"Because you have no magic, and your companion's faith blinds her to other tools. Only by seeing the danger can you avoid it a or warn Evenna in time to fight it." He spread his hands wide, cupping an invisible bowl. Flames, fueled by his flesh, leaped up between Falcien's blackened fingers. The center smoothed into a wavering sheet, like a mirror of beaten bronze, while smaller tongues of fire danced about the edges.

In that strange mirror Asharre saw herself and her companions walking through the desecrated chapel of Carden Vale. This time she caught glimpses of meaning in the lay of the rubble at the chapel's door and the papers that skittered around their feet. It was like seeing the pages of a book in a language she had just learned to reada"but the vision moved on before she could take any meaning from them. She wanted to stop the images and understand what the ruins were trying to say, but she had no power over the dream.

Asharre watched as Evenna and Falcien entered the chapel and dipped their hands into its ever-flowing bowl, touching wet fingertips to their brows and breasts in ritual obeisance. With the aid of the fiery mirror, she saw now that there were worms of corruption swimming in that bowla"tangled strands that looked like murky lakeweed and wrapped itself around their fingers when they touched the water. The black worms burrowed into their heads and hearts when the two Celestians made their gestures. Soon they were out of sight, vanished beneath skin.

"So you see," dead Falcien said, closing his hands and shattering the image, "we invited the corruption in without knowing. If we had been able to read the signs, if we had been able to see a I might have been spared. If you learn to find the patterns soon enough, Evenna might yet be. If you can follow them and find Aurandane."

"The solaros guessed rightly? It is in Shadefell?"

Falcien exhaled. A stream of sparks poured from his nose, burning his septum to a crumbling wall of cinders. "It is there. The sword is hidden behind shadows and snares; it is no accident that the Sun Knights of old could not find it. But it is there. With my help, you will be able to evade the traps that ring it and carry it out safely. I will lay a trail of scales for you to follow a like the Storm Queen's daughter finding her way back to the sea." His mouth twisted at the last words, making a smile that looked more like a grimace. The corners of his lips bubbled and burst.

"I do not know that story."

"No? It isn't important. Listen to me, and learn the signs. Knowledge will keep you out of Maol's traps."

"Unless this is the trap." But as soon as she said it, Asharre knew that was wrong. It was Falcien's appearance that was corrupted, not the man's message. The Mad God cast a shadow into her sleep, turning his victims into mockeries of themselves in an attempt to frighten her away from heeding their warnings. By that deception, Maol meant to steal the one weapon she might use against him.

"If this is a trap," Falcien said, his teeth cracking apart in the heat, "you would be right not to trust me. But I think you know the truth."

Asharre nodded hesitantly. A tiny voice of doubt piped at the back of her mind, but she crushed it ruthlessly. They needed this. "What must I do?"

"Listen. Only listen, and learn." Falcien extended his hand. Broiled flesh sloughed from the blackened bones. She took it, forcing herself to ignore the ugliness. His touch scorched through the bandages on her injured palm, but there was a sweetness to the pain, like the burn she felt after hard exercise. It was a pain that would make her stronger. Euphoria washed through her, drowning that tiny voice of doubt.

"Wake now," he said, "wake, and when you return to sleep, we will begin."

Asharre opened her eyes.

The last stars were setting through the western mountains. Sapphire and silver chased the snowy peaks opposite them. It was nearly dawn. The dream had lasted only a moment, yet the entire night had passed.

She clenched her hand under the bandage. It didn't hurt. Curious, Asharre unwrapped the knotted blanket.

The gouges from the first night had healed, after a fashion. Instead of the deep holes, there were only four swollen blisters, red and fat as grapes, where the wounds had been. Four new blisters dappled the skin between them, making a lopsided ring, like two diamonds laid crosswise atop each other.

Four over four. The thought was vaguely troubling. She'd seen a similar design before, somewhere a but it was of no consequence. She would have remembered if it were.

The blisters made it hard for her to close her hand, but there was no pain and she could use her fingers, albeit awkwardly. She rewrapped the bandage around her palm and went to check on Evenna.

The Illuminer was sleeping poorly again. Her teeth were bared in a rictus snarl; her hands were clenched into fists atop her blankets. She'd tossed and thrashed until her sweaty hair surrounded her like a halo of black snakes.

Asharre shook her roughly. "Wake up."

Evenna moaned. Her eyes fluttered open, stark white. Asharre shook her again, harder. The Illuminer sat up, immediately dropping her head into her hands. Her shoulders trembled as she gasped for breath; she dug her fingers into her tangled locks, pulling hard.

"Bad dreams?"

"Nightmares." Evenna shuddered, keeping her face buried between her arms. "I know a I know what we're doing is important. Lives depend on it. But oh, Bright Lady. I don't know if I can be strong enough."

"You are. We are. We have to be." And we have more hope than you know, Asharre wanted to add, but it was best not to speak of that until she was sure. Perhaps Falcien would not come back to her dreams; perhaps she had only imagined he'd help. She couldn't promise anything. Not yet. "What did you dream?"

"The forge again. It was burning bones, like before, but this time it held a tiny sun in its firepit. On the outside it was all white and gold glory, dazzling, but there was a black seed at its heart. I saw the people of Carden Vale cutting the bones from their own bodies, from their friends', from their children to feed that fire. They prayed while they did it. They believed that they were serving Celestia's will by their blasphemy. I saw it a and I knew it was true, even as the vision tried to use that truth to lead me astray." The Illuminer wound the chain of her sun medallion over her right hand and pulled it tight. Its links bit white lines into her fingers. "The corruption is trying to reach me as I sleep. It's trying to take me. It might succeed. If it does, if I should fail a"

"You won't," Asharre said, more brusquely than she meant to. "You have your goddess and your faith. You have me."

Evenna looked up and smiled weakly, pushing sweat-straggled hair from her face. "Faith is good, but a plan is better. Isn't that what you said? One must have a plan. This is mine. If I should fall, do one thing for me. Kill me. I can't allow myself to be corrupted. I can't a if the Mad God takes one of Celestia's Blessed a you mustn't allow it to happen, if I can't stop it myself."

"How will I know?"

"I don't know. But you must. Promise me."

Asharre shifted her weight uncomfortably, feeling the heft of the caractan press against her back. It felt wrong to give that oath, as if she tempted fate by uttering the words a but that was foolishness. They were dead anyway if they failed. Or worse. Maybe death would seem a blessing then. "I promise."

"Thank you." Evenna stood unsteadily. "I need to pray."

"Wait," Asharre said. "Do you know the story of the Storm Queen's daughter? The one with a trail of scales?"

The younger woman canted her head to the side. "Yes, why?"

Asharre shrugged uneasily. It had only been a passing mention in a dream a but it troubled her, somehow. "Tell me."

"It's a children's story." Evenna waited for a moment, but when Asharre did not seem dissuaded, she went on. "There was a prince who lived in a seaside castle and saw the Storm Queen's daughter singing amidst the waves at daybreak. She was beautiful, with hair and skin as white as sea foam and eyes that shone like pearls a but she was not human. From the waist down, her body was that of a silver fish, all covered in scales. Still, the prince fell in love and resolved that he would have her. He went to a sorcerer and begged for a boon that might bring the lady out of the sea.

"The sorcerer gave him a golden crown, and the prince laid that crown on the shore. At dawn the next day, the Storm Queen's daughter picked it up from the strand and lifted it to her head. When she put it on, the crown transformed into a golden net, and the prince ran down to claim her.

"She did not want to go with him, and she struggled and wailed, but the prince would not be deterred. He carried her off into the castle, intending to make her his bride. So that her mother could find her and save hera"or, in some tellings, so that she'd be able to find her way back to the seaa"the Storm Queen's daughter clawed off her own scales, one by one, and left them shining in a trail of blood to mark the way she had gone."

"The prince did not notice?" Asharre asked.

Evenna brushed the question away with a tired wave. "It's a story. The prince never notices anything in stories. So the Storm Queen's daughter left her trail of scales. But a strange thing happened when she dropped the last one: she found human legs inside her fish's tail, and she forgot what it was to live in the sea. She had no more interest in returning to her cold life of stones and water; she wanted to stay with her prince.

"It was too late, though. The Storm Queen saw her daughter's blood and came to the castle in a fury. Crashing waves tore the castle down; lightning killed its soldiers. The Storm Queen drowned the prince herself, dragging him into the deeps, and brought her daughter back under the waves.

"But her daughter had become a princess, human in heart and body, and the sea was no longer her home. She drowned alongside her husband, and that is the story's end."

"A fine tale to tell children."

"Most folk stories are like that. They might have meant something else, originally a but they're for children now."

"Yes," Asharre said, wondering.

They were on the move again before the sun rose over the Shardfield. The day was gray and hazy, and the forest closed around them as the road climbed northeast along the mountain walls. Years of neglect had healed the scars left by soldiers and miners; as often as not the road vanished into undergrowth. Pine and spruce cloaked the slopes, leaving little to betray the fact that men had ever lived here.

Asharre wondered if they'd find anything more substantial than ghosts at Shadefell. It seemed impossible that the surviving townspeople of Carden Vale could have retreated into such isolation and left no signs of their presence. But they'd already come this far, and they had nowhere else to look.

That night she dreamed of Falcien again. The dead Celestian sat cross-legged on the embers of his pyre. Nothing was left of his flesh, and most of his bones had been consumed by the fire. Only the sunburst pendant fused to his sternum, a glob of gold and ash, told who he had been.

"You are traveling too fast," he warned her. Threads of burnt hair crumbled around his shoulders. "You will not have time to learn what you must before reaching Shadefell. Better if you slowed; better yet if you turned back and retrieved the solaros' writings from the Rosy Maiden. If you had his work to build on, your studies would go much faster."

"We can't go back," Asharre said. "Maelgloth infest Carden Vale, and Evenna's getting weaker every day. Returning might help me, but it would hurt her, and her strength matters more than mine."

"Even if it means your life?"

"My life matters only as far as it shields hers. Help us find Aurandane. If we have the sword, we have a cure." I hope.

The dead man's jaw creaked into a grin. Most of his teeth had fallen out. "Yes. Yes, that is so. Its magic is still strong. Maol's creatures cannot touch the sword. It burns their flesh; it destroys their bodies. Only human hands can hold Aurandane. That is why the Mad God has not claimed it, all these many years, and has hidden it away instead a but the signs are there, for those who know how to find them."

"Tell me how to find it."

"Carden Vale's solaros followed the same path you walk now. Trace his footsteps. His people lit the way to enlightenment, and he saw the sword, but he did not have the strength to hold it. When you find his tracks, you will know the path a but you must not falter, as he did. You must not fail. Maol's creatures will try to stop youa"but I can show you the wards that will defeat them."

She set her jaw. "Show me."

He did, and she watched closely, but the dream lessons proved nigh impossible. Asharre's strengths had never lain in the scribe's arts, and that was all Falcien taught her. He showed her protective runes and warding circles, arcane sequences of numbers and invocations that could counter-spell corruption. Asharre began to understand what Laedys had been trying to capture in her lonely cottage, and why the woman had worked so frantically to record each shape and pattern before it evaporated with the dawn.

It was impossible to remember everything. There was too much of it, coming too fast, and the dream's nature worked against her. No sooner did a wheel of sigils appear on a page than her perspective shifted, or the page's contents changed, or time stuttered and started again elsewhere, and she was stymied. The blisters on her injured hand, which had hardly troubled her in waking life, here made her as clumsy as if she were trying to write with a plum wedged between each finger.

The only thing she was able to master was a simple sunburst, the ends of its rays flattened like hands a and there was something that tugged at her memory about that too. But the thought was gone as soon as it came, a little fish glittering in a brief leap of light before it was pulled back into the dark and drowning sea.

Falcien touched the back of her hand with the three skeletal fingers left to him. Dawn softened the darkness to the east. As it was in the dream, so it would be in the world.

"You must go," he said. "When you find the sword, let Evenna wield it. She is Blessed, and her faith is strong. Aurandane will be better in her hands than yours a but you are the one who must find it. Go, and do not falter."

The bed of embers had nearly gone out beneath him. Shadows swaddled the dule tree and filled the hollows between his bones. Asharre knew, somehow, that when the fire died completely and the darkness claimed Falcien, he would no longer be able to help her. Maol would swallow that spark of resistance, and she would be alone in the night.

"How do I keep the fire alive?" she asked.

He did not seem to think it was a strange question. "The price of that is too high."

"Tell me."

"Bones," he whispered, as the dream faded with the night. "The fire burns bones."

She woke. Around her the forest was blue-green and tranquil in the dawn. Evenna was still sleeping. Asharre traced the sunburst on the Celestian's brow, hoping she remembered its shape correctly, and was relieved to see Evenna's strained features relax. For a heartbeat she was tempted to carve the mark in with a knife, to make it permanent a but no, that was absurd. She shook the impulse away almost before realizing it was there.

Falcien's secrets worked. There was hope for them yet. Asharre let the girl sleep for another hour, until the morning was lively bright, then shook her awake.

"I've missed prayers," Evenna said as soon as her eyes opened. She looked around, confused as a child. "How did I miss the dawn?"

"You were sleeping. Peacefully, for the first time in a long while. I didn't want to wake you."

"Please don't let it happen again." Evenna hobbled to a patch of sunlight falling through the leaves. There was an ashen cast to her porcelain skin, and her body trembled visibly. She swept her hands skyward to begin the ritual, turning her face up to the morning. "I can't sleep through dawn prayer. It makes me weaker."

Asharre let her pray in peace, abashed. When she was finished, they went on. Late that afternoon, they came to Shadefell.

It was a grand folly: a collection of arches and interlocking courtyards that ringed a central tower like filigree around a jewel. Tiny windows peered out over ornamental bands of stone. Blind arcades adorned the front walls, converging on the great doors at the center. A circular emblem of carved stone, its details masked by dirt and moss, crowned the doorway's arch.

The Rosewayns must have spent a king's ransom to build it. Asharre tried to calculate the cost of bringing workmen and materials to this godsforsaken corner of the valley, floundered, and gave up. Even with the roads in good repair, they were days from Carden Vale, and that town was itself a speck on the backside of nowhere. Add in Duradh Mal's curse, and it was hard to see how the Rosewayns had managed to raise Shadefell at any price.

It was still harder to see why they'd bothered. Shadefell House defended nothing, controlled nothing. There were no passes nearby, no roads, no easy access to the river. The outer halls had no towers, no walls, only decorative battlements. Shadefell's sole defense was its remoteness.

"They'd be helpless if anyone attacked," Asharre said, marveling at the absurdity.

"It's a temple," Evenna said. "This is a perfect copy of a Vendathi temple. It was never meant to be defended."

"I do not know the Vendathi." She studied the buildings, looking for anything that might indicate they had living occupants. Not a smudge of smoke darkened the sky; what little she could see of the stables looked as dilapidated as the main house. The weeds between the courtyards' paving stones grew tall, untroubled by footsteps.

"They were a minor kingdom in Ardashir. The Vendathi believed that peace was the only true road to enlightenment, and they welcomed the world to it. They built all their palaces and temples without fortifications. This house is designed according to their precepts."

"Why? I thought the Rosewayns wanted to retake Ang'duradh. It's a long leap from coveting a Baozite fortress to emptying a treasury on an Ardasi peace temple."

"They lived in the shadow of Duradh Mal. Maybe they thought peace would protect them where walls and soldiers had come to ruin."

"Then they were wrong." Asharre pushed out of the brush. "There is nothing here. Perhaps the other side of the house will show more."

Evenna nodded. They followed the forest's hem, seeing nothing more than weeds and wildflowers and the brown veins of ivy wrapped around the courtyards' pillars.

The northern wing of the house swept out to the remnants of a kitchen garden. A tangle of blackberry vines spilled over the garden wall. The green spikes of new onions and feathery carrot shoots struggled for sunlight amidst the young pines and purple laceflower that had conquered the old beds. A doorway, partly blocked by fallen stone, led from the garden into the main house.

Asharre started toward the door, but Evenna pulled her back. "Wait."

She shrugged the younger woman's hand off impatiently. "What?"

"By the doorway. Look at the water."

A rill of inky water trickled out from a crack in the wall there. Where that thread of water flowed, nothing grew. A few yellowed weeds wilted at the edges of its reach, dying where they stood. Blooms of tiny mushrooms, blue as a corpse's kiss, sprouted from their remains. Otherwise, from the time the rivulet emerged from the house until it sank under the earth in a rippled fan of black sediment, the dirt was poisoned bare.

"Morduk ossain," Evenna said. "Dead man's feast. The hand of Maol is here."

16.

"I've found the missing Celestians," Malentir said. He brushed a finger along the underside of his dead sparrow's chin. The little bird sat motionless on his shoulder, as it had since returning from its flight. "One went south on horseback; my bird saw him retreating across Spearbridge. Two went north on foot. To Shadefell."

Bitharn winced. Kelland closed his eyes. "Which two?" the knight asked quietly.

"Two women. One bigger than most men, with runes scarred on her face and short white hair. She carried a sword heavier than yours."

"Asharre," Bitharn said. That description could be no one else. No wonder she'd thought the tracks by the pyre were a man's; the sigrir's height and stride would confuse anyone who hadn't seen her in person.

"The other was younger, smaller," the Thornlord continued. "Black hair bound in a healer's halo. No weapons. She walked slowly; she might have been wounded."

Bitharn glanced at Kelland, who shrugged. "The lack of weapons confirms that she's an Illuminer, but it isn't much to go on. Jelian, maybe, or Evenna. I don't know the younger ones as well as I should. How far ahead were they?"