Twenty-eight cold mages taken prisoner! My icy heart flamed hot. Was Vai among them?

The general lowered the spyglass, handed it to me, and took the wrinkled paper to scrawl a note on it. “Tell the marshal that the cold mage Andevai Diarisso is to be sent directly to me.”

“Marshal Aualos said to tell to your ears alone that the particular mage you seek is not among the prisoners.”

I pressed a hand to my locket. It was still warm.

“I want the marshal to secure the encampment and the city gates. Harry any retreating Coalition units until they rout. I want Lord Marius captured, or dead if must be. When the Romans arrive, we will have them surrounded on three sides, with the river at their back.”

We stood without water or shade for an hour or more as troops ponderously trudged past our position to meet the approaching Romans. Far to the south the crack and boom of rifle fire started up; about half an hour later the rumble of cannon woke a mile or more away. But for the sound, and the departure and arrival of messengers, our watch on the ridge passed uneventfully. I couldn’t think for the constant noise. Rory tucked himself into the shade of a tree, where he leaned his head against the trunk and closed his eyes. Exhausted, I sank down beside him.

The pounding hammer filled every crevice of flesh, and blood, and air, and earth. I fell as off a cliff into a dream.

Winged as an eru, I flew above an ocean of smoke. All around clamored my brothers and sisters, each fashioned in their own shape, and all of us killers. Flashes of light like silvery minnows caught in the waves as the dying gave up life. My siblings dove into the waters to gulp up each soul.

The spirits of the dead walked through us, the hunter’s children, from the mortal world into the spirit world.

I saw everything: A man rides away from his comrades on a desperate errand although they urge him to turn back. My eru’s sight could not encompass the features by which a mortal person recognizes another: the flash of sweetness when he really smiled, the way his eyebrows rose when he was teasing me, the promise of his lips. I saw instead the fathomless well of a cold mage whose person is the conduit through which weave the energies that bind the worlds.

Vai.