“And I always will be,” Durzo said. He grinned, and despite himself, Kylar couldn’t help thinking that it was nice to see this once hard and bitter man smile. “In your memories. I’m smart enough to stop fighting you before you start winning. I reached the top of my game, and I had a good run. From here, I’ll only get worse.”

“But you still have so much to teach me.”

“You think this isn’t going to teach you something?”

“What if I fail?” It came out in a whisper.

“What if you do? It won’t change how I feel about you.”

“But I could doom the world! Don’t you care?”

“If I spend my last hours in Gwin’s arms, frankly, not much. Growing old with the woman I love would be my first choice, but dying reconciled with her isn’t a bad second.”

“So I’m alone.”

“I told you that was the cost when you demanded to be my apprentice.”

“I didn’t know I was agreeing to eternity!”

“Cry me a river. You’re pathetic. What’s your plan for getting into the Wood?”

Stung, Kylar shrugged. “The ka’kari.”

“The ka’kari.” Durzo stated the question like Momma K would have. The old man really had spent too long with her.

“It absorbs magic, eludes magic, makes me invisible. I’ll figure something out.” Now he was sounding defensive.

“Whose Wood is this again?” Durzo asked. “Oh yeah, Ezra’s. And who made the ka’kari? Oh, don’t tell me. Ezra.”

“Ezra didn’t make the black.”

“He understood it well enough to make six others. So tell me, fifty years after making six ka’kari he comes here—and at this point he and I aren’t on such good terms—and he makes himself a fortress. You think it never occurred to him that I might try to come in?”

“Uh . . .”

“Kid, you can scare a few Sisters with raw power and bravado, but you’re playing on a different plane here. If you live through Ezra’s defenses—which by the way, you strengthened tenfold by throwing Curoch into the wood—you still have to get around a creature so powerful and so cunning that it may have killed Ezra himself, unless it is Ezra gone utterly mad. Either way, the Hunter isn’t going to be impressed by raw magic. Your newfound confidence is inspiringly suicidal.”

Kylar was silent. Then he said, “I won’t be stopped.”

“Shut up, she comes.”

Kylar rolled the ka’kari into the center of the fire. The flames collapsed into the ball, dying instantly, plunging the clearing into darkness. Kylar jumped left and Durzo rolled right even as purple magic blazed through the clearing in jagged hands. Kylar extended a hand and the ka’kari leapt into it, flooding him with the energy it had absorbed from the fire.