Logen gathered up the bowls and started spooning steaming slop out into them, making sure to keep one ear on Bayaz' talk. 'Our rivalry became a feud, and our feud became a hatred. We fought, with words, then with hands, then with magic. Perhaps, left to ourselves, we would have killed each other. Perhaps the world would be a happier place if we had, but Juvens interposed. He sent me to the far north, and Khalul to the south, to two of the great libraries he had built long years before. He sent us there to study, separately and alone, until our tempers cooled. He thought the high mountains, and the wide sea, and the whole breadth of the Circle of the World would put an end to our feud, but he misjudged us. Rather we each raged in our exile, and blamed the other for it, and plotted our petty revenges.'

Logen shared out the food, such as it was, while Bayaz glared at Quai from under his heavy brows. 'If I had only had the good sense to listen to my master then, but I was young, and headstrong, and full of pride. I burned to make myself more powerful than Khalul. I decided, fool that I was, that if Juvens would not teach me… I had to find another master.'

'Slop again, eh, pink?' grunted Ferro as she pulled her bowl from Logen's hand.

'No need to thank me.' He tossed her a spoon and she snatched it out of the air. Logen handed the First of the Magi his bowl. 'Another master? What other master could you find?'

'Only one,' murmured Bayaz. 'Kanedias. The Master Maker.' He turned his spoon over and over thoughtfully in his hand. 'I went to his House, and I knelt before him, and I begged to learn at his feet. He refused me, of course, as he refused everyone… at first. But I was stubborn, and in time he relented, and agreed to teach me.'

'And so you lived in the House of the Maker,' murmured Quai. Logen shivered as he hunched down over his own bowl. His one brief visit to the place still gave him nightmares.

'I did,' said Bayaz, 'and I learned its ways. My skill in High Art made me useful to my new master. But Kanedias was far more jealous of his secrets than ever Juvens had been, and he worked me as hard as a slave at his forges, and taught me only such scraps as I needed to serve him. I grew bitter, and when the Maker left to seek out materials for his works, my curiosity, and my ambition, and my thirst for knowledge, drove me to stray into parts of his House where he had forbidden me to tread. And there I found his best-guarded secret.' He paused.

'What was it?' prompted Longfoot, spoon frozen halfway to his mouth.