Surrendering to the power humming deep in the earth beneath her, she closed her eyes and breathed in the richness of the Black Woods. Breathed in hope. Breathed out fear. Breathed in the future. Breathed out the past. Drifted her mind through the books she’d studied in Morgan’s library, incant after incant, her thoughts and the thoughts of Dorana’s greatest mages shifting and coalescing into something uniquely her own.

The clock behind her eyes ceased its ticking. She was adrift in this new land, untethered from time, and only the whispering feet of a millepede running over her lax hand brought her back to bare earth and shafts of sunlight and the dark, dreadful feeling that once again, their time was running out.

She returned to her tent in the makeshift camp at the edge of Gribley village, and settled herself on the cot with her diary and a pen. Writing things down always helped her clarify a problem. Remmie found her there soon after, barging into the oiled-felt tent to glare down at her, his hands tight fists upon his hips.

“Where have you been?”

She put the pen down, left the diary open in her lap. “In the woods. Walking.”

“Avoiding me, you mean.”

She shrugged. “If you like.”

“No, Barl, I don’t like!” Remmie retorted, his temper ragged. “You shouldn’t wander alone in those woods. Remember Benbarsk? Remember Dreen? This is a strange land. It could be dangerous.”

Dreen. Hunched on her cot, Barl squinted up at her brother. Pain spiked behind her eyes as she remembered torn flesh and splintered bones and the last agonised moments of a dying woman. A friend.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“Oh, well, then,” he said, scornful. “That makes everything all right.” He shoved his hands into the baggy pockets of his roughspun trousers. “If you’re interested, Elder Chaffie says she can’t say yet if we can stay. It’ll take some time for her people to make up their minds about us.”

“I’m not surprised. We’re asking a lot of them.”

“She was curious about one thing. She’s wondering how we can help them. Funnily enough, Venette and I are wondering the same thing. And we’re wondering why you lied to the Olken. There was no civil war. Mage hadn’t turned against mage. We ran, Barl. We escaped the ruin you and Morgan created. But you didn’t mention that, either.”

“No, I didn’t!” she snapped. “We want the Olken to help us, not turn away in fear and horror.”

“They’ll turn away when they find out you lied!”

“But they won’t find out, Remmie. Not if you don’t tell them. And you won’t.”

His shoulders slumped. “No. I won’t. We won’t. But Barl, this other business…”