It is difficult to talk while trotting, so for the next hour or so we were mostly quiet. I watched Tisala and savored the fresh air. At long last we walked the horses. They weren’t too tired yet, but by the time we stumbled them into Hurog, they wouldn’t be good for much for a month or more.

I dismounted when it was time to walk to save Feather as much as possible—I weighed half again what some of the other men did.

“Huh,” said Tisala, still mounted—though a number of others were walking their horses. “If you had some Oranstonian horses, you’d have another league or more before you had to pull up.”

“No.” I shook my head solemnly. “If I had an Oranstonian mount I’d always be walking because my feet would drag off either side.”

She laughed and we spoke of everyday things—gratitude for the recent frost that killed most of the flies, though it had made the past two nights of camping chilly; hope that the clouds over our heads would wait for a few days before raining—or snowing. Anything but what lay ahead of us. Such talk made the journey shorter.

“How’s Kellen doing?” I asked. “I haven’t talked with him much today.”

“He’s giving a good performance,” she said, nodding her head toward a place a little distant where Kellen rode beside my uncle.

“Sometimes,” I said, “if you can hold the role long enough, it becomes part of you. I’ll give him my room at Hurog—not only is it the only room in the keep fit to put him in, but it’s as far from a cell in the Asylum or even one of the royal rooms at Estian as a pack of dwarves can make it.”

“It is rather cluttered,” said Tisala.

I grinned at her in appreciation of her acerbic tongue. “There still aren’t all that many places in the keep with doors that lock and roofs that don’t leak,” I said. “A lot of things get put in there for a bit and stay for a few years.”

WESET UP CAMP JUST BEFORE DARK.ISTARED AT THEstars from beneath my blanket to remind myself where I was before I closed my eyes—it didn’t help my dreams.

I stood in the laboratory room of the Asylum once more, but this time I wasn’t strapped to the stained leather table. Instead I stood before one of the other tables, the ones that held flasks of potions and implements of torture. I held a velvet bag in my hands, a bag I had to force myself to look at. Pulling back the velvet, I took out the staff head called Farsonsbane and set it in a stand on the table.