“Nor I. I need to talk to those who knew my mother, see if there’s any record of it. And even more mysterious than that … are these.” He pulled out the enameled box and spilled the tiles onto her bed. “I remember the name, selani. She told me it was a game, but they have another use. Divination.”

Arian stirred the tiles, then laid all of one color together. “My father had a set of these. He let me play with them, but did not teach me anything like a game. He would say, ‘Which do you feel calling you?’ and I would hold my hand over them and one would feel right.”

“Do you know the meanings of the runes?”

“Not all of them. He would only tell me the ones that I said called me. Do you know them?”

“Linne knew the runes but not how to use them. I began to learn, I think.”

“A king to wake the mountains, Amrothlin told me once you might have been. I think waking the taig is enough.” Her smile was luminous.

“And so do I,” Kieri said. “But how to use it well … I am still uncertain.”

“You will learn,” Arian said. “Because that is what you do. And now our enemy is dead, our children are safe.”

“One enemy is dead,” Kieri said. “I would not say all are; we know one iynisin escaped alive.”

“True,” Arian said. “But for this night, I will feel safe, for you are here and the elvenhome is with us again.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Ifoss, Aarenis

Arvid Semminson found the soldiers far more willing to learn tricks of swordplay from him than the Ifoss Girdish, distrustful as they were of “thief tricks.” For his part, he watched the Company weapons practice with interest. He had not paid attention to soldiers before meeting Paks other than to consider how they might be vulnerable to thieves. Her command of that little group in Brewersbridge impressed him more than he had admitted. Now he saw where she learned the skills—and skills they were. When the weaponsmaster offered to let him drill with them, he did so, taking his lumps without complaint. As Midsummer neared, he felt more and more at home with the soldiers.

It was different at the grange.

“We don’t need such,” one of the senior yeomen said. He was a master mason with his own yard, Arvid’s height but more heavily built, his shoulders thick with muscle. “We fight honest, as Girdish should.” Beyond the man, Arvid could see one of the soldiers roll his eyes.

Arvid said nothing, and when Marshal Porfur asked him to trade blows, he picked up the staff, not a sword. “Are you giving up the sword, then?” the same yeoman asked.

“Regar,” the Marshal said. “A man’s entitled to choose his weapon.”

“I just thought—” Regar began, but subsided at the Marshal’s glare.