“Dwindles,” Aracus repeated, following a path worn by his restless feet. He shot a glance at the Counselor. “By how much, Malthus? How much is required to extinguish the marrow-fire? How much remains? Enough?”

Malthus shook his hoary head. “I know not, and cannot say.”

“No?” Aracus eyed him. “How many times have you withheld the fullness of your knowledge from me, Malthus? Your plots have ever been deep-laid. I wonder, betimes, what you fail to tell me now.”

“There is nothing.” Malthus touched the gem on his breast. Its clear blaze underscored the deep lines graven on his features. “Forgive me, Son of Altorus. The Lord-of-Thought’s will is set in motion, and I, like this Soumanië I bear, will soon be spent. There is some service I may yet do to lure the Sunderer’s minions from his lair. But I have no more knowledge to conceal.” He smiled sadly. “The unknown is made known. There is nothing more I may tell you.”

“Would that there was!” The words burst from Aracus. He fetched up before Malthus and flung himself to his knees, his face pale and strained. “Wise Counselor, I am leading men, good men, unto their deaths; Men, aye, and Ellylon and Dwarfs. Whatever else happens, this much is certain. And they are trusting me to do it because I was born to it; because of a Prophecy spoken a thousand years before my birth.” He gave a choked laugh, his wide-set eyes pleading. “Tell me it is necessary, Malthus! Tell me, whatever happens, that it is all worthwhile.”

A man’s face, holding the phantom of the boy he had been, reckoning the cost of youth’s dreams. How many generations had it taken for one such as him to come? Malthus the Counselor reached out, cupping the cheek of the boy he remembered, speaking to the man he had become.

“All things,” he said gently, “must be as they are.”

Aracus bowed his head, red-gold hair falling to hide his expression. “Is that all the comfort you have to offer?”

“Yes,” Malthus said, filled with a terrible pity. “It is.”

“So be it.” Aracus Altorus touched the hilt of his sword; the sword of his ancestors, a dull and lifeless Soumanië set in its pommel. “Strange,” he murmured. “It seems to me I have heard those words before, only it was the Sorceress who spoke them. Perhaps I should have listened more closely.”

“We all choose our paths,” Malthus said. “Unless you wish to follow hers, soaked in innocent blood, it is the better part of wisdom to pay her words scant heed; for such truth as they held, the Sorceress twisted to justify her own deeds. Yet there was more folly in her than evil, and even one such as she may have a role to play in the end. Do not discount Lilias of Beshtanag.”

“You counsel hope?” Aracus lifted his head.