Magic doesn’t work well long distance. My own pain every time I left Hurog taught me that over and over again. Jakoven hadn’t had to be at Hurog the night his creature had attacked—a geas had done the traveling for him. There were other ways to work magic over a distance. Runes sometimes worked—or a jewel could carry a spell almost forever until it was loosed. Oreg had once transported himself a day’s ride to a place he’d never been—but, as he’d later explained, he’d only done that because the magic that had bound him to me pulled him far more strongly than his body did. So there were exceptions, but I didn’t think that Buril was one of those.

I believed Jakoven had brought Farsonsbane to Buril—and I had the means to test my theory.

Sitting on my bed, I closed my eyes. I wouldn’t look for Jakoven.Finding takes magic, and there was always a chance that a wizard might feel the magic I used tofind him. So I sought Farsonsbane instead.

I thought of the Bane as I’d last seen it, an age-darkened bronze dragon, poorly wrought and crude. It was unremarkable except for the unmistakable power that hung about it and the small jewel that hovered in the dragon’s mouth.

Ifound the Bane half a day’s ride away to the north.

I opened my eyes and could barely breathe over the possibilities of what I had discovered. A chance.

As I’d tried to explain to Haverness, no man would want to announce he was using Farsonsbane—not in the position Jakoven found himself. He wanted a world to rule, not a barren wasteland. So he had to keep the Bane secret until people were so cowed by it, and him, they would not fight against it—say after he laid waste to Hurog, for instance, something more spectacular than the mere death he’d left behind him at Buril. But for now he had to keep it secret or his own men would turn against him.

If Jakoven had brought an army with him, they’d have turned on him the moment he brought out the Bane and used it. If he’d brought an army, his use of the Bane to destroy Buril would not be a secret. I knew with absolute certainty that Jakoven wasn’t stupid enough to have brought an army with him.

He’d come in secret, and was leaving the same way. And I knew that Jade Eyes would be with him.

The chill in my spine was anticipation. A part of me salivated at the thought of sinking ax or blade into Jade Eyes’ flesh. Blood lust was a portion of the legacy of my father, and not something I was proud of. But I preferred the hunger for Jade Eyes’s death to the bone-deep fear the rest of me felt.