He gave me an odd look and said, “I don’t expect you to kill me again and use my bones to destroy Jakoven, Ward. Quit feeling guilty about a deed that happened centuries before you were born. You can ask anything of me without guilt. I’m old enough to refuse if I wish.”

I nodded, then said, “Jakoven’s found Farsonsbane.”

Oreg’s head snapped up and his eyes began to luminesce as they did when he was agitated. “Are you sure?”

I described it briefly, then said, “I don’t know what he intends to do with it—I’m not sure really what it does. But while he had me in the Asylum he used my blood to call it to life. Something happened, but it wasn’t what he expected.”

Piece by piece Oreg pulled the whole story out of me. He dismissed my belief that some of the effects I thought I felt when in the Bane’s presence were from the drugs they fed me.

“Blue,” he exclaimed. “And the magic changed?”

I squirmed but told him, “It recognized me.”

“Blue,” he muttered, and rubbed his cheek absently. “I’ve never heard of it doing that.”

“Neither had Jakoven. That’s why I’m sure he’ll come after me—or some Hurog, I don’t suppose it matters which one of us.” I had a terrible thought. “Father and his father left by-blows all over Hurog. I’m going to have to warn them.”

“How did he anoint the stone with your blood?” asked Oreg. “Did he use a ceremony—”

“No,” I said. “He just cut my arm, dribbled blood on a cloth, and rubbed it on the stone.”

Oreg frowned and sat down beside me. “What kind of cloth? Linen, cotton, silk?”

“I don’t know,” I said, but I closed my eyes and tried to remember the feeling of the cloth on my cheek. “Not silk. Linen, maybe.”

“Was there anything else on the cloth? Was it clean?”

“Clean,” I agreed, then said, “Or it was to start with. He wiped my face with it—and I was pretty filthy.”

“Sweat,” murmured Oreg, then he stiffened. “Not sweat,tears . Tears, Ward. Did he have your tears on the cloth?”

Oreg wouldn’t think the less of me—he’d known too much pain in his long life—so I admitted what any son of my father wouldn’t have acknowledged to anyone else. “Yes.”

“Ha,” said Oreg triumphantly, rising to his feet and fisting a hand melodramatically to the ceiling. “Take that, you bastard. Ha!” He turned to me with a grin. “Bet that Jakoven forgot he’d wiped your face—or modern mages have forgotten the power of a tear.”

“So what did it do?” I asked.

Oreg, still grinning, shook his head. “I have not a clue. But it will change the nature of the Bane—you said it recognized you.”