Heart thudding, sweat trickling, Jervale shook his head. “No. Just weary. It was a long road here.” He blotted his forehead on his sleeve. Trust myself. “In Lur we don’t call it magic. It’s just—it’s singing, to us.”

Her smile was swift and trembling. “Then sing for me, Jervale. I have to hear you sing.”

There were foxes in the Black Woods. He coaxed two out of hiding, a vixen and her half-grown kit. Their pelts glowed brownish red in the dappling sunlight, eyes in their dark masks shiny and unafraid. Barl Lindin stared at them, silent. He held them in thrall for only a few moments, then released them.

“Well?” he said, when she didn’t say a word.

Her beautiful eyes were wide in her thin, pale face. “What else can you do?”

So he told her how the Olken lived in harmony with the land. How they sang the seeds in springtime, nurturing new life. Sang their crops to harvest in summer and autumn. How they hunted fish and game with kindness, never wasteful or cruel. How they felt the seasons, shifting, and the coming of the rain.

Or used to, before Lur’s long and dreary dry spell.

“And can you feel the drought?” she asked, when he was finished. “Does the earth’s song sound different because there’s no rain?”

She might be a great mage, but was she a lackwit too? “Of course I can. Of course it does. Lur’s in pain. We can feel it.”

“Strange,” she murmured. “I can’t. But even so, you can still… sing?”

“Yes, but it’s harder. And it leaves us feeling sour.”

She looked at him intently. “And if I could ease Lur’s pain, Jervale? How would you feel about me then?”

She was a dangerous mage, he knew that much for certain. But even so, she wasn’t wicked. She wasn’t mad, like her Morgan Danfey. And she could ease Lur’s pain. He’d seen it, hadn’t he? He’d felt the land’s joy in his brief, waking vision.

So she’s our ruin and our saving? How can that be?

He’d thought this was going to be simple. See the yellow-haired strangers for himself and speak out against them. Save Lur from the trouble they brought with them over the mountains.

And now it’s all got complicated. Bene, I wish you were here.

“Well,” he said, cautious. “I’d say you’d be owed something, Mage Lindin. If you could ease it.”

Up went her chin, so haughty. “I can.”

“You say you can.”

“I can,” she insisted. “I am a great mage. And if you know so much, you should know that.”

Trouble was, he did know it. Trouble was, he knew too much. Feeling sick, he nodded. “Then I reckon you should save us.”