And in many ways, this was an even greater tragedy, for Christa had still been on her internship assignment.

When the pieces were all assembled from the various fragments the Heralds at the Collegium had “read” when the Death Bell began ringing, the result was almost as confusing as having no information at all. This much alone they knew; Christa was dead; the Herald assigned as her counselor, the cheerfully lascivious Destria, was badly hurt, and the cause had something to do both with raiders and a great fire.

The information they received from the Heralds stationed with the Healing Temple to which Destria had been carried was nearly as fragmentary. Their Gifts of Mindspeech weren’t nearly as strong as Kyril’s or Sherrill’s. But they made it plain that Destria needed more help than they could provide—and that there was urgent need of a different kind of aid. They were sending Destria back to Healer’s Collegium and the Palace, and with her would come clarification.

Within the week they came; one uninjured Herald, Destria (a pitiful thing carried on a litter swung between two Companions, one of them Destria’s Sofi), and a battered and bruised farmer whose clothing still bore the smoke stains and ash of a fire. All three of them had to have traveled day and night with scarcely a pause to rest to reach the capital so quickly.

Selenay called the Council into immediate session, and the petitioner came before them. He sagged wearily into the chair they set for him, his eyes sunken deeply into their sockets, his hair so full of ash it was hard to tell what color it was. It was plain he had wasted not even a single hour, but had gotten on with the journey without taking time for his own comfort. And the tale he told, of well-armed, organized raiders, and the near-massacre of everyone in his town, was enough to chill the blood.

They had given him a seat, since he was plainly too weary to stand for very long, and he seemed like an omen of doom, sitting before the Council Table, both hands bandaged to the elbow. The taint of smoke had so permeated his clothing that it was carried even to the Councillors, and the smell of it brought his message home with terrible force.

“It was slaughter, pure and simple,” he told the Council in a voice roughened by the smoke. “And we walked into it like silly sheep. Up until this spring we’ve had so much problem with brigands, little bands of them, pecking away at us, that we’d come to expect them, like spring floods. Then, when they all vanished this winter—gods, you’d think we’d have had the sense to realize something was up. But we didn’t; we just thought they’d gone off to richer pickings. Ah, fools, fools and blind!”