“Burn the—your—body?”

“Yes. Better that than risking more lives. He and I have discussed what to do with the family should that occur.” Dorrin touched Falk’s ruby. “Ward of Falk,” she said, and stepped into the room.

Magery coiled about her, invisible but palpable to her awakened mage-sense. Woven into the blue and gray rug, its patterns picked out in silver threads that drew her eye, urged her to move here, then there, in patterns that would entrap her if she obeyed. She ignored the urging, instead looking around once more—to either side, behind, above, below, probing with her awakened abilities for every trap, every compulsion, every evil design.

The room seemed more silent than it should, the silence oozing out from shelves of books and scrolls, up from the rugs, down from a carved and painted ceiling. Stillness, timelessness—Dorrin shook herself; it was not peace, but yet another protection built into the room, intended to immobilize intruders, and she had forgotten its existence. She stamped on the floor and said, “Your Duke returns! Verrakai hoert’a basinya bakuerta bavanta da akkensaar!” In the ancient language of the password: “Verrakai: not elven, not stone-folk, not air-folk, but mage-man.” A spell and counterspell she’d been told were older than Verrakai House, old as the magelords’ retreat from Old Aare. The stillness receded.

She glanced back at the sergeant, pale-faced and sweating in the doorway. “Just an old spell, don’t worry.”

“It looked like the room was filling with dust.”

“It wasn’t exactly dust,” Dorrin said. She stayed away from the ducal desk and went to the shelves to the right. “I may disappear,” she said over her shoulder. “These shelves are images; they should recede to the real ones beyond, but I might walk through them. I wasn’t taught all the counterspells.” Under her gloved hand, the shelves felt real; she knew better than to grope among the books and scrolls for the touchlock and instead pressed the ducal ring on the most likely shelf. “Tangat Verrakai!” she said sharply.

The shelves vanished, revealing a much larger room with two tables, plain wooden chairs set near them, and more shelves. At the far end, the portrait she remembered hung above a small fireplace; it had terrified her as a small child, a larger-than-life-size image of Aekal Verrakai, the first duke, grim-faced. But she was not a child any longer and found him more repulsive than frightening.

You should fear. Straight into her mind the words came. Without me, you are nothing. Because of me, you were born. Because of me, you will live or die. Fear me.

“You are dead these thousand years,” Dorrin said.

A cold laugh. This power never dies.

“Nor Falk’s power, nor the High Lord’s,” Dorrin said. She drew her sword and laid the sword’s tip on the image’s chest. “It is time this image died, as well as its ghost.” A little pressure, and the tip pierced the surface.

Blood spurted from the image’s chest, ran down her sword blade hissing and smoking. The blade itself flared blue; stinking black smoke curled to either side. Dorrin stared, amazed, for a split second. Blood magery even here? She lent her power to the sword blade, augmenting its innate protection with her own, at the same time drawing the tip across the portrait, ripping it one way, then another. More blood surged out, splashing against her personal shield, hissing … it died, dried. A red mist rose from the wall behind the portrait, but dissipated when Dorrin called again and again on Falk.