She was young… and at the same time, dreadfully old. What she’d endured had aged her. It had aged her brother too. And the woman standing beside him, Lady Venette Martain, her eyes were as old as time itself.

These Doranen had suffered. It was harder to fear them, feeling their pain. But he couldn’t let sympathy soften him. Suffering or not, they were dangerous.

Nearly one hundred of Lur’s hamlets and villages had answered Elder Chaffie’s call and sent someone to Gribley. Sitting with his new friends Bannet and Del, crowded into the village hall to hear the mages of Dorana tell their sorry tale, Jervale traced his fingertips over his still-tingling face, where Remmie Lindin had soaked magic into his flesh.

They’re speaking Doranen and I understand them. That seems unnatural. These are unnatural, powerful folk.

Which begged the question… how in the name of all things green and growing was he supposed to stop them from destroying Lur? The task seemed impossible. He quailed at the thought.

But if not me, then who? There ain’t nobody else.

Which hardly seemed fair.

Barl Lindin was into the meat of the Doranen’s story now, fear and bloodshed and desperate doings, and her captivated Olken audience was aghast. Some of the women were weeping. All the poor little children. The cruelty of death.

But the Doranen mage was telling them lies.

Or not lies, exactly. Just… not the whole truth. She was leaving things out, things he’d seen in his dreams or simply knew, when he looked at her. The handsome mage who terrified her. The dreadful thing she’d done, that helped bring about the fall of her people. And she’d done something. He could feel it, like a sharp knife carving in and out with his breathing.

Del of Westwailing leaned close. “You all right there, Jervale?”

“Fine,” he whispered, and willed his pounding heart to ease.

Del didn’t seem to notice the lie.

At last Barl Lindin finished her terrible story. Glanced at her brother, and Lady Martain, then turned back to the hall.

“Good people of Lur,” she said, sounding weary and sad, “I know we must seem strange to you. Perhaps frightening.”

With a snap of her fingers she summoned fire from thin air, hovering it in a glowing ball above her outstretched palm. Jervale felt his heart pound even harder. It was just like his dream.

“Sink me,” muttered Del, beside him. “That ain’t right.”

She wasn’t the only one who thought so. Around the hall, gasps and a rising tide of unease that could easily wash away sympathy.