“Were you even there, in Midsummer?” she asked.

“Not often. I spent the summers in Aarenis.” Hot summers those had been, sweat gluing his shirt to his body, sun beating down on his helm. “When we were in a safe camp, I poured a libation on Midsummer Morn, and some of the troops would sing songs through the night.” Kieri lay back on the soft grass, eyes half-closed against the gleams of sun coming through the tree’s canopy overhead, and pushed those memories away; the present peace and ease were too precious to waste. After a time, the Squires talked softly among themselves. He scarcely listened, letting his mind wander to the coronation taking place in neighboring Tsaia, to his former captains Dorrin and Arcolin. He wished them well, a Midsummer prayer of abundance and health.

“But Paks said there were magelords in enchanted sleep out there,” Harin said. Mention of Paks caught Kieri’s attention. “If they are magelords, are any of them Verrakaien?”

Kieri opened his eyes. “What magelords? Where?”

“In Kolobia,” Harin said. “When Paks was there with the Girdish, she said there were noble warriors in the stronghold the Girdish call Luap’s. Didn’t she tell you?”

She had, he remembered. Kieri nodded to show he understood.

“If some were Verrakaien, would they be under attainder if they were to wake?” Arian asked. She sounded fully awake herself. Kieri turned his head and glanced at her. She was plaiting the stems of pink and yellow flowers into a crown.

“Who could wake them?” Maelith asked. She fitted a wristlet of blue flowers over her hand and began work on another.

“Who would want to?” Harin asked. “Magelords were always trouble. Let them sleep, I say, until the end of time.” Then he flushed as Kieri looked at him. The king, after all, had magelord blood. “The Tsaian ones, I meant.”

“The Girdish are trying to find out,” Kieri said without raising his head. “The Marshal-General visited me last winter—back in Tsaia—and I heard a little about it then.”

“Surely whoever put them to sleep could wake them,” Arian said. “And that I would like to know: how did they come to be sleeping there, and who else might be sleeping somewhere else?”

A disquieting thought. Kieri considered what little he knew of Kolobia, what Paks had told him. The magelords had taken refuge in that land, been attacked by something—perhaps the iynisin who attacked Paks—and then cast into an enchanted sleep. Why? For what purpose? And if what cast that sleep ended it, what would come out from that distant fortress? Allies or enemies?

“Maybe dragons out of the old tales are asleep somewhere, too,” Maelith said.

“Dragons! They’re all gone; Camwyn Dragonmaster sent them away.”

“We thought magelords were all gone,” Arian pointed out. “Maybe dragons are just sleeping.”

“They were said to be shape-shifters as well,” Sarol said, putting a pink and white wreath on his head. “We might have one in Chaya today: would we know?”