The wood of the tabletop was scored with graffiti, some of it recent, much of it old, all of it telling a story. There were many names mentioned, most of them with some reference to the impressive or pitiable size or function of their sexual organs. Places were named too, often in childish bravado, like I went to Kang Kang and it stank of shit. And here and there were messages. Xel—meet me at Friar’s Bridge, sunfall, noonday—Yel. Kosar wondered if Xel and Yel had made the meeting, and why, and what had come of it. He wondered whether they were both still alive, and if not whether they had died happy. Death was free nowadays, handed out on a whim by militia and murderers alike. And Red Monks too. A Red Monk slaughtering a whole village . . .

He looked around the tavern and shivered. He had heard what the Red Monk asked the children on the bridge before he killed them: Where is Rafe Baburn? The only villager that madman had not killed was the one he was seeking. There was a message in that, more hidden than those carved into the oak of this tavern table, and yet far more important. For a Red Monk to be abroad, it meant only one thing: that magic was back in the land. And for the Monk to be seeking the boy Rafe . . .

He shook his head and took a huge swig of his ale. It truly was an Old Bastard, coursing into his stomach and blurring his vision within minutes. It had been a long time since he’d taken a drink like this—back in Trengborne he was lucky to be given a bottle of rancid rotwine—so he would have to be careful. He had no wish to greet A’Meer by sicking all over her.

Yet strong ale would not purge the fear that had been seeded in his mind. Kosar had never felt a terror like this. He had been afraid many times in his life—fearful for himself, and those he sometimes had cause to call his friends—but never terrified. Even when the rovers had tied him down and watched as a weasel nibbled at his thigh, he had been certain that he would survive. Perhaps it had been the cocky conviction of a younger man, someone who almost always got what he wanted by stealing it, but it had seen him through. This was different. Earlier fears had been based on knowable threats, the knife in this man’s hand, the whip in another, a herd of tumblers chasing him for a day and a night across the foothills of Kang Kang. Those threats were tactile, understandable. What he felt now was a terror of something transmuted into myth and legend. Secondhand, yes, but no less heartfelt for that.