“Enough, enough! It’s settled then,” he laughed, “and much thanks to you both.”

“Remember that the next time I do something wrong!” Elspeth giggled back.

She teased Dirk for a few moments longer—then her face clouded with anxiety when she realized that Talia had fallen asleep. She’d been doing that a great deal lately, sometimes right in the middle of a conversation. Elspeth was afraid that this was a sign that she would never be quite well again.

But Dirk and Skif just exchanged amused glances while Dirk settled the sleeping Herald a little more comfortably on his shoulder. Elspeth heaved an audible sigh of relief at this; surely if anyone would know if something were wrong, Dirk would.

Dirk hadn’t missed the anxious look or the sigh of relief.

“It’s nothing important,” he told her; quietly, to avoid waking Talia.

“He’s right—honestly!” Skif assured her. “Dirk’s mother told us she’ll be dropping off like this. It’s just a side-effect of speed-Healing. It has something to do with all the energy you’re using, and all the strain you’re putting on yourself. She says it’s the same kind of effect you’d get if you ran twenty or thirty miles, swam a river, and climbed a mountain or two, then stayed up three days straight.”

“According to mother,” Dirk continued, “It has to do with—fatigue poisons?—I think that’s what she called them. When you speed-Heal, they build up faster than the body can get rid of them, and the person you’re Healing tends to fall asleep a lot. When they stop the speed-Healing, she’ll stop falling asleep all the time.”

“Show-off,” Skif taunted.

Dirk grinned and shrugged. “See all the useless information you pick up when you’re a Healer’s offspring?”

Elspeth protested; “Useless, my eye! I thought for sure there was something wrong that nobody wanted to tell me about—like there was when she wouldn’t wake up. Nobody ever thinks to tell me anything anymore!”

“Well, imp,” Dirk retorted, “That’s the price you pay for poking your nose into things all the time. People think you already know everything!”

The Border was officially closed, but refugees kept slipping across every night, each of them with a worse tale to tell than the last. Selenay had had a premonition that Ancar wasn’t quite through with Valdemar, and had stayed on the Border with a force built mainly of the defectors from Hardorn’s army, now fanatically devoted to her. She had been absolutely right.

This time the attack came at night, preceded by a storm Selenay suspected of being mage-caused. There was a feint in the direction of the Border Guardpost, a strong enough feint that it would have convinced most leaders that the attack there was genuine.