.”

“Hey!” Oliver exclaimed. “How is that fair? What’s left over?”

“Everything else!” Radburn said. “Seems a fair enough trade to me!”

“I don’t see anything.” Carrington was frowning. “And I sense nothing. It’s nonsensical to think that I might.” She stepped away from her student—fortunately, for Oliver was already trying to hold a conversation over his shoulder with Radburn about the exciting new avenues open to him as a male practitioner of arcane arts. Folding her arms, she said, “It’s a trick.”

“I think you’re allowing your emotions to rule your intellect,” Eyre said. At her fulminating glare, he said, so quietly that I thought only she’d been meant to hear, “You were always afraid of being accused of too much sentimentality. But a little sentiment, Mary, is not always a bad thing.”

“Try holding that belief while laboring as one of the sole women in your field. In any field of higher learning!”

Poor Eyre. He so wanted to reach her, and she so wanted to be reached by him, but her wounds kept her from accepting any aid. I empathized with her dilemma. It felt as if years had passed since Eyre had admonished me to accustom myself to asking for help because the whole of human life required acknowledgment that few of us survive without it. Like her, I’d been handicapped by something I couldn’t change—my illness—and wanted to succeed despite that handicap, and to do so while being able to say I needed no one.

I had learned better. Or at least, I hoped I was in the process of doing so.

“Leave her be,” I said. Both of them looked up at me at that. “I want no one who does not come to us of their own free will… and pushing her into accepting the gift will do none of us any favors, sir. If she decides to trust us, then we’ll still be here.”

Behind me, Chester said, “You’re making several assumptions, Locke. Not the least of which that we might not die in our endeavor.”

“We might,” I said. “But by God’s grace we shan’t, and I will trust in Him.”

“That still leaves us with the problem of dealing with her presence.” Chester came abreast of me, eyeing Carrington.

She lifted her chin. “If you think to frighten me… I don’t fear you. I don’t fear death!”

“You’re lying,” I said. “And I admire your bravado, but it won’t serve.” I glanced at Eyre and said, “I think we’ll have to take her along, wherever we end up going.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“I hear horses!” Samuel exclaimed.

And so did I, and I felt them too. “Will they know we’re off the road?”

“They know,” the knight said.

I abandoned Carrington and Eyre and all my friends, caring little that I might be seen from Vigil in the weirdling light that accompanied the slow receding of night. How appropriate that he should arrive with the sun! And how long I’d waited to see him!

The drake I saw first, by its burning ember eyes, separating from the shadows. And then the entirety of the entourage came, harnesses jingling, hooves striking their swift beats. By then, however, I saw only the man in the saddle of my beast, and I was already running for him before they halted. Reaching up, I cried, “Oh, but what has befallen you! They have hurt you! Tell me who it was and I will kill them myself!”

“Morgan,” Amhric said, sliding into my arms. “Ah, Morgan.” And rested there, warm against me, and whole but afflicted… by what I knew not. His shining had dimmed, so that his golden skin looked more like Eyre’s or Chester’s than like an elf’s shimmering, and he looked weak and too gaunt. It hadn’t been long enough for him to look like this… had it? What new torment had Sedetnet devised for him? I cradled him close, grateful but fighting rage and guilt, and heard the horses circling us without allowing them to distract me. Or I did until one of the people astride spoke.

“It was no one, my prince.”

Shocked, I looked up and found my liegeman—vassal—both, either, did it matter? “Kemses! But what are you doing here?”

Kemses it was, and holding the staff I’d sent with Last as symbol of my promise to Amhric to protect him. How appropriate that it should come back to me in his hands! “It is a long and strange story, but before we tell it, I have it from our escorts that we should not tarry?”

“No,” I said. “No, we mustn’t.” Over my shoulder I called, “We must ride!” Leaning back to clasp Amhric’s shoulder, I added, solicitous, “Can you?”

“I can,” he promised. “I am not so cruelly used as I look, I promise.”

“And I must believe you. But you must tell me all when we find a safe spot.”

“I will.” Amhric sighed. “I have missed you, Morgan!”

“And I have you, like a riven piece of my heart. Up you go, back on the drake.” I helped him up, turned… and found all my friends drawn in behind me, staring. They could sense him on their skins too, from the looks on their faces, each as individual as their personalities: Chester with solemnity and Ivy with awe, Guy considering and Radburn flushed. Eyre behind them looked like a man who’d resigned himself to the teaching of history, suddenly thrust into its midst. I remembered his reaction to me when I’d first returned to Evertrue and saw the joy there again.

Nor was I the only one, for Mary Carrington was watching him, torn between unease and pensiveness.

“Well?” I said to them, and they scattered to break camp and load the horses.

I rode behind Amhric, and from this position I felt all too clearly the ribs in his back and the hollow of his waist. These things I ignored, for the pace the Vessel and Kemses demanded was too grueling for words. I had thought they would guide us out of sight, but this would not suffice for either of them. The day broke over us, bringing the sun; the sun rose bright in the autumnal sky; and the sun was pressing toward the horizon when at last Rose began seeking a campsight. We were able to choose one enshrouded in trees, for they had brought us far enough from Vigil to reach them.

“Here,” the Vessel said. So haggard was her dark countenance and so grim her voice, I wondered if she had seen any skeletal vultures on the journey to meet up with the king. “Set up the watch, and double it. I want at least one elf and one human per team. If the prince will permit.”

“The prince does,” I said.

Last and Samuel scattered to make good on the command. The remainder of us saw to the tents and the disposition of our one prisoner, for Carrington’s students were far too fascinated to attempt escape. Their mentor we kept under watch, but didn’t tie, and all three of them we held separate from our counsels.

And then it was time for the explanations.

“He let me go.”

“He did what?” I said, startled. I had not heard correctly, surely.

“The sorcerer released me.” Seeing my expression, Amhric said, quiet, “He didn’t harm me, save to scratch my cheek once.”

“For the blood,” I guessed grimly.

“He found it illuminating. Of what, he declined to divulge. But he didn’t harm me, and indeed, he let me go not long after you left.”

“I had men at the sorcerer’s tower,” Kemses said. “I was suspicious, for I thought him too involved with warmongering, and with Amoret in particular, who betrayed the king, and I had promised you I would find some way to hold a beachhead for your return. But one day Sedetnet made his tower whole, emerged from its base, and left. My outriders brought me word, and I came swiftly, for it is not common to hear of the sorcerer using magic anymore.”

“I had found my cell open,” Amhric murmured, “And I followed in Sedetnet’s wake, and found Kemses there.”

“Just like that,” I murmured.

“Just like.” Kemses said. “If ‘just like’ can encompass my surprise at finding the king in Serala rather than on a ship bound for Troth. But that is neither here nor there. We trailed him, Morgan. He went to the coast and made a Door.”

A singing pause, as if they expected me to understand why this was significant. Since I didn’t, I said, “And a Door leads someplace, I presume.”

“Doors need magic such as has not been seen since the betrayal,” Kemses said. “I had assumed there was not power to make a Door in the world anymore.” He glanced at Amhric, and his jaw hardened. “I fear what it means, if demons await only power to arrive to the world.”

“A Door,” Amhric said to me, “allows a person to move from one place to the other without spending the time in traveling.”

“Oh my,” Ivy whispered beside me.

“Your whole shipping business would collapse,” Guy said to Chester.

“Or become imperishably wealthy,” Chester said, absently. “Where did this Door go, sire?”

“Here,” Amhric said, quiet. “It leads here, north and west of where we are.”

“So Sedetnet came here.” I frowned. “Why? He had cause, I’m sure.”

“And no doubt he wishes to tell it to you,” Amhric agreed. “For he left you a letter, sitting outside my cell door. Propped up against the wall, as if in expectation of my escape.”

“A letter!”

“None of us can open it,” Kemses agreed, and withdrew it from his bag to hand it to me. As I puzzled at the pale envelope, he continued, “We came through the Door in the sorcerer’s wake, and we were seen doing it on the Archipelago side. There are those who very much wish to do away with the king. Your reinforcements—” He nodded toward Rose, “—were very helpful in that regard, for we had already had several clashes with them and they pressed us hard.”

“You were chased by your enemies?” Eyre asked, his attention suddenly very sharp. “How did they find you? Did you kill them all?”

“They are dead and burned,” Kemses said. “But that hardly signifies. The Door remains open, and there is no guarantee it will not attract more travelers.”

“Still open!” Ivy exclaimed. “But for how long? I have to imagine such an enchantment requires a terrifying amount of power!”

“The power is in the opening and closing,” Amhric told her. “It remains as it is until commanded.”

“And none of us have the power to command its closure,” Eyre guessed. “Which means—”

“That the elves can return after their long exile,” Guy said. “I don’t relish the meeting given Morgan’s report of them.”

I passed my thumb over the smooth paper, wondering what Sedetnet had written me, and why. But one matter needed attention first. “And you,” I said to my brother. “Why do you look so attenuated?”

“Because this continent is starved for magic,” Amhric said. “There is nothing but longing in it, a parched need. And I am the king.”

And the king reflects the land. But where had all the magic gone? I had noted its absence myself on reaching the continent, but I couldn’t conceive of a reasonable explanation for the lack.

“We have some small amount,” Chester said, quiet. “If it would help…?”

“You have a generous heart.” Amhric reached out, rested a thin hand on Chester’s knee. “But what afflicts me cannot be healed until the land is healed.”

“And for that we have to know what’s hurting it,” Ivy said. “Except… what could that be?”

As they spoke, I pressed my thumb beneath the blood-red wafer sealing the envelope closed, and touching it I knew it was not that color solely for dramatic purpose. Something stung my skin as it crumbled, pricking forth small beads of blood. He had enchanted it to open only to my fingers. Why? Why me? I did not flatter myself to think he’d found our one tryst so affecting that he held some lasting affection for me. Something else bound us. Was it that he found me unexpected in a life that had become tedious and empty?

The words were written in Lit, not the Gift, and with a casual hand that made the letters feel as if they’d been thrown away.

 

O Would-Be Prince,

 

I am here on my own errands, which involve summoning demons. Yes, I think that’ll do, don’t you think? It’s past time. But by the time you read this, Suleris’s new blood-flag head will have discovered the Door, and so will his enemies. Knowing that an entire continent full of unsuspecting human fodder lies on the other side, I expect them to have some quarrel about who will feed first. It may take a day or two for them to settle their differences. If you’re fortunate, it will take longer. But I give them less than a week before they head south. I shudder to think what they’ll do with an entire new population to enslave. It should be fairly easy for them to do so, given how difficult it is for them to die.

You have a choice now. Stop the demons and save the elves. Stop the elves and save the humans. I look forward to seeing what you decide. Strangely, as I have good reason to hate choices.

If you choose the former, I suspect you already know how to find me.

My, how interesting things have become, in the end! But end they shall, and I will see you ere it finishes.

Enjoy!

—S

 

“My God!” I whispered. “He is mad!” I imagined the cruelty done to me by Thameis inflicted on my parents, the families of my friends, my countrymen. I wouldn’t wish the horror the elves would visit on them on even the worst of criminals: a judicially-mandated death was a cleaner end. My nausea redoubled. Save the elves or save humanity! It beggared belief that anyone could be so amoral as to set up such a choice. But could I have expected anything else of one who rolled dice to guide his decisions? Nothing was of consequence to the sorcerer; life or game, it was all the same to him.

“Morgan?” Ivy asked, distressed. “Your hands. They’re shaking.”

“What does it say?” Eyre added.

“He means to unleash the demons,” I said. “And to distract me from stopping him, he has set the elven populace on the Door and told them where to find a new source of slaves.” I looked toward Kemses. “He says there is some slight chance they will quarrel amongst themselves for primacy before heading south.”

My liegeman’s face was masklike. “It’s possible.”

“How long did it take you to ride here?” I asked.

“Two weeks, about,” Kemses said. “So I judge.”

“Can we step backward a moment?” Radburn interrupted. “Are you telling me that an elven army is coming here? To conquer us?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, we can’t have that,” Guy drawled.

“They must be warned,” Chester said.

Yes, they must be. Unless... I looked at Eyre. “Doctor Carrington. Bring her here.”

Unlike her students, Carrington hadn’t been interested in eavesdropping on our conference, and had kept her back stubbornly turned to us for its duration. She came with obvious reluctance, arms tightly folded over her chest, and spared only a glance for Amhric and the other elves before facing me. “Yes?”

“Three riders left Vigil not long before you did,” I said. “Where were they going?”

She eyed our company mutinously and said nothing. Frustrated, Eyre said, “Mary, please.”

“I’ll save you some work,” I said. “They were riding south, to warn someone. Evertrue, I presume. But perhaps the countries neighboring Troth as well.”

“You’ll never catch them,” she declared.

“I have no desire to,” I said grimly. “I hope to God they arrive, and whatever evidence they’ve brought to prove their case is sufficient to excite the alarm of whatever official entertains them.”

Shocked, she blurted, “You can’t be serious!”

“I fear I am. Your colleagues’ fears will shortly be realized, and it may be that they are the only ones who can marshal humanity to its own defense, because I—” I met Amhric’s eyes and exhaled, calming myself. “I need to go after Sedetnet. Don’t I.”

My brother held out his hand. I gave him the message, and after he’d read it, he passed it to Kemses.

“I’m right,” I said softly. “It’s a false choice. Humanity can survive what the elves will do to them, for the like of Thameis and Amoret will not be inclined to kill the cattle supplying them with their magical needs. But if the demons are freed, we are all imperiled, and the dead will walk, and with the elves yet bound the cost in blood to stop them will be immeasurable.”

Said Amhric, only, “Yes.”

“What are you talking about?” Carrington demanded. When no one immediately replied, she said to Eyre, “Are they seriously discussing an elven host bent on conquest? It’s real?”

Eyre glanced at me and I nodded. He said, “I fear so.”

“And you’re not going to stop them?” Carrington faced me now. “You said you grew up human. You would abandon us now?”

“He has no choice,” Chester said. “If the sorcerer brings down the demons, the elves won’t be equal to their task of fighting them off. We will all die.”

“If only we’d finished our work!” Ivy exclaimed. “But the library is barred to us!”

“Is it?” Guy asked. When he found everyone’s attention on him, he lifted his brows. “I count some fifty elves here. Maybe. And the Vessel has twenty-five knights. Surely fifty deathless warriors can mop up three times their number in poorly armed students. We might not be able to do the job but they can.”

“He has a point,” Kelu said, speaking for the first time. I had not expected the other genets to opine, but Kelu’s quiet had been unwonted. “You could send them to take the library. Or at least convince the people holding it that they can’t keep it, if you’re going to be squeamish about killing them.”

“If the sorcerer is already on his way north, we cannot afford to linger, my prince,” Kemses said. “Not even to resume the quest to unravel the enchantment.”

“There’s more than enough of us for both tasks,” Radburn pointed out. “Some of us could stay and keep reading while the rest of you go corral the sorcerer.”

“But for that to work,” Ivy said, “We’ll have to leave everyone who can fight behind—” She glanced at Carrington, then finished, “Since I doubt they’re going to be convinced by anything less than overwhelming force.”

“I don’t want to kill anyone more than necessary,” I said. Sighing, I finished, “Indeed, I would rather not kill anyone at all.”

“Morgan,” Rose said, quiet. “Don’t ask me to stay behind. We were trained for this moment—”

“To bar the dead from the living,” I said.

“The king is our charge!”

“Humanity is your charge,” I said. “The king of elves is a means to your end. Winifred herself would say so. Rose, where I go no force of arms can aid me. The sorcerer cannot be defeated by a sword, no matter how bravely wielded. And the minor magics you can bring to bear would trouble him no more than the bite of an ant.”

“Enough ants can bring down a man,” the Vessel said.

I held up my hands for quiet, received it, mercifully. Looking at my brother, I said, softer, “Will you decide?”

A smile curved his mouth, gentle and rueful and loving. “I am the King-Reclusive. In this you lead.”

“Then,” I said with a sigh, “I will lead first by retiring to consider my options.” I rose and bowed to the company. “I won’t be long.”

Hoping that would stay them from following and beleaguering me with their well-meaning attempts to help, I left the campfire for the forests, where the land could cradle me and the silence soak into my heart and still my racing thoughts. Picking my way through the thickness of shadows that would have once tripped me, I continued until I found a likely tree. I sat against it and wrapped my arms around my knees, stared through the black fretwork of the branches. With fewer leaves to diffuse the pattern, it looked almost like the ceiling of a cathedral, and I thought of the hall at Vigil with its glass open to the firmament. Some elven architect had sat beneath a forest’s canopy and found glory in the hint of blue mystery, and duplicated it no doubt. A reminder that none of us had access to the pattern, and it was glorious beyond our ken.

Had the sorcerer gone mad for seeing it?

Why did I think he had?

I pressed my brow against my knees, feeling the frame of my glasses pinch the skin at my nose. Really, there was no choice. I could not leave Sedetnet free. I could not afford to leave the library’s answers. And the elves would come straight through Vigil on their way south, unless they broke west, and the mountains that way quickly became impassable. It was in my heart that they would take the easier path, not just because it was easier, but because it led to the ground where once they’d fought and bled. Threnody-Calling-Forward was calling, and they would heed.

How dearly I wanted to stay and read books and make notes. Almost it was in me to wish I had died ignorant of myself, and too young, rather than have come into this. But it was useless.

Almost.

I closed my eyes and marshaled my strength for what was to come, and I had not finished when I heard the whisper of feet against the earth. Softly, Almond said, “Master?”

I held an arm out to her and she poured into the space alongside me, rubbing her furred cheek against mine. Kelu I heard because she allowed me to hear her, sitting to one side and before me.

“We know you said you wanted to be alone,” Almond whispered, though I’d said no such thing—it was like her to have heard it so clearly—“so if you wish us to go....”

“No.” I gathered her close and sighed. “No, it’s well. I think I’ve had about as much solitude as I need.”

“You have attracted a small horde,” Kelu agreed, dry.

“Not my intent, I assure you.”

“No.” She grinned, all sharp teeth. “Just an accident of your going around turning everything upside down. First the Archipelago. Now the human civilization. I thought you would, but I didn’t think you’d do it so fast.”

I thought of the messengers racing for the capital. “It is not how I would have chosen to introduce humanity to the elves. The damage may in fact be irreparable.”

“I’m sure they’ll shrug it off when they see the elves being ripped apart for them by the dead,” Kelu said. At my expression, she said, “You don’t honestly expect to be able to stop Sedetnet, do you?”

“Kelu,” Almond murmured.

“No.” Kelu flicked her ears back. “No, on this one point, I’m not going to soften the blow. We’re talking about someone who can float a tower and open Doors. If he wants to summon demons, no one’s going to be able to stop him.”

“I could ask,” I said.

“You could, and he might even say ‘yes’. But I doubt he will. For someone capricious, he’s acting like someone with a mission.”

“He is, isn’t he?” I said, puzzled anew. “I’m missing something, and I fear the lack may destroy us all.”

“Probably,” Kelu agreed, scooting over and putting her back to the tree. She ignored Almond’s outraged gasp. “More than probably, really. Unless, I guess, you can make all these humans into bad copies of elves by pricking the magic in them. Not that it’ll matter, since there’s not enough magic on this continent to feed them all. What good is a hundred knights who can use magic if you’ve got thousands of corpses rushing them?” She shrugged. “I don’t know how that’ll work out for the best.”

“Maybe an angel will save us, the way an angel saved us before,” Almond said.

Kelu snorted. “You know how many people have prayed for angels to save them?”

“Maybe if Amhric and I ask,” I murmured, but they both heard the lack of confidence in my voice. Responding to Kelu’s quizzical look, I said, “But I fear our sacrifice has been debased. There is nothing in our blood to bring forth an angel anymore. We have wasted the gift.”

“You didn’t waste it,” Almond said firmly. “It was taken from you by betrayal.”

“Either way, I don’t think we can rely on our ability to summon one. The very idea is blasphemous. We are no one to be ordering the arrival of one of God’s divine messengers.” I removed my glasses and rubbed one eye with the butt of a palm. “We will have to muddle through as best we can.”

“You will, anyway.” Kelu closed her eyes. “The rest of us will be dead, and probably for the best.”

Almond tensed against me, but said nothing. I frowned and squinted at Kelu. “By which you mean—”

“God, you are daft.” Kelu sighed. She leaned over and knocked on my brow with her furred knuckles. “I’m the oldest genet in existence, and I’m near my expiry date, ‘Master.’ Almond won’t be around in a few years. All of the genets that exist, right now, are all the genets that will ever exist, because there’s no more Fount to make them, and even if you somehow figure out how to win this disastrous epic battle you’re not going to hand the king over to Suleris so they can keep making more of us. In five or six years, the youngest of us will die, and there will be no more genets.” At my expression, she nodded, satisfied. “So you see, I don’t really care whether you figure things out or not. Either way, it’s not going to matter to us. Me, Almond, Emily,” said with disdain for the human name, “Serendipity... all the genets in cages back at Suleris... we’ll all be dead.”

The thought of a future without genets was absurdly depressing. But there were no genet sires, and their lifespans were engineered into them as surely as ours were into us. “Perhaps the same knowledge that will liberate the elves from their imprisonment will serve the genets as well.”

Kelu snorted. “Maybe. But by the time you have time to figure it out, I’ll certainly be dead.” She got to her feet, dusting off her legs. “Don’t worry yourself over it. No one will ever be asked to make a hard choice between saving the genets and saving everyone else. That’s a privilege you furless people reserve to yourselves. We’re just...” She trailed off and grinned humorlessly. “Unfortunate victims.”

“Kelu,” I said, “I can understand you throwing darts at me. I can understand you hating me. But the darts you throw rip you as well. Why do it?”

She looked away, ears flat against her head and a wrinkle rumpling her muzzle but not quite baring her teeth. Finally she said, “Don’t try to save what can’t be saved. ‘Master.’” And then she stalked away.

“She doesn’t hate you,” Almond said softly, distressed. “Her life has been nothing but fear and cruelty, Master. She doesn’t know how to hope.”

“Your life hasn’t been much better.” I drew her into my lap and wrapped both arms around her.

“No, but I have known kindness. You have been kind.” She petted my arm.

“But before me?” I pressed.

“Before you I knew that pleasing my masters was good,” she said, “because pleased masters are happy, and then there is more happiness in the world.” She lifted innocent eyes to mine. “And if I have added to some of the happiness in the world, then my life has been worth something.”

I hugged her tightly, feeling in my heart for the first time that she would die, years before I had tired of her sweetness and her wisdom. She licked my jaw and perhaps I let my eyes well against her hair.

When I could breathe again I leaned back and let her right my glasses on my nose. Through them she burned a purity, as well she should. I no longer knew what the glow signified; it only seemed appropriate that she should be among the brightest of the people I had yet seen.

“Do you know what you’ll do?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “So let us go back and see it done. The sorcerer is putting distance between us as we speak.”