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wrist and held it tightly. She stared at him for a minute, as if to assess how much real anger was behind the move, then shrugged off his grip. “Easy, Rhys, that’s why they picked me as well, you know. Second cousin to someone or something of importance . . . I forget his name. Not as much of the lyr blessing as you, but some little bit of it, eh? They figured you’d need that with you, if you had to go close to the Spears.”
    She looked down at her hand and made a quick cut along the side, shallow and short. Red blood welled up quickly, trickling down the side of her palm. “May the gods of the north guide us and protect us. May they grant us the sight to pick out the enemy, the courage to challenge it in battle, and the strength to send it to the worst bloody hell that the underworld has to offer.” She stepped forward and put her hand on the spire of twisted rock, smearing the blood across its surface before withdrawing it.
    She offered Rhys the knife.
    He cut himself slowly, carefully, along a line that had been cut and healed over many, many times in the past. Unlike her he did not speak out loud, but moved his lips silently as he made his blood offering.
    If we are the generation that must do battle with demons, then so be it. Guide us to where our strength is needed. Help us to see that the Second Age of Kings does not end like the first .
    His fingers trailed down along the twisted stone pillar, thin lines of red trailing behind them.
    And have mercy upon the lyr, he added, your most precious and ignorant children, who have been promised power without knowing its name, and who may be sent into battle without even knowing what weapons they bear.
    It seemed to him that the ancestor spirits echoed his prayer.

Chapter 4
    C OLIVAR HAD anticipated that Ramirus’ domain would be guarded by sorcerous obstacles, but they were annoying nonetheless. None of them were serious threats, as a Magister measured such things, but they required him to waste time and energy, which was a threat of a more subtle nature.
    But that was their purpose, of course. Such obstacles were the Magister’s equivalent of a welcome sign, which set out in no uncertain terms what the status of a guest was to be in this place. Each challenge required a visitor to waste just a tad more power in flying over it, or burrowing under it, or burning or fighting or conniving his way through it, to reach the other side. For each such act a visitor must drain more of the life from a consort whose vital energies were finite. Would such exercises force a guest to the edge of transition, so that he might fall helpless later if he tried to use sorcery in Ramirus’ presence? Or would he have second thoughts about the business that had brought him here, and perhaps question whether it was important enough to merit such a risk?
    It mattered little to Colivar. His current consort was freshly claimed and unlikely to expire this soon for anything short of an all-out sorcerous war. Nevertheless the various entrapments did annoy him, and if he happened to damage a few of them as he flew overhead—setting fire to a forest of enchanted trees, causing a pack of mutated hounds to turn on one another, draining a moat so that all its carnivorous inhabitants were left gasping for breath upon the dry earth—surely Ramirus had expected no less of him. Indeed, even as Colivar flew over the final obstacle, a vast maze of hedges twice as high as a man, he could see rain begin to fall upon the land he had just passed, quenching his fire’s fury, distracting the hounds, and filling the moat anew.
    He smiled as he flew, for such weather-working was a costly affair that could drain whole days from a consort’s life. He had judged Ramirus too proud to sit back and watch as his works were destroyed, and he had not been disappointed.
    At the heart of the hedge maze was an imposing manor house built in the northern style, a large and somber