In daylight, the ravages wrought on his body were more evident. Whatever other gifts the Were possessed, healing was not one. How many bones, Lilias wondered, had been broken? There was a Pelmaran children’s counting rhyme that gave the litany, all the way from one left eye-socket to each of his ten fingers. It was told as a heroic act in Pelmar, that beating, a blow struck against the Misbegotten, minion of the Sunderer himself. The stories failed to take into account the fact that it was a child beaten, a child’s bones broken. Ill-knit, all of them, from his knotted cheekbone to his skewed torso.

On her brow, the Soumanië flickered into life.

Birds rode the currents of wind above Beshtanag, calling out inconsequential news. Lilias touched the half-breed’s arm with her fingertips, watching his knuckles whiten on the railing. It would be easy, so easy, to Shape his bones, to straighten what was crooked, smooth what was rough. Easier than Shaping granite, to mold flesh and bone like clay. And he would be beautiful, oh! Prettier than her pretty ones, were he healed.

“Sorceress.” Ushahin’s mismatched eyes glittered. “Do not think it.”

And then he was there, in her thoughts, peeling away her defenses to lay bare her deepest fear—there, alone and defeated, the Soumanië stripped from her brow, leaving her naked and defenseless, alone. The Chain of Being reclaimed her, mortality, age sinking its claws into her, withering flesh, wrinkling skin, and at the end of it Oronin the Glad Hunter sounding his horn, for her, for her …

“Stop it!” Lilias cried aloud.

“So be it.” He turned away, watching the birds soaring on the air. “Leave me my pain, Sorceress, and I will leave you your vanity.”

“Is it vanity to cling to life?” she whispered.

The half-breed ignored her and closed his eyes. His long, pale lashes curled like waves against the uneven shoals of his sockets. One of the soaring birds broke loose from its broad spiral, a sturdy-winged raven with a rakish tuft of feathers protruding from his gleaming head. Circling tight, he cawed and chattered at the Dreamer. Frown lines appeared between Ushahin’s brows.

“Gulls carry rumors,” he said, opening his eyes. “And ravens hear them. Lady, what do you know of a ship sailing from Dwarfhorn?”

Lilias stared at him. “Dwarfhorn?”

“I am uneasy.” Ushahin made a gesture at the raven, which made a sharp sound and winged off southward, in the direction of the southern coast of Pelmar. “Lady Sorceress, I would speak with the Dragon of Beshtanag.”

Calandor? she asked.

Bring him.