We passed stone walls and winter-seared pasture. Barking dogs gave notice of habitation. Under the brilliant light of the moon rose long houses with peaked thatching, flanked by sheds with sloped roofs. Torchlight flared ahead. As we reached the village, Vai’s magic guttered the torches one by one. The doors leading into the houses opened, and dimly seen faces peered out. Although we didn’t need light on the night of the full moon, Vai extended his right hand in a gesture meant to be dramatic, and pinched four globes of light out of the air. Devyn mumbled a prayer.

We rode down a dirt street through the center of the village. In spring the main street would be nothing but a strip of sloppy mud. There were no modern chimneys, only smoke holes, and no glass windows set in the wattled walls. To judge by the bleating of sheep, the flocks were being wintered over in the same houses the people lived in. Two thousand years ago a Roman legion pressing forward to find tin, fur, and slaves for trade had probably seen the same sights we did now.

Had my mother truly come from this barbaric place? How different Daniel must have seemed to her, with his sophisticated education and his years of travel!

Watchmen paced us through the streets, holding their blackened torches. People slipped out of their homes to follow Vai’s mage light. We halted in front of a substantial house with a high roof. An elderly man dressed in an embroidered wool gown and a calf-length sleeveless leather tunic appeared on the porch. He greeted Vai with incomprehensible words.

Devyn translated into his weirdly archaic and broken Latin. “To you, Magister, we are honored to be giving guest rights. Your magic is strong. You have captured the god’s beast and trapped her in the form of a woman. But in this village the beast cannot be staying. She bears malice toward us by wearing the face of one of our dead.”

“She is my wife,” Vai repeated. “Not a beast. We need shelter for the night. We will go on in the morning.”

“No shelter can we be giving you unless the priest pours the offerings and the god grants his blessing.”

Vai’s lips thinned. I had a feeling that he was trying to decide whether to terrify them with a frightening display of cold magic.

“It can’t hurt to go to the temple.” My teeth were beginning to chatter even with the fur blanket wrapped around me.