Blaise Caveros bowed, precise and exacting. “You should know,” he said, hesitating. “The Soumanië, your Soumanië—”

“Ardrath’s Soumanië,” Lilias said wearily. “I know its provenance, Borderguardsman. Have you listened to nothing I say?”

“Your pardon.” He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “You should know, having once possessed, having still possession of it—it is being set into a sword. It was Aracus’ choice,” he added, “with Malthus’ approval. ’Tis to be set in the hilt of his ancestral sword, as a pommelstone. Malthus is teaching him the use of it, that he might draw upon its power should your heart relent. Does it not, Aracus will carry it into battle against the Sunderer nonetheless.”

“How men do love their sharp, pointy toys. I wish him the joy of it.” Lilias turned her head to gaze out the window. “You may go, Blaise.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he went. “Good-bye, Lilias.”

Although he did not say it, she knew he would not return. He would go forth to live or die a hero, to find love or squander it among others who shared the same fierce, hard-edged certainty of his faith. And so it would continue, generation upon generation, living and dying, his children and his children’s children bound to the yoke of the Shapers’ endless battle, never reckoning the cost of a war not of their making. She would tell them, if only they had ears to hear. It was not worth the cost; nor ever would be. But they would never hear, and Lilias, who had lived a life of immortality surrounded by mortals, was doomed to spend her mortality among the ageless.

Outside her window, the sea-eagles soared, tracing an endless parabola around the tower. Beyond her door, the sound of his receding footsteps began to fade.

Already, she was lonely.

SEVEN

SEVEN

PEERING INTO THE CHASM, SPEROS gave a low whistle. The brilliant flicker of the marrow-fire far below cast a masklike shadow on his face. “That’s what this place is built on?”

“That’s it,” Tanaros said. “What do you think? Is there aught we can do?”

The Midlander glanced up at raw rock exposed on the ceiling, then back at the chasm, frowning. “It’s beyond my skills, Lord General. I can make a better job of patching it than Lord Vorax’s Staccians did, but it’s only a matter of time.”

“Where does the fault lie?”

Speros shrugged. “There’s no fault, not exactly. Only the heat of the marrow-fire is so intense, it’s causing the rock to crack. Do you feel it? There’s no forge in the world throws off that kind of heat. I’d wager it’s nearly hot enough to melt stone down there at the Source.”

Tanaros’ brand itched beneath his doublet. He suppressed an urge to scratch it. “Aye, and so it has been for a thousand years and more. Why does it crack now?”