The village head, a fat merchant named Qurin, stepped forward nervously.

“I do.”

“What is your name and rank?”

“Qurin, Head of Oralyn.”

The Dunwayan leader looked the plump man up and down. “I am Bal, Talm of Mirrim, Ka-Lem of the Leven-ark.”

Leiard’s lessons were coming back to Auraya. “Talm” was a title of land ownership. “Ka-Lem” was a high position in the Dunwayan military. The latter ought to be linked to the name of one of the twenty-one warrior clans, but she did not recognize the name “Leven-ark.”

“This is Sen,” Bal continued, nodding to the sorcerer at his side. “Fire-warrior of the Leven-ark. You have a priest with you.” He looked at Avorim. “Come here and speak your name.”

Avorim glided forward to stand beside the village head. “I am Priest Avorim,” he said, the wrinkles of his face set in an expression of disdain. “Why have you attacked our village? Set us free at once!”

Auraya suppressed a groan. This was not the way to address a Dunwayan, and definitely not the way to address a Dunwayan who had just taken a village hostage.

Bal ignored the priest’s demand. “Come with me.”

As Bal turned on his heel, Qurin looked desperately at Avorim, who put a hand on his shoulder in reassurance. The pair followed Bal out of the Temple.

Once the door had closed the villagers began speculating. Despite the village’s close proximity to Dunway, its people knew little about the neighboring land. They didn’t need to. The mountains that separated the two countries were near impassable, so trade was undertaken by sea or through the pass far to the south.

The thought of what Qurin and Avorim might say to upset Bal sent a shiver of apprehension down Auraya’s spine. She doubted there was anyone in the village, other than Leiard, with enough understanding of Dunwayans to negotiate a way out of this situation. But Avorim would never allow a Dreamweaver to speak for them.

Auraya thought back to the day she had first met Leiard, nearly five years before. Her family had moved to the village in the hope that her mother’s health would improve in the clean quiet of the country. It hadn’t. Auraya had heard that Dreamweavers were good healers, so she sought out Leiard and boldly asked him to treat her mother.

Since then she had visited him every few days. She’d had a lot of questions about the world that nobody could answer. Priest Avorim could only tell her about the gods, and he was too weak to teach her many magical Gifts. She knew Leiard was strong magically because he had never run out of Gifts to teach her.