'So. What did Juvens say? The best lessons one teaches oneself.' Zacharus turned his bulging eyes on Ferro, and the eyes of his birds turned with him, all as one. 'This is a strange one you have here.'

'She has the blood.'

'You still need one who can speak with the spirits.'

'He can.' Bayaz nodded his head at Ninefingers. The big pink had been fiddling with his saddle but now he looked up, bewildered.

'Him?' Zacharus frowned. Much anger, Ferro thought, but some sadness, and some fear. The birds on his shoulders, and his head, and the tip of his staff, stood tall and spread their wings, and flapped and squawked. 'Listen to me, brother, before it is too late. Give up this folly. I will stand with you against Khalul. I will stand with you and Yulwei. The three of us, together, as it was in the Old Time, as it was against the Maker. The Magi united. I will help you.'

There was a long silence, and hard lines spread out across Bayaz' face. 'You will help me? If only you had offered your help long ago, after the Maker fell, when I begged you for it. Then we might have torn up Khalul's madness before it put down roots. Now the whole South swarms with Eaters, making the world their playground, treating the solemn word of our master with open scorn! The three of us will not be enough, I think. What then? Will you lure Cawneil from her books? Will you find Leru, under whatever stone she has crawled beneath in all the wide Circle of the World? Will you bring Karnault back from across the wide ocean, or Anselmi and Brokentooth from the land of the dead? The Magi united, is it?' And Bayaz' lip curled into a sneer. 'That time is done, brother. That ship sailed, long ago, never to return, and we were not on it!'

'I see!' hissed Zacharus, red-streaked eyes bulging wider than ever. 'And if you find what you seek, what then? Do you truly suppose that you can control it? Do you dare to imagine that you can do what Glustrod, and Kanedias, and Juvens himself could not?'

'I am the wiser for their mistakes.'

'I hardly think so! You would punish one crime with a worse!'

Bayaz' thin lips and hollow cheeks turned sharper still. No sadness, no fear, but much anger of his own. 'This war was not of my making, brother. Did I break the Second Law? Did I make slaves of half the South for the sake of my vanity?'