But what am I? Eluik could not help but wonder. His own pret had no dazzle or spark, and if he had a troop of followers he could not detect them. My younger brother is the great mage. What am I? Here on Mittlegard, he was likely to be, not drekka, but a drowther, and while the drowthers were mostly oblivious to magery, Eluik would know the vast gulf between those with and without power.

In Iceway, he would be just as lacking in magery, perhaps—but he was the firstborn son of King Prayard, though born to a mistress rather than a wife. There were people eager to exploit him; others who would like to have him dead. But he mattered.

So maybe it’s pure vanity that makes me see Mittlegard as an alien place, where I do not have and will never have a home.

Enopp needed company, needed people to talk to, and the Diamond home was always full—not only of the Diamond family, but also of the many visitors that the Colonel was always inviting, or who came by uninvited. With Enopp happily occupied listening in on all the conversations of adults or playing videogames with the Diamond boys, who were older but seemed to enjoy teaching him, Eluik had plenty of time to himself.

That’s how he wanted it. When the conversation was in full swing, Eluik would say enough to make it clear he was there, and then drift out of the room and … jump.

If he had been a gatemage, then another gatemage might have been able to track him. But because he simply went, his pret going without any kind of gate at all, no one could have tracked him in any way.

Eluik liked Diamond’s farmstead, especially the wilder country, the deep woods, the glens, the hilltops. On summer evenings, when there was plenty of light, he would simply go. Even when he jumped to places that he could not see, he never appeared partly or fully inside a tree or a rock. Perhaps the other prets that were already there protected him against such a destructive collision. Eluik was content to know that it worked.

Sometimes he also jumped back to Ohio. Never into the Silvermans’ house—he did not want to let them know he was there, and he certainly didn’t want to spy on their private conversations. He would simply go to some corner of their property, or some nearby place in Yellow Springs, and sit and think for a while.