“Oh, Morgan.” Her face twisted. “Did you not hear what I just said?”

Reaching over the top of the book, he seized both her hands. “I am answering you. But first, answer me.”

“Yes. I trust you. I don’t know why you keep asking. If I’ve not proven it by now then—”

“You have,” he said, and pressed her knuckles to his lips. “The trouble is, I don’t have a good reason to give you. I can tell you why, but that isn’t the same. Because the why is nothing more than a feeling, my feeling, that Dorana isn’t safe.”

“Not safe?” She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either, sometimes,” he confessed. “Thought about lightly, my fears make no sense. We are mages, gifted beyond the dreaming of any other race. We’re respected, even feared, by every nation beyond our borders. While our neighbours make war on each other, we live in peace. While their rulers rise and fall in dynastic conflagrations, we conduct our affairs with consummate civility.”

“Really?” she said. “I’d hardly call Sallis Arkley civil.”

“Sallis Arkley is a cantankerous old bastard, but that’s not the point. Despite personal differences, our culture endures. It thrives.”

“And yet you say we’re not safe?”

Letting go of her hands, he sat back on his heels and rubbed his hands across his face. “No. I do not think we are. We might be mages, Barl, but we can still be pierced by a spear or slashed in two by a sword. An arrow can puncture our hearts. A rock can crush our skulls.”

“We have incants that can destroy weapons like that.”

“True,” he said. “But what if we faced hundreds of them? Or thousands? We could never invoke those incants fast enough then. And don’t forget the panic that would surely spread in the face of such aggression.”

Her eyes widened with disbelief. “You think Feen or Trindek or Vharne or any of our neighbours would be so foolish as to attack us?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered. “When you say it out loud it sounds ridiculous. I see that. But Barl, the truth is that Dorana is defenceless. We abandoned martial magework nearly four centuries ago. Yes, the incants still exist, but they’re warded deep below the Hall, never again to see the light of day. Beyond the Council, I’d wager every other mage has forgotten we ever used them. For all the good they could do us, they might as well have been destroyed.”