“I’m not convinced—” Nikolas said warily. “That’s just entirely not reasonable to me. How could the thoughts of a beast from beyond our borders get here? And why would Mags sense it wanted something here? That is the part that makes the least sense of all! What could it want here, of all places? No one here is—cursed, or haunted, or—”

It was Caelen who snapped his fingers then. “Of course!” he exclaimed.

Nikolas raised an eyebrow. “Of course what?”

“That’s the answer. Those bodyguards—why in the name of all that is holy would they have been so convinced, immediately, that they were being haunted?” Caelen smiled broadly. “Anyone else, any other hardened fighters I have ever seen, have always been extremely skeptical of hauntings, rather than credulous. Unless—?”

“Unless they have had visitations before,” Nikolas said slowly. “That . . . Caelen, that makes altogether too much sense.”

Mags stirred uneasily. Something about this theory didn’t feel right.

“And if one is being troubled by a vengeful spirit, perhaps in dreams, how does one deal with the nightmares?” Caelen persisted.

The third Herald answered, a little grimly. “Steady drinking, usually. And if the visitations were ugly enough, the nightmares bad enough, it might just drive a man to ignore warnings of an impending blizzard to try and get to a source of really strong drink.”

He turned to Mags. “Trainee, did you get any sense at all of whether this—thing’s—target was Valdemaran?”

Mags had to shake his head, even though he had some grave misgivings that the solution was this simple. After all, this was not the first time he had had a brush with this thing. And when he had, it had been pursuing something he cared about, and he didn’t give a crumb about those bullying mercs.

But the answer certainly seemed to satisfy the others. “I think it might be wise to make sure these men have access to either distilled spirits or that herb Healer’s sensitivity-deadening potions for as long as they are snowed into the palace,” Nikolas was saying. “Things are going to be tense enough as it is before we dig ourselves and the city out. The last thing we need is for one of those men to go mad.”

“Agreed,” said the third Herald. “And just to be on the safe side, I will keep watch for the revenant myself. If I sense it, I will see if I can find a priest about to cast it out.”

“Well, historically, they never stay cast out for long,” Nikolas observed, as Mags shuddered at the thought of having that in his head again.

“True, but by then, they should be gone.” Caelen looked down at Mags. “And so should you, young Trainee. You look as if you would not make it as far as the second floor before you passed out.”

“ ’m all right,” Mags said, struggling to his feet. “Just a bit—”