With the trickle of urine into a jar to cover any noise he made, Wad leaned close to Bexoi’s ear and whispered, “When the baby is born, I will kill you. You cannot hide from me.”

He gated away from Bexoi’s bedchamber before the doctor turned around.

Wad found himself in a certain clearing in the woods at the southern end of the Mitherkame, where a nameless treemage was teaching the Earthborn windmage Ced how to control himself. It seemed to Wad that the lessons were going all too well. Whenever he came to visit, Ced was in some kind of meditative trance and the treemage would tell him almost nothing about Ced’s progress.

This time was no different. Ced was sitting in absolute stillness, and there was not a breath of wind in the clearing, though breezes blew through the trees only a dozen yards away. The treemage stood with his back against an old beech, only his eyes moving to follow Wad’s movement through the grass.

“He does well,” said the treemage.

“I didn’t ask,” said Wad.

“You asked before, and now I have an answer,” said the treemage.

“I find that I’ve sworn to kill an evil mage, but because she’s lying in a coma I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Do men refuse to cut down a tree because it doesn’t speak or walk?”

“Cut down a tree and you can build something. A house or furniture or a fire. Cut down a sleeping mage, and all you have is a mass of flesh and bone and bodily fluids, rotting as quickly as it can.”

“And then it becomes part of the soil, or part of the bodies of crows and maggots,” said the treemage. “What form does her evil take, when she’s awake?”

“She deceives everyone, kills whomever she wants, and seeks to rule two kingdoms. To start with; I think her ambition will never end.”

“If she can’t wake up, then her ambition will only be fulfilled in dreams, where it harms no one,” said the treemage.

“But I don’t know that she can’t wake up,” said Wad. “I only know that she seems to be asleep, and has not seemed to wake up yet.”

“So if you knew that she could not wake, you’d leave her alive,” said the treemage, “because being alive would be useless to her. But if she might wake up, and thus make use of her life, you need to kill her.”

“She murdered my son,” said Wad. “And Anonoei, the woman who used to come here with me.”

“The manmage.”

Wad had not realized that the treemage knew what she was. “A good woman,” said Wad.

“A mother, as I recall,” said the treemage. “I believe you left her sons on Mittlegard.”

“I did,” said Wad. “Because we thought they were in danger.”