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made him think Quendius could travel through shadow. It was not a Talent or a magic that the Vaelinar held. It was more like a blight on the world and Quendius a worm who could wiggle through the corruption. Narskap shivered. His thoughts turned to the problem at hand: getting past Bistel to harvest the wood from the famed Vaelinar trees known as aryns. Nothing less would suit his purpose.
    Inwardly, the words of the Goddess echoed in his head, particularly those which she had whispered to him. Like an arrow of Cerat, he mused. Straight to the heart and through it. She had intended to hurt him, and she had indeed pierced him. If he’d had a heart.

Chapter Four
    He watched Daravan ride off, north and to the east around the looping bay after a last admonishment to tell Lariel their suspicions but to couch them with uncertainty. And to make sure his audience had no listeners but the queen, not even Osten. As for the trader they’d saved, Daravan wanted nothing said. He would handle that, he’d told Sevryn, and Sevryn had little doubt he would. The Oxfort dynasty held more power on the First Home continent than any bloodline or warlord, and it would be crossed, if at all, with great diplomacy. Sevryn took a hand off a carcass for himself after kicking and shooing away the kites who’d come down to claim the spoils.
    Blood soaked his clothes, drying stiffly in the slanting sunlight. Some of it belonged to him and some to Daravan, but the vast majority was the red-black blood of the foe and it stank. The whites of his horse’s eyes showed as he watched Sevryn as warily as he would a stranger while Sevryn wrapped and tucked away his grisly souvenir. Sevryn pulled firmly on the bridle with a word or two, testing the tie-up to a driftwood stump and sat down to pull his boots off so he could bathe. He would not ruin his boots in the sea, not even for a recalcitrant mount. He waded into the surf, the salt water stinging the cuts and scratches peppering his body, even as the chill made him clench his teeth. The foam drew back with the tide stained red by his bathing, and he stepped out of the water as soon as he could, wind off the bay cutting through him.
    Sevryn pulled a saddlebag open and ate while the cold breeze dried him, cutting jerky into strips and chewing it down as best he could. He had a cheese in there, too, but decided to save it and warm it by a fire in the evening. After he finished, he drew out all his weapons, the ones he had recovered, and began to oil and clean them. He honed the ones with the harshest usage, but there were nicks and notches that a smithy would have to finish off for him. Shivers came and went over him as his clothes dried in the chill wind, and he finally put his blades away. He cleaned his boots in the same way, but they would have to be redyed and treated. The bloodsong in him bled away with the sea wind.
    The kites came back with their shrill cries, a dark cloud of them, swooping low to the marsh, and he knew they had come to feast on the carrion left for them. With that thought, he pulled his boots back on, mounted with an encouraging word to his horse, and put his heels to the animal’s flanks. The blood on the water, the cry of birds squabbling over the dead, the winter chill of the wind, all filled him with the sense that he had a need to get back to Rivergrace as soon as he could. It spurred him harder than the urgency to take his grisly trophy to the Warrior Queen with word of a possible new foe. He rode back the way they’d come, the wind off the sea already whipping the sand and dirt over their tracks, obscuring them. When he came to the freshwater river cutting across the marshes, he paused at its bank holding little hope that he could call on the Ferryman to aid his return. He kicked the horse into the water with a jump and a leap and they were through, heading south and to the east, to the line of forested hills where the horse could graze when they halted for the day and he