Kile shook his head. “Even I have limitations.”

“What’s going on? What are you two talking about?” Farilane asked. “How could you know I was going to come here the day I was born?”

“By these ten events you will know my prophecy is true,” Sephryn said, as if she were reciting something. Once more, she spoke to Kile. “I was number seven, I believe.”

Kile nodded.

“What prophecy?” Farilane felt the tension rising in the room. This silent conversation had taken on a disturbing tone. As if hearing the draw of a blade leaving a scabbard, she felt the anticipation of something terrible, yet they all sat quietly around the warm hearth fire and the table set with untouched cheese and crackers.

“Where is the key?” Sheldon asked. “The one that opens the box. Is it here, too?”

“No,” Sephryn said and picked up the poker once more. This time she didn’t use it on the fire. Instead, she crossed to Sheldon and handed it to him.

The carpenter refused to accept it, but he said. “How long have you known?”

“Since the moment you spoke. It’s the same voice. I could never forget that voice.”

The silent pack! Farilane realized. It was how he sounded. The manner in which Sheldon spoke. The disrespectful manner that occurred since leaving the monastery—no, even before that. It had grown more obvious once they failed to obtain the horn, but even before, when they met at the ferry . . .

“He said you were on your way to Dibben Monastery and would be trying to sneak out because the emperor forbade you to leave. He explained that in your haste and need for secrecy, you would neglect to invite me as you had promised.”

All this from a man who previously struggled to say more than I ah . . . 

“I’ve wanted to kill you for so very long,” Sephryn told Sheldon. “But now, in a way, we’re linked. You and I share the same fate.”

“No, I will succeed at becoming fane, and I will force Ferrol to readmit me to the fold. But thank you for finally delivering the horn. I suspect the key will be far easier to locate.”

Sheldon raised his hands, and a blinding bolt of white light shot forth, passing through the empress dowager’s chest and striking the far wall where it shattered stone and caught a wooden beam on fire. When the light vanished, the princess saw the Empress Dowager Sephryn collapse to the floor with a six-inch hole burned through her.

The door burst open, and Halcyon myr Milyon entered. Sheldon got to his feet and raised his hands once more. The elven bodyguard was still advancing with his sword when he died from another blinding flash.

Then Sheldon faced Kile, who promptly got to his feet.